affecting the look. Short blond hair feathered across their eyes, lots of neck jewelry, both in muted summer dresses. The bowling shoes actually looked good on them. They each turned and gave me a beaming smile. I grinned back. Higgins kept his body angled toward me. If I made a fast move he’d find the sweet spot of my skull with that blackjack in no time flat.
Fingers had good form, a nice extension as he threw the ball, a solid curve that hooked the edge of the gutter and held on, breaking only at the last moment. He picked up the spare handily and the women clapped and woo- hooed.
He noticed me immediately but chose to ignore me until he and his lady friends had finished their game. Afterward, he gave each of them a juicy kiss that made me think this crew was a little kinkier than at first appeared to be the case. Maybe the bowling shoes should have been a giveaway. The women retired to the bar. Higgins kept focused on me the entire time.
Fingers finally turned his chin and waved me over. I got up and so did Higgins, who shadowed my every move. I stood before Fingers while he cleaned his ball with an oil-stained chamois rag.
“I know you?” he asked.
“We’ve never met,” I said. “My name’s Terry Rand.”
He nodded. “Family’s got a good rep, except for that one black mark on it.”
“Right. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“I’m entertaining some friends right now.”
“This will only take a minute.”
“Not here.” He stuck his ball in a bag. Higgins kept eyeing me. Whatever intimidation the sunglasses got him would eventually cost him. He’d be rough to take under these bright lights, but in a parking lot at night he’d go pretty easy. “Make an appointment with my partner here. Maybe we can set something up in a few days. Maybe next week.”
“It can’t wait.”
“I told you. I don’t do business here.”
“From what I hear, Fingers, this is the only place you do business. No chance of the feds bugging you with all these pins flying.”
“Like I said, I’m entertaining some close friends right now-”
“Yeah, I saw. They really twins or do they just like to play dress-up and pretend?”
It made him reassess me. He held his bowling bag on his lap and wet his lips.
“What do you need?”
“I don’t need anything. I want to ask you a few questions.”
“I don’t answer questions.”
“How do you get through life without answering questions?”
“I just do.”
I put a little ice in my voice. “See that, Fingers. You just fucking answered one.”
He checked over his shoulder at Higgins, to make sure he was still close by. “You don’t want to be troublesome now, kid.”
“You’re right, I don’t. But like I said, this can’t wait. I think you know why.”
“We’re through here,” Fingers said.
Higgins drifted nearer and began to brace me. He stuck his chest in my face and backed me up a step. Like most big bruisers, he underestimated anyone who wasn’t as tall and thick as himself. He got in closer and angled a hip at me so he could yank his sap quickly. His right hand dipped into his pocket. He said nothing. What little of his face I could see held no expression. He started to draw the beaver-tail blackjack.
I grabbed the bowling bag out of Fingers’s lap and hurled it down as hard as I could on Higgins’s left foot. There was a crunch like a box of matchsticks snapping. He let out the first note of a yowl and bent over to grab at his mashed toes. I snapped a knee up into his chin. I couldn’t see his eyes but they had to be rolling. He took one step backward and fought for balance. I knocked his other leg out from under him and he fell flat on his back.
While he was down, I kicked him twice in the face. His glasses cracked and sailed off.
The bowlers in the other lanes kept right on playing. I had to hand it to these folks. They certainly had dedication and passion. Jesus, were they focused.
Fingers didn’t even try to take a swing at me. He just sat with a resigned air, sucking his teeth and shaking his head, probably already plotting how he’d snuff me.
“Did you sell a piece to my brother?” I asked.
“You’re finished, you know. I can’t let this go. Even if I wanted to, I can’t.”
“We’ll cover that later. But for right now, focus. Tell me about my brother.”
“I don’t talk about my customers.”
“Then you’re admitting he was a customer. I’m not the cops, Fingers. It’s not like I’m holding you responsible. But I need to know where he got his pistol.”
He shrugged, his bony shoulders nearly spiking through his bowling shirt. “Why do you care?”
“How about if we don’t chase each other around the track all night long? Did you sell him a clean piece?”
“Yes, I did.”
“How about a knife?”
“That too.”
My heart pounded and I crossed my arms over my chest as if to hold it in. “Right. When?”
“You want the date?”
“I do.”
“How am I supposed to remember that?”
“You remember selling it. I bet you never forget a customer, a price, a date, or a caliber, especially if it’s used in a spree like the one he went on. So tell me. When?”
Higgins let out a moan and started coughing blood. He blinked and tried turning over. I put a foot on his chest and said, “Shh.”
Fingers kept wagging his head. It made that mound of hair waver and flap.
“Even if I wanted to let this go, you think he’s going to?”
“What’d I say? Stay focused, right? Tell me when my brother came to you.”
Fingers told me. It turned out to be the day before Collie went on his rampage. He said, “You’re dead, you know.”
“Bring along someone better than this goon.”
“I will. See you soon.”
I hit the door with my heart tripping. Collie hadn’t gone off on a mad tear. It hadn’t been anything that had happened at the Elbow Room to push him over the edge. He’d either been planning to drop into the underneath or he’d picked up gun fever once he’d held the piece in his hands. A fever that had risen by degrees through the night. My brother, a living storm of urgency and indulgence, sweeping across town.
I wondered if I’d been home, would he have saved the last shot for me?
18
I drew back my arm and tossed the stick. JFK brought it back and I tossed it onto the lawn again. He hung his head, looked at me like I was an asshole, and laid down at my feet.
I wanted to see Kimmy. I wanted to do more than that. I longed to fold up in her arms and beg forgiveness, but only if she would give it to me. I knew she wouldn’t. I would stand there exposed and empty and begging and she would stare at me with no idea of what to say or do. Her eyes would be steamed with years of tamped-down puzzlement and hate. Scooter would jet around and I would want to call her my girl.
I had apologized to my old man for leaving, and now the urge to run was starting to overwhelm me again. In thirty or forty years my brain would turn to tapioca and I’d die in front of a television, watching cartoons and muttering about a dream I’d once had of carrying a woman to the top of the lighthouse.
I sniffed and smelled Mal behind me, standing in the screen door. I hadn’t thought anyone was home. He was a
