Moonlight Mile (Kenzie & Gennaro 6)

“You fucking shoot the guy?” I said. “A bit harsh, no?”

“Don’t bring me out on this shit if you’re going to leave your pair at home.” Bubba frowned. “Goddamn embarrassing what a civilian you’ve become, man.”

I got a closer look at Max as a burst of air left his mouth. He ground his forehead into the cement floor and pounded a fist on it.

“He’s fucked up,” I said.

“I barely hit him.”

“You blew one of his hips off.”

Bubba said, “He’s got two.”

Max began to shake. The shakes quickly turned to convulsions. Tadeo took a step toward him and Bubba took two steps toward Tadeo, the Steyr aimed at his chest.

“I’ll kill you just for being short,” Bubba said.

“I’m sorry.” Tadeo raised his hands as high as they could go.

Max flopped onto his back. Kettle hisses preceded his gulps of air.

“I’ll kill you for wearing that deodorant,” Bubba told Tadeo. “I’ll kill your friend for being your friend.”

Tadeo lowered his hands until they shook in front of his face. He closed his eyes.

His friend said, “We’re not friends. He gives me shit about my weight.”

Bubba raised an eyebrow. “You could lose a few but you’re not an orca or anything. Shit, man, just lay off the white bread and the cheese.”

“I’m thinking Atkins,” the guy said.

“I tried that.”

“Yeah?”

“You gotta give up alcohol for two weeks.” Bubba grimaced. “Two weeks.”

The guy nodded. “That’s what I told the wife.”

Max kicked the desk. The back of his head rattled off the floor. Then he was still.

“He dead?” Bubba asked.

“No,” I said. “But he’s heading there, he don’t get a doctor.”

Bubba produced a business card. He asked the big guy, “What’s your name?”

“Augustan.”

“Well . . . No, really?”

“Yeah. Why?”

Bubba looked over at me and shrugged before looking back at Augustan. He handed him the card. “Call this guy. He works for me. He’ll fix your friend up. The fixing’s free, but the drugs’ll cost you.”

“That’s fair.”

Bubba rolled his eyes at me and let loose a sigh. “Grab your laptop, would you?”

I did.

“Tadeo,” I said.

Tadeo lowered his shaking hands from his face.

“Who hired you?”

“What?” Tadeo blinked several times. “Uh, a friend of Max’s. Kenny.”

“Kenny?” Bubba said. “You got me out of bed so I could shoot some prick over a Kenny? That’s fucking humiliating.”

I ignored him. “Redheaded guy from the house, Tadeo?”

“Kenny Hendricks, yeah. He said you knew his old lady. Said you found her kid once when she went missing.”

Helene. If it smelled of stupid, Helene just had to be somewhere nearby.

“Kenny,” Bubba repeated with a bitter sigh.

“Where’s my bag?” I said.

“Other drawer,” Tadeo said.

Augustan said to Bubba, “I can call your doc now?”

“Augustan always?” Bubba asked. “Never Gus?”

“Never Gus,” the big guy said.

Bubba gave that some thought, then nodded. “Go ahead. Call the number.”

Augustan flipped open a cell and dialed. I found my bag in the desk drawer, found Gabby’s picture and my case files, too. As Augustan told the doctor his buddy was losing a lot of blood, I put the laptop in my bag and walked to the door. Bubba pocketed his weapon and followed me out of the garage.

Chapter Eight

In my dream, Amanda McCready was ten, maybe eleven. She sat on the porch of a yellow bungalow with stone steps, a white bulldog snoring at her feet. Tall ancient trees sprouted from a strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street. We were somewhere down South, Charleston maybe. Spanish moss hung from the trees, and the house had a tin roof.

Jack and Tricia Doyle sat behind Amanda in wicker armchairs, a chess table between them. They hadn’t aged at all.

I came up the walk in my postal outfit, and the dog raised its head and stared at me with sad black eyes. Its left ear bore a spot the same black as its nose. It licked its nose and then rolled on its back.

Jack and Tricia Doyle looked up from their chess game and stared at me.

“I’m just delivering the mail,” I said. “I’m just the mailman.”

They stared. They didn’t say a word.

I handed Amanda the mail and stood waiting for my tip. She leafed through the envelopes, tossing them aside one by one. They landed in the bushes and turned yellow and wet.

She looked up at me, her hands empty. “You didn’t bring anything we can use.”

The next morning I could barely lift my head off the pillow. When I did, the bones near my left temple crunched. My cheekbones ached and my skull throbbed. While I’d slept, someone had seeded the folds of my brain with red pepper and glass.

And that wasn’t all—none of my limbs or joints were pleased when I rolled over, sat up, or breathed. In the shower, the water hurt. The soap hurt. When I tried to scrub my head with shampoo, I accidentally pressed my fingertips into the left side of my skull and produced a bolt of agony that nearly put me on my knees.

Drying off, I looked in the mirror. The upper left side of my face, one half of the eye included, was purple marble. The only part that wasn’t purple was the part that was covered in black sutures. Gray streaked my hair; it had even found my chest since the last time I’d paid attention. I ran a comb carefully over my head, then turned to reach for the razor and my swollen knee yelped. I’d barely moved—a minor shift of weight, nothing more—but my kneecap felt like I’d swung the claw end of a hammer into it.

I just fucking love aging.

When I entered the kitchen, my wife and daughter clasped their hands to their cheeks and shrieked, eyes wide. It was so perfectly timed, I knew it had been planned, and I gave them a big thumbs-up as I poured myself a cup of coffee. They exchanged a fist bump and then Angie opened her morning paper again and said, “That looks suspiciously like the laptop bag I got you last Christmas.”

I slung it over the back of my chair as I sat at the table. “One and the same.”

“And its contents?” She turned a page of the Herald.

“Fully recovered,” I said.