I picked up the note that Junior had tossed. All it said was:
I hope the extra $5000 covers any expenses.
I am in your debt.
Thank you. You should receive the information
we discussed from my people within two weeks.
Unsigned, of course.
Two weeks. Two more weeks for information I’d waited twenty years for. What was two weeks, right? It felt like a fucking lifetime. Again.
“How soon can we cash this?” Junior asked.
I crumpled up the paper and tried to hide my… hell, I didn’t know what I was feeling, or why I was trying to hide it. Was it disappointment? “I’ll bring it to the bank tomorrow.” Junior didn’t have a bank account. Never trusted them. Far as I knew, he kept his money stuffed in a mattress.
“Because, frankly? I want to spread it on the floor, roll around in it nekkid, then rub one out while staring in Ben Franklin’s eyes.”
“Don’t ever ask me to break a hundie for you ever again.”
“Brother, from now on twenties are for lighting cigarettes.” Junior’s eyes flicked to my doorway. “Can’t help but notice you got one visitor left.”
“And?”
“And I’m going home and going back to bed.” Junior clasped my shoulder, looking at me like I imagine a proud father would. “You fuck her, Boo.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Thanks, Junior. But I think she’s gotta decide to—”
“Fuck her blue, my friend.” He clapped my shoulder and walked backward to Miss Kitty, giving me the double-forefinger gunslinger.
“Dick.”
“Fuck her blue,” he said one more time in an Irish whisper and climbed back into the car.
When I walked back inside, Kelly was looking at me the way she had at Donnelly the night in the loft. There was admiration there, but there was something breathless on top of it now.
She stood and kissed me hard, pulling me down by the front of my shirt. Our tongues met as she put her hands under my shirt and brushed her fingers along my stomach.
I fumbled with the buttons on her blouse for a moment and couldn’t take it anymore. I tore the shirt open, buttons popping off and clattering to the floor.
What the hell, I could buy her a new one.
She pulled back, dug her fingers along the neck of my T-shirt, and ripped it down across my chest, laughing.
I stopped.
She stopped.
Stunned, she looked at the vicious patchwork of scar tissue that made up my torso. The long incision scar that started six inches under my Adam’s apple and ran to a point just above my navel. The burns. The smear of ruined flesh that took up a large part of the upper left side of my chest.
Hot shame flooded my cheeks at her touch. She looked me in the eyes, cupped my chin, and kissed me deeper while pushing me toward the bedroom.
Clumsily, I pulled off my jeans and underwear in one quick hopping motion that almost sent me toppling. Laughing, Kelly rolled back on the bed and gracefully slipped out of her skirt and panties. God bless her.
I kneeled at the edge of the bed, and she sat up to draw me on top of her. Our eyes locked. Her lip curled up in that sly smile. “My tough guy,” she said. Lying back, she took me in her hand and gently glided me inside. She let out a small purring sound as I started rocking myself into her.
She turned me over and straddled me, forcing me deeper and deeper. I luxuriated in the smell of her, the skin beneath my hands, the tickle of her hair on my nose as I kissed underneath her ear.
It was a close one, but I managed to hang in there and Kelly groaned just before I did. Ain’t I a champ?
She wasn’t blue by the end, but I still felt pretty damned good about myself.
We lay on top of the sheets. I rested on my back and Kelly had her arms and legs wrapped around me from the side. I couldn’t help staring at her naked bone-white skin. Softly, I ran my fingers back and forth over her curves, like lying with a soft marble statue. I realized she didn’t have any tattoos on her. She was the first woman I’d ever been with, that I’d seen naked, who had none. The uniform purity of her skin fascinated me.
I inhaled our mingling scents. The day was turning hot and humid again, but there wasn’t any discomfort as we lay together, sticky sweat dripping off us. I wouldn’t have traded that position for the whole world and half the moon.
She lay her head on my left shoulder, her breath tickling the sparse chest hair that determinedly poked through the thick scar tissue. Her fingers traced the outline of the pink disfigurements.
