The Hard Bounce

Chapter Fifteen

Stakeout #2.

We were better prepared for a long night in the car the second time around. First, we went to Junior’s and filled two thermoses with his famous home brew. Coffee is the closest Junior comes to cooking. That said, the man knows how to make a great goddamn cuppa joe. He uses only the finest grounds and, I believe, strains it through old sweat socks.

Once we’d stockpiled the caffeine and picked up a couple grinders at an all-night packie, we chucked it all into a disposable cooler on Miss Kitty’s backseat. Junior pulled an empty gas can from the trunk for when the coffee punched its way out of our bladders.

It was close to three in the morning by the time we got to Papa’s and got a parking space. As luck would have it, there was a Store 24 right next to the restaurant. I slipped the clerk a twenty and guaranteed myself use of the bathroom. It was better than sticking my dick in a rusty gas can.

Junior chose to continue using the gas can. “Meh,” he said, “stuck my dick in worse.”

Papa’s Empanadas sat on Washington Street, right off Blue Hill Avenue, smack dab between Roxbury and Dorchester. For some people, not the safest place to park and stare. Roxbury is what many of the more polite Bostonians refer to as an “ethnic” neighborhood, while Dorchester is where the working-class Irish migrated generations ago-not the two most compatible cultures. Heaven help any man, woman, or child who accidentally stumbled one block too far. The neighborhood’s inhabitants were tough enough on themselves. They were worse if you didn’t belong there. Above and beyond our lookout for Snake, we had to keep our urban radar set on high for any roving Irish, Puerto Rican, or Black gangs that might want to test our cultural allegiances.

Using our best guesstimations, we triangulated the angle of the window’s view on the DVD and narrowed down the apartment’s location to somewhere opposite Papa’s Empanadas.

NASA, we’re not.

All we knew was that we could eliminate the boarded-up tenement directly across the street. For good measure, I ripped a strip of plywood off a smoke-stained windowsill and peeked inside to make sure our boy wasn’t squatting.

So we sat, windows open, listening to the city lullaby of distant traffic.

My eyes flicked from window to window on the apartment buildings, hoping. But creeping doubt began to poke its finger in my brain. Nothing said Snake lived where the video was shot. For all we knew, it was a rented space where he shot the videos, only returning when he had a new girl lured in. He might only use the space every few weeks… or months.

I kept convincing myself that this wasn’t the case, that the apartment in the video had that bachelor lived-in look. A pair of full ashtrays. More than one meal’s worth of pizza boxes.

Besides, it was all we had.

Junior loudly munched on a chunk of green pepper that curled up over his lip, almost sticking in his nose. He mumbled something unintelligible through the mouthful of food.

“Swallow first, you goddamn savage,” I said, never taking my attention off the empty street, the empty windows, the empty everything.

A little clearer, he said, “I bet you say that to all the boys.” He finished swallowing and took a breathy slurp from the coffee. “I said, I talked to Underdog.”

“Me, too.”

“I talked to him after you did.”

I didn’t answer him.

“He called me after he left you at the aquarium.”

“Yeah. Forgot to tell you. He’s out. He doesn’t have our backs on this.”

“That surprise you?”

“Not really. Probably should have kept my goddamn mouth shut. I don’t think he’ll turn us in if this thing goes completely to shit, though.”

“Yeah. He didn’t give me that impression either. He wasn’t making threats, but he was worried.”

“About what?”

“He was worried we were about to do something royally fucked up. Something that might screw us over. In a forever kind of way.”

My heart started to sink. I didn’t answer. I didn’t like where the discussion seemed to be heading.

Junior took another big bite of his grinder, chewed, and sucked down more coffee before he went on. “I kinda agree with him.”

Brutal silence hung in the air between us. I was burning up inside. Junior and I had never backed away from each other. Ever. On anything. The feelings of betrayal slammed me right in the heart.

“You want out? Then go,” I said softly, bitterness edging my words. “I’ll step out of the car right now, and you can be on your merry fucking way.”

“What?” His voice was tinged with hurt. “Fuck you, Boo. I’m not backing off nothing. I got just as much at stake here as you do.” He shook his head slowly in disbelief. “Don’t even talk to me that way, you fuck.”

“What are you trying to say, Junior? Spit it out.”

He angrily chucked the rest of his sandwich out the window. “This ain’t our fight no more, Boo. The girl? She’s dead. We got hired to find her. We didn’t. We found out what happened to her, but it’s not the same thing. Technically? We’re done. We’re not getting paid for this, and it’s not our fucking responsibility anymore to pull this midnight-avenger shit.”

