I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Collections every week throughout 2023. Download links below.

10.

I’d had guns pointed at me before, but the trigger never got pulled. Guns were everywhere in my line of work, and assholes produced them regularly. It was the Asshole Punctuation Mark, really; whenever they felt like you weren’t paying them the proper attention, they put a gun in their hands for emphasis. But throwing bullets around had consequences—I worked for Frank McKenna, and even if I hadn’t been one of his best earners he would retaliate against any bullets thrown my way pretty harshly, just as a matter of policy. If you didn’t get the sign-off from someone up the food chain, bullets had a way of coming back at you.

I stared at Rusch; she was eying me like I was on fire. “We’re gonna perform a scientific experiment, doc,” I said, struggling to cvontrol myself. The bitch had shot at me. I felt light and nimble, every chemical my brain had at its disposal dumped liberally into my bloodstream. I knew I’d be sore and stiff tomorrow—not from exertion, but from overdrive. “We’re going to see if you can convince me not to punish you for that. I don’t like your odds.”

Rusch straightened up and looked wide-awake, finally, her eyes wide, her face hot and red. “I can explain!” She said. “Let me explain!”

I realized someone was hitting me in the back. It was like a soft drizzle of rain. I turned my head and the redhead was there, tiny, beating her little fists against me. As I looked at her she hit me in the face a few times, like a gnat crashing into a window pane. I took one hand and put it on her head, and with a light shove sent her flying into the sink.

Then, suddenly, Rachel was there next to me, her arms akimbo, her face dark and red.

“Stop it!” She said steadily. “Stop it.”

A cold flash swept through me. I frowned down at her. “She shot at me,” I complained.

“Let her speak,” she commanded, actually stomping her foot. “Jesus fucking Christ, let her explain.”

I clenched my teeth. “She—”

Rachel stood up on her tip-toes and slapped me across the face, making my cheek sting and my eyes water. I whipped my head back and stared at her in amazement.

“You brought me into this,” she said. “I am not going to stand here and watch you beat another person to death right in front of me.”

I stared down at her, my throat working, my arms trembling. She was four-feet eleven inches tall in skintight jeans and shiny leather boots, but she stood there with her lip out and her chest pointed at me like she was certain of besting me in a fight. Which, considering I’d promised to never touch her, she probably would.

With a snarl, I spun away and punched a nice round hole in the wall between the kitchen and the bathroom. Turning back, I wiped my face with my hand, still trembling, and glanced at the front doorway. My neighbor, Mr. Mittra, was peering at me from his own door, his face, as usual, heavily lined and very brown and completely unreadable.

“Mind your business, Mr. Mittra,” I said between breaths. He jumped a little and shut his door. I figured the cops would be here in about three minutes.

I turned and looked at the girl, who lay on the floor with her back against the sinkbase, staring at me. I swallowed bile and stepped over to her, holding out a hand.

“All right,” I said thickly. “Sorry about that. But you were hitting me.”

She stared at my hand and then up at me. After a moment, I pulled my hand back and looked at Rusch and Rachel. The professor had recovered her posture and sleepy look. Rachel looked like a diamond was about to pop out of her ass.

“I’m pretty sure my neighbor just called the cops,” I said slowly, feeling slow and thick. “Let’s get out of here and … talk.”

Rachel nodded. “It’s okay,” she said to Rusch. “He won’t do anything else.” She paused, biting her lip. “Just don’t shoot at him any more.”

Pirelli’s Diner was an ancient box of greasy laminate and cracked vinyl. It had a thick, sticky menu showing faded pictures of all sorts of interesting food no one had ever ordered. I’d never actually eaten anything solid in the place, wanting to remain alive. I ordered surprisingly good coffees and used their ashtrays.

I sat on the inside corner of the booth, smoking, a cup of coffee going cold in front of me, my arm stretched out along the back of the booth, an inch away from Rachel’s neck. There was air between us, but I could feel her warm and soft there anyway. Rusch and her girl sat across from us. The doctor had ordered a slab of cherry pie with ice cream, and I stared at her in amazement as he devoured it happily, like he hadn’t been terrified half an hour before.

Snuffing my cigarette out, I leaned forward, carefully snaking my arm out from behind Rachel without touching even a strand of hair. “All right, Doc—let me apologize for losing my temper. But my temper’s short, and you did fire a gun at me.”

She nodded, suddenly jolly, and dropped her fork to pick up a napkin and wipe her lips carefully. “I do understand, I assure you. I apologize for the trick. I assumed if I asked you would not consent to the experiment.”

I kept my face still. “And if the experiment had gone badly?”

She shook her head, wincing a little. “No, no, no—impossible. I am almost certain of your quantum status. I’ve been working with this research for thirty years—ever since I received tenure.” Her face darkened peevishly for a moment. “The university hasn’t let me teach a class in years. They think I’m crazy. But I still have access to the facilities, and I have been working on my research, alone. Quite alone.” She sighed, then blinked and looked at me. “I had done my due diligence on you and was certain of my findings, but I required a definitive test. I knew the gun would not fire.”

I considered the odds of four or five misfires in a row, then a clean shot, then another two misfires. Certainly not impossible, but unlikely. “And if it fucking had?”

She stared at me for a few seconds, her face blank. “I—I admit I did not have a fallback scenario in mind.”

“We would have run,” the redhead said calmly. “You’re a criminal. The police would have assumed you were rubbed out by some other criminal. Can I have a cigarette?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Rubbed out? Did you really just say that without irony?” I tugged my pack out of my shirt pocket, took one out for myself, and tossed it onto the table along with the matchbook. “What’s your name, darling?” I said, leaning back and sticking the cigarette into my mouth.

She just gave me a sour look while she picked up the cigarettes, examining them with a frown, but Rusch gave me a wincing grin. “Forgive Doira. She has been my research assistant for many years, and she is protective. And she knows I dislike cigarette smoke.”

The redhead rolled her eyes.

I smiled and turned my head to look out the window. The BMW sat in a shadowed corner of the parking lot, The Bumble’s squat form a blur in the driver’s seat. I was kind of relieved to have him there.

I looked back and nodded at Rusch. “You were saying?”

She paused, a pie-laden fork halfway to her mouth. Slowly, she set the fork down and cleared her throat.

“In small words,” I said, taking the matches Doira had dropped back on the table. “See if you can get through it in about thirty seconds.” I jerked my thumb at Rachel. “She’s the only thing keeping me polite right now.”

She looked at Rachel and then back at me. “Very well. As we discussed, observ—alternate universes. Yes, let us use that term.” She placed her fork on the table between us and pointed at the top. “Let us say here is our timeline. You and I, moving forward through time.” She traced a finger up the stem of the fork slowly. “You understand, I am criminally misstating the actual science.”

“Better than getting a bone broken,” I suggested, and Rachel turned to glare at me, adorable.

Rusch continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “Every second, every nanosecond, you and I, everyone, face decisions, yes? Coffee or tea, pie or cake, smoke or abstain, yes? At the moment of decision, every possible outcome exists, because you have not made the decision yet.” She glanced up at me. “Clear?”

I sent a gale of smoke into the world. “As … mud.”

She winced again, as if my words caused her physical harm. “An example: You could stop smoking that cigarette at any time. Any second, you could crush it into the ashtray. Every second, a world exists where you do crush out that cigarette. And this world, where you do not, also exists. Every second, universes split off, every conceivable possibility, infinite decisions and actions and non-actions from around the world, spinning off.” Her finger had reached the tines of the fork, crusted with pie and ice cream, and she spread the fingers of her hand. The skin on the back of her hand was thin and mottled by the blue veins beneath, ropy, sinuous. “In each of these universes, you exist. Or perhaps you do not—the actions of another person, or the inanimate chance of natural happenings, may have destroyed you, or caused you to not exist in the first place. Yes?”

I nodded, more for effect than anything else. “Okay, so every time I make a choice, there’s another me out there. Maybe. At any rate, a lot of mes running around breaking bones out there.”

She hesitated. “Well … let us leave it at that. Except that the other “yous” may not resemble you very much, depending. Certainly, at the moment of divergence, perhaps you are identical. But if you diverged thirty years ago, or in the womb, say, you may be very different people.” She picked up the fork again. “At any rate, I do not believe there are any other yous out there.”

I blinked. “Why is that?”

“You are what I term a Quantum Terminus.”

I smiled. “Oh, I am going to like this.”

She grinned back at me as if she believed me, as if I hadn’t terrorized her just a moment before. “Perhaps you will. As I said, every divergence can create an … alternate version of you. Again, the terms are not precise, but … However, there are not infinite versions of you. You may die. You may never be born at all in a divergent timeline. However, because of the splitting of timelines—consider: Every time you are in danger of dying, there exists one possible world where you die, and one where you live. As a result,” she hesitated suddenly, then leaned forward and spoke in a rush. “There exists, always, one version of a given person who does not die. Ever. Every time they face the possibility of death, they are the version that lives. Forever.”

I blinked. “What?”

“She’s saying you’re immortal,” Rachel said, in the same tone of voice as if she’d said I was fat, or smelled bad.

Rusch shrugged apologetically. I realized I kind of enjoyed her talking, and thought she was probably a good professor. “Yes.” She leaned forward again. “Imagine this: You sit in front of a gun fitted with an automatic trigger that randomly either fires or does not fire, every second. Each second, the possibility is that the gun fires and kills you, or does not. Thus in every second you split into two: One dies, one lives. Each split then also faces the next second, and splits in turn. Eventually you end up with one version that survives every second. This version is the Quantum Terminus, because it goes on. Forever.” She relaxed, picking up the fork again. “This is why the gun misfires when I point it at you. You are the last of, well, you. In every scenario where you choose between living and dying, you live.”

She plunged the fork into her pie and held it up between us for a moment, gesturing at me with a dollop of cherry filling and vanilla ice cream. “You’re immortal.”

I considered that for about five seconds, then leaned forward and held my cigarette up in front of my face, pretending to examine it closely. “Doc, I didn’t hear the name Falken once in that speech. And you know how that irritates me.”

Rusch actually seemed amused, still holding the pie in front of her face. “He’s not immortal, but there’s a version of him—an alternate him—that wants to be.”

I shifted my eyes from the coal to her face. “And how does he do that?”

Rusch pushed the fork into her mouth. “By killing all the other versions of himself, of course.”

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I‘ll be posting one chapter of my novel Collections every week throughout 2023. Download links below.

9.

When Rusch stepped through the doorway, she was the same slightly nervous, badly-dressed woman I’d met down in New Brunswick. She was followed by the red-haired woman who’d been with her in the limousine—or who looked exactly like her, since she was also dressed like a schmuck: baggy tan pants, a shapeless T-shirt, a ratty old gray sweater, tennis shoes. If I’d passed her on the street I wouldn’t have even noticed her. She was carrying a large, cheap suitcase made of an itchy-looking fabric.

I’d managed to put on shoes and a shirt. It was offensively wrinkled and dusty from the floor, but if these mopes weren’t going to dress for the occasion—the good professor had on a tan jacket she might have found on the street moments ago—then I didn’t give a shit. I’d also cleaned off my one and a half chairs and put on some coffee, the glass urn miraculously unscathed.

She came in tentatively, shoulders down, and I decided finally that there were two women who looked exactly alike. There had to be. Or else Doctor Rusch had a serious mental problem.

I pushed my hands into my pockets and leaned against the stove.

She looked around. “You must throw some parties, young man.”

I pulled one hand free and pointed at her. “You have a twin.” I shifted to point at the ginger. “So do you.”

They exchanged a long, blank glance. There was no fire in it, no spark of any kind. They might have met on the way up the stairs. They were either complete strangers or they’d been married fifty years. The girl was leaving youth behind, and she wasn’t pretty, with a too-long, bold nose and just the wrong amount of freckles.

“We all do,” Rusch said, looking back at me. “Everyone has a twin. Hundreds of twins. Trillions.”

“Does Elias Falken?”

Rusch nodded without looking at me, and began strolling around the kitchen as if nothing concerned her. “Oh, yes. Although I wouldn’t say he has trillions of them any more. As a matter of fact, I’d say he’s been narrowed down to about two or three.” She kicked at the rubble that had once been my kitchen. “Hmmph. Gas-on-gas heat,” she said, examining the stove with her baggy eyes. She looked sleepy all the time, like keeping her eyes open was far too much trouble. I looked at her and pictured her in a motorized bed, being zipped around everywhere with some silly sleeping cap on, muttering lazily now and then to communicate her thoughts. “Freezing in the winter in here, yes?”

