“And I’m gonna put them on you last too.”
I counted his crew. “Sure doesn’t look like you planned on that.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I dunno,” Junior said, scratching his chin. “Thirteen guys? You knew we were only gonna be here with three or four. It kinda makes you look like a pussy, dude.”
Nyah-nyah.
If we could goad him into a one-on-one, he might not release his dogs on us. To do that, he’d lose a lot of the respect with his crew. If I beat him, same thing, so I’d decided to let him get some licks in and take a dive to protect us all. It was the only way we were going to walk away with all our bones on the right side of our skin. Marcus was a big bully, but like all bullies he was a coward at heart. He’d already tasted my capacity for inflicting bodily harm once that night. Even banged-up, I liked my chances against the moron. I’d deal with Summerfield myself, later.
Marcus looked to his crew, who stared back at him with as much challenge as we did. Any one of them was willing to see him go down and take his spot in their food chain. They may have been his crew, but I could suss out immediately that not a one of them was his friend.
I went on. “So why don’t you stop being such a vadge, put the bat down, and let’s do this. Me and you.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the car door on the front SUV open and somebody get out. Fourteen guys? Really?
I didn’t take my eyes off of Marcus, though.
Marcus snorted. “Yeah. I’ll put the bat down. On top of your fuckin’ head.” He raised the bat high and charged me. I crouched and crossed my arms in an X over my head. I was most likely going to have both my forearms snapped by the blow, but at least it wasn’t going to be my skull. And I’d have my legs loose to punt his nuts into Southie.
Phup, phup, phup.
Three short bursts of sound—like someone punching a pillow—and the bat exploded into splinters in Marcus’s hands.
Twitch.
Marcus’s swing came short by about a foot, since the part that was intended to Humpty Dumpty my skull had been vaporized.
That meant my Plan A was still valid.
I blasted him square on the sack with the top of my size-thirteen wides, making sure it was with my good leg. I was both intentionally and unintentionally damaging quite the number of male genitalia that night.
Marcus shrieked and fell to his knees onto the snow.
Aw, crap.
I’d accidentally won the fight, despite myself.
The IronClad boys all frantically looked around for the source of the shots. I wanted to figure it out myself, but didn’t want to give away my own ignorance toward the sudden turn of events.
“Hey, guys,” came Twitch’s voice, swirling in the driving snow, seemingly coming from everywhere at once and nowhere in particular. A chill wracked my body, and it wasn’t from the cold.
“Hold your fire, buddy!” I yelled to the air, hoping that he would. With Twitch, one could never be too sure.
Marcus rolled over, screaming at me, albeit in a higher voice than when he’d arrived. “A gun? Who’s a fucking pussy now, Malone?”
He had a point. In our world, bringing a gun into a fistfight was the ultimate puss-out. But this was neither a fistfight nor remotely fair from the get-go.
All this “who’s a pussy” business was very delicate.
“Hey, Marcus,” called Twitch from nowhere. “Nice to see you, bitch.”
“Fuck you, freak. Why don’t you stand down here with the rest of your boyfriends?” I didn’t know that Marcus and Twitch knew each other. But that was the power of reputation in what we do. In whatever capacity they knew of one another, Marcus knew enough about Twitch to call him a freak. Twitch knew enough about Marcus to call him a bitch. Both were kinda right.
“What’s the matter, Marcus?” said G.G., leaning over Marcus’s prone body. “Don’t like it when the playing field’s even?”
“Even or not, the quarrel is between the two of us, wouldn’t you agree, Mr. Malone?” Stepping into the forefront was number fourteen himself.
Ian Fucking Summerfield.
I balled my fists and locked eyes with him. “I’d say so.”
“Then does your offer of a one-on-one stand? Because I think if we’re to settle this amongst aggrieved parties, you and I are the ones who should be engaging the other.”
“I’m your huckleberry.”
Summerfield shook his head like he hadn’t heard me right. “I’m sorry, is that an affirmative?”
Guess he skipped on Tombstone to watch Downton Abbey.