“So that’s what this is about now? The paycheck? Fuck what he did to that kid, long as we get paid?”

“Don’t be a fucking prick. Open your eyes. What if this thing goes all fubar and we get busted? Is it worth it to spend the rest of our lives in a fucking cage over this? Over a girl we never even knew?”

I opened my mouth to say something. Anything to interrupt him. But nothing came out. The man was making a point-and a righteous one at that, goddamn him.

Junior said, “Well, is it? I’ve been there, Boo. So have you. We spent most of our lives locked in, and there weren’t even bars on The Home. This guy just isn’t fucking worth it.” Junior motioned vaguely toward the opposite side of the street.

“Maybe he isn’t to you.” Despite the sound logic in Junior’s argument, Snake-whoever he was-mattered to me. I wanted him out of the world I had to live in. I couldn’t explain it to Junior in that moment, but damn it, it mattered. My hands started shaking in anger at Junior’s sudden turnaround.

“All right. Fine. I’m not saying we don’t jack this boy up six ways to Sunday and twice on Monday. I’m not saying we don’t find him and beat his ass like a piñata until he tells us what he did with the kid and we get it on tape.” He paused. “But we leave him, Boo. We leave the fucker alive. We drop the dime on his now-crippled ass with the video and his confession. All on tape. Then we let the real cops handle this. This just isn’t our game anymore. This is bigger than we thought it was going to be, kid.”

Junior was right, but I couldn’t hear him anymore. I opened the car door and got out. “Go, then,” I said. “Step the fuck off.”

Junior’s tipping point tipped. He kicked his door open and faced me across the car roof. “Goddamn you, Boo! This girl? This fucking little dead girl? It sucks. It sucks worse than anything I’ve dealt with since The Home. But you know what? It had nothing to fucking do with us.” Junior smacked his open palm on the hood of the car. He folded his arms, shook his head, and dropped the bomb. In a quiet voice, he said, “This girl? You gotta realize something, Boo. She’s not Emily.”

Bang.

All the blood raging in my ears. All the adrenaline pounding in my veins. All of it dropped in a single heartbeat into the pit of my stomach like a mouthful of mercury. Hot tears welled up in my eyes, but I fought them back. I wanted to scream. I wanted to curse and start swinging on him. My best friend. My only family. I wanted to make him hurt like his words did me. But I couldn’t. There was something hard and pointy lodged in my throat that made it hard to breathe, harder to speak.

Because he was right.

He threw his hands up in the air. “There. I said it. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to, but you’re blind to your own goddamn motivations. So you can listen to me and think it over or you can tell me to fuck off again. Your choice. Say the words, and I’m gone.”

I stared down at the concrete, trying to fight back the anguish Junior’s words had brought up from the bottom of the hole I’d thought I’d buried it in. “You’re right.” My voice came out in a hollow rasp. “You’re right.” I lit a cigarette with numbed fingers. I had a hard time looking up at him. “Maybe… maybe I’ve been screwed in the head with this thing all along. But you’re right, either way.”

“Good. So let’s give this shit up for the night, get some sleep, and come back tomorrow. Sound good?” Junior climbed back into the driver’s seat.

I followed him into the car. As suddenly as everything had come to a boil-all of the anger, the adrenaline, Junior’s coffee-it all rushed out my system just as quickly. My body felt like a full bathtub with the drain pulled. I was exhausted in a place deeper than physical.

We drove in silence. I wanted to apologize again, but it took all the will I had left just to stay awake for the drive home. Junior pulled his car up into the driveway behind the ridiculous hippie van, and I climbed out.

Junior leaned over the seat. “What time you want to get there tomorrow?”

I rubbed at dry eyes with the back of my hand. “Around five, I’m figuring. If the fucker has a jobby-job, maybe we can catch his ass on the way home.”

“Sounds good.” Junior shifted the car into reverse, but left his foot on the brake. “You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“You pissed at me?”

I shook my head. “Nah.”

“You sure you’re not pissed?”

I nodded.

“Still friends?”

“Yeah,” I said, tugging a strained smile onto my face.

“Good, ’cause I owe you this.” He flipped his hand across the seat and whacked me on the balls through the open door.

I groaned loudly as my lower equator cramped in pain. Crumpling from the blow, I tumbled backward into the hedges.

Junior peeled out, his spinning tires spraying me with gravel. I could hear him cackling over the engine’s roar as he pulled out toward Cambridge Street at a clip.

