“Hey, Jack!” Marly said with a welcoming grin. His burly hands moved with deceptive grace as they dried one pint glass after another and put them under the bar counter. “’Bout time you came up and said hello. Why you hiding out in the corner over there?”
She shrugged. “New case. Ugly one. Just mulling over shit, you know how it is. It’s going to frustrate me, I can tell already.” Fucking cowboy is going to be a pain in the ass.
“Christ, Jack. Frustrated already?” Pernetti’s voice cut in like a mouthful of castor oil.
Goddamn, Pernetti. Did the guy ever know when to shut up? She turned toward his table, which sat off the other corner of the bar. “When’s the last time you weren’t frustrated, Pernetti?” The other three at the table chuckled at Pernetti, who gave her a “is that all you got?” look and looked at her for more. They knew there would be more from Jackie Rutledge. “Not counting Charlene down in shipping.”
That garnered a few outright laughs and good-natured heckling. Pernetti’s shiny crown of a forehead flushed a lovely shade of pink. His affair with the shipping clerk was common knowledge, except perhaps to his wife.
Pernetti then sat back in his chair, waving off the barb. “Have a couple more drinks, Jack. That should ease the frustration.”
Jackie stepped back from the bar and faced Pernetti. At that moment, Shelly walked by, a trayful of food in her hands.
“Careful, hon. Leave the prick alone.”
Jackie frowned at Shelly’s back as the waitress walked off into the crowd, tray held high. Leave him alone? He’s the asshole who started it, and now the fucker is accusing me of drinking too much? I’ll carefully plant my steel-toed boot up his ass. Jackie pushed through the bar crowd, ignoring the beer that spilled over her arm and the ensuing swearing from the girl she had bumped into.
At the guys’ table, Jackie stopped, staring at Pernetti’s dome of a head, glowing with perspiration under the overhanging lamp. He was a bowling ball on legs. “A dozen drinks wouldn’t drown out the frustration of your presence here, Pernetti. Is it just me in particular, or are you a shit head around everyone?”
Gamble laughed, slapping Pernetti on the shoulder. “Think it’s you, Jack. Must be love.”
Jackie pointed a finger at him. “Shut up, Gamble. I wasn’t talking to you.” Something in her tone made him wisely clam up. She continued before Pernetti could get his comeback out. “You think nobody heard you fucking Charlene in the storage room? I think the security guys passed the tape around, or maybe that was the one of her sucking you off in the delivery van down at the loading dock. You and the wife should get some popcorn and have a movie night, Pernetti.”
The laughter at the table had gone quiet with her diatribe. The venom in her voice told them she was far past the joking-around stage. Pernetti’s head had gone from pink to a rosy red.
“Okay, fuck you, Rutledge. You want to tell the whole bar?”
“Sure, P,” she said, turning to face the room. “That’s a fabulous idea. You can tell them about how much I drink, and I’ll tell them about how you’re a philandering office slut who will fuck anything-”
Pernetti’s hand whipped across the table, faster than she would have figured he could move his lumbering body, and shoved her back. “Watch it, Jack. I’m not going to put up with your bullshit.”
“Or what, P? You going to take it out on a woman?” Jackie laughed. She felt on a roll now, nice and pissed. Five years she had been putting up with this pig. She suspected he was one of those types who took everything home and dumped it on his wife. The fucker had pictures of his kids on his desk, but not the wife. She had heard him call her a bitch to the other guys. Yeah, Jackie thought. Bring it on, numbnut. “According to Charlene, you ain’t got enough dick to take it out on me anyway.”
Pernetti scrambled to his feet, his face a wonderful rose red. Jackie grinned at him and shifted her right foot back just a bit for balance. She knew his type. Set them off, and it was all blind, dumb rage. There were actually a few similarities between him and a stepfather who only crept out of the hole in her mind while she slept. Her thought trailed off at Pernetti’s retort.
He leaned over the table at her, hands slapping hard down on the surface, mouth twisting into a spiteful sneer. “What you need dick for, Jack? You got the dykey little witch to lick your boot heels for-”
Jackie’s hand flashed out and slapped Pernetti across the face. He didn’t deserve anything more than a good bitch slap. If he pressed it though, Jackie was prepared to bust his crooked, oft-busted nose. At that moment, however, the ring and buzz of her cell went off in her pocket. Pernetti appeared too flummoxed to respond, holding one hand to his face in disbelief.
“Nice one, Jack,” Gamble said, pushing away from the table. He was smart enough to see some shit was about to hit the fan. “Maybe we should just get everyone outside so we can cool our heads.”
Jackie gave him an icy look and pulled out her phone while Pernetti tried to scramble out from behind the table. Everyone else had wisely picked up their drink but Pernetti, who sent his spilling across the table when he hit it trying to move around to Jackie. She flipped open the phone, noticing Laurel’s number on the screen, and keyed the TALK button, all the while enjoying his clumsy attempt to get around to her. What was he going to do, throw a punch?
“Rutledge,” she said into the cell just as, to her surprise, Pernetti did indeed throw a punch. Jackie instinctively leaned back, bringing her hand across to block, and his fist connected rather solidly with her phone, snapping the lid off and sending it to the floor. “You stupid fucker!”
Jackie returned fire, her small hands flashing out with blinding speed, even if they did not pack much punch. Pernetti’s mouth erupted with blood, and he quickly lost his balance in the puddle of beer he found himself standing in. There was no time to celebrate the glorious image, as a long arm snaked out from Pernetti and he grabbed her shirt. Jackie found herself tumbling down to the floor along with him.
“Damnit, Jackie!” It was Marly’s voice screaming at her from the bar.
“Fucking bitch,” Pernetti hissed at her through his split lip.
She scrambled to her feet, turning to smile at Marly. “Sorry, Mar. He had it coming though. You heard him, didn’t you?”
“Then take it outside, for Christ’s sake. You going to clean up that mess?”
Pernetti was getting slowly to his feet, one hand gingerly touching his lower lip. The crowd, which had been swarming in, began to dissipate back to their normal places just as quickly. What could she do? Jackie shrugged, a pained smile on her face. “Sorry. Really. He just… you know…” She sighed and bent down to pick up her busted phone, hoping Laurel wasn’t trying to reach her about anything important.
Gamble had a hold of Pernetti now, helping him back to his feet. “You’re a fucking psycho, Rutledge,” Pernetti said.
He was embarrassed more than anything. Sally was already walking up with a mop in her hand, and Jackie fished in her wallet for a twenty. “Sorry, Sal.” She sounded like a broken record. It was time to get out.
Sally snatched the twenty from Jackie’s hand before it had even been offered. “Go home, Jack.”
The crowd cheered her on as she walked by the bar, and Jackie felt embarrassed now. Okay, it had been a stupid thing to do. Likely, she would be hearing something from Belgerman the following day. No way would word of this not spread. Marly just glared at her, and she had no nerve for trying to smooth things over. He would forget about it in a day or two. He always did. Her hope now was that there was a kind and beneficent god who would keep Laurel from driving over to see what the hell was going on.
Jackie stepped out into the setting sun, squinting at Laurel, who had stopped and crossed her arms over her chest. The hard, thin line of her mouth said it all. Man, God could be a prick.