The Hard Bounce

Chapter Ten

Sid’s Vids sat sandwiched between a Vietnamese restaurant and a Store 24 on Commonwealth, right down the block from where the BU campus began. The window facing the street looked like it last met Windex sometime during the Cold War. Sun-faded videotape boxes sat limply on display. I did a double-take.

Videotapes? Even I, the man with the beeper, owned a DVD player. The titles popped up more red flags than a Chinese Army parade.

Caddyshack 2.

Joe vs. the Volcano.

The place didn’t even hawk good videotapes.

Obviously we’d found the right place. The piece of real estate the store occupied didn’t come cheap. And Sid’s Vids wasn’t working too hard to interest customers off the street. The money wasn’t coming off rentals. The only thing missing was a neon sign flashing FRONT. But I must have passed the place a thousand times before and never noticed the quirk of it.

A little bell tinkled over the door as we walked in. The place smelled of stale dirt and something ripe and sickly sweet like old meat. The air conditioner over the window had to be broken; otherwise it should have been turned on by law. Putrid humidity hung the stench at eye-level in the small room. I could hear the sounds of a television and labored breathing coming from the rear. My heart pounded as we walked down the aisle. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do if I saw a snake tattoo.

Bad things.

Bad, bad things.

What I did see was one of the fattest beasts outside a zoo that I’d ever laid eyes on. The person sitting behind the counter was at least four hundred pounds. Limp, stringy hair lay across its forehead like overcooked spaghetti.

I was looking right at it, and I had no idea if it was a man or a woman. There were tits, sure, but in the dim light, I couldn’t be sure there wasn’t stubble or an Adam’s apple wedged into the thick folds of its neck.

“Oh, yuck,” Junior muttered under his breath.

I cleared my throat. “Excuse me.”

“What?” The beast still didn’t look up from the TV.

“I want to talk to Sid.”

“I’m Sid,” the beast said, pointing a thumb the size of a bratwurst back at itself.

“You’re Sid?” Junior asked.

“The fucking sign says Sid’s Vids, don’t it? You expecting a man?”

Well, at least we cleared that much up.

“It’s Portuguese,” she went on, “short for Sidonia.”

“We were told we could get some movies here.”

With a tremendous effort, Sid turned her head to look at us better. “Wow. You two managed to figure out that you could get movies at a video store. You two must be the fucking pride of MIT.” Sid laughed a wet gurgle at us.

“Movies with girls in them.”

Sid turned back to the television. “On your left. Through the curtain, Romeo.” To the left was a beaded curtain, a handwritten sign next to it that read, 18 And Over Only.

“I don’t think you’d have these movies on your shelves,” I said.

Sid’s broad face darkened as she turned back. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you do,” Junior said. “Rough stuff. With girls. And by girls, we mean girls.” Junior plucked a pair of quotation marks in the air with his fingers.

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.” Sid’s voice didn’t have the same conviction the second time. Beads of dull sweat popped out on her face. Might not have been nervous sweat. Could have been exertion sweat from having to turn her head twice in less than an hour.

“C’mon,” I said. “Seven told us this is where he gets his.”

“Seven what? Little dwarves? I said I don’t-”

“Whatever,” Junior said. “You don’t want our money? Fine. But just so you know, we’ve got a few people who want those kinds of movies and we’ve got cash.” Junior brought out the flash money-a hundred wrapped around a thick wad of ones. To Sid it must have looked like a Burger King’s ransom.

Sid licked her thick lips at the sight of the money. I suppressed my gag reflex.

“You two cops?” she asked.

“We look like cops to you?” I asked.

“Cause you have to tell me if I ask. It’s illegal for you to not tell me if I ask. That’s entrapment.”

“I’m not a cop,” I said. I didn’t know if Sid’s information on the law was true or not, but I figured I’d humor her.

“What about you, Red?”

Junior sighed. “Nope. Not a cop.”

“Say it. Say the words. Say, ‘I’m not a cop.’”

“I. Am. Not. A. Cop,” he said, hammering it out like a kid at a spelling bee.