“Let’s step.” I dropped my foot back and got ready to dance with the fucker—who frankly had to be out of his goddamn mind, or at least sampling his own pills, to think this fight was ending any way he’d enjoy.
Summerfield smiled as he removed his topcoat and handed it to the tower of meat to his left. “You gentlemen are to stand down until this is ended. Understood?”
“Yes, Mr. Summerfield,” the collected ton and a half of meat said together, like the world’s biggest collection of grade-schoolers answering their principal.
Summerfield waved his hand into the air and lifted his eyebrows at me expectantly.
“Don’t shoot him, Twitch,” I yelled to the wind.
“Awww,” the wind complained back.
We slowly circled each other. Was this guy out of his freakin’ mind? I’d already wiped the floor with his frontman two times that night. Besides, to work my leg back into shape, I’d been taking some Muai Thai kickboxing classes at the Allston YMCA. I planned on showing Mr. Fancy Accent how we did it during the Revolution. I guessed his height at about six feet three, which put him a couple above me, but his weight was all wire. I easily had forty pounds on his Benedict Cumber-ass.
He wasn’t going to outmuscle me, the best he could hope to be was—
—faster.
Funny.
I’d just noticed that he held his weight in an odd way, leaning into his front foot, when that same foot shot out like a tree snake and nailed me.
Right on my bad knee.
“I couldn’t help but notice that you’re favoring that leg a bit, Mr. Malone.”
Blasting pain shot right up to my hip and I staggered back, clutching at the magnesium flare that had ignited inside my knee.
The snow burst into blood-red hues as my rage, my comfortable fury, rushed through me.
The beast was out, motherfucker.
I snarled and charged him, swinging a haymaker for the fences.
Summerfield casually turned to his left and my thunderous fist collided with nothing but snowflakes. He spun back, under my shoulder, and drove his fingertips deep into my armpit. My shoulder exploded in pain and my entire arm went numb. I knew enough martial arts to recognize a knife-hand into a nerve cluster. I also knew enough martial arts to recognize that I knew just enough martial arts to get my ass handed to me by someone who knew what they were doing.
Ian Summerfield had evidently been taking more than a couple of classes at the Y.
All of this came together in my head the same time that a really expensive shoe came together with the point of my jaw, snapping my head back.
By the grace of God and the iron railing that flanked the perimeter of the bar, I looped over but didn’t go down. My dead arm curled over the top rail.
Summerfield straightened out the pleats of his pants. “I think it would be prudent if you stayed away from my property in the future.”
Sucker. I wasn’t down, therefore, I wasn’t out. I threw myself forward and grabbed the shoulders of his suit jacket, intending to yank his head into my knee the same way I’d done Marcus. I even had my tough guy comment ready about Kelly not being his fucking property. But I was dropping this prick off at the depot for Painsville first.
I drove my fists down, and was smart enough to bring up my good knee this time. I started my devastatingly pointed statement as my knee impacted viciously into the fabric of the coat
.
Thing was, Ian wasn’t in it at that moment.
Goddamn it.
I didn’t even get the first word out. Only a feeble “shhh” as he floated out of the jacket a half second after my fingers touched camel hair. He turned with a backhand that whacked me on the temple. A bright flash bloomed inside my right eye and I slipped backward again.
Yeah. The guy was faster than my ability to produce a vowel.
Summerfield moved in on me. He palmed me square on the nose. Blood instantly began filling my sinuses.
“Don’t enter any of my nightclubs again, Mr. Malone, even to use the pisser.” A sweeping side kick to the inside of my thigh threw me off-balance.
I gritted my teeth against the instant cramping of my groin muscle under the kick. “You and your douchebag clubs can suck my—”
Then the same foot whipped up and kicked my chest, driving my back into the railing, pinning me without even letting me finish my retort. Who knew the Brits were so rude?
Then the son of a bitch held me flat against the railing with his piston of a goddamn leg like a bug on posterboard. “I hope we’re clear,” he said.
