Fuckin' Lie Down Already Read Online Free PDF Page A

mirror and saw Edward’s eyes were still half-open. He wanted to tell his son that he wasn’t missing as much as the boy might think, that life was uglier than wherever he was at now.
    Backing out, Clay felt a slight thump under the rear left wheel and knew instantly that Cuddles had dug his way under the fence and gotten loose. The hell was going on? He got out and looked down at the crushed dog. The sudden and intense silence on the block brought Mrs. Fusilli rushing to her front door. She spotted Cuddles lying there, bloody with tire tracks over his snapped back, and started screeching.
    Clay picked the Chihuahua up and tossed him into the back seat next to Edward. The boy’s eyes seemed to light a bit so maybe it was the right thing to do.
    If he packed enough death around him maybe it would insulate him from his own murder for just long enough.
    Mrs. Fusilli really had a set of pipes on her. Tits down to her girdle and lungs to match. He looked over his shoulder at her and said, “Sorry, lady, but that little bastard has been driving me fuckin’ nuts for two years. Go buy a nice goldfish.”
    The expression on her deranged face actually made him grin. He beeped the horn and gave a quick fluttering wave before stomping the pedal and tearing down the street towards seething damnation.
     

CHAPTER THREE

    The Feds had been onto Chuckie Fariente and the Merullo family since the beginning of time, but they’d screwed up every indictment they’d ever thrown down. Chuckie had personally killed four men that Clay knew of-two with a shotgun and two with a straight razor. Unlike most of the capos, Chuckie liked to get his hands dirty some of the time, get out there with the other soldiers and have some fun. Clay was still sort of surprised that Chuckie had hired a piece of shit like Rocco Tucci instead of coming dead-on himself.
    But he’d learned not to take too much for granted when dealing with the wiseguys. Anything could come out of left field-these pricks whacked their own brothers, their kids, one capo even killed his six-year-old daughter’s hamster with a hammer because the spinning wheel squeaked too loudly. You could never be too sure what might be going on inside the head of a guy like that.
    They were a slick lot though. Clay nearly had Chuckie pinned down a year ago, directly tying a couple of dealers in the South Bronx to the Merullo family. But eleven kilos of heroin did the Brooklyn bounce and vanished from the evidence room by the end of the day. Clay pretty much knew it would happen, but he figured he had a little more time on his hands. The fact that the bounce happened so quickly proved that Chuckie not only had men in the precinct, but on Clay’s team as well.
    How could you ever beat a guy who could do that?
    You simply had to roll with it as best as you could. You watched your brother officers and kept an eye on who bought a new car every eight months, who kept two mistresses in tenth floor apartments on the upper west side. You made a decision on who might actually watch your back when you finally brought it to the Merullo’s doorstep.
    Nobody.
    He took the exit for Saratoga too fast. The Caprice’s shocks didn’t have much left to them and the car jostled crazily as he jumped the median. Clay tugged the wheel hard and brought the front tire back down onto the road. He was clenching his jaws so tightly that his back teeth had begun to buckle, mouth flooding with a metallic taste that reminded him of when he wore braces.
    The air conditioner was still cranked full-throttle. That thin film of ice on the inside of the windows gave the world a pleasing blue glaze, but the cold didn’t help with the stench. He stopped into a strip mall for more potpourri and a few deodorizers, tossed them all around the car.
    Clay’s father used to bring him up here when he was eighteen or nineteen, and they bonded at the race track over beer and talk about the force. His Dad had tried to lay it on the line and