“Fine,” Trey said, obviously relieved to have gotten this much. Headlines were guaranteed.
Thistle did what I’d told her to do, pointed at a short guy in the second row. All the print guys had neat little reporters’ notebooks, but the best Louie the Lost had managed in the minutes since I’d called him was a bright yellow legal pad as big and conspicuous as a semaphore.
“You,” Thistle said. “The handsomest man here.”
“My question is for Miss Annunziato,” Louie said. He made a sweeping gesture that encompassed the entire stage. “Look at those pictures, would you? That’s a little kid up there. So here’s my question. Your family has been in organized crime for decades, but not like this. How do you think your father would like you taking his organization into kiddie porn?”
26
“Well, that went well,” Thistle said as we stepped into the hallway. “Do you think there was one person there I didn’t piss off?”
“I’m pretty sure Trey was happy,” I said. “Until about ninety seconds ago.”
I could hear the reporters shouting questions at Trey. The volume dropped as the door swung closed behind us and then grew louder again as it opened, and Thistle’s eyes darted past me and widened into circles, and two arms wrapped themselves around my neck, clamped tight, and lifted me off my feet.
I got both hands over the upper arm and pulled, kicking back with my heels at his shins, but no go: whoever it was, he’d grabbed the sleeves of his jacket-a plaid that looked familiar-with both hands and was hanging on tight. Then, as I began to choke, he pivoted so I was facing the door that had just swung closed again, and ran me, face-first, into it.
I saw some neurologically expensive special effects and said something along the lines of “Owww,” and then the guy who was strangling me topped me by saying, “OOOOOWWWWW!” and dropped me. I put a hand against the wall for support and swiveled to see Hacker backing away in his awful plaid suit, his hands cupped over his groin, as Thistle pulled back her foot and launched another kick. This one missed, and she staggered back, flailing her arms to keep from going over backward, but I caught her. The three of us stood there, Thistle panting in my arms, Hacker red-faced and trying not to groan, and me suddenly weak-kneed, a late reaction to near strangulation.
“What the hell was that?” I demanded.
“You’re … finished,” Hacker said. He sounded like he had a stone the size of a loaf of bread lodged in his throat. “Wattles and me … we’re going to feed you to the dogs ourselves.”
“That’s a figure of speech, right?” Thistle said. “Tell me that’s a figure of speech.”
“This asshole isn’t smart enough to use a figure of speech. What’s got you upset, Hacker? Some kind of clampdown on police corruption?”
“You … you just wait.”
“What would make more sense than me just waiting would be you starting at the beginning and telling me what the hell you’re talking about. Presumably, you’re here to deliver some sort of message. And unless you’ve got something really fundamental wrong, which wouldn’t surprise me, feeding me to the dogs is the or else part of it. See, or else should come second.”
Thistle said, “What dogs?”
“Tell you later, but they’re not that much worse than those piranhas you just finished with. What about it, Hacker? Aren’t you supposed to be trying to get me to do something?”
“I saw that, in there,” Hacker said, still breathing hard.
“Gee, I guess they let just anybody in.”
“I saw Louie, and don’t you try to tell me you didn’t bring him in.”
I said, “Louie who?”
“You even told her,” he said, lifting his chin at Thistle, “to call on him.”
“He did not,” Thistle said. “He told me it was time to get out of there. I was getting too loaded.”
“He’s a cop,” I told her.
Thistle brought her hands to the center of her chest and wrung them. “Oh, my poor little heart, it’s pounding so hard.”
“Keep it up, you little junkie bitch,” Hacker said. “When this movie is over, you won’t be so fucking immune.”
“… is over, you won’t be so fucking immune,” Thistle said, doing Hacker to perfection.
For a moment, Hacker froze. Then he said, “And if you think I’m kidding-”
“… think I’m kidding,” Thistle said, half a syllable behind him.
“Cut that out,” Hacker said.
“Cut that out,” Thistle said. Her tone matched his exactly, and her voice was almost as low as his. Her arms hung loose, the fists semi-balled, shoulders high, chin forward, feet planted wide, corners of the mouth pointed down. Hacker to the quarter-inch.
Hacker’s right arm came up, a pointed index finger at the end of it, and Thistle’s movement mirrored his precisely. He stopped, mouth half-open, and so did she.
“See how stupid you look?” I said.
“Tell her to stop-” he said, and almost in unison, Thistle said, “Tell her to stop-” Hacker choked it off, glaring at her, and got exactly the same glare in return. He opened his mouth. Thistle opened hers. Hacker’s tongue flicked the center of his lower lip, and Thistle’s did the same. For five or six seconds the two of them stood there, immobile as frescoes, and then Thistle said, “Aww, you’re too easy,” and relaxed.
Hacker waited to make sure she’d really quit. He put his hands on his hips, but she didn’t follow suit. “I still know about Louie,” he said to me. “One more double-cross, one more hint you’re not being straight with us, and you’ll be all over Rabbits’s backyard.” His eyes flicked nervously to Thistle, but she was through playing.
“See?” I asked. “See how much easier it is when you do things in the right order? There’s the message, errand boy: Do what you’re supposed to or it’s doggie time. Tell you what: You don’t mention Louie to anybody, and I won’t tell Wattles how you screwed this up. And I’ll make sure she stops imitating you.”
“He’s no fun anyway,” Thistle said. “It’s like imitating a hand puppet.”
“Just so’s you remember,” Hacker said to me, his eyes going involuntarily to Thistle. He turned to go, and when he was halfway down the hall, he looked back and said to me, “You don’t want that kid of yours to lose her daddy, do you?” I took a couple of steps toward him, and he backed away, saying to Thistle, “And you, chickie, you’re going to have a much bigger day than you think.” Then he turned the corner and was gone.
“A bigger day?” Thistle asked. “What’s that mean? Are you somebody’s daddy? Where do you think he got that suit? And what was that thing about dogs?”
“I’m under a certain amount of duress,” I said. “It’s kind of picturesque, but you don’t need to know the details.”
“If you say so. But, I mean, dogs? That’s like a metaphor, right?”
“Sure,” I said. “You know, go to the dogs.”
“That’s real convincing,” she said. “So tell me if there’s something I can do to keep whatever it is from happening to you, I mean, I sort of owe you. And also, let’s find Doc and see if I can’t get taken down a few feet.”
“Where’d you learn to do that? What you did to Hacker and Trey?”
“I’ve always been able to do it,” she said. “I used to do it on the show all the time. It’s about the only thing I’ve got left.”
At that moment there was a burst of male voices, and six guys rounded the corner Hacker had vanished behind. Thistle turned in their direction, and the two of us watched them come. Four white, two black, all in their late twenties or early thirties. I’m not generally much on snap judgments, but one sprang to mind then, a word Thistle had recently used: trash. Dressed in jeans, T-shirts, outdated Seattle grunge-rock plaid, leather wristbands, tattoos, and dangling steel bracelets. Chin-patches and sideburns, the ghosts of hairstyles past. Chains jingled at the heels of boots. None of them sparkled with conspicuous cleanliness or intelligence. As they swaggered down the hall, they eyed Thistle openly, even speculatively. They showed no indication of wanting to avoid a collision with us, so I tugged Thistle out of the center of the hall and over to the wall. As they passed, one of the guys closest to her reached out without slowing and touched her lower lip and said, “Hurts, I’ll bet.”