The Hard Bounce Read online

  Junior took me by the arm and pulled me the long way around to the entrance of The Cellar so no one could tell the cops where to find us.

  Junior walked at my side as we passed around the lot. I could feel his eyes on me. Without looking over, I said, “You got something to say?”

  “Nothing specific. You okay?”

  “Finer than Carolina. We just performed a public service, if you ask me.”

  He didn’t ask me. “Fair enough,” he said. “You want a soda big guy?”

  “Fuck off.”

  Toward the front of the jam, an old lady in a beat up Dodge Omni and Red Sox cap gave me a big thumbs-up.

  For some reason, that bothered me.

  I could still hear the kids crying when we got back to the bar. I shouldn’t have been able to, but I did.

  Chapter Two

  Soaked from the rain, we did our best to dry off with bar napkins. The flimsy napkins kept shredding, leaving little white pills on our clothes. Junior kept smirking, looking like he had something to say.

  “What?”

  “He’s not gay; he just likes fucking dead things?”

  I held it in as long as I could, but one loose snort later and we both exploded into laughter. Junior doubled over, howling. My ribs ached from the force of my own guffaws. The guilt still gnawed, but I needed the laugh right then.

  It was easy to cut the giggles, though, when we realized one of us had to clean up the pile of shit outside.

  “Rock, paper, scissors?” Junior asked, wiping away a tear.

  “Of course.” If it was good enough to settle negotiations when we were eleven, it was good enough today.

  “On shoot. One, two, three, SHOOT!”

  Rock.

  Junior made paper.

  Shit.

  “I’ll get you the shovel, garbage man,” Junior said. He hooted evilly as he trotted to the utility closet. I really hate it when Junior hoots.

  An hour later, the show closed and I was only about two-thirds done. The crowd exiting the building my way covered their faces and made disgusted sounds as they passed. They were all smart enough not to make any comments. I had a shovel.

  The cleanup left me glazed in vinegary old beer, ashes, and some viscous crap I didn’t even want to attempt identifying. It also left me deeply, deeply pissy. By the time I was down to the last shovelful, the storm had transitioned from drizzle to summer downpour.

  Carefully, I pulled a cigarette from my pocket, mindful not to contaminate any part that was going into my mouth. The wet paper split and tobacco crumbled under my fingertips. I was just about to let loose with one of the longest, loudest, and most profane curses in the history of language when I heard a woman’s voice from the doorway behind me.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Malone?”

  I turned, wanting to see who was speaking before I answered.

  “Are you William Malone?” she asked.

  I gave her the once-over. Too small to be a cop. Definitely too young to be a cop in a suit. Usually only cops call me Mr. Malone. “That’s me,” I said, staying right where I was.

  “Kelly Reese,” she said, extending her hand in a sharp, businesslike gesture.

  I didn’t take her hand. “No offense, but I wouldn’t do that right now. Not unless you plan on getting some serious vaccinations later,” I said, trying to wring rain and muck out of my shirtfront.

  She didn’t get it at first. Then the wind shifted and she caught a quick whiff of what I had been dealing with. To her credit, she managed to cover her reflexive gag with a demure cough. “Oh,” she said through watering eyes.

  “What can I do for you, Ms. Reese?”

  “I’d like to talk to you about possibly hiring your firm.”

  My firm? “I don’t know what you’ve been told, Ms. Reese, but we’re not lawyers.”

  “Maybe it would be better if we spoke inside. You’re getting wet.” The wind blew her way again, and fresh tears sprang into her eyes. She subtly made with the scratchy-scratchy motion instead of pinching her nostrils shut. Classy chick.

  “I am wet. Can’t really get much wetter.”

  She nodded sickly in agreement. “I’m sorry,” she said, and she finally covered her nose and mouth, unable to take the stink anymore. I guess class can only hold out for so long.

  “After you,” I said. I could feel my ears burn with embarrassment as I turned and followed her up the stairs.

