The Hard Bounce

by Todd Robinson

  “Thas good. She deserves that at least.” He turned his head and something pinged inside my brain as I looked at his profile. Same as when I’d seen his uncle. Some resemblance that itched at me.

  I pushed the thought aside. “Do you have a list of any kind? A list of buyers?”

  He shook his head like it was resting on a pile of ball bearings. “Nah. Sid does all that distribution stuff. I just made ’em.”

  It looked like another visit with Sid was going to be unavoidable. We turned to go.

  “I really, really loved her, you know?” he said to our backs, his voice crumbling.

  I felt the old warm violence creeping through me again. I felt the urge to beat him into a puddle again and ask him if it was love. Is it Derek? Is this the love you gave those girls? Instead I took a deep breath.

  Derek barked a humorless laugh. “The only reason I made that other movie was so we could make some money.” He tried to stand and fell back to the mattress. “We were gonna run away together. I loved her. I really did.” His self-justification cut off as he started bawling.

  I couldn’t help but realize that if I’d never found her, if Derek and Cassie had run away together, as fucked-up and flat-out wrong as it would have been…

  She would still be alive.

  Junior had no problem splitting our search. He went off to look for Paul again, and I went to Sid’s. Truth be told, I think Junior was a bit afraid of the woman.

  I found Sid’s Vids closed two hours ahead of schedule. Suspecting another run for the border, I peered through the greasy windows. Everything was there. Then I heard the barking of the fat chihuahua. Sid must have closed up shop early to get a head start on dinner.

  I walked around back to the residential entrance and found luck in the form of an already popped lock. As I inspected the busted deadbolt, rumbling thunder sounded above me in the clear blue sky. I fucking hate omens.

  The dog’s shrill barking sounded frightened and alarmed. My nerves jangled further when I got to Sid’s door. The locks were splintered in five places, and the door was slightly ajar.

  Not good.

  Definitely not good.

  Somebody wanted in before me. And wanted it in a hurry.

  “Sid?” I whispered. No answer. I feared Sid would come leaping out of the shadows to attack—okay, maybe not leaping, and it would have to be one hell of a shadow—but I couldn’t hear Sid’s raspy wheeze. All I heard was the dog and the television.

  Gently, I pushed open her door. My heart froze when I heard the clatter of tiny feet on linoleum. The fat dog jumped on my braced leg, licking at my fingers. The apartment still stank to high heaven, but there was something else. A primal smell. I closed the door behind me.

  “Sid!”

  Still no answer.

  Still no wheezing.

  Then I saw the foot sticking out.

  I followed the mammoth foot around the corner to its leg. And then on to Sid herself…

  … and the two neat holes where her nose and left eye used to be.

  Blood spread out under her head along with chunks of skull and brain. A pathetically small, two-shot derringer was on the floor a couple inches from Sid’s outstretched hand.

  Not part of the plan.

  I had to call Junior. I needed him to pick me up and get me the hell out of here. There was no way I was going to hail a cab from the apartment of the murdered. My cell phone rang as soon as my hand touched it. Stifling a yelp, I juggled the phone, catching it before it dropped into Sid’s pooling blood, which seeped toward my shoe.

  “Yeah,” I whispered hoarsely, “who’s this?”

  Galloping through my brain was the thought that maybe I shouldn’t have answered. Could the cops peg where the cell phone was calling from? Was I marking myself as a suspect by putting myself at the scene of the crime?

  Paranoid? Absofuckinglutely. It wasn’t the first dead body I’d seen, but it was the first one I’d found.

  “Boo!” Junior’s frantic voice sounded in the tiny earpiece. “Where the fuck are you?”

  What washe so frantic about? I was the one next to four hundred pounds of dead Sid. With a shudder, I took a step back so the blood wouldn’t touch my foot. Sid’s curtains blew in on a strong gust of air. I leaned to breathe in the breeze rather than the sickly odor of bodily evacuation that flooded the room.

  “I’m in Sid’s.”

  “I’m right out front. I’ve got Paul with me.”

