NO Quarter

by Robert Asprin

By the time they reached Burgundy, Alex’s blond-wigged head was nestled against Dunk’s shoulder. It lifted as she got out her keys, opened the gate. When it closed, I was outside it, listening to their steps going up. Then her apartment door opened on the building’s second story, clicked shut, and the overhead light in the front room went on. I slotted my key soundlessly into the gate’s lock.

  I came up the stairs on the edges of the risers, knowing which ones made noise, putting on the Bear’s brass knuckles as I went. Brass knuckles—like, say, a blackjack—are one of those street-fighting weapons that everyone has heard of but no one has ever laid eyes on. I hadn’t asked the Bear where he’d gotten his set, but I’d worn them around my apartment today a few times, getting familiar with the weight. I was comfortable with them, and confident.

  Alex hadn’t locked her apartment door behind her. I turned the knob with my left hand and swept forward into the front room. I jabbed Dunk hard on the crest of his left cheekbone just as his head came around at the door’s opening. His fingers still clutched Alex’s red T-shirt, which he’d pulled free of her jeans.

  I saw a surprised, if dope-muddled, expression on his face just before the ridge of heavy metal caught him. He made a surprised “ga-lawp” of noise, then went down hard.

  Alex ducked down the hall to her bedroom. I reached behind me, closed the door, and flipped the lock without taking my eyes off Dunk. I had swung on him with maybe a third of the muscle I could muster for my best slamming punch. I wondered why the hell brass knuckles had gone out of style.

  Unlike my apartment, Alex’s apartment is usually neat and uncluttered. For this evening we had cleared the front room of even the decorative rugs, leaving the wood floors bare. Dunk lay on the floor, on his side, rocking back and forth and moaning, nowhere near able to get back on his feet and not even yet trying—still absorbing the hurt and the shock. I watched and waited outside the range of his legs.

  Alex came back into the room carrying her shotgun and a towel. As she entered she tossed me the towel so I could wipe off my disguise. She gave the gun a good, loud pump. She’d had it a long time in a box in her bedroom closet, disassembled, a gift from her father on her eighteenth birthday. Keeping a good distance back, she aimed at him from the hip.

  Dunk held his head in both hands as he rocked. His long, dirty hair brushed the floor. He was wearing a stained purple T-shirt that advertised some heavy metal band I didn’t know. He heard the shotgun’s pump-action, and got his eyes open and saw. Understanding seemed to slice straight through the pain and his dopey fuzziness.

  “Whoa ... no. Nuh-nuh-no way ...”

  His head whipped my way.

  “Oh, uh, see. She, um, it was her, dude. She picked me up.”

  I had removed the hood and took off the hat, wiped the makeup off my face, and waited, gazing back, letting him see me. Then, I saw, he had it.

  “You ... yer that Bone dude ...”

  “Why did you sic the Juggernaut on me?”

  His head shook side to side with the heartfelt denial of a three-year-old trying to escape blame. “Nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh—”

  “Did you ask him to kill me?”

  “No.”

  “He was looking for me. You were looking for me. Why? For what?” My tone was level, almost neutral, not aggressive.

  “The ... drawing.” His cheek was red, getting redder and swelling. “Y’know, those dragons. Yuh-yuh-you took it. I mean, yuh did. Right? Offa the door of the apartment. I—I—I wanted it back ... and Jugger made me tell him about yuh, why I was lookin’ for yuh, everything. He was mad ... wanted to know why yuh was snoopin’ ...”

  For a moment, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. “Why? Why was that drawing important to you?”

  Dunk’s eyes twitched toward the barrel of the shotgun, then hurried back to me.

  “It ...” He licked his lips repeatedly. His eyes were growing shiny. “That drawing ... it had her in it.”

  “Sunshine,” I said, and then I realized how hateful it was to be saying her name in the same room with him.

  “Yeah.” A tear rolled from his eye. “See ... I didn’t have any, like, pictures of her. No photos. Nothin’. I jus’ wanted ...”

  “Why did you give me that envelope with the photograph?”

  He stared back at me, clueless.

  “The envelope,” I said. “Had an M drawn on it. You handed it to me at your place. Why?”

