Or maybe Cat is, and how’s that supposed to work?
I run across the backyard to Mrs. Podolski’s kitchen. I grab a crust. I bake him a blueberry pie in the garage’s miniature oven.
We make out while waiting for it to cool.
Do I know how idiotic this is?
Do I know we should be dealing with what happens now? (About blowing town. About the guy he pounded and I punctured. About disappearing.) Do I know I have to go, and going with him would be mind-blowingly stupid?
Yes to all of the above.
52
Jack
Walking back to my apartment from her place, I’m whistling. Then I’m not whistling so much.
I know to check if things are as I left them. I’ve known that since I was five, and not just because Don took my stuff and put it back broken.
Trip wires, threads, twigs, tiny wads of lint—you wouldn’t think a person so conversant with the fine art of self-preservation would be facing down two guys in his living room.
Correction: I’m facing one guy. I walked in, and there he was, sitting in the dark. The second guy was pressed against the bookcase, a yard from the door. But I missed him, and now he has a hard metallic thing just behind my head. I force air up and down my nostrils, smell the dust in the apartment, and the humans.
Nobody says anything.
Every breath seems to take thirty seconds: time to plan. First you assess your target, then you plan. You hit them hard enough to get away, and then you get away.
If they falter, I’ll duck, jab backward, kick, and try to take out a knee in a bastardized Krav Maga move. I wish I were wearing hiking boots and not sneakers. I’m so pumped with adrenaline, I could probably bench press a Hummer. Dislocating a kneecap with a Converse sneaker should be nothing compared to that.
I wonder if they’ve found Don’s gun in its hiding place. If they’re that good, I’m fucked whether they’ve found it or not.
The guy in front of me is built like a bouncer. He’s bulging out of his suit, his pants riding up over the top of zip-up ankle boots. His weapon isn’t pointed at me. It isn’t even out. Why should it be, given what’s behind my head?
He settles in the green easy chair, his bulk spilling over the armrests. I make myself stop thinking about Nicolette in my lap in that chair, the rough mohair on skin, her skin against my skin.
I can’t let myself get distracted. These guys figuring out who was in that chair would make things worse—much worse. Because they’re not here for me, they’re here for her.
The guy behind me doesn’t move. I don’t think he’s big, and either he doesn’t use deodorant or he’s scared shitless. The worst kind of guy to have pointing something at the back of your head would be a scared little guy.
It runs through my head that the wedge sitting in my chair will collapse it, the guy behind me will freak, and I’ll only make it if the thing in his hand is a knife.
“You should get a better lock,” the big guy says. “Word to the wise.” He sounds as if he’s auditioning for a part in an episode of the kind of old black-and-white crime show my dad liked—or maybe a parody of that kind of show.
He’s not getting the part.
I say, “Make yourself comfortable.”
“Cool customer.” Crap, this part of the nightmare has a terrible script.
“You’re in my apartment. Your boy has something aimed at me. Do you know who I am?”
I’m trying to sound like a prodigy crime lord, Son of Crime Lord, any heavy-duty thing I can think of.
He laughs at me.
There’s nothing to lose. Something bad is going to happen here. The guy behind me is leaning against the bookshelves (I can hear them creaking), lazy.
I swivel toward him, take the knee without too much trouble, my hand on his wrist, the only challenge how sweat-slick it is. The knife falls against my calf. I kick it to the side, out of reach, the payoff for ten years of martial arts.
The hulk in the chair barks, “Manx! Chill!”
The little sweaty guy is lying on the ground, swearing at me. All I’ve got going for me here is my lineage and a lot of sparring with an Israeli Krav Maga instructor who took me down every single time. I’d rather have metal in my hand.
The guy in the chair raises his eyebrows. “We don’t want trouble from you.”
“You ambush me in my apartment? Seems like trouble.” I’m doing the best possible imitation of my dad, or maybe the Godfather. I hope it’s good enough.
The guy in the chair takes his gun out from under the jacket and lays it across his lap. “Just tell me where she is, and we’ll leave.”
“Where who is?”
This was stupid because, in his line of work, he’s got a temper, and there’s a Beretta in his lap. He puts his hand on the gun and gives me a significant look, exactly like bad TV except for the real possibility of sudden death.
I say, “Okay, sorry. But if I knew where she was, do you think I’d still be here? I’d be at the beach.”