The Hard Bounce - [29]

Another pause. The door clicked and buzzed as Seven let us in. It was on.

I pushed the door and held it. “Tammy, we just need you at the door so he’ll open it.” I considered telling Paul to wait, but I didn’t want to emasculate the kid in front of the girl.

Tammy knocked on the door. There was a peephole, so Junior and I flanked opposite sides before she knocked. Seven undid what sounded like two dozen locks before he opened the door. He stood in the doorway in a long red silk robe that slung low around his waist, barely held together with a sash.

“Come in,” said the spider to the fly.

Then the pit bulls charged the web.

Junior firmly pushed Seven back into the apartment. The walls were painted blood red, and Nag Champa incense clouded the space so thickly my nose hairs gagged.

“Wait,” Seven said in an offended tone. “Who are you two?” I noticed his fake accent seemed to be tinged with German right then. His body was completely hairless, which made him tough to read. If he was surprised, he didn’t have the eyebrows to show it. If anything, he almost seemed pleased to see us. He pointed a long finger at Tammy. “I remember you. You cry.”

I grabbed him by the silk lapels and flung him into the wall. His head bounced off it with a pleasant whack.

“Hey! Hey!” he protested. I let him go. “I remember you, too.” Then he looked at me with calm appraisal. “Philistine.” He said it like a nickname for an old friend.

“I’m real flattered you remember me, dickhead.”

“You stopped my art. You have no vision.”

Junior stuck a thick finger into his face. “And you’re gonna have no teeth unless you give us what we want.”

“What do you want?” he asked, sounding bored. I had to admit, the guy was cucumber cool.

“The DVD,” I said.

“I don’t have DVDs. Or CDs or tapes for that matter. I am a performance artist.” He trailed his fingers slowly down his body. His long, manicured fingernails made a soft zipping sound on the silk. “All of my shows are individual works.”

“We don’t give a good shit about your whiny, pansy-ass music or ‘performances,’” Junior said. “We want to see the video you played last night.”

I gnawed my lower lip, itching to pound the pose right off him.

His smile was lascivious. “Ah, yes. The red-haired girl. Her fear was delicious.” The room started to tinge redder than the walls, redder than his robe.

“So was yours,” he said to Tammy. He stared at her, unblinking. I followed his gaze to her. She was frozen, terrified. He held her eyes like a snake paralyzing a mouse. The poor kid was so scared, she couldn’t even cry anymore. She just took short, sharp breaths while fresh black tears rolled down her cheeks.

Junior broke the spell with a clean right hook to the mouth. Hard. Seven’s head snapped back with what sounded like a whip crack. He dropped to his knees and grabbed his mouth.

“Ahh! You fuck!” Seven yelped. It sounded like “fuh-muck” through his mashed lips.

“Yo, Seven,” Junior said, leaning down, his face right in Seven’s. “You really should have been paying attention to us, not the kid. You might have been able to dodge that if you were.”

“Take her down to the car,” I said to Paul. Paul nodded and took Tammy out the door by her upper arm. In her state of shock, she was easily led.

“I’m gonna sue your asses off!” Seven cried, stumbling back up to his feet. “I have a performance tonight!” Blood poured from his ruined mouth. Remarkably, Junior’s punch had only unleashed more attitude.

I grabbed his left ear and twisted it like a piece of taffy. He screamed, and I socked him in the gut with my other hand to shut him up. Worked like a charm. Felt real good, too.

He dropped back to the floor, gasping. He didn’t try to stand again.

“This is the last time I ask. Where’s the DVD?”

“Do you have any idea how much that cost me?” His voice was a wheeze. I noticed he forgot the accent entirely. A natural Quincy twang replaced it.

“You need to listen when I say I’m not asking again,” I said, drawing back my hand. “Now you get the pimp hand.”

He squealed. “No! It’s in the coffee table!”

I let the pimp hand go just for the pleasure of it. I cupped my hand and caught him right on the ear I’d just squeezed. He howled and covered up the side of his head. Must have hurt like hell. I walked over to the coffee table. It was a glass-topped box shaped like a coffin, complete with plastic skeleton inside. Under the bones of the left arm sat a short stack of unmarked black DVD cases.

“Which one is it?” I asked.

“It’s one with the red sticker on top,” he said as he pointed at the table. The long finger wasn’t so steady anymore.

I flipped through the DVDs. There were five of them. Three with red stickers. I dropped each case without a sticker to the floor and crushed it with the heel of my boot. “Which one?” I asked.

“I don’t know. It’s one of those.” He put a finger in his mouth, probing his teeth.

“Where did you get these?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I can’t tell you.”

“Junior, go to the car and grab my needle-nose pliers. I’m gonna pull those pretty fingernails off backward. Then we’ll see what he can and can’t tell us.” It was only a half-threat. I wouldn’t have pulled them off backward. That would have been mean.