She didn’t ask.
They all asked.
I didn’t want to tell any of them before. I didn’t feel like telling her yet, either. We both just lay there silently until we dropped into sleep, her hand resting on the scar tissue over my heart.
I awoke with a sharp intake of breath. Kelly was towel-drying her hair in the long mirror suspended on the inside of my bedroom door. I rolled to my side and admired her nudity as she dried herself. She caught my staring in the mirror and smiled. “What?”
“What, what?”
“You’re wearing a face.”
“I have a face most days. This is mah thinking face.”
“Thinking about what?”
“If I told you, you’d have to shower all over again.” I wiggled my eyebrows at her.
We showered together the second time.
She was scrubbing my back when she said, “I was thinking about getting a tattoo.”
I couldn’t explain to her why I laughed so hard.
After the shower, she gathered up her things in a rush. She poked and lifted objects around my room, looking for a missing something or other.
“What’s your rush there, Reese?”
“I do have to show up at the campaign office at some point today. Have you seen my shoe?”
I halfheartedly looked around. “Nope.” I flopped back onto my bed, the beaded water cooling my skin in the slowly moving air.
Kelly found one shoe under a pillow. “Jeez, now I have to run home and finish my hair.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
She shot me a look.
“What?” I asked. “Isn’t the wet look back?”
“Yeah. And if it dries in this humidity, it’ll look like a Brillo pad.”
“You girls and your doings, I swear…”
“Well, maybe if my shirt still had some buttons on it…”
“Don’t blame me. Blame your sultry ways. I couldn’t control myself.”
She chucked the pillow at me as she hopped on one foot, putting her shoe on. “Get up, put on a pair of underwear, and walk me out like a gentleman.”
“Wasn’t it my roguish devil-may-care demeanor that attracted you to me in the first place?” I said, pulling on a pair of reasonably clean shorts. She just kept muttering to herself as she hustled her way out.
In the doorway, she tried to give me a quick and cursory goodbye kiss, but I held tight and planted a kiss I wanted her to feel in her toes.
She pulled back forcefully. “No! Oh, no you don’t. I have to get to work. I’ll call you tonight. You can buy me a fabulous dinner with your newfound wealth.” One more quick peck and she was off. I watched her car pull around the corner.
With two spectacular sexual exercises lumped on top of my brutal lack of sleep, I felt like I could nap until the Bruins won another Stanley Cup.
I dropped back down on my bed, her smell still in my sheets. I drew in a deep breath of it and smiled. Rolling over, my hand felt something silky under a fold in the comforter. “Well, I’ll be damned,” I muttered. In her haste and confusion, Ms. Reese had left behind her frilly little blue panties. She said she had to go home to finish her hair. Should I call her and let her know she was air-surfing under her skirt? Could make for an interesting day at the office for her.
I must have drifted off for a little while, because my doorbell chimed, waking me from a wonderful dream about a world without panties.
<
br /> Dammit.
I opened the door with a smile, expecting to barter for the return of her drawers.
Instead, I got a gun barrel in my face.
I froze in confusion.
The gun slowly lowered from my nose, and I got a brief look at the face at the other end of the arm. Dirty blond hair cut in a flattop. Pale skin and one blue eye. The other was a milky cataract, a bright scar from the corner of the socket worming over the ear like a pink garter snake. He stood a couple inches over me and wore an expensive-looking suit on his wiry frame.
The stranger in my doorway with the gun pointed at me beamed like we were long-lost friends. He was still smiling when he pulled the trigger.
Bang.
Chapter Seventeen
Gravity can be a damned mean bitch.
The gun barked, and my right leg flew back and away. My left foot slipped sideways and I came down hard, smacking the side of my face against the foyer wall as I dropped.
I lay facedown on the hardwood, gritting my teeth so hard a molar snapped like a popcorn kernel. A hot wetness spread underneath me as I lay there, staring at my shooter’s expensive shoes. I hoped it was blood. Please God, I thought, if I’m gonna die right here and now, don’t let me piss myself. My whole body shook uncontrollably. I knew I was shot, but it didn’t hurt.