One more shot, for reaction’s sake. “Listen, just call the snake man and tell him we want three copies of every movie he’s got.”

Sid jiggled and wheezed at his mention.

We have a winner.

I sighed, feigning boredom at the conversation as we walked. “Make some calls. We’ll be back tomorrow. Have an answer.”

Outside the store, Junior said in a mock-serious tone, “I thought you told Seven you wasn’t gonna bring him into this.”

“Did I now?” I said with equal amounts of mock-forgetfulness. “Well, gee. It must have plum slipped my mind.”

“Shame on you.” Junior waggled his finger at me. “And your plums.”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes. Shame on me. Leave my plums out of this.”

Junior sat on Miss Kitty’s hood, mulling over the situation. “Well, ain’t this a bitch,” he said, chewing on his thumbnail.

“What is?” Humid sweat made my clothes stick. As I separated the fabric from my skin, I could still smell the stink of Sid’s Vids coming off me, as though the odor had dug itself into my pores.

“This throws a monkey wrench right into our investigatory style, now don’t it?” he said, throwing his hands into the air. “I mean, hell… we can’t just kick the shit out of her to find out what we need, can we? She’s a girl.” He said the last with an aggravated sweep of his hand toward the storefront.

Girl might not have been the term I would have used to describe our little Sidonia, but I knew what he meant. As a blanket policy, we try not to hit women. Even ones with as questionable a womanhood as Sid. Once I had to deck a townie biker chick when she went for my eyes with a corkscrew. Another time, a drunken skinhead girl chased Junior halfway to Roxbury when she decided she wanted a fight and picked Junior. That’s how far he’d go to avoid physical conflict with a woman. Literally.

As extreme as the circumstances were, we couldn’t come up with a good enough reason to pound on Sid. Besides, I wasn’t convinced we could dish out anything that would register on her thick hide. Be like punching a waterbed.

This was going to call for creativity. Not our deepest well to draw from.

“Wait a sec,” I said. I walked back over toward Sid’s Vids. I was reasonably sure Sid wasn’t going to come waddling out the door unless it was time to close or the building was on fire. Over the windows, about seven feet up, was the broken air conditioner. I felt in my pockets for something to hitch up the vent flaps with.

Pack of Parliaments, keys, and Sharpie pen.

Bingo.

My lucky self-defense Sharpie.

I tiptoed up and arched my body to stay out of Sid’s line of vision. I heard her voice over the television before I lifted up the slats. I couldn’t make out what she was saying but I knew she was on the phone. Nobody was in the store when we went in, and nobody had gone in since we’d left.

Detective of the Year Award, here I come.

With the slats opened, I caught snippets of her side of the conversation.

“… know who the fuck they are… [wheezing] yeah… I think that… [more wheezing]… pay fucking Seven a visit… [wheeze]… stupid fucking pussy ass faggot…”

Too easy. Either we were better than we thought we were or these people were wicked retarded.

Then my beeper sounded, nearly making me shit myself. I jumped down and tried to muffle the buzzing by cupping it in my palms as I ran down the street. I wasn’t worried about Sid giving chase.

Kelly’s number popped onto the screen. As I walked past Miss Kitty, Junior rolled down the window. “The fuck was that?”

“Got a beep. Gonna use the phone in the store.”

I dropped a quarter in the pay phone in the Store 24. Much as I hated to admit it, I was going to have to get a cell phone. Pay phones were becoming scarcer in Boston than Yankees fans.

“Kelly Reese.”

“You beeped?”

“Yeah. About that. You have a beeper?”

“Yup. I’m kinda old school.” I waved at the cashier. When he looked over, I showed him the Twinkie package I’d picked up. He waved it off, so I opened it and took a big bite of chemical deliciousness.

“That’s one way of looking at it.”

“Hey, you beep me to bust my balls, or you need something?”

“Touchy.”

“Only when people make fun of my beeper.”

“Can you meet up with me for a coffee in the next couple hours?”

“I’m available right now. Sure you don’t want anything stronger?”

“Want me to vomit on you again?”

“Coffee it is.”

