The Hard Bounce

by Todd Robinson

  I bussed tables at Hoolihan’s. That stint ended when the manager grabbed my vest and flapped his jaws at me a little too aggressively. I broke my hand on that same jaw. It flapped a little differently after that. I got a hundred hours of community service and an anger management class.

  Clearly the anger management classes didn’t take.

  The community service did.

  Junior and I both had spent the larger portion of our lives under the State’s rule. We didn’t want to go back to that. Ever.

  And the only reason that I wasn’t already in a cage was that I had three witnesses that saw the Hoolihan’s manager grab me first.

  That scared the shit out of me.

  It was obvious that we needed jobs with as little answering to higher authorities as possible.

  We were drinking our sorrows blind at The Cellar when opportunity knocked. Back then, the door staff was too busy scoring, selling, or snorting to care much about carding. One night, the bouncer got the shit kicked out of him by a couple of townie bikers after he screwed them on a coke deal. Junior and I entered the fray and tossed all of them, bouncer included, into Kenmore Square.

  4DC was born.

  When we left the bar, the streets were empty and silent but for the sounds of traffic coming off of Storrow Drive on one side and the Mass Pike on the other. Junior hopped on his ten-speed bicycle and rode off. Normally, Junior would have given me a ride, but his car was in the shop for the third time in six months. The car was an old wreck, but Junior loved it, even to the point of suffering the indignity of putting himself on a beat-up bicycle for days at a time. Devotion and indignity. That pretty much sums up our lives.

  And beat-up.

  Beat-up cars, beat-up bicycles. Beat-up lives.

  Nice thing about our business though? Sometimes we got to beat back.

  While waiting for a cab, I leaned against the front of the bar and looked at Cassandra’s picture.

  The picture was taken at a mall somewhere in the suburbs. I could make out a Sunglass Hut and Spencer Gifts in the background. She was a cute kid with a sweet smile: a kid’s smile, without the self-consciousness that develops with adulthood. Her hair was slightly shorter in the shot so it couldn’t have been more than a few months old. I noticed the unusual maturity I’d seen in her eyes earlier that day wasn’t present in the picture.

  Whatever put it there happened recently.

  I handed the cabbie ten bucks after the short drive up Commonwealth from Kenmore Square to my apartment in Allston. The young neo-hippie who lived upstairs wasn’t at his usual post on the front steps. He’s usually perched there all odd hours during the summer, never on any type of schedule that might coincide with having a job. Might be a student. Never cared enough to ask.

  I have the entire first floor of a two-family house on Gordon Street. It’s got three big rooms—more space than I need, but the price is right. The landlord cut me a deal when 4DC shoo-flyed some meth-head squatters from another one of his properties. I converted the front room into a home gym and use the second for a living area. The smallest room, no bigger than a large closet, is my bedroom. Growing up like I did, I tend to find comfort in smaller spaces. Less to defend.

  The red light on my answering machine blinked three times. I hit play and walked into the kitchen to open a can of dinner. I dumped the canned pasta into my lucky bowl and tossed it into the microwave. It’s my lucky bowl because it’s my only one. I also own a lucky plate and a lucky glass. It says Welch’s Grape Jelly on it and features Tom & Jerry.

  The first message was from Curtis, the manager at The Drop Bar in Cambridge. He needed some extra security on weekends. He said the bar had been attracting a rowdier crowd in the last month and more fights had been flaring.

  The machine beeped. Message two. Some woman was overly concerned with my cable TV package. She left a number in case I was as excited about the movie lover’s package as she was.

  The machine beeped again. “Mr. Malone? This is Kelly Reese. My employer has agreed to meet with you. A car will pick you up at The Cellar tomorrow night at ten o’clock Goodbye.” She ended the message without giving me a return number by which to accept or decline the offer. Regardless, I *69ed the number.

  Unlisted.

  My number’s unlisted, too. How they got it was just one more question I would have to add to the stack.

  I woke up around noon the next morning—early for one living the night-owl lifestyle. I opened up another can for breakfast and turned on the news.

