Chapter Twenty-Eight
Topside
10:17 P.M.
The door exploded off its hinges with a thunderous crack and flew into the room, chunks of wood spewing across the living room carpet.
John Waterson shot up from his chair on strengthless legs, stumbling, then worsened his equilibrium by whacking his knee against the Formica table.
Poker chips rolled this way and that like Barbie hubcaps.
John’s police buddies Pablo, Carlos, and Frank, leapt to their feet and shouted.
Three huge men poured through the gaping hole of the doorway, although only one came forward. He approached with the muscled stealth of a fighting professional and—
John’s heart stalled out.
Teeth-Tattooed Asshole.
A kick to the head.
A punch to the temple.
Pablo and Carlos were out.
Frank made it as far as yanking his service revolver from its shoulder holster.
Teeth-Tattooed Asshole arm-blocked the weapon snout-up toward the ceiling while his other fist made a line-drive into Frank’s forehead, connecting brutally enough to lobotomize the detective. Frank hit the kitchen floor like several pounds of liver into a waste bucket and drooled.
John stood in place, shaking. Three seasoned police officers, neutralized in seconds. By one man. He would’ve been embarrassed for his friends if he wasn’t so busy being embarrassed for himself.
Teeth-Tattooed Asshole was looking him over now, and clearly he was appalled by what he saw.
“This,” scoffed one of the other men, “is the infamous Detective John Waterson?”
John’s face flamed. If he’d thought his poker buddies were men to be envied for their health and vitality, these three had physiques to inspire steaming jealousy. He clamped his teeth together so hard a couple of molars leaned sideways inside his gelatinous gums. Standing here in front of his enemy, feeling so blaringly inadequate, gouged a stick into his soft underbelly about as deep as it could go. “What the fuck do you want?”
Teeth-Tattooed Asshole’s lip lifted into a sneer. “One of my men almost died because of the deal you cut with Rázóczi, Waterson.”
Almost. So MoonRiderOne—besides obviously welching on his agreement to kill Teeth-Tattooed Asshole—had hosed up his own revenge against Nichita. Christ. How was a dying man supposed to fulfill last wishes when forced to deal with rank amateurs?
He gave his enemy bland. “I beg your pardon?” One act he definitely wasn’t performing from his deathbed was offering this man more information. He didn’t know how much Teeth-Tattooed Asshole knew about John’s plans for justice, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to fill in any gaps.
Teeth-Tattooed Asshole exhaled a blast of air. “Don’t try to pull any shit, Waterson. The techie guy who works with us could find a hymen on a whore, which means it took him less than ten minutes to discover you’re Justice Seeker.”
John started to spread his hands in an oh, well gesture, but his fingers were shaking badly—adrenaline was not his body’s friend these days—so he just shrugged.
If there’d been any humanity in Asshole’s dark eyes, white fury now incinerated it. He stalked forward, his boot sole leaving a geometric print on the back of Frank’s shirt on his way over to a nose-to-nose position with John. “You think you can get away with messing with one of my men?”
This close, the absolute power of Teeth-Tattooed Asshole was immense. John could almost feel his marrow curdling. One punch. That’s all it’d taken from this man to lay John out on the floor of Scripps Memorial Hospital the last time they’d gone nose to nose. That’s what John just saw happen to his police buddies.
Suddenly it felt like he was breathing at altitude. After a 10K. He edged a step back, his chest constricting further when he nearly tumbled off his teeter-totter legs. Weakness absolutely fucking sucked. The only thing worse was the impotence his illness—He flushed.
The two men by the door watched him curiously.
“Time to settle your account with me, Waterson.” The black hell on Asshole’s face would have made most men lose bladder control.
John was going to blame his immediate need to urinate on his illness.
The apartment across the hall began to spew the Bossa Nova. Too loud. Mr. Palmeiro, you deaf fuck.
The fist just arrived.
Out of nowhere.
It carried the weight of a pallet of bricks, and John’s head snapped completely around, cranking his entire body with it. He spun a full three-sixty, his legs braiding together like a Rainbow Twist Lollipop. No way could he stay upright like that. He fell. His hip, then his shoulder struck the linoleum one after the other. Then his chin connected, knocking his jawbone against his skull bones, thundering a pain through his head unlike any he’d ever known. Manic Ferris wheels. Demented Teacups. An air horn blaring in his ears. Barbed spears stabbing down from his brain into his upper teeth.
He clutched his temples and screamed.
Teeth-Tattooed Asshole made a rude noise. “Chrissake, Waterson, I barely tagged you.”
Unbelievably, the pain got worse, as if his cranium was fissuring apart and poking sharper shards into his waxy brain while his jaw rent in two, crowbarring an upper molar out of his mushy gums. He spat it out. A crippling, endless chasm of hunger opened up inside his stomach and boiled over into a searing agony, like having Hell’s furnace for an ulcer.
He raised his screams to shrieks.
“Holy shit,” one of the other men cursed. “Would you get a load of this guy?”
“Let’s fucking roll. All this racket, cops’ll be here in a heartbeat.”
John’s face was grabbed and maneuvered over until Asshole’s scowl came into view. “Something’s not right with him.”
“Ya think? Dude’s half-a-corpse.”
“No. It’s something else.” Asshole was closely examining him. “I don’t like it. We need to take him to a hospital.”
“Jesus. All right. Which one is closest to—”
“Not a topside one. Ours.”
“Shit.”
And then someone must’ve switched off the lights.