“I don’t know.” I tried to sit up. “I may have some broken bones.”
“I’ll go call a doctor.”
“Let’s see if I’m still alive first.”
“Lie still for a while. Your lip’s split open and you’ve got a broken tooth.”
I touched the tooth with my tongue and felt the ragged break. My lip was busted down to the cleft in my chin.
I tried again and did sit up. But I ached in joints I never knew I had.
“I suppose they took your stuff,” I said.
“You shouldn’t worry about that now.”
“Did they hurt you?”
“Nothing I won’t get over. You got far worse.”
“What’d they do to you?”
“One of them slapped me around, just to get my attention, he said. He put a gun to my head and said there’d only be one warning.”
I took the flashlight and played it on her face. She’d have a shiner in the morning.
“What was the warning?”
“Not to go to the police. If I do, they’ll be back and I’ll be dead.”
I got up from the floor and moved around.
She said, “Does anything feel permanently ruined?”
“Just my pride, Koko.” But as I reached out for the wall it seemed to slip away. When I looked at her by flashlight there were two of her. “Never been kayoed before. Had plenty of chances but never had the pleasure till now.”
“At least your morbid sense of humor’s in one piece. Sit down here, I’m going to call a doctor.”
“Not yet.”
“I don’t want to argue with you. You really do need some attention.”
“I’m a fast healer when I need to be. And I don’t have time for a doctor.”
I figured I had a concussion but I could live with that. I reached out and squeezed her arm. “If you really want to do something for me, go inside and make half a pot of the blackest coffee you can brew. When the spoon stands up in it, call me.”
“There isn’t any coffee. I’m sorry, I don’t use it.” Her voice was distressed, as if she had failed me in my darkest hour. In a smaller voice: “Would you like some tea?”
“Oh God, no.” I covered my face and laughed, and my laughter was the blood brother of tears. “Your tea is lovely, Koko, but please, God, no tea. Thank you for the thought.”
She squatted in the light from the open door and looked up at me like a mother hen. “I’m so sorry this happened to you.”
“It’s not the first time. Based on past experience, I think I’ll live.”
We sat with each other, just breathing and happy we could.
“What’d you do with that gun?” I asked after a while.
“It’s still in there on the table.”
“They didn’t see it. That’s good, I’m gonna need it.”
“Why? What are you going to do?”
“Go get your stuff back, I hope.”
She didn’t believe me. I smiled and moved away from the wall. She put an arm around my back and I hobbled across the yard to the house.
CHAPTER 17
From across the street I could see the faint light far back in Tread-well’s. Just as I had figured: they were in there trying to dope out what they’d got. I hadn’t needed the brains of a Rhodes scholar to solve this one. One and one are two; two rats plus one rat equals three rats. There they were: Carl and Dante and some other rat.
“What if you’re wrong?” Koko said. “What if it wasn’t them?”
“Then I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.”
It was still well before the dawn: the deadest part of the early morning, when anyone on the street would be noticed a block away. I had parked out on Broadway and we had walked boldly up Eastern Avenue, finding a crack