Luckily for me, his leverage was off and he didn’t get off as clean a shot as I had given him. With effort, I got to my feet and stumbled toward my apartment. The hippie was on the steps, looking at me open-mouthed as I approached.

“Hey, dude, you all right?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I croaked. “Never better.”

“Did that guy just hit you in the nuts?”

“Yup.”

“Why?”

“’Cause he’s my best friend.”

“Oh,” he said, as if my answer made all the sense in the world.

I got to the top of the porch, then stopped. “What’s your name?”

“Phil.”

“Nice to meet you, Phil. I’m Boo.”

He mulled it over for a moment, blinking in slo-mo. “Is that like Boo Radley or like Casper, the friendly ghost?”

“Radley.”

He smiled and nodded dreamily. “Cool. Good book.”

I nodded and went inside my dark, empty apartment. From under the bed, I pulled out my ragged blue hardcover of The Hardy Boys and the Mark on the Door. Inside the cover, I found the brittle piece of folded construction paper. My one valuable. I carefully unfolded it and looked once again at the two smiling stick figures standing on a faded field of grass that never existed in front of a house we never lived in, LovE Emily scrawled above the smiling yellow sun in a deliberate child’s hand. Gently, I folded the paper up and placed it back in its safe place. The Boy lay under my bed, hiding. From what, I didn’t know. He took the book from me and held it tightly to his grotesquely scarred little chest.

I held onto the image of the smiling sun as I lay back and closed my eyes.

Day two.

More coffee.

More sandwiches.

No Snake.

The closest we came to activity was around 9 P.M. when a bum started harassing us for change and wouldn’t leave.

He stood at the car window, swaying and reeking like sour milk. “C’mon, big guy. Help a vet’rin out. You gotta have some change you kin spare.” He redirected his focus to Junior since I refused to give him my attention, much less change. His breath filled the car with the odor of cheap wine and gingivitis.

“You know what I got for you, alkie?” Junior reached under his seat and pulled out what looked like a homemade remote control. He pressed a button on the side, and a burst of electricity crackled across two metal studs attached to the top. “Zappy-zappy. That’s what I got for you, you don’t start walking.”

The bum backed off from the window, palms up. He walked away, slurring his irritated sentiments. When he got halfway down the block, he turned around and flipped us off.

“What the hell was that?”

“I just hate bums,” Junior said.

“No, I meant what is that in your hand?”

“What? This?” He held up the thing. It still looked like a big remote, held together with black duct tape. One thin green wire protruded from the bottom of the tape and re-entered the plastic molding just under the metal studs.

“What is that? Is that a stun gun?”

Junior smiled and nodded. “Sweet, isn’t she?” He pressed the button again, sending electricity dancing between the electrodes. It made a sound like corn popping. “Twitch made it. He gave it to me on my birthday. I call her Rosie.”

Why the hell does everyone name their weaponry?

On my last birthday, Twitch gave me a set of Reservoir Dogs action figures. I didn’t feel like I’d gotten off easy at the time. At least he hadn’t gifted me with something I could electrocute myself with.

We sat until Junior’s snoring woke us both up around 11 P.M. Neither of us could figure out exactly when we’d fallen asleep. Needless to say, neither one of us had spotted our man from inside fucking slumberland.

Day three. Pouring rain. And I mean pouring. The rain fell in solid sheets around the car, and gray rivers ran down the gutter. Junior and I made a game out of guessing what would come bobbing by next, caught in the current. You’d think it would have been a nice relief from the stifling heat, but just an inch of open window and my entire right side would be drenched immediately. With the windows closed, the humidity built up in the car, fogging up the glass and giving us zero visibility.

“This is retarded,” Junior said, wiping the condensation off the inside of the windshield with a napkin. “We wouldn’t see the guy if he was doing a cha-cha on the hood. Let’s do this tomorrow.”

We’d only been in our spot for an hour, but Junior was right. I sighed. Day three and zip. Wasn’t even noon yet, and the day was in the shitter. “Fine. I’m just going to take a piss and get smokes. You want anything from inside?”

“Cherry Coke.”

“Got it.” I got out, head down, and ran into the store as fast as I could.

Our bribed counterman pressed the button from behind the counter, opening the lock on the bathroom door. Under the fluorescent lights, my skin had taken on a lovely jaundice, dark bags pooching under my eyes. I sighed at the living dead in the mirror. He sighed right back at me. I took a wonderfully extended piss and walked out. The bell on the door dinged as someone else came into the store. I grabbed Junior’s soda and headed to the counter.