  “Listen to me, Junior, Sid’s—”

  “He came to The Cellar. He saw somebody at the squat. Cassie didn’t get there on her own. You were right.”

  The room spun like I was in a centrifuge when the callused hand of reality suddenly squeezed my nuts.

  “Junior, wait a sec—”

  Why was Sid’s blood still pooling?

  A tiny wisp of gray smoke curled up from Sid’s brand-new nose hole.

  That wasn’t a rumbling of thunder I’d heard; it was Sid hitting the floor.

  The open window.

  A hand reached around the open sill and started firing in my direction. I heard the fup-fup-fup of a silencer as chips of paint and concrete flew around my head. I dove for the kitchen and landed right on my bad leg. I screamed as the stitches tore, blood immediately seeping through the bandages, soaking my pants leg. A cloud of plaster dust filled the room, and the dog started yipping in fright again. I covered my head and stayed low.

  The gunshots stopped, and the dust settled around me. The fire escape rattled as the shooter made his escape. Hobbling, I scooped up Sid’s pistol and got to the window just in time to see the door shut on a dark green four-door. I fired the pistol’s two bullets at the car.

  Being the shot that I am, I managed to miss an entire car with the first bullet. The second one chipped off the windshield. The gun didn’t even have enough firepower to get through glass at that distance.

  The engine roared to life as I grabbed onto the fire escape ladder and slid the floor and a half down. Jagged pieces of rusted iron sliced my palms.

  I hit pavement just as the car sped toward the alleyway to the street. When my newly re-opened leg hit the ground, my nervous system short-circuited. Nothing but pure adrenaline got me back to my feet through the blinding pain.

  I turned the corner just in time to see the taillights whipping away.

  Paul stood at the end of the alley, waving his outstretched arms to stop the car.

  “Paul! No!” I yelled. “Get the fuck out of the way!”

  The car wasn’t going to stop.

  Junior came out of nowhere and open-field tackled Paul. The two of them flew sideways across the mouth of the alley.

  A second too late.

  With a thumping crunch, the car plowed into them, launching them both into the air and out of my line of sight. The car screeched left, and I heard a second terrible crunch of shattering glass.

  As fast as my gushing leg could carry me, I bolted down the alley. People were screaming. Tires screeched—the driver of the car blowing through a red light, missing the honking cross traffic by inches, then gone. In the melee, I couldn’t find Junior or Paul. In a panic, I ran to the closest assemblage of witnesses.

  Junior lay in a crumpled heap against Miss Kitty, a huge dent in the driver’s side door where he’d hit. Paul had been launched through the window of the candy shop where Junior and I bought our Sno-Caps and jellybeans the night of our stakeout. A cascade of bright candy poured out around Paul’s mangled body.

  Groaning, Junior pushed himself up with his left arm, his right arm bending at the bicep in an unnatural angle.

  I ran to Paul.

  All of Paul seemed to be pointing in wrong directions. His eyes were wild with fear and pain as I kneeled next to him, glass cutting into my knees. Red, green, and purple jellybeans ran onto the sidewalk, mixing into the small river of Paul’s blood.

  Paul’s eyes locked into mine. “B-B-Boo?” His jaw hung awkwardly in his mouth. Wet gurgles stuttered every
breath he struggled to take.

  Then I saw the shards of glass sticking out of the kid.

  “Oh God. Oh fuck,” I babbled. “Stay calm, kiddo. An ambulance… Somebody call a fucking ambulance!” I screamed to the rapidly building crowd, panic breaking my voice.

  Too much blood.

  “I… I shaw him, Boo.”

  So much blood.

  “Shh,” I said, my voice shaking. “Hold on to it, Paul. You can tell me later. Just keep cool.”

  Paul began to squeal in pain.

  The kid was dying right in front of me. In my arms.

  I’ll never forgive myself for asking him, but I had to know. I couldn’t look at him when I asked, “Who, Paul? Who did you see?”

  The kid was starting to arrest. Convulsions wracked his skinny body. “G-g-g-g-GAHP!” he screamed.

  He gasped.

  He gasped again.

  He gasped once more and went limp.