  I saw it catch up to him. “Oh ... right. Sunshine said to give it to—somebody. It was, like, some family thing. I dunno. She told me, if she ever, y’know, disappeared ... or whatever ... that I should give it to ... ” Confusion clouded his face. “I couldn’t remember. So I just gave it to you. ‘Cause you were, well, there.”

  He was useless. Breathtakingly useless.

  I watched another tear drop, then pressed him. “How did you get Sunshine to go out there by the river? What did you tell her, what kind of setup? What was she doing on the Moonwalk after midnight?”

  He started shaking his head again, frantically this time. The tears were now accompanied by a sickly, squirming whine.

  “No. No. No no no no—”

  “You’re going to answer,” I cut through his whining. “You understand that, so don’t give me this ‘no-no’ shit. Answer. How did you get her out by the river?”

  His eyes went over, studied the shotgun again in Alex’s very sure hands—she knew how to work the gun, not me. Then, with the tears still coming but no longer indicating grief for Sunshine, and with his upper lip—dusted with a trail of downy fuzz—quivering, Dunk answered.

  “Juh-Juh-Juh-Jugger ... Jugger was back. He found out about ... me an’ Sunshine. An’ ... fuck, it made him, like, crazy. He wuh-wuh-wouldn’t let no girl touch me. Never. I tol’ Sunshine about him, about my, y’know, my past with him. Jugger said he had to meet her. If she wanted me an’ I wanted her, then we could have each other ... but he had to meet her first. He tol’ me to tell her that. Tol’ me to tell her when an’ where.”

  The brass knuckles hung heavy at my side. I flexed my fingers slightly within the hoops.

  His wet eyes looked up desperately at mine.

  “That’s all.”

  “What day?” I asked.

  “Huh?”

  “What day of the week—when did Jugger tell you to pass on the meeting time to her?”

  He had to think a moment; think hard through the fear.

  “Uh, Thursday, he tol’ me. For a meetin’ Sunday night.”

  Maestro had gotten that phone message from Sunshine two days before her murder. She had doubtlessly smelled a rat. A middle-of-the-night meeting on the Moonwalk with the assault-happy ex-lover of her boyfriend? Sure she was suspicious. She had perhaps thought about enlisting help or advice and had picked Maestro because he seemed a level head, somebody who could handle himself? Or because of that photo—maybe she thought he might be her father? When she couldn’t get in touch, she had ... reconsidered? Dropped it? Figured the Juggernaut was all bluff and she had no reason to be afraid of him? Maybe. However it had gone, Sunshine had not tried to contact me, had not turned to me for help.

  “That’s all,” Dunk said. “That’s all I did. I swear, dude.”

  “Get on your feet,” Alex said, and there was nothing about that harsh voice that could have produced that sweet girlish giggling earlier. “Stand up.”

  His teary eyes widened, and he was shaking his head again.

  “Do it,” I said.

  Dunk slowly pulled his feet under himself, then, even more slowly, stood on legs that shook like a newborn deer’s.

  “That’s all I did ...” His voice was a reedy little whisper now.

  “I know it is,” I said, nodding. “Put your hands behind your back, lock the fingers together.”

  He shook as h
e did so and looked very, very frightened. I stepped forward and threw a hard, fast roundhouse that smashed him on the temple, and he caromed off the wall and went down a second time. The many rings in his earlobes jingled, then were still.

  This time he was unconscious. I pulled him out into the middle of the floor. I set the brass knuckles out of reach, got the square of duct tape I’d already cut and laid it over his mouth—the mouth that had blown such amazing, soulful music from his saxophone. I thought, How could someone as repellant and cowardly as Dunk be given such a gift?

  I didn’t want to think about it. I shook my head, clearing it, then neatened the edges of the tape, straddled his chest, and looked up at Alex, who had held the shotgun at the ready throughout this.

  “Hand me the pillow,” I said. The words hurt my throat. My head, my eyes, felt too tight, too hot.

  She laid the gun on the couch, picked up the big feather pillow, and knelt next to me, looking down at Dunk. He hadn’t moved during any of this—out cold. I held out my hands for the pillow, but she continued to hug it, pulling it in tight next to her body.

  “Do you think he really did love her?” she asked. “At all?” Her words were soft, quiet.

