The Hard Bounce

by Todd Robinson

  Snake’s chest lifted shallowly.

  “Nope.” I still wanted blood. I wasn’t through hurting him yet.

  “You’ve never been accused of being subtle, have you?”

  “Nope. Gimme the duct tape.”

  While Junior ran out to the car to get the rest of our supplies, I sat in a wooden kitchen chair opposite Snake. I lit a smoke to keep my fingers doing something, anything but what the wild violence wanted them to do.

  Looking down at his inert body, I thought it bizarre we had come this far, standing over the guy, and still didn’t have any idea what his name was. Who he was.

  “The name’s Bevilaqua,” Junior said, reading my mind as he re-entered. “On the mailbox. What is that? Greek?” He tossed the canvas duffel bag on the couch.

  “No idea. Let’s get him into the chair.” Junior took the arms, and I took the legs.

  Dead weight is never easy to maneuver. It’s even less easy when you’re being careful. We weren’t. I hoisted him into the seat by the collar, not caring if I accidentally choked him on the way.

  Junior taped his hands together behind the chair, and I taped his ankles to the wooden legs. Snake gurgled a moan as we finished, but he wasn’t going to wake up on his own just yet. Blood trickled from his smashed nose onto his chest. Another line ran slowly down the back of his neck from the swollen spot where he’d bonked against the wall.

  “So, what do we do now, wait until he wakes up?”

  I took a look around the apartment. The walls were painted a dark burgundy, the bathroom door open, another white door next to it. The bedroom. A shiver passed through me, seeing the place as a reality instead of an abstract on a screen. I didn’t want to go in. Were the walls still streaked with Cassandra’s blood?

  For the second time that hour, someone snapped his fingers in front of my eyes, drawing me back. “Yo, Malone! Wake up! Stay with me here. What are we doing?”

  “Wake him up.”

  Junior went to the kitchen. I heard some clatter, then the sink running. He returned with a sloshing saucepan. He dumped the water in one motion on top of Snake’s head. Snake slowly held up his head.

  “Mnnnnn… ow,” he murmured, blinking hard. He looked up and squinted at us.

  I’m not sure what I expected him to do. I knew I wanted him to cry, to beg. What I didn’t expect was him to smirk like he did.

  “You’re both dead men,” he said softly, each word dripping hot acid.

  I gave him the back of my hand.

  His face snapped around, and came back with a fierce expression. He snarled at me, “You have any idea what’s going to happen to you when—”

  I cut him off with another backhand. And another. And another. His lips split. His nose began pouring blood again. A thin line of blood creased my middle knuckles.

  “Fuck! Stop it! Jesus!” Snake gagged and feebly spit a gob onto his own chest, a white piece of tooth floating in the blood and saliva.

  Snake sneered. “Sister or girlfriend?” He huffed a sharp laugh at us.

  I looked at Junior, who shrugged. He was as stymied as I was. We both knew there was no intimidating a psychopath.

  Snake continued with the abuse. “So, I give one of your girls a good dicking, which she probably wasn’t getting from either one of you, and I’m the bad guy?” He was still laughing. “Shit, not my fault you boys can’t keep your girls happy.”

  Junior grabbed my arm, sensing I was a second away from losing it. “My turn?” he asked.

  “Go nuts,” I mumbled and turned away. I couldn’t look at him anymore. I stared at the bedroom door again.

  I heard Junior behind me. “Okay, dipshit. Believe it or not, my buddy was the one who was being nice to you. I’m the guy who’s actually gonna hurt you.” I heard the crackle of Junior’s stun gun. “See this? This baby hurts like nobody’s business. So, I’m gonna ask you a question, then I’m gonna make with the zap-zap. Thing is? I want to hurt you. Really. I do. I just want to hurt you. You decide whether or not you want to answer. The next one goes on your balls.”

  “Fuck your mother,” Snake said.

  “Fair enough. One chance. Where’s the body?”

  The question stuck in my chest like a barb.

  Snake got out one puzzled, “Huh?”

  As the stun gun crackled, it suddenly popped into my head just what a bonehead move we—well, Junior—were about to make.

  Par for the course, I realized it one second too goddamn late.

  “Junior, no! He’s—”

  I wasn’t fast enough. Junior applied an electric charge to a man we’d dumped a pot of water on. Junior was still soaked from the rain. I didn’t know the math or physics of it, but I knew that electricity plus water makes bad.

