Junior swung for the fences, whacking the bat into the thick meat at the back of Fat Pat's thighs. Fat Pat screamed, dropping hard to his knees onto the concrete floor. With Pat's weight behind it, the fall probably hurt more than the bat.
The Swede turned to his fallen buddy. I could almost smell his synapses firing. "Hey!"
I socked him hard in the ribs with the brass knuckles. With a pained explosion of breath, Swede was on the ground next to his pet blob.
I flicked the lights on and stood over the two dummies. "Now, before this experience gets any more painful for you guys, just tell us who told you to grab Ralphie O'Malley and…what the fuck happened to your head, Swede?"
Swede had a huge purple shiner, the whites turned blood-red from smashed blood vessels. Over the eye, a huge red knot bulged horribly. More than slightly ashamed, The Swede said, "I got hit with a shoe."
Junior and I looked at each other. "No shit?"
"No shit," Swede said. "What happened to your nose, Junior?"
"That woman is a fuckin' menace," Fat Pat said, shifting uncomfortably in his barstool. His legs must have still hurt like a motherfucker. Boo-hoo. Since it took the three of us to help Fat Pat back up the stairs, my back was killing me. I drew the short straw and got bottom duty while Junior and The Swede pulled from above. I'd have to remember to boil my hands after.
"She's like Bruce Lee with a Dr. Sholl," Junior agreed nasally, his nose clogged from the swelling.
"It was an accident. I mean, I swung on her, but I didn't know who was hitting at us when I did. She's a freakin' animal."
The Swede gingerly touched his disgusting eye. "But we swear to God, Boo. We never hurt Ralphie. We just grabbed him for--"
Fat Pat silenced him with a hard glare.
"For who?" I asked.
"We don't know," Fat Pat said, a bit too quickly. "We got an anonymous call, said pick up Ralphie."
"Who paid you, then?"
"Direct deposit." Fat Pat said, then smiled, obviously satisfied with his on-the-fly answer. Truth be told, it was pretty smart for Fat Pat.
"Where did you drop him then?"
"I…" I reached over and grabbed a fistful of Fat Pat's ear and twisted. "Ow-ow-oww!" he whined.
I loosened the twist but didn't let go. "Shut it. I'm asking Swede." While Fat Pat may have exhibited a minor talent for improvisation, Swede was dumber than a bag of wet hamsters.
Swede looked nervously at Fat Pat. "We… Just… Dropped him off?" He answered in the form of a question, like an unsure fifth-grader. But since this wasn't Jeopardy, I continued my line of interrogation.
"Where?"
"On a corner?"
"Let me get this straight," Junior interjected. "You two rocket scientists snatched Ralphie, then just released him back into the wild on some corner? Is that what you're babbling at us Swede?"
"Yes."
"Retard," Fat Pat muttered.
"Hoooo-kay, Pat," I sighed, "as much a contradiction in terms as this may be, natural order has made you the brains of your operation. Swede?"
"Yeah."
"You're a retard. Fuck off."
"Got it." Swede jumped up and walked out quickly, abandoning Pat. He stopped at the doorway. "Yo Pat. Call me later if you want to rent a movie or somethin'."
"I'm gonna step on your head later, is what I'm gonna do, you stupid fuck."
The Swede looked sincerely hurt by Fat Pat's anger and walked away, head down. I felt a twinge of guilt, like I'd just kicked a disabled puppy.
I turned my attention back to Pat. "So, all things considered, we're just going to keep hurting you until you tell us who paid you to get Ralphie." I twisted his ear again.
Pat squealed in pain. "I can't," he whined.
Junior leaned in close. "Whaddaya think, Boo? Another inch and the ear starts to tear off?"
"Let's see."
"Garrett!" Fat Pat shrieked. "We took him to Al Garrett!"
"Aw, no," Junior said softly.
I released his ear and smacked him upside the head with the same hand. "What's wrong with you?"
"He paid us."
"How much?" Asked Junior.
"Five hundred."
Junior leveled his gaze at me. "More than we're getting."
"We don't do work for that psycho."
"Just saying."