  Everything about her screamed “out of place.” Her dark, curly hair was cut in a perfect bob. Most of our regulars looked like their hair was styled by a lunatic with a Weed Whacker. She was also in a dark blue suit that looked like it cost more than the combined wardrobe of everyone else in the bar.

  Whether your collar is blue or white, in Boston, you stick with the crowd that shares your fashion sense. The city’s got a class line as sharp as a glass scalpel and wider than a sorority pledge’s legs. The old money, reaching back generations, live up on Beacon Hill and the North End. They summer in places like Newport and the Berkshires.

  They see me and mine as a pack of low-class mooks. We see them as a bunch of rich bitch pansies. Kelly Reese’s collar was so white it glowed. Still, it didn’t keep me from checking out her ass as she walked up the stairs ahead of me. Ogling knows no economic boundaries.

  “Want to sit down here?” I indicated a table at the end of the bar.

  “Is there anyplace quieter? More private?” She asked, wincing at the volume of the Dropkick Murphys track bellowing from the jukebox.

  “Don’t worry about it. Nobody else can hear us over the music.” As it was, I could barely hear her.

  “This—This is fine, then.” She looked around the room like she’d found herself on the wrong side of the fence at the zoo.

  I sat in the gunslinger seat, back to the wall. She rested her hands on the tabletop but quickly pulled them back onto her lap with a sick expression. The table was sticky and dirty, but there probably wasn’t a cleaner one in the place. Princess would just have to make do.

  “Would you like a beer?”

  She smiled nervously. “Uh, sure.”

  I waved at Ginevra, the heavily tattoed Nova Scotian waitress who was built like she should have been painted on the side of a WWII bomber. Ginny gave me the one-minute finger as she downed a shot with a table full of middle-aged punk rockers, then walked over to us. “Whatcha need, hon?”

  “Two Buds and a shot of Beam.”

  Ginny wrinkled her nose and looked around. “Christ, what the hell is that stench?” She leaned closer, following her nose down to me. “Damn, Boo. You been washing your clothes in a toilet again? Whoo!” She dramatically waved the air away from her face with her checkbook.

  “Yeah, Ginny. Thanks. Thanks for the input,” I said, my ears burning again as she walked off to get the drinks.

  Ms. Reese raised an eyebrow. “Boo?” Was it a tiny smile or a smirk that touched on her face?

  “Long story,” I said and quickly got up from the table. “I’ll be right back.”

  I took the stairs two at a time up to the 4DC Security office. And by office, I mean the space next to liquor storage, complete with desk, separate phone line, and one dangling light bulb. All the comforts of home, if home is a Guatemalan prison.

  Tommy Sheralt, the alcoholic lunatic who owned the joint, cut us a deal on the space. We got a desk, Tommy got a discount on our rate and the guarantee that we won’t tell the customers that he cuts the top-shelf liquor with rotgut.

  In the desk, we kept spare sets of clothes for such emergencies, though our usual emergencies involved bloodstains.

  I stripped out of my foul clothes and into a clean pair of jeans and a black T-shirt. I still reeked. Junior kept a pint of cheap cologne in his drawer, and I tried to cover up the rest with an Irish shower. I was trading in smelling like a bum for stinking like a Greek man-whore, but it was a step up. Finally, I cracked a bottle of Crème de Menthe and gargled, spitting into the wastebasket while quietly resenting Ms. Kell
y Reese for making me give a shit.

  When I walked back downstairs, Junior was doing his best seductive lean-in on Kelly. I hurried over and caught the tail end of one of Junior’s knee-slappers. “And the farmer says, ‘That’s the fourth faggot rooster I bought this month!’” Junior cracked up while Ms. Reese tried her best not to look completely horrified.

  “Good one, Junior,” I said and clapped him on the back. “I’ll take it from here.”

  “Huh? My bad. Didn’t know I was stepping on toes here.” Junior winked at Kelly with as much subtlety as a bear on a unicycle. Kelly gagged on her beer. “By the way, Boo, we need another bottle of Johnny Blue at the bar. Came in with the Bud,” he said, nodding to the bottle in Kelly’s hand.

  Well, well . . . Ms. Reese just got a whole helluva lot more interesting.