Yet.
Then I felt the cool metal of the barrel pressed against my forehead. I closed my eyes tight against the impact I was sure would follow.
Nothing.
A gently brogued voice said, “Be easy, boy. Be easy if this was a kill. You’re lucky the word was just to hurt you bad.”
A piece of paper being shoved into my hand, dry fingers closing my fingers around it.
I opened my eyes to see the expensive shoes walking away.
Then the pain came.
Boy-motherfucking-howdy.
It sliced through me like somebody had laid me open with a straight razor beginning behind my knee and cutting up into the back of my skull. I screamed with the sudden intensity of it, clutching my leg. When the initial shock of pain subsided, I unclenched my fingers from the blood-smeared paper. An address, mine, handwritten in block letters in black ink. Underneath it, another address.
Kelly’s address.
In pure panic and rage, I leapt to my feet, paying instantly for the stupidity. My dead leg buckled, sending me crashing back to the floor, bright new eruptions of pain blinding out the world. I almost passed out right there, but the frenzy overrode everything else. I pushed myself up on shaking rubber muscles and propped myself against the wall, weight balanced on the leg that wasn’t shot.
A door opened above me, and Phil trotted down the stairs. “Jeez, man. What was that sound?” He poked his head in my doorway. “What the hell are you—holy shit!”
“H-help me,” was all I could say. My wires were scrambled. Too much pain. Too much fear. Too much. Too much.
“Holy shit!” Phil’s skin tone went to chalk. “Dude, you need an ambulance.”
“No!” I said, louder than I meant. Phil jumped back at the ferocity in my voice. “Does… that van drive?”
“Yeah. I think so. But wouldn’t an ambulance be better right now?” He took a couple steps toward me, and I grabbed him by the shirt and slammed him into the wall.
“Start the fucking thing. Now!” I threw him toward the door and out. I only had one leg to push off from, but it gave me enough leverage to give him a good launching. I pitched forward with my own momentum and came down on my face again. White lights danced before my eyes. There was no time for clear thought, but I really had to stop falling the fuck down.
As the hippie van’s engine coughed over and over, I had a minor epiphany. The cell phone was only a few feet away, charging in the living room. I hopped and dragged myself toward the phone at a frantic clip.
Pulling myself onto the couch, I saw the thick trail of blood zig-zagging in my wake.
Shit, that’s a lot, I thought.
I didn’t want to look at my knee. I snatched the phone off the side table and hit the autodial for Kelly’s cell.
Ringing.
Ringing.
Ringing. Motherf—
Connection!
“Hi, this is Kelly. Sorry I can’t answer your call right—”
“Fuck!” I shouted. “Fuck! Fuck!”
Kelly’s home number was next in the menu. It rang twice. “Come on… come on,” I muttered.
It rang a third time and Kelly answered, a bit out of breath. “Hello?”
“Kelly. Call the cops.”
“What? Boo?”
“Lock your door and call the cops right now.” The words were getting harder and harder to produce. My lips felt shot full of Novocain.
“Boo, what’s—”
“Right now, baby. Please.”
“Tell me what’s happening!” Her voice rose in fear.
“I got shot.” Gotta admit: Them’s some strange words to hear yourself say.
“Oh my God, Boo! Who shot you? Where are you?”
“I’m on my way. Don’t answer the door.”
“Boo—”
“Please, Kelly. Just lock your door and call the cops.” I hung up before she asked any more questions I really did not have the time for.
I tried Junior’s number, but my blood-slicked fingers kept slipping off the small keypad. I took a deep breath and collected myself enough to find the right numbers.
“Wuzzah?” came Junior’s sleepy voice.
“Junior, I’m shot. I got shot.” It still felt weird saying it. My voice was calm, but it rang in my ears like I was in an echo chamber.
“Huh?”
“Get to 116 Mt. Vernon!”