  “Oh no. Oh fuck me, no,” Junior said, stumbling, fighting his way through the crowd.

  Junior placed a hand against his left ear, fingers coming away red. “Shit, that ain’t good.” The blood drip-dripped twice onto his shoulder before his eyes rolled up white and he collapsed hard onto the sidewalk.

  The sirens sounded so far away.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Fourteen hours. Paul died.

  Twice.

  Twice they brought him back by the skin of his teeth.

  Junior hadn’t woken up yet.

  We got to the hospital, and I waited. I got another batch of stitches to keep my blood where it belonged, and I waited, numb. I don’t know if I dozed or not. I sat and stared at the pattern on the worn carpet for long stretches.

  I didn’t take my lies too far from the truth when I talked to the cops. I told them we were going to ask about some movies when the car shot out of the alley. Sooner or later, the police were going to cross-check some names and see that I’d just been shot a week earlier. But for the moment, my answers seemed to satisfy the bored-looking detective.

  Every few decades, I’d get a report on Junior.

  In and out, they’d say.

  He’s still on the operating table, they’d say.

  They were doing everything they could, they’d say.

  I stared at the name on the triage paperwork.

  Darrell McCullough.

  Junior.

  It was a name I knew but didn’t recognize. It was a name for someone who hadn’t existed for nearly twenty years. He’d disappeared into the same place that took Billy Malone.

  An older man in green scrubs came up to me. “Are you the gentleman who came in with the hit and run?”

  “Yeah,” I said, waiting with my guts in my shoes for I’m sorry.

  “Your friend is in critical condition. I’m afraid he suffered a lot of internal injuries.” He read from a clipboard like he was going over a grocery list. It was a long grocery list. “Five of his ribs are broken. One lung collapsed, and the other is severely bruised. On top of his arm and leg, both of which are broken in a couple places, he’s suffered a fairly serious head trauma.”

  Suddenly, I realized I didn’t know who he was talking about, Paul or Junior. “Wait a minute. I came in with two people.”

  With a sigh, he flipped back a couple of pages. “This chart is Mr. McCullough’s.”

  “Can you tell me about the kid?”

  “Far as I know, he’s still in surgery. His family has arrived, so I’m afraid that any information about him will have to come through them first.”

  I nodded. “So, give me the shorthand. What’s happening with Jun—Mr. McCullough?”

  “I’m afraid he’s in a coma.”

  Seemed the doctor was afraid of an awful lot.

  I was afraid, too.

  Finally, I tore myself from the waiting area. I needed something to eat. I needed sleep even more.

  I went home to my empty apartment. For the first time in twenty-three years, alone was a presence in my life. Alone was a noun.

  The Boy was sitting coiled on my kitchen floor, holding himself tightly. Fire and hell burned in that little boy’s eyes.

  I trudged into my bathroom to change my dressing. For the briefest of glimpses, I thought I saw the ghost of Billy Malone in the mirror, but I was wrong.

  It was only Boo.

  The next morning, I was bedside with Junior.

  Lost.

  I took his rough, bandaged hand in my own. “I’m with you, buddy,” I said. The only response was the beeping of his heart monitor and the asthmatic wheeze of the respirator.

  I was ten. I hadn’t spoken a word in two years.

  The other boys at The Home took easy potshots at me, seeing my trauma for the weakness it was. I took a lot of beatings, daily humiliations. They called me retarded, even though I spent most days alone in The Home’s meager library, spending hour after hour lost in the worlds of Asimov’s robots, roaming the streets of Metropolis, having dinner with the Hardy Boys. My most vivid memories about the adventures of Frank and Joe Hardy involve the luxurious meals described in the books. It made for one hell of a fantasy for a boy forced to eat state-subsidized food three meals a day.

  I devoured the fiction, making a different world inside my mind. I was detached from their world, their cruelty. I was detached from my own. I was the boy at the bottom of the well.

  And I liked the well just fine.