I nodded, smiling a little. I was amused. So many people either tried to hit me, to beg me, or to run away from me. “Like a meat locker.”

She nodded. “Pre-war tenement railroad. People used to shut up half the rooms and live in the kitchen and living room during the winter. If you close the door to the bedrooms, the heat’s just enough to keep you alive.” Suddenly she looked up at the cupboard over the sink, which now hung slightly askew, one of the screws torn out of the wall. I waited a beat, but she didn’t say anything else. She just stared at the wall.

Steps outside, and then Rachel was leaning against the doorway, arms crossed under her chest. She looked good in her librarian glasses, hair pulled back, in a lush black turtleneck, jeans, and gleaming black leather boots. We exchanged a glance, and she shrugged, somehow making the gesture beautiful, graceful. As usual I wanted to touch her so badly my hands curled up involuntarily, but that was the single, inviolable rule of our relationship: that I never touch her. The redhead glanced her way, but Rusch didn’t take any notice of her at all.

“Dr. Rusch,” I said, tearing my eyes from Rachel and putting them on her. “I have no imagination, so if you came here to say something, say it fast. My conversations usually devolve into me beating the shit out of people until they start saying what I want to hear.”

She turned and blinked at me. “What? Beatings?” She said the word as if she’d truly never heard it before, and stared at me in undisguised horror. I controlled myself. I didn’t know what was going on, and it wasn’t right to just start swinging out of frustration.

“Mr. Falken,” I said slowly, turning away and searching for an unbroken mug. “You were about to tell me where he is so I can find him and beat the snot out of him,” I turned and smiled back at Rusch. “Instead of you.”

“But—but I don’t know where Mr. Falken is!”

I picked up a white mug from the floor and blew into it to clean out some of the dust. It wasn’t my favorite; it had little black specs everywhere that always made me think it wasn’t clean. I turned back and gave Rusch my sunniest smile. “Then I’m confused, because that’s all I want to hear. Why are you here, then, Dr. Rusch?”

I grabbed the urn of hot coffee and poured some into the mug. Little bits of dust floated on top, and I stared down at them, unhappy.

“To try and explain what’s been happening,” Rusch said quickly. “I’ll, eh, I’ll admit you frightened me a little yesterday. I thought perhaps the best thing would be to remain uninvolved.”

I braced myself and took a sip of coffee. It was not the worst I’d ever had, even with the grit; it did not, for example, choke me to death. I’d bought it in a tin can on the way home a few hours ago; three dollars and a tin can did not, it turned out, make a good cup of coffee. “Well, since you’re involved, I have one question before you get started: Does the name Falken enter into whatever dissertation you’re about to give at all?”

She blinked at me again. “Yes. May I have a cup of coffee?”

I shook my head, leaning back against the stove again and crossing my arms so as to hold the coffee up near my face. “No.” I gestured with my free hand. “Proceed.”

She stared at me for another moment, then looked at her girlfriend. Dr. Rusch had been pretty, once, eons ago. I saw her at twenty, short skirts and a simple, unfussy hairdo, and wanted to talk to that version of her, make her smile. Clearing her throat, she nodded. “I am a physicist,” she began, then paused, cocking her head as if hearing her own words echoed back to her from some vast distance. Shaking her head, she looked at me again. “What do you know about the Many World’s Theory?”

I studied her. I took a sip of coffee. I kept a grimace off my face.

“Multiple universes,” she prompted, gesturing at me encouragingly. After another few moments, she blinked. “Alternate universes.”

I looked over at Rachel. I liked looking at her. She was short and slim and still had that freshness to her she’d had when we first met. She smiled briefly and shrugged her eyebrows behind her fantastic glasses.

Rusch took another breath, and I held up my hand. “All right. I’ve heard the term.” I looked at her. “A million other earths with a double of each of us on ’em, right?”

She scowled. “Well, no, actually, not—” She paused and visibly collected herself. “All right. Except, not a million, but infinite. You know what infinite means?”

I stared at her. After a few seconds she swallowed and looked over at the ginger again, then down at the floor. She seemed to be figuring out, more slowly than I would have imagined for a professor of some sort, that she was in near danger of having her nose broken.

“Yes,” she finally said. “Every observable,” she paused and looked at me again, apparently assessing my intelligence and not liking the prognosis. “Forget why,” she finally said. “Infinite universes. Each diverging from a previous timeline, some running parallel for a while, some diverging wildly.” She glanced up at me intently. “This is the field I’ve worked in my whole life. The theory of it, but also the application of it, how to touch these other universes. To observe them. And by observing them create another infinite set of—” she paused again. “Yes. These worlds exist. And yes, there can be other versions of us, depending on when divergence occurs. Since the set is infinite, the versions of us can be infinite.” She shrugged. “The math, however, proves these ‘doubles’ are, in fact, finite. For some of us, millions. For others, two. For others, none.” She nodded as if someone had agreed with him. “That is the interesting data.”

I sipped more coffee; drinking this coffee was quickly becoming one of my biggest regrets in life. “I have not heard the name Falken yet, doc,” I said. “I’m going to be upset if I don’t hear it soon.”

“Mr. Falken approached me,” Rusch said suddenly as if it had been her plan all along to introduce the subject at that moment. “He approached me some weeks ago concerning my work, and told me a fantastic story—that he was, in fact, a different version of Falken, a man born at the same point in another, nearly-identical universe, that he was completely normal, average, a nonentity, and that a gang of people had suddenly tried to murder him some months ago. He did not explain how, exactly, he transferred himself to this reality. He did, however, indicate that he had been followed here by those who wished to eliminate him.”

I thought about Rachel telling me Falken had been dead for two years. “So you’re telling me, Falken and this other Dr. Rusch I’ve been running into are alternate versions? From alternate universes?”

Rusch took a half step backwards, as if she could sense that she was about four words away from that punch in the nose. Maybe three.

“Yes! Though I would use more precise terms. While I believe such travel is possible, I do not know of the exact technology utilized, nor am I aware of any practical way to do so.”

I swallowed the last of the coffee with a sense of relief, set the mug down carefully on the scorched and greasy stovetop, and straightened up, reaching up to unbutton my shirt cuffs. “Sorry, doc. I’m going to have to beat you a little extra for trying to lay that bullshit on me.”

She blanched, her face literally going white, and skittered around to put the ruined hulk of my table between us. “Young man, I assure you I am not—”

“Assure all you want. I want to know where in fuck Falken is, and I think you know.” I started working on the other sleeve. “And I’m going to convince you to tell me.”

I didn’t know what to make of all of it—maybe she was crazy, and believed it all. I didn’t care.

She sidestepped her way towards the girl. I glanced at Rachel again, but she shrugged. She wasn’t going to step in front of this train.

I finished tucking my sleeves up around my elbows, and started to walk steadily around the table to get to her. Rusch touched the redhead on the shoulder and she dropped the suitcase onto the floor and began unsnapping the locks.

“I beg a moment’s indulgence,” Rusch said quickly, inching back as I approached. “I can make all of this perfectly clear.”

I nodded. “I know you can, doc. I got faith.”

The girl tossed the suitcase open with a flourish, and plucked something out, handing it up to Rusch. She fumbled for a second, and then brought a gun up, held on me with both hands.

I didn’t like guns. I didn’t use them; they made you soft. But I came across my share of them, and by necessity I’d learned something about them. This one was an automatic, and it looked like a good one, though I didn’t know much about make and model. I stopped and let my hands hang at my sides.

“That necessary, doc?” I said. “The only thing happens when people handle guns, is someone gets shot.”

Before I realized what she was doing, Rusch extended her arms, centered the gun on my chest, and pulled the trigger four times. Each time all she got was a dry click, a misfire, while I stood there frozen in shock, completely unconvinced that it was possible an old lady from New Jersey had just tried to shoot me to death. Then she shifted the gun a foot to my right and pulled the trigger again. A peal of thunder shook the whole room and something exploded into the wall behind me as I ducked reflexively, the noise finally getting me into motion. Then she put the gun on me again and pulled the trigger three more fucking times, again getting just a dry click.

“As I suspected,” she said. “You cannot be killed.”

I surged up and knocked the gun out of her hand, intending to do more, but the shriek of terror that she produced combined with a sudden, grandmotherly cowering brought me up short. I glanced over her at Rachel, who was just staring at me flatly, saying nothing. It was one thing to slap an annoying woman, it was something else to beat an old lady. It impossible to do either with Rachel watching me.

I forced myself to straighten up. “I can be pissed off, doc,” I said, stepping towards her. “And we’re there.”

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I‘ll be posting one chapter of my novel Collections every week throughout 2023. Download links below.

6.

We were inching down 30th street in the tunnel lane when the cherry-top bloomed into red life behind us, a dashboard model, dim and hard to see in the harsh daylight. I wasn’t used to the sun; I spent most of my time crawling through bars and underground card parlors in the wee hours of the morning, lungs rough from cigarettes and poorly ventilated illegal clubs, my eyes squinty and red from smoke and low-watt mood fucking lighting. The car felt tight and hard, the radio droning on about something at the U.N. that had everybody hot and bothered, some treaty half the world wanted and half didn’t.

“The Executioner,” The Bumble muttered, putting the Beamer into park and making sure his hands were visible. “I’ll bet you.”

I shook my head. All my wounds throbbed deliciously, giving me a hard-on. “That’s a sucker’s bet.”

He strolled over in a beautiful, understated gray suit, and when he put his hands on the door and leaned in I noted that his fingernails, yellowed and thick, were perfectly groomed. His rings clinked against the side of the car.

“Mornin’ boys,” Detective James said, grinning behind sharp sunglasses. “Takin’ a trip?”

“Making a run for it,” I said, giving him a smile calibrated to match his own. “Gonna start a new life in New Jersey where no one will ever find us.”

James liked that. “Start a pizza shop,” he suggested. “Change your name to Gino. You’ll fit right in.”

I didn’t laugh. “Anything we can do for you? You yanking our passport?”

He shook his head, shooting his bright white cuff to check the time on his Rolex. “Naw, just making sure you know I’m paying attention. You gonna be gone long?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. But it ain’t a permanent change of address, if that’s what you’re worried over.”

He laughed again. “The idea of you and Billy Bumble here shacking up for the rest of your lives like the Pink Mafia don’t have what they call verisimilitude, so, no. Just remember, they got brother police on that side of the Hudson, too.” He straightened up and tapped the top of the car. “This is new, huh?” he said. “That Mercedes got all scuffed up, huh?”

There wasn’t anything to say to that, so we just sat there with our hands visible. James got testy if your hands got obscured. The fucking cops—they all played these little games. I didn’t mind, usually, but sometimes I couldn’t see the fucking point. We knew he was keeping his yellow eye on us, looking for an opportunity to profit from us or jam us up, he knew we were working angles. I’d prefer to just let us all do our fucking bit and leave it at that.

He tapped the roof again. “All right. Carry on, boys.”

The Bumble waited until James was back in his craphole Ford before putting the car back into gear. We got lucky at the light and were able to make the right turn without having to sit there with James staring at our ass.

“Fucking cops,” The Bumble was moved to say. “Spend half their day wasting everyone’s time.”

Those were the last words we spoke for the next two hours. Through the tunnel onto the Turnpike, through the toll booths, and then south, south, south, Jersey transforming from the oily smell of Elizabeth to trees and trees and trees. We took exit nine and coasted into New Brunswick, a scrubby slab of concrete with a university and a hospital and twenty thousand assholes to recommend it, and found Hamilton Street more or less by complete accident. The address Rachel had given me for Rusch turned out to be a big corner house, stained white siding and a slab of cracked driveway for a backyard. It sagged there in the sunlight like the fucking town in miniature: worn-down, mistreated, and not even that attractive to begin with.

“Stay in the car,” I suggested to The Bumble. He nodded, then got out with me and followed me up the sagging wooden stairs. The tiny front yard was filled with trash: broken furniture, three cases of empty beer cans, four or five warm and moist-looking trash bags of uncertain vintage. The screen door had no screen in it, so I just reached through to knock on the door.

