Todd Robinson - Dirty Words

"Yeah."

"You're a retard. Fuck off."

"Got it." Swede jumped up and walked out quickly, abandoning Pat. He stopped at the doorway. "Yo Pat. Call me later if you want to rent a movie or somethin'."

"I'm gonna step on your head later, is what I'm gonna do, you stupid fuck."

The Swede looked sincerely hurt by Fat Pat's anger and walked away, head down. I felt a twinge of guilt, like I'd just kicked a disabled puppy.

I turned my attention back to Pat. "So, all things considered, we're just going to keep hurting you until you tell us who paid you to get Ralphie." I twisted his ear again.

Pat squealed in pain. "I can't," he whined.

Junior leaned in close. "Whaddaya think, Boo? Another inch and the ear starts to tear off?"

"Let's see."

"Garrett!" Fat Pat shrieked. "We took him to Al Garrett!"

"Aw, no," Junior said softly.

I released his ear and smacked him upside the head with the same hand. "What's wrong with you?"

"He paid us."

"How much?" Asked Junior.

"Five hundred."

Junior leveled his gaze at me. "More than we're getting."

"We don't do work for that psycho."

"Just saying."

"Where did you drop him?"

"The Garrett Bowl."

Albert Garrett ran a vast bookmaking operation out of a bowling alley in North Quincy. Word had it that he and his crew of townie goons used the bowling balls and pins with a great deal of creativity to hurt people who were late with his money. I don't even want to talk about the ball-polisher rumor.

I did, however, want to beat the cellulite off of Pat, but instead said, "Get the fuck out of here," in a tone that left no room for misinterpretation of what the day held for him if he stayed.

Never has four-hundred pounds moved so fast. He looked like a Beluga ninja as he shot out the door.

"Now what?" Junior asked.

I groaned and rubbed the tension spot between my eyes. "Feel like driving out to Quincy?"

"No, but I guess we kinda have to now, don't we?"

"Yeah."

"I'm just glad you didn't try to get all clever and said something like 'Let's go bowling'."

"Shut up."

Momentum and element of surprise count for a lot, but a full charge in a car battery counts for something too. About a half a mile from the bowling alley, Miss Kitty decided to cough and wheeze herself to a sputter just as the first thick clumps of snow started tumbling from the sky. I melted a few on the way down with the fiery language that I directed at the car and Junior.

There went our momentum.

Ever try to muscle a small tank through the snow? Then you'd know what it was like trying to move a '79 Buick through a Nor'easter. If we didn't find a gas station soon, we'd have a real problem on our hands. Junior seemed calmly unsurprised.

"You knew this would happen, didn't you," I asked as I pushed from inside the passenger door. My calves burned with the effort.

"Sooner or later. The catalytic converter is jacked."

"And you haven't fixed it…why?"

"Because we don't make me enough money for these stupid fucking gigs that leave us stranded in a fucking blizzard?"

'Nuff said.

Of course, the next gas station was directly across the street from the alley. Junior popped the hood and then the trunk. He pulled another battery from the boot.

"You had another battery in there the whole time?"

"This one's not juiced either."

"Why?"

"I just keep switching and re-charging the batteries when I need to. Forgot to juice both."

I was about to nail Junior with a vicious retort, but couldn't squeeze it out between my chattering teeth. That was our lives, in a nutshell. Jury-rigged. Held together with tape and twine and a whole lot of duct tape.

Then it hit me…

If the grapevine held true about Al Garrett, we might have a card to play after all.

"Junior, wait." I grabbed his shoulder as he headed into the garage.

"What?"

"I got an idea. I need that battery."

I went into Junior's trunk. It was the usual treasure trove of worthless shit. I pulled some wires from a busted receiver (that he'd been meaning to get fixed), a joystick from an old Nintendo (he didn't know why he had it) and of course, duct tape. I stuffed the contraption into a grease-stained duffel bag and told him my plan.

Junior grinned and nodded appreciably. "Fuckin' MacGuyver."

Fuckin' MacGuyver.

The four goons stopped their bowling game when Junior and I walked through the frosted glass doors of The Garrett Bowl. I never realized how eerie a silent bowling alley was. You could've heard a mouse fart as the goons watched us walking through the lobby.

We went up to the bored-looking girl behind the shoe rental booth. I could smell her hairspray across the counter. Her bangs saluted us crisply. She didn't look up from her nail filing when I cleared my throat. Probably for the better. Junior didn't look up from the ten-grand worth of cleavage that heaved between her open-collared bowing shirt.

She popped her gum. "You guys Boo and Junior?"

Shit.

And there went the element of surprise.

"Um. Yeah."

"Al's waiting for you." She pointed a pink talon at the door next to the counter that read: Manager's Office.

Allow me to reiterate.

Shit.

We opened the door and walked in to see the wide back of a black leather chair. A finger came up from the other side, giving us the 'one minute'. Garrett was on the phone. "Yeah. The line is four and a half, you give him seven. The numbnuts is so in love with the Pats, he'd do it on nine. Yeah…"

The rumors were true. Behind the desk were a dozen flat-screen TV's, each one broadcasting a different sporting event; from the greyhounds at Wonderland Park to a poker tournament to-was he watching cricket? On the desk sat three expensive-looking computer banks, complete with three more flat-screen monitors.

He'd come a long way since his old man ran afoul of a chest full of cholesterol and left the bookie business to little Al. Twenty-five years old at the time, everybody laughed when the skinny kid went to collect on his dead old man's vigs. Al answered the dismissals with a brutality that became its own urban legend, stories that degenerate gamblers tell their kids to get them to eat their peas.

A decade later, nobody was laughing any more. Not after the rumors about the ball-polisher hit the grapevine.

"Call me tomorrow." He finished his conversation and turned his chair to us. Al Garrett looked a lot younger than his current thirty-five years. His long hair was slicked back and tied behind the navy suit jacket that looked like it cost more than my entire wardrobe. That wasn't saying much, since my entire wardrobe was probably worth about sixteen bucks. The suit was nice, nevertheless.

"You're Boo and Junior, right?"

"I'm Boo," I said, stupidly.

"I'm Junior," Junior said unnecessarily.

"How did you know we were coming?"

"When Tom Brady's nuts itch, I know how hard he scratches. You think I wouldn't know that you two assholes were coming my way?"

I made a mental note to have a serous conversation with Fat Pat the next time I ran into him.

Junior bunched his fists. Garrett saw it. "Unh, uh, uh." He waggled his fingers and the huge canary diamond on his manicured pinkie finger twinkled at us. I wondered if the girl in the lobby did his nails for him. "You don't want to pull any tough guy horseshit with me, boys." The finger moved under the desk. "I press this little button underneath here and those four big guys out there come running in. I'm afraid they're not very nice."

Neither were we. If Garrett's bruisers were on a par with Fat Pat and Swede, I think we'd normally have had a righteous chance. Unfortunately, Junior and I were both half-frozen and spent from pushing a goddamn Buick for a mile and a half. As it was, I gave us a fifty-fifty chance, at best.