“Two packs of Parliaments,” I said.

The clerk put the cigarettes on the linoleum counter next to the soda, then he nodded at whoever was standing right behind my shoulder. “Pack of Reds?”

“You got it,” came the reply. All the hair on my body shot up straight into the air. I’d heard that voice before.

The clerk passed over a box of Marlboros. Put the pack into a hand. A hand that was on the end of an arm. An arm with a snake tattoo curled around it. The hand dumped a few bills and some change onto the countertop.

Slowly, I turned my head and looked into a pair of blue eyes, drops of rain hanging from his thick eyelashes. His long, too-black-to-be-natural hair hung wetly around his head. Given the time, I probably could have counted each pore on his nose. He had thinner features than I thought he would. He looked about twenty-five. He’s too young, my mind said. He looks too… normal.

He flipped me a quick, cursory smile. “How are ya?” he said and walked out. The bell sounded again.

A snapping of fingers next to my ear brought me back. “Yo, bro? You with me here? You paying for the smokes and Coke or what?” I put a bill on the counter, grabbed my items, and walked to the door, numb with disbelief.

Junior was out of the car, standing in the downpour and wearing the same thousand-yard stare I was sporting. I walked over to him and stood at his side. I opened my mouth, but Junior beat me to it. “Please. Please, dear God, tell me that’s who I think it is.”

“It’s him,” I said. We watched him walk through the front door to an apartment building that sat at ten o’clock from the front door of Papa’s Empanadas. Once he was inside, Junior grabbed the duct tape we’d brought with us off the car seat and the two of us bolted across the street, oblivious to the traffic zipping past us in both directions. A car passed close enough to nip the back of my pants leg.

Snake hadn’t used a key to get in the first door. He’d just pushed it open. I hoped it wasn’t a double-door foyer with the lock on the second door. It wasn’t. It was just one door with a busted lock.

Snake wasn’t in the lobby, but the elevator was on its way up. We watched the numbers climb to the fifth floor and stop.

“Gotcha, fucker,” I said.

We rode up to the fifth floor. Our original plan was to knock on each door with a pitch for the Church of the Divine Ascension until we got to the right one. I was thankful we didn’t need the shtick. Instead, we just followed the wet footprints on the tiled hallway to apartment 506.

“And here we are,” said Junior, a bit breathlessly. “You want the honors?”

I knocked on the door and waited, heart pounding like a bass amp. A shadow passed over the peephole in the center of the door and something snapped in my brain. I actually heard a pop inside my head.

The world exploded red.

I pressed myself flat against the wall opposite the door in the thin hallway. With the wall bracing my back, I kicked at the lock full-on. The dry wood around the bolt shattered like a Saltine. The sound of the heavy wood bashing onto meat and bone was orgasmic to my ears.

I charged through the open doorway. What I lacked in panache, I made up for in sheer momentum. To his credit, Snake was still standing. It probably would have been better for him if he’d gone down. His eyes were rolled halfway up his skull, and his nose looked like somebody had stuck an M-80 inside a nostril and lit the fuse.

I decked him with every muscle, every pound, focused into the tip of my fist. His wiry body went airborne, launching clear over the couch behind him. When gravity resumed its grip, he crumpled on the hardwood and slid across the floor all the way into the far wall. His trip came to an abrupt end when the back of his head crunched into the scuffed wood molding. I didn’t care if it was the molding or his skull that had made the crunch.

I stood over Snake’s body, wishing he would stand so I could pop him a couple more times. My fists shook, breath hissing out from between clenched teeth. He wasn’t going anywhere.

Junior walked in behind me and gently placed a hand on my shoulder. The muscles bunched under his fingers. “Nice punch.”

It was a second before I could answer, snapping out from under the spell of violence as though from hypnosis. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. I blew out air in a long stream, the violence still under the surface, wanting to do bad things.

Bad things.

“Yeah,” I finally said.

Junior nudged Snake with the toe of his boot. “Shit. He dead?”

Snake’s chest lifted shallowly.

“Nope.” I still wanted blood. I wasn’t through hurting him yet.

“You’ve never been accused of being subtle, have you?”

“Nope. Gimme the duct tape.”

While Junior ran out to the car to get the rest of our supplies, I sat in a wooden kitchen chair opposite Snake. I lit a smoke to keep my fingers doing something, anything but what the wild violence wanted them to do.

