by J. R. Rain
“Tell them to back off,” I said. “Do it.”
“Fuck off.”
I pulled Steel Eye back and smashed him hard against the glass. I was risking breaking the glass. It was a risk I was willing to take. I’d never much liked pebbled glass anyway.
“Tell them to put away their guns and wait for you in the parking lot.”
“I’ll kill you, man. I’ll kill you dead.”
“Other than being redundant,” I said, grunting a little as I pulled him back a few feet, and then rammed his face into the glass. Something crunched. I may not have been an anatomist, but I was pretty sure I had broken his nose. That was, if the blood coating the pebbled glass was any indication.
“Oh, fuck man. You broke my nose!”
With my suspicions confirmed, I kept his face pushed hard against the glass... giving his buddies outside a good look at their esteemed leader’s blood sliding in rivulets down the glass.
“Tell them,” I said.
“Fuck you!”
The guy had spirit, which I broke with more pressure on the glass.
“The glass...it’s gonna fucking break.”
“I know a good glass man.” That was a lie, of course. Who actually knew good glass men?
“Okay, okay,” he said, or mumbled, since his mouth was also pressed against the glass.
“Okay, what?”
“Okay, I’ll talk to them, goddammit.”
I eased the pressure off him and he spoke into the glass from a half inch away. “Bros, take a hike. I got this. Go on.”
I heard mumbling on the other side of the glass. The mumbling seemed to suggest that they didn’t quite believe that their venerated leader had this. In fact, he very much did not have this.
“Tell them to put their guns away too,” I said. “This is a respectable neighborhood.”
“Respectable my ass,” he said, but he told them to put their guns away. I heard more grumbling on the other side of the door. From what I gathered, few liked me, and fewer still liked the current direction in which things had gone.
Most still loitered on the other side of my door. I slammed Steel Eye against the glass again. “Tell them to wait downstairs.”
“Go on,” said Steel Eye. “Git!”
They “got,” cursing and lobbing threats at me. Threats were nothing new. Hell, I’d been threatened by the best.
When I heard the last of them tromp down the stairs, I released Steel Eye and stepped back. He turned wildly, dripping blood from his nose, bottom lip and chin. The drips joined the other bloodstains that sprinkled my carpet. Don’t ask.
He considered charging me until he saw me holding my piece. Or maybe he saw my shoulders. Or maybe he wasn’t as tough as he thought he was.
“Are you going to just stand there and bleed, or do you want to talk about why you’re here?”
“You’re a dead man.”
“That’s a start.” I glanced at Camry, who was sitting on the couch and not looking at us. I said to her, “Wait for it...”
“Fuck you,” said Steel Eye.
“There it is,” I said and turned back to him. “Have a seat, Steel Cheeks.”
Except he didn’t sit. He stood there bleeding and looking menacing, both of which he did well. I indicated the client chair in front of my tooled leather desk. The desk was one of the few luxury items I owned. That it was left by the previous tenant was irrelevant. Meanwhile, Steel Dick didn’t move.
“Take a seat,” I said.
We both looked at each other. He glared. I didn’t so much glare as gaze at him poignantly.
“Sit,” I said. “And if you say fuck you again, I’m going to punch your broken nose.”
He mumbled something about me being dead by this time tomorrow...but he came over and sat.
“I want my gun back.”
I put my own gun in my waistband and opened the file cabinet drawer. I half-cocked the hammer and emptied the six bullets in his revolver into the drawer and shut it. It was a pain because I needed two hands to rotate the chambers and pull the plunger back. That would have been the time for him to go for me, but he didn’t.
I went around my desk and sat, too. I lay his empty Colt .45 revolver on the desk before me. It didn’t make much of a sound against the leather top. I loved my leather top. I also loved Cindy, but in a very different way.
My phone was in the open drawer next to me. I left it there.
“Camry tells me you killed a man,” I said.
“Camry’s a lying bitch.”
“Either that or you really killed a guy.”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Steel Eye. “Does it?”
“It does if you’re the dead guy or the police.”
“You ain’t the police.”
“No, but I’m the next best thing.”
Steel Eye wanted to say “fuck you” or something to that effect, but thought better of it, especially since his broken nose was still bleeding.
“Don’t matter if you’re dead, too.”
“You make a lot of threats for a man who just got his nose broken.”
He glared at me, then at Camry, then down at my desk. What did my desk ever do to him?
“If you killed a guy, you’re going to jail. If you didn’t, I’ll let you walk. So which is it?”
“Are you fucking serious, man?”
“As serious as the headache that’s going to be setting in soon.”
“I didn’t kill nobody, asshole.”
I turned to Camry, who was still sitting on the couch and still looking away.
“What do you have to say about that? He sounded serious enough to use a double negative.”
She didn’t move or blink, I thought. She was afraid of him, but there was something else, too.
Ah, hell, I thought. She still loves him.
I was also getting another feeling while I looked at her. I studied her body language...she hadn’t lied to me about him killing someone. Still, one thing was certain: she was afraid of him. In love with him, but afraid of him, too. The fear, I thought, trumped the love, but there was still enough love there for her to text him her location. To see him again.
I drummed my fingers on my leather-tooled desk. The drumming didn’t create noise of any real significance. I considered what to do. Then nodded to myself, because I like to be reassuring, even to myself.
I pulled out my cell and dialed a number. Sanchez answered on the first ring. “That’s more like it,” I said.
“You got lucky, Knighthorse. What do you need?”