She was sitting outside the Starbucks across from Back Bay Station when I got there. She handed me a large iced coffee. (You can fuck yourself if you think I’m calling it a venti.) I knew a hangover when I saw one, and she looked like she was coping with a doozy. Lot of that going around, apparently.

“How you feeling, kiddo?”

“Oh, ready to die.” She nodded toward the paper bag on the table. “Didn’t know how you took it, so there’s some sugar in the bag and milk in that little cup.”

“Thanks. So…”

“Again, I just want to apologize for last night. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.”

Her behavior had given me all the right ideas, but none I could repeat in public. “Like I said, no problem. You call me up to apologize again?”

“Beeped you, actually,” she said, smirking.

“What did I say about making fun of my beeper?”

“Sorry. Forgot you were old school for a second.”

“Thank you.” I lit a cigarette and saw her expression shift. “So, which is it?”

“Which what?”

“Are you a pain-in-the-ass cigarette hater, or did you want one?”

“I quit a year ago.” She took a long pull off her straw.

“Great. You’re the worst of both worlds.”

“Give me a drag.” She plucked the cigarette from my hand and took a longer pull, closed her eyes, and groaned in a fashion not far from sexual. I wondered if she’d quit to impress her boss, the other ex-smoker I’d handed a cigarette to recently. “You’re a very, very bad influence, Mr. Malone.”

She had no idea. “So other than using me to enable your vices, why are we here?”

“Mr. Donnelly was wondering how you were doing.”

I took the cigarette back and puffed. I got a strange pleasure from the taste of her lipstick on the filter. “Oh. Um, we’re making progress.”

“What does that mean, exactly?”

I decided to edit severely, and dodge the exactly. “Have you ever heard her talk about boys at all? About a guy with a snake tattoo, specifically?”

“Honestly? I’ve never really talked to her all that much. I’ve picked her up from school, driven her to the mall and stuff, but she’s at an age where anyone over twenty is the enemy.”

“That may be the case, but the guy we think she’s with is well over puberty.”

“That sounds bad.” She pulled a chunk off an apple fritter and popped it into her mouth, chewing it slowly.

“It probably is.” I didn’t say just how bad.

“Oh God, I think I’m going to be ill.”

“Not on me this time.”

“You’re never letting that go, are you?”

“Probably not. She do any of that computer stuff? Friendster?”

“Friendster? You’re not old school, you’re retirement home. All the cool kids are on Facebook. Besides, her dad keeps all her passwords saved. He regularly checks her online activity.”

“He spies on her?”

“Monitors her. But kids are crafty. They’re so much better than adults with the technology, with adapting to it. Most kids, they want to hide online activity from their parents? A moderately savvy kid could do it easily.”

I didn’t do any of that shit. I didn’t “friend” people on a fucking computer. I didn’t Twoot on Twatter or whatever the hell that crap was called, either. Maybe she was right. Maybe I wasn’t old school anymore so much as just out of touch. “So there is a possibility that she met some kind of pervo online, and her dad would have no idea, even with the monitoring.”

“That is a possibility.” She shuddered at the thought. “Anything else? Anything less on the potentially skeevy side?”

“Sorry. Skeevy is all we got right now.”

“All right, then.” She stood and wiped the creases off her skirt. “One more drag.” She opened her fingers to grab the cigarette.

I pulled it back. “Tell me I’m cute again.”

She immediately blushed. “Did I do that?”

“Yup.”

“Crap. Well, you are, for old school.” Defty, she plucked my cigarette out of my hand and walked off with it.

“Hey.”

She winked at me. “I might not be old school, but I’m not as good as you think I am, Mr. Malone.”

“No doubt, Ms. Reese.”

No doubt.

I met back up with Junior at a small Chinese restaurant about a half mile down Commonwealth. We didn’t talk much while we ate. We were both trying to think in between chews.

Junior spoke first. “How do you think you’d fuck something that big?”

“I wouldn’t,” I said through a mouthful of pork fried rice. Great partner he was. I was trying to figure out how we could get information out of Sid while he was trying to figure out the mechanics of sex with her.