  Johnny Walker Blue wasn’t sold at The Cellar. Would have been like offering Kobe beef at Taco Bell. Junior just informed me that our little Ms. Reese had come with a police presence.

  I didn’t have to look at the bar itself. From where I sat, I could see the entire room reflected in the long mirror running across the far wall. He blended in better than the prom queen across the table from me, but I knew immediately who Junior was talking about. He sat nursing a beer and stared straight ahead, all the while watching our table out of the corner of his eye. Big guy with a white beezer haircut and an old black nylon jacket on despite the heat, which told me he was packing. His air was “don’t fuck with.” Old-school tough.

  “You got this covered?” Junior asked, tipping his head back toward the bar and the cop.

  “Yeah.” I nodded. “You can head back downstairs. I got it up here.”

  “You sure?” I knew he was only about a third concerned. The other two-thirds were curiosity and just plain nosiness.

  “I got it,” I said, a little firmer.

  Junior nodded and walked toward the front, giving the cop’s back a long lingering glare.

  I checked the cop in the mirror one more time before I turned my full attention back to Ms. Reese. “So, do you own a bar?”

  Her eyes widened. “Excuse me?”

  “You said you wanted to hire us. We do bar and club security. That’s what people hire 4DC Security to do.”

  “No, I don’t own a bar.”

  “Club, then?”

  “No.”

  The game of twenty questions was wearing thin. “So assuming you haven’t mistaken us for a ballet troupe, what is your business with us, Ms. Reese?”

  “Kelly,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Please, you can call me Kelly.”

  Even that small offering sounded patronizing. She seemed to have been torn between disgust, condescension, and sheer horror since she walked in the place. It was all probably unintentional, but it was crawling under my skin like a fat tick.

  “Okay, Kelly, what’s your business?”

  “My employer would like to hire your services.”

  “And just who might your employer be?” I said, popping down my bourbon.

  “I’m not at liberty to divulge that at this time.”

  “You’re not…” I laughed a little too loudly and glanced in the mirror. My outburst made a white beezered head turn at the bar.

  Gotcha.

  “Let me explain something to you, Kel. I don’t know whether you’ve seen too many spy movies or just have a hard-on for old noir, but I don’t work for phantoms, and this cloak and dagger bullshit you’re feeding me is going right up my ass. So you can cut the shit and talk to me straight or you can go piss up a rope.” I stood from the table, ready to walk. It was one part my shitballs of an afternoon and another part poorly repressed class rage. Either way, it felt good to let her have it.

  Her voice shook a bit when she said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Malone. I’m just following my employer’s wishes at this time. I didn’t mean to get you angry.”

  She looked much younger than my original assessment right then. On the table in front of her was a small pile of napkin bits. She’d been nervously ripping off pieces and rolling them into little balls. She wasn’t just being snobby. She was legitimately scared to be there. And of me.

  Hot shame filled my chest. Kelly Reese made me feel like a bully. “Listen, I… I’m sorry,” I said. “You didn’t deserve that.”

  “No need to apologize,” she said, but her eyes didn’t leave the table.

  “I’m not having the best day, as I’m sure you can smell.”

  She forced a tight smile. “You do smell awful.”

  “Thanks. Ask anybody. Any other day and you’d be overpowered by my smoothly masculine musk.”

  “No doubt.” The smile came a little less forced.

  “Can we start from the top again? And this time straight?”

  “I’m just here to find out whether or not you’re available for hire.”

  “For what?”

  “My employer’s daughter has been missing for a week and a half. He would like you to try to find her.”

  I drained the last of my beer. “I don’t know who you or your employer has been talking to, but that’s not what we do. Like I said, we do club security and every now and then we’ll pick up a bail jumper for shits and giggles, but that’s it. Hell, more often than not, we know the guy we’re picking up. Missing persons usually go to cops like your friend at the bar.” I tipped my empty shot glass at the cop. The cop saw my gesture and closed his eyes, disgusted. I gave him a hearty wave.