  Big bad.

  Snake shrieked and convulsed. Junior hollered and flew back as though struck by lightning. Snake slumped into his seat, unconscious. Junior bounced into the wall and came down hard on his ass.

  “Ohhhh,” Junior groaned and hugged himself. “That sucked so, so bad.”

  I walked over to Snake and placed my thumb under his ear. He still had a pulse. Good. I wasn’t done yet.

  The bedroom door clicked. I froze. Junior looked to the door, then at me, then back to the bedroom. The door stuck a little from the humidity and then pulled opened. A girl in sweats walked out, yawning and rubbing her eyes. Freshly dyed black hair hung over a big shiner on her right eye. Her iPod was turned up so loud I could hear the bass line across the room. She hadn’t heard a thing.

  Cassandra Donnelly stared at the three of us, just as flabbergasted as we were.

  I could only imagine how it looked. Snake, unconscious and bloody, taped to a chair and two gawping numbnuts, mouths open wide enough to park a pair of Humvees.

  Then, of course, she screamed and ran for the door. “Help me! Somebody!”

  I roped her around the waist, momentum swinging her halfway around me. Junior was trying hard to stand, but his electrocuted body fought stiffly against him.

  “Cassie!” I yelled. “Wait! Wait. Hold it!”

  Saying her name had no effect. I lifted her off the ground, and she shrieked right into my ear. Her heels kicked brutally into my shins as I covered her mouth to stifle her caterwauling. Attention was not what we needed. Simultaneously, a tiny heel collided with my hairy beanbag just as Cassandra’s teeth found the fleshy part of my thumb. I felt bone crunching just as the air exploded out of my lungs from the nut-shot. My poor, poor balls were having a shitty week. The combo made my knees turn to rubber, and I fell on top of Cassandra with a howl of my own. At least my fat ass landing on her got her to loosen her jaws off my knuckle. My other hand went reflexively to my balls. Cassie saw the opening and scrambled out from under me, heading for the door again.

  “Please! Somebod—”

  Zap.

  Cassandra was on the floor. Junior convulsed, flew back into the wall a second time, then face-planted on the floor next to Cassie. “Fucking ow,” he croaked. “I taste smoke in my mouth.”

  “You think you’d have learned.” I pulled him up under his armpits into a seated position. I may have imagined it, but he felt warmer. I slumped back to the floor myself, cradling my abused crotch while I debated the pros and cons of vomiting.

  Junior weakly punched me on the chest. “At least I didn’t get my ass kicked by two girls this week.”

  “If I throw up, will you hold my hair?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “There’s my hetero life-partner.” I remained fetal for a bit, trying to decide which hurt worse: my balls, my hand, or my pride. At the moment, it was a three-way draw.

  Always helpful, Junior said, “Bleeding there, Boo.”

  “Thanks, doc. Hadn’t noticed.” A deep laceration creased the webbing of my thumb, but I was still able to wiggle my fingers. Small favor, nothing was broken. I’ve broken both my hands enough times to recognize that particular brand of pain. All in all, I’d have rather had a cookie.

&nbs
p; “Little broad’s got a strong set of teeth on her, huh?”

  “Like wrestling a hundred-pound mastiff.” I stood shakily, one knee buckling. I walked toward the bathroom. “Watch them.”

  “Aye, aye, cap’n.” Junior saluted me, then dropped his head back to the hardwood with a thump. Once inside the bathroom, I heard Junior mutter, “I still taste smoke.”

  Rummaging through Snake’s medicine cabinet was like taking a tour through Keith Richard’s lunchbox. Dilaudid. Valium. Oxycontin. Hydrocodone. Propoxyphene. All in little prescription bottles, none with the name Bevilaqua on them. Beautiful. Kiddie porn star, pill-popper, and snuff filmmaker. Well, maybe not snuff. At least not with Cassandra. What in sweet fuck-all was going on?

  I read a few more labels before I chose one I recognized. I dry swallowed one of the Dilaudids, pocketed the bottle, and went to his bedroom.

