Bad to the Bones(30)
He must not be one of those people.
Tossing the pissy heroin onto a couch with a flick of the wrist, Knoxie hauled back and led off with a quick jab to Bodhi’s nose. He followed with a lightning uppercut to the solar plexus. The guy was so unprepared for the assault, the pill bottle went flying, his neck snapped back, and he made a loud “ooph!” as the air was jolted from his lungs. Knoxie put his entire body into a satisfying overhead punch that brought the asshat crashing to his knees. It was ironic that he looked as though praying while a river of blood coursed down his throat.
Knoxie towered over the twatwaffle, feeling supremely victorious and macho. The women huddled together, their eyes wide like innocent deer. He intoned meaningfully, “That’s for Bellamy…Asanga. You think you can just throw her away like she’s a f*cking used blowup doll. Well, you running her off like a rabid raccoon was the best thing that ever happened to her.” Standing tall, Knoxie glared about the room at the intimidated women. “You f*cking chicks should be ashamed of yourselves, letting this happen. She was one of you and you just sit there and take it, even assist. Tell Virginia that her sister is fine and well, no thanks to any of you whackamoles, and we’re f*cking coming back to save her, too.”
Seeing as how a dude wearing what looked like an angora sweater, fuzzy cap, and an eye patch was now standing at the hallway entrance, Knoxie decided to blaze. Detouring only to sweep up the prescription pill bottle in his hand, he strode back the way he’d come as the holier-than-thou Ed Wood floated forward, moaning,
“Have you been afflicted, my communitarian? You lash out at others due to some blackness, some existential loneliness in your soul.”
Knoxie wheeled around in the doorway. He had both pistols hidden in his waistband, but that sort of solution would ultimately be no solution at all. He pointed a furious finger at the sick swami and roared, “You! You are the f*cking reason so many poor women don’t even know the difference between abuse and real, genuine, loving f*cking! You should be f*cking imprisoned for the things you do, not celebrated and admired, you deviant asswad!”
By then, though, Knoxie heard running boots coming down a couple of other hallways. Bodhisattva was being helped to his feet by a few women as another sweetbutt barked into a hand-held radio.
“Code African violet! daimyo to their stations! Loose outsider at Wang Cho House. Code Boysenberry!”
Knoxie hot-footed it back down the hallway. The last thing he heard was Shakti calling out remotely, as though Knoxie were on some distant lighthouse.
“I haven’t forsaken you, my son! You need to gaze into the candles and give total effort and you will be redeemed!”
Knoxie passed by the bologna-loving daimyo, who just stood there with his mouth hanging open, one last bite of gluten-free goodness in his hand. Knoxie hit the back door like a magnum round, barreling down the back ramp. He seemed to reach the Safeway truck in three bounds, heaving himself into the cab.
“Qué está pasando?” asked Rafael groggily, apparently just woken from a nap.
Knoxie dumped the keychain in Rafael’s lap, grabbed one of the daily logs filled out by Stuart Grillo, and wrote on it furiously in block letters with a Sharpie.
“Vamos a la guerra con estos fanáticos religiosos,” Knoxie said all in a rush, shoving the crumpled log into the filth-encrusted neckline of Presención’s shirt. We’re going to war with the nutjobs.
Leaping from the cab, he made a mad dash for the Suzuki rice rocket he’d earlier seen parked in a covered spot. Making sure it was in neutral and the kill switch was off, Knoxie squeezed the clutch and hit the start button.
By this time, the daimyo had finally swallowed the last bite of his sandwich and was standing at the back door waving his AK around threateningly. Knoxie had the feeling these guards weren’t too experienced. Most of the ashramites seemed to come from the world of white collar professions—they were the ones with the money that Shakti wanted to corral.
“Hey, you!” shouted the daimyo. “That’s my bike!”
The rice rocket’s engine sprang to life, much quieter than Knoxie was used to. He felt sort of ridiculous as he started off down the gravel drive. He felt like a teenager forced to ride his little brother’s stingray bicycle. He really wanted to flip off the guard—and the absurd one-eyed “master” who was peering out from behind the guard’s arm—but he needed one hand on the bike, and one to brandish his own piece at them.
“We’re going to bury you, swami!” he bellowed. “You’re in The Bare Bones sights now!”
That’s what he had written on Stuart Grillo’s daily log. “LOVE, THE BARE BONES.” The cartel might think he was a member of the hated Cutlasses, but the Bihari whackamoles sure as hell would know who to watch out for.
Knoxie Hammett had irrevocably joined their ranks as a Prospect now, had left their calling card, and there was no going back….
CHAPTER NINE
BELLAMY
Knoxie didn’t get to Madison’s house until about six in the morning, but I didn’t sleep.
I wavered between feeling silly, stupid, and wrenched with emotion. Incident after incident kept rushing back to me, things Shakti had done that had seemed acceptable at the time. Now, they seemed like the heinous acts that they truly always had been.