  But sometimes the abuses just wouldn’t be ignored. One afternoon, some of the bigger kids dragged me into the bathroom. While two held my arms, a third would piss on my head and laugh. I hardly reacted, just tried to keep my head up and my mouth closed. With two down and the third opening his fly, the bathroom door crashed open. I remember imagining the whole population of The Home was in line outside, waiting for the opportunity to piss on the back of my neck.

  “Yo! The fuck is this? You fags having a circle jerk in here?” The new voice sounded younger than my attackers. The voice was fearless.

  “Get out of here, fucko,” one said.

  “Fuck off,” the new voice said. I turned my head to see one of the newer residents of The Home standing at the door. The new kid was a little red-haired hellion who’d already caused himself a lifetime’s worth of trouble at St. Gabe’s. The administrators had taken something of a gentle touch with him. Word around the concrete schoolyard was that his family had been wiped out in a fire.

  Even from the position I was in, with my urine-soaked head in the urinal, I could feel the charge in the room, the older kids’ uncertainty. They were accustomed to having their age and size advantages being enough to bully the younger kids. They sure as shit weren’t prepared for a challenge.

  “Why don’t you leave him alone?” the new kid asked.

  “Why don’t you mind your Ps and Qs?” the boy holding my right arm said.

  “Well, I gotta take a whiz and you got his head in the urinal.”

  The third kid laughed. “Just piss on the retard.”

  The new kid paused. “Who is that? That the mute? Boo?”

  “Yeah. He won’t say nothing even if you—” The kid behind me had his words cut short with a thump. A squealing wheeze of pain followed.

  “Hey!” the kid on my right said. Another thump and a guttural groan. My right arm was free.

  “Hit ’em, Boo!” the new kid said.

  I threw an uppercut with my freed arm into the sternum of the third, right under the ribcage. With a pained explosion of breath, my left arm was released, too.

  “In the nuts! Hit him in the nuts!” my new coach yelled.

  I lowered my aim and brought my right fist up into the boy’s crotch. Hard. Another yelp. Another moaning body on the floor. The other two were in identical positions, rocking on the ground and clutching their assaulted balls.

  I felt a flush of victory as the new kid stepped over them and started pissing in the urinal where my head used to be. “Little trick, Boo. The bigger they are, the bigger their nutsacks
.” He finished and zipped up his fly. “Why do you let them do that to you?” he asked as he stepped back over them. He held the door open. Did he want me to follow him? Nobody ever wanted to talk to me, much less hang out.

  I had no answer, so I shrugged.

  “Are you really retarded?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then how come you don’t talk?” He was leaving. I followed him out. “You’re not deaf, ’cause you answer my questions. Kinda.” He looked at my face thoughtfully. “Unless you’re reading my lips. Is that it?” He held his hand over his mouth to test the theory. “You a lip reader?”

  I shook my head again.

  “My name’s Junior.” He stuck his hand out, then pulled it back. “Never mind. You got pee all over. Your name really Boo Radley?”

  I shook my head once more.

  “That all you can do? Shrug and nod?”

  I shrugged. “W… whu…”

  Junior’s eyes bugged out. “What? Say it.”

  “What’s the Junior for? What’s before Junior?” My voice, unused for so long, sounded more like Froggy from the Little Rascals than the falsettos of the other boys my age.

  “Wow! You can talk!” He laughed and clapped his hands. “It’s short. Short for Junior Mints. One time, we went to the movies and I ate so many that I threw up.” He smiled at the memory. Then the smile caught on something and faded away. “My brothers, they used to call me Junior Mints after that.” A deep ache shadowed his face at the mention of his brothers. He’s never mentioned them since.

  The rest is my life. Boo Radley and Junior Mints. My first words in two years were to Junior. Maybe I never would have talked if I hadn’t met him. I don’t know. I didn’t want to talk to him as he lay on the hospital bed. I wanted, needed the next words passed between us to be his. I didn’t know what to say, anyway. Instead, I just held my brother’s hand.

  And remembered the last word Paul said.

  “Gahp,” he’d shrieked. The word mangled in his broken mouth.

  An accusation.

  Cop.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” Underdog said. “The guy is a hard-ass, but he’s a cop, for chrissakes. He couldn’t.”