Looking down at his inert body, I thought it bizarre we had come this far, standing over the guy, and still didn’t have any idea what his name was. Who he was.

“The name’s Bevilaqua,” Junior said, reading my mind as he re-entered. “On the mailbox. What is that? Greek?” He tossed the canvas duffel bag on the couch.

“No idea. Let’s get him into the chair.” Junior took the arms, and I took the legs.

Dead weight is never easy to maneuver. It’s even less easy when you’re being careful. We weren’t. I hoisted him into the seat by the collar, not caring if I accidentally choked him on the way.

Junior taped his hands together behind the chair, and I taped his ankles to the wooden legs. Snake gurgled a moan as we finished, but he wasn’t going to wake up on his own just yet. Blood trickled from his smashed nose onto his chest. Another line ran slowly down the back of his neck from the swollen spot where he’d bonked against the wall.

“So, what do we do now, wait until he wakes up?”

I took a look around the apartment. The walls were painted a dark burgundy, the bathroom door open, another white door next to it. The bedroom. A shiver passed through me, seeing the place as a reality instead of an abstract on a screen. I didn’t want to go in. Were the walls still streaked with Cassandra’s blood?

For the second time that hour, someone snapped his fingers in front of my eyes, drawing me back. “Yo, Malone! Wake up! Stay with me here. What are we doing?”

“Wake him up.”

Junior went to the kitchen. I heard some clatter, then the sink running. He returned with a sloshing saucepan. He dumped the water in one motion on top of Snake’s head. Snake slowly held up his head.

“Mnnnnn… ow,” he murmured, blinking hard. He looked up and squinted at us.

I’m not sure what I expected him to do. I knew I wanted him to cry, to beg. What I didn’t expect was him to smirk like he did.

“You’re both dead men,” he said softly, each word dripping hot acid.

I gave him the back of my hand.

His face snapped around, and came back with a fierce expression. He snarled at me, “You have any idea what’s going to happen to you when-”

I cut him off with another backhand. And another. And another. His lips split. His nose began pouring blood again. A thin line of blood creased my middle knuckles.

“Fuck! Stop it! Jesus!” Snake gagged and feebly spit a gob onto his own chest, a white piece of tooth floating in the blood and saliva.

Snake sneered. “Sister or girlfriend?” He huffed a sharp laugh at us.

I looked at Junior, who shrugged. He was as stymied as I was. We both knew there was no intimidating a psychopath.

Snake continued with the abuse. “So, I give one of your girls a good dicking, which she probably wasn’t getting from either one of you, and I’m the bad guy?” He was still laughing. “Shit, not my fault you boys can’t keep your girls happy.”

Junior grabbed my arm, sensing I was a second away from losing it. “My turn?” he asked.

“Go nuts,” I mumbled and turned away. I couldn’t look at him anymore. I stared at the bedroom door again.

I heard Junior behind me. “Okay, dipshit. Believe it or not, my buddy was the one who was being nice to you. I’m the guy who’s actually gonna hurt you.” I heard the crackle of Junior’s stun gun. “See this? This baby hurts like nobody’s business. So, I’m gonna ask you a question, then I’m gonna make with the zap-zap. Thing is? I want to hurt you. Really. I do. I just want to hurt you. You decide whether or not you want to answer. The next one goes on your balls.”

“Fuck your mother,” Snake said.

“Fair enough. One chance. Where’s the body?”

The question stuck in my chest like a barb.

Snake got out one puzzled, “Huh?”

As the stun gun crackled, it suddenly popped into my head just what a bonehead move we-well, Junior-were about to make.

Par for the course, I realized it one second too goddamn late.

“Junior, no! He’s-”

I wasn’t fast enough. Junior applied an electric charge to a man we’d dumped a pot of water on. Junior was still soaked from the rain. I didn’t know the math or physics of it, but I knew that electricity plus water makes bad.

Big bad.

Snake shrieked and convulsed. Junior hollered and flew back as though struck by lightning. Snake slumped into his seat, unconscious. Junior bounced into the wall and came down hard on his ass.

“Ohhhh,” Junior groaned and hugged himself. “That sucked so, so bad.”

I walked over to Snake and placed my thumb under his ear. He still had a pulse. Good. I wasn’t done yet.

The bedroom door clicked. I froze. Junior looked to the door, then at me, then back to the bedroom. The door stuck a little from the humidity and then pulled opened. A girl in sweats walked out, yawning and rubbing her eyes. Freshly dyed black hair hung over a big shiner on her right eye. Her iPod was turned up so loud I could hear the bass line across the room. She hadn’t heard a thing.

