The Inn(52)

“You’re shittin’ me.”

“Nah, man! Doctors had to sew it back on and all.”

“Fuck. This old cop dude sounds ripped.”

“Hell yeah. He some badass motherfucker.”

Cline opened the door and saw the two girls on the couch, curled up together, their knees up and their feet on the cushion. One of them had shoes inset with lights that flashed different colors. He grabbed that one by the neck.

“What’s that you were saying?” Cline asked as he marched the girl toward the fountain in the middle of his yard. She managed a squeal before he thrust her head under the water. Her friend followed them but she didn’t know what to do; she stood nearby pleading and crying, wanting to reach for Cline but not having the courage. Tough little gangsta bitch, huh? he thought. Cline let the girl in his hands up for a second and then plunged her back under. He pressed her against the edge of the concrete fountain, his crotch against her cute little ass, pushing her head down hard until he could feel it scraping against the bottom of the structure.

He let her up. “The old cop, what did you say he was?”

“Nothing. Nothing! I didn’t say—”

Cline plunged the girl under the water again. Her flashing shoes twisted on the pavement; her fingers clawed at his hand. He looked at the friend and counted the seconds off, the pain in his head easing considerably. The friend kept begging, but he couldn’t hear her—there was only a warm, pleasant humming in his ears. He let the girl up and she coughed and vomited.

“What did you say?”

“He’s nothing!” the girl blubbered. “Please! Please, man! I said he’s a loser! He’s … he … he ain’t—”

Cline dunked her head. Lifted it. “What did you say?”

“A badass. I said he was a badass.”

Cline dunked the girl again, held her under until she was spasming violently against him, urine mixed in with the water soaking them both, staining her white jeans. When he thought she was just about to go limp, he released his grip and let her slither down the side of the fountain. After a moment, she crawled away from him, a loathsome, soaking-wet creature, shivering and whimpering. He watched the girls hugging each other and sobbing, and he stretched his neck until he heard a crack, the tension and pain melting like butter.

“Who’s the badass now?” he asked, and he turned back toward the house.





CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE





I NEEDED TO get away from the Inn, from the house where my friends were recovering from their wounds, where blue and red lights had flashed in the night and gunshots had shattered the windows. It was too emotional there for me to properly plan my next move. I invited Malone, Nick, and Susan out with me to the Greenfish and sat with them at a high table near the windows looking out on the street.

Nick and Malone went to order at the bar, and Susan sat close to me, turning a coaster over and over. I had told them about the doc on the way here, and it weighed heavily on everyone’s shoulders.

“I just can’t see that in him,” I told her. “He’s someone I thought I knew, and that scares me. It makes me feel like I don’t know anyone in my house—that my house is full of secret keepers and liars.”

I thought of Nick’s words on the boat, of his claim that he had done bad things on his deployment. How bad were we talking? Why hadn’t he, my best friend, ever confided in me?

“The doc’s been in the house maybe … a year and a half?” I said. “He told me he hit a crisis point in his life a year ago. He was that low, low enough to accept Cline’s offer, and I couldn’t see it.”

Guilt and rage picked at me. The words of fury at Doc Simeon rolled off my tongue so quickly and easily, and yet under my bed there was a bag of Cline’s cash that I had not yet disposed of. I was one of the liars too. One of the secret keepers.

“Maybe Doc didn’t want you to see it,” Susan said. “You ever think of that?”

“But why not?” I asked. “I’m a good listener. I could have talked him through it.”

“That’s just the thing. You would’ve wanted to help him.” She put a hand on mine. “You know how difficult it’s been for you to let people help you with your grief over Siobhan.”

I thought of Marni, of the memorial she had organized with the others only days earlier. Marni had poked a hole right through the cone of silence I had erected around myself about Siobhan. I’d thought that if I simply closed my ears and my mind to the memory of my wife, the pain of her loss might go away. But it turned out that Marni’s intervention had been exactly what I needed. Cline had come into Doc Simeon’s life when he was low, breaking through his inactivity and loneliness with sudden promises of purpose and adventure. The master of pain had offered to take the hurt away, and the old man had accepted.

Nick put a beer down in front of me and he and Malone sat down. “This guy is going to come at us again,” Nick said. “We need to be ready.”

“I don’t know.” Malone looked at me. “What can he do now? I mean, how many guys can he have? We put two of them on stretchers, and your local sheriff took care of two others. His little running boy Squid is under a rock somewhere in Augusta. Cline has got to be feeling threatened, at least for now.”