  The room from the video. I looked around. Blood was still streaked above the bed. I couldn’t help myself. I scraped some of the dried residue off with a fingernail and daubed the tip of my tongue, expecting the sweetness of dyed corn syrup. Instead, I got the taste of blood. I gagged and spit onto the floor. Should have fucking known the loony dipshit had been method-acting his fake snuff. A quarter-full bottle of Wild Turkey sat on the floor. I rinsed my mouth and spit it onto the bedsheets.

  I slid open one side of the closet door. Ratty looking T-shirts mixed in with high-priced suits with long Italian names on the labels. I ripped the silk lining out of a suit jacket and wrapped my hand tightly. Then I saw that the wardrobe ended sharply at the halfway point in the long closet.

  A long mirror faced the bed on the other side of the sliding closet doors. I pushed the clothes all the way over to one side. An expensive-looking camera on a tripod was inside the other half of the closet. The top panel of the door was cut out. The mirror was a two-way.

  I took the camera off the tripod and smashed it on the floor. Junior ran to the doorway. “You okay?”

  “All good. Just enjoying some smashy-smashy.”

  Junior looked at the camera pieces. “Nice. Can I piss on it?”

  “Who am I to deny you the simple pleasures?”

  Junior and I were in agreement that we needed to get our asses in gear and boogie the hell on out. Pronto. We carried Cassandra over to the couch, placing her on the cushions as though she were made of porcelain. After double-wrapping Snake’s bonds, we taped his mouth over. Just to be a dick, I wrapped a few rounds over his eyes and ears, making sure I tangled a lot of his hair in the industrial-strength tape.

  Junior left to pull the car around front. I was to wait five minutes and hustle Cassandra out the door and into the car.

  Four minutes down, and we were going to pull it off. We’d done it, despite the missteps, bullshit, and general lack of having a single clue about what we were walking into. We’d pulled it off, despite every plan blowing up in our faces. I smiled as I looked down at Cassandra’s body, every breath she took a bonus.

  She was alive.

  Gently as I could, I threw Cassandra’s arms over my shoulder and lifted her in a fireman’s carry. I guessed her weight at about a hundred pounds, maybe a hint over. Even so, it was a hundred pounds of dead weight. And I was five flights of stairs up from making good the escape. I wasn’t chancing the elevator and having to explain to other tenants why I was toting an unconscious fourteen-year-old girl over my shoulder. I’m pretty good on my feet, but even I didn’t think I could talk my way cleanly through that one.

  No matter what, five flights of stairs was just flat-out going to suck. I opened the door and lumbered across the hallway and out the fire door to the stairs.

  The first two flights weren’t bad.

  Three flights down, my shoulder went numb and my fingers were well on their way. I stopped on the landing, breathing heavily, my shirt starting to soak through. Why couldn’t Cassie have run away in the goddamn winter? No, she had to go and run away during the hottest summer in twenty years. I cursed myself for not having more cardiovascular in my daily workout. But really, how would I have prepared for this? Gone for a jog with a couple concrete sacks over each shoulder?

  By the time I got us down to the second floor, my whole arm was dead and my shoulder felt like a strong breeze would pop it out of socket. Genius that I was, I’d slung Cassandra over the shoulder I’d run into The Cellar’s back door. I couldn’t figure out any way to shift her to my other arm in the cramped stairwell without smacking her head against the wall. Instead, I gritted my teeth and plodded on.

  Finally, we made it to the ground floor just as my lumbar started to cramp up. I propped Cassandra against the wall, holding her up by the hood of her sweatshirt, twisting at the waist to avoid a full blow-out of my back. Pins and needles buzzed painfully down my arm like a swarm of pissed-off bees. I muttered a few curses and looked out the door for Junior’s car. He wasn’t there yet. I cursed some more. Small blessing that the rain would keep foot traffic to a minimum as we got Cassandra out of the building. Nothing like trying to pull off a half-assed kidnapping in broad daylight.

  Then the elevator bell pinged behind me.

  My heart seized as I heard the old elevator door scrape open. My mind raced, and I leapt into the one action my panicked brain concocted. I blocked Cassandra with my body and stuck my face in her neck, a pose of lovers mid-makeout.

  Tiny feet jumped up and paddled my ass, making my already overtaxed heart bounce around my ribcage like a superball. I jerked and turned to find a hyperactive Boston Terrier in a yellow rain slicker happily playing my backside like bongos.