The door opened and a tall, older woman blinked at me. “Yes?”

It took me a moment to recognize the woman in the white suit from the limo; she was wearing a baggy sweater and a pair of faded, torn jeans, and no shoes or socks. Her hair had somehow gotten about four inches longer, and hung in her face in a stringy mass of salt-and-pepper curls, wearing a different pair of thick glasses. I smiled at her, a weird feeling of sudden uncertainty gnawing at me. I’d been planning to just slap her in the face when I found her, but my internal auditor wasn’t giving me the green light.

“Remember me?” I asked brightly.

She frowned, cocking her head at me. “No,” she said, finally, and sounded like she meant it.

I wasn’t prepared for this. I’d intended to just menace her until I felt better, then ask her about Falken, but I just hung there, unsure. Finally I decided on a half-measure, shouldering her aside with a brusque “Mind if I come in?” that made me feel like I’d regained the momentum.

The Bumble, silent as always, followed me into a narrow, oppressive hall, the wood paneling waxy-looking. A set of narrow stairs led upwards, covered in a dusty carpet, but I followed the hall until it opened up into a bright living room. Three windows faced me, giving me a glimpse of the side street we’d parked on. The kitchen squatted to my left, and a set of pocket doors hid another room to my right. The living room was furnished lazily; the couch was floral and ancient, the coffee table scratched and battered, the television old and dusty. Dusty was the word of the day: It hung in the air, covered everything, like she hadn’t been in the room for weeks.

“What is this?” Rusch asked, rushing into the room to stand in front of us. Her puny fury was kind of amusing; I suspected she was a woman who had never been hit, not once in her life, and who imagined men did not strike woman. You couldn’t be afraid of something you’d never felt, and I shrugged my coat onto my shoulders and peered at her. I’d hit plenty of women. It came up in the job.

“Cornelia Rusch?” I asked. Somehow it seemed possible there had been a mistake.

She nodded. “Yes!” she snapped with something approaching authority. “Now—”

“Doctor Cornelius Rusch?”

“Jesus, yes,” she snapped again. I looked at The Bumble, but he’d suddenly discovered the floor, and stood there staring down at it, swallowing a grin. I looked back at the good doctor, at sea. I couldn’t give myself a pass to beat the snot out of her—enjoyable as that would be—until I was sure what was going on.

“You’re telling me you weren’t in New York two days ago?”

She threw up her hands, her arms skinny and nonthreatening. “No. Now why are you in my house?”

I frowned. I believed her, for some reason. She really had never seen me before. “Well, shit, I’m not sure now,” I said, then paused. “You don’t have a twin sister, do you?”

Her whole manner changed. She went still, and glanced nervously at The Bumble as he pushed his hands into his pockets. After a moment she pursed her lips and rocked back on her heels. It was easy to picture her in front of a class, lecturing.

“Why do you say that?”

I caught the scent again and leaned forward, feeling myself swelling back to full size, sensing the hollow bones under Rusch’s skin, her soft, open stance, easy to unbalance.

“Because someone who looked just like you took me for a ride yesterday, doc, and poked her nose into my business. Which I do not approve of.”

Before I could transition to the threat portion of our conversation, she surprised me by stepping forward and leaning in, presenting me with a gorgeous glass chin that would shatter on impact in a spectacular and satisfying way. “Tell me,” she demanded, “did she look exactly like me?”

I paused, picturing the woman in the white suit sitting across from me in the back of the limo, and then nodded. “She was wearing glasses, and had better fashion sense. But otherwise exactly.”

She nodded, looking off to his right in a dreamy way, letting out a noncommittal grunt. I let her hover for a moment until I was sure she wasn’t going to volunteer anything useful, then I stepped to my left and inserted myself into her line of sight, putting a hand on her shoulder and grabbing hold.

“Now, let me explain something to you, Dr. Rusch. There’s a lot of things I don’t generally like. White shoes. Menthol cigarettes. The Second Avenue Subway. Number one on my list, though, I have to say, is going to fucking New Jersey.” I pushed her gently and she backed away from me towards the couch. “So I’m running out of patience. I don’t care if you have a twin sister, or if it was you in that car with me in Manhattan and you’re just being cute.” I pushed her down onto the cushions and she fell there easily, staring up at me. “I’m looking for a man who owes me a lot of fucking money, and in return for your help in finding him I will consider not breaking both your legs.”

She blinked up at me, then at The Bumble. “Jesus, what are you, gangsters?”

“I’m the guy who’s going to break your legs,” I said, spreading my hands. “What else do you really need to know?”

She looked glum. “I knew this would happen,” she muttered, and I stepped forward suddenly, looming over her. The couch smelled like stale dust. I was offended by the whole fucking room, which had all the taste and cleanliness of the college kids who’d lived here before my good professor.

“Dr. Rusch,” I said slowly, forcing myself to hold back. “I’m going to ask you this once: Where is Falken?”

She stared at me without any reaction aside from a slight furrowing of her brow. She slowly shook her head. “I have no—”

I decided she needed a little more encouragement, so twisted back and kicked her in the left shin, light. She howled and collapsed forward, rolling off the couch onto the floor in a cloud of disturbed dust. I looked over at The Bumble as Rusch rolled on the floor, screaming and clutching her leg, and rolled my eyes. He shrugged back. The Bumble didn’t understand anybody, or anything. The world was simple to him, and he got annoyed by anyone who found it otherwise.

“Dr. Rusch—”

“You broke my leg!”

I sighed. “No, Dr. Rusch, I didn’t.”

“You broke my leg!”

I leaned down in a rush and took hold of her shirt, yanking her up and throwing her back onto the couch. People didn’t know how this was done, professionally. Most people didn’t experience violence in their lives, and when it was used on them their reaction was almost always fucking amazement. That was why assholes willing to take and dole out punishment were always in charge.

“Where the fuck is Falken?” I asked again, thrusting a finger under her nose. “And if your next sentence begins with I have no I will break your leg.”

She shook her head violently, her eyes closed like not seeing me might make me disappear. “I don’t know! I don’t know that name!”

I stepped back and threw my hands up for The Bumble’s benefit. He was the only one in the room who might appreciate the subtleties of our profession anyway. Thing was, I believed the old bag. She wasn’t the Rusch I’d met the other day—as impossible as that maybe was. She didn’t know who the fuck Falken was. It didn’t hang together right, but I realized I wasn’t going to feel right about beating the snot out of her unless I got rid of the itchy feeling that she didn’t know what the fuck was going on.

“All right, Dr. Rusch,” I said, nodding over at The Bumble. “We’ll leave you now before anyone gets curious about your screaming. But we’ll be back. Think about I’ve asked you today, see if you can’t jog something free.” I turned towards the door, and The Bumble preceded me down the hall again, retracing our obvious footprints in the heavy dust on the floor. If the good doctor actually lived in the house, or at least the main floor, I would be amazed, and I eyed the small, tight cellar door as we moved alongside the stairway.

The Bumble didn’t say anything as we walked down the steps and around the corner to the car. “Gimme the phone,” I said.

He fished out the cell and handed it over to me. “What’re we doing now?”

“We’re going home,” I said, punching the numbers carefully, my fingers too thick, the phone feeling delicate in my hand, like it might snap into pieces if I twitched. Rachel answered on the second ring.

“Hey, Unc,” she said, sounding breathless. “Am I gonna need a restraining order?”

“I need another favor,” I said. “I need someone watched for a couple of days. The old rate, when you were freelancing steady, if you want it.”

There was silence for a few seconds while The Bumble and I stood around outside the car like a couple of assholes. “Paying expenses?”

I smiled. “You’re gonna be sitting in your car, kid. What kind of expenses are you gonna rack up?”

“All right. Give me a few hours to make some calls, make some arrangements. I’ll check in later.”

“Thanks, Rache.” I snapped the phone shut and tossed it to The Bumble. “Let’s go.”

He grunted and the doors unlocked. “You’re gonna have the stripper watch the house?”

I kept my face blank. “Hey, she actually paid her way through college that way. Besides, she’s not a stripper any more. And you don’t get paid to think, Billy.”

He shrugged and sank into the driver’s seat. “And we’re going home.”

The universe clearly made less sense now to him than it had thirty seconds before. “I gotta show my face or Frank’s gonna fucking push a button on me,” I said, twisting around to look back at the shabby white house as we pulled smoothly into the street. I didn’t tell The Bumble that I had exactly one friend to ask favors from. The Bumble didn’t have any, and I didn’t want to make him feel bad.

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5.

I lay in bed smoking, which they tell you not to do, but they also tell you not to drink liquor, not to eat red meat, and not to gamble, have sex, or dance on Sundays, so fuck ’em. I’d taken off my shirt to keep from wrinkling it, and lay against piled-up pillows with my shoes and pants on in just my undershirt. The apartment was hot from the steam heat and I was sweating there despite the cold wind coming in from the window.

I was running the events of the last few days over in my mind. Falken, dead. Rusch from fucking Jersey. A limo stolen thirty fucking years ago. And me, suddenly and officially, owing Frank McKenna a boatload of money, because Falken, poor dead Falken who’d been nursing a hangover in McHales just a few days ago, had skipped and that was on me.

There was a knock at the front door. I frowned and didn’t move for a moment, cigarette burning in my hand. It was a sixth floor walkup in an old building, it was quiet, stuffy, and I had an easy way out the bedroom window, up the ladder to the roof, across six buildings with easy jumps, and down the fire escape to the street. I glanced that way, watching the yellowed drapes blow in for a few seconds, and when another knock came I sat up, snuffing my cigarette in the crowded ashtray as I stood.

Passing through the living room, they knocked again, harder and more rapidly, making the door jump. The kitchen was dark and I left it that way as I crossed to the door; the hallway would be dim and there was no reason to light myself up. I paused just inside the door as they pounded again. I squinted through the peephole and saw two men: One a round, big black kid with a dopey smile on his fat face, the other taller, skinnier, with a big bushy mustache like a caterpillar sitting on his upper lip. The black kid was wearing baggy jeans and a dark T-shirt, lots of gold chains hanging off his neck that I was pretty sure would turn his skin green soon enough. The other guy was wearing a black suit, all attitude, but he pulled it off. Black shirt, black tie, black pants, black jacket. He had the shoulders and posture to make it work.

As he reared back for another pound, I opened the door and stepped into the doorway, leaning against the jam and pulling my pack of cigarettes out.

“Evening, Miggsy,” I said. “Selling Girl Scout Cookies?”

Miggs settled himself, folding his hands in front of him. The kid kept smiling like something was tickling his ass. I thought about asking Miggs about his taste in muscle, but thought better of it. Miggs didn’t look like he was in the mood to kid around. He was a little older than me, and worked Frank’s lesser debts, but he was steady.

He pulled a toothpick from his mouth and shrugged. “You buying Girl Scout cookies? You buyin’ ’em, I’ll find some to sell ya.”

With the pleasantries over, I lit a match and sucked in smoke. “What can I do for you, Miggs?”

He winced a little, looking a little embarrassed. “Frank put Falken’s debt on you today, kid.”

I studied him. “And, what, you couldn’t wait to come down here and break my balls about it?”

He shrugged, not looking embarrassed any more. “It’s a lot of money.” He twisted his head until his neck popped, loud, like a gunshot. “You got the two weeks? Maybe the whole thing?”

I smiled, a golden ball forming in the pit of stomach. My heart started pounding, and I felt adrenaline and power pouring into my limbs, everything loosening up. I looked at the Smiler and then back at Miggs, who stood there with the easy posture of a man used to violence. He understood the equation.

I thought, for a second, of the money under my closet floor, and then pushed the thought aside. The easy thing to do would be to hand over every fucking dime I had to Frank McKenna and hope I found Falken and twisted the money out of him, that would let me get back to work, back to normal. It would save me money in the long run, too, because Frank was going to pile on juice to the debt every week no matter what I did.

I shook my head. “Go fuck yourself, Miggs. Tell Frank he wants his money, he can come here like a man and ask me nicely.”

It was hard to keep the smile off my face. Not only was this allowed, not only was this fucking okay, but Miggs was a man who could handle himself, and would give as good as he got. This was going to be fun.

