Down And Dirty

"Well," Je

"every few months you turn up just like clockwork."

She was angry, and Bre

"I have to warn you." There was no easy way to say it. "I'm leaving the city. Kien said he'll leave you alone, but I don't trust him."

Je

Her frown deepened. "He did use me to threaten you. He said he'd send his goons after me if you kept at him."

"Something like that," Bre

Je

Bre

Je

"Things?" Bre

"Things neither you nor Kien took into account. The fact that I won't allow myself to be held hostage by anyone. The fact that I can't be held hostage if no one knows where I am." She looked at Bre

She ghosted. She stepped out of her clothes and through her bedroom wall and vanished. Bre

"wait-" he croaked, but it was too late. The room was empty, except for him and her belongings, abandoned and deserted now and forever. "Wait…"

He sat down heavily on the bed, overcome by shock and a sense of overwhelming loss that struck him with the force of a physical blow.

"You don't understand," he said aloud to the empty room, partly to himself, partly to a vanished Je

His voice trailed off and he stared at the wall where Je

"Good." She smiled. " I hoped you'd say something like that."

He shot off the bed. "Christ Almighty! Get back in here and get solid!"

"Why? Are you going to kiss me or slug me?"

"You'll have to take your chances," Bre

"You know," Je

Bre

"You're right." His voice, his eyes, were dreamy and strange-looking. Je

She smiled and kissed him again.

"And Kien?" she asked him when they broke apart. Bre

All the King's Horses

VII

"This is ridiculous." Bruder was in a fury. He had a pair of leather driving gloves in one hand, and he slapped them against his legs compulsively as he spoke. "Do you realize what you're doing? You're throwing away a fortune. Millions of dollars. Moreover, you're opening yourself up for a lawsuit. Tudbury and I were partners; this land ought to belong to me."

"That's not what the will says," Joey DiAngelis said. He was sitting on the rust-eaten hood of a 1957 Edsel Citation, a can of Schaefer in his hand, as Bruder paced back and forth in front of him.

"I'll contest the goddamned will," Bruder threatened. "Damn it, we took out loans together."

"The loans will be paid," Joey said. "Tuds was insured for a hundred grand. There's a lot left even after the funeral expenses. You'll be covered, Bruder. But you ain't getting the junkyard, that's mine."

Bruder pointed 'at him, gloves dangling from his hand. "If you think I won't take you to court, you better think again. I'm going to take everything you own, you asshole, including this shit-eating junkyard."

"Fuck you," Joey DiAngelis said. "So sue me, I don't give a shit. I can afford lawyers, too, Bruder. Tuds left me all the rest of his stuff, the house, the comic collection, his share of the business. I'll sell it all if I have to, but I'm keeping this junkyard."

Bruder scowled. "DiAngelis," he said, trying to sound a little more conciliatory, "listen to reason. Tudbury wanted to sell this place. What good is an abandoned junkyard? Think of all the people who need housing. This development will be an enormous boon to the whole city."

DiAngelis took a swig of beer. "You think I'm a moron or what? You're not building no shelter for the homeless. Tom showed me the plans. We're talking quarter-million-dollar townhouses, right?" He looked around at the acres of trash and rusted cars. "Well, fuck that shit. I grew up in this junkyard, Stevie boy. I like it just the way it is."

"Then you're an idiot," Bruder snapped.

"And you're on my property," Joey said. "You better get the fuck off, or I might get the urge to jam a tailpipe up that tight ass of yours." He crushed the beer can in his hand, tossed it aside, and slid off the hood of the Edsel. The two men stood toe to toe.

"You can't intimidate me, DiAngelis," Bruder said. "We're not kids in a schoolyard anymore. I'm bigger than you, and I work out three times a week. I've studied martial arts."

"Yeah," Joey said, "but I fight dirty." He gri

Joey smiled as he watched him drive off.

After Bruder had gone, he went to his own car and pulled another Schaefer off the six-pack on the passenger seat. He drank the first swallow by the shore as the tide came in off the bay. It was a wet, windy, overcast day, and in an hour or so it was going to turn into a wet, windy, overcast night. Joey sat on a rock and watched the fading light paint rainbows in the oil slicks on the water, thinking of Tuds.

The wake and the funeral had both been closed casket, but Joey had gone into the back room after everyone else had left and told a junior mortician that he wanted to see the body. The wild card hadn't left much that looked like Tom. The corpse had skin like an armadillo, scaly and hard, and a faint greenish glow, like it was radioactive or some fucking thing. Its eyes were huge sacs of glistening pink gelatin, but it was wearing Tom's aviator frames, and he'd recognized the high school ring on the pinky of one webbed hand.

Not that there was any room for doubt. The body had been found in a Jokertown alley, wearing Tom's clothes and carrying all of Tom's ID, and Dr. Tachyon himself had done the autopsy and signed the death certificate, after comparing dental records.

Joey DiAngelis sighed, crushed another beer can in his hand, and tossed it to the side. He remembered when he and Tom had built the first shell together. Back then they made beer cans out of steel, and you had to be strong to crush the motherfuckers. Now any old wimp could do it.