Then he dropped his foot off my nipple and took his suit jacket from my hand, which I hadn’t even realized I was still hanging on to.
Then…
Was he turning his back to me?
Nope.
He was spinning.
The heel of the other expensive shoe smashed into the spot where my jaw connected to the rest of my face, and I was flipping skyward over the top rail. I landed hard, splayed face-first in the snow.
Now I was down…
…and fucking ow.
He crouched on the other side of the railing. “Next time, I will be forced to hurt you.” He stood up, dusted the snow from the front of his coat, and walked back to the waiting SUV.
Good thing he didn’t hurt me this time.
The car drove off, spitting dirty snow on the back of my head as a final insult as the driver executed a U-turn.
Junior stood over me. “You got whupped.”
I tried to lift my head. “Yes. Yes, I did.”
“By a guy named Summerfield.”
“You’re not going to let me live that down, are you?”
“Think I’ll have some ammo until I get beat down by some guy named Percy Flowerpot or some shit like that.”
“Seems fair.”
“You need help getting up there, Sundance?”
“Nah,” I said. “I think I’m just gonna lie here in the snow for a while, Butch.”
“Suit yourself.” Junior and G.G. went back into the warmth of the bar, leaving me in my frozen humiliation.
I really did need help getting up.
Jerk completely missed my sarcasm.
Fuck it. Lying in the snow felt good against my injured most of me.
Another day, another dollar, another quart of blood spilled onto Kenmore Square.
Chapter Five
Everything hurt. My pride. My body. My spirit.
I limped back into The Cellar. Junior and G.G. were racking up a pool game like nothing at all had gone down. I guess nothing had. To them.
“You want winner?” asked Junior.
“No, thanks.” My right arm still didn’t have full feeling back yet. A tingling numbness working its way through my shoulder to my fingertips was all I had. I walked behind the bar and pulled the pourer off the full bottle of Beam and took three long pulls. Seemed like a “fuck glasses” kind of night. Tommy could blow himself. I’d replace the bottle later in the week. “Any of you guys see Twitch?”
“Nah, man,” said G.G. “Those were some freaky Jedi moves your boy pulled there.”
Freaky wasn’t the half of it. Twitch was the master of urban camouflage. It was the most finely tuned survival tactic he’d learned back at St. Gabe’s. Granted, he was already a near-albino hiding in a snowstorm, but Twitch could make himself invisible standing on second base at Fenway during a playoff game.
Junior scratched the eight on his first shot. “Dammit.”
Twitch walked in from the back as the ball dropped. “Anybody got next?”
“You do,” Junior said, disgusted at his play. Then he froze when he got a look at Twitch’s getup.
Twitch was rocking some kind of dirty-white military snowsuit that, god knows, he must have bought in the kids’ section of the Army/Navy. The cold had lowered his normal skin tone from a creepy pink hue to a zombie gray. No wonder we couldn’t spot him.
“Wassup, little brother. Thanks for the backup.” G.G. low-fived Twitch, who smiled broadly across his boyish face. Twenty-seven years old and he could still be carded at Chuck E. Cheese. His pure white next to G.G.’s all black made the two of them look like a lopsided yin-yang of racial harmony.
“Where the hell were you?” Junior asked from behind the bar.
“On the roof.”
“How the hell did you get onto the roof?” I asked.
“The stairs,” he said.
Ask a stupid question…
“You want anything?” Junior asked him. The box of Chablis gurgled as he poured himself another glass of the grape-flavored toxic waste The Cellar called wine.
“Nah.” Twitch racked the pool balls. He was unusually casual for someone who’d only moments earlier fired sniper shots from a rooftop.
“Where’s the gun?” I fed a buck into the jukebox and dropped some Clutch into the air. The blood that had frozen in my upper lip stubble started to melt and drip into my mouth. I chased it with some more bourbon. Not bad. It’s a wonder that whisky and plasma isn’t a more popular cocktail.
“What gun?” Twitch smiled innocently. “I don’t see a gun.” Then he looked to G.G. “You see a gun?”