  Kelly Reese raised an eyebrow. “Well, with observational skills like that, you might be the right person for the job.”

  “The flattery is certainly helping, but again—”

  “However, my employer knows that going to the police could mean the situation leaking to the media. Unless it becomes absolutely necessary, he would like to avoid that.”

  “And your police escort is here…” I trailed off, allowing her to fill in the blank.

  “My friend at the bar is just here to keep an eye out.”

  “For what? For me?”

  “For anything.”

  “I see,” I lied. I didn’t see shit yet. Although my ego deflated slightly that I didn’t warrant the singular attentions of her bodyguard. “But as I said, we really don’t do that sort of thing.”

  “He’s just asking you to try.” She reached into her briefcase and pulled out a cream-colored envelope and slid it across the table. “Here’s a picture and a small retainer, should you choose to take our offer.”

  I opened up the envelope and pulled a smaller envelope out. It was unsealed, and clearly held more than a month’s wages in bouncer gigs. I hoped my eyes didn’t do a cartoon bug-out. “Okay, then, we’ll give it a shot,” I said a bit too quickly. Money talks, brother. And in this case it sang a rock opera.

  I pulled out the picture.

  It was the girl with the dyed red hair.

  I leapt up from the table, knocking over my chair, and ran to the door where she had just kissed me on the cheek less than two hours before. Junior saw my frenzy and ran over. “Yo! Where’s the fuego?”

  I stuck the picture in his hand. “This girl was just here. Find her!”

  No questions asked, he ran back down to the basement. I looked around the street in front of the club. Nothing. I ran back through the bar and out the back. A few kids were hanging out there in a cloud of acrid pot smoke and quickly hid their hands. No girl.

  I let out that long and profane curse I was holding in.

  I stormed back into the bar and over to Kelly. “All right! What the hell is going on? That kid was just here. Who is she?”

  The cop decided he’d had enough of the silent partner routine. He quickly came over to the table. “What do you mean she was just here?”

  “What the hell do you think it means, Chief Wiggum?” I smacked the back of my fingers across the envelope. “She was just here.”

  Junior came in through the back. “Nothing. There’s a few band members and a couple of gro
upies downstairs, but not this one. Who is this?”

  The cop said, “Where? Who was she with?”

  “Who is this?” Junior asked again.

  “I don’t know,” I said to them both.

  “Then why the fuck am I looking for her?” Junior asked.

  “Where was she?” The cop again.

  “Hey!” I yelled at the cop. “Step off! Until you introduce yourself, you can blow me with the interrogation.” His face darkened, but he shut up for the moment. “Junior, go back downstairs. Show that picture to everyone down there and ask them if they know her, and if anybody does, where she went and who she was with.”

  Junior threw his hands up and sighed. “Fine.”

  I turned on the cop. “You. Who are you?”

  He pointed a sausage finger at Kelly. “I’m with her.” Kelly just stood at the table, tense and unsure.

  “I didn’t ask you who you were with, pal. I asked you who you were.”

  Veins bulged on his forehead. “Danny Barnes.” He said his name like it should mean something. It didn’t. “And you’d better watch your mouth, boy.” He meant it. I suddenly remembered the man was a cop. And according to his bulgy jacket, an armed one.

  “Good. Thank you. Now that we’re all introduced, why don’t one of you fill me in on what the fuck this is all about.” Relative calm restored itself, and the three of us sat back down at the table. “Question number one,” I said. “Who is this girl?”

  Barnes answered. “Her name’s Cassandra.”

  “Cassandra what? Just Cassandra? Does Cassandra have a last name or is she like Cher?”

  I thought I could hear Barnes’s teeth grinding. “As I’m sure Ms. Reese has explained to you, last names are out of the question at the moment. We need to respect her father’s request for privacy.”

  “Lemme tell you something, I don’t need to respect a goddamn thing. Ms. Reese hasn’t told me a whole hell of a lot as of yet, so why don’t you, Danny?”

  Kelly shifted uncomfortably in her seat but stayed silent. Barnes had taken control of their end of the meeting. She seemed more than content to let him have it.