Steady Madness

by Mike McCrary

  Skinny Drake rises up to a knee, then stands, removing some pancakes from his face and stuffing them into his mouth. “Kinda,” he says, chewing. “She set us up here. Different hotel, but she has some kind of deal here I think. Said we’d be safe.”

  I consider letting the other shit from last night go, but I don’t.

  The hell with that. My anger needs to feed.

  “Did you two go out after the bus?” I ask. Skinny Drake looks away. I snap my fingers at him. “Hey. Did you two have a real good time after I almost got naked and groped—scratch that, I did get groped, but not naked. I did almost get killed. Hell, we all almost got killed and, oh yeah, I blacked out so you, what, dragged me around like I was some burdensome suitcase? That when you two fuckers decided it was happy, happy party time?”

  “Not really,” he says, looking down. “We just went downstairs.”

  “Oh, you mean where the casino, loose women and bars are?”

  “Well, yeah.” He starts to pace. “We were kind of amped up after that whole bus thing and watching Rosie go off on the Nasty Brothers. We needed to come down some.”

  A cold spike fires through me. I’d forgotten about the Nasty Brothers.

  “Where are they?” I ask. “Where are the Nastys?”

  “One’s deader than hell. White Nasty.”

  “Rosie do that?”

  “Yeah, you were there.”

  “I know I was there,” I say. “Humor me. I’m a little squishy on some of this.” I rise up on my elbows, feeling myself starting to get pissed off again. “Not to mention you don’t get to be snippy with me, sweet brother of mine. You and that sack of shit over there decided to drag my blacked-out ass around all night while you tore it up, then you want to be a wiseass? Seriously, dickhead?”

  “We didn’t drag you. We were careful.”

  I grind my teeth.

  “Seriously though. We made sure you were breathing and all that.”

  “Shut. The. Hell. Up,” I boom.

  Skinny Drake looks down, picking at his fingernail.

  “Sorry,” he says.

  I can tell he is. He made a mistake. He’s young and a guy, and that combo has a proven track record of stupid.

  “Hell yeah, you’re sorry.” I take a deep breath. “Now I want you to tell me what has happened since I took my little nap.”

  “You’ll just yell at me.”

  “No,” I say, calming down. “No, I’m done with that. You know you did wrong, now I need to know what in the holy hell is going on.”

  “Snot! Balls! Hair pie!” Rondo yells.

  I shake my head, pinching the bridge of my nose.

  Skinny Drake snickers.

  Chapter 28

  Skinny Drake starts with Rosie beating the life out of White Nasty.

  He said it was brutal. Seems a little shaken up over it too. I forget he’s still the sensitive one out of the two of us. The kid’s seen a lot, but it still hits him hard. Harder than me. I love that about him. I don’t like that about me, but it is a truth I can’t avoid.

  He tells me about how she was covered in blood, but still rushed over to me to keep me from falling to the road. I do remember that part. Sort of. I still liked hearing Skinny Drake tell it to me. Helps close some loops in my head. Helps me remember I’m human enough to appreciate an act of kindness.

  He also tells me that Gordo slipped away with Black Nasty during all the crazy and stole our Yukon. I think about blasting the shit out of Skinny Drake for leaving the keys in it, but decide to let it go. I have to pick my battles with the kid, and I can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube, so I’ll grant him a pass on that one.

  It’s a big one, however.

  My brother glosses over the partying stuff. Only touches on the highlights of how Rosie left them in the lobby while she secured a room. She was only gone about a half hour, but during that time these two geniuses managed to suck down three beers each, three shots of tequila each, and pick up a six-member bachelorette party out of Miami. They lost a grand apiece at a blackjack table and another grand betting on black at a roulette wheel. Rondo got into a fight with a visiting football team while defending the honor of the bachelorette party and, oh yeah, all of this is while I’m fluttering in and out of consciousness.

  “That it?” I ask him. I can feel my nostrils flare. I imagine them big as headlights, with steam rolling out from them like a cartoon bull.

  “Pretty much.” He thinks. “My head hurts.”

  I lean over and slap him upside the head. Hard as I can.