He got sulky, frowning and letting his hands hang free in preparation. “Just business. No need to get sticky about it.”

I exhaled smoke and flicked my cigarette away. “Sticky? Fuck you, sticky. I own this debt for three goddamn hours you’re here like a fucking roach to see what might fall out of my ass as I walk around?” I stepped forward, into the hall, crowding them, the narrow, shadowy stairs a few feet behind Miggs to his right. “You know what you just did?”

Miggs didn’t back away, just narrowed his eyes. His mustache was fucking majestic, with a healthy sheen, thick and glorious. “What?”

“You just gave me permission,” I said, and jerked forward, smacking my forehead into his nose.

He took it well, staggering backwards a step or two with a grunt and then putting his head down, meeting my rush with his shoulders, grappling my waist with his big arms. I pushed him into the railing at the top of the stairs, making it creak and lean outward dangerously, then sprang back half a step and clocked him nice and solid on the chin, spinning him onto the wobbly railing with his ass pointed at me.

He took hold of the railing and kicked, catching me in the stomach with a shot that felt like lead, knocking the breath out of me. I tried to laugh, uncontrollably, my whole body clenching and shuddering painfully as it tried to vomit up guffaws. Spots danced in front of me as my lungs burned.

He spun around and saw me just swaying there, shaking, and lunged forward with a haymaker. I ducked, easy, and he smacked his fist into the wall, old lathing and plaster that didn’t even crack. He howled and danced back, clutching his fist, and I managed one wet, coughing breath as I reached out and grabbed onto one of his ankles, giving it a yank with my knees planted firmly on the floor. He toppled over and hit the floor with a crash, making all the boards jump, and I leaped atop him, smacking my fist down into his face, angels singing, the white light everywhere, truly happy for the first time all day. I was working his face, like an artist works clay, re-arranging it and putting my stamp on it. It was what I’d been put on the earth to do.

I sat up suddenly, panting, my chest tight and feeling like someone had pushed splinters into my lungs. Miggs lay there moaning, his nose and mouth bloody and soft, his face already swollen. I looked up, feeling my shirt clinging damply to my torso, and found the Smiling Fool still just standing there. He wasn’t smiling any more; his face was concentric circles of fucked-up shock.

“You’re the worst,” I managed between heaves, “fucking muscle … I ever saw.” I gestured down at poor Miggs, for whom I was already feeling sorry. “Why didn’t … you jump in?”

He looked at me and blinked. “Shit, he didn’t tell me to.”

I nodded. “You and the fucking Bumble ought to form a club.” I pushed myself up to my feet and pointed at him. “Stay here.”

I staggered back into my apartment, blowing like a beached whale, and grabbed my shirt and overcoat from the bedroom, then went back into the hall, where Miggs had rolled himself onto his belly and had pulled himself a few inches towards the stairs. I shut and locked the door behind me and fished for my cigarettes again. Stepping over Miggs with a cigarette in my mouth, I glanced back at the Smiler and pointed at Miggs.

“Don’t help him,” I said. “Make him crawl down.”

The streets were empty and the cab dumped me outside The Oak Room off of Central Park in about half an hour. My chest still felt like I’d strained some fundamental muscle and stabbed me every time I moved, but I’d stopped panting and trembling. I’d smoked three cigarettes along the way and discovered four open cuts oozing blood on my face, but felt fantastic. I needed to get into fistfights more often. The problem with the people I worked with was their disappointing tendency to pull a gun on you if you pushed them too far.

I paid the driver a fifty and told him to keep it, and pushed my way past the flunkies at the front and stood in the dining room a moment. I saw Frank just as his mopes did, and they rushed forward to meet me when I was still a few steps away from his table, where he was eating alone. They were just two kids, fat assholes who had all the imagination of the cheap suits they were sausaged into.

“Touch me and I’ll break both hands so bad you’ll never be able to jerk off again,” I said, putting another cigarette in my mouth. Bad for me, but so was getting into fights outside your own fucking apartment. I looked past them to where Frank sat leaning back in his chair, napkin tucked into his collar, studying me with a grin on his face. “You seriously want a scene, Frank?”

He shrugged. “I can cover the damages. And I can get ten more guys in here in thirty seconds.”

My heart leaped in instinctive joy. I smiled. “Do it.”

Frank studied me again, then leaned forward to his plate again, shaking his head. “Fucking crazy bastard. Let him come.”

The mopes stepped aside, shooting their cuffs and giving me their best hardcase looks, and I pushed past them and dropped into the chair opposite Frank, lighting up. I stared at him until he looked up from his steak dinner. He blinked and leaned back again.

“Jesus, you look like hell. You want somethin’? Hey, Ginny, get him a bourbon,” he said, waving his hand in the air randomly. “Get him a Wild Turkey, neat.” He looked back at me and spread his arms. “What?”

I waited a moment, then leaned forward, pushing smoke out through my nose. “Your cash flow drying up, Frank? That why you sent that fucking grocery clerk to try and collect on me?”

He popped his eyes at me. “Send him? Send who?”

I controlled myself with effort. I felt so good I wanted to leap across the table and keep my adrenaline up. “Miggs. Miggs Bender.”

Frank smirked. “That moron. Look, you inherited a debt. You inherit the juice on it too, and you don’t get a reprieve just because it’s got a new owner.” Someone crept up behind me and placed a nearly-full tumbler of whiskey on the table in front of me. Frank shrugged. “I didn’t send anyone after you. But you can’t be surprised. Miggs has got you on his list now. He don’t get you to pay, he’s in dutch, right? So he’s just bein’ enterprising.”

I leaned back and picked up the tumbler with my bandaged, aching hand, crossing my legs and pursing my lips. It could be, I figured. Miggs was greedy and ambitious like everyone else, and he maybe just thought he might find me soft. I sniffed the whiskey and took a gulp. “All right,” I said. “Maybe.”

Frank nodded and picked up his knife and fork, bending over the plate. “Besides, you bring it on yourself. You earn good, kid. You don’t bet, you don’t spend. The fuck you do with all your money, who knows? So it’s natural to think that you’ve got a nut hidden away, that you could clean up a debt like that easy.”

I stared down into my drink, going calm and still, knowing the truth: I’d been chucked over the side for money. It was a big nut, sure, but nothing compared to what Frank McKenna pulled in every day. But he figured I had money stashed somewhere and he’d let Miggsy come at me hoping to break something loose. I took a deep breath and bolted the glass of whiskey, forcing it down and sitting for a moment, making sure it stayed down.

“I’ll handle it,” I said. “No need to send fucking poodles to bite my ankles, okay?”

I stood up, but Frank reached out and put a hand on my arm, making me pause. “Listen,” he said, letting his hand slide off me and picking up his fork again. “No hard feelings. You pay off the debt, all is forgiven, everyone’s friends.”

I nodded. “Yeah, okay.” I wanted to smash the tumbler into his head, make him bleed.

He nodded without looking up. “Until then, Billy’s gonna stick closer than usual. No offense.”

“Fuck you, no offense.” I took a few steps away, then paused. Without turning back to him, I said “Fine. Tell Bill to pick me up tomorrow around nine. We’re taking a trip.”

“A trip? Where to?”

I grimaced as I pushed my way through the mopes again, giving them both some shoulder. “Fucking Jersey.”

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4.

We sat, The Bumble and me, in the waiting room, on the little plastic seats bolted to the wall. I sat in continuous fear that the seat might collapse under The Bumble’s bulk; a catastrophe like that would ruin the impression of blank menace The Bumble usually projected. The receptionist sat behind her cheap metal desk tapping dolefully at a keyboard, stealing glances at us. She was middle-aged and matronly, with no discernible figure, wearing a floral sack of a dress and big round glasses with bright red frames she probably thought were daring. She didn’t like us sitting in the waiting room, but I’d made an appointment and this flustered her.

For his part, The Bumble was glad to be back on rounds. He didn’t like uncertainty and breaks in our routine. He appeared to doze next to me, eyes half-closed, at peace.

The waiting room was just bare drywall painted an unenthusiastic shade of off-white; you could still see the tape on the seams. A single, gloriously terrible painting, huge, had been hung behind us on the wall, stretching the length of the bolted-on seats, and a tall potted fake plant a shade of green that was almost, but not quite found in nature squatted in the corner behind the receptionist. That was it for decoration, aside from the jerkoff’s law degree in a frame on the wall over her desk. There was no music, no magazines, and no conversation with a pretty thing—this was, I decided, the worst Reception Area I’d ever been in.

Rounds were tedious, most days. Most people paid up, making ninety percent of my job just a long boring errand. Even the ones who tried to get cute usually never pushed me to the point where I gave myself permission to have some fun, so the whole fucking day was usually me, blue-balled, reduced to glowering and making threats. I went home at night pissed off and grouchy, fantasizing about getting a real fight, someone my size with some training, some passion, who would simultaneously owe Frank McKenna money and be ready for me. It didn’t happen often.

Then, there were days like this, where one name glowed hot and red on my list, a punk who was three weeks behind and thought he could get away with it. I wore my best suit, double-breasted and formal.

Something buzzed on the desk, and the Receptionist heaved herself forward to mash a finger. “Yes?”

“Send in my three-o’clock, Gladys.”

Gladys. I smirked. Sometimes parents had a supernatural sense of exactly what their kid was going to be. I stood up, and The Bumble snorted and startled upwards.

“You can—”

I waved a gloved hand at her as we headed for the office. It was silly, maybe, to sit and wait for an appointment, but I liked the idea. I pictured Mr. Lawrence Teller, esq., in his office, having an afternoon cocktail and scrolling porn on his computer, thinking there was business in his lobby, happy and calm. And then we walk in. Keeping your subjects off-balance was a big part of the job.

I turned the knob and stepped into the office, The Bumble behind me like a ghost. The office was exactly the same as the reception area, just smaller. The walls looked like props, the carpet was stained and worn down to a theoretical layer of shag, and the desk was exactly the same sort of remnant bought from the back of a truck. Our guy was sitting ramrod straight, a big smile on his face, fat in a too-tight shirt, his tie knotted a bit too high up, sitting on his belly like a dead fish. He had a wide, florid face, perpetually pink, and a long nose, a mop of happy brown curls on his head. He would have been kind of good-looking when he’d been young.

Again, there was just one piece of decoration on the wall, this one right behind the desk, up a little too high. The frame was just barely not big enough to totally obscure the fact that something was set into the wall behind it.

“Mr.,” he glanced down at his desk, “Smith.” He heaved himself up and extended a hand. “How are you today, sir?”

I paused in front of the desk while The Bumble circled around behind him. I stared at him and made no move to take his hand. “Mr. Teller,” I said, pursing my lips. “You’re a fucking deadbeat.”

He let his hand drop and glanced nervously around at The Bumble, then back at me, trying to frown all stern-like. “Who are you?”

“I’m Frank McKenna’s nephew,” I said. “You owe him fifteen thousand dollars with interest due every week, and you’re three fucking weeks late.” I smiled. “As a service to our professional white-collar clients who maybe don’t have time in their busy days to troop downtown to make a payment, I show up and pick it up for ’em.” I nodded. “So let’s have it.”

That was my due diligence. I eyed Teller clinically, looking for soft spots, places he would hurt best. He was all soft spot, as far as I could tell, one big bruise waiting to happen. He looked like a guy who wore slippers in the house to spare his tender feet. Electricity buzzed through me. I was going to get the chance to beat the tar out of this bastard, and it would be entirely justified.

He smiled, looking at The Bumble and then back at me. “Ah, I see. Gentlemen,” he indicated the two dusty-looking chairs opposite his desk. “Have a seat. Let’s discuss the circumstances.”

I nodded. “Do you have the money?”

He shrugged. “I’m afraid not.”

I looked at The Bumble and made my face into an O of shock. “Hot Christ, he doesn’t have it, Billy. What the hell do we do now?”

“My secretary has already called the police,” Teller said calmly, sitting down in his big leather rolling chair and sweeping his hand towards his guest seats. “Let’s give up the tough guy routine and come to some terms—a payment plan. I fully intend—”

Joyfully, I leaned forward and punched him in the nose.

