Todd Robinson - The Hard Bounce

“Peachy. You?” He lifted his chin toward Commonwealth Avenue. “I see you didn’t get chauffeured back.”

“How did you know?”

“Bout a half-hour ago, Barnes rolled up and handed me an envelope. Said, ‘Give it to Malone when he gets here.’” Junior gruffed his voice and did a shuffling waddle. Not a bad impersonation. “I don’t think he’s too taken by your charms.”

“I’m an acquired taste. You look in the envelope?”

He shook his head. “Not yet. I was going to, but a little brouhaha broke out in the bar and I had to regulate.” Junior absently sucked on a scraped and red knuckle. “I left it on the desk.” Junior checked the IDs of two girls and let them pass. “So what happened?”

I reached in my pocket and found some gum and smokes. I went with the cigarette, of course. “For starters, I called that Reese chick a piece of ass. She didn’t like it too much.”

Junior barked a laugh. “Most girls would take that as a compliment.”

“Most girls we know, anyway.”

“So what’s up? Who’s the boss-man on this cluster fuck?”

I could see Junior was champing the bit, waiting for me to get back with some answers. I took another long drag, toying with his patience for my own enjoyment. “You’re not going to believe this.”

“In a good way, or a bad way?”

“Both. Jack Donnelly.”

He waited for more. “What about him?”

“That’s who’s doing the hiring.”

He stared at me blankly, waiting to see if I was fucking with him. “Great googly moogly! Big Jack Donnelly?”

“Shhh!” I waved at him to keep his voice down. “DL, stupid. DL. The whole reason we’re being asked is because we’re supposed to be able to keep a lid on things.”

“This is big, man. He’s a big man.”

“That’s why they don’t call him Little Jack Donnelly.”

Junior frowned. “Don’t be a dick. You know what I mean.” If Junior was a cartoon, little cash register tabs would have cha-chinged behind his eyes.

“Cassandra’s his runaway daughter. We’re going to find the poor lost lass amongst the social dreck of our peers.”

“I do so love it when you talk like a PBS fruit.” Junior grinned and bounced foot to foot like a kid on Christmas morning. “How much?”

I sat on the sidewalk and leaned against the brick. The sick feeling had doubled up on my train ride, when I really had time to think about what was being offered. “How much what?”

Junior squinted at me. “You okay?”

I took a long drag and exhaled the smoke out my nose. “He said he could find Emily.”

“He said that?”

“Not in so many words.”

“What words did he use?”

“He said he could find people, too. Who else could he mean?”

“But he didn’t say Emily, exactly-”

“No, but-”

“No, but my hairy ass. Before you get your panties all twisted, maybe he was talking bout the broad who gave you the clap in Oh-6. You always wondered who that was.”

I didn’t reply, just stared at the cigarette in my hand, brain slipping away toward memories of Emily.

“You want her found?” Junior asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, as much to myself as to him.

“Ain’t that a dick in the ass.”

“Yeah.”

Junior nudged me in the shin with the tip of his boot. “Enough about your sorry bullshit. Let’s talk about what really counts.”

“And what is that?”

“Me, jackass. Money. My moolah. How much money we getting to find the kid?”

“Shit.”

“What?”

“I forgot to ask.”

After Junior had himself a hissy fit and called me a couple of colorful names, I went up to the office to check out the envelope on the desk. Plain yellow manila with nothing written on it. I tore open the end and dumped the contents onto the desk.

A business card for Kelly Reese. Business line read: Donnelly for Mayor Committee. Chairperson under her name. It listed an office number, extension, and e-mail. If I’d owned a computer, I might have dropped her a note and apologized. Again.

Three pictures of Cassandra. The first one a school picture complete with forced smile. She was in a private school uniform with a coat of arms patch on her blazer. Surprisingly, her hair was a natural chestnut in the picture.

The second looked like a blow-up of a family photo, carefully cropped not to show anyone else in the picture. The third showed her on a beach, grinning. She was running into a wave and hugging herself from the cold. They were all solo shots of her. I pulled out the picture from my back pocket and looked at it again. Then the beach shot again, seeing the subtle but present signs of damage done.

What the hell happened to you, kid?

In the dream, I was eating a huge Italian grinder. Really big. The size of a coffee table. Then the red peppers started to beep and I woke up. Even my subconscious was busting my balls.

Hardy-har. Biting off more than I could chew. Very subtle.

Goddamn brain.

I swept my hand across the nightstand, looking for my beeper, grumbling curses to the air. I knocked over a glass of water, my Harry Crews Reader , and an ashtray before my fingers found the beeper and turned it off. I squinted at the number. Didn’t recognize it. I shuffled over to my phone and dialed.

The line picked up after one ring. “Call back later, dude. I’m waiting for a call.” It was Paul.

“It’s me, jackass. What’s up?” I was already dripping sweat. Another boiler of a day.

“Oh. Hey, Boo. I didn’t think you’d call back so fast.”

I yawned so hard my jaw cracked. “Yeah, well, I did. What do you want?”

“Did I wake you up?”

“Paul…”

“It’s eleven, dude. You’re missing the day.”

“Paul!”

“Okay, okay. You know The Pour House?”

“On Boylston?” Where the hell were my smokes?

“Yeah. I’m here now. I got some stuff to tell you.”

“What?” I picked my pants off the floor and rifled the pockets. Success! Lighter?

“I’ll tell you when you get here. Bring money. You’re buying me lunch. Ha- hah! ” With that, he hung up on me. Little prick.

I lit my smoke and stumbled to the shower.

And yes, I can smoke in the shower. I have a technique.

I got to the restaurant a little after noon. When I walked in, the mingling smells of beer, hot sauce, and frying hamburger made my stomach croak frog-noises. The stupid dream had made me hungry, so I wasn’t all that upset at meeting at The Pour House. They made the best burger in town. Cheap too, thank God. When I found Paul in a table toward the back, he was finishing a plate of buffalo wings and a basket of mozzarella sticks.

“About time, man. My burger’s almost here.”

Before I could say anything, the young waitress came over for my order. For breakfast, I went with a double bacon cheeseburger and a Sam Adams. Paul watched her exit as she walked off with my order.

“I think she wants me. What do you think?” His lips were red with wing sauce. He popped another in his mouth. The kid ate like he hadn’t been within three feet of a meal in days. For all I knew, he hadn’t. I remembered that kind of hunger. The ghost of it echoed in my gut as I watched him tear into his food like he was worried somebody would take it from him.

I stifled a yawn. Probably should have ordered coffee instead of a beer. “What have you got?”

He held up his finger and pulled the bone from his mouth, meat sucked clean off. Jesus. Maybe the answer to Cassandra’s disappearance was because Paul ate her.

“Nothing,” he said through a mouth full of half-chewed chicken.

I stared at him. “You beeped me, called me here, to tell me you found nothing?”