Cassandra Donnelly stared at the three of us, just as flabbergasted as we were.

I could only imagine how it looked. Snake, unconscious and bloody, taped to a chair and two gawping numbnuts, mouths open wide enough to park a pair of Humvees.

Then, of course, she screamed and ran for the door. “Help me! Somebody!”

I roped her around the waist, momentum swinging her halfway around me. Junior was trying hard to stand, but his electrocuted body fought stiffly against him.

“Cassie!” I yelled. “Wait! Wait. Hold it!”

Saying her name had no effect. I lifted her off the ground, and she shrieked right into my ear. Her heels kicked brutally into my shins as I covered her mouth to stifle her caterwauling. Attention was not what we needed. Simultaneously, a tiny heel collided with my hairy beanbag just as Cassandra’s teeth found the fleshy part of my thumb. I felt bone crunching just as the air exploded out of my lungs from the nut-shot. My poor, poor balls were having a shitty week. The combo made my knees turn to rubber, and I fell on top of Cassandra with a howl of my own. At least my fat ass landing on her got her to loosen her jaws off my knuckle. My other hand went reflexively to my balls. Cassie saw the opening and scrambled out from under me, heading for the door again.

“Please! Somebod-”

Zap.

Cassandra was on the floor. Junior convulsed, flew back into the wall a second time, then face-planted on the floor next to Cassie. “Fucking ow,” he croaked. “I taste smoke in my mouth.”

“You think you’d have learned.” I pulled him up under his armpits into a seated position. I may have imagined it, but he felt warmer. I slumped back to the floor myself, cradling my abused crotch while I debated the pros and cons of vomiting.

Junior weakly punched me on the chest. “At least I didn’t get my ass kicked by two girls this week.”

“If I throw up, will you hold my hair?”

“Fuck you.”

“There’s my hetero life-partner.” I remained fetal for a bit, trying to decide which hurt worse: my balls, my hand, or my pride. At the moment, it was a three-way draw.

Always helpful, Junior said, “Bleeding there, Boo.”

“Thanks, doc. Hadn’t noticed.” A deep laceration creased the webbing of my thumb, but I was still able to wiggle my fingers. Small favor, nothing was broken. I’ve broken both my hands enough times to recognize that particular brand of pain. All in all, I’d have rather had a cookie.

“Little broad’s got a strong set of teeth on her, huh?”

“Like wrestling a hundred-pound mastiff.” I stood shakily, one knee buckling. I walked toward the bathroom. “Watch them.”

“Aye, aye, cap’n.” Junior saluted me, then dropped his head back to the hardwood with a thump. Once inside the bathroom, I heard Junior mutter, “I still taste smoke.”

Rummaging through Snake’s medicine cabinet was like taking a tour through Keith Richard’s lunchbox. Dilaudid. Valium. Oxycontin. Hydrocodone. Propoxyphene. All in little prescription bottles, none with the name Bevilaqua on them. Beautiful. Kiddie porn star, pill-popper, and snuff filmmaker. Well, maybe not snuff. At least not with Cassandra. What in sweet fuck-all was going on?

I read a few more labels before I chose one I recognized. I dry swallowed one of the Dilaudids, pocketed the bottle, and went to his bedroom.

The room from the video. I looked around. Blood was still streaked above the bed. I couldn’t help myself. I scraped some of the dried residue off with a fingernail and daubed the tip of my tongue, expecting the sweetness of dyed corn syrup. Instead, I got the taste of blood. I gagged and spit onto the floor. Should have fucking known the loony dipshit had been method-acting his fake snuff. A quarter-full bottle of Wild Turkey sat on the floor. I rinsed my mouth and spit it onto the bedsheets.

I slid open one side of the closet door. Ratty looking T-shirts mixed in with high-priced suits with long Italian names on the labels. I ripped the silk lining out of a suit jacket and wrapped my hand tightly. Then I saw that the wardrobe ended sharply at the halfway point in the long closet.

A long mirror faced the bed on the other side of the sliding closet doors. I pushed the clothes all the way over to one side. An expensive-looking camera on a tripod was inside the other half of the closet. The top panel of the door was cut out. The mirror was a two-way.

I took the camera off the tripod and smashed it on the floor. Junior ran to the doorway. “You okay?”

“All good. Just enjoying some smashy-smashy.”

Junior looked at the camera pieces. “Nice. Can I piss on it?”

