The Hard Bounce - [42]

“Hey, Boo. How’s it going?”

“I gotta talk to you, Dog. It looks like you might be needed on this thing after all.” I’d barely touched the ribs. Maybe the pile of sauce-slathered, meaty bones was hitting my psyche too close to home after what I’d seen.

“Oh. Okay.” He didn’t sound eager to help. He’d weighed it all against his fear of Danny the Bull and come up short. “Where are you?”

“I’m at Wolf’s”

“That’s weird. I was just there.”

“Listen, Dog. I gotta talk to you ASAP.”

“Well, I can just wait for you here.”

“No. I don’t want to talk about it there. You got a place?”

“You mean away from prying ears?”

“Ears, eyes, tongues, and anything else you can think of.”

“Let me think…” A soft, grating sound came out of the phone as Underdog scratched his stubble in thought. “Hows about you meet me at the pier right by the aquarium? You know which one I’m talking about?”

“That’ll work.”

“An hour okay?

“See you in an hour.” I hung up.

I chain-smoked during the wait. The hunger still roared in my stomach, and my recent sleeplessness was catching up to me. My eyelids felt like someone had glued a pair of bricks to them. A misty breeze blew off the harbor and moistened every surface around me. When I’d first arrived, I’d sat on the concrete ledge of the pier and gotten rewarded with a soggy ass.

So I paced and I smoked. Once in a while I mixed it up and smoked, then paced. Except for the soft red glow of the cherry, it was nearly pitch dark by the aquarium, the light swallowed by the fog. I hadn’t been there since I was a kid. I remembered a dolphin statue somewhere, but I couldn’t see it. One of my most vivid memories of my mother was of her waddling around the sculpture, chasing me and quacking penguin noises while I laughed and ran from her.

Part of me was glad I didn’t see the statue. The memory was beginning to fill me with shame for who that kid became.

A voice snapped me back from my childhood. “Boo? Where are you?” Dog’s voice carried well on the misty air, and I could see his silhouette on the border of the well-lit world.

“At the pier,” I called back. “Right where you said to meet you.”

“Shit, it’s dark.” He was hugging himself, shivering against a cold that wasn’t there. I kept the observation to myself.

Underdog gave the area a quick look over. “So… what’s up?”

I took one last drag on the dying cigarette and ground it out under my shoe. The tip sizzled on the damp ground. Bright cinders danced a ballet in the breeze. “We’re close to ending this.”

“That’s great.” Then he realized there wasn’t an ounce of great in my statement. “Isn’t it?”

“She’s dead. Snake killed her. Me and Junior saw it on a video.”

“Wh-what?”

“It’s a snuff video. Snake’s moved up from kiddie porn into blood-freak theater.”

“That stuff’s mostly urban legend, Boo. Most of that shit is faked. Buncha twisted fucks looking for a quick buck in the loony market.”

I shook my head at him. “Most is not all. I saw it, Dog. Shit wasn’t faked.”

Underdog looked away toward the Harbor. “Bastard… that fucking bastard,” he said softly.

“We’re getting close to him.” I lit another cigarette. I was still pacing, but I’d slowed it down to a conversational speed.

“When you do, call me. Do you still have the video? I’ll have Vice on his ass like-” Then, quietly, “Shit. It’s Homicide now, isn’t it?”

I shook my head again. “He’s gone. We find him, nobody else does. Not Vice. Not Homicide. Nobody.”

Before he could respond, a yellow flashlight beam caught me right in the eyes, blinding me. I held up my hand to cut the glare, but flash burn still coated my vision. Peering through my fingers, I could see a pair of silhouettes slowly walking toward us. The saunter spelled cops, even at fifty paces.

“Whatcha doing out here, boys? Aquarium’s closed.” The arrogance of authority rang in the voice.

My eyes adjusted, and I could make out the pair. Two young cops. Younger than me.

“We’re just talking, officers,” Underdog said.

“You sure?” the other one said. He was smaller than the first and that much cockier. “Because it looks like you two are up to something, lurking around in the dark here.”

As they got closer, I could see the taller one was blond, a wispy cop moustache over a thin mouth. The shorter one had a dark buzz cut and power-lifter muscles under a generous layer of fat. Both wore matching sneers.

“There a law against conversation?” I asked.

“On closed property there is.”

“Hey,” the shorter one said. “Maybe the crackhead was just about to suck off big boy’s dick, here. Maybe we interrupted a date?”

“That right?” the other asked. “You two faggots about to exchange a little kneel and bob?”

“Actually, we were waiting for your dad to show up,” I said.

“You fucking-” The little one was reaching for his club when Underdog jammed his own badge halfway up his nose.

“I know you’re an idiot, but I assume you can read.” Brendan Miller had made a sudden appearance-one that probably saved me a long sentence at Cedar Junction.

The taller one’s face blanched as he looked at the ID. “Oh. Oh! We’re sorry, Detective. We didn’t…” He couldn’t seem to find a satisfactory way to finish his sentence.