  He grits his teeth then looks at me like I’m the most horrible person ever.

  “We gotta be smarter than this, dude,” I say, locking into his eyes while holding onto his chin. “We’re all we’ve got. You and me. If this is going to work out, if we’re going to get safe and get to good, then you and I need to play it smart. And brother, this shit ain’t smart. Not at all. Ya hearin’ me, bro?”

  Skinny Drake nods. I can tell he knows he screwed up. I get it. This has been a crazy time. A lot of stress. A lot to take on emotionally, what with all that he’s learned about his family and the life he thought he knew. I’m going through it too, and it is not easy. He doesn’t let it show, and he sure as hell doesn’t talk about it, so it comes out in different ways. Apparently one of those ways is a messy party outburst with an asshole like Rondo. I’m not going to beat him up over this anymore. I promise. I do slap him upside the head again just to make sure I get my point across. Then I hug him.

  I tell him I love him.

  He tells me he loves me too.

  This is a first for both of us, but I won’t make a big deal of it.

  The door bursts open.

  It flings clear of the locks like they were mere inconveniences. I don’t even have time to release from my brother’s arms before four big men storm into our room. Charging hard. Ski masks and casual clothes blurring fast toward us with guns raised.

  I push my brother clear as I dive for my bat.

  A gun barrel pushes against my forehead before I can even sit up straight. The man in the mask has hard eyes and is breathing even harder. He’s big as hell, but that’s all I can make out. That and his big-ass gun aimed at my brain with his thick finger on the trigger.

  I raise my hands nice and slow.

  Two more of them rush to my brother. He gets a good punch in on one. Drops the meaty bastard. The other dives on top of him, landing hard, then pinning my brother’s arms down with his knees. Before I can process, he jams a syringe in my brother’s neck.

  “No!” I scream as I slap the gun away from my forehead.

  The meaty bastard on me wasn’t expecting it and he slides slightly to the left off my swat. I whip my bat around with all I’ve got, tagging his shoulder. I hear a pop. I swing it around again, landing a helluva hit to his back. Another pop. More of a crack, more hollow this time.

  I spin clear, out from the bed with my bare feet on the floor.

  I ready my bat.

  A foot lands into my stomach, sending me backward, crashing into the bedside table. A lamp smashes. I blindly swing my bat, hitting nothing as the back of my head bounces off the wall. I feel my brain slosh. My sight blurs, but I can still see that my brother has gone limp on the floor. Rage floods inside of me. A level I haven’t known before. I try to move, but my body doesn’t obey my commands. A thick hand shoves me back against the wall.

  I hear one of the meaty bastards whistle.

  Another one rushes into the room with a wheelchair.

  The one from the bed, the one who had the gun to my head, along with another meaty bastard moves toward me. I ready my bat. They ready their guns. I can only watch my brother being loaded into the wheelchair and being strapped down.

  “Stop!” I scream, rushing toward him with no regard for the guns.

  I’m thrown back with amazing force. I bounce like they were tossing a tennis ball against the wall, then I flop to the floor. Looking up, I see the wheels of the cha
ir moving away from me. I push myself up.

  “Don’t,” one of the meaty bastards says, pointing his gun at my head. “Not a fight you want.”

  From the corner of my eye I see a mass of energy fly from off the couch.

  Rondo crashes into the one pushing my brother’s chair. Rondo’s gone full-on attack dog. He’s wailing punches down on the meaty bastard like a man possessed. Wild swings. Anger fighting. Zero skill. Face blood red, spit flying from his mouth as he screams something that isn’t human.

  I swing my bat, clocking the one in front of me in the ear. He slump-falls clear.

  I feel a pinprick in my neck. A rush of warmth spreads fast.

  A shit-ton of black rushes in.

  The world falls down.

  Again.

  Chapter 29

  One lid cracks open.

  My mouth feels like a cat crapped in it.

  This is becoming way too common. I’m back in the same bed, my bat is next to me, but this time Rondo is standing by the bed staring down at me.

  How long have I been out?

  How long has Rondo been staring at me?

  I fire straight up as my memory comes back to me like a runaway train.

