Dark Rain: 15 Short Tales (40 page)

“Why don’t you seem nervous?”

“Maybe I am.”

“You should be.”

“I should be many things. But worried about your boyfriend isn’t one of them.”

“He’s not my boyfriend. Anymore.”

“You can tell that to him.”

“Why are you being like this? You said you would help me.”

“Help you, yes. Entertain you, no.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“I’ll let you figure that out.”

I could hear distant voices now. Someone was asking which door. Someone else said, “It’s a few more doors down.”

Right about now, the bikers would be passing my accountant neighbor and the girl who gave “massages.” I was suspicious of the legality of her massages, but let it slide. It was, after all, good to be neighborly.

Camry was openly staring at me. “You think I did this on purpose, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“You think I
wanted
Steel Eye to show up here?”

“I do, yes.”

“Why the fuck would I do that?”

The heavy footfalls stopped outside my office door, although a few stragglers clomped from behind. I said, “I think you like it when guys fight over you.”

“You don’t know me.”

Someone pounded on the door.

“Shit,” said Camry. “Please. You have to help me.”

I said nothing. I didn’t like Camry, but I also didn’t like someone pounding on my office door. It seemed… rude.

“Who’s fucking in there?” shouted a voice that was, predictably, gruff.

I said to Camry, “Do you or do you not enjoy guys fighting over you?”

“What the hell are you talking—”

“Is that you, Camry? You fucking bitch. Get the fuck out here before I break this fucking door down.”

She looked at the door, then at me, and then made a face that might have indicated that she’d peed herself a little.

“He sounds scary,” I said, and shivered.

“Shit, okay, fine. I admit it.”

“You admit what?”

“I like it when guys fight.”

“And not just fight, right? Specifically, fight over
you
.”

“Yes, yes, dammit. So? A lot of fucking good that does now.”

“Oh, it does some good.” I pushed out from behind my desk, then unlocked and opened my upper desk drawer and removed my Walther.

“What good?” she said, her eyes visibly lighting up when she saw the gun.

“It confirms you’re a bitch.”

Her mouth dropped open. “Then you’ll help me?”

“We’ll see,” I said.

“He’ll kill you,” said Camry as I reached for the doorknob and put the gun in the back of my waistband. I needed both hands.

“Something is going to kill me someday.” I turned the knob as I glanced back at her. “But it sure as hell isn’t going to be some jerkoff named Steel Eye.”

I opened the door.

***

I counted eleven of them. And only one of me. I liked my chances. Then again, I always liked my chances.

“Who the fuck are you?” asked the guy in front. The color in his right eye was washed out, as if his iris had exploded from looking too hard at the sun.

“Your worst nightmare?” I said, my voice rising slightly. I made it sound like a question.

The guys behind him laughed. Most were over six feet. None were as tall as me. I noted Steel Eye’s complete lack of concern for me. It was easy to dismiss a six-foot-four, ex-fullback when ten guys stood behind you. At least, that was what I told myself, since my pride was hurt a little.

“Let’s try this again, fuck-wad,” said Steel Eye. He tried to see around me. That was hard for him to do with shoulders like mine. He gave up and looked up at me. “Who the fuck are you?”

The mahogany handle of a revolver projected from his jeans. Either that, or he was just happy to see me. The others were packing, too. The guy in the back held a baseball bat. I looked at the sea of beards, worn blue denim, and tattoos. I looked at the bad teeth and bad attitudes… and did what I thought any logical badass would do.

I grabbed Steel Eye by his meaty shoulders, pulled him into my office and slammed the door shut.

Lucky for me, the door locked automatically.

It happened fast, and the big guy wasn’t expecting it.

He probably also wasn’t expecting to find his hairy mug pressed up against the pebbled glass window of my office door. I was almost certain he wasn’t expecting his gun to be forcibly removed from his pants or the sheer brute strength of the man presently pinning him flat.

Now, as his flared nostrils fogged the glass, I heard a cacophony of guns being drawn and hammers being pulled back. Mostly, I heard a whole lot of cussing and banging.

With one hand, I drew my own gun and held it on him. With the other, I pressed Steel Eye’s face harder than I probably had to against the glass. Any harder, and it would go straight through it. Undoubtedly, from outside, they got a good look at their leader’s distorted façade and the shadow of a gun pointed at his head. Pebbled glass had that lovely distortion effect.

“Tell them to back off,” I said. “Do it.”

“Fuck off.”

I pulled Steel Eye back and smashed him hard against the glass. I was risking breaking the window. It was a risk I was willing to take. I’d never much liked pebbled glass anyway.

“Tell them to put away their guns and wait for you in the parking lot.”

“I’ll kill you, man. I’ll kill you dead.”

“Well, that’s just redundant,” I chided, grunting a little as I pulled him back a few feet, and then rammed his face into the glass. Something crunched. I may be an anatomist, but I was pretty sure I had broken his nose—if the blood coating the pebbled glass was any indication.

“Oh, fuck man. You broke my nose!”

With my suspicions confirmed, I kept his face pushed hard against the door… giving his buddies outside a good look at their esteemed leader’s blood sliding in rivulets down the glass.

“Tell them,” I said.

“Fuck you!”

The guy had spirit, which I broke with more judiciously applied pressure.

“The glass… it’s gonna fucking break.”

“I know a good glass man.” That was a lie, of course. Who actually knew good glass men?

“Okay, okay,” he said, or mumbled, since his mouth was also pressed against the glass.

“Okay, what?”