I didn’t have much leverage; I sent him rolling back into the wall behind him, made him yelp and throw his hands up to his face, but there was no satisfying crunch of broken cartilage. Grinning, I leaped up on top of his desk as The Bumble caught hold of his chair and sent him rocketing back towards me. I set my weight and lashed one foot at him, a steel toe smacking into his hands and sending him and the chair ass over tits. I jumped down on top of him, barking my shins on the chair’s arms as I got a knee on his throat, making him shoot his hands from his crushed nose down to my leg, where they grabbed on, sticky with blood, and feebly tried to push me away.

I felt light. I felt like I was weightless, floating, and everything around me was just made of sand: moldable.

“I don’t give a shit about police, Mr. Teller,” I said gaily, raising one fist and just letting it hang there in the air. I could hold it there forever, for centuries, without getting tired. Power coursed through me, golden and liquid. “I’ve spent plenty of nights in holding cells, and I’m not a fucking lawyer like you but I’ve got lawyers who make, apparently a lot more fucking money than you do.” I feinted my fist down at his face, making him twitch and yelp again, spitting up bubbly blood. “Since you called this in, we’ve got about ten minutes. Ten minutes we can spend either beating you to a fucking raw pulp, or gathering cash from your fucking wall safe.”

He was moving his mouth, a grotesque, slithery sight. After a moment I realize I was putting too much weight on his neck and he couldn’t breathe. I let up half an inch and he sucked in a damp, bloody breath. His nose pulsed like a swamp every time he breathed.

“Don’t have … don’t—”

I leaned down a little. “Shhh, now, shhh. You don’t have it all, huh? That’s okay. You got at least a week’s interest?”

He nodded miserably, and I smiled. “All right. That’ll buy you one more week. Ups-a-daisy.”

I sprang up off him and held one gloved hand down to him. Slowly, panting hard, he took hold and let me pull him up. The Bumble took his cue and snatched the painting off the wall, revealing a pretty sad-looking wall safe embedded roughly into the wall. The Bumble tossed the painting aside savagely, smashing it against the far wall, and I leaned over and smoothed Teller’s bloody shirt against his paunch, adjusted his collar. His nose was flat and leaking blood, and his eyes had already darkened to black circles.

“You’re fine,” I said heartily, still high, feeling powerful and happy. I gave him a friendly slap to the cheek and indicated the safe. “Have at it.”

Back out in the lobby, the receptionist watched us emerge from the office with wide, frightened eyes. I winked, stuffing the large bills into my envelope.

“You really call the cops?”

She nodded, slowly, tracking us as we passed her.

“Tell ’em you were robbed,” I said as The Bumble called for the elevator. We stepped into the cab and let the doors slide shut. I looked at myself in the shiny, scratched steel and couldn’t see any bloodstains. I handed the envelope to The Bumble.

“Do me a favor,” I said. “Hand this in for me.”

He took the envelope, stared at it for a moment, then looked at me. “Where you going?”

“To the library.”

I watched her from across the huge room for a few minutes. For a library reading room it felt noisy, even though there wasn’t much sound at all—but the sound there was felt layered and deep. Big wooden tables filled the floor, the walls two stories high covered in bookshelves. At the far end was a row of windows like in a bank—Teller’s windows—but these handed out books. You filled out a form and handed it in, a few minutes later someone brought the books up and slid them across to you. Every few minutes I saw her: Beautiful brunette, her long hair pulled back into a silky pony tail, all curves in her ankle-length skirt and cardigan, smartassed glasses on the tip of her nose. She was beautiful, she was young, she was fucking brilliant, and she chose to work in the goddamn library.

I smiled as I walked up the wide center aisle, feeling noisy.

The place was pretty filled; you kept hearing about how no one read any more, how everything was going to the dogs, but here we were in the fucking library and it was packed. Most people were slobs, though, dressed like they were in someone’s living room having a beer, watching the game. People didn’t know how to fucking dress any more; they wore whatever they found on the floor when they woke up.

She saw me as she brought a stack of books up to one of the windows, and looked over the head of the tiny old man who collected them, staring at me with a half smile on her lips. She turned and said something to the people working with her and when I stepped up to the window she turned and smiled at me.

“Well, if it isn’t my favorite Uncle who isn’t my uncle,” she said. “How have you been, Unc?”

“Alive,” I said. “How are you, Rache? Got a minute?”

She hesitated, then nodded. “Sure. Come on back.”

I stepped over to the heavy door on the side of the windows and a moment later she opened it and passed me through. I followed her back to a tiny office, keeping my eyes off her ass, and ignored the looks from everyone we walk past. She dropped into the squeaking chair behind a pile of paper in the general shape of a desk a computer screen poking out from one end and glowing ominously. I barely had space to leaned against the wall across from her. I put my hands in my pockets for safe keeping. The office smelled like her, some flowery perfume.

She leaned back, her straining cardigan somehow worse than if she were naked. “Been a while.”

I nodded. “I figured you’d let me know if my company was ever wanted again.”

“Have I been sleepwalking again? Dropping postcards in the mail in the middle of the night?”

Looking down at the floor, I shook my head. “No. I came to ask a favor.”

She didn’t say anything. When I looked back up, she was chewing on her glasses and studying me, cool and collected. After a moment, she nodded. “Okes, maybe. Depending on what you need. For old time’s sake.”

I nodded, pulling a slip of paper from my pocket and handing it over the desk to her. “Two names.”

She smiled, taking the paper. I imagined a spark of static electricity as our fingers almost touched, but it was probably just the dry office air. She looked at the two names and quick bullet lists of information I’d printed on it. “They have this thing now called the Internet, you know.”

I shook my head. “Too random. I could spend all day running down bullshit. You’re good at this shit, Rachel.”

She looked back at me, raising one eyebrow. She’d always been a cool kid: She never laughed or reacted unless she wanted to, and getting her to react had always been a thrill for me. Finally she stood up, graceful.

“All right. Wait in here. Don’t step outside this office, and if anyone says anything to you, you’re mute. Got it?”

I smiled. “Can I make one of those signs begging for money because I can’t speak?”

She turned and walked out of the office, but I was pretty sure I’d made her laugh. As a reward I watched her ass as she walked away.

When she came back about half an hour later, I was still standing there where she’d left me. She had a bunch of papers in one hand and paused in the doorway, squinting at me, as if she thought maybe I’d rifled her desk while she’d been gone. But she’d know that was ridiculous—I played by the rules.

“All right,” she said, breezing in, sassy. She dropped back into her chair and held onto the paper for a moment. “You gonna break their legs or something?”

I shrugged. “One, maybe. The other put me through some trouble,” I touched the bandage on my forehead, “and I just want to find out why before she shows up again.” I decided not to mention that each one had pulled a disappearing act on me.

She studied me again, fanning herself with the paper. “All right,” she said finally. “First, Rusch. I found three women who fit the general data you gave me.” She leaned forward and handed me three sheets of heavy photo paper. The second one was a good crisp picture of the Doctor, without her thick glasses. She was smiling and looked a little younger, but it was her. I handed that one back. “That’s one.”

She nodded, glancing down. “That one’s down at Rutgers University in Jersey. Physics Department. Published a lot up until about a decade ago, then dropped off the scene and if she wasn’t tenured probably would have been let go.” She shrugged and handed over a single sheet of copy paper, several bullet points and paragraphs of information, including a phone number and address. I smiled and folded it up.

“You’re a goddamn angel, you know that?”

She looked up at me from under her eyebrows. “And you’re a violent asshole, you know that?”

I stiffened and looked away. She would tear like paper. I swallowed a surge of adrenaline, imagining, for one quick, dirty moment how she would just disintegrate in my hands, like tissue. Then I forced a smile onto my face and locked down my breathing, forcing steady, deep breaths. “You wouldn’t know, Rache,” I said. “Remember that, okay?”

We held each other’s eyes for a moment, and then she looked back down at the last bit of paper in her hand. “There’s only one Elias Falken who fits your description that I can find. Which is too bad for you.” She leaned forward, giving me a view of her neck as she handed the page over.

“Why’s that?” I said, glancing down. The photo was exactly right: Falken smiled back at me in what looked like a Driver’s License shot.

She finally gave me a full-on smile, her whole face lighting up as she cocked her head, eyes shining. “Because he’s been dead for two years.”

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I‘ll be posting one chapter of my novel Collections every week throughout 2023. Download links below.

3.

“Where are you headed?” White Suit asked. “We can drop you.”

I was crowded between the two big guys in the back of the limo. It was old-school, the limo; big and chrome-laden, an old car but in fantastic shape, the leather seats supple and soft. White Suit and the Ginger were seated across from us, a little more comfortable. I kept my hands in my lap and a smile on my face.

“The Porterhouse,” I said. “Columbus Circle. Steak and a whiskey. Good chopped salads. But I have my own driver—he gets emotional if I leave him in the car too long. And I should have cracked the window.”

White Suit smiled. “Do not pretend you do not know your driver is following us at a discrete three-car distance.” She nodded. “We’ll drive you there, and have a conversation.” She held up her hand to forestall an interruption I wasn’t going to give. “Just a conversation.”

I shrugged as the limo pulled into traffic. “All right.”

We all stared at each other for a few moments. It was cold in the limo, the crank air pouring in through a million tiny vents.

“You are searching for a man named Falken,” White Suit suddenly said.

I stared back at her and said nothing, and she smiled.

“The silent treatment?”

I shrugged again. “We ain’t been introduced.”

She smiled. “I see. My name is Cornelia Rusch. Doctor Cornelia Rusch.”

Awkwardly, she leaned forward, extending her hand. I stared down at it for a moment, and then looked back at her. I lifted my head and sniffed the air, turning right and left, then leaning down to smell the big guy on my right. He smelled like aftershave. A lot of fucking aftershave.

“You don’t smell like cops,” I said, straightening up. “And I don’t recall too many doctors working a shield anyway. So who the fuck are you?”

Rusch seemed amused by this. “Police!” She said with an odd upturn on the pitch at the end. “He wonders if we are police. No,” she sobered instantly, looking at me seriously. “We are not police. We do not, in fact, have any authority at all in this. . .locality.”

“All right,” I said, looking at Ginger. She wasn’t pretty.

Silence hung between us again. I sighed.

“Look, you snatched me. You want a conversation, you’re going to have to supply it.”

She smiled and nodded. “Ah! Yes! Yes!” she clapped his hands and looked around. Her three employees were the worst audience ever; they didn’t even pretend to give a shit, and I was momentarily glad that she at least didn’t go for the dry-heave high-five. Lowering her arm, she beamed at me, unconcerned. “You are searching for this man Falken. I also seek an audience with him.” She spread her hands. “I am merely proposing cooperation.”

I nodded, and stared back at her. After another moment, she sighed.

“I do not care about the sum of money Mr. Falken owes. You are welcome to it, and I hope you recover it. If I can assist you in recovering it, I will gladly do so.”

She grinned at me. After a moment I realized she thought this was enough to get me talking.

She blinked. She’d switched her sunglasses for a pair of thick prescriptions in the same frame, her eyes swimming huge and bleary behind the epic lenses. Time was slowed down by those lenses, every blink taking an extra second to get to me, occurring in the past.

“So,” she said, sounding suddenly unsure of herself. “Since we both seek Falken, I am suggesting we pool our resources. Share information. I want Falken himself—his physical being. You wish only his funds. Therefore we are not at cross-purposes, and could benefit from combined strategy.”

I nodded and sat forward, jostled slightly by the smooth motion of the limo through the streets, zooming uptown on Third Avenue. “Is that it? That the pitch?”

She blinked again, Morse code from the future. “Well,” she said, twiddling her fingers. “Well.”

I gave her another few seconds, puzzling it out. She had muscle. Three heavy hands with barkers crowding their armpits didn’t make an empire, but it was muscle. She had money. Not cops, but Feds, I wondered, or some agency maybe you didn’t hear about too often. Or just someone with money who had a hard-on for Falken, although you didn’t meet too many independently wealthy assholes who had time for shit like this—they had lawyers for shit like this. I turned and looked out the tinted window, watching the Mercedes containing The Bumble suddenly accelerate past us, and then leaned forward and smiled at Rusch again.