“Sorry, think I got something crazy stuck in my ear. Did you just say you got shot?”
“Please, Junior. I think he might be going after Kelly.” Panic started chewing my gut anew.
“I’m out.” Junior hung up. Done and done.
From a distance that seemed too far to be the driveway, the van heaved a mighty cough and started.
Phil came running around the hall into the living room. “She’s running. Oh God.” He got a good look at my knee and promptly turned eight shades of green. “Oh my god.”
I reached out to him. “Help me get up,” I said, slurring. I sounded drunk. That couldn’t be good. My eyes were getting heavy.
Phil slung my arm around his shoulders and helped me to the van. He put me on my back through the rear doors and ran around to the front. “Where are we going? What hospital? Where is the hospital? Jeez, I don’t know where the hospital is!” Phil sounded one notch down the panic meter from where my needle was buried.
“Mt. Vernon. Just… just drive to Mt. Vernon Street.” The dancing white lights were getting bigger. And they’d brought friends. Not good. I was slipping into shock.
“I know where Mt. Vernon is, but there’s no hospital.” From my position, the upside-down Phil turned, confused. “And, uh—you’re in your underpants.”
“Drive, you stupid hippie jackass!” I shouted through clenched teeth.
Phil hit the gas and shot out of the driveway with a screech of tires. He turned a hard left onto Cambridge, centrifugal force flipping me upside down and bouncing my forehead off the van wall. Another explosion of pain shook my nervous system, and I fought back the nausea wringing my stomach.
I looked at the cell phone. Who else could I call?
Twitch. I could call Twitch.
“I don’t have a license, man,” Phil whined hysterically. “The van doesn’t have any plates. What if we get pulled over?”
The van chugged along. Not fast enough. Then I saw Phil had the gas pedal to the floor. We were going as fast as the beat-up van was capable.
I tried to answer him, but somebody had filled my tongue with sand. The lights slow-danced and grouped into one blob—a blob that was spreading over my vision. Not yet, I thought. Not yet, goddammit. I bit my lower lip hard enough to draw blood,
trying to push back the shock. My brain was too disconnected to feel it, like I was biting into somebody else.
I anchored myself, palms flat on either side of me, as the van rocked with each turn. Phil was still yapping protests, but I’d stopped listening. Stay awake.
Stay awake.
Flowing, watery black curtains.
Stay awake.
Where is she?
“Where is who?” asked a puzzled Phil.
Don’t you hit her!
“Hit who? What are you talking about?”
Was I talking?
Where are my pants?
The van stopped. I reached up, grabbing the seatbelt draped over the passenger seat, and pulled myself into the seat. “Whaz going on,” I slurred. “Why’d we stop?”
“Um. Red light.” Phil pointed at the traffic light.
The phone rang. I hit the button.
“Boo?” Kelly was panicked. “Somebody’s here. Oh God. Somebody’s banging on my door!”
My heart convulsed in fear. “Don’t answer it. Call the cops.”
Kelly screamed. “He’s kicking in the door!” I heard wood crunch in the background.
The phone beeped three times. Disconnected.
With the strength I had left, I brought my good leg around the gearshift and stomped on Phil’s right foot, flooring the van. Phil screamed as we jumped forward into the intersection. Horns blared and tires squealed as the cars shot around us. We were almost clear when somebody clipped us in the rear and sent the poor, abused van into a spin.
Phil screeched a birdcall in pitch-perfect harmony to the shrieking tires. He held onto the operatic howl until the van came to a stop.
“Dude!” he said. “That was so unfuckingcool.”
I didn’t know where we were. Blurry. Whole world gone blurry.
Some guy in a Patriots hat smacked Phil’s window. “You stupid fuck! Get out of the van!” Must be the guy who hit us.
“Oh God,” Phil yelped.
“We facing the right way?” I asked.
“Yeah, but—”
I stomped on the gas again. I saw a Patriots hat go flying up and away in the rearview. Hope we didn’t run over the guy’s feet.
The Hard Bounce Page 19
