Take Down

FORTY-FOUR

They entered the urgent-care clinic on the corner of Eastern and Flamingo at just past ten. Mags had a bloody towel pressed to her ear, and fit right in with the rest of the clinic’s walking wounded. The clinic was run by a drunk named Dr. Gregorio Ibarra. Ibarra specialized in treating the city’s criminal element, the reception area’s cheap plastic seats filled with drug dealers and tattooed gang members. Ibarra treated their gunshot and knife wounds without bothering to report their injuries to the police, as the law required. That was his racket, and he made a good living from it.

A female receptionist reading a celebrity magazine sat behind a plate of bulletproof plastic. Billy sweet-talked her, his breath fogging the plastic. Soon Mags was being ushered into an examining room ahead of the other patients.

The examining room was without decoration. Mags sat on a steel table bolted to the wall and kept shaking her head, pissed off that she hadn’t been taken to a regular hospital. Billy stood against the wall with his arms crossed, refusing to wilt under her hostile gaze.

“This place is a dump. The floors aren’t even clean.”

“I can’t take you to a regular hospital without the cops getting involved. You’ll be fine here. Your wound isn’t that bad.”

“You could have blown my head off with that crazy stunt.”

He had shot Mags on the side of her head directly above her left ear. He hadn’t meant to take a sliver of her ear off, but shit happened. To everyone in the campsite it had appeared that the bullet had entered her skull, when in fact the bullet had only grazed it. The timing of her fall into the grave had sold the play, and he didn’t think it could have gone better.

“You’re alive, aren’t you? Show some gratitude,” he said.

“A piece of my ear is gone. I’ll be scarred for life.”

“So wear your hair long.”

“My hearing’s fucked up as well.”

“Learn sign language.”

She angrily threw the towel at him. “I thought you cared about me.”

He started to steam. He’d risked everything to save her. It had seemed the right thing to do; now he wasn’t so sure. But he was stuck with the decision, and he decided to let the situation play itself out. If he played her right, maybe she’d tell him what her deal with the gaming board was.

“I do care about you,” he said.

“Then why didn’t you use the gun to shoot those bastards instead of me?”

“The gun had only one bullet.” He retrieved the towel from the floor and placed it on the examining table. “Let’s not talk about this right now, okay?”

“You’re not making any sense.”

A noise in the hallway ended the conversation. Ibarra entered, his eyes watery from too many liquid meals. In his hand was a clipboard containing Mags’s personal information, all of it lies. Ibarra gave her wounded ear a cursory examination before addressing Billy.

“Gunshot?” the doctor asked.

Billy acknowledged that Mags had indeed been shot.

“You look familiar.”

Billy acknowledged that he’d visited Ibarra’s clinic in the past.

“I’m assuming you know the drill.”

Billy said that he did.

“Six hundred, cash, and I’ll make your friend as good as new.”

Ibarra’s rates had gone up. Billy was in no position to argue, and he extracted six crisp hundred-dollar bills from his wallet. Ibarra held the bills up to the overhead light to ensure they were not counterfeit before stuffing them into his lab coat. Then he got busy stitching Mags up.

The closest Walgreens was on the corner of Flamingo and Maryland Parkway. The aisles were empty as they walked to the back of the store to where the twenty-four-hour pharmacy was located. The pharmacist on duty was a pleasant guy with a goatee and a silver ponytail and said it would take fifteen minutes to fill Mags’s prescription for painkillers.

They waited on a short bench outside the pharmacy window. Mags’s ear was covered by a flesh-covered bandage that didn’t look so bad, until you saw her face and knew that she’d just stepped one foot in hell. He felt bad for her, even if she was a snitch, and held her hand.

“You going to be okay?” he asked.

“I’ll survive. I want to finish our conversation. What was going to happen to you if you didn’t shoot me? Were the people in the car going to kill you?” she asked.

“Probably.”

“Who are they?”

“The good-looking guy is named Marcus Doucette. He runs Galaxy. The wacky blond’s his wife. The old guy is a grifter I once ran with who switched sides.”

“What’s your deal with them?”

