I glanced over at Denny. One of the remaining three bruisers was unconscious on the floor beside him, and the other two were warily approaching Denny from either side. I was starting over to help out when Earring suddenly punched me on the right side of my face. It was a good punch, one that he’d feel the effects of tomorrow but was doing the most damage to me at the moment. Had to give it to old Earring. I knew he had something broken in his left arm, but he was still coming. I turned around, ducked under another right from him, and gave him a short, hard left jab in the kidney. He doubled over a little, and I took advantage of that opportunity to put an uppercut on his chin. Sometimes you can’t avoid using the fist-against-face approach. My knuckles would be a little swollen tomorrow, but that was nothing compared to how bad Earring felt right now. He went down and stayed down.
I turned back to Denny’s side of the room. The left side of his face had a reddish tint to it where somebody had hit him with something, but his two opponents were much worse off. One of them had blood pouring from his nose, and the other was currently wrapped around the lats machine. His head seemed to be somewhat misshapen on one side. As I walked over to Denny, the remaining bruiser remembered about discretion and valor and bolted for the door, forgetting that it was locked. While he was frantically twisting the knob, Denny put his hand around the guy’s neck, lifted him off the floor, turned him around so they were facing each other, and then banged him back against the wall beside the door. When Denny released him, the guy slid slowly down to the floor and made no attempt to get back up.
It was all over too fast. The tiger was back in the cage now, and Denny and I checked all five of the bruiser brothers for weapons. Surprisingly, none of them was armed. Denny used his cell phone to call for some black-and-whites to come and collect the rednecks. He also went out to his car and came back with his police revolver, just in case. We sat on the floor and waited for the gendarmes to arrive.
“Tell me I didn’t hear you whistling Smoke Gets in Your Eyes a while ago,” I said.
“Of course not,” he said. “That would have been too obvious.”
“Not for this crew,” I said.
“You got a point there,” he agreed.
“Hey, let me ask you something else,” I said. “In situations like this one, do you psych yourself up by concentrating on the racial slurs these goobers used?”
“Hell, no,” he said. “You saw those outfits. People dress like that, they need to take a beating every now and then.”
Chapter 41
None of the five had any kind of identification, and none of them would talk to us about who had hired them. Denny went with the uniformed cops who came to take the bad guys away. He’d be doing paperwork most of the night, so we cancelled our after-workout snack and promised to keep in touch regarding the newest members of our playgroup.
Denny called me a little before nine the next morning.
“Hope I got you outta bed,” he said. “I’ve been here since six. Don’t know why I bothered going home last night.”
“I’ll have you know that I’ve been up and about since the crack of dawn,” I told him, as I pulled the covers back and sat on the edge of my bed.
Denny chuckled and said, “Right, JB, and you sound groggy on account of the fierce beating you took last night.”
“That works,” I told him. “I think I’ll go with it. Any luck on our friends?”
“Nah, not yet,” he said. “We kept them separated last night and tried to get them to turn on each other, but they’re either incredibly loyal or extremely afraid. Since you and I both know that Manny’s gotta be somewhere in this, I’m guessing the latter. And speaking of Manny, he’s nowhere to be found.”
“Surprise, surprise,” I said.
“Actually,” Denny continued, “I think it’s only the guy with the earring knows who hired them. The others seem to be mostly just day labor. And Earring ain’t saying a thing, other than he wanted his lawyer.”
“So what’s next?” I asked.
“’Bout what you’d expect, JB. I can hold these guys on assault charges, but eventually they’ll make bail, even with one of the victims being a police officer. And we’ll keep looking for Manny. Meanwhile, why don’t you lie low for a bit, just in case Manny, or whoever, decides to try again, maybe more forcefully.”
“I’ll be careful, Denny. Thanks.”
After we’d hung up, I thought about whether I should have mentioned the disc to Denny, but I doubted if anyone on the force could crack the password faster than Irv could. Once I knew what was on the thing, if it related to the case, I’d tell Denny.
Since I was semi-up anyway, I decided to get dressed and do some grocery shopping. Usually, I’m willing to brave the Giant Eagle without a weapon, but this morning I took my gun. You never know when that old lady handing out free samples of cheese spread is going to turn feisty on you when you tell her you’re on a non-dairy diet.
The shopping excursion was uneventful, and as I walked back into