  An elderly woman was killed during a botched home invasion. No suspects were in custody at the time.

  A Harvard freshman’s suit against the city started the day before. He fell onto the Red Line tracks, losing both his legs.

  The mayor was railing against his opponent’s stance on “the issues of the citizens.” Apparently, the incumbent couldn’t dig up any damning personal info to fling yet. Unfortunately for him, his opponent, a long-term DA, had a whole lot on him. Ah, politics…

  I shut off the TV before the news anchor got to the report that my children’s lives just might depend on.

  I did a quick workout, punching on a heavy bag until I broke a light sweat. I wanted to keep working the bag, which was always good for clearing my head, but my shoulder was still stiff from the Wile E. Coyote routine I’d re-enacted off The Cellar’s back door.

  I had a lot of time to kill until my evening pickup, so I decided to do some recon work. I could at least try to fill in some blanks so I didn’t walk into the meeting with nothing more than my dick in hand.

  My upstairs neighbor had resumed his post on the front steps, soaking in the sun like an otter on a rock. A strong mixture of patchouli and pot wafted off him. He even had an old VW van parked in the short driveway beside the house. I’d never seen anyone drive it since the day he moved in. At some point in its existence, somebody decided to paint a mural of peace signs, rainbows, and daisies on the front but lost interest about a quarter of the way back.

  He’d been living above me for three years and I still didn’t know his name. Couple years back, I’d tossed him out of The Cellar after I busted him lighting a hash pipe. From that point on, I think he regarded me as a tool of the Man’s oppression.

  He gave me a nod of acknowledgment as I passed him on the steps. I returned the nod and stopped. I pulled the picture from my back pocket and held it out to him. “You don’t happen to know this kid, do you?”

  He lowered his sunglasses and stared blankly at the picture. He narrowed his eyes when he looked back at me. “Nope.”

  Great. Now he had me pegged for a chickenhawk as well as a Fascist.

  I hopped the Green Line train back into Kenmore. The Cellar didn’t open until three, but by the time the train got there, the bar would be ready for business. I knew Underdog would be inside as soon as the doors opened.

  A few years back, Underdog was just another drinker at the bar. He was usually the first to show up and sometimes the last out at the end of the night. Pipe-cleaner thin, he would keep to himself in whatever part of the bar had the least light and steadily drink plastic pints of Busch. After a few weeks, he became a fixture and the staff began to feel sorry for him. The girls who work at the bar have a soft spot for strays like Underdog, and The Cellar was the type of bar that attracted them.

  A year back, I’d made a rare daytime appearance at the bar. As I headed up the stairs to the offices, I heard a clattering from the well underneath the steps. I went to see what was going on, since the area was supposed to be off limits.

  I got an eyeful of Underdog’s ass as I turned the corner.

  And the long needle tracks along the pasty flesh of his inner thigh. The clatter I’d heard was a dropped hypo.

  I felt duped, personally betrayed by a man we’d brought into our family.

  A bloody haze fell over my eyes like a red-filtered Klieg light blazing at a thousand watts.

  “Boo, I—” was all Underdog got out before my right hand c
lamped over his throat and squeezed off his protests. Feeble squeaks of alarm were all he could produce.

  I crushed the syringe in my left hand, glass slicing into my palm.

  I flung the shattered needle to the floor. With my bleeding hand, I went into his pockets while still choking him with the other. From his shirt pocket, I plucked a small bag of heroin. I dumped the beige powder on the floor, turning the baggie over right in front of his face. Underdog’s mouth started foaming at the corners, his oxygen-starved brain ordering his thin legs to kick at my shins. Unfortunately for him, a panicked hundred and twenty pounds doesn’t even register when I hit that wall.

  And I’d hit that wall.

  Hard.

  Then his eyelids fluttered and he was beyond caring.

  I felt through the front pockets of his jeans. A few loose bills. Keys. Stick of gum. Lint.

  In the back pocket of his jeans, I found his badge.

  My hand opened on Underdog’s throat, and he dropped to the floor, conscious by a hair. “You’re a cop,” I said, dumbfounded.