“They caught me cheating their casino and blackmailed me into doing a job for them. I’ll be done tomorrow afternoon, and then they’ll let me go.”

“What happens tomorrow afternoon?”

“I can’t tell you that. What’s wrong?”

“My ear’s starting to throb.”

He coaxed the pharmacist into giving him a single pain pill. Mags swallowed it dry and thanked him with a thin smile. He decided it was time to level with her. “I followed you out of the casino the other night. You got into a Jeep Cherokee on the corner of Sahara. There was a guy behind the wheel. You want to tell me about him?”

She hesitated, the gears shifting, thinking hard.

“He was my partner,” she said.

“Was, as in past tense?”

“We’re splitting up. I’m done with him.”

“He treat you bad?”

“The fucking worst.”

“Explain why you came back to Galaxy.”

“I wanted to see you again. I want to run with your crew. It’s what I wanted my whole life. When you made me the offer the other night, I thought, shit, it’s finally come true.”

He didn’t believe that was her motivation for coming back to Galaxy. The gaming board had made her do it, then left her hanging in the wind. They were bastards that way. But maybe she was being truthful about being done with them. After what had happened tonight, he didn’t think she was very useful to the gaming board anymore.

“Your prescription’s ready,” the pharmacist announced.

He paid for the drugs. The pain pill had taken hold and Mags was acting spacey. Taking her by the arm, he guided her to the front of the store.

“I’m dying for a smoke,” she said.

“You still smoke Kools?”

“You remembered. How sweet.”

He bought a pack and they went outside. The Camaro was parked by the entrance, windows down, the blaring rap music loud enough to stir the dead. Ike and T-Bird occupied the front seat, playing chauffeur because he’d asked them to.

He helped Mags into the backseat. She lived on the east side of town in a town house development. The drive was short. As Ike pulled into the driveway, Billy glanced up and down the street, just to make sure no gaming agents were hanging around.

He walked Mags to the front door. She was fighting to stay awake and struggled to get the key into the front door. She invited him inside, and he heard an urgency in her voice that caught him by surprise. They entered the foyer. The door slammed behind him.

“I want you to stay,” she said.

“I can’t do that.”

“Not even for a little while?”

“No. You need to rest up. You took a real beating tonight.”

“I really want to run with you, Billy. We’ll make a good team.”

He’d been sincere when he’d asked Mags to join his crew. It seemed out of the question now, considering what he knew. Her days as a grifter were over. She needed to find another line of work, go back to school, get a degree in a profession that paid the bills. Anything but this.

“Let’s talk about this in a couple of days,” he said.

“You’re not backing out, are you?”

“Of course not.”

She wrapped her arms around his waist, and kissed him on the mouth with everything she had. She had smoked a cigarette in the car, and the menthol taste did a wicked number on his head. When their lips parted, he could hardly breathe.

“Why won’t you stay?” she asked. “Don’t I turn you on?”

“I just can’t,” he said, the words unconvincing.

“You never forgot that day in Providence, or me.”

“I’ve got to beat it.”

“Admit it. You want me so bad your pants are about to burst.”

“Not tonight.”

“You’d better not stand me up on Sunday, or I’m going to hunt you down.”

Her eyelids had turned heavy and she could barely stand up. He guided her through the town house to the master bedroom and made her lie down on a bed covered with a collection of teddy bears. She was asleep within moments of her head landing on the pillows.

He found a blanket on the top shelf of the closet and covered her, then stood beside the bed and drank in the sight of her for the very last time. She was the definition of everything he found beautiful in a woman. Never seeing her again was the right thing to do, even if it was going to tear him apart.

“You take care of yourself,” he whispered.

He walked out of the town house and locked the front door behind him. He needed to wash away the memories with a few stiff drinks. Ike and T-Bird were chilling in the driveway, and he offered to buy them dinner. They climbed into the Camaro with Billy riding shotgun. Ike fired up the engine and backed out of the drive.

“What are you gents in the mood for?” he asked.

“You’ve got some explaining to do first,” Ike said.

“About what?”

“That shit at the campsite. Me and T think you’re trying to pull a fast one on us.”

Before Billy could explain, Ike cuffed him in the mouth, and the car took off.