Todd Robinson - The Hard Bounce

She made a disgusted face. “I’m not even sure what almondine is,” she said.

“You just throw a handful of mixed nuts into Hamburger Helper.” I recognized the sharp squeal of brakes from the front of my house and the familiar cough of Miss Kitty’s dying engine. “Aw, shit.”

“What? What’s the matter?” Instinctively, Kelly covered up her boobs.

“It’s Junior,” I said. I could already hear his boots stomping on the front steps.

“Better get one last good look then, Mr. Malone.”

Kelly did a playful pirouette, and I did indeed soak up that one last look. She trotted off to put on some decent clothes for our visitor. A visitor whose ass I planned on sticking a wad of French toast pudding up. I grabbed a handful of goop and headed to the door, stopping dead in my tracks when I opened the door and saw his expression.

Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

I stood there dumbly with a fistful of raw egg and singed toast. He stared back at me, a heavy weight suspended in the air between us. Yellow goo dribbled down my forearm.

“She’s dead, Boo.” Junior’s voice cracked.

“No.” I shook my head. “Don’t even kid-”

“She’s dead.”

Junior’s words struck Kelly like an open-handed slap. She ran to the bathroom, and I could hear her crying behind the door. Junior kept clearing his throat and stalking back and forth in the room.

I wondered where my anger was. It should have been there, coursing through me. Empowering me. It was there for Seven. It was there for Derek. Hell, it was even there for Underdog. Why wasn’t it there for Cassie?

A demon whispered in my ear. You’re used to losing women.

Of course. Of course, she’s dead.

You were supposed to be her hero, Boo.

Could you ever have been her hero? Anyone’s?

No , my demon said. You never saved anyone . You never could.

And you never will.

“What happened?” I finally asked.

“She ran away again. Two kids found her in the Dutch House. A step let loose or something and she fell. She must have broke her neck.”

“Did anyone see her?” My voice was as flat as a machine’s.

“See her what?”

“Did anyone see her fall?” I stared past Junior, to my front door, to the street.

Junior gave me a look. “No, Boo.”

“So if nobody saw-”

“Don’t do this. There’s nothing to figure. It’s a big rotting squat. You know that. Who the fuck knows if anybody saw anything? If they did, you can get yourself a nice list of junkies and degenerates as witnesses. Fucking place has been condemned as long as we’ve been in Boston.”

“Witnesses to what?” I turned away from the street.

Junior flopped down on my couch, slouched over. He stopped massaging his hands and paused. “What?”

“You said I could make a list of witnesses. Witnesses to what?”

“I was just saying-”

“Don’t bullshit me, Junior. You wouldn’t have said it if you didn’t think there might be witnesses to something.”

“To what? Witnesses to anything! To her falling! To somebody finding her. Shit, at the Dutch House, you’re probably likely to find more than a couple witnesses to alien abductions.”

“Try to find Paul. Ask him if he knows the kids who found her.”

“Boo, the cops already looked into this. Don’t make it into something it’s not. She’s the daughter of the goddamn DA. You think they didn’t look into every fucking detail?” There was no anger in his reprimand, just pity. Telling Ahab that there was no white whale.

“They didn’t know every detail. We do. We just yanked that kid away from a kiddie porn-no, a snuff porn-freak who’s the nephew of the most dangerous man on the Eastern Seaboard. We don’t know who had a copy of that movie. We don’t know what kind of maniac watched it and jerked off in his mother’s panties every time she died. Maybe… maybe one of them saw her walking down the street and… and…” I was reaching, and I knew it.

Junior knew it too. “You listening to yourself?”

“I don’t believe in three things, Junior: the Easter Bunny, a loving God, and coincidences. Just call Paul.” My failed breakfast experiment was drying into glue on my hand. In my numbness, I’d forgotten to wash it off. I nearly tore off the faucet head turning the water on.

Defeated or just too worn out to argue, Junior said, “Fine. We’ll look into this. But I’m only giving it a week, Boo. Our answering machine at the office is flooded. We’ve spent enough time with this. Curtis is pissed that you never called him back about last weekend, so we lost our Drop Bar account to Ironclad Security.”

I soaped up my hands and ignored him.

“We’ve got a dozen more waiting to hear back from us. I’m not losing 4DC over this. Our job ended when we handed her over. This is business I’m talking now, Boo. It’s a fucking tragedy and I’m sorry she’s gone but we have a goddamn business to run. One week.” With that, he marched out the door and drove off.

I drove Kelly back to her apartment in a heavy silence. We parted with the quiet intact, sorrow stripping us of our words.

Junior gave me one week. It only took two days.

I went alone that night to the Dutch House. A decade and a half ago, fire had gutted most of the old house. Not too long after, a local assemblage of homeless addicts, nutcase bums, and runaway teens moved right in. Some kids would just hang out there and get high, away from the street. A place they could call their own, burned, rat infested, moldy, and dangerous as it was. Since day one, Mr. Dutch always had a motley assortment of stragglers coming and going.

I knew the place all too well. I bunked there for a spell when I first came to Boston, jobless and homeless.

Mr. Dutch had probably moved himself in before the place stopped smoldering. Nobody knew Dutch’s full story. Since he lived at the house that bore his name, I guess he wasn’t technically homeless. Nobody knew how old he was or where he’d come from.

I found him across the street from the house, nervously twisting on his lanky, graying dreadlocks. For a vagrant, Dutch was always well-groomed and articulate. He spotted me as I walked down Brattle Street.

“That you, Boo?” Dutch cupped a hand to his mouth and blew out a long stream of marijuana smoke.

“It’s me, Dutch.”

“Well, hell’s bells, white boy. What you doing in this neck of the woods? You lose your lease?” He cackled and offered me his joint.

“No thanks,” I said, my eyes locked on the house across the street.

“Make your leg feel better.” He pointed the joint at the brace on my leg. “Help heal that shit up fast.” Dutch would tell you marijuana could cure everything from hepatitis to Republicans.

“No thanks. Got my own pills for it.”

“Got any more?”

“Sorry.”

“Whatever. Might at least help knock off that ugly gorilla face you wearing. Good for the heart and the mind.” He tapped a finger off his chest, then head. Dutch practiced what he preached. A lot. But he never seemed stoned. “Whatever did you do to yourself?”

“I got shot.”

“Mm-hmm.” He didn’t seem surprised at all, which bothered me. “You sure do know how to piss off the wrong people, dontcha?”

“Guess I do.” It was hard not to smile for Dutch, but I wasn’t feeling anywhere close to the humor he usually brought. “What can you tell me about the girl?”

He didn’t have to ask which girl. He knew.

“Aw, don’t tell me she was a friend of yours. That poor thing was just a baby.” Dutch shook his head and comforted himself with another toke.