“That’s a good kitty,” the big boy said.
Jesus, after just watching this kid knock the piss out of me. Talk about betrayal.
Then the kid stopped stroking the cat and instead grabbed it roughly by the head. He turned the cat’s head to the left with a sudden and vicious snap. The cat went limp and the kid dropped its carcass to the floor. Two cats dead. It was a fucking cat holocaust.
The kid would pay for the cats, Smoke decided. In blood.
The scarred face appeared again.
“James Dugan, also known as Walter O’Malley?”
Smoke spit at the face. “Fuck you.” These guys were worse than the cops.
The karate works.
Lola sailed through the morning on that thought alone. Two big men had tried to take advantage of her – face it, they had tried to rape her – and she had kicked ass, just like the tattoo on her back said. It had been scary, sure, but now that it was over and gone, she wanted to do it again. This time, she wanted to go in knowing she would fight, and just get in there and, and, and… KICK ASS.
God, the feeling. She had put their lights out in seconds flat. She could have really hurt them both. By the end there, they were both completely under her power. Even now, she felt a tingle of electric excitement up her spine at the thought of it.
Smoke hadn’t been ready for her last night. That feeling of power, well, it had translated into everything. Friday night had churned up a lot of memories for her, had made it hard, but now it was clear, after last night, that it was for the good.
She felt great, that was the simple matter of fact.
She had lunch monitor duty today so she couldn’t call Smoke. Now she could barely wait until her afternoon break so she could check in with him.
It was a long day.
Smoke opened his eyes and was surprised to find himself on the floor again. For a while, they had put him in the chair.
He looked at the floor around his head. The linoleum was tacky with blood.
The skinny kid, the one who was missing the fingers, stood over him again. “Well, look who’s awake. Your girlfriend called a while ago. She left a message on the machine. She knows you’re out in the shop working. She just wanted to tell you that she loves you.”
The kid’s eyes showed rising good humor. He had a sheet of paper in his lobster claw hand. He referred to it, then looked up with a smile. “That would be Lola Bell, right? Twenty-five years old, African-American, resides at 210 Vesper Street in Portland? Top floor apartment?”
Jesus, Lola. He had to keep her out of it at all costs. It didn’t matter what they did to him. Lola was not part of this. She knew nothing about this. He wouldn’t take the bait. He wouldn’t say anything about her. If he let the comment die, perhaps they would forget about her. If he could get a message to her somehow, tell her to run…
The big one placed another dead cat on Smoke’s chest. He took a moment to get it positioned just so. Then he stood up. Smoke pushed the cat off. This time it was Minefield, so named because he was the three legged cat in the bunch. Three down and three to go. He looked around. The others appeared to have scrammed. Good for them.
The big guy settled into the chair. He pulled out an emery board and began filing his nails. “Smoke, she called you. Is that some kind of nick-name?”
“What does it sound like?”
The kid smiled. He rolled his eyes slowly. “Son, you’re gonna learn to appreciate how patient I been with you thus far. Like that cat of yours…” he gestured at the crumpled remains of Minefield. “I took all that time to get it just so. It was a piece of art how I had it. Then you knock it away. What you think of that, Fingers?”
Fingers flashed a silly grin. “I think it’s rude.”
“Rude. That’s exactly the word I would have picked.”
The dark man, Cruz, came out of the bathroom. He was not smiling. Another lit cigarette dangled from his mouth.
“O’Malley. I see you’re awake. Anything you’d like to tell us about your life up until now? Like, for instance, what you did with about two and a half million dollars you took from Roselli when you killed him.”
Smoke lay back on the linoleum and sighed. “I’m telling you. You have the wrong man. My name is James Dugan. I’m retired. I used to be an engineer for Sikorsky down in Connecticut. Now I make toys and adaptive devices for retarded children.”
Cruz nodded at the big kid.
“Roland?”
Slowly, the big man moved his bulk out of the chair. He flexed his triceps as he did so. He cracked his knuckles. He smiled.
“Friend, I’m starting to get bored, you see what I mean?”
Then the pain came again. And when the pain came, Roselli was dead and Smoke was holed up in a motel all the way out in Greenport, Long Island, waiting for the bad weather to come in, with all that money stashed in a satchel under the bed. The urge was there, to take that cold, hard cash and spread it out all over the bed and just lay in it and roll around in it, but he fought off the urge. When the storm came, he finally made the call, yeah, Walter O’Malley making reservations on Block Island, half way between the North Fork and Rhode Island. Yeah, I’m coming in on my own boat, is that okay? The weather? Oh, it’ll be a wet one, but I’ve been in worse than this. Sure, I’ll see you tonight.
Then he was out on the Boston Whaler, in the dark and the rain and the wind. Whitecaps topped the waves, the foam tearing off and blowing in his face. He went inside and set the charges in the cabin. He set them against the hull, one on each side, wet hair dripping in his eyes, Smoke working feverishly as the boat rocked and listed. He lowered the red fiberglass dinghy, no ordinary dinghy, a sturdy survival boat that would rock and roll. He loaded up and powered out of there. The Whaler was on its own.
He heard the muffled blasts moments later, and then the Whaler was gone. And O’Malley was gone. And bedraggled Dugan raced across heavy seas toward New London, where his car was waiting like a trusty dog, man’s best friend. He could take that car and run anywhere. Anywhere at all, and wherever he went, it would never be far enough. So when he found a place he liked, he stopped. He stopped way too soon.
Sometime later, Smoke opened his eyes.
His wrists were cuffed together, and they were attached to a rope slung over one of the exposed pipes that ran along the ceiling. The whole thing was pulled just tight enough that his toes barely touched the ground. He looked up at his hands. They had turned purple while he was passed out. He knew he had lost some teeth. In fact, he had seen them come out. It was possible that he had some bruised ribs as well. At least bruised. Maybe broken.
A new and terrible thought had occurred to him. “How’d you get in here?” he gasped to nobody in particular.
The one they called Fingers floated in front of his face. He grinned. His face looked like a carved up Jack o’ lantern. In his own way, he was as bad as the other two.
“We talked to the housekeeper.”
Shit. Lorena. She had been swept up in this, too.
“Where is she now?” Smoke said. He felt his Adam’s apple bob. He was afraid of the answer, afraid of everything now, afraid of what he had wrought with his goddamned stupid laziness. He had played a role, he had pretended to be a normal person, and then he had come to believe in the role himself. He had lied, and then he had bought the lie.
