“I will try not to kill anyone. Kneecapping is allowed if need be, correct?”
“Correct.”
“If I’m not out in ten minutes,” she said, “please come and get me.”
“If you’re not out in ten minutes,” I said, “I’ll already be inside.”
“That’s sweet,” she said.
“Be careful.”
“Michael, I must say that I like this new sensitivity. Where did you learn it?”
“Something I’m trying out,” I said.
“It doesn’t really suit you,” she said.
“I know.”
“But keep trying, will you?”
She popped out of the car then and began sashaying up the sidewalk toward the bar.
The Ghouls didn’t stand a chance.
10
When you’re hot, you don’t need to know a bunch of spy tricks to get information. Men, women, small children and the occasional pet all tend to respond to a pretty girl. This made being Fiona a rather pleasurable experience. She didn’t like to think that things had been handed to her on a silver platter simply because she was attractive-and really, if you’re going to have something on a platter, would it be a life of crime? No, Fiona tended to believe that she was given good looks to combat the other, less desirable aspects of her personality.
Like the tendency she’d had since childhood to punch people in the neck when they bothered her. Or her general desire to watch things blow up. And then there was her attraction to unavailable men, who, if they had even a smidgen more moral turpitude than she did, would turn her in for what were likely hefty rewards offered on her worldwide. You sell guns to revolutionaries and just common scumbags and people tend to take it the wrong way, but that was okay by Fiona.
A girl has to earn a living. Particularly if she doesn’t want to depend on a man for a living. That was the one thing she just couldn’t resolve in her mind as she walked up to Purgatory. How could women consent to being the property of not just one drug-dealing biker but an entire gang? Oh, maybe a certain brand of woman found that exciting for a few days, but eventually didn’t you wake up in bed next to the sweating beast and realize you were being treated worse than a whore? Didn’t that bother those women? InStyle tended not to cover that side of life, but Fiona wondered if maybe Oprah could talk some sense into those women. Or maybe that nice Michelle Obama. Now there was a person Fiona thought could handle herself in any situation.
If there was one thing Fiona was certain of, it was that she could handle herself and if you got in her way, well, she’d step right over you. After knocking you down, of course.
She was only a few yards from Purgatory and was overwhelmed by the smell of urine coming from an alley between the bar and the empty shop she was passing. It was odd. All of the stores in this strip of shops were vacant, even though they faced a busy intersection. But then biker piss had a way of driving away business.
The presence of Baseball Bat probably wasn’t helping commerce, either. Fiona could see his shadow on the sidewalk, and even that was huge. She also had the sneaking suspicion that some of that smell was coming off him. Nevertheless, when she skipped past the alley and found herself in front of the bar (which was rather daintily designed out front, with a low retaining wall lined with big decorative planters), she gave Baseball Bat a smile that could have melted lead.
“Well, hello to you,” she said and that big, scary-looking thug actually blushed.
This was going to be fun.
“Hello to you,” he said. His voice was surprisingly sweet-sounding. Somewhere under all of that menace was a boy, Fiona thought. Not much of a boy was left, granted, and probably what was left was a boy who liked to kill animals and melt things, but a boy no less. On his left hand, across the knuckles, was the name CLETE. On his right hand, over his fingers, were the words WILL KILL YOU.
Subtle.
“That’s a nice bat,” Fi said.
“It gets the job done.”
“Cricket?”
“Not quite. You lost, sweetheart?”
“My car broke down,” she said. She pointed back toward the Charger, but there were several beaters parked on the street near it and Fiona didn’t think Baseball Bat’s vision was that great. She could see that even though he had that rather foul- looking tattoo on his neck he also had the darkened rings around his neck that indicated diabetes. Poor bastard, Fi thought. Too tough to get his blood sugar looked at. No wonder he limped around. He probably didn’t have any feeling beneath his knees. “And wouldn’t you know I have to use the powder room, too? Isn’t that how it always is? Just one problem after another.”
Fiona started to make her way toward the bar’s door and Clete lifted the tip of his bat off the ground and tapped it on Fi’s shin. Not hard. Just enough to stop her momentum. “No ladies’ room inside,” Clete said. Ah, there was the gruff voice.
“I don’t need to have a pretty place to sit,” she said, moving forward again. “A little boys’ room will be fine.”
And there was that bat again. This time two taps on her shin. Not a very polite way to treat a lady having a bad day.
“Use the alley,” he said
Fiona admired Clete’s code. She really did. He had a job to do and he wasn’t going to be swayed by a pretty woman with a small bladder and a broken-down car.
“Are you sure?” Fiona said. She stepped closer to him this time, let him get a whiff of her scent, let him really see her up close.
“Beat it, skank,” he said and this time brought the bat down onto her foot. Not hard enough to break anything, nor even cause much pain, but with the clear intent to show Fiona that he could, and would, break her foot if she didn’t vacate the premises. Even less polite than poking her in the shins, really. In Fiona’s opinion, he’d shown a gross lack of chivalry with her when all she needed to do was use the restroom of the establishment.
Or, well, she believed that if she’d actually been someone in that actual position, his lack of chivalry would have been gross. As it was, calling her a skank was not the right thing to do, no matter the situation.
Fiona kicked the barrel of the bat from the top of her right foot, sending it out of Clete’s hand and straight into the air. She caught it in midair with her right hand and in the same motion brought it down across Clete’s right knee. As he tumbled forward, she grabbed him by the back of his collar and tossed him down the three short steps in front of Purgatory.
He landed with a dull-sounding thud and Fiona could already tell that she’d fairly ruined his knee, because people’s legs really aren’t supposed to bend inward, are they? It also seemed like the fall had caused him to break his left wrist and nose, since his face was bleeding profusely and his wrist was bent at a nauseating angle.
She’d done a nice amount of damage to his knee, but Fiona reasoned that other injuries were Clete’s own fault. His mass multiplied by the acceleration of his fall did the real work. If he’d bothered to take care of himself, he would only have a broken knee now. Alas, people just didn’t take care of themselves as well anymore. Fiona thought that was a personal choice that said legions about a person’s self-confidence.
Despite all of this, Clete was trying to get up to go after Fiona, but was clearly having a pretty hard time of it.
Fiona walked gingerly down the steps-after seeing how Clete took them, she was sure she’d didn’t want to slip and land on him, even though with her weight, she’d probably bounce harmlessly off-and stood a few feet from Clete.
“It’s not polite to call a girl a skank,” she said.
“I’ll kill you,” Clete managed, but there wasn’t much in the way of honest-to-goodness malice in his voice, seeing as he was choking back tears. It’s hard to sound really tough when a girl has busted out your kneecap and tossed you to the pavement, though Fiona admired him for trying.
Then she remembered that gun she’d noticed in his belt earlier. Unfortunately for Clete, she remembered it at the very moment he remembered it, too. So as he tried to extract it from beneath his sizable girth, she brought the bat down into the small of his back. Not hard enough to separate his spine, or paralyze him, but certainly hard enough to shatter his tailbone.