  “Down, Max!” a voice said from the other end of Max’s leash. I followed it to an elderly woman in a matching raincoat glowering at me. The dog jumped down and pulled the leash toward the door. “Get a room,” the old woman grumbled as she passed.

  I turned to block Cassandra from the other side and stuck my face back against her neck. I counted to twenty after the door closed before I chanced another look for Junior. Of course, he was at the door, mouth open in shock.

  “Fucking perv,” Junior said. Then he cackled softly.

  He’d managed to keep his goddamned mouth shut long enough for us to prop Cassandra into the backseat. In the interim, he’d snickered out his nose twice, so I knew it was only a matter of time before the comments came flying.

  “Shut it. I mean it. Think about what we just pulled her out of. It’s inappropriate.”

  “It’s inappropriate,” Junior mocked in a Mary Poppins accent. “Out of the arms of one perv—” His last words got lost in an amused squeak.

  “She’s fourteen, you sick fuck. Besides, what else could I have done? What would you do?”

  “I wouldn’t have dry-humped the jailbait against the wall, that’s for sure. That’s inappropriate,” Junior said. Then, softly, “Fucking perv.”

  “Not another word, Junior.” I was trying not to crack up myself. I’d just have to put up with a few years’ worth of Junior’s mockery. He snorted again, and that was it. We both lost our shit, and I giggled until my ribs ached. All in all, it wasn’t funny, but fuck, we needed the laugh.

  Cassandra stirred with a grunt, and we quickly stifled ourselves.

  “Twenty-five grand!” Junior sang to himself as we drove. Despite the throbbing bite on my hand and great big swollen balls, I felt like belting out a tune myself.

  Junior pulled up in front of my apartment and killed the engine. The rain had driven Phil the Hippie off the porch for the day. It looked like, apart from one happy dog up my ass, the kidnapping (The abduction? A forced rescue?) would be brought off hitch-less.

  Junior turned to me. “What the hell do we do now? Do we just give Kelly a ring and dump her in daddy’s limo when it comes by?”

  I shrugged. “I haven’t thought that far ahead yet. We’re playing this by ear right now.” I jerked my thumb at the backseat. “Finding the kid changes things a bit.”

  “Well, finding her alive sure as shit does.” Junior started
singing his twenty-five grand song again, and I wanted to stop him before he started dancing. The day had been disturbing enough already. “Well, let’s get her inside. Then we’ll formulate. I don’t want her waking up and—”

  Cassandra’s shriek just about made the two of us shit ourselves. She’d woken up all volume, swinging fists, and fury.

  “Jesus Christ!” Junior yelped as he spun around, catching a flailing elbow to the ear. He fell backward, ass-first under the steering wheel.

  “Fuck!” Startled, I jumped high in the seat, whacking my head into the roof hard enough to give myself a sharp pain at the base of my neck. I rolled to the right reflexively, caught the doorknob with my elbow, and tumbled backward out the door.

  Abruptly, Cassie cut the screaming and flailing and sat stone still, panting in fright. I held up my hands in a calming gesture from my tactical position, halfway jammed in the rain-soaked gutter. “It’s okay! It’s all right!” I said. “You’re safe. We’re not going to hurt you.” Well, at least not more than we already had, between crushing her onto Snake’s floor and electrocuting her.

  She remained still, but the air was thick as freshly poured asphalt. Her short breaths started to hitch. Then she was crying. “My head hurts,” she said.

  “Uh, Boo?” Junior said softly. “Little help here?” Junior was good and wedged backward under the steering wheel, his upper body bent in a position that seemed unnatural for a guy of Junior’s build. I grabbed the seatbelt and pried myself up. Then I went over to Junior’s side, opened his door, and pulled him out.

  I leaned back into the car. “Cassandra?” I said in a gentle voice.

  Cassandra pulled a lock of ebony hair from her eyes and looked at me, her breath coming in short gasps. If I didn’t calm her down soon, the kid was going to hyperventilate. Her fear and confusion dug at my heart. The poor kid was doing her best to hold it together, but the trembles in each breath showed the bluff. Her eyes locked into mine with a dim light of recognition.

  “Do you recognize me?” I asked.

  “Y-you,” she said tentatively. “I know you. You work at The Cellar.”

  I smiled with as much radiant calm as I could muster. “Yeah. That’s me.”