Wrong Ways Down Read Online Free PDF

what I got. Just some dude, an I wanna find he.”
    He pulled another twenty out of his pocket. Tryna give lashers to Ed were always tricky; he’d take it after he done something but never wanted to take it before, and never would take too much neither. But it were always worth the try. “Here. For the help.”
    For a second he thought Ed would give him the no, and started thinking what to say next, but Ed took it. “Thanks. Do what I can do.”
    Terrible gave him a nod, lifted a hand to say bye, and left. Hopefully that’d make a difference. Hopefully the ghost rumor ain’t would take on any momentum, because he really, really didn’t need that shit in the middle of everything else. Five years or so past there’d been a ghost scare in Downside—before Chess moved in—and it had been a huge fucking mess. No ghost, just a story started by Slobag to make trouble, but it’d taken he and Bump weeks to get everyone calmed the fuck down.
    People started thinking on ghosts in town, made em start wondering why Bump ain’t protecting em. People started wondering why Bump ain’t protecting em, made em wonder what else Bump couldn’t do. Fighting with Slobag they expected. Fighting with ghosts they didn’t, and making them doubt Bump’s control led noplace good.
    So he needed to get that shit stopped right away.
    And hope to fuck it weren’t true.

    He ain’t minded the cold, or the dark, but it did make shit harder. Finding people on the street weren’t as easy, and not as many people out there who might try starting shit with him he could finish. And fuck how he wanted to finish something just then, when Bump’s anger still made him tight inside. And fuck, wasn’t he glad he got the chance; third name on he list were home.
    He flexed his fingers, stretching them, before curling them into a fist and slamming them into Sharp-Eye Ben’s face again. Ain’t should have felt good doing it, but it did. 
    And it helped him forget all the other shit. Helped him forget how he’d failed protecting the girls and how maybe he weren’t smart enough to find the dude attacked Sue. Helped him forget how his daughter ain’t even knew she was his, that she thought some other dude was her dad and he couldn’t ever, ever say the truth. Helped him forget how he looked, how fucking pitiful he was when it came to Chess, how he weren’t good enough to even be her friend, weren’t good enough for much at all.
    Except this. This was the one thing he did better than anybody else, leastaways better’n anybody else he’d ever met. He’d never lost a fight. And when he was doing it, using his fists, his whole body … he felt right. Like his body did the thinking he mind couldn’t seem to get, and when he was fighting he thought faster than anybody else. If fists were brains he was the smartest dude in the city, and he couldn’t help how that made him feel good.
    “Two weeks is up, Ben,” he said, letting his fist hang cocked in the air so Ben could see it. “Ain’t seein any lashers in my hand.”
    “Sorry,” Ben gasped. Kinda hard to make out the words, what with he mouth all puffy and bloody, but Terrible had a lot of experience with that. “Tried, I done, I tried, but I ain’t got it yet. Just another week’s all I need, another week—”
    Terrible hit him again. “Don’t got another week.”
    He dropped Ben—he’d been holding him up by the hair—and turned away as Ben crumpled to the floor. Ben were a speed-banger; his place looked like a banger’s place, almost empty, and cold in the merciless light from the unshaded overheads. 
    But Ben were a cutpurse, too, which meant he might have something hidden away. Some last valuable thing, pass on to somebody who’d buy he a bag with it, since Ben couldn’t buy from any of Bump’s until he’d paid up. Also meant he knew other thieves, more’n Terrible did.
    “Gonna have me the money soon,” Ben whined behind him. Terrible hoisted the end of the cheap-ass