  Skinny Drake. My brother.

  “Where is he?” I ask, grabbing Rondo by the throat.

  He takes hold of my shoulders trying to push and pull me off, but it’s useless. I’m holding on until he gives me something. Something good. I need to hear something that isn’t horrible.

  “Where’s my brother?”

  “I don’t know,” he sputters while gagging. “I tried. I did.”

  We fall from the bed with me holding on. Still choking him. Hanging on to his throat like my life depends on it. Riding him down to the floor. My fingers getting tighter and tighter. I feel his pulsing blood in my hands.

  I know he’s right.

  He did try.

  He dove into the fight face-first and gave them hell with no regard for his personal safety. That’s a Rondo I didn’t know existed. Still, I can’t let go. It’s as if I got locked into burning aggression, and now I can’t snap out of it. I’m still in a kill-or-be-killed mode, even though I know I don’t need to be.

  “I can’t breathe,” he says with a deep begging in his eyes.

  I have to let go. Rondo is one of the good guys now. It can happen that fast. People can go from good to bad or bad to good that quickly when you don’t really know them. One event can change the way you see a person real damn fast. I release my grip, pushing myself back up against the bed, away from him.

  Rondo coughs and wheezes, holding his throat, fighting to find air. I try to catch my breath as I watch his face turn back to a normal, human color.

  Trying to process what happened is hard. Trying to understand what happened with those masked, meaty bastards, it’s impossible to make sense of any of it. My brain fumbles to find stable ground. It’s not there. The idea of my brother being gone is robbing me of rational thought. My emotions are raw, at the tips of my fingers like flames dancing off my nails, but I’ve got to try to get ahold of my shit. No time for a meltdown.

  “They have my brother, Rondo,” I say.

  Rondo nods.

  I talk as I think. I talk about how they could have killed me and Rondo, but they didn’t. They wanted Skinny Drake and only Skinny Drake. They used drugs to knock him out, and then on me when they couldn’t secure me. They came in heavy with guns, but didn’t use them. They wanted to scare us. They didn’t want to hurt us for some reason.

  “It has to be Gordo,” I say. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  “Jonathan needs you both to get Gordo,” Rondo says, helping me do the math.

  “Yeah, right. Maybe he’s not his dad. Gordo doesn’t want to kill us, he just wants us to stop. He knows I will only consider it if they have my brother. It’s the smart move. A dick move, but Gordo is a smart one.”

  Rondo nods.

  We need help. We can’t do this alone. We need someone who knows Gordo, and more precisely, where to find him.

  “Where’s Rosie?” I ask.

  “Right here, Sweet Angel,” she says, standing in the open doorway. “You want to tell me what in the hell happened in here?”

  Sandy is standing next to her. They walk into the room and take a seat on the bed. Both tough as nails, but there’s a warmth and concern coming off each of them. A strength I cannot define. One that I love.

  “How long was I out?” I ask Rondo.

  He shrugs. “About five minutes. Maybe six.”

  Unbelievable. Feels like a week and a half.

  “They have my brother. I’m going to find him,” I say to Sandy and Rosie. “And I’m going to kill that piece of shit if he harms a single hair on Skinny Drake’s head.” I wipe a tear from my eye then look to the three of them. “Wanna help?”

  Rondo nods.

  Rosie and Sandy smile.

  Sandy tosses me my bat.

  “Try and stop me,” Rosie says.

  Chapter 30

  “He’s got a place in Lake Tahoe. It’s usually where he goes to disappear. At least he has over the years,” Rosie says, pumping a shotgun. “Secluded. He’ll have people around him, though.”

  We’re standing in a dirty apartment somewhere in Vegas. Rosie told us we had to put bags over our heads on the way over so we didn’t know how to find this place. This is her “gun guy,” and she said he’s really, really paranoid. She pays him via a monthly arrangement with a few of her girls.

  Not sex.

  Not even heavy petting, let alone full penetration.

