Эйс Аткинс - Kickback

“I do it for the pickles,” I said. “Jews make wonderful pickles.”

Susan stood up and gently pushed Pearl aside. She sat in my lap and wrapped her long legs around my torso. “Can I do anything to make you feel better?”

“This may be the first time I’ve said this,” I said. “But I want to take a shower and go to sleep. I feel lousy as hell.”

She bit her lower lip and nodded. I wrapped my arms around her and rested my head on her shoulder. “What about the woman?” she said. “The lawyer? Will she help?”

“I’m pretty sure she’s the one who tipped the men off to snatch me.”

“But you already knew that,” she said. “Why you had Hawk following you.”

“I had doubts about her integrity.”

“What about now?” Susan said.

“What do you mean?”

“She’s in a different situation,” she said. “If she had any doubts about covering for the judges, perhaps this may have put her over the edge.”

“I doubt it.”

“The shootings made the news,” Susan said. “If she isn’t a complete sociopath, this will rattle her a great deal and could make her more likely to discuss private matters with you.”

“She knew she was setting me up.”

“How do you know?”

I didn’t say anything for a moment. Channel 7 news teased SHOOTING IN SOUTHIE. Three dead. Local reporter Hank Phillippi Ryan was at the scene.

“I could ask her,” I said. “I know where she lives.”

“I could go with you,” Susan said.

“Moral support?”

“Push her some,” she said. “I could perhaps persuade her in a way you couldn’t.”

I nodded. “Therapeutic talk?”

Susan shook her head. “She needs to be slapped around,” she said. “She almost got you killed. You can’t physically threaten her. But I can.”

“Maybe I should go alone.”

Susan looked thoughtful for a moment. “Perhaps that would be best.”

“Can’t have shrinks slapping around vulnerable people.”

Susan took me by my chin and kissed me full on the mouth. “You look kind of vulnerable right now,” she said. “I kind of like it.”

Susan wandered back to the bedroom. She left the door wide open.

I took a long sip of the bourbon.

And followed.

He slept outside all night. No one came looking for him. The guards must’ve thought he had nowhere to go and would eventually turn himself in. But he didn’t. He kept moving, finally settling into a small island of trees on the south side of the island at the bottom of the big hill facing the ocean. He found part of a blue tarp to use as a blanket and some pieces of cardboard to make a little shelter against a young tree. The sound of the ocean was strong, and at night, when the lights went off on the island, Boston looked like a bright jewel. He had nothing to eat. The fever and the shakes were coming on again.

But he couldn’t be sure if he shook from the sickness or the cold. He crawled out of the shelter sometime in the early morning where the hills had eroded into the beach. He searched through the pieces of trash that had spilled from the old landfill. Looking for anything to keep him warm. He found some ragged but dry pieces of cloth, maybe part of old pants and a shirt, and used them to make a nest to sleep.

He couldn’t sleep. The wind blew stronger. And at one point, a hard gust toppled his whole shelter. It took an hour in the full dark to rebuild and settle back into the nest. Everything smelled of garbage and rot. He didn’t care. He buried his head deeper in the mess. He tried to sleep. He had a fever but couldn’t sweat in the cold. He wanted to throw up. But his stomach was empty.

The cold was too much to take. If he could have moved, he would have walked back. He would have quit. But he was weak and the cold was so deep and paralyzing that he was pretty sure he’d die out here. He knew they’d kick him into the sea or bury him deep with all of the city’s garbage from years ago. They wouldn’t find him. He’d be nothing.

The sun is what kept him going. He lay facing the hills when the black became a bright, electric blue. He staggered to his feet and dragged the ripped blue tarp on top of the hill. He wrapped the tarp around him, still sick and breathing hard. He tried his best to will the sun to come on faster to warm things up even just a little, hard waves beating against the thin cut of beach. A hollowness turned in his stomach. There was a prick of light coming on. The blue light shading into orange. Just a wisp of clouds over the ocean, a light roll of the waves. The little light became a small ball shooting out spectrums of light, turning the entire horizon orange. The boy made it to his feet. He wore the tarp over his shaved head, wind rattling around him.

“Isn’t that pretty?” a voice said behind him.

It was Robocop.

The boy turned. He wavered on his feet, not from being afraid but from the hunger and the sickness.

“I thought you’d be dead by now.”

The boy didn’t say anything. Only the wind off the Atlantic answered.

“I hoped you were dead,” he said. “Come on.”

The boy didn’t move. Couldn’t move.

“I said come on.”

The boy shook his head. The light bled up over the beach and onto the hills, crossing the shadows of his feet and the space that separated them.

“You’ll take what’s coming to you.”

The boy shook his head.

The guard pulled out a police baton and walked fast, trampling the sun in the dead grass. “Come on, you little fucker.” He raised the baton, and as he wavered over the boy’s head, the boy snatched it from him and thwacked the man on the side of the head.

The man yelped in pain. The boy did not stop. He hit the man again and again until he saw the blood. The man was on his knees when he heard the yelling. A fat woman in uniform and an old guy holding a gun ran up onto the hill. The old woman was out of shape and breathing hard when she told him to drop the weapon. The boy waited a beat and then tossed the baton off the hill and down to the narrow beach. He felt empty, spent, almost hollow with lack of sleep and food.

Robocop got to his feet and wiped blood off his mouth. He snatched a Taser from the fat woman’s hand, and before he had time to react, shoved it up under the boy’s arm. The pain of it nearly lifted him off his feet. He clenched his teeth, not wanting to show the pain, as the man zapped him again.

He fell with a thud. Robocop looked down at the boy. He spit in his face.

“Get this piece of shit back to the compound,” he said. “He tried to fucking kill me. That’s attempted murder.”

The boy fell to his back, trying to catch his breath. He looked up at the bright sky. The fat woman, the old guy, and Robocop grouped in a sloppy circle. The kid just tried to breathe.

“He’s screwed,” the fat woman said, her voice gaspy and excited. “That’s attempted murder. He ain’t never getting home.”

51

Sydney Bennett lived in the South End on the second floor of an old redbrick row house. Hawk and I drove past the address the next morning. Hawk sat in the passenger seat and stared right ahead, and we drove along Appleton at a slow, yet confident, pace. A lot of cars had been covered in the sleet and snow overnight but the streets had been scraped clean as a fat man’s dinner plate. “Someone’s minding the woman,” Hawk said.

“Looks like it.”

“Guess you figured that,” Hawk said. “Since she didn’t show for work.”

“White BMW,” I said. “Two guys up front.”