“My little girl was sick. I lost my job. I had no insurance, no money for a doctor.”
“So that gives you the right to take our money?”
“I told you, I’m sorry I did it. I’ve been sorry every day since then.”
Phil nodded and looked at his brother, who sort of shrugged, like he couldn’t care less. Phil said, “You’re going to have to take a beating, you know that, don’t you? For fucking Shelley if nothing else.”
“I never touched her! Except for carrying her in out of the rain after she fell on her back, I never laid a finger on her.”
Bubby came up close to me then, shoved his big belly right up against me. “You’re full of shit, you know that?”
I shoved him away hard, as hard as I could. It made enough room for me to spin around and make a grab for the saddlebag, but that was as far as I got. Phil slammed me facedown until I was bent over the bike seat, my hands jammed up underneath me. Next thing I knew Bubby was yanking me around and driving a fat fist into my chest, knocking me back so hard I fell on my ass on the floor. It was like he’d crushed my chest and collapsed my lungs, that’s how it felt. I started gasping for air but couldn’t suck any in.
He was moving toward me again when Phil told him, “Enough.” Then Phil was kneeling down beside me. He grabbed me around the throat and squeezed so hard I heard myself groan, exactly like I’d done to Donnie the day before. Even with both my hands on his wrist I couldn’t pull free. There wasn’t any strength left in me.
“Tomorrow night,” he said. “10:00 p.m.”
I nodded as best I could while choking.
“You remember where you used to work?” he said. “The crushing plant?”
He let up on my throat a little, enough that I could swallow and cough. Then I told him, “Guards maybe.”
“No guards. I already checked that out. You park behind the crusher building and wait for me inside. Capiche?”
I nodded again.
“You come alone. And you better bring every fucking dollar. If you don’t, you’ll be coming home to an empty house. Is that understood?”
I didn’t answer right away because my mind was racing, trying to think of some way out of this, some way to get at the revolver. I’d already spent how much of the money? Hell, I couldn’t even think straight, couldn’t add any of it up. I kept trying to get my feet underneath me but all he had to do was yank me one way or the other and I’d lose my footing.
I guess he didn’t like it that I wasn’t answering so he let go for an instant, then threw me into a chokehold with his forearm locked up against my throat.
“You better understand,” he said, and then clamped his forearm down hard. It wasn’t long before everything even right in front of my face melted into darkness. I felt like I was turning into some kind of hot black tar, slipping away and oozing over the concrete floor. Then everything went quiet. Quiet and black and deep. And my body sort of evaporated away from me.
I have no idea how long I was out before I heard myself breathing again. Probably not long. But when I came to and got most of my senses back, I was alone. I got up and stumbled back inside the house and went straight to the living room, which was as empty as the pantry and the kitchen.
“Emma!” I called. “Emma, baby, where are you?”
She came out from behind the long drapes on the front window. “Where’s the lady, Daddy?”
I scooped her up in my arms. “She had to go, I guess.”
“She couldn’t find me, could she? I won!”
“You won, baby.”
“Can we play again?”
“Maybe later, okay? Let me hold you for a while.”
I’d tried every way I could not to drag anybody else into this shit storm with me. By next morning I’d decided the best thing to do was to pack up what money there was left, which was most but not all of it, and hand it over to McClaine and promise to pay him back the rest in installments. If I had to take another beating, so be it. In one sense, I knew I deserved it. Then maybe life could get back to something like normal again, without me flinching at every sound and shadow.
If they ended up killing me, then all I’d have to say is that they’d better be smart about it. I’d remind them how many people knew about them harassing us. Hell, even the vice principal at Dani’s school knew a little something about it. I’d tell Phil I left notes with three different people saying I had a late-night business meeting with him. And if he was really smart, he’d take me up on my offer of installment payments, because then he could collect interest on the debt.
I spent the first half of the afternoon convincing myself that my plan would work, then started worrying about how I was going to get out of the house that night without Cindy asking a bunch of questions. I wasn’t all that sure I could even keep my nerves under control. Chances were ten to one she would see right through me.
I also spent some time convincing Emma that “the lady” who played hide-and-seek with her came with two guys interested in buying my bike. Cause I knew there was no way to keep Emma from telling Cindy about them being at the house. Emma hadn’t seen but a glimpse of the two guys, if even that, so I was safe there. Shelley was the problem. Had been ever since I first laid eyes on her.
And yep, Cindy and Dani came through the door a little after five, and there goes Emma gushing on and on about the pretty lady who came and played hide-and-seek with her and how Emma won because nobody but Daddy knew where she was hiding.
Of course Cindy looked at me and said, “What lady?”
“I think she was the girlfriend of this young guy who stopped by to ask about the bike. Him and his father, I think.”
“Ask what?”
“He heard I might be looking to sell it.”
“Where would he hear that?”
“I mentioned it to a couple people at the picnic on Labor Day.”
“I thought we talked about that. How would you get to work in the future?”
“I know. I wasn’t thinking when I mentioned it at the picnic. I guess I was sort of panicking about not having a job and all.”
“Did they make an offer on the bike?”
“Yeah but it was way too low. Plus the guy had never ridden a bike before. I told him he needed to start out on something smaller. Like a five hundred maybe. Get some experience, you know? You don’t start out on an eight-hundred-pound bike unless it comes equipped with training wheels.”
“You told him that?” she said.
“His father laughed and shook my hand for it. Said he’d been telling the boy the same thing.”
Cindy smiled at that, so I knew it was a good time to change the subject. I said to Emma, “Tell Mommy what we made for dinner.”
“Pasgetti!” Emma said.
“We smelled it in the garage,” Dani said.
“The sauce is ready, but I have to put the pasta in and toast the garlic bread,” I said.
“A salad?”
“You bet.”