Dirty Words - [14]

It all came together in Rusty's mind. He'd been fighting the wrong fight all along. Never go toe-to-toe with a puncher when you're a boxer.

Last round.

Ding.

*****

Rusty left the message at The Queen of Hearts that he'd meet them there at five a.m. After closing, but before Bleecker Street would have any morning traffic. Rusty got off the train at Second Avenue and jogged the remaining mile, feeling his blood pump, the muscles loosen up. He felt good. He jogged up the stairs to the club, marveling at the god-awful orange awning as he passed it. He knocked on the wooden door. Yancy opened it and stepped aside.

Mr. Queen smiled a big Texas grin as he came in. "Mr. Cobb. I'm so glad that you decided to do business here, clean up the mess you made, and such."

Rusty pulled the metal box out of his backpack. "First of all, let me apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you. I didn't know what it was when I took it and I sure as hell didn't know how important it was when I did."

Queen smiled wider. "Bygones and such. Yancy?"

Yancy took the box from Rusty and with his other hand grabbed the hood of Rusty's sweatshirt, choking him.

Queen took the box and stepped back. "Just so's were sure you're not trying to pull a switcheroo here."

"Suit yourself," Rusty croaked.

Queen thumbed the lock on the box.

Three.

Queen opened the box. Rusty spun, catching Yancy with a hook right on the eyebrow he'd pointed to. Yancy let go of the hood and wobbled noticeably.

Two.

Queen looked up, his face a mask of rage. "You sonofa-" He dropped the box and reached for his gun. Rusty threw the dazed Yancy into the space between Queen and himself. Yancy stumbled and fell into the gun. His body muffled the shot, but a red blossom opened on his back.

One.

Rusty dove out the second story window into the ass-ugly orange awning.

BOOM

The explosion blew out all the windows facing Bleecker.

Rusty never figured out just what he was supposed to have stolen.

Dante's money had been enough to buy a timing cap and a small quantity of plastique from Ali. Small, but enough for one good bang. With ultimate caution, Rusty attached the cap to the lock on the box and stuffed the lower part of the tiered box with the explosive, turning the metal casing into a great big shrapnel grenade.

The concussion nearly threw Rusty over the awning, but he caught the edge, rolled, and came down hard on the street. He was covered with shards of glass, but the thick sweatsuit had protected him from any major cuts.

He lay on the concrete for as long as he could afford, did a quick mental inventory of his parts, decided they were intact and carefully got up. Time to go. His ears rang loudly and he feared he wouldn't hear approaching sirens.

On the corner of LaGuardia, Rusty found a slightly burned cowboy hat. He stuffed it into his backpack and started the jog back to Brooklyn.

Dirty Laundry

"How long has she been missing?"

"Two days," Nathan said, putting his Rolling Rock bottle on my desk. Condensation off the bottle dripped onto my desk calendar.

That annoyed me.

Everything Nathan Underwood did annoyed me. From his idiotic growth of hipster chin scrub down to the way he sat on the corner of my desk like he owned the place.

Not that I owned the place, either. The "office" for 4DC Security occupied the space beside the liquor room above The Cellar, Boston's favorite dank pit for cheap beer and God-awful garage bands. The only reason he was up there in the first place was because he was offering me money, which everybody knew he had. He hardly ever shut up about it.

The 'she' in question, was Nathan's girl, Matilda. We'd all heard of Matilda, but nobody had ever seen her. Considering how many nights Nathan spent at The Cellar, never with the girlfriend, led many to speculate that she didn't, in fact, exist. Some of that speculation also touched upon what kind of girl would date a blazing jackass like Nathan Underwood.

Millionaire or not.

Yet there he was, offering me money to find the girl who I had trouble believing existed in the first place. So much so that I had twenty riding on it with my partner. Junior's bet was that she was real, but looked like the backside of a leprous rhinoceros

"Where do you think she ran off to?"

Nathan's good eye shot me a look. His glass eye stayed where it was. "I didn't say ran off, I said missing." The hard look didn't impress me. Nathan was taller than me by a good four inches, but softer than a marshmallow in the sun. He was more Goonie bird than goon.

"Okay, fine. Any ideas where I should start?"

"She said she was going to do the laundry. She never came back."

Then she must have had some clothes with her, I thought. Another indication that she just up and left the turkey, but I didn't say it.

"You got a picture?"

He placed a 5x7 on the desk. Matilda was a tall, thin girl, with reddish-brown hair and slate-blue eyes that looked through you, even in a photograph. The only thing that kept her from being stunning was the sadness behind the obviously forced smile.

"That a bruise under her right eye?"