“Not anymore,” Connie said. “He blew this thumb clear to Connecticut. His hand's going to be bandaged.”
Connie was right about Pitch's hand being bandaged. The incident happened three weeks ago, but the hand was still wrapped in big wads of gauze.
Pitch answered the door when Ranger and I knocked and he calmly accepted that we were bond enforcement. “I guess I forgot my date,” he said. “It's all these pain pills they got me on. Can't remember a damn thing. Lucky I don't put my pants on my head in the morning.”
Ranger and I were both dressed for the visit in full Super Hero Utility Belts. Sidearms strapped to our legs, handcuffs tucked into the belt, pepper spray and stun gun at the ready. Plus Ranger had a two-?pound Maglite, just in case we needed to see in the dark. The lite could also crack a head open like a walnut, but walnut cracking was a little illegal, so Ranger saved it for special occasions.
“Let me just shut the television off,” Pitch said. And then he whirled around, slammed the door shut, and threw the lock.
“Fuck,” Ranger said.
Ranger didn't often curse and he rarely raised his voice. The fuck had been entirely conversational. Like he was now mildly inconvenienced. He put his Bates boot to the door and the door popped open to reveal Pitch at the end of the hall with a gun in his left hand.
“You're just a couple amateur pussies,” Pitch yelled.
Ranger gave me a hard shove to the shoulder that knocked me off the small front stoop into a scraggly hydrangea bush. Then he stepped to the side of the door and drew his gun.
Pitch squeezed one off, but he was shooting with his left hand and clearly he wasn't ambidextrous because the round hit the hall ceiling. The second round bit into the wall.
“Goddamn,” Pitch shrieked. “Piece of shit gun!”
Pitch had destroyed his thumb with a semiautomatic. And I guess one misfire was enough for him because he was now holding a revolver. The revolver held six rounds and Pitch fired them all off at us.
Ranger and I were counting shots. I was counting while I was trying to disengage from the hydrangea. There was silence after the sixth shot. Ranger stepped into the doorway, gun drawn, and told Pitch to drop his weapon. I climbed onto the porch and saw that Pitch was trying to get another round into the chamber. Problem was, he couldn't do it with the bandaged hand, so he had the gun rammed between his legs and he was fumbling with his left hand.
Ranger gave his head a small disbelieving shake. Like Pitch was so pathetic he was an embarrassment to felons the world over.
Pitch gave up on the gun, threw it at Ranger, and ran into the kitchen.
Ranger turned to me and smiled. “And you said he wasn't going to be fun.”
“Maybe you should shoot him or something,” I said.
Ranger ambled into the kitchen where Pitch was rummaging in a junk drawer, presumably looking for a weapon. Pitch came up with a screwdriver and lunged at Ranger. Ranger grabbed Pitch by the front of his shirt and threw him about twelve feet across the room. Pitch hit the wall and slid to the floor like a glob of slime.
Ranger cuffed Pitch to the refrigerator and called Tank. “Send someone over,” Ranger said. “I have a delivery.”
We stayed to watch Pitch get taken away by yet another of the Merry Men, we secured the house, and we walked out to the car.
“You could have told me to move instead of dumping me in the bushes,” I said to Ranger.
“It was one of those instinct things. Keeping you out of harm's way.”
“Yeah, right. Maybe more like getting even with me for sending the Apusenjas out to talk to you.”
Ranger opened the passenger side door for me. “When I get even it's going to be something much more rewarding than dumping you in the bushes.”
I buckled myself in and looked at my watch. “My sister came home today with the baby. I should stop around and see how she's doing.”
“Tank's going to be glad he broke his leg when he finds out how I spent my afternoon.”
“You don't like babies?”
“I come from a big family. I'm used to babies.”
“Well then?”
“My grandmother is a little Cuban woman who cooks all day and speaks Spanish. Your grandmother watches pay-?per-?view porn.”