Under the Knife(91)

Finney.

What an asshole. His poker face, around Sebastian at least, sucked. He obviously still thought of Sebastian as some kind of a chump. Like that thing with Hammurabi’s Code. Like Sebastian was incapable of cracking a fucking book.

Whatever.

The more important issue was that Finney was getting less predictable. A lot less predictable. Pretentiousness he could deal with; irrationality could be dangerous. That business with Wu, and her drinking: unfortunate, sure. And Sebastian knew all about revenge: the primitive desire, after being hurt, to lash out and hurt back.

Alfonso. God, how he’d wanted to hurt somebody after what happened to Alfonso.

But still.

Sebastian from the beginning had been disturbed by Finney’s readiness to gamble with the life of an innocent patient. Now, this business with the bomb in the girl’s head. He wondered if he somehow could talk Finney into disarming it—

“Goddammit!”

A pack of teenagers on skateboards darted out in front of the car. They turned in sharp circles down the middle of the street, leaping into the air, flipping and spinning their boards in complex twists and turns before executing perfect landings with a clatter of wheels on pavement.

Sebastian slammed on the brakes. The car squealed to a halt inches from the nearest of them.

Christ! That was close. He sized them up. Skate rats, in the local vernacular. Four of them. Torn Tshirts and plaid flannels. Baggy jeans with belt lines slung low over slender hips, revealing glimpses of tanned, armadillo-plated abdomens. Knit caps pulled low over sullen eyes. Black-and-white-checkered sneakers. Shaggy, salted locks of hair. Haphazard patches of nascent mustaches. Skating well out of their normal area, which usually was closer to the coast.

The first three didn’t so much as glance in the car’s direction. The one bringing up the rear was different. He carried a camera mounted to a selfie stick, with which he’d been filming the others. He stopped long enough to glare at Sebastian from beneath hooded eyelids.

“Fucking watch it, dude!” He banged his fist on the hood of the car before shouldering his camera and following after the others.

Sebastian turned to Finney.

Finney was staring straight ahead. He pursed his lips, and he nodded.

“Are you sure, boss?”

A second nod.

Goddammit. We don’t need this right now.

“I don’t recommend this, you know.” Sebastian nudged the accelerator and pulled the car to the side of the road. By now the camera kid had fallen half a block behind his friends. Sebastian opened the driver’s side door.

“Sebastian.”

“Yeah, boss.”

“I want you to hurt him.” Finney was gazing through the windshield. “I can’t abide disrespect.”

Sebastian sighed. Neither could he, but he was willing to let this one go. They had too many other things to worry about. He beeped the horn, long and loud, and climbed out of the car.

“Young man,” Sebastian called. “Excuse me! Young man!”

The horn grabbed the kid’s attention. He stopped about ten feet away, just short of a steep downhill stretch, his smooth, adolescent features twisted in rage, and sized Sebastian up. He must have concluded that Sebastian’s unassuming appearance did not merit retreat.

A conclusion he would soon regret.

“What the fuck,” the kid snarled. A declaration, not an interrogative.

He was standing on one side of the road, about a foot away from the curb, in the shade of a broad, tall evergreen, at the base of which grew a stand of thick, high bushes. The kid’s three friends were out of sight, having sped down the hill. The estates on this road were big, few, and far between. City ordinance, or something: You couldn’t divide land into parcels below two acres, or some such shit. Aside from the kid, Sebastian, and Finney, this stretch of road was deserted.

He approached the kid with slow, deliberate steps, keeping himself stooped slightly at the hip, with his hands up and palms out in a nonthreatening gesture: a skittish good citizen confronting a skateboarding hooligan.

As he’d intended, Sebastian’s meek body language emboldened the kid, convincing him that he was the alpha here. The kid puffed out his lean chest. Perfect.

“Look. Young man,” Sebastian said, hands up and palms out. “Look. I don’t want any trouble. But I think you did some damage to my car back there.”

“Oh yeah? That piece of shit?” He laughed and pointed at the Volkswagen.

Sebastian slowly closed the gap between them.

They were six feet apart.

“Yes. There’s a small dent in my hood where you hit it. You and your friends are being very unsafe.”

Braces glinted from inside the kid’s mouth. “Oh yeah? Well screw you, dude. Go fuck yourself.”

What a fucking mouth! This kid really could use a serious attitude adjustment. Fifteen, maybe? Sixteen, tops?

“There’s no need for that kind of language, young man.”

“Oh yeah? Well, fuck. And, you.” The kid chortled, then coughed, as if choking on his own wit.

They were three feet apart.

The kid was tall. He had about three inches on Sebastian, and immense, rounded shoulders—broadened, no doubt, by years of paddling a surfboard. Skate rats and surf rats. Sebastian had learned soon after moving to San Diego that these kids were one and the same. In between surfs, the surf rats skated; in between skates, they surfed.