“Okay, I’ll talk to them, goddammit.”

I eased on the pressure, and he spoke into the glass from a half inch away. “Bros, take a hike. I got this. Go on.”
The return mumbling on the other side suggested that they didn’t quite believe that their venerated leader had this. In fact, that he very much did
not
have this.

“Tell them to put their guns away, too,” I said. “This is a respectable neighborhood.”

“Respectable my ass,” he said, but dutifully relayed my order. There was yet more grumbling on the other side. From what I gathered, few liked me, and fewer still liked the current direction in which things had gone.

Most still loitered on the other side of my door. I slammed Steel Eye against the glass again. “So, your boys got themselves some comprehension problems?”

“Go on,” said Steel Eye. “Git!”

They “got,” cursing and lobbing threats at me. Threats were nothing new. Hell, I’d been threatened by the best.

When the last of them tromped down the stairs, I released Steel Eye and stepped back. He turned wildly, dripping blood from his nose, bottom lip, and chin. The drips joined the other bloodstains that sprinkled my carpet. Don’t ask
.

He considered charging me until he saw me holding my piece. Or maybe he saw my shoulders. Or maybe he wasn’t as tough as he thought he was.

“Are you going to just stand there and bleed, or do you want to talk about why you’re here?”

“You’re a dead man.”

“That’s a start.” I glanced at Camry, who was sitting on the couch, not looking at us. I said to her, “Wait for it…”

“Fuck you,” said Steel Eye.

“There it is,” I said and turned back to him. “Have a seat, Steel Cheeks.”

Except he didn’t sit. He stood there bleeding and looking menacing, both of which he did well. I indicated the client chair in front of my tooled leather desk. The desk was one of the few luxury items I owned. That it was left by the previous tenant was irrelevant. Meanwhile, Steel Dick didn’t move.

“Take a seat,” I said.

We both looked at each other. He glared. I didn’t so much glare as gaze at him poignantly.

“Sit,” I said. “And if you say
fuck you
again, I’m going to punch your broken nose.”

He mumbled something about me being dead by this time tomorrow… but sit he did.

“I want my gun back.”

I put my own gun in my waistband and opened the file cabinet drawer. I half-cocked the hammer and emptied the six bullets in his revolver into the drawer and shut it. It was a pain because I needed two hands to rotate the chambers and pull the plunger back. That would have been the time for him to go for me, but he didn’t.

I went around to my chair and sat, too, laying his empty Colt .45 revolver on the desk before me. It didn’t make much of a sound against the leather top. I loved my leather top. I also loved Cindy, but in a very different way.

My phone was in the open drawer next to me. I left it there.

“Camry tells me you killed a man,” I said.

“Camry’s a lying bitch.”

“Either that or you really killed a guy.”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Steel Eye. “Does it?”

“It does if you’re the dead guy or the police.”

“You ain’t the police.”

“No, but I’m the next best thing.”

Steel Eye wanted to say “fuck you” or something to that effect, but thought better of it, especially since his broken nose was still bleeding.

“Don’t matter if you’re dead, too.”

“You make a lot of threats for a man who just got his nose broken.”

He glared at me, then at Camry, then down at my desk. What did my desk ever do to him?

“If you killed a guy, you’re going to jail. If you didn’t, I’ll let you walk. So which is it?”

“Are you fucking serious, man?”

“As serious as the headache that’s going to be setting in soon.”

“I didn’t kill nobody, asshole.”

I turned to Camry, who was still sitting on the couch and still looking away.

“What do you have to say about that? He sounded serious enough to use a double negative.”

She didn’t move or blink. She was afraid of him, but there was something else, too.

Ah, hell. She still loves him.
I studied her body language… she hadn’t lied about him killing someone. And she
was
afraid of him. The fear trumped the love, but there was still enough of the latter there for her to text him her location.

I drummed my fingers on my leather-tooled desk. The drumming didn’t create noise of any real significance. I considered what to do. Then nodded to myself, because I like to be reassuring, even to myself.

I pulled out my cell and dialed a number. Sanchez answered on the first ring. “That’s more like it,” I said.

“You got lucky, Knighthorse. What do you need?”

“Biker gang. Eleven of them. Most armed. My office.”

“Be there in ten. Don’t piss anyone off.”

“Too late.”

“Shit.” He hung up.

They came in six minutes.

Steel Eye spent the six minutes glaring at me while holding an increasingly bloody wad of tissues to his face. I didn’t glare back. Indeed, I glanced whimsically with flashes of amusement and mild interest.

The sirens continued blaring outside even as the choppers all fired up. One by one, I heard them leave the smallish parking lot.

“Looks like you’re alone,” I said.

“They’ll be back,” said Steel Eye.

“So will my guys.”

“You hide behind the cops?”

“A show of force never hurt anyone, until it does. You taught me that.”

“Where I go, my brothers go.”

“Makes the bathroom kind of crowded,” I said, “I would think.”

“We’ve got each other’s backs.”

“And they’ve got mine.” I jutted a thumb toward the sirens. “Seems like we’re even.”

“Until we find you alone.”

“Or until I find you alone.”

He glared some more. I tossed him another tissue. Tissues don’t toss very well, unless you do it right. I did it right. I made the ball of it and tossed it. He snatched it out of the air and applied it to his broken nose, dropping the other one to the carpeted floor, where the hemoglobin transferred immediately to the fibers.
Oh joy.
Another bloodstain. My office now looked like a crime scene. Many crime scenes. Yeah, I was definitely not getting my deposit back.