  Dog lay at my feet, clutching his neck and wheezing asthmatically. He slid himself into the crevice under the stairs like a wounded animal.

  “You’re a cop,” I said again. The answer—the gold shield in a leather case—was already in my hand. I was just trying to push the information into my brain. It didn’t want to go.

  “Vice,” he squeaked from his corner, almost too softly to hear. Then he started weeping deep, heaving sobs like a child.

  “Vice,” I repeated. I stared stupidly at the ID tucked into the flap of the wallet. Sure enough, it read: Brendan Miller, BPD, Detective—Vice Division—Narcotics. Then I looked long and hard at the photo. Any bouncer will tell you, the best way to spot a fake picture on an ID is by focusing on two things that don’t change on a person between license photos: the distance between the eyes and, barring breakage or surgery, the nose. Brendan Miller had an academy crew cut.

  Underdog had a shoulder-length mousy tangle.

  Brendan Miller was clean shaven, skin gleaming.

  I’d never seen Underdog with a decent shave.

  Brendan Miller was a healthy looking, young guy.

  Underdog… wasn’t.

  The picture on the ID was definitely the same person cowering on the dirty floor before me. But it sure as hell wasn’t the same man.

  “I didn’t want to be this way,” he cried quietly.

  I towed him up the stairs by the scruff of his shirt before anyone else came looking to see what the hubbub was about. I dropped him in the office and cleaned the bits of glass out of my hand in the upstairs bathroom. When I came back, he was still slumped in the bright yellow chair next to the desk, his sobbing tapering off. His shirt was streaked with stripes of my blood, and when he coughed, a little spray of his own came out.

  I glared down at him, then looked at the cuts in my palm. “Any chance you gave me something? You got Hep?”

  Softly, “No.”

  “HIV?”

  A shake of the head. “I get tested. I’m an idiot. I’m an asshole. I’m a fucking junkie. But I’m not suicidal.”

  I handed him some paper towels. “Here. Clean yourself.”

  I sat in the desk chair and watched him smear my blood deeper into his shirt. He started sobbing again. “I don’t wanna die, Boo. I really, really don’t.”

  “So, what’s the story here, Dog?” I said quietly, not able to look directly at him. I’ve seen more than my share of junkies in my day and felt not a lick of pity for their weaknesses.

  But dammit, this was Underdog.

  He gave me his story in a monotone.

  He’d been Vice for six years and on deep cover for the last three. Too deep and not enough cover, apparently. In his dealings, as a show of good faith, he’d shot up a few times with the people he was supposed to be keeping an eye on. Nobody shoots up and believes they’ll get addicted. Brendan Miller was no exception.

  He was wrong. After a few months of regular use, he became the Underdog before me, snuffling through tears and holding himself tight.

  His real troubles started a year before, when in a drugged stupor he told a pusher who was dicking him around that he was a cop. Word spread fast, and soon the whole network of dealers knew. They cut him a deal. Fudge your reports and your junk is free. Brendan Miller was too far gone to refuse. The dealers were thrilled. They had a cop under their thumbs. A Vice detective, no less.

  The entire time Underdog was telling me this, he stared at an empty space on the floor. I still didn’t want to look at his face, so it was a good arrangement. His feet scuffed a two-step on the tile, and he wrung his hands obsessively.

  When he finished the story, he looked up from the floor and held me with heartbroken, bloodshot eyes. “Boo?”

  “What?” When I spoke, my voice was as flat as his.

  “Please don’t kick me out. Please.” He was begging. His voice cracked at the end, like he might burst into tears all over again.

  That’s what he was afraid of. He’d seen what I’d done to other people. People I’d caught messing around with shit a hell of a lot less severe than heroin.

  “You can fuck me up if you want to. Shit, I deserve a beating. I probably need it, but please don’t…”

  I realized the people in The Cellar were probably the only ones who had been kind to him in a really long time. They were people who cared about him, who liked to see him when he walked in the door. He was terrified to lose that.