“I mean, you’d have to have a dick like a Pringles can to get under that belly.”

My gorge did a little hurdle at the thought. “Junior, please. I’m trying to eat.”

“You think Snake fucks her?”

“Junior…”

“He’d be capable, just-”

“Junior! Fucking stop!”

“Sor-ry,” he said, dripping sarcasm. “Didn’t mean to offend your delicate sensibilities.”

“Did you see what time the store closed?” I asked, desperate to change the conversation.

“Nope,” Junior said, mopping up the last swirls of oyster sauce with a piece of bread. “Why?”

“Figured we could tail Sid. See where she goes after work.”

“Well, she ain’t going to no gym,” he said with a snort. “Not too far a stretch to guess she goes for food. You don’t get that big unless you eat a good ten meals a day. And I’m not kidding. Take my aunt, Gretchen-”

“No, thank you.”

“Wakka-wakka, Shecky.”

“That was Henny Youngman.”

“Huh?”

“Henny Youngman, not Shecky Green.”

“Fucking hell, you wanna let me talk or you gonna display your knowledge of the Borscht Belt all over my story?”

“The mike is yours, bubelah.”

Junior paused a second, debating whether or not I’d called him something potentially offensive, and whether or not to eat the bread in his hand or to stick it up my nose. He chose to pop the bread into his mouth and continued.

“Anyway, Gretchen, same deal. Actually, she was smaller than Sid, but nobody was calling her to do any underwear modeling, you know? She ate two meals between breakfast and brunch.”

Just thinking about it made my appetite grind to a screeching halt. I dropped my fork down on the plate with a clatter and tossed my napkin on top of it. I was still hungry, but with Sid and Aunt Gretchen in my head, I might not eat for the rest of the week. “Was there a point to that story?”

“Sorry. Did you need one?” Junior nodded at my rice. “You gonna finish that?” I handed him my plate, and he dumped my food onto his. “Anyway, other than thinking about what to eat next, I don’t imagine Sid doing much else.”

“So we’ll follow her when she leaves the store.”

“Should be easy to tail. Not like she’s gonna outrun us.”

“Can’t say that about too many people.”

“True that. Problem is, what do we do once she stops?”

I scratched at the stubble on my chin. “Getting physical on her is out of the question.”

“Not if we call Twitch.” Junior didn’t look at me when he said it, as though he were ashamed for thinking it, much less saying it.

I shuddered at exactly what Twitch could be capable of. “That’s not the way I want to go about this.”

“Me neither,” Junior said. “But what other options we got? Clock’s ticking.”

“We’ll do this on the fly. Let’s see where she goes first. Who knows? I think we rattled her. Her next stop might be Snake’s. Now, he we can fuck up.”

“Sounds like a plan. Kinda.” Junior shoved the last of the fried rice into his mouth.

Yeah. Kinda. Problem was, I had no idea what to do next if Sid didn’t follow my imaginary script.

Our first stakeout. They should make Hummels to mark the occasion. For supplies, we brought six cans of metallic-tasting iced coffee, a carton of smokes, and three pounds of candy from the candy shop right across the street from Sid’s. Good thing neither one of us was diabetic. If we were, we’d find out soon enough.

We parked behind a construction trailer on the far side of the street. Just enough of a sight line for us to see the front of Sid’s and not be obvious about it. If anyone in the neighborhood was wondering why we were sitting in our car for a couple hours smoking and bitching about the quality of canned coffee, they didn’t care enough to ask.

“‘Oh, Sheila,’” I said to Junior as I popped another jelly bean in my mouth.

“Prince. You’re slipping. That’s an easy one.” Junior was munching on a big bag of Sno-Caps, the front of his T-shirt covered in tiny white sugar granules.

“So easy you’re wrong.”

“What? That was so Prince! He wrote it about Sheila E.”

“I don’t know if he wrote it, but he didn’t sing it.”

“Morris Day?”

“Nope.”