“I don’t see a damn thing. I never do.”
I heard footfalls coming down the back stairs from the office. Ginny was still arranging the night’s receipts in her hands when she almost walked into Twitch. “Gah!” she startled. “What the fuck is that?”
“That’s a Twitch,” I said, quietly thanking the gods that Twitch no longer had the gun.
“Looks like a Gollum,” she said, giving him the once-over. “No offense.”
Twitch shrugged. “You’d be surprised how often I get that.” Some color went back into his face as he blushed. Only Twitch could hear a comparison to a fish-gut-sucking goblin and take it as a flirtation. Poor guy. It was probably the closest he ever got to one.
Ginny looked like she had something to say. Thank god “Binge and Purge” started blaring from the speakers at a teeth-rattling level. I was in no mood for her commentary. I pointed to my ears and shrugged.
Ginny rolled her eyes and marched over to me. She tiptoed up and yelled into my ear, “I need to talk to you!”
“About what?”
Up close, she got a better look at the damage that had temporarily re-structured my face. “Are you bleeding?”
“No,” I yelled. “Old family tradition. I come from a long line of white trash squirrels. I like to store ketchup in my nostrils for the winter.”
“I can’t talk to you while you’re bleeding,” she said. She walked to the bar and scooped some ice into a bar rag.
The song cut out, and I caught a piece conversation between G.G. and Twitch.
“…the hell did you shoot that moving bat out of his hands? In a damn blizzard?” G.G. asked.
Twitch shrugged. “I was aiming for his head.”
The next track clicked on a second too late. I’d have really felt better off not knowing how that sentence ended.
Ginny handed me some napkins and the makeshift ice pack. I rolled up two napkins and shoved them in my nostrils. “That’s…that’s not better,” Ginny said, grabbing my bottle and taking a gulp. “Did Byron kick your ass too?”
Maybe it was my underlying anger about my ex banging the drug lord who’d just handed my ass to me, or maybe it was simply the punches to the head I’d sustained, but any woman drinking straight fr
om a whiskey bottle is pretty hot.
“Who the fuck is Byron?” I said, taking the bottle back and matching her intake. I could feel the whiskey beelining to my brain, possibly aided by the probable concussion, or the blood loss, or the concussion.
Then again, it might have been the concussion.
“Byron was the guy who got all grabby with me before.” It was the middle of winter, but Ginny dressed to bar-impress. She wore an old Rathskeller half shirt and jeans tight around her curves. I guess I’d assumed the guy’s Russian hands and Roman fingers were merely the end result of a few too many four-dollar pints and a run-of-the-mill dickhead’s lack of self-control.
“Who?”
Ginny sighed. “The guy who Junior danced with earlier.”
“Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahaaaaa!” I pointed right at Junior.
“What?” he said.
“Byron!”
“Huh?”
“The guy who kicked your ass was named Byron.”
“Ah, dammit,” Junior said as he realized that the years of mockery he had ahead of him had been stripped from him. “At least my guy didn’t talk with a Mary Poppins accent.”
“His name is Byron!” I said gleefully. “Byyyyyyyyron.”
“Shut up,” Junior said, pouting.
Ginny blinked rapidly as she looked back and forth between the two of us. “You’re both retarded,” she said, grabbing the bottle back.
Yes, my brain decided, whiskey-chugging Nova Scotian broads were indeed hot. I wasn’t in any kind of place to argue with her, but again—concussion. “No. Junior and I suffered completely different ass kickings.”
“You guys are terrible at this.”
A tiny bit of humiliation crept in again, even as I remembered Byron’s parting words.
He wanted me to tell the cunt he’d be back.
Unfortunately, my mouth ran before my brain even knew there was a race. “You’re the cunt!” I said.
“Excuse me?” Ginny’s eyes went wide. Her gorgeous blue, blue eyes…
Hold on. Concussion. Back to the point. “Wait, you know that asshole?”
“What did you just call me?”
“Byron called you that. Outside.”
Rough Trade Page 4