Читать книгу The Painted Gun - Bradley Spinelli - Страница 11

5

It must have been about three in the morning, as I was sleeping the joyous, dreamless sleep of the bourbon drunk, when I heard the three beeps. I once had an alarm system in my house, but the alarm company doesn’t come and rip it out when you can’t pay the bill, it just becomes a glorified smoke detector. Whenever a door opens in my house—the front door, or even the door to downstairs—the old alarm sounds three annoying beeps. I jumped out of bed and went to the closet for my gun, realizing that it wasn’t loaded. I must have been standing just behind the door to my room, because when it opened suddenly I caught it right in the side of the head.

I barely had a chance to moan before a hand grabbed me and dragged me into the living room, sitting me down hard on the couch and attacking me with a piercing bright light. When my eyes adjusted I was looking at a face like a slab of meat.

“You Itchy Crane?”

“Not even sure you got the right guy?”

I got a slap in the face for that.

“Don’t get smart with me. I don’t like smart guys.”

“What, they make you feel dumb?”

I caught another slap for that, one that broke my drunk’s rude awakening and brightened me up enough to take an interest in the speaker.

“You gonna cut out that smart lip?”

I pondered the question, taking advantage of the opportunity to look at the five-foot, three-hundred-pound side of beef standing in my living room. I was thinking maybe I could take the bastard when a tall, cool character came drifting in from the kitchen, eating a salami sandwich and chewing it loudly. “Just cover him, Al, lemme do the talking.”

Of course there would have to be two. Thugs always come in twos in the funny pages. I thought I’d say nothing for a change.

“Nice digs you got here,” the cool one said. He was dark-haired but fair-skinned, with a high Irish forehead and chiseled features. He didn’t look dangerous from a physical standpoint, but the Colt in Al’s hand made me forget about trying to take either of them.

“Glad you like the place,” I said, pressing my fingers to my temples to try to clear my mind of the buzzing sound from either the bourbon or Al’s fist, or both. “Why don’t you make yourself a sandwich or something—you know, make yourself at home.”

“Thanks, I will.”

“Want me to slap him again?”

“I don’t think that will be necessary.” The cool one had a voice like a lizard licking sandpaper. He slithered onto the other couch, stuffed the last of my salami in his mouth, and put his feet on my coffee table. “So, Itchy—can I call you Itchy?”

“Why not.”

“Right. Why not. I think we have the upper hand here. So, Itchy, you working this Ashley thing or aren’t ya?” He smacked his lips and licked a bit of mustard off a long, pointed index finger.

“Naw, I can’t say I’m working it. Floundering is probably the better term.”

“Ah. Witty.”

“Yeah, real sense of humor this guy’s got,” Al said, waving the Colt in my general direction.

“Al, why don’t you park your Samoan ass.”

Samoan. Of course. Why not a Samoan?

Al sat down heavily in one of my chairs, still within slapping distance.

“See, this is the thing here, Itchy. We don’t want you working, floundering, investigating, nosing around, sniffing about, wishy-washing, dillydallying—you can invent your own word here, if you like. Let’s just say we don’t want you doing anything with this Ashley thing. We think we’re just fine without you.”

“Fine by me,” I said, a little too quickly. “Feel like getting the hell out of my house now?”

“Okay, Al, now you can slap him.”

He did. It was less a slap than what you would call a full-on, closed-fist punch to the eyebrow. I failed to enjoy it.

“I don’t want you to think I don’t like you,” the lizard was lisping when the stars cleared out of my eyes. “I mean, I like you quite a bit. You’ve got spunk. Panache. Je ne sais quoi. And I like your taste in cold cuts. So what I want, and when I say want, I don’t mean want so much as—what’s the word, Al?”

“Order?”

“No, that’s much too harsh. Ah . . . what I . . . require—there we go—what I require is that you go back to bed, get up in the morning, put a steak on that eye of yours, go out to the store, and buy yourself some more of that nice salami. Maybe I’ll pop by next week for a sandwich and we can chat about the weather. Or the ’9ers. Or the price of fucking tea in China.” He stood up and leaned into me, his hot breath inches from my face. “But what we will NOT talk about is a little cunt named Ashley. Because SHE,” he flicked a finger at my eyebrow, which was already beginning to swell, “IS”—flick—“NOT”—flick—“YOUR”—flick—“PROBLEM.” He sat down. “We solid on this, Itchy?”

“Sure as you got salami breath, buddy.”

Al clocked me a slap across the head. It was half-assed for him, but it brought those constellations right back for me.

“Let it go, Al. Our bright boy here has lots to think about.”

I heard those three beeps again and the door shut. I opened my eyes. I heard an engine rev and jumped up, leaned over the back of the couch, parted the Venetians and saw brake lights on a beat-up old Datsun. I copped the license plate number and flopped down on the couch.

Home sweet home, sweet solitude, just me and fifty old ladies screaming bloody murder inside my head.