“Shit. Who was it?” Just then, a stunning young thing in ripped jeans and a tank top came strolling by with a ferret wrapped around her neck. Only in Boston. From our angle, we could see a big tattoo of the Pisces sign on her lower back, right above her butt cleavage. “Jeeeeeesus H. Crow,” Junior said in awe.

“Yeah,” was all I could manage as I squinted in the last few seconds of her before she turned the corner and was gone. “You know, I’m starting to think we’re not the best guys for this work.”

Junior shrugged as he licked a finger and dipped it into the white sugar orbs accumulated at the bottom of his bag. “I dunno. I think we’re doing a pretty damn good job so far.”

“Yeah, but look at us. Put together, we don’t have the attention span of a squirrel. We’re supposed to be watching the store.”

“Boo?”

“Yeah?”

“If something like that ever walks by and I can’t take my eyes off Sid? Shoot me in the face.”

“Got it.”

“I mean it. In the face. Close the lid. I don’t deserve the dignity of an open casket. Sno-Cap?” He sucked the sugar off his finger as he offered the bag.

“No thanks.”

“Suit yourself.” He dipped his wet finger back in for another go.

“Ready for the World.”

“I’m ready for anything.”

“No, they sang ‘Oh, Sheila.’”

“Damn. It was them, wasn’t it? I thought it was Prince.”

“Nope.” So far, I had the lead. Sixteen to nine. Hollow victories are still victories.

“Oh, yeah. Fine, then. Gloves are off. ‘Pac-Man Fever.’”

I sang the opening riff. “I got a pocket full of quarters, and I’m headed to the arcaaaade…”

“No way. No fucking way do you know this one.”

“Way. Buckner and Garcia.”

“Goddamn it.” Junior flicked a Sno-Cap at me. I switched my jelly bean bag for my gummi worm bag.

Time crept along, and we waited. My legs started to stiffen, and my back ached. How the hell did cops do this shit? Maybe they didn’t in real life. So far, all we had for references on procedure were John D. MacDonald novels and Junior’s Miami Vice DVDs.

Then the Sid’s Vids sign went black. I checked my watch. Quarter past eight. The sun was just starting to lower itself into the horizon, turning the sky into mango.

Timing was perfect. We would have the cover of dusk to follow Sid. Unfortunately, it was too hot to wear trench coats. That would have been cool.

We waited. Another fifteen minutes passed. The lights in the store went off.

Another half-hour. Fully dark now. No Sid.

“Uh… You don’t think she went out the back, do you?” Junior asked.

“Shit. I don’t know if there is a back way.”

“Shouldn’t we have thought of that?”

“Probably.”

“Wait here. I’ll go check.”

Junior scrambled out of the car, hunched low and moving in a serpentine path from car to car like he was on recon in Baghdad. Nice and inconspicuous.

Jesus.

I kept my eyes on the front of the store. Nothing. It was half past nine. Something was fucked up in Denmark.

Junior came back behind the car, still hunched like a gorilla with Scoliosis. “Found her,” he said, grinning.

“Where?”

“Upstairs. We were watching the stupid store so tight we didn’t notice the lights in the apartment above go on. I guess it’s hers. There’s a little lot and a rear door into the apartments back there.”

“How do you know she’s up there? All the shades are drawn on this side.”

“Shadows, my man. Either Sid is up there or they’re renting the apartment out to a wheezing buffalo. Got a dog up there, too.”

“Damn. How big?”

“Sounded like one of those little dogs with fuzzy ears that just piss and shake.”

“Good. I don’t want to head up there and rassle with a Rottweiler.” Along with women, I don’t dance with dogs. I know guys who have; guys like Lefty and Petey One-Nut.

“If what I heard was any longer than my dick, I’ll buy you a steak.”

“Wow. That’s a little dog. Or a barking ladybug.”

“Hardy-har. You’re a fucking riot. You want the front or the back?”

“I’ll take the back door,” I said, climbing out of the car.

“Heard that about you,” Junior said with a cackle as I shut the door.

Point to Junior. That was a good one.