  I wasn’t going to beat him up. Life had already taken care of that. I took my reserve bottle of Beam from the drawer and poured him a thick shot into a rocks glass and took a pull from the bottle. “I’m not going to ban you from the bar.”

  His bony face lit up with hope, but his hands still shook hard enough to make the bourbon slosh around the glass. “Boo, I—”

  “But if you ever, fucking ever, buy, sell, or do that shit in this building again… if you do and I catch you…”

  I didn’t finish with my threat. I didn’t have to. He was still thanking me when I told him to get the fuck out of my office.

  Underdog had made himself scarce the last couple months. I think he was avoiding me. I’d hear about him being in the bar, but he’d be gone by the time I showed up for my shifts.

  He hadn’t been caught again.

  That’s not to say he wasn’t still using.

  He just wasn’t caught.

  Iggy and the Stooges blaring out of The Cellar’s open door could only mean Audrey was working. She’d been bartending at the place almost as long as Luke had been cleaning it. Big, loud, and with more brass than your average marching band, Audrey was something of a local legend. Legendary for her heavy hand when pouring the Jack Daniels for customers—and herself. Legendary for laying out said customers who dared to give her an ounce of shit. I’d lay good money that she could punch harder than me. That long a tenure at The Cellar, and she’d have had plenty of practice.

  It was still early enough for the scent of Luke’s pine cleanser to have the advantage over the stink that would soon fill the air. Audrey’s ample behind wagged a greeting at me when I entered. She leaned over the bar, smothering somebody with her maternal bartending. She had two grown daughters of her own, but never had an empty nest. She stuck all of us in there instead, whether we liked it or not.

  “Hey, baby, can I get some fries with that shake?”

  She wheeled around, a wide grin breaking across her cherubic face. “Willie!” she said in her sandpaper voice, thirty years of Winstons and whiskey sitting on her larynx. Audrey was the only one who could call me Willie without making my skin crawl.

  Coming around the bar, she bear-hugged me, nearly lifting me off the floor. My ribs shifted under the power of her hug.

  “Look, Brendan!” she said. “Willie came out to play today.”

  “Dog,” I said.

  “Boo.” He nervously bobbed his chin in greeting.

  Audrey smiled like she’d
just reintroduced two old playground buddies. “Me and Brendan were just gonna play some gin rummy. You want the winner, Willie?”

  “Maybe later, Audrey. I need to talk to Underdog.”

  Dog’s head shot up, and I waved him toward a table in the back. He picked up his pint and shambled over. He looked even skinnier than I remembered from the last time I’d seen him. His clothes hung off him like socks on a chicken.

  Audrey freshened up her Jack and water. She would freshen it at least a dozen times a shift and never show it. Thirty years ago she could have been my dream girl.

  “I just remembered why I drink,” Audrey called out to us. It was the closest thing she had to a toast, and the reply was mandatory.

  “Why is that, Audrey?”

  She swallowed half the glass. “Because I fucking like it.”

  Before I could say word one to him, Underdog was already scrambling.

  “I didn’t do anything, Boo. I swear.” He kept his voice hushed so Audrey wouldn’t hear. A loud ka-chunk sounded through the old speaker system as Audrey changed the tape. Jimmy, the legendary skinflint who owned the club, was still too cheap to spend the thirty bucks it would have cost to buy a CD player, much less an iPod. The Muffs started screaming about a lucky guy, and Audrey bobbed her head vigorously to the beat, oblivious to our conversation.

  Underdog stared at me with an earnestness intense enough to pop greasy beads of sweat on his brow. “You’ve got to believe me. I’m not going to lie to you. I’m not going to say I’m totally clean, but I swear, I never do anything here. Not anymore.”

  “Dog—”

  “Boo, I swear…” He held a sweaty palm up to show his honesty.

  “Dog—”

  “To God!”

  “Shut up,” I snapped. “Jesus!”

  “Huh?”

  “Shut up. I just want to ask you about some people.” Underdog still possessed enough unscrambled brain cells to hide his addiction and keep his job. He wouldn’t be joining Mensa anytime soon, but if he were stupid, he’d already be dead or behind bars himself.