“Who am I to deny you the simple pleasures?”

Junior and I were in agreement that we needed to get our asses in gear and boogie the hell on out. Pronto. We carried Cassandra over to the couch, placing her on the cushions as though she were made of porcelain. After double-wrapping Snake’s bonds, we taped his mouth over. Just to be a dick, I wrapped a few rounds over his eyes and ears, making sure I tangled a lot of his hair in the industrial-strength tape.

Junior left to pull the car around front. I was to wait five minutes and hustle Cassandra out the door and into the car.

Four minutes down, and we were going to pull it off. We’d done it, despite the missteps, bullshit, and general lack of having a single clue about what we were walking into. We’d pulled it off, despite every plan blowing up in our faces. I smiled as I looked down at Cassandra’s body, every breath she took a bonus.

She was alive.

Gently as I could, I threw Cassandra’s arms over my shoulder and lifted her in a fireman’s carry. I guessed her weight at about a hundred pounds, maybe a hint over. Even so, it was a hundred pounds of dead weight. And I was five flights of stairs up from making good the escape. I wasn’t chancing the elevator and having to explain to other tenants why I was toting an unconscious fourteen-year-old girl over my shoulder. I’m pretty good on my feet, but even I didn’t think I could talk my way cleanly through that one.

No matter what, five flights of stairs was just flat-out going to suck. I opened the door and lumbered across the hallway and out the fire door to the stairs.

The first two flights weren’t bad.

Three flights down, my shoulder went numb and my fingers were well on their way. I stopped on the landing, breathing heavily, my shirt starting to soak through. Why couldn’t Cassie have run away in the goddamn winter? No, she had to go and run away during the hottest summer in twenty years. I cursed myself for not having more cardiovascular in my daily workout. But really, how would I have prepared for this? Gone for a jog with a couple concrete sacks over each shoulder?

By the time I got us down to the second floor, my whole arm was dead and my shoulder felt like a strong breeze would pop it out of socket. Genius that I was, I’d slung Cassandra over the shoulder I’d run into The Cellar’s back door. I couldn’t figure out any way to shift her to my other arm in the cramped stairwell without smacking her head against the wall. Instead, I gritted my teeth and plodded on.

Finally, we made it to the ground floor just as my lumbar started to cramp up. I propped Cassandra against the wall, holding her up by the hood of her sweatshirt, twisting at the waist to avoid a full blow-out of my back. Pins and needles buzzed painfully down my arm like a swarm of pissed-off bees. I muttered a few curses and looked out the door for Junior’s car. He wasn’t there yet. I cursed some more. Small blessing that the rain would keep foot traffic to a minimum as we got Cassandra out of the building. Nothing like trying to pull off a half-assed kidnapping in broad daylight.

Then the elevator bell pinged behind me.

My heart seized as I heard the old elevator door scrape open. My mind raced, and I leapt into the one action my panicked brain concocted. I blocked Cassandra with my body and stuck my face in her neck, a pose of lovers mid-makeout.

Tiny feet jumped up and paddled my ass, making my already overtaxed heart bounce around my ribcage like a superball. I jerked and turned to find a hyperactive Boston Terrier in a yellow rain slicker happily playing my backside like bongos.

“Down, Max!” a voice said from the other end of Max’s leash. I followed it to an elderly woman in a matching raincoat glowering at me. The dog jumped down and pulled the leash toward the door. “Get a room,” the old woman grumbled as she passed.

I turned to block Cassandra from the other side and stuck my face back against her neck. I counted to twenty after the door closed before I chanced another look for Junior. Of course, he was at the door, mouth open in shock.

“Fucking perv,” Junior said. Then he cackled softly.

He’d managed to keep his goddamned mouth shut long enough for us to prop Cassandra into the backseat. In the interim, he’d snickered out his nose twice, so I knew it was only a matter of time before the comments came flying.

“Shut it. I mean it. Think about what we just pulled her out of. It’s inappropriate.”

“It’s inappropriate,” Junior mocked in a Mary Poppins accent. “Out of the arms of one perv-” His last words got lost in an amused squeak.

“She’s fourteen, you sick fuck. Besides, what else could I have done? What would you do?”

“I wouldn’t have dry-humped the jailbait against the wall, that’s for sure. That’s inappropriate,” Junior said. Then, softly, “Fucking perv.”