Luck came in the form of a pizza and a prayer. I waited in the back, leaning in the empty rear doorway to the shop next to Sid’s Vids. I watched shadows play in the windows. The shadows looked big, but I couldn’t tell what might be tricks of the light. I could hear the sharp yipping of an aggravated pet. It did sound smaller than a breadbox, which was a relief. Other than that, Sid seemed to be alone up there.

Junior came around the corner of the building, a large flat box in his hands, a huge grin on his puss. “Lookie, lookie,” he said, “Junior found a cookie. It appears Sid here ordered herself a big ol’ pizza that I seem to have intercepted.” He tipped the paper cap that read College Pizza.

“Nice hat.”

“Any headwear looks good on a man like me.” Junior hit the buzzer for Sidonia Sliva.

Sid’s voice replied from the console. “What?”

“Itsa pizza,” Junior answered in an Italian accent that would have embarrassed Chef Boy-ar-dee.

She buzzed us in. Either Sid never met an actual Italian before, or she was just too hungry to care.

One flight of creaky stairs up, I knocked on the door.

“C’mon in. The door’s open,” came the reply from inside.

So we went in. The apartment had the same reek as the store. It wasn’t as bad as the Dumpster incident, but it was still awful, like old meat and dirty underpants. My sinuses wanted to bust out of my head and run to the nearest aromatherapy clinic. How the hell could someone live in this?

Sid sat in a wide recliner, frozen. From the television she’d been facing, Homer Simpson said “D’oh!”

“Yo, Sid,” Junior said. “Dangerous habit leaving the door unlocked like that.”

Sid tried to leap out of her chair. She really did. All she managed to do was rock spastically from side to side. “What the fuck is going on here? What the fuck are you two doing here?” she croaked at us. She almost made it up into a half squat. I nudged her in the shoulder with the tip of my boot. Sid fell back with a thud into the recliner. The vinyl farted under the impact. I hoped it was the vinyl. She looked like a turtle who’d suddenly found itself wrong side up.

“Do you guys know who you’re fucking with? Who my business partners are?” Sid bellowed.

“Let me guess,” I said. “Colonel Sanders? He’s dangerous. Military background.”

“Fuck you.”

“Wait, I got it. You’re in with the McDonald’s Mafia, aren’t you?”

Junior was trying to find a place to put on his badass lean but couldn’t seem to locate a surface that wouldn’t ruin his pants. “Dude. Maybe we oughta think about this. That Grimace is a baaad mutha-”

“Shut yo mouth!”

Junior shrugged. “I’m only talking ’bout Grimace.”

“I can dig it.”

“Fuck you!” There still didn’t seem to be any fear in Sid’s voice. That wasn’t good. If anything, she was just getting more and more pissed.

“Well, I’ll tell you who she doesn’t know. Mr. Clean.” Junior picked up what looked like a leather handbag with eyes from behind a garbage pail. “Sid, your housecleaning skills suck.”

“Worse than yours?” I asked.

“At least I don’t have little piles of shit on my floor left by Free Willie of the canine set.” Junior held up the pudgiest chihuahua I’d ever seen. His tiny legs poked out from a body the same size and definition as ten pounds of cookie dough. His tail stub wagged happily.

The dog was the plan. Since we couldn’t very well threaten Sid physically, we had to threaten her dog. Looking at the cute little fat bastard, I felt guilt seep into my gut. I like dogs better than I do most people.

“Hey, buddy,” I said, scratching him behind his ears. His little tongue darted out at my fingers. Then tiny teeth gnashed where my fingers had been a moment before. “Hey!”

The fucker started snarling and snapping for Junior’s fingers too, but the dog couldn’t turn his neck far enough over his fat shoulders to get him.

“You let him go,” Sid said in a low and deadly tone.

“What’s the little guy’s name, Sid?” I asked.

“Put him down!” Sid didn’t try to stand again, but the armrests creaked ominously under her grip.

“Now, Sid. You don’t want to go yelling and get all the neighbors riled.” To my right, small stacks of DVDs sat on a bookshelf. Red stickers and all. “Because if the cops come, I’m gonna have to show them those discs you got over here, now won’t I?”

A flicker of fear danced across her eyes, but the fierce glow quickly returned. “Put the dog down,” she said.