“Then listen: I don’t give a fuck why you want Falken. I don’t care to have terms dictated to me. When I find that motherfucker, I will need use of his physical being in order to extract my money from him, follow? When I’m done with him, if there’s much of him left, you can scrape him up and do whatever you want with him, because I won’t care any more. Until then, you better put on your fucking seatbelts.”

Rusch blinked again. “What?”

The Mercedes swooped into the lane in front of us and the brake lights came on red and angry as The Bumble shuddered to a sudden stop. The limo swerved and braked, spinning and slamming into the trunk of the Mercedes, sending us all tumbling violently around the back, smacking into each other. I hit my head on something that didn’t like me, and everything went gray and woozy for a moment. A piercing, painfully loud noise erupted in my ears, a harsh buzzing that grew and grew until I wanted to twitch and shake and bang my head against concrete to make it stop.

And then, it stopped.

I realized I was on my back on the floor of the limo, the stink of spilled liquor everywhere, and when I pushed myself up my left hand found broken glass that sliced in, sending a burning spike of pain up my arm, which I ignored.

I blinked, something wet and burning in my eyes. I looked around. Aside from me, the limo was empty. Everyone else had disappeared.

I stared down at the Ribeye and my double bourbon. Bourbon was a good, steady drink when your heart was pounding and your head aching; bourbon was basically moonshine allowed to age and thus was all natural and unfussy. When my stomach felt tender I went with good old American bourbon instead of Scotch. I was on my third, double neat, and hadn’t touched my steak.

Sitting at the bar at The Porterhouse, I felt confused and burned cigarettes one after the other, forgetting to smoke them. They’d tried to ban smoking indoors a few years ago, but cooler heads had prevailed. The noise of the restaurant and bar was subdued and mellow, just people having conversations. The bartender was a sweet young girl in black pants and a white shirt, her blond hair up in a bouncy ponytail, and most nights when she was working I tried flirting with her, just for the hell of it. Tonight I didn’t have the mental energy and it worried her. The gash on my head and the bandage damp with blood on my hand might not be helping either.

On the other end of the bar, The Bumble sat with a newspaper, pretending he could read and glancing up at me from time to time, his face blank. I kept buying the impassive bastard drinks—he was, I knew, partial to Gimlets—but he hadn’t touched them, all three just sitting there, sweating and wet. The Bumble didn’t drink when he deemed himself to be on duty.

A tall black man in a really good suit, carrying a really nice black overcoat over one arm, stepped into the bar area behind The Bumble, who spied him in the mirror and nodded, once, politely. Detective James made a gun out of his massive hand and fired at The Bumble, once, grinning. James found The Bumble amusing, and so far had not had any occasion to be disabused of the notion. I watched him walk over to me in the mirror, his alternate self grinning as he slid into the stool next to me, the massive gold watch on his wrist glinting in the light, his diamond rings glittering like tiny flash bulbs. His tiepin, I noted, was a big ruby, somehow not gauche or oversize on him. It was probably because Detective James was the size of three men forced into the same suit.

“Thought I’d find you here,” he rumbled as he leaned towards the bartender. “Hello, sweetheart. You’re getting better-looking every time I come in here. Still not dating brothers?”

The blond, whose name I never learned on purpose, kept her face blank. “I date lots of brothers,” she said archly. “I don’t date cops.”

He grinned, his teeth perfect, white and straight. “All right, then. A Coors.” He turned back to me, still grinning. “The fucking Banquet Beer, eh?”

I shrugged. Coors had tasted like dirty water a hundred years ago, and it tasted like dirty water today.

“Shit, you look like hell,” he said, folding those shovels in his lap. “Crawl out of any limousines lately?”

I shut my eyes. “Shit.”

“Someone noticed your plates as you fled the scene of an accident. I got a flag on that plate. I like to keep an eye on you. So you’re lucky; I quashed the note for now. Thought I’d see what was going on.”

I nodded. Detective Stanley James, called The Executioner by his admirers due to an unfortunate shooting record, was the smartest fucking cop I knew. He wasn’t adverse to bribery—took them eagerly—but he always chose the moment, the time, the place. McKenna had put hundreds of thousands into James’ pocket, but we didn’t really have a hold on him, at least nothing permanent. Nothing you could rely on. You could sometimes buy your way through things with him, but if he chose to jam you up, he just magically turned back into a real cop, and he was fucking unpredictable in that regard.

He had a philosophy: He figured a lot of crimes were self-induced. You borrowed money with a thirty-five percent interest rate, you got what you deserved, and he was willing to let someone like me operate unobstructed. It all depended on victimhood with The Executioner. If he saw a victim, there wasn’t an amount of money you could pay him to step aside.

The bartender brought his beer, a lot of spiteful foam on top. He stared at it unhappily for a moment.

“So?” he said, turning in his stool to lean against the bar, his long legs spread wide, surveying his new kingdom. Detective James annexed any room he entered, conquered it, and ruled it, then abdicated as he left, freeing the slaves. “Wanna tell me why I shouldn’t release your name to the Dicks on the file?”

I smiled. “As a favor?”

He laughed. “Shee-it, kid. I don’t owe you any favors.”

“You could set me up to owe you one.”

“Sorry, kid. The chances of you ever being in a position to help Mister Detective Stanley James out of a hole is fucking unlikely, so that cash ain’t got no gold behind it.”

I sighed. “Then you’re gonna have to arrest me.” Frank wasn’t going to stretch out his arm for me on this, since it wasn’t anything to do with him, and I wasn’t going to waste good money on buying my way out of something that happened to me. I hadn’t done anything.

He turned back around and picked up his foamy beer. He studied it unhappily for a moment, then drank it off in one gulp, setting the empty glass down with a smack of his lips and standing up. I watched him in the mirror again. Detective James was a good-looking guy, and he dressed well. His suits were midrange—expensive for normal cops, but not crazy. A man on a detective’s salary who was careful with his money could conceivably own a few of those suits, and The Executioner had a reputation as a dandy, so no one raised any eyebrows.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll let it worm its way through, so someone’s gonna come by and have a chat. But since you’re so fucking innocent, a virgin in the bad old world, I guess you got no worries.” He grinned down at me, but I still didn’t turn to look at him; I just watched him in the mirror. “You know that limo was stolen, right?”

I blinked, but kept my face blank. It wasn’t surprising, of course, but I hadn’t thought about it. Instead I’d been thinking about all those people in there with me, tossed around, and then. . .gone. I forced myself to shrug. “Cars get stolen, Detective. You know that ain’t my bag. I don’t carry a gun and I don’t steal cars.”

He shrugged his overcoat on. “It’s interesting.”

I frowned, touching my aching head. “That it was stolen?”

He grinned. “When it was stolen. Which was thirty-two years ago.”

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I‘ll be posting one chapter of my novel Collections every week throughout 2023. Download links below.

2.

I went home and took a shower, changed clothes. Even when they gave you the slip, tracking down deadbeats was hot work. My apartment wasn’t much—nice enough, but just five rooms and a nice terrace, and I’d never gotten around to buying any furniture. I had a card table in the kitchen, warped and unsteady from water spills and heat, a pile of bedding on the floor of the tiny bedroom. I spent about four hours a week in my place. All I had in the kitchen was booze and all I had in the closets was cash in sturdy canvas bags under a fake bottom beneath the floorboards.

I poured myself a drink to keep the three I’d had at McHales company and stood on the terrace with my shirttails out, feeling my hair dry as the sun sank in front of me. After the Dalmore my hundred-bucks-a-bottle Scotch tasted like piss and I got depressed.

I put on a good black suit and a pair of tough black shoes with special steel toes. You had to get them custom made if you wanted dress shoes with a steel toe, but all my clothes were custom anyway. I didn’t look at myself in the mirror; it didn’t matter what I fucking looked like. All that mattered was that I felt good in them. No one understood that. If you felt good in your clothes, you would look good in them.

Leaving, I paused to look around the kitchen, the floor covered in dust except for the pathway from the liquor cabinet to the bathroom to the living room, and when I left I didn’t lock the door. There was nothing obvious to steal, and if someone was coming for the cash, was going to tear up floorboards, then the fucking door wasn’t going to stop them anyway.

The Templar Social Club was a run down old tenement on Spring Street, a sagging pile of bricks with a sad old iron sign hanging outside the door. Members only, with no membership process—you either were or you weren’t, and if you had to ask about it that sort of answered itself. The club did nothing. It had sponsored a Little League team for a few years, and sometimes they put out a table during the street fair and had four or five fat old man stand there handing out cheap shitty toys to the kids. But mostly it was a place where the Friends of Frank McKenna—a large and diverse group of men and, these days, the occasional woman—gathered any night of the week to play cards, drink coffee, shoot the shit, and do absolutely nothing illegal whatsoever.

The goon standing guard outside the front door was doing his level best to look like a guy who’d stepped outside for a cigarette four hours ago and lost track of time. I’d seen him hanging around, probably someone’s nephew or cousin, and guessed someone had finally given him a job. We hadn’t been introduced. I was pretty sure his name was Bob, but I was also sure some bright bulb had already nicknamed him Tiny.

“Evenin’,” he said, civilly enough. “Can I help you?”

I blinked, stopping short. He crowded the doorway like he’d been trained to it from an early age. A wave of tired irritation swept through me, and I found myself leaning forward, imagining this fat fuck squealing on the sidewalk, but pushed myself back. The kid, I told myself, was just doing his job. He didn’t know me, but he did know that he’d been told to watch the fucking door.

I breathed in deep and nodded at the door. “Gotta go in, see Frankie, okay?”

He nodded. Not completely stupid, at least. “Gotta frisk you.”

I smiled, actually amused this time. “Ask around, kid. I don’t carry a barker.” I held open my coat and let him step up to me. Stupid after all, as he came in close like a sack of shit, all exposed arteries and soft spots. I let him move his tiny hands over me, imagining twisting his arm until his shoulder popped out of its socket, slamming his perfectly round head into the brick wall, the smell of his blood as it poured out of his nose, the feel of the gristle when I pinched it just to make him hurt.

He stepped back after the most spectacularly bad frisk I’d ever been party to. I could have had a fucking Howitzer hidden up my ass for all the good his hands did him. But he stepped aside with a sheepish grin that was almost charming and waved me in. I took a step and then paused, turning to put my hand on his shoulder. I could feel his blood pulsing under all that flab, all those nerves, sharp little buttons to push.

“Now you know me,” I said. “Next time, you don’t move the fuck out of my way I’ll break your arms.”

I didn’t know if he believed me; I stepped inside. There was a moment, a split second, of suspension when I walked in, conversations stopped for just that half a heartbeat, then resumed with something approximating their original volume. I felt eyes on me. I liked to pretend it was the suit; no one saw a good cut any more, these days. A suit tailored for you, cut exactly for your build, it was striking and people couldn’t even put their finger on what it was about you they found striking. But it wasn’t the suit.

The Templar was just a big empty room, cheap wood paneling and ancient, horrible greasy-looking plastic tables and folding chairs. Four televisions rumbled in different spots, and a couple of radios battling it out too. The TVs were all tuned to different news stations, reporting about riots in Chicago where some bigwigs were meeting, deciding the next ten years of pork futures or whatever it was rich fucks from all over the globe got together to decide. The National Guard, bunch of assholes had nothing better to do with their time except play soldier, had been called in and the city was under curfew.

Framed pictures lined the walls: Every President of the United States, with a tiny brass plate under each one with their name. Kennedy’s twice as big as everyone else’s, with a tattered black armband still pinned in one corner after all these fucking decades. A deep haze of smoke filled the whole room, the smell of cigarettes mingling with the smell of cheap booze and burnt coffee and stale sandwiches.

As I walked, everyone stole glances at me. A couple of guys nodded at me, and I nodded back, but no one said anything, which was how I liked it. These mopes were fucking Lifers, and they had all the imagination of houseplants. I walked steadily down the center aisle towards the back office, a half-smile on my face, my black gloves on. The door was open, and I put myself in the doorway and leaned against the jam.

Frank was, as always, behind the big metal desk. For a guy who pulled in half the dirty money in the city, he looked like a mope. He was heavyset, with a bush of dark hair sprouting from his head and a perpetual shadow of a beard linking up to his uneven mustache. He had dark bags under his eyes and a belly that made him look like he’d swallowed a small animal whole, like a python. He was wearing a pair of cheap slacks that rode up too high when he sat, exposing his pale calves, and a dark red shirt over a cotton T-shirt, buttoned haphazardly. Frank McKenna was worth fucking millions, but if you passed him the street you’d have the urge to give him a dollar, tell him you hoped he straightened his life out.

