The phone rang again, and I picked it up because I thought it was Dani calling back.
“Hey, Dani, what is it?”
A man breathed heavily into the phone. Before that first breath was through, I knew who this was. The mean man who called before. I recognized the wheezy sound and the way he blew out air with a kind of grunt at the end. After his second noisy suck of air, I matched up the breath with the man. Not that it made me any happier to of figured it out. This was Marty. H.K.’s uncle, who ran the Bow Wow club. The boss creep. The head thug. The mouth breather.
“You tell Hayes I found his car.” His voice had a flat sound to it, bored almost, as if he was reading from a piece of paper he’d already read a hundred times. “I’m taking it as mine and it don’t count for nothing toward what he already owes, not even the vig. You hear me?”
That bad night flashed through my head again like pictures in a PowerPoint presentation. The paper cutter goes whomp. The little pink nub jumps across the table. The hand squirts red. Plain, old-fashioned fear turned my insides into goo.
“I don’t speak for Hayes,” I told him, trying to keep the wobble out of my voice.
“Shit. You tell him, you tell him this—” He made a long sound of disgust, like he was clearing his throat. “I ain’t going to let this slide. You tell him that. He goes to fucking China—I don’t care—I’ll find him. You tell him it don’t have to go bad for him. But, but, but, if he don’t get with it, I’m going to send Butthole Gibbs after his sorry ass. Hayes will know what I mean. He’s got two days.”
Then he hung up.
This is the end of summer, I thought.