– Asshole! Shut up! Knock that shit off before I hit you with another baton round.
Voice is close. He kicks me in the thigh. I crawl and scream and vomit a little more. He kicks me again. I slump against his leg, screaming, rubbing my face into his leg, trying to get the burning off. He grabs me by the hair to pull me away.
Which is how I know he’s not pointing the riot gun at me anymore. So I wrap both arms around his legs, pull them out from under him, hear the crack when his skull hits the concrete, reach up his leg and find where it meets the other leg and grab a fistful of what’s there and start squeezing and yanking and twisting, use my other hand to make a fist and start hammering the middle of his stomach, hear a clatter of plastic and metal, see a blur of bright orange next to me, pick it up and swing it like a club, bringing it down over and over on the place where I think I see his face.
By the time my eye has cleared enough for me to get a look at how I did, there’s no point in emptying the gun in his mouth, but, like with Lament, I said I’d do it. Laughing when I get another look at that legend printed on the stock.
LESS LETHAL
But just enough.
Anyway, kind of a shame about emptying the thing. Seeing as it means I don’t have anything lethal or otherwise when I climb off the enforcer’s dead body just as another limo tops the ramp, pulls to a stop, and three more enforcers get out and grab me and hold me down while Dexter Predo exits from the back of the car.
– Pitt.
He takes off his jacket.
– I can’t tell you.
He undoes a button on his white shirt, tucks his tie inside.
– Just how pleased I am.
He undoes his cuffs and rolls his sleeves to his elbows.
– How unequivocally delighted.
He takes a pair of calfskin black gloves from a back pocket and snugs them onto his hands.
– Imagine the odds.
He reaches in the open door of the limo, comes out with a small black doctor’s bag that looks like a prop from an old movie.
– Meeting like this.
He walks over to where I’m pinned, steps across my body and stands over me with a foot on either side of my torso.
– It could only happen through sheerest luck.
He lowers himself and sits on my chest.
A rib end pokes my lung.
– Or if someone were idiot enough to park a known Hood vehicle in a high-surveillance area of Coalition turf.
He sets the bag next to my head and twists open the brass clasps.
– Leaving it there for nearly an hour.
He takes a pair of green-handled shears from the bag.
– While he slips into a bar for a few drinks.
He opens and closes the shears, testing the action.
– How fortunate for me that you are just such an idiot.
He looks at the enforcer holding my left arm and the guy shifts his grip and puts a knee in my shoulder and lifts my hand from the ground and I ball it into as tight a fist as I can.
Predo shows me the shears.
– Through a long process of elimination, over many years, I have found that the compound action of a good pair of hoof rot clippers allows for the easiest and cleanest severance.
He nods and the enforcer starts to pry at my fist.
– Now, we could start small, work our way up, but I feel we’ve covered so much ground already in our relationship. So many threats unfulfilled. At this juncture, I think we can do away with the formality of gradualism and move directly to actions that make a distinct impression. Permanency can be difficult to accomplish in this line. You’ve lost an eye already. And what’s another toe, really? A man of your experience, what can I do that has not already been done?
Trying to open my fist, the enforcer has broken my pinkie and ring fingers to get what he’s really after. But he has it now.
Predo points.
– Do you know what separates us from the animals, Pitt? Our thumbs.
He fits the open shears around the base of mine.
– Our opposable thumbs are what allowed us to become users of tools. And our use of tools is inextricably linked to the development of our brains.
He looks at me.
– But you, Pitt, with your profound and recurring idiocy, you can undoubtedly spare a thumb.
He squeezes.
– Perhaps even two.
The blades pass through the skin and meat and bone in a single smooth snip that proves Predo was right. They really are the best tool for the job.
My thumb on the ground, he decides to change tack for the moment and snip off my broken little finger next. One knuckle at a time.
I manage to stay with the show for the first two knuckles, by the third I’ve blacked out.
Not wondering if I’ll wake, but if there will be anything left of me when I do.
I’m gonna die.
Not a news flash or anything. We all live under the same headline. But I’m gonna die here and now. Soon, anyway. In however much time it takes Predo to whittle me down to dead.
I know I’m right because I’ve felt the same thing so many times before. By now, I know exactly how it feels to know that you’re about to die. And in all that time, it only ever happened once. And that lasted for less than a minute. I’m not saying it makes me feel optimistic about my chances here, but it does make me feel like there may be a play left in my hand.
All I have to do is sell people out.
• • •
I come to.
Count my fingers.
Still got five on the right hand and three on the left.
That’s the good news. Bad news is, Predo’s still on my chest, has the shears fitted at the top knuckle of my left ring finger, and seems to have just been waiting for me to open my eyes.
– Ah, there you are, Pitt. Welcome back.
He clips the knuckle, and I lose another fingerprint.
He moves the shears down about an inch.
I sell someone out.
– Digga’s going to backstab you on the treaty!
He doesn’t take the knuckle, but he doesn’t move the shears from the finger either.
His brow furrows.
– I told myself.
He squeezes the shears just enough to break the skin around the knuckle.
– I told myself I’d finish the whole hand first.
A little more pressure and I can feel the blades touch bone, the scrape of steel.
– Before I asked what you could possibly be thinking that would make you do something so monumentally stupid.
He stops squeezing.
– When we both know, truly, that despite your best efforts to prove otherwise, you are not at all stupid. And, Pitt.
He closes his eyes and gives his head a little shake.
– I do not at all appreciate your interjecting here and causing me to rethink my plan of action.
He opens his eyes.
– You understand, yes? I nod.
– Yes sir, Mr. Predo, I understand.
The corners of his mouth crimp.
– Ah, there it is, that air of sarcastic servility.
He snips away the knuckle.
– I’ve so missed that.
He lowers the shears from my hand, and rises, standing over me, looking down.
– And it appears you’ll get one last chance to employ it, won’t you?
He steps away, tilts his chin at the enforcers, and they release me.
I stay where I am, and hold up my mutilated left hand.
Index finger, middle finger, stub of a ring finger.
I show it to Predo.
– Got to thank you, Mr. Predo, you left just enough so I can still tell a guy to read between the lines.
Turns out you need two opposable thumbs to roll a cigarette.
– Are you going to fumble endlessly with your bad habit, Pitt?
I rip another rolling paper and spill more tobacco on the ground.
– I’ll take any help I can get right now, Mr. Predo.
He looks at the three enforcers, they all shrug.
He unfolds his arms, comes away from the limo he’s leaning against, and takes the pouch from my good hand.
– A lost art, it appears.
He tugs a paper from the folder.
– It has been some time for myself.
He settles tobacco into the crease, rolls the paper back and forth around it, shaping a cylinder, pinches lightly and spins it into a tight bundle.