He was sitting with his cheap black shoes up on the desk, his fat fingers laced over his belly. His main people were standing around with him: Chino, fat and smiling with these delicate metal-rimmed glasses perched on his nose, his long dark hair epically braided, his big oversized white dress shirt untucked, as always, as if we couldn’t imagine his gut if we couldn’t see it outlined in Rayon. Mikey D—there was always a Mikey D, in every crew—who was better-dressed, his white hair cut short and combed, his face clean-shaven, wearing a sportsjacket but no tie, burning a cigarette between his lips as usual. Frank’s kid, Frank Junior, a slightly thinner version of his Dad except where Frank smiled all the time, made you feel good about him picking your pocket and then slapping you in the face, his kid always looked sour, and wore a diamond earring his Dad didn’t approve of. It was flash.

The three of them shut up and looked at their shoes when they noticed me, but Frank smiled and threw out his arms.

“What, you lose a bet, that suit?” He shouted, grinning.

The other three eyed me from under their brows as I stepped forward, pulling a thick manila envelope from my jacket pocket and tossing it onto the desk.

“Today’s collections,” I said. “I hit everyone except Falken.”

Frank put his hands back on his belly, protectively, like he was proud of that monster. “He was the big tuna today,” he said philosophically. “You can’t reel him in by Friday—”

I nodded, dropping into one of the cracked vinyl chairs across from his desk and pulling out my pack of cigarettes, unfiltered, Gauloises. “I’m on the hook for it. I know our fucking arrangement, Frank.” I crossed my legs and tapped the pack against my palm. “He gave me the slip, is all.”

Frank nodded. “I know. Bill gave me the word earlier.”

That The Bumble served as both my backup on runs and as Frank’s snitch on me was not news, but I still didn’t like hearing it. The Bumble was a good egg, though, and we’d long ago agreed he’d just tell Frank nothing and we’d be friendly about it. I looked around the room. No one was looking at me yet. These were tough guys, each of them, unafraid of a fight. But I knew how to break them, each one. The kid was easy: Take that fucking earing and tear it out of his ear, he’d go down like a princess. I’d seen Chino get hit in the head a dozen times and just shrug it off, but go for his eyes and he freaked out. Mikey was the easiest: A solid kick in his balls and you had a punching bag in human form. These were guys who weren’t much without a gun, or three of their guys standing behind them.

“Give us a moment, fellas,” Frank said, looking at me steadily. Frank was another story; he didn’t bother with the hardcase bullshit. He looked soft, but Frank was tough. Frank knew that you gave in just once, you tagged out just once. You never got back in.

The other three still didn’t look at me as they filed out of the little office. I was used to it. Junior shut the door behind him with a glance at my shoes, probably wondering what they were, since I’d never seen the kid anything except running shoes. Not that he ran.

With the door shut, Frank leaned back tapping his belly and staring at me. I stared back, lighting my cigarette.

“We lost the kid today,” he finally said, wiggling his nose and reaching up to scratch it. Frank always gave the impression of being out of breath. “Aubrey whatshisname. Got a fucking straight job.”

I pictured the kid: Seventeen, skinny, friendly and not too bright. “Best thing for him. He wasn’t good for this.” I shrugged. “Too nice.”

He nodded. He was breathing through his nose, and it was loud and rapid. Finally he pointed at me. “You sure you got Falken? He’s given you the slip twice now.”

I blinked, picking tobacco off my tongue. “This time I at least got eyes on him. Closer and closer every time, Frankie.”

He shrugged, grinning a little, amiable. “It’s a big nut. You get socked with it you’re going to have some fucking trouble payin’ it off. You got a perfect record all these years, be a shame to crap it out.”

I shook my head. “I can handle it.”

“You salvage a lot of money. If we called it earnings, you’d be my top guy. You don’t kick up dust and you do what your told. But that don’t mean you can piss on my shoes. Close that shit out.”

I shook my head. I got five points on every dollar I brought back from the cold for Frank, which meant he got ninety-five percent of what would otherwise be complete write-offs. Getting people to pay their debts was always an uphill battle, but I always won.

I pointed my cigarette at him. “I said I can handle it. I’ll find that cocksucker.” I smiled. “And I’ll beat every dollar outta him.”

He stared back at me for a moment, breath whistling. Frank stared. It was a management technique; as a younger man he’d preceded just about every savage beating with one of these coldhearted stares, and it made tough guys search for the exits. I stared back, sucking in smoke, until he finally smiled, throwing up his hands.

“All right, you stupid cunt. Tell you what, you bring in the white whale here and I’ll give ya ten points on it, if you bring it in—no arguing. Ten.”

I nodded and stood up. “Good. The Bumble out front?”

Frank nodded, amused. “Yeah. Doing whatever it is Billy Bumbles do on their own.”

“Burn ants with a magnifying glass,” I said, spinning away and waving over my shoulder.

“Hey!” Frank shouted, and I turned with my hand on the door. He had his hands on his belly again, his favorite possession. He nodded at me. “You don’t find him, you can cover the nut?”

I shook my head, thinking of the bags under my floorboards. “Nope.”

The Bumble was dozing in the driver’s seat of the Mercedes, his flat ugly face peaceful, kind of childish. I tried to imagine The Bumble as a kid and could only see him as a shorter version of himself, dressed in short pants. The image made me shiver. The idea of getting into the car and betting my life on his driving again kept the shiver going.

I scanned the street, drawing on my cigarette. A few tourists and strollers were making their way down the sidewalk, unaware of all the fucking tough guys cheating at penny-ante poker inside the Club. There were four people I didn’t like: Two hispanic guys wearing sunglasses and tight suits, trying to look casual as they stood in the street between the Mercedes and a rusty old Ford Van, a tall, gangly white girl in the same outfit, her red hair in a tight bun on her head, and the old maid in the white suit. Also in sunglasses, pretending to read a newspaper in the dark. With sunglasses on. She leaned against the metal vending machine, grinning down at the paper like there was something funny in it, old enough to be my grandma, her gray-white hair loose and curly.

I didn’t like them at all. When I stepped for the car, the matron in the white suit let the paper drop and cut me off, tucking the paper under her elbow and reaching out.

“Excuse—”

I had never been impressed by old women. I didn’t help them across the street and I didn’t pay any attention to their opinions of me. I took hold of her outstretched arm with both hands and pushed down, hard, forcing her to bend down slightly, a squawk escaping from her. I stepped to the side and twisted her arm cruelly behind her, getting a knee into her back and pressing her down. She screeched in sudden pain, and then went nice and limp, panting on the sidewalk. A thrill went through me: I had an exact calibration of how easy it would be to cause this bitch more pain than she could stand. And it was a low number.

I glanced to my right and left. I had a gun in each ear. If I had to be psychic, I’d guess the third was somewhere behind me. I also had a holy vision of The Bumble, still dozing in the car, twitching one leg like a dreaming dog.

“Ease up,” the younger woman hissed in my ear. “Ease on up.”

I looked down at the top of White Suit’s head. No one was going to come pouring out of the Templar, muscle to back me up. I wasn’t liked, and their interest in gunplay that didn’t involve their money ended at the door. So I nodded, accidentally ashing on top of White Suit’s head.

“Easing up, boss,” I said, letting go and putting my hands up. White Suit sprang up from the sidewalk with surprising agility and bounded a step away, turning to smile at me, rubbing her shoulder. I expected to be grabbed and manhandled, but nothing happened, except the guns slid away and disappeared.

“Please,” White Suit said, her lips twitching, rubbing her arm. “I merely wish to speak with you.” She sounded smooth and educated. “Haven’t you ever heard of bone thinning?”

I nodded, flicking my cigarette away and exhaling smoke into the air. “What in fuck could we have to talk about?”

She nodded as if I’d just agreed with something he’d said. “Mr. Falken,” he said.

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SO, for the last few years I’ve been using this blog to publish a novel one chapter at a time, and I’ve kind of enjoyed it (in 2021 it was DETAINED, and last year it was DESIGNATED SURVIVOR). I write a lot, and thus have a large list of novels that haven’t gone anywhere commercially for one reason or another; a book like Collections probably will never sell to a publisher, but I also have an outsize affection for it, so here you go.

I’ll be discussing Collections in a bit more detail over at the podcast, THE NO PANTS COCKTAIL HOUR, later this month, so I’ll keep my comments about it here brief. The book was written in 2010 and hasn’t been significantly revised since, for better or for worse. I posted a draft cover a few weeks ago on social media and the response was … tepid, so I have a new cover to amaze you with:

I actually think that turned out pretty good! So thank you to everyone on Twitter who told me the original cover wasn’t great. We must put our best foot forward when giving away unpublishable novels.

So! Y’all know how this works. Every Monday I’ll post a new chapter right here, and at the end of each chapter there will be download links in various ereader formats. You can read it here or download it chapter-by-chapter, or wait until we’re done (in November or December) and I’ll post download links to a full book version.

Thanks for checking it out! Do let me know what you think — and enjoy!

COLLECTIONS

Chapter 1

Take The Bumble, for example: A man designed for his job, as if his creator had known all along. Short, but broad in the shoulders, the sort of magic metabolism that took beer and fried sandwiches and turned it into a massive slab of muscle. A man who breathed loudly through his nose no matter how much exertion he was putting out. Shovels for hands. Not particularly bright—The Bumble was never going to write his memoirs—but not exactly stupid, either, and you treated him with contempt at your peril. People were designed for things. If you figured out what you were meant to do, you were happy. Otherwise you ended up doing the wrong thing and were miserable.

Me, I was happy.

The Bumble peeled off and took a seat at one of the fragile-looking wooden tables, the chair creaking under him as he planted himself. He immediately took out a pack of cigarettes and sucked one straight from the pack to his lips. In his suit and overcoat he looked like a fucking sausage packed in, his flat, expressionless face like a mask called Generic Russian Gangster you bought at a store: Bulbous, red nose, sad, sulky eyes, not even a hint of a smile line anywhere.

I went to the bar. McHale’s was an old place, cool and dark inside because back in the good old days bars didn’t want windows. The bartender was a fancy gent in a clean white shirt and tight black trousers, thumbs hooked into the front of his pants as he chewed a toothpick, deciding on how to treat me as I slid out one of the stool and climbed aboard. To break the ice I Pulled out my money clip and tossed a hundred bucks on the bar.

He glanced at it and kept his excitement so under control I thought maybe he was blind. Or that a Sultan had been through Hell’s Kitchen the day before, leaving diamonds as tips.

Finally, he pushed himself towards me, floating slowly on currents only he could see. He picked up a towel along the way, wiped down the bar in front of me, and made the century disappear.

“What can I get you?”

I looked around. There were two other people in the bar at eleven fifteen in the morning: An old lady in thick, clownish makeup, sipping a straight gin with shaking hands, three bulging handbags arranged around her feet, and my dapper-looking fellow at the other end of the bar, drinking a Bloody Mary with a wilted-looking piece of celery sticking out of it. He was wearing a nice blue suit and his hair was combed back meticulously, but his cheeks were blue with a day’s beard. He wore a huge gold ring on his pinky, simply absolutely fucking massive, and I decided I’d have to kick him in the balls an extra time for that.

I shot my cuffs, feeling the starch in my shirt and liking it. The suit had been made by a Romanian guy over on eighteenth, didn’t speak a fucking word of English and wasn’t too interested in anything you had to say anyway, but he cut cloth like a master. It was black and the lines could split atoms.

The rows of bottles behind the bar were depressing: Bad bourbon, Scotch by way of Scotland, Pennsylvania, and dusty liqueurs, forgotten, reviled. And then, with a little patch of sun lighting it up like a diamond, way up high on a shelf over the ancient manual register, a squat bottle of dark whiskey, wide and flat on the bottom. I stared for a moment, and then looked back at the bartender; he was a softy, a fucking Jumbo Softy, six feet of beer gut and sweat stink. The guy would hurt, I thought. He’d hurt nice and easy, and my heart started pumping a little. He’d hurt without me breaking a sweat, and there was no fucking way he knew a Dalmore ‘62 when he had one in the bar with him.

