sidewalk, and even that was huge. She also had the sneaking suspicion that some of that smell was coming off him. Nevertheless, when she skipped past the alley and found herself in front of the bar (which was rather daintily designed out front, with a low retaining wall lined with big decorative planters), she gave Baseball Bat a smile that could have melted lead.
“Well, hello to you,” she said and that big, scary-looking thug actually blushed.
This was going to be fun.
“Hello to you,” he said. His voice was surprisingly sweet-sounding. Somewhere under all of that menace was a boy, Fiona thought. Not much of a boy was left, granted, and probably what was left was a boy who liked to kill animals and melt things, but a boy no less. On his left hand, across the knuckles, was the name CLETE. On his right hand, over his fingers, were the words WILL KILL YOU.
Subtle.
“That’s a nice bat,” Fi said.
“It gets the job done.”
“Cricket?”
“Not quite. You lost, sweetheart?”
“My car broke down,” she said. She pointed back toward the Charger, but there were several beaters parked on the street near it and Fiona didn’t think Baseball Bat’s vision was that great. She could see that even though he had that rather foul- looking tattoo on his neck he also had the darkened rings around his neck that indicated diabetes. Poor bastard, Fi thought. Too tough to get his blood sugar looked at. No wonder he limped around. He probably didn’t have any feeling beneath his knees. “And wouldn’t you know I have to use the powder room, too? Isn’t that how it always is? Just one problem after another.”
Fiona started to make her way toward the bar’s door and Clete lifted the tip of his bat off the ground and tapped it on Fi’s shin. Not hard. Just enough to stop her momentum. “No ladies’ room inside,” Clete said. Ah, there was the gruff voice.
“I don’t need to have a pretty place to sit,” she said, moving forward again. “A little boys’ room will be fine.”
And there was that bat again. This time two taps on her shin. Not a very polite way to treat a lady having a bad day.
“Use the alley,” he said
Fiona admired Clete’s code. She really did. He had a job to do and he wasn’t going to be swayed by a pretty woman with a small bladder and a broken-down car.
“Are you sure?” Fiona said. She stepped closer to him this time, let him get a whiff of her scent, let him really see her up close.
“Beat it, skank,” he said and this time brought the bat down onto her foot. Not hard enough to break anything, nor even cause much pain, but with the clear intent to show Fiona that he could, and would, break her foot if she didn’t vacate the premises. Even less polite than poking her in the shins, really. In Fiona’s opinion, he’d shown a gross lack of chivalry with her when all she needed to do was use the restroom of the establishment.
Or, well, she believed that if she’d actually been someone in that actual position, his lack of chivalry would have been gross. As it was, calling her a skank was not the right thing to do, no matter the situation.
Fiona kicked the barrel of the bat from the top of her right foot, sending it out of Clete’s hand and straight into the air. She caught it in midair with her right hand and in the same motion brought it down across Clete’s right knee. As he tumbled forward, she grabbed him by the back of his collar and tossed him down the three short steps in front of Purgatory.
He landed with a dull-sounding thud and Fiona could already tell that she’d fairly ruined his knee, because people’s legs really aren’t supposed to bend inward, are they? It also seemed like the fall had caused him to break his left wrist and nose, since his face was bleeding profusely and his wrist was bent at a nauseating angle.
She’d done a nice amount of damage to his knee, but Fiona reasoned that other injuries were Clete’s own fault. His mass multiplied by the acceleration of his fall did the real work. If he’d bothered to take care of himself, he would only have a broken knee now. Alas, people just didn’t take care of themselves as well anymore. Fiona thought that was a personal choice that said legions about a person’s self-confidence.
Despite all of this, Clete was trying to get up to go after Fiona, but was clearly having a pretty hard time of it.
Fiona walked gingerly down the steps-after seeing how Clete took them, she was sure she’d didn’t want to slip and land on him, even though with her weight, she’d probably bounce harmlessly off-and stood a few feet from Clete.
“It’s not polite to call a girl a skank,” she said.
“I’ll kill you,” Clete managed, but there wasn’t much in the way of honest-to-goodness malice in his voice, seeing as he was choking back tears. It’s hard to sound really tough when a girl has busted out your kneecap and tossed you to the pavement, though Fiona admired him for trying.
Then she remembered that gun she’d noticed in his belt earlier. Unfortunately for Clete, she remembered it at the very moment he remembered it, too. So as he tried to extract it from beneath his sizable girth, she brought the bat down into the small of his back. Not hard enough to separate his spine, or paralyze him, but certainly hard enough to shatter his tailbone.
Fiona had been taught early on in her life that if you really want to disable someone, you need not run the risk of killing them as well. Breaking someone’s tailbone isn’t a pleasant experience for anyone, especially since if you do it the right way, it will temporarily make the person feel paralyzed, and if you do it the wrong way, it will make the person think they’re paralyzed and knock them out.
So Fiona made sure she did it the wrong way, and then, when it was clear that Clete would not be getting up in the near future, she reached into his pants and removed his gun. It was by far the most disgusting thing she’d done all day. Fiona didn’t understand how someone could have that much hair coming up out of their pants. Quite vile.
But the gun was nice. A Star Model D. 380. Beautiful finger grooves. Platinum plated. A perfect all-purpose killing machine. She slipped it into her purse and then took another look at Clete. She almost felt bad for him, splayed out there on the sidewalk as he was, until she realized she needed to move him, lest someone notice the enormous biker beached in front of Purgatory. Or at least she needed to hide him. She tried to pull him by his leg, but he was just too damn heavy and the dragging would simply take too long. She opted instead to tip him over against the low retaining wall in front of the bar and then drag a few of the handsome planters around him so that he was effectively boxed in from view.
Then she checked her appearance in the window of one of the vacant shops and fairly skipped into Purgatory.
One thing Fiona could never abide in men was their tendency to turn into pack animals when left to their own devices. The result of this tendency was that everywhere they huddled looked the same: brown. Brown furniture. Brown carpet. Brown walls. Brown television. Brown food. Brown drinks. Brown dirt under their nails. Brown jeans that were once blue. Women were far more interesting, at least in terms of their palettes.
The really weird thing, though, was that places even smelled brown when there was an excess of unfettered men about. Scientists would probably call this pheromones or something, but Fiona thought it all boiled down to the fact that men have never learned how to bathe correctly because none of them are willing to change a lightbulb.
This was abundantly clear when she walked into Purgatory and was met with a wall of blackness. It took her eyes several seconds to adjust before she could make out the dark brown bar, the five dark brown stools that sat empty in front of the bar and the skinny man wearing a brown shirt and pointing a brown sawed-off shotgun at her.
“Whoa,” Fiona said. Not because she was frightened, but because she figured that someone encountering a shotgun for the first time would be frightened.
“How’d you get in here?” Skinny said.
“Clete said I could use the bathroom,” Fiona said.
Skinny relaxed a bit, but not to the point that he lowered his gun. “You his?” he asked.
“I’m nobody’s,” Fiona said. “But I could be.” She kept her eyes on Skinny, but she was also making note of the items in her periphery. There was a door to the right of the bar that looked to head to a small kitchen area. On