"Where did you drop him?"
"The Garrett Bowl."
Albert Garrett ran a vast bookmaking operation out of a bowling alley in North Quincy. Word had it that he and his crew of townie goons used the bowling balls and pins with a great deal of creativity to hurt people who were late with his money. I don't even want to talk about the ball-polisher rumor.
I did, however, want to beat the cellulite off of Pat, but instead said, "Get the fuck out of here," in a tone that left no room for misinterpretation of what the day held for him if he stayed.
Never has four-hundred pounds moved so fast. He looked like a Beluga ninja as he shot out the door.
"Now what?" Junior asked.
I groaned and rubbed the tension spot between my eyes. "Feel like driving out to Quincy?"
"No, but I guess we kinda have to now, don't we?"
"Yeah."
"I'm just glad you didn't try to get all clever and said something like 'Let's go bowling'."
"Shut up."
Momentum and element of surprise count for a lot, but a full charge in a car battery counts for something too. About a half a mile from the bowling alley, Miss Kitty decided to cough and wheeze herself to a sputter just as the first thick clumps of snow started tumbling from the sky. I melted a few on the way down with the fiery language that I directed at the car and Junior.
There went our momentum.
Ever try to muscle a small tank through the snow? Then you'd know what it was like trying to move a '79 Buick through a Nor'easter. If we didn't find a gas station soon, we'd have a real problem on our hands. Junior seemed calmly unsurprised.
"You knew this would happen, didn't you," I asked as I pushed from inside the passenger door. My calves burned with the effort.
"Sooner or later. The catalytic converter is jacked."
"And you haven't fixed it…why?"
"Because we don't make me enough money for these stupid fucking gigs that leave us stranded in a fucking blizzard?"
'Nuff said.
Of course, the next gas station was directly across the street from the alley. Junior popped the hood and then the trunk. He pulled another battery from the boot.
"You had another battery in there the whole time?"
"This one's not juiced either."
"Why?"
"I just keep switching and re-charging the batteries when I need to. Forgot to juice both."
I was about to nail Junior with a vicious retort, but couldn't squeeze it out between my chattering teeth. That was our lives, in a nutshell. Jury-rigged. Held together with tape and twine and a whole lot of duct tape.
Then it hit me…
If the grapevine held true about Al Garrett, we might have a card to play after all.
"Junior, wait." I grabbed his shoulder as he headed into the garage.
"What?"
"I got an idea. I need that battery."
I went into Junior's trunk. It was the usual treasure trove of worthless shit. I pulled some wires from a busted receiver (that he'd been meaning to get fixed), a joystick from an old Nintendo (he didn't know why he had it) and of course, duct tape. I stuffed the contraption into a grease-stained duffel bag and told him my plan.
Junior grinned and nodded appreciably. "Fuckin' MacGuyver."
Fuckin' MacGuyver.
The four goons stopped their bowling game when Junior and I walked through the frosted glass doors of The Garrett Bowl. I never realized how eerie a silent bowling alley was. You could've heard a mouse fart as the goons watched us walking through the lobby.
We went up to the bored-looking girl behind the shoe rental booth. I could smell her hairspray acro
ss the counter. Her bangs saluted us crisply. She didn't look up from her nail filing when I cleared my throat. Probably for the better. Junior didn't look up from the ten-grand worth of cleavage that heaved between her open-collared bowing shirt.
She popped her gum. "You guys Boo and Junior?"
Shit.
And there went the element of surprise.
"Um. Yeah."
"Al's waiting for you." She pointed a pink talon at the door next to the counter that read: Manager's Office.
Allow me to reiterate.
Shit.
We opened the door and walked in to see the wide back of a black leather chair. A finger came up from the other side, giving us the 'one minute'. Garrett was on the phone. "Yeah. The line is four and a half, you give him seven. The numbnuts is so in love with the Pats, he'd do it on nine. Yeah..."
The rumors were true. Behind the desk were a dozen flat-screen TV's, each one broadcasting a different sporting event; from the greyhounds at Wonderland Park to a poker tournament to—was he watching cricket? On the desk sat three expensive-looking computer banks, complete with three more flat-screen monitors.
