Suitcase City Read Online Free PDF Page B

shirt opened at his waist, and Teach saw it in the waistband of the black jeans—the shiny black handle of a straight razor. McLuster started to pant, and Teach thought, Heart attack, then McLuster moaned, “Oh no,” and Teach saw the dark stain spreading around the man’s clutching fingers.
    The boy laughed quietly. “You bitches better give it up. I ain’t gone say it again.”
    Teach held his eyes on the boy’s face and made himself smile. His salesman’s smile. The smile that ate shit if shit got the purchase order signed. He willed the boy to look at him, apply those cold, coffee-bean eyes to his. When the boy did it, Teach let his smile flow into his eyes, ten years of schmoozing receptionists, accommodating assholes in white lab coats, and closing, closing. He had to close the distance here. He reached out a careful hand and eased McLuster to his right. Teach had to talk but didn’t know what to say. There was a razor in the boy’s waistband.
    He saw the headlines: Local Businessman Slashed in Bar. Motive: Robbery. But headlines were ink and there was going to be blood here. Teach imagined the boy grasping the black handle of the razor and flipping out the gleaming blade. The smallest touch of such an instrument, Teach knew, could bring forth the red gush that ended life in seconds. And for what? Some cracked-out kid wanted money.
    Teach said, “What do you want? Our wallets? Is that it?”
    The boy looked at him, his head tilted sideways. He held up his left fist and loosened three fingers. “That’s three, bitch. I said I wasn’t gone ask you again.”
    Teach glanced at McLuster and shrugged. “He wants us to give it up. You got any idea what he’s talking about?”
    When the boy looked at McLuster, Teach did it: leapt across the space between them and delivered a sweeping right forearm to the side of the boy’s head. Even as Teach knew the sweet smack of contact, felt the boy’s body go limp against his, heard the whack and skitter of the razor hitting the tile floor, he thought it had been too easy. Somehow too easy, too lucky. The boy’s head hit the doorframe, and he slid unconscious to the floor, blood pouring from his split cheek.
    Teach looked at what he had done. What he’d had to do. The thing, apparently, he was still ready to do after all these years. His right elbow ached where the shock of the blow vibrated. He turned to his companion. McLuster with his back against the wall, both hands clutching the urine stain that spread down his trouser legs. “My God,” he said, “look at this. I don’t fucking believe this.”
    Then the boy on the floor groaned and Teach knew this wasn’t over.
    He grabbed the boy’s collar and dragged him facedown through the men’s room door and into the middle of the bar. There he knelt beside the boy, pinning his right arm between his shoulder blades.
    The bartender, a stocky bald man whose name tag said Benny , a man Teach had only vaguely noticed before, a man with the bartender’s gift for appearing with the needed thing and then returning to the status of furniture, looked across the bar at Teach and the boy who was bleeding onto the carpet. The bartender’s face said everything about the things we least expect.
    Teach said, “Call the cops. This kid tried to rob us in the men’s room.” Then, to the man’s expression of disbelief, Teach said, “He had a knife. He was going to rob us. Kill us. I don’t know. Call 911.”
    The bartender turned for the phone, and the boy groaned again. His eyes were foggy but clearing. Teach shoved his arm up to let him know his situation.
    The bartender put down the phone and came over. “They’re coming.” He looked at the boy’s face on the carpet. “Jesus,” he said, “look at the mess you’re making. I gotta get Malone in here.”
    Malone? Malone? Teach thought. Ah yes, this is Malone’s Bar. He looked around now, out of the bright tunnel of violent energy that, for a few moments, had included