Strange got a coil of rope out of his trunk and patted his back pocket. He walked up toward the house.
Chapter 30
HORACE McKinley was in the living room, eating a slice of pizza topped with hamburger and pepperoni, when he heard someone banging on the back door. His heart skipped as he swallowed what was in his mouth. Couldn’t be Mike; he always came in through the front. He dropped the slice into the open cardboard box at his feet. Neighborhood kids, most likely, pullin’ pranks and shit, like they liked to do.
“Don’t you move now,” said McKinley, standing out of his chair, talking to Devra, who was still against the wall, hugging her knees. “I’ll be right back.”
McKinley pulled the automatic from his waistband and racked the slide.
Devra watched him walk into what would be the dining room in a normal house. He went through an arched cutout there, barely fitting through it, and back into a hall. The hall led to the galley kitchen and the back door, she knew. When he got into the hall she heard him curse and then start to run, his heavy steps vibrating the wall at her back. And then she heard him opening the back door and yelling something out, his voice fading now ’cause he was outside.
Devra looked at the front door. Only thing stopping her was a dead-bolt latch and a chain. Thinking, If I am going to see my baby again, now is the time to try.
QUINN stood on the back porch, knocking on the window and its frame, talking to himself, saying, “Come on, fat man, come and get it,” and then smiling right into the man’s sweaty face as he turned sideways to get himself through an opening and appeared in the hall. Quinn heard his muffled curse as he raised the gun in his meatball hand. Quinn held his position and his smile, knowing he was firing up the fat man, watching him run straight toward him through the kitchen to the door.
Quinn turned and leaped off the porch. His feet scrabbled for purchase on the dirt as he made it to the chain-link fence that surrounded the patch of backyard. He put his hand on the rail of the fence and was over it clean as he heard the back door swing open. The fat man was yelling at him now, and Quinn ducked his head. He zigzagged combat style down the alley and heard the first shot, thinking, I am not hit, and he heard himself humming as the second shot sounded and a whistle of air passed his ears. And now he just hit it, dug deep for speed and ran straight. He came to the end of the alley where it dropped onto the street, cut left, and slowed to a jog. His short bark of laughter was all relief, a burst of pressure release with the knowledge that he had cheated death.
He looked back toward the alley, wondering if he had given Derek enough time.
IT was that white boy, Strange’s partner. Had to be.
McKinley slipped the Sig back inside his drawers. He rolled his shoulders and looked around. A light came on in one of the houses, and a dog, that rott two doors down, was barking fierce. Wasn’t but two shots. No one in this neighborhood was going to call the police ’cause of that. And if they did, wasn’t no police gonna bother to respond.
McKinley walked across the dirt, stepped up to the porch, and entered the house. He closed the door behind him, mumbling as he locked it. He heard himself wheezing and felt the sweat dripping down his back as he walked through the kitchen into the hall. He went by the arched cutout, not wanting to squeeze through it again, and straight into the living room, where Devra Stokes was standing, one hand kind of playing with the fingers of the other.
“I tell you to get up?” said McKinley, standing before her.
“Heard gunshots, is all.”
“Girl,
He looked over the girl’s shoulder and saw the chain hanging free on the front door. He said, “What the
What he saw in that last second was a man with size, and McKinley reached for his gun. He had his hand on the grip when something whipped up toward him fast, a blur of flat black. When the flat black thing hit him under the chin, the pain was cold electric and the room spun crazy. His feet weren’t holding him up, and he was floating, could almost see himself, like a balloon in one of those parades. The spinning room was the last thing he saw as his world shut down.
WHEN McKinley opened his eyes and his vision cleared, there were a couple of men in the room with the girl, all of them standing over him, talking about him like he wasn’t there. It was Strange and the white boy, the one he’d chased down the alley. McKinley burped and smelled the garlic and meat on his own breath.
“Look who woke up,” said Quinn.
“Told you he was all right,” said Strange.
McKinley was propped up against the plaster wall. His hands were together behind his back, and he moved to separate them. They were tied. He went to move his feet, and they were tied, too. McKinley turned his head to the side and spit out some blood. He rolled his tongue in his mouth. His teeth ached and one of the side ones he chewed with was loose. It was just kind of sitting in there, connected by threads. He could move it all around with his tongue.
Strange had fucked him up. That thing in his hand, looked like a sap, it must have been what he’d hit him with. He was slipping it into his back pocket now. And there was his own new Sig sticking out the waistband of the man’s pants. This man has no idea what I can do to him, thought McKinley. None. But the thinking made him tired, and he closed his eyes.
“He’s going out again,” said Quinn.
“He’s just resting,” said Strange.
“What now?”
“We make a trade.”
Strange took McKinley’s cell phone off his belt holster, getting down in front of him. He grabbed McKinley by the chin in the spot where he had laid the sap up into him. It opened McKinley’s eyes.
“That doesn’t smart too much, does it?” said Strange.
“Motherfucker,” said McKinley sloppily.
“Mind your language,” said Strange. “What’s your boy’s cell number?”
“His name is Mike,” said Devra, her arms crossed with her purse clutched tight, looking down hard at McKinley.
McKinley gave Strange the number and Strange had him repeat it, knowing it hurt McKinley to talk. He punched the number into the cell.
“He gets on the line,” said Strange, holding the phone to McKinley’s ear, “I want you to tell him to bring the boy here. Tell him the condition you’re in, and how important it is that he not even dream about doin’ anybody any violence. Because you will be the first one to suffer. Do you understand?”
McKinley nodded. He listened to the phone and said, “Mike ain’t pickin’ up.”
“Leave a message when it tells you to. We’ll try again.”
They did, with the same response. And tried again, ten minutes later. McKinley left his third message, and Strange stood.
“Get her out of here,” said Strange to Quinn. “Take her back to her apartment. I’ll be in contact with you by phone. We’ll meet up in a little while.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“Talk to our friend here alone,” said Strange. “We got a few things to discuss in private.”