He'd come a long way since his old man ran afoul of a chest full of cholesterol and left the bookie business to little Al. Twenty-five years old at the time, everybody laughed when the skinny kid went to collect on his dead old man's vigs. Al answered the dismissals with a brutality that became its own urban legend, stories that degenerate gamblers tell their kids to get them to eat their peas.
A decade later, nobody was laughing any more. Not after the rumors about the ball-polisher hit the grapevine.
"Call me tomorrow." He finished his conversation and turned his chair to us. Al Garrett looked a lot younger than his current thirty-five years. His long hair was slicked back and tied behind the navy suit jacket that looked like it cost more than my entire wardrobe. That wasn't saying much, since my entire wardrobe was probably worth about sixteen bucks. The suit was nice, nevertheless.
"You're Boo and Junior, right?"
"I'm Boo," I said, stupidly.
"I'm Junior," Junior said unnecessarily.
"How did you know we were coming?"
"When Tom Brady's nuts itch, I know how hard he scratches. You think I wouldn't know that you two assholes were coming my way?"
I made a mental note to have a serous conversation with Fat Pat the next time I ran into him.
Junior bunched his fists. Garrett saw it. "Unh, uh, uh." He waggled his fingers and the huge canary diamond on his manicured pinkie finger twinkled at us. I wondered if the girl in the lobby did his nails for him. "You don't want to pull any tough guy horseshit with me, boys." The finger moved under the desk. "I press this little button underneath here and those four big guys out there come running in. I'm afraid they're not very nice."
Neither were we. If Garrett's bruisers were on a par with Fat Pat and Swede, I think we'd normally have had a righteous chance. Unfortunately, Junior and I were both half-frozen and spent from pushing a goddamn Buick for a mile and a half. As it was, I gave us a fifty-fifty chance, at best.
"We're not here to start shit. We were just wondering how business was," I said.
Garrett smiled crookedly at me, opening his arms to encompass his obviously pricey electronic kingdom. "Not bad," he said, dripping sarcasm.
"Then why are you fucking with small fries like Ralphie O'Malley?"
The smug little bastard steepled his fingers on the desk. "Let me explain something to you guys about business. I'm working with a lot of figures here. Am I going to bust up somebody who owes me fifty G's and make him incapable of working and earning my money? Or am I going to bust up the guy that owes me five and make sure that Mr. Fifty gets a clear picture of his future?"
His point made perfect sense to me, which made me a little ill. "We just want to know where Ralphie is. Beyond that, we don't have any stake in this."
Garrett leaned his chin onto his hands. "Now, why would I tell you anything if you have no stake in it? That wouldn't be very good business, would it?" He bit his lower lip coyly. "Tell you what. You give me the five grand that Ralphie owes me, and I'll tell you where that fucking loser wound up."
I reached into the bag and pulled out my contraption. Garrett went eight shades of sickened gray and reached under the desk.
"Unh, uh, uh," Junior said, waggling his finger this time. "Why don't you keep those pretty rings where we can see them, Zsa Zsa."
He slapped his hands quickly onto the desktop.
I pressed a button on the joystick. "If your hands move, I press that button again. Then you have a serious problem."
Garrett's color settled on a nice shade of green. "Are you guys fucking nuts? You're threatening me with a bomb?"
Junior and I laughed. "Why would we do that? This isn't a bomb. Like I said, we don't have a stake in this. But right now, you sure as shit do."
Some pink returned to Garrett's face. "Then what in Christ's name--"
"It's an industrial-grade electromagnet. Amazing what a little knowhow and a helpful nerd at Radio Shack can accomplish."
Green all over again, Garrett made a soft choking noise deep in his throat.
Junior circled his finger teasingly over the red joystick button on our car battery Frankenstein. "So, if you move your hand, we activate this sucker and wipe out all the electronics in the building."
"Though I'm sure that smart-boy here has backed up all his numbers, addresses and amounts onto another system." I looked at Garrett and grinned. "Right?"
He made that moist choking sound again.