  I loved her! screamed through my head. I did, not him! “She died because of him!” My voice was choked, raw, and I wasn’t even trying to hold it steady. “He put her there, Alex. Dunk put her there. Too scared of the Juggernaut to stand up to him. He might’ve ... loved ... Sunshine. If the selfish son of a bitch could actually feel something like that. But he did the coward’s thing. For Christ’s sake, he gave her up to make Jugger happy!”

  “But is that a big enough crime? Being weak? If that’s so, Bone, then an awful lot of people deserve to die.”

  I looked at her. I hadn’t expected her to stop me, to take up for him. “What are you saying? I thought we agreed.”

  “We agreed to this when we thought he’d killed her.” She took a deep breath. “I’m saying that, however misguided and foolish she was, Sunshine loved this man enough to face the Juggernaut for him. If she was willing to take that risk, do you think she would want this? Do you think she would want this for you?”

  I looked into her eyes and found nothing judgmental, just love, and I realized, in tiny increments of understanding at first, then all at once, that she was right. I hated Dunk with all my heart and soul, but did I have the right to kill him? Just for my own personal satisfaction? I looked down at his pathetic, skinny body for a long moment.

  “Okay,” I said, forcing out the sound past a mental scream of rage. “We’ll throw him back. He’ll probably be too scared to say anything anyway.”

  I removed the tape, wiped off the fluids that drooled out of Dunk’s mouth, stuck my baseball cap on his head and pulled the brim low. Then Alex helped me get him to his feet and take him down the stairs, moving him in that “drunk-assist” way that is to Quarterites what CPR is to paramedics. I had his arm across my shoulder and held him stiff against my hip. Alex steadied him from the other side, keeping him upright while I did all the walking. It’s a move you use to get your blotto friends into cabs.

  It got Dunk out the gate, across the sidewalk and down the street to the nearest underlit alcove. He started to stir a little as we settled him onto the ground. We left him there, like so much trash.

  * * *

  Excerpt from Bone’s Movie Diary:

  The towering screen perfs. are & shall remain: Gloria Swanson’s indelible Norma Desmond in Sunset Blvd.; Paul Newman, somber & subdued in The Verdict; Morgan Freeman (would somebody get this man an Oscar!) in Shawshank Redemption; Peter O’Toole as god-like Eli Cross in The Stunt Man; David Bowie’s brief & magnificent portrayal of Pontius Pilate in Last Temptation of Christ; Glenn Close, irresistible & evil in Dangerous Liaisons; Paul Sorvino’s sidesplitting corrupt evangelist in Oh, God!; Jose Ferrer’s articulate lawyer in Caine Mutiny; Marlene Dietrich’s Nazi general’s widow in Judgment at Nuremberg; Kenneth Nelson, whose tongue drips with poignant acid in Boys in the Band; Jane Alexander in Testament (the best movie you’ve never heard of); Joel Grey as master of ceremonies/fiend in Cabaret; Melinda Dillon with her UFO-abducted child in Encounters/3rd Kind; and Charleton Heston (yes, Heston) in Soylent Green (yes, Soylent Green). That’s that. We may reopen the books on this category one day. Watch. Wait.

  The one thing guaranteed to win sympathy with a victim is another victim of the same thing. Once I realized Jugger thought Dunk was cheating on him with Alex, the only way out was to make him believe Alex was cheating on me. I hoped our relationship as “pals” would make Juggernaut leave Alex to me, especially if he thought I was going to do a really good job of punishing her. There had been no way to warn Alex of the plan. I had to hope she would catch on and play along when I started tearing into her. And she did, in a performance worthy of an Oscar.

  The ploy worked so well that, once Jugger and I left Dunk, we commiserated about unfaithful lovers for the entire five blocks to the Stage Door. Take that to mean Juggernaut complained loud and long about his “bitch’s” lack of fidelity, while I threw in an occasional word or comment just so he wouldn’t forget I was there. I comforted myself with the knowledge that there was now no doubt of Jugger’s link with Dunk. I just had to keep Jugger clear of Alex and Bone long enough for them to get Dunk, and then, at last, I could deal with the Juggernaut.

  I would have preferred to head somewhere besides the Stage Door, where most of the bartenders knew me, but decided it was more important to get the Jugger into a situation where he could be contained for a while. As it turned out, I got lucky. The regular bartender had called in sick and the replacement was a new guy I had never seen before. I ordered a round and found a table near the back. Jugger slugged back his drink in one motion. I quickly ordered him another. He wouldn’t be the first man driven to drink by a faithless lover, but the tipsier I could get him, the better. Once I had an opening, I planned to duck into the sandbox, call the Bear, and set the final phase in motion.

