Todd Robinson - The Hard Bounce

“I’m sorry I got you into this mess,” I said. “Until we fix this, I need to know you’re protected. You’ll be safe here.”

Kelly squeezed my hand and nodded. “I’m sure you know what you’re doing. I trust you.”

Holy Moses on a trampoline, I wished I felt like I knew what I was doing.

“Hey,” Junior said. “How come nobody’s apologized for perforating my fucking arm?”

She laughed through her teary eyes. “Junior, I am heartily sorry for having perforated your arm.” Then, mockingly sweet, “You want me to kiss it better?”

“Nah. Probably try to bite it off.” Junior turned to cover his smile. He sniffed and rubbed his flattened nose. “Loony broad.”

Twitch’s apartment was the second floor walk-up of a two-family house. We marched up the thin stairway like a line of ants, with me on point. I was as nervous as Twitch was about the condition of his apartment. At least I could poke my head in first to see if he’d missed anything incriminating. Like a body or two.

Much to my surprise, not only was the apartment in fair order, but it was pretty clean as well.

Spartan would be the best way to describe Twitch’s decor. A small color TV on a footlocker stood as his entertainment center. For furniture, he had a leopard print futon and a blue futon mattress rolled up against the wall.

Twitch smiled nervously as Kelly gave his apartment the feminine once over. “Anybody want a soda?” he offered, his tic working so hard it nearly caused a breeze. Poor Twitch. He wasn’t exactly a masterful conversationalist and entertainer. Maybe I should have brought Pictionary.

Kelly stared at Twitch’s fish tank and the one fish inside. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the edge of a Swank magazine poking out from under a closet door. As smoothly as I could, I stepped over and nudged the corner back under with my cane.

“This fish is beautiful,” she said.

Twitch beamed, his face that of a little boy at show-and-tell. “He’s a Siamese fighting fish. Named him Roadhouse.”

“How do you know he’s a he?”

“Got a huge cock.”

Junior howled a laugh.

I winced so hard, I nearly cramped up.

To my surprise, Kelly guffawed. My respect for the girl kicked up another notch. I suppose I still had some residual filter on her from my first impression.

“Excuse me,” Kelly said, “but where’s the ladies room?”

“Down the hall on the left,” Twitch said, pointing.

I leaned over to him and said under my breath, “You do have TP, right?”

“We’re in luck. Just got a fresh roll yesterday.”

The last time I’d visited the apartment, I made do with an old Boston Globe . The fewer indignities Kelly had to suffer, the better. Wiping with the comics page is a pretty big one, in my book. Unless you’re using Cathy .

A shriek pierced the air, rising in pitch like an air-raid siren. We all bolted down the hallway to find Kelly waving her hands and dancing a heebie-jeebie in the doorway on the right.

“ Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod ,” she babbled, her face the color of pasta dough.

“Wrong door! Wrong door!” I yelled.

One of my greatest hopes had been that she could spend a day or two without finding the pet room. Instead, she stumbled into it in less than thirty seconds.

In that wrong room, Twitch had two ball pythons and a six-and-a-half-foot long albino boa. Iggy, the iguana, rounded out the zoo.

And then there were the rats.

To feed his babies, Twitch kept a large fish tank full of rats that he bred himself. The tank was brimming with squirming rodentia that day. They all moved in one big, putrid mass of red eyes, oily fur, and teeth. Kelly gasped and made a horrified gurgling sound.

I knew how she felt. My skin crawled just looking at the snakes, never mind the rats. The first time I’d been shown the collection, I let out a scream just one octave down from hers.

“Uh, the bathroom is on the other left,” Twitch said.

“Can I tell you how much I hate rats?” Kelly’s teeth chattered as she sipped from the tea Junior was kind enough to go get at the packie for her. At least she’d stopped rocking and hugging her knees.

Junior stayed with her when Twitch motioned me into his room.

“Ollie’s working research on your shooter,” Twitch said.

“What kind of research?”

“He’s checking newspaper records, police records. Cross-search kinda stuff. If he is who I think he is, you might want some of this.” He lifted his mattress off the box spring. Sandwiched between the two was a selection of armaments that would have made Tom Clancy skeet in his boxers. Besides an assortment of handguns, I recognized an AK-47, a sawed-off Mossberg, a small Uzi, and some type of high-tech sniper rifle, laser sight and all.

“Jesus, Twitch, you expecting an ATF raid or just Armageddon?”

“I expect everything.” He waved his hand over the guns like a game show host displaying his fabulous, fabulous prizes. “Take your pick. They’re all untraceable.”

Against my better judgment, I had the gun Twitch had snuck into the hospital tucked in the back of my pants. “I’m good with the one I got.”

Junior walked in and picked up a nasty-looking Ruger revolver. Junior’s no better with a gun than I am. Either of us were more likely to shoot ourselves or each other than an attacker.

In an effort to cut down our odds of unintentional murder-suicide, I said, “I already got a gun, Junior,” hoping he would the put the damned thing down. Instead, he picked up an automatic, comparing their heft in his hands.

He looked at me, and for the first time, I could see the wear on him. Worry lines creased his face like they’d been etched there with a tattoo needle. He opened the gun. “I don’t.”

Of course, the gun was already loaded.

Kelly gave me a tight hug like I was leaving for Iraq. As far as I knew, we were going to war. Or starting one. Junior went down to start the car. Twitch looked around the room uncomfortably. Kelly took my face in her hands and gave me a slow, warm kiss. I didn’t say anything, but she answered the question she read on my face.

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “You come back as soon as you can.”

As I turned to walk out, I wondered just how fine she would be. The last thing I heard was Twitch clapping his hands together and saying, “So, who wants to feed the snakes?”

It was going to be a long night.

Junior got in the car and reached over to unlock my side. I climbed in and waited for him to start the engine. He just sat behind the wheel, chewing on the filter of his cigarette.

“Before I start this car, you gotta promise me that you will at least attempt to cut the bullshit.” He stared out the windshield.

“What shit are we talking about now?”

“The martyr shit. I heard you apologize to Kelly for getting her into this. You need to understand that this isn’t your fault. None of this is. We got called into this game way late in the fourth quarter, Boo.” Junior popped the dash lighter and lit his cig. “We got the ball when the game was pretty much played.”

“Yeah, but we can still kill the spread.”

“Okay, too much football. Let’s just say, and I’m only saying, as a theory-”

“Yeah?”

“Maybe we did make a bad situation a little worse.”

“I like your freewheeling use of the word ‘little.’”

“Hey, it’s a theory, ass.” He jabbed at me with the cigarette. I plucked it from his fingers and jumpstarted my own.

“Can we, in theory, start the car and go?”

“In theory, yes.” He didn’t start the car. “The point I’m trying to make here is that the situation was already bad, the game was fixed, and we were just playing the game we knew how to play. We got the girl. The rest is prologue.”