The Hard Bounce - [12]

And I’d hit that wall.

Hard.

Then his eyelids fluttered and he was beyond caring.

I felt through the front pockets of his jeans. A few loose bills. Keys. Stick of gum. Lint.

In the back pocket of his jeans, I found his badge.

My hand opened on Underdog’s throat, and he dropped to the floor, conscious by a hair. “You’re a cop,” I said, dumbfounded.

Dog lay at my feet, clutching his neck and wheezing asthmatically. He slid himself into the crevice under the stairs like a wounded animal.

“You’re a cop,” I said again. The answer-the gold shield in a leather case-was already in my hand. I was just trying to push the information into my brain. It didn’t want to go.

“Vice,” he squeaked from his corner, almost too softly to hear. Then he started weeping deep, heaving sobs like a child.

“Vice,” I repeated. I stared stupidly at the ID tucked into the flap of the wallet. Sure enough, it read: Brendan Miller, BPD, Detective-Vice Division-Narcotics. Then I looked long and hard at the photo. Any bouncer will tell you, the best way to spot a fake picture on an ID is by focusing on two things that don’t change on a person between license photos: the distance between the eyes and, barring breakage or surgery, the nose. Brendan Miller had an academy crew cut.

Underdog had a shoulder-length mousy tangle.

Brendan Miller was clean shaven, skin gleaming.

I’d never seen Underdog with a decent shave.

Brendan Miller was a healthy looking, young guy.

Underdog… wasn’t.

The picture on the ID was definitely the same person cowering on the dirty floor before me. But it sure as hell wasn’t the same man.

“I didn’t want to be this way,” he cried quietly.

I towed him up the stairs by the scruff of his shirt before anyone else came looking to see what the hubbub was about. I dropped him in the office and cleaned the bits of glass out of my hand in the upstairs bathroom. When I came back, he was still slumped in the bright yellow chair next to the desk, his sobbing tapering off. His shirt was streaked with stripes of my blood, and when he coughed, a little spray of his own came out.

I glared down at him, then looked at the cuts in my palm. “Any chance you gave me something? You got Hep?”

Softly, “No.”

“HIV?”

A shake of the head. “I get tested. I’m an idiot. I’m an asshole. I’m a fucking junkie. But I’m not suicidal.”

I handed him some paper towels. “Here. Clean yourself.”

I sat in the desk chair and watched him smear my blood deeper into his shirt. He started sobbing again. “I don’t wanna die, Boo. I really, really don’t.”

“So, what’s the story here, Dog?” I said quietly, not able to look directly at him. I’ve seen more than my share of junkies in my day and felt not a lick of pity for their weaknesses.

But dammit, this was Underdog.

He gave me his story in a monotone.

He’d been Vice for six years and on deep cover for the last three. Too deep and not enough cover, apparently. In his dealings, as a show of good faith, he’d shot up a few times with the people he was supposed to be keeping an eye on. Nobody shoots up and believes they’ll get addicted. Brendan Miller was no exception.

He was wrong. After a few months of regular use, he became the Underdog before me, snuffling through tears and holding himself tight.

His real troubles started a year before, when in a drugged stupor he told a pusher who was dicking him around that he was a cop. Word spread fast, and soon the whole network of dealers knew. They cut him a deal. Fudge your reports and your junk is free. Brendan Miller was too far gone to refuse. The dealers were thrilled. They had a cop under their thumbs. A Vice detective, no less.

The entire time Underdog was telling me this, he stared at an empty space on the floor. I still didn’t want to look at his face, so it was a good arrangement. His feet scuffed a two-step on the tile, and he wrung his hands obsessively.

When he finished the story, he looked up from the floor and held me with heartbroken, bloodshot eyes. “Boo?”

“What?” When I spoke, my voice was as flat as his.

“Please don’t kick me out. Please.” He was begging. His voice cracked at the end, like he might burst into tears all over again.

That’s what he was afraid of. He’d seen what I’d done to other people. People I’d caught messing around with shit a hell of a lot less severe than heroin.

“You can fuck me up if you want to. Shit, I deserve a beating. I probably need it, but please don’t…”

I realized the people in The Cellar were probably the only ones who had been kind to him in a really long time. They were people who cared about him, who liked to see him when he walked in the door. He was terrified to lose that.

I wasn’t going to beat him up. Life had already taken care of that. I took my reserve bottle of Beam from the drawer and poured him a thick shot into a rocks glass and took a pull from the bottle. “I’m not going to ban you from the bar.”

His bony face lit up with hope, but his hands still shook hard enough to make the bourbon slosh around the glass. “Boo, I-”

“But if you ever, fucking ever, buy, sell, or do that shit in this building again… if you do and I catch you…”