  Halfway through his second drink, Jugger saved me the hassle, going for his own sandbox run. I used his bathroom break as an opportunity to make the call to the Bear. I would call again once the target was in range.

  I sipped my drink sparingly, careful to stay clear-headed. It was almost over. Now that I was sure we had the right guy, it was just a matter of taking care of business.

  Ten minutes passed, then fifteen, and Jugger had still not emerged from the men’s room. Suspicious, I did a quick check and confirmed my fears. Jugger had done the same thing I had once done to him—used the sandbox run as an excuse to duck out, undetected. Alarmed, I tried to imagine where he would go. Normally I couldn’t peel him off with a crowbar. What would be more important than the companionship he wanted from me? The answer: his “bitch.” He was going after Dunk—and Dunk was with Bone and Alex. I left my drink mostly untouched and quickly headed towards Bone’s place, using my ground-eating “late to meeting” stride, though I didn’t really care who saw me rushing this time.

  I turned the corner on Burgundy in time to see Bone disappear quietly into his gate. There was no sign of Juggernaut. I moved closer and found a secluded place to keep watch, scanning the street for any sign of the big man. Some thirty minutes later Bone, and Alex—now without the blond wig—emerged from the gate, half dragging a very groggy but surprisingly alive Dunk between them. They deposited Dunk in the nearest recessed doorway, went back inside. I watched long enough to see Dunk crawl out of the niche and struggle to his feet—with lots of help from the wall nearby. He leaned on the wall for a while, obviously not in the best shape, before he started stumbling slowly down Burgundy toward Barracks. Once I was sure no one was watching, I gave Bone a quick call on his landline. He met me at his gate and led me up to his apartment where Alex waited amid a comfortable clutter of clothes, pillows, books, and movies. A small, green-eyed black cat lurked at the far end of the hallw
ay.

  They told me about Dunk. They had spared him, and I had to admit their reasoning made sense. It was their decision, anyway.

  Juggernaut’s fate was mine to decide.

  “Yeah,” I said, “I saw Dunk head off to his place. I’m just glad you’re both safe.”

  “Why wouldn’t we be?” Alex asked from where she sat on the overstuffed couch, snuggled close to Bone. “Certainly not because of Dunk.”

  I had to tell them.

  “Because ...” I took a deep breath. “I lost the Juggernaut.”

  “You what?” Alex looked stunned. “But you’re a super hunter-tracker wise-guy or whatever. You’re the pro, right? How could you lose him?”

  Bone blinked at me, probably thinking the same thing.

  I proceeded to tell them what happened. “So I want you both to stay here by the phone—especially since you no longer have a cell phone. I don’t think he knows where you live, but we can’t count on that. I’m going to find him.”

  Bone frowned. “You’re going to hunt him down alone? Is that wise?”

  “Not really, but the Jugger still thinks we’re friends, I’m sure of that. And I’ve got an idea where to look. Trust me, if I need you, I’ll call. I have no delusions of being a hero.”

  I left Bone and Alex holding each other on the couch. If nothing else, this hunt had certainly opened Bone’s eyes. Now the bond between them was practically visible, no doubt strengthened by what they’d undertaken together.

  * * *

  I followed the track Dunk had taken, down Burgundy toward Barracks street. If I was right, Jugger would head for Dunk’s place and wait. Since Dunk was only a few minutes ahead of me, I figured I had a good chance to catch him there.

  At the edge of the park I slowed, surreptitiously looking through the fence to Dunk’s building. No sign of movement there. A couple of kids walked by on Barracks, heading toward the river. A derelict sat slumped on the steps a few doors down. Still no sign of Jugger. I decided to do a casual pass-by to see if I could pick up anything closer to the building. Without changing stride I crossed Barracks and turned toward the river on a path that took me in front of Dunk’s building. I stopped, bending to pretend to tie my shoe, and listened. The place was dark and silent. I continued past, glanced at the derelict on the steps, and froze in my tracks. I recognized the partially shaved, greasy dark hair, cutoffs, and stained purple T-shirt. It was Dunk.