Junior tapped a thoughtful finger over his lip. "I'm even willing to bet it'll conk out that panic alarm of his, which should give us plenty of quiet time to beat both the crap and the whereabouts of Ralphie out of you."
Garrett cleared his throat. Greasy sweat poured down his greasy forehead. "If you press that button, or lay a hand on me, I swear to God you will one day find out what your own cock tastes like."
"You tried that once, didn't you Junior?"
"I was young. I was experimenting."
"You get close?"
"Meh. Couple more yoga classes and I'd have had it."
"You two clowns think I'm kidding?" He was talking tough, but his hands were still pressed to the desktop.
"Albert, Albert, Albert," I sat on the corner of his desk," do you really want to get into that kind of mess, cock removal, forced ingestion of removed cocks, etc, etc, over little Ralphie O'Malley?"
A droplet of sweat dangled on Garrett's nose. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. Beaten, he said, "I had him dropped off at his house five hours ago."
"What?"
"I don't have him. You're right. You think that little shit is worth me getting into anything serious? I had the boys slap him around, then dropped him off at his mama's around two this afternoon."
A little light bulb popped on over my head. The only thing it illuminated was how stupid we'd been. "Well, been nice doing business with you."
Junior packed up our battery and we walked out the door.
All that for nothing. At least Garrett hadn't called our bluff. Our "industrial-grade electromagnet" couldn't even start an old Buick, much less demagnetize anything.
MacGuyver, my ass.
"You've got to be fuckin' kidding me," Junior said as Miss Kitty fishtailed through the rising snow. A small snow bank passed dangerously close to my door. We couldn't afford to get stuck now.
It was there all along.
We were so taken aback by Mrs. O'Malley's kamikaze shoe attack that we didn't listen close enough to what she was saying. She'd said, "leave my Ralphie alone," And "don't hurt him anymore." Who was she protecting if Ralphie wasn't there? If he hadn't been returned, how could she have known that he'd been hurt?
We got played big time by a sweet old lady.
God dammit.
Visibility was nearing zero when we pulled up in front of the O'Malley residence for the second time that day. A set of f
ading footprints leading away from the house were freshly marked in the snow.
Junior squatted over the prints. "You think Ralphie bolted?"
I shook my head. "Those are Mrs. O'Malley's shoes. Feet are too small, and look…" Edged around the first few steps in the snow were ruby flakes of what was probably Junior's blood.
"Small feet, my ass." Junior cupped his busted nose. "Where the hell is she going in this shit?"
"Probably ran to Star Market for some blizzard supplies." I felt a twinge of sadness at the thought of the old woman trudging through the snow in her sandals, felt bad for eating her food. Looking at the sad house, I realized for the first time just how little she and Ralphie had other than that depressing piece of real estate and each other.
We didn't want to bust open Mrs. O'Malley's door, despite her lies and assault, so we tried a couple of the ground floor windows. All locked of course. Junior looked up at the second level. "There we go."
Craning my neck, I could barely make out the tip of a blue curtain billowing through a cracked window jamb.
"Bend over," I said. We had to move fast, my fingers were starting to go numb again in the cold.
"Now's not the time, Brokeback."
"Cut the shit. We got to hurry before Mrs. O'Malley gets back. Let me climb on you. I think I can reach the ledge of the lower roof."
"No way. Lemme climb on your back."
"Are you kidding? You way thirty pounds more than me. Besides, my arms are longer. Or do you want to wait it out and dance with Dr. Scholl again?"
Junior muttered something about his goddamn jacket, but bent over. I climbed on his back and had to stand on my toes to reach the ledge. Junior howled as my toes dug into his spine. My fingers grasped around the edge just as Junior disappeared from under my feet, cursing all things about me. I swung my right leg up and over the lip, but couldn't get enough purchase in the driving snow to bring my left leg up.
"Pull, you tubby bastard," Junior yelled from below.
I swear to God…
I had one shot to grab the sill and pull myself up. If I missed, I was going back over the edge. That thick Irish fuck had better catch me.
I let go of the gutter and scrambled for the window. I started to slide when my fingers caught the jamb and held.
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