The Hard Bounce - страница 64

Rummaging through Snake’s medicine cabinet was like taking a tour through Keith Richard’s lunchbox. Dilaudid. Valium. Oxycontin. Hydrocodone. Propoxyphene. All in little prescription bottles, none with the name Bevilaqua on them. Beautiful. Kiddie porn star, pill-popper, and snuff filmmaker. Well, maybe not snuff. At least not with Cassandra. What in sweet fuck-all was going on?

I read a few more labels before I chose one I recognized. I dry swallowed one of the Dilaudids, pocketed the bottle, and went to his bedroom.

The room from the video. I looked around. Blood was still streaked above the bed. I couldn’t help myself. I scraped some of the dried residue off with a fingernail and daubed the tip of my tongue, expecting the sweetness of dyed corn syrup. Instead, I got the taste of blood. I gagged and spit onto the floor. Should have fucking known the loony dipshit had been method-acting his fake snuff. A quarter-full bottle of Wild Turkey sat on the floor. I rinsed my mouth and spit it onto the bedsheets.

I slid open one side of the closet door. Ratty looking T-shirts mixed in with high-priced suits with long Italian names on the labels. I ripped the silk lining out of a suit jacket and wrapped my hand tightly. Then I saw that the wardrobe ended sharply at the halfway point in the long closet.

A long mirror faced the bed on the other side of the sliding closet doors. I pushed the clothes all the way over to one side. An expensive-looking camera on a tripod was inside the other half of the closet. The top panel of the door was cut out. The mirror was a two-way.

I took the camera off the tripod and smashed it on the floor. Junior ran to the doorway. “You okay?”

“All good. Just enjoying some smashy-smashy.”

Junior looked at the camera pieces. “Nice. Can I piss on it?”

“Who am I to deny you the simple pleasures?”

Junior and I were in agreement that we needed to get our asses in gear and boogie the hell on out. Pronto. We carried Cassandra over to the couch, placing her on the cushions as though she were made of porcelain. After double-wrapping Snake’s bonds, we taped his mouth over. Just to be a dick, I wrapped a few rounds over his eyes and ears, making sure I tangled a lot of his hair in the industrial-strength tape.

Junior left to pull the car around front. I was to wait five minutes and hustle Cassandra out the door and into the car.

Four minutes down, and we were going to pull it off. We’d done it, despite the missteps, bullshit, and general lack of having a single clue about what we were walking into. We’d pulled it off, despite every plan blowing up in our faces. I smiled as I looked down at Cassandra’s body, every breath she took a bonus.

She was alive.

Gently as I could, I threw Cassandra’s arms over my shoulder and lifted her in a fireman’s carry. I guessed her weight at about a hundred pounds, maybe a hint over. Even so, it was a hundred pounds of dead weight. And I was five flights of stairs up from making good the escape. I wasn’t chancing the elevator and having to explain to other tenants why I was toting an unconscious fourteen-year-old girl over my shoulder. I’m pretty good on my feet, but even I didn’t think I could talk my way cleanly through that one.

No matter what, five flights of stairs was just flat-out going to suck. I opened the door and lumbered across the hallway and out the fire door to the stairs.

The first two flights weren’t bad.

Three flights down, my shoulder went numb and my fingers were well on their way. I stopped on the landing, breathing heavily, my shirt starting to soak through. Why couldn’t Cassie have run away in the goddamn winter? No, she had to go and run away during the hottest summer in twenty years. I cursed myself for not having more cardiovascular in my daily workout. But really, how would I have prepared for this? Gone for a jog with a couple concrete sacks over each shoulder?

By the time I got us down to the second floor, my whole arm was dead and my shoulder felt like a strong breeze would pop it out of socket. Genius that I was, I’d slung Cassandra over the shoulder I’d run into The Cellar’s back door. I couldn’t figure out any way to shift her to my other arm in the cramped stairwell without smacking her head against the wall. Instead, I gritted my teeth and plodded on.