“We will, Sid, we will. First, you to tell us where we can find the guy who stars in your videos.”

“I don’t know where he is. When I need the videos-” She cut herself off.

“What? You call him? Don’t suppose we could get that number, do you?” I was hoping we wouldn’t have to go any further than asking.

Sid didn’t say anything, but she looked frantically between the dog in Junior’s arms and me.

Damn it.

I nodded at Junior. The dog yipped in pain. Even though I knew Junior only gave him a tiny pinch on the hind leg, it still hurt to hear the little guy cry like that. I knew it hurt Junior even more to have to do it.

Neither one of us expected what happened next.

Sid started sobbing. Big, whooping sobs that sent her frame shaking like Jell-O on a paint mixer.

Junior and I exchanged guilt-ridden glances. This wasn’t us. Sid might have been a horrible waste of humanity, profiting from pain on video, but as far as we knew, she’d never hurt anybody.

Then the dog peed a yellow arc onto the floor.

“Whoa.” Junior held the dog over the wastebasket.

Sid covered her face with wide hands. “Puh-puh-leease. Let my dog go. I’ll tell you wuh-wuh-whatever you want.”

I leaned in close, the guilt making me nauseous. “That’s all we want, Sid.” I turned to Junior. “Put the dog down.”

I turned back just in time to see… Sid smiling through her fingers, then a fist the size of a canned ham bee-lining for my face.

The impact was tremendous. Like a sack of M-80s exploded in the back of my skull. She caught me square on the jaw with a straight right that would have made Brock Lesnar proud, with all of her weight behind it. I found myself airborne and looking up at my feet and the cracked ceiling. I landed on my neck and upper back, the wind knocked out of my lungs and my senses knocked clean to Tuesday.

If I wasn’t so jacked, the following scene might have been enjoyably comic.

Junior ran like a fullback chased by the biggest and scariest defensive tackle in the league. He hurdled an end table, shuck-and-jived around the television stand, and pushed over a large fern to block the charging Sid-the entire time with the chihuahua tucked under his arm like a hairy football.

And he was singing.

“C’mon, Sid! Can’t touch this! Duh nuh nuh nuh. Nuh nuh. Nuh nuh. Can’t touch this!” he sang as he dodged.

Sid just continued her rush, making low animal noises as she grasped for Junior and her dog.

Still woozy, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see little chirping birdies swooping around my head. My lower lip was shredded, warm pennies in my mouth.

Impossible as it would have seemed moments before, Sid was still going full-bore, tearing through her apartment like a maddened mama gorilla. The dog yipped like a frightened squeeze toy. Junior cackled like a madman. He stopped cackling long enough to throw me a warning. “Yo, Roundheels! Coming back your way! Get the fuck up!”

Sid had finally given up her pursuit of Junior. Hands on her knees, head down, she gulped huge, spent breaths. She wasn’t looking toward me either, though she began lumbering back toward where I lay sprawled.

I followed her gaze. She was headed for the kitchen and…

Oh shit…

… the big block of butcher knives on the Formica countertop.

I had just enough time and sense left to fling myself at the back of her knees as she passed. The clipping move might have drawn a flag in the NFL, but this was strictly amateur hour.

Down Goes Frazier! Down Goes Frazier! Down Goes Frazier! ran through my head in Howard Cosell’s voice as she fell.

Sid toppled with both arms reaching forward in a last-ditch effort to get her hands on a knife. Problem was, that didn’t leave her any hands to break her fall. She seemed to drop for a considerable amount of time. The first body part to connect with anything solid was her face on the countertop. The Formica cracked like a gunshot. Dishes jumped in the cast iron sink five feet away. Sid’s head snapped back, blood already streaming from her split brow, and she crumpled like a sack of beans.

Out.

“Aw shit,” Junior whispered when the dust settled. Even the dog stopped barking. And I’d swear his little jowls hung open in surprise.

“Aw shit,” I reiterated. Sid didn’t move. A small pool of blood blossomed under her face.

“We killed the great white whale,” Junior said.

