The Fixer

47

Conklin’s already ruddy face had turned dark, and his eyes twinkled with moisture. There was something in his expression very close to hatred.

Rick was about to speak, to attempt to talk the man down with some combination of wheedling and threat, when Conklin jabbed a fat finger in the air close to Rick’s nose and said, with teeth bared, “Get the fuck out of here this instant before I make you.”

There was no more reasoning with him. Anyway, Rick had gotten what he’d come for. He stood up, the ladder-back chair crashing to the kitchen floor behind him. He picked up the chair and slid it neatly against the table. Then he left the kitchen and headed down the hallway to the front door, his footsteps loud in the silence.

He descended the steps of the gray-painted wraparound porch, his heart thudding. The air was salty and the sun was so bright he had to blink a few times before his eyes adjusted. When he was a good ways down the long driveway, he heard a noise behind him. There was a scuffing sound, like a shoe against gravel, and he turned his head and for a fraction of a second he saw something in his peripheral vision: a person.

Then something walloped his upper back with such force it sent him sprawling to the ground. He heard a cracking sound on impact and wondered if it was a bone. After a brief moment of nothing, a supernova of pain exploded in his upper back, of a magnitude he’d never experienced before. Needles of pain were shooting down his arms, his hands, and radiating down to his lower back. His right cheek had scraped against the asphalt, but that hurt was insignificant. What the hell? He looked up, saw a guy looming over him, holding a baseball bat, silhouetted against the bright sun.

“Leave it… the fuck… alone,” the man said. It was the bouncer from Jugs, and the man clearly intended to kill him.

He scrambled to his feet, as the ground beneath him tilted, and he lunged unsteadily toward his car. He tried to run but for some reason he found himself moving slower than usual; maybe it was the pain that had gripped his back and shoulders.

The bouncer pulled the bat back and swung it hard at his face.

Rick watched it come at him, as if in slow motion, and he knew that the bat would derange his face as soon as it made contact, break his nose and cheekbone and probably other bones he didn’t know he had. For a split second he considered contracting into a fetal position to protect himself. But at the last moment, as the bat came at him, he spun and flung out his hands to try to block the blow, try to grab the bat out of the guy’s hands, but he managed only to have the fingers of his left hand crunch against the shank of the bat, slowing its speed and maybe altering its trajectory just enough so it cracked into his jaw. His field of vision exploded in a constellation of stars. His left arm flopped uselessly against his side and he screamed in pain. The bones in his left hand felt as if they’d shattered like glass.

He tasted the metallic tang of his own blood. A part of his brain, the project manager that was overseeing everything at a cool distance, wondered whether the bouncer intended to kill him or just inflict brain damage. Maybe he’d get hit on the side of his head and suffer a stroke, and he’d end up just like his father.

“Hold on,” he huffed. “Listen.”

Or maybe he only thought he’d spoken these words aloud. His jaw felt broken and his mouth wasn’t working.

“Leave it… the fuck… alone,” the bouncer said again.

He tried to lift his arms to ward off the next blow, but he couldn’t lift his left hand, and this time the bat connected with his trunk, slamming into his solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him, doubling him over. He couldn’t breathe. For a brief instant he saw stars again. He crumpled to his knees. He gasped for air uselessly like a goldfish out of its bowl. Everything went quiet, and all he could hear was a high-pitched squeal, like feedback from a microphone. He collapsed into a ball.

But the man wasn’t done yet.

The bat connected one more time, smashing into his right shoulder and his right ear, and somehow the starburst of pain was even worse, a crescendo of agony, and his field of vision went dark and he was gone.