I pointed, keeping one eye on the Dandy. “That,” I said, pulling my gloves from my coat pocket and laying them on the bar. “A double.”

He blinked and followed my finger, staring up at the bottle like he’d never seen it before. He probably hadn’t. Someone had put it there years ago and it had been forgotten, a fucking shame. People who collected good Scotch were fucking assholes. I thought about breaking the bartender’s legs and burning the place down around him and my mood started to get all giddy.

“I dunno,” he said. “I don’t even know how much to charge you for it.”

I put a smile on my face. Making this shitbag hurt would be a lot of fun, but I controlled myself: He wasn’t on my list, and I was going to be able to exert myself on the Dandy in a few minutes. The urge to make him squeal was thrumming inside me like always, but I told myself I was better than that, smarter. I had discipline.

“I just paid you a hundred,” I said. “Gimme a fucking double.”

He thought about it, which was obviously not too easy for him, his Adam’s Apple bobbing as he pushed his hand through his thinning black hair, dyed and bristly, a huge bald spot like the fucking moon shining in the gloom of McHale’s. Then he reached the end of his personal decision-tree, which was about three steps long, and shrugged, reaching up on his toes to pull the dusty bottle down. He examined it, suddenly cheerful, as he carried it over to me.

“You sure, man? This shit looks like it was here when they built the place. It maybe isn’t—”

Bartenders who didn’t know shit about liquor pissed me off. I saw myself taking a handful of his greasy hair and smacking his face down into the bar, felt the impact in my arm, heard the crack of his nose, smelled the geyser of easy blood, and I had to struggle to keep my hands down, my arms on their best behavior.

“I’m sure,” I said as he flipped a tumbler onto the bar in front of me. With a smartassed smile, he worked the cork with something approaching skill and poured a sloppy double into my glass, a bit more than necessary, which didn’t earn him any points. The smell was fucking heaven, and I closed my eyes to savor it, imagining what it was going to be like. A hundred dollars. I couldn’t fucking believe it.

I opened my eyes and took the glass, swirling the booze around a little. I took another sniff, this time with my nose in the glass, and then I tipped the glass back and drank it off, the whole fucking thing, in one swallow. The waste felt wonderful. The whiskey tasted like gold.

I opened my eyes and made sure the Dandy was still sitting there. He’d made a dent in his Bloody Mary. Fucking mixed drinks. People who ruined good booze with mixes deserved what they got.

A flush spread through my middle, happy and warm, like autumn leaves in the sun. It even made me forgive the asshat bartender. I was filled with love and kindness. The Dandy, he was on my list, and that made me even happier.

I rapped my knuckles on the bar and picked up my gloves. “Thanks,” I said, and turned to nod at The Bumble. He rumbled up off his chair and followed me back towards the Dandy as I slipped my gloves on, crisp and black. My hands felt normal inside them, like they belonged.

He looked up as we approached and I put a big smile on my face, pointing at him. “Miiissteerrr Falken!” I said, throwing my arms out. I ran my eye over his suit: Expensive, but a piece of shit. Off the rack, something assholes bought because they didn’t know what the fuck the word tailor meant. Gobs getting on and off the train every day to scrape themselves off behind a desk, that’s who wore a suit like that. No self-respecting man would. The Dalmore baked in my belly, home at long last after its long bottled nightmare.

He looked up, his eyes going from me to The Bumble and back to me. He was a good-looking guy, a little chubby and suffering from a catastrophic razor burn under his fast beard, his fat face tanned and flushed. He looked prosperous enough, which made me happy. He had a dark face, with a heavy brow and an elegant nose I was jealous of. I rubbed the big round thing on my own face self-consciously as we approached: The Dandy was good-looking, and I was: Not.

“Do I know you fellas?” he asked, easy, leaning back and lacing his hands across his belly. The Bumble ignored him and scooted around behind him, sliding into the stool to his right and angling himself so as to block any attempted escape in that direction. I slid into the stool around the corner of the bar from him, which let me look right at him without twisting my body. I crossed my legs and put my hands in my lap, and pushed that smile.

“No, Mr. Falken, we never met,” I said, leaning forward slightly, crowding him a little more. Ease it on. I took my time. I could feel it squirming inside me, wanting to take hold of him, feel his flesh and bones, make him hurt and feel that through his vibrating skin. I wanted to do it so badly. But there were rules, and rules were what had kept me sane all these years, so I stuck with them. Rules also let me do my job the right way, which so far had kept the black spot out of my hands. “But I represent someone you have met. Someone you owe a lot of fucking money to.”

Usually this was when they got real serious and pious, real polite. This guy just grinned.

“I owe a lot of money to a lot of people,” he said, that oily grin making him look like a goddamn monkey.

I lifted my hands a little and tugged the gloves on nice and tight, my heart singing in my chest. He was going to be an asshole about it. It was like a gift. “Frank McKenna,” I said. “That ring any bells?”

He nodded cheerfully. “Sure, sure. Frankie.” He twisted around to look at The Bumble, who sat like a sack of potatoes, staring at Falken with a steady, lifeless expression, chewing a toothpick. Falken looked back at me. “So you’re the legbreaker, huh?” He put up his hands. “Let me guess,” he pointed at The Bumble without looking at him. “He’s gonna break my fingers while you play Good Cop and tell me there’s an easy way to avoid this sort of thing.”

I shook my head, trying to match his smile for insincerity. It was no challenge. “Mr. Falken, let me tell you something about myself.”

I paused and let him look back at me. I searched his face; he wasn’t afraid, that was for sure. Because he thought this was just scare tactics. He thought this was just the first try, shake him up and see what kind of loose change fell out. Just when he lost patience and opened his mouth to ask me what the fuck I was waiting for, I spoke up.

“I was a big kid, Mr. Falken. And I was stupid as the fucking day is long, so I got left back in school couple of times. So I was a fucking giant in my class. When I was eleven years old I figured this out. Shit, I could pick up the other kids in my class and throw ’em around.” I leaned forward a little. “So I did. I beat the shit out of everyone. I enjoyed it. I got suspended, so I beat up the kids in my neighborhood. I liked sitting on some little shit’s chest, my knees pinning his arms, I liked the soft crunch when I broke a nose, the wet sound, that lucky moment when a tooth went flying. I fucking loved it.”

He composed himself, leaning back a little, forcing a nonchalant attitude. An asshole. My mood was lifting with every hot beat of my heart.

“My Dad, he didn’t like that. Took the stupid old fuck a while to figure it out, but once he knew what I was doing with my free time, he knocked me down and he beat the living shit outta me, and asked me how I liked it.” I shrugged a little. “What do you think?”

Falken was smiling faintly, but his eyes were wary. “You didn’t.”

I shook my head, remembering that ecstatic feeling—I could take it, I could feel my own nose turned to pulp, my own arms pinned under his impossible weight, his whisky breath, and I could take it. It was a license to do it to other people, because I wasn’t doing anything I couldn’t handle myself.

“I did. I fucking loved it. It hurt, sure, but it’s the way of the fuckin’ world. But my Dad was a fucking huge slab, y’know, an’ he put me in the hospital. Broke both my arms, my nose, three ribs, and I bled when I shit for weeks.” The doctors saying I should have died, it was a fuckin’ miracle the drunk old bastard hadn’t killed me. I made a comical face of horror. “Oh, Da’ was fuckin’ broke up. Felt terrible. An’ he taught me, right there in the hospital, the only lesson I ever needed to learn: You need rules. If I kept up just beatin’ the snot outta everyone I could, eventually I’d hit into someone who could beat me back, and I might not make it. You had to have rules.”

Falken had hooked on, and didn’t say anything while I paused. I leaned back.

“I haven’t hurt a fuckin’ fly since then,” I said slowly, “who didn’t deserve it. Y’know how I know when someone deserves it?”

He shook his head in a hazy way. “How?”

I nodded. “Mr. Frank McKenna tells me. I get a list of Bad People, an’ I go around and do what I love.” I jerked my head at The Bumble. “He’s here to pull me off you.”

Falken blinked and we stared at each other for a moment, eye to eye. The color was fading from his cheeks, and I thought maybe I was getting through. He opened his mouth to say something, and I cut him off.

“The rules say, however, that you can buy your way off my list, Mr. Falken. You’re two weeks over on your interest. You bring yourself current and pay up this week’s, we walk away and I go home blueballed.”

Sometimes they made a move here. It happened, and I thought I was ready for it. This was a desperate moment; these shitheads didn’t have the money, or they’d have paid their juice. They saw a beating in their immediate future and some of them had the spirit to run, to try and get in a sucker punch, to scream and yell and try to get the attention of some Bull wandering around on the street. I made a show of checking my watch, and for a second I was distracted, because it was twenty minutes behind. I was frowning down at the glinting diamonds on the face when Falken surged forward and shoved me in the chest, overbalancing me on the stool and sending me crashing to the floor.

I scissored my legs and kicked myself free, rolling over and pushing myself up into a low crouch. The Bumble was just sitting at the bar, all alone, looking bland, his hands folded in front of him, like a newly erected statue of The Bumble.

“What the fuck?” I asked.

The Bumble shrugged. “He was fast.” He jerked his hand over his shoulder, indicating a flimsy swinging door marked PRIVATE.

The urge to hurt The Bumble sang in me, sweet music, but I leaped up and pushed past him with just a slap on the shoulder, because experience had taught me that The Bumble could not be hurt.

The door led to a short hallway, white plaster and scratched-up wood paneling, at the end of which was a more formidable-looking door. Falken was crouched over the lock, working it, and twisted his head around to look back at me as I ran. It was only a flash before he turned away again, but he didn’t look scared. He looked like he was enjoying himself.

I was three steps away when he popped the lock and spun behind it, yanking the door shut behind him. I crashed into the door and bounced back, staggering back a few steps, off balance. A sudden piercing, keening noise filled the air. I couldn’t place it, but it hurt my ears. I started laughing, launching myself forward again. This was just giving me permission to hurt Falken extra, and my mind was churning with ideas. I was getting creative.

I tore the door open and the noise stopped suddenly, like I’d tripped a switch somehow. I dashed into a small office, cluttered and dark, and skidded to a halt, spinning around and smacking into a huge old wooden desk that almost filled the room completely.

The fucking room was empty.

I stood there, panting, a dumb grin on my face. There was no other door, there was no window. The room was paneled in horrible dark wood, and had a low dropped ceiling of white foam, speckled everywhere with brown water stains. Aside from the desk, which was piled with papers and phone books and manila folders and a fucking ocean of gray dust, there were four wooden filing cabinets that looked like they were holding together out of ancient habit. The walls were covered in framed newspapers and photos. I started to choke; the room was a desert of dust and wood.

I adjusted my tie as I burst back into the bar. The Bumble was still sitting at the bar, happy as a clam. I pointed at the fucking skinny fuck behind the bar, who was staring at me with the phone pressed against his ear, calling it in.

“Oy! Skinny Fuck!” I shouted.

He dropped the phone and backed up into the back of the bar. “Wh-what?”

I stepped up onto the footrest and threw myself over the bar, taking hold of the skinny fuck’s shirt and pulling him forward as I dropped back to the floor. Then I took hold of his hair and smashed his face down onto the bar, medium style, not hard enough to knock him out.

He screeched like a pig, and I smiled.

“How do you get out of that back office?”

He stood there swaying, both hands flat on the bar. “Wh-what?”

I took hold of his shirt and yanked him forward again. “The back office. In the back. Exits.”

He blinked. “Just one door!” He shouted. “I swear, man. There’s no way out from it!”

I stared at him, trembling with the sweet desire to tear into him. He was soft. A Jumbo Softy ripe for a bust out, and I wanted to put my hands on him in the worst way, and if he was lying he would be on the list. I searched his face, careful. He wasn’t lying. He was terrified.

I let him go and leaned back against the bar, breathing hard. I looked at the skinny fuck, and waved him off. “Give me another double,” I said, pulling cash from my pocket and dropping a dollop on the bar. “And one for yerself, eh?”

I looked over at The Bumble. The motherfucker shrugged. “What you gonna say to the boss?”

I blew hair out of my face and shrugged back. “The fucker disappeared.”

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