The Hard Bounce - [36]

The impact was tremendous. Like a sack of M-80s exploded in the back of my skull. She caught me square on the jaw with a straight right that would have made Brock Lesnar proud, with all of her weight behind it. I found myself airborne and looking up at my feet and the cracked ceiling. I landed on my neck and upper back, the wind knocked out of my lungs and my senses knocked clean to Tuesday.

If I wasn’t so jacked, the following scene might have been enjoyably comic.

Junior ran like a fullback chased by the biggest and scariest defensive tackle in the league. He hurdled an end table, shuck-and-jived around the television stand, and pushed over a large fern to block the charging Sid-the entire time with the chihuahua tucked under his arm like a hairy football.

And he was singing.

“C’mon, Sid! Can’t touch this! Duh nuh nuh nuh. Nuh nuh. Nuh nuh. Can’t touch this!” he sang as he dodged.

Sid just continued her rush, making low animal noises as she grasped for Junior and her dog.

Still woozy, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see little chirping birdies swooping around my head. My lower lip was shredded, warm pennies in my mouth.

Impossible as it would have seemed moments before, Sid was still going full-bore, tearing through her apartment like a maddened mama gorilla. The dog yipped like a frightened squeeze toy. Junior cackled like a madman. He stopped cackling long enough to throw me a warning. “Yo, Roundheels! Coming back your way! Get the fuck up!”

Sid had finally given up her pursuit of Junior. Hands on her knees, head down, she gulped huge, spent breaths. She wasn’t looking toward me either, though she began lumbering back toward where I lay sprawled.

I followed her gaze. She was headed for the kitchen and…

Oh shit…

… the big block of butcher knives on the Formica countertop.

I had just enough time and sense left to fling myself at the back of her knees as she passed. The clipping move might have drawn a flag in the NFL, but this was strictly amateur hour.

Down Goes Frazier! Down Goes Frazier! Down Goes Frazier! ran through my head in Howard Cosell’s voice as she fell.

Sid toppled with both arms reaching forward in a last-ditch effort to get her hands on a knife. Problem was, that didn’t leave her any hands to break her fall. She seemed to drop for a considerable amount of time. The first body part to connect with anything solid was her face on the countertop. The Formica cracked like a gunshot. Dishes jumped in the cast iron sink five feet away. Sid’s head snapped back, blood already streaming from her split brow, and she crumpled like a sack of beans.

Out.

“Aw shit,” Junior whispered when the dust settled. Even the dog stopped barking. And I’d swear his little jowls hung open in surprise.

“Aw shit,” I reiterated. Sid didn’t move. A small pool of blood blossomed under her face.

“We killed the great white whale,” Junior said.

Not the plan. Not the plan at all.

This is what me and Junior get when we start thinking this shit out and actually come up with a strategy. Junior came up with the next one on the fly.

“Run!” he yelled as he dropped the dog and booked it down the stairs. I grabbed an armful of the red-stickered DVD cases and followed him out in a full sprint.

“Ohfuckohfuckohfuck,” Junior kept babbling as we bolted from the scene of our crime to the car. Junior did a perfect Bo Duke slide across the hood and leapt into the driver’s seat. I’d have to compliment him on it later.

My lip had stopped bleeding, but the whole side of my face was swollen and throbbing. The inside of my mouth felt like I’d brushed my lower teeth with a steak knife. Junior slammed his foot onto Miss Kitty’s accelerator.

Junior said, “Dude, we’re boned.”

“We’re all right. I don’t think anybody saw us.” I turned and checked to make sure no one was pointing and staring, writing down license plate numbers.

“Your goddamn blood is all over that floor. That DNA shit is gonna point right to us!” He was gulping in huge panicked breaths. “CSI, motherfucker! CSI!”

“Shut up. Let me think.”

“I mean, if it was a dude? Like if that was Snake on the floor? I wouldn’t give a shit. Courts probably wouldn’t either. But we just smoked a female. A female!” He was too freaked to even bust my balls about getting cold-cocked by the aforementioned female.

“I don’t think DNA testing gives a name and address. I think it just does blood type and hair color and that shit.”

“How the fuck do you know, Professor Malone? You been following the technology in Scientific Weekly World News?”

He had a point.

Junior drove into the parking lot behind The Cellar and screeched to a halt behind the Dumpster. For a second, I thought he might knock the damned thing over again. I unlocked the back door to the club with my keys and staggered into the rear of the bar. I was hoping nobody would see us. Junior let the door slam shut behind him.

The huge metal door.

It sounded like two Mack trucks colliding. All conversation stopped in the packed bar, and all eyes turned to us-including the last pair of eyes I wanted to look into at that moment. Barnes sat in exactly the same seat he was in the week before, smirking at us. We had only one option.