“Well, if your witness is one of those shifty Lost Boys or one of those criminal Assassins, their word is about as good as Obamacare. Kind of hard to take the word of a drug addict, no?”
I frowned something fierce. Pratt wasn’t going behind his desk. He would have if he was afraid of me, to use it for protection. He definitely had a new, cocksure attitude as he just leaned his lard butt against it, crossing his arms and ankles impudently. He had something up his sleeve.
“Who’s the drug addict? What’re you implying?”
He quirked an eyebrow. “Who’s the master and who’s the slave now, slave?”
“I don’t even know what the fuck you think you have on me, Pratt. All I know is I don’t think your wife—or should that be ‘wives’?—would take it kindly if she found out about your penchant for eating long, fat cock.”
“Ah! Thank you for bringing that up again, slave. Don’t mind if I do.”
And he bounced himself off the edge of the desk so he could grab me between the legs again!
I automatically executed an upward elbow strike to his fucking chin. His teeth snapped loudly in his stupid skull and he whined loudly, maybe biting his tongue. I saw by the look of shock and dismay in his eyes he hadn’t expected me to defend myself. Did he really think I’d just let him suck me right then and there? Why?
“Thass it,” he slurred, holding his chin gingerly. He looked about to cry. For an armed man, he sure was a wuss. But then the gloves came off. “I’ve got videos, Rockwell. I’ve got videos of your little meth-snorting hooker, Deloy Pingree.”
I snorted. “How’s that even possible, Pratt? For one, Deloy doesn’t snort anything. I don’t allow drugs at Liberty Temple.”
“It’s from before Liberty Temple. When Deloy was on the streets.”
“Oh. Well I have no control over what happened to some of those boys, Pratt, after you and your friends were done throwing us under the bus.”
Pratt continued, “Oh yeah? Well I think the dental school would be right interested in it. And the little naked stripping dance video Deloy helped my friend make when he visited him at Liberty.”
What the fuck? I advanced on him until I was practically stepping on his toes. “I don’t allow videos either, you fucking twisted assmuncher.”
He cringed back, a good sign he was intimidated. But he just kept spewing. “Oh, you don’t knowingly allow videos, that’s for sure. How else do you think I snuck and got the video of you the other night in the hotel?” His look softened, became almost dreamy. When he went to salaciously lick his lips, I saw that I had drawn blood. He looked like a creepy vampire, smearing his own blood all over his lips like that. “Mmm. Nice fat juicy penis. You’re built like a brick shithouse, Rockwell. Wish I would’ve known how you’d turn out. I might not have helped you off the premises up at Cornucopia. I could’ve kept you as my personal slave.”
That did it. That sent me over the edge. I only had to take one more step to grip his shirtfront in my fist again, crunching his asinine bowtie. “That’s it, you sick fundy. You tell Shumway to give me my fucking business license. Krav Maga is not a fucking ‘occult’ practice and you fucking know it, and there’s no set number of licenses you can give out.” I didn’t threaten to make a report to the cops. I knew from Gideon that they didn’t involve cops, especially not out here where the cops were all in the fundy’s back pocket. In fact, I’d been driven off the Cornucopia property and taken into the desert fifteen years ago in a fucking cop car. I trusted them about as much as Gideon and his men did. I was just going to go and hold a knife to Shumway’s throat until he gave me my fucking license.
He said, “I could maybe scratch your back if you scratch mine.”
I backed off a bit, letting go of his shirt. With disgust, I realized he had a fucking hard-on. Under the overhang of his belly he had a fucking hard-on just because I was close to him, and that creeped me out more than anything. “You’ll do that? Issue me a business license? Leave Deloy alone?”
He nodded curtly. “I could see my way to that. Yes indeed, I could. But you’d have to give me something in return.”
“Forget it,” I spat, and turned on my heel.
“Oh, it’s all right to sell your body for money, but suddenly you’re above selling it for a business license? And to keep your darling little boy in dental school?”
The dental school part almost got to me. But the man disgusted me so heavily it propelled my legs to carry me from that sickening office.
The last thing I heard him call out was, “I’m not here to run you out of town, my sexy slave. I’m here to destroy you, to grind you back into the dust you came from. You’ll be groveling at my feet before long.”
This time, I took him seriously.
CHAPTER EIGHT
OAKLYN