The Jealous Kind (Holland Family Saga 2)
Page 131
“It doesn’t work like that.”
“Yeah, it does,” he said. “You got to be upbeat. I’ll pick you up at eight, Gate. Tell Valerie we’ll be motorating over to her place. We’re back in action, Jackson.”
I watched Major and the cats walking down the driveway toward us, trusting, innocent, full of curiosity.
“I got a new one for you,” Saber said. “What did the bathtub say to the commode?”
“I don’t know. Tell me.”
“?‘I get the same amount of ass you do, but I don’t have to take all that shit.’?”
Saber was Saber. Destiny was destiny. I felt myself falling through a black hole. As he backed out, he gave me a thumbs-up to show that he had everything under control.
BEFORE I LEFT THE house, I called Merton Jenks at home. “How you feeling?” I asked.
“Worry about yourself,” he replied.
“Did Miss Cisco come see you?”
“You got a big problem, Aaron. You want to believe in people.”
“That’s bad?”
“For you it is. You have the judgment of a hoot owl sitting in the middle of the highway on a bright day.”
“Vick Atlas and his father or their people are going to hurt my family or my animals.”
“You know this for sure?”
“I have no doubt about it.”
He waited so long to speak that I thought we had been disconnected.
“Are you there?” I said.
“What the hell are you up to, boy?”
“See you around.”
I hung up and headed for Vick’s apartment building.
I RODE UP TO the penthouse in a birdcage elevator. Vick answered the door in a pair of red Everlast boxing shorts, flat-soled gym shoes, and a strap undershirt. His shoulders and chest were covered with black hair. He had on a pair of blue bag gloves, the kind with a wood dowel inside. “How’d you get up here?”
“On the elevator.”
“What happened to your face?”
“This?” I said, touching the bandage on my cheek.
“Yeah, that.”
“A bull got me.”
“A cow or a cop?”
“Guess.”
Behind him I could see a heavy bag hanging from a steel frame. The air was fetid, his eyes like two ball bearings out of alignment. He looked up and down my person. “Are you calling me out?”