The Hard Bounce - страница 44

“Hey, buddy,” I said, scratching him behind his ears. His little tongue darted out at my fingers. Then tiny teeth gnashed where my fingers had been a moment before. “Hey!”

The fucker started snarling and snapping for Junior’s fingers too, but the dog couldn’t turn his neck far enough over his fat shoulders to get him.

“You let him go,” Sid said in a low and deadly tone.

“What’s the little guy’s name, Sid?” I asked.

“Put him down!” Sid didn’t try to stand again, but the armrests creaked ominously under her grip.

“Now, Sid. You don’t want to go yelling and get all the neighbors riled.” To my right, small stacks of DVDs sat on a bookshelf. Red stickers and all. “Because if the cops come, I’m gonna have to show them those discs you got over here, now won’t I?”

A flicker of fear danced across her eyes, but the fierce glow quickly returned. “Put the dog down,” she said.

“We will, Sid, we will. First, you to tell us where we can find the guy who stars in your videos.”

“I don’t know where he is. When I need the videos-” She cut herself off.

“What? You call him? Don’t suppose we could get that number, do you?” I was hoping we wouldn’t have to go any further than asking.

Sid didn’t say anything, but she looked frantically between the dog in Junior’s arms and me.

Damn it.

I nodded at Junior. The dog yipped in pain. Even though I knew Junior only gave him a tiny pinch on the hind leg, it still hurt to hear the little guy cry like that. I knew it hurt Junior even more to have to do it.

Neither one of us expected what happened next.

Sid started sobbing. Big, whooping sobs that sent her frame shaking like Jell-O on a paint mixer.

Junior and I exchanged guilt-ridden glances. This wasn’t us. Sid might have been a horrible waste of humanity, profiting from pain on video, but as far as we knew, she’d never hurt anybody.

Then the dog peed a yellow arc onto the floor.

“Whoa.” Junior held the dog over the wastebasket.

Sid covered her face with wide hands. “Puh-puh-leease. Let my dog go. I’ll tell you wuh-wuh-whatever you want.”

I leaned in close, the guilt making me nauseous. “That’s all we want, Sid.” I turned to Junior. “Put the dog down.”

I turned back just in time to see… Sid smiling through her fingers, then a fist the size of a canned ham bee-lining for my face.

The impact was tremendous. Like a sack of M-80s exploded in the back of my skull. She caught me square on the jaw with a straight right that would have made Brock Lesnar proud, with all of her weight behind it. I found myself airborne and looking up at my feet and the cracked ceiling. I landed on my neck and upper back, the wind knocked out of my lungs and my senses knocked clean to Tuesday.

If I wasn’t so jacked, the following scene might have been enjoyably comic.

Junior ran like a fullback chased by the biggest and scariest defensive tackle in the league. He hurdled an end table, shuck-and-jived around the television stand, and pushed over a large fern to block the charging Sid-the entire time with the chihuahua tucked under his arm like a hairy football.

And he was singing.

“C’mon, Sid! Can’t touch this! Duh nuh nuh nuh. Nuh nuh. Nuh nuh. Can’t touch this!” he sang as he dodged.

Sid just continued her rush, making low animal noises as she grasped for Junior and her dog.

Still woozy, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see little chirping birdies swooping around my head. My lower lip was shredded, warm pennies in my mouth.

Impossible as it would have seemed moments before, Sid was still going full-bore, tearing through her apartment like a maddened mama gorilla. The dog yipped like a frightened squeeze toy. Junior cackled like a madman. He stopped cackling long enough to throw me a warning. “Yo, Roundheels! Coming back your way! Get the fuck up!”

Sid had finally given up her pursuit of Junior. Hands on her knees, head down, she gulped huge, spent breaths. She wasn’t looking toward me either, though she began lumbering back toward where I lay sprawled.

I followed her gaze. She was headed for the kitchen and…

Oh shit…