“Biker gang. Eleven of them. Most armed. My office.”
“Be there in ten. Don’t piss anyone off.”
“Too late.”
“Shit.” He hung up.
* * *
They came in six minutes.
Steel Eye spent the six minutes glaring at me while holding an increasingly bloody wad of tissues to his face. I didn’t glare back. Indeed, I glanced whimsically with flashes of amusement and mild interest.
The sirens continued blaring outside even as the choppers all fired up. One by one, I heard them leave the smallish parking lot.
“Looks like you’re alone,” I said.
“They’ll be back,” said Steel Eye.
“So will my guys.”
“You hide behind the cops?”
“A show of force never hurt anyone, until it does. You taught me that.”
“Where I go, my brothers go.”
“Makes the bathroom kind of crowded,” I said, “I would think.”
“We’ve got each other’s backs.”
“And they’ve got mine,” I said, jutting a thumb toward the door and sirens. “Seems like we’re even.”
“Until we find you alone.”
“Or until I find you alone.”
He glared some more. I tossed him another tissue. Tissues don’t toss very well, unless you do it right, unless you make a ball of it first. I made the ball and tossed it. He snatched it out of the a
ir and applied it to his broken nose. He dropped the other one to the carpeted floor, where the hemoglobin transferred immediately to the fibers. Oh, joy. Another bloodstain. My office now looked like a crime scene. Many crime scenes. Yeah, I was definitely not getting my deposit back.
He dabbed some more while I sat back in my chair and steepled my fingers under my chin.
“Michael said you were hardcore.”
“Michael should know,” I said.
“He suggested that it might be a bad move to come and see you.”
“And, was it?”
Steel Eye shrugged. “People don’t fuck with Michael.”
“Not even you?” I asked.
He shrugged again. “Anyway, you got Michael’s respect...” His voice trailed off.
“Which means?”
“Means you have my respect, too.”
“Now, I can sleep at night.”
We were silent some more after that “bro” moment.
Finally, Steel Eye said, “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Where are the cops?”
“Outside waiting.”
“Waiting for what?”
“For me to call them up.”
“You that tight with the cops?”
“Tight enough.”
“And you ain’t scared?”
“Been a while,” I said, “since I’ve been scared.”
“Me too.”
“The cops scare you?” I asked.
“Nope.” Then he added, “Since neither of us are scared, what do we do about it?”
I said, “We can fight to the death.”
He looked at me from over the tissue and his swelling nose. “For what purpose?”
“Pride?” I said. “The love of a good woman? Street cred?”
He shook his head. “You always like this?”
“Spirited?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of idiotic.”
“That too,” I said.
“You going to call the cops up here or tell them never mind?” he asked.
I shook my head. “The way I see it, you haven’t done anything wrong. Unless you hurt Camry.”
“I ain’t ever hurt Camry.”
“Her bruises suggest otherwise.”
“Fine, so you caught me. Big deal. You gonna arrest me for slapping around my girl?”
“No, but I’ll beat the shit out of you and have Camry film it and we’ll put it on YouTube.”
“Bullshit.”
“Try me.”
He gave me the hard stare, or tried to.
Then nodded. “Fine, whatever.”
“Camry,” I said, without looking at her. “Will he keep his word?”
She didn’t answer. Not at first. I glanced at her. She continued staring ahead, unmoving.
“Or I can call up the police. They are, after all, waiting downstairs. I’ll tell them Steel Nards killed a guy, based on your story. They may not get him for murder. But they’ll probably find something, especially with me on the job.”
“Hey,” said Steel Eye. “I thought, you know, we was cool.”
“We’re cool, unless you hurt her. Then we’re very much not cool.”
“Okay, fine.”
I studied him, then looked at Camry. “You want to go with him, or do you want protection? Or better yet, do you want to press charges?”
She shot me a look that suggested she’d had enough.
“Just leave him alone,” she said.
“There it is,” I said sitting back.
“You’re being mean to him.”
I looked at Steel Eye. He shrugged. Camry got up and went over to him and hugged him deeply, bumping his nose. He yelped and she touched it gently, kissing the tip and now they were both apologizing, followed by careful kissing and tears from them both.
I sighed and sat back, then called Sanchez.
“What’s going on up there?” he asked.
I looked at Camry and Steel Eye kissing deeply. I said, “We may need an ambulance.”
“For who?”
“For me,” I said. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
The End
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(Click here or turn the page for more information about Jim Knighthorse’s friends)
Friends of Jim Knighthorse:
Sanchez first appears in:
Dark Horse
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~~~~~
Spinoza stars in:
The Vampire With the Dragon Tattoo
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~~~~~
Detective Sherbet first appears in:
Moon Dance
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~~~~~
Aaron King stars in:
Elvis Has Not Left the Building
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~~~~~
Numi appears in:
Silent Echo
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~~~~~
Nick Caine stars in:
Temple of the Jaguar
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~~~~~
Monty Drew stars in:
Ghost College
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~~~~~
Roan Quigley stars in:
Dragon Assassin
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~~~~~
Max Long stars in:
Bound By Blood:
The Vampire Diaries
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~~~~~
Jack Carter stars in:
Zombie Patrol
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~~~~~
And Samantha Moon stars in:
Moon Dance
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About the author:
J.R. Rain is an ex-private investigator who now writes full-time in the Pacific Northwest. He lives in a small house on a small island with his small dog, Sadie, who has more energy than Robin Williams.
Please visit him at www.jrrain.com.
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