Not the plan. Not the plan at all.

This is what me and Junior get when we start thinking this shit out and actually come up with a strategy. Junior came up with the next one on the fly.

“Run!” he yelled as he dropped the dog and booked it down the stairs. I grabbed an armful of the red-stickered DVD cases and followed him out in a full sprint.

“Ohfuckohfuckohfuck,” Junior kept babbling as we bolted from the scene of our crime to the car. Junior did a perfect Bo Duke slide across the hood and leapt into the driver’s seat. I’d have to compliment him on it later.

My lip had stopped bleeding, but the whole side of my face was swollen and throbbing. The inside of my mouth felt like I’d brushed my lower teeth with a steak knife. Junior slammed his foot onto Miss Kitty’s accelerator.

Junior said, “Dude, we’re boned.”

“We’re all right. I don’t think anybody saw us.” I turned and checked to make sure no one was pointing and staring, writing down license plate numbers.

“Your goddamn blood is all over that floor. That DNA shit is gonna point right to us!” He was gulping in huge panicked breaths. “CSI, motherfucker! CSI!”

“Shut up. Let me think.”

“I mean, if it was a dude? Like if that was Snake on the floor? I wouldn’t give a shit. Courts probably wouldn’t either. But we just smoked a female. A female!” He was too freaked to even bust my balls about getting cold-cocked by the aforementioned female.

“I don’t think DNA testing gives a name and address. I think it just does blood type and hair color and that shit.”

“How the fuck do you know, Professor Malone? You been following the technology in Scientific Weekly World News?”

He had a point.

Junior drove into the parking lot behind The Cellar and screeched to a halt behind the Dumpster. For a second, I thought he might knock the damned thing over again. I unlocked the back door to the club with my keys and staggered into the rear of the bar. I was hoping nobody would see us. Junior let the door slam shut behind him.

The huge metal door.

It sounded like two Mack trucks colliding. All conversation stopped in the packed bar, and all eyes turned to us-including the last pair of eyes I wanted to look into at that moment. Barnes sat in exactly the same seat he was in the week before, smirking at us. We had only one option.

Be casual and lie, lie, lie.

We walked through the room like Clint Eastwood in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Unfortunately, we were felt neither good, nor bad. Just dazed, pale, sweating, and blood-covered. I moseyed up to the bar right next to Barnes. I can mosey real well when I try.

“Ice, please.”

Barnes stared straight ahead and sipped his Heineken. He was playing it casual too, and pulling it off better than we were. You try to be casual when your face has been pounded into tuna tartar.

“So,” he said in a chipper tone. “Should I even bother?”

“Cut myself shaving,” I said.

“Fell down the stairs,” Junior said.

“I fell down the stairs while shaving.”

“Poor bathroom design,” Junior said with a snicker.

“Funny,” Barnes said, taking a sip of his beer. “Got anything for us?”

Junior and I just looked at each other. The bartender brought me a bar rag filled with ice. I pressed it against my broken face. Heaven. Barnes waited for a response.

Junior looked at me. “You know? I like it better when they send in the girl.”

“Me, too. Seems less obvious for us to be talking to a broad-any broad-than Mr. Trying-not-to-look-like-a-cop, here.

“True. Wasn’t discretion supposed to be a big factor?”

I shrugged. “I thought I heard them say that. And look at you, using a big-boy word like discretion.”

Junior beamed. “I know, huh? Being around all these classy edjamuhcated people must be rubbing off.”

“Osmosis.”

“Like Donny and Marie Osmosis.”

Barnes snorted, shaking his head. “Thought so. You two fuck-wits have five more days.” He tipped the last of the beer into his mouth.

“Five? You guys said two weeks.”

“The two weeks were conditional. We both assumed you might have idea one before today. You got five more days.”

I pulled the ice from my face, the terrycloth a Rorschach in crimson. “Fine. Won’t even need that many. Wanna bet we can name that tune in three?”

Barnes snorted again as he got up and walked out. He didn’t dignify my bravado with a response. He didn’t have to. My bluff sucked. I didn’t believe me either.