  Her words, not mine. No, this guy apparently likes to wear a panda suit and snuggle all night with a girl wearing a prom dress. Rosie says the girls hate it. Can’t imagine why. They’d rather give a hand job and be done. Again, her words. With this guy, they have to put on a whole show, like carry on a long conversation with compliments and shit, then stay the night. He also makes breakfast for them. That part he does in the nude. He prefers the girls to stay in the prom dress.

  Dear God.

  “It creeps them the hell out,” Rosie says. “Sex they understand. That’s pretty much red light, green light type stuff. But that panda shit, that’s just messed up. Gets in your head.” She tosses me a Glock. “But the freak wants what the freak wants.”

  I shake my head. I’ll never understand people.

  Not sure I want to.

  I look to her gun guy. He’s small, round and hairless. Maybe that’s why he likes the panda suit. It’s the fur that gets him all hot and bothered. I don’t know. If I were one of her girls, if I were in that line of work, I think I’d rather get him off and be done too. Eight hours of chatting and spooning with Panda Bear Gun Boy while stuffed into a prom dress followed by a complimentary continental breakfast prepared by a pasty, nude chef compared to two to five minutes of arm work?

  I don’t know.

  Tough call. No real winners there.

  I check the gun. Feels the same as every other gun I’ve held in the last week or so. I’m finding I take a certain stance when I get a gun into my hands. I actually arch my back and stand different. Maybe it’s my defenses kicking in. My body knowing that if I’ve got a gun, bad shit is coming. Maybe I’m getting better at it. Some muscle memory kicking in. Right now all I’ve got is Panda Gun Boy eyeballing me. God knows what’s going through that busted head of his. Wonder what color prom dress he’s picturing me in. He hasn’t said a word.

  I shiver a bit off the idea, like I swallowed a bug.

  Sandy looks over the guns and isn’t having any of it. I forget not everyone has been on the same crazy ride I’ve been on. She and I have talked a lot over the time we’ve known one another, but I don’t think we ever discussed getting some guns and storming a lake house before.

  I look to Rondo. He’s checking the action on a Berretta. Seems to know what he’s doing. This doesn’t track with what I know about him. I took him for a surfer, sex-toy boy. Weapons enthu
siast is not what I think of when I think of Rondo. He does look better with a gun. Who am I kidding? The guy’s hot. Got a lot hotter when he dove on those meaty bastards at the hotel. When he tried to help my brother. Funny how his appearance has improved greatly since then.

  Stop.

  Last thing I need is a crush on Rondo.

  It has been a while though.

  Stop.

  “What?” Rondo asks me.

  I realize I’ve been staring at him for way too long.

  “Nothing,” I say, covering my stupid-ass gaze. “How do you know about guns?”

  “I was in the Marines after high school.”

  I blink. Nope. Not what I thought at all.

  “Oh. How long?”

  “Just the four years. Got out and was going to go to college, then got sidetracked by the beach and all that. Met a girl and here we are.”

  “Met a girl? You mean Mama McCluskey?”

  He nods, checking another gun.

  “Did you—” I stop. Rethink what I was going to ask him, then ask it anyway. “Did you, ya know, care about her?”

  Rondo looks up at the ceiling, considering my question. “I did,” he says. “Not deep love or any of that shit, but I had a good time with her. It wasn’t just sex. Well, fine, it was mostly sex, but we talked some too. We enjoyed each other’s company.”

  “Sorry,” I say. Not sure why I said that. I mean, I know I killed her and all. Not at all sorry about that. But I am sorry if he did care about her.

  “Sorry for what she did to you,” Rondo says. “I get it completely, why you did it, especially now. But I knew a different person. That’s all.”

  I look away, pretending to check my Glock. I don’t even know what I’m checking, but I make it look good. Maybe Rondo is okay. Perhaps he’s not the simple, stoner, sex toy by the water I’ve made him out to be. Sandy walks by. Rondo practically undresses her with his eyes, stopping just shy of drooling on her chest.

  And there we go.

  “Unless that sweet MILF you’re talking about left you some cash,” Sandy says to Rondo, as sexy as can be, “you can’t afford me.” She flicks the tip of his nose and walks over to me. “Now.” She picks up a gun. “How do I work this thing?”