Todd Robinson - The Hard Bounce

For the second time that week, I felt the chill of Louis Blanc’s gun against my head. His other arm reached around my throat in a headlock, pulling me off-balance in the chair. I had no footing or leverage to resist if I wanted to. So I kept talking instead.

“How old was she, Mr. Cade? She was fourteen, wasn’t she? What if it was her, Frankie? What if it was her?”

That caught him for a second. Then, just as fast, the rage overwhelmed his doubt. He grabbed my wrist and went straight for my fingers with the lobster cracker. I made a fist and pulled my hand back. I wasn’t going to resist all that strenuously, not with a gun to my temple. Still, I wasn’t going to give up my fingers without making it difficult.

“Gimme his goddamn hand, Lou!”

“Uh, Frankie? I only got two hands here. You want me to let him hold the gun for me so I can keep his hand straight?”

“Shoot him in the fucking head, he keeps moving.”

I stopped. But then Cade stopped too.

Because I was smiling.

“The fuck you smiling at?”

Suddenly, the grip around my throat loosened. “Well, shit on me,” Blanc said.

“What the fuck are you smiling at, Lou?”

“Frankie, you might want to look at your lobster,” I said.

Cade looked down at the stupid bib. At the tiny red laser dot that danced in the center of the cartoon lobster’s forehead. “The fuck?”

Louis whistled through his teeth. “Nicely played,” he whispered in my ear as he released his grip around my neck and put all four legs of my chair on the floor. He gently smoothed out the shoulders of my shirt and clapped me on the shoulder as he holstered his gun with the other hand.

“What the fuck is this?” Frankie tried to wipe the laser dot off his bib with a napkin. The light just ran over his hand.

“That, Frankie, is a laser beam. Most commonly used on sniper rifles and the like.” I knew Blanc’s gun was gone, but I could still feel the ghost of its pressure against my temple.

“Shit,” Frankie said.

Feeling a sudden empowerment, I reached across the table and took Frankie’s glass of white wine. I swallowed a mouthful to clear my slightly crushed voicebox. “This isn’t a threat, Mr. Cade. This is a fucking promise. Now I want you to hear me when I say this.”

“Yeah, yeah. You got my fucking attention, kid. Hey, Lou, can you believe this shit?”

Trying to regain my composure, I finished Frankie’s wine and placed the glass back on the table. “I understand why you did what you did. But Derek is pulling some sick shit, and he’s pulling it publicly. So I’m offering you two things: The first thing is my silence. You talk to him. He stops. Period. I hear of any more movies, and I buy myself a ‘get out of jail free’ card, courtesy of turning on your nephew.” Cade didn’t answer me, but I knew he was hearing me. His eyes were down to two slits.

“Second thing is I don’t raise my hand right now. If I do, your bib won’t save your lovely sweat suit. You proved your point. You got me. You got me good. But don’t you ever, ever threaten my friends or anyone I care about again.” I let my words hang.

Then they both started laughing. Whooping guffaws of amusement that threw me off the cool hand I thought I was playing. Cade walked around the table and put his arms around me, lifting me up from my chair.

“Jesus H. Christ, Lou! You believe this kid?” Frankie cupped my face in his hands and kissed me on the cheek. I don’t think it was a kiss of death, but it wasn’t full of passion, either.

“I must admit, Frankie, I’m impressed.” Lou leaned against the table, took a pair of cigarettes from a polished gold case, and lit them with a gold lighter. He handed one to me. I was too bewildered to refuse it. I guess state tobacco laws didn’t apply in mob-run establishments.

Frankie put his arm around me like we were long-lost family. “I mean, where do you buy pants with balls so big?” There were little tears of laughter in the corners of Frankie’s eyes. “C’mere.” Frankie hugged me again.

“You’re a piece of work, Malone. No doubt.” Louis’s scar crinkled up when he smiled, the cigarette clenched between his teeth.

Frankie grabbed me by the shoulders. “Listen. You impressed me today. I can’t tell you the last time I’ve been so impressed.”

Louis blew a stream of smoke up at the ceiling. “You used to like that Rainey kid in Pittsburgh.”

“Before he went and made me have him shot.”

“Yeah.” Louis looked at me hard. “Before that.”

Cade clapped his hands and laughed. “True. But you, Malone. You, I hope, won’t make me kill you.”

How was I supposed to respond to that?

Frankie continued. “I’ll tell you what. You have actually done both me and my nephew a favor today. I’m sure that he don’t know about any police file on him. He don’t need the grief, and I sure as shit don’t. As of today, Derek’s production company comes to a halt. I’ll see to it myself, okay?”

“Okay.” If there was anything else I wanted to say, I couldn’t think of it.

Cade chucked me on the cheek and flecks of ice came back into his eyes. “Now, if I ever see you again, I’m gonna personally make sure you eat your own testicles. Got it?”

I got it. He knew I got it. There was no need for me to answer.

“Now, get the hell out of here. I gotta piss, you made me laugh so hard.” He dismissed me with a wave and left.

Before I turned to go, Lou gave me one more smile and a wink.

With his dead eye, of course.

Out the door, I hustled quickly past the dinosaur. He’d managed to make it back to his feet with the assistance of the small crowd of rubberneckers that had grown around him. He held his hand to his head, blood streaming between his fingers.

I climbed into the car, and Junior sped off. “We good?”

“We good.”

Junior tossed the laser sight he’d pulled off of Twitch’s rifle onto the backseat. “By the way, what was the backup plan in case they didn’t buy the laser?”

“We don’t need no stinking backup plan.”

“Didn’t have one, did you?”

“Um, no.”

Boo Malone. Had a hell of a week.

It was time for as close to a vacation as I ever got. Kelly took the week off from work to nursemaid me back to health.

That, and we fucked. A lot. One night in bed, a thin trickle of blood smeared down her leg. “Oh, crap,” she muttered. “Oh, God, this is embarrassing.” It was nearly dark in the room, but I thought I could feel the heat of her blushing.

Before she could get any more embarrassed, I felt the warmth pooling in the sheet under my leg. “I think you’re good. I think my leg might have been a little overtaxed.”

“Oh, thank the lord.”

“Yeah, thank the lord that the bullet hole in my leg is bleeding again.”

“You know what I mean.”

She turned the bedside light on. In the yellow glow, the blood looked worse than I thought. And now that the endorphins were wearing off, my leg was starting to hurt like a motherfucker again. “Well, looks like somebody needs a bath.”

“Looks like we both do.”

“I’ll get the sponge.”

“Let’s try something else for a change.”

I limped into my kitchen and found an old roll of cling wrap in my junk drawer. After I daubed the blood from my wound and applied a generous dollop of Bacitracin to the stitches, I wrapped my thigh tightly in the plastic.

Kelly poked her head from around the bedroom. “Hmmm, kinky…” she said in an inflection I recognized.

“Did you just Hedley Lamarr me?”

“That I did, cowboy.”

“Wow. Any woman quoting Blazing Saddles is a woman I can fall in love with.”