“Not another word, Junior.” I was trying not to crack up myself. I’d just have to put up with a few years’ worth of Junior’s mockery. He snorted again, and that was it. We both lost our shit, and I giggled until my ribs ached. All in all, it wasn’t funny, but fuck, we needed the laugh.

Cassandra stirred with a grunt, and we quickly stifled ourselves.

“Twenty-five grand!” Junior sang to himself as we drove. Despite the throbbing bite on my hand and great big swollen balls, I felt like belting out a tune myself.

Junior pulled up in front of my apartment and killed the engine. The rain had driven Phil the Hippie off the porch for the day. It looked like, apart from one happy dog up my ass, the kidnapping (The abduction? A forced rescue?) would be brought off hitch-less.

Junior turned to me. “What the hell do we do now? Do we just give Kelly a ring and dump her in daddy’s limo when it comes by?”

I shrugged. “I haven’t thought that far ahead yet. We’re playing this by ear right now.” I jerked my thumb at the backseat. “Finding the kid changes things a bit.”

“Well, finding her alive sure as shit does.” Junior started singing his twenty-five grand song again, and I wanted to stop him before he started dancing. The day had been disturbing enough already. “Well, let’s get her inside. Then we’ll formulate. I don’t want her waking up and-”

Cassandra’s shriek just about made the two of us shit ourselves. She’d woken up all volume, swinging fists, and fury.

“Jesus Christ!” Junior yelped as he spun around, catching a flailing elbow to the ear. He fell backward, ass-first under the steering wheel.

“Fuck!” Startled, I jumped high in the seat, whacking my head into the roof hard enough to give myself a sharp pain at the base of my neck. I rolled to the right reflexively, caught the doorknob with my elbow, and tumbled backward out the door.

Abruptly, Cassie cut the screaming and flailing and sat stone still, panting in fright. I held up my hands in a calming gesture from my tactical position, halfway jammed in the rain-soaked gutter. “It’s okay! It’s all right!” I said. “You’re safe. We’re not going to hurt you.” Well, at least not more than we already had, between crushing her onto Snake’s floor and electrocuting her.

She remained still, but the air was thick as freshly poured asphalt. Her short breaths started to hitch. Then she was crying. “My head hurts,” she said.

“Uh, Boo?” Junior said softly. “Little help here?” Junior was good and wedged backward under the steering wheel, his upper body bent in a position that seemed unnatural for a guy of Junior’s build. I grabbed the seatbelt and pried myself up. Then I went over to Junior’s side, opened his door, and pulled him out.

I leaned back into the car. “Cassandra?” I said in a gentle voice.

Cassandra pulled a lock of ebony hair from her eyes and looked at me, her breath coming in short gasps. If I didn’t calm her down soon, the kid was going to hyperventilate. Her fear and confusion dug at my heart. The poor kid was doing her best to hold it together, but the trembles in each breath showed the bluff. Her eyes locked into mine with a dim light of recognition.

“Do you recognize me?” I asked.

“Y-you,” she said tentatively. “I know you. You work at The Cellar.”

I smiled with as much radiant calm as I could muster. “Yeah. That’s me.”

“You’re the guy. You stood up to those jerks for Kevin.” Her last words emerged in a choke, and she cleared her throat.

“I’m Boo,” I said, cautiously extending my bandaged hand. I was ready to snatch it back in case she decided to bite again rather than shake. “That’s Junior.” Junior wiggled his fingers at her and smiled.

She looked around, trying to get a bearing on her surroundings. “Where… where am I?”

“You’re at my place. Your father hired us to find you.”

“My dad?” Guilt edged her voice, and she gnawed at her lower lip. “He’s gotta be so pissed at me.”

I wasn’t sure pissed was the word, but I didn’t want to blow a load of smoke up the kid’s ass. “Probably. But I know he’s been worried, too.”

“Is he coming here?”

“He doesn’t know you’re with me yet. I don’t see any reason to rush things, but we should let him know that you’re safe as soon as we can.” Cassandra just sat there, still frozen by the sudden and violent turn of events. “Listen, do you want to come in? We can talk about all this inside.”

She thought it over, giving us both a suspicious eye.

“You know, inside? Where it’s not raining down the crack of my ass?”

Her mouth trembled, fighting a smile. “Um… okay.” I offered her my unbandaged hand to help her out of the car. She looked at the blood-soaked silk wrapped around the other hand. “Was that me?”

“Sure was.”

“Sorry ’bout that.”

“No problem. Happens all the time.” And it actually did, in my line of work.

“Boo?”

“Yeah?”

“Why is my hair sticking up?”