More blackness. More dreams of gunshots, of shotguns emptying in a crowded garage, of heads exploding on pool tables, of sharp-edged knives.
Occasionally music intruded on them, some of my favorite Van Zandt songs. Some that I knew Gen liked, by First Aid Kit and Grace Potter. Others I wasn’t sure I could identify.
When I blinked awake, slowly, the bright lights of the room hurt my eyes.
I was slow to lift my head up; there were two other people in the room with me. One large and hulking, sitting on a couch against the wall. Brock.
The other, smaller, slimmer, blonder, all around more fun to look at, stepped to the bedside and grabbed my hand.
It took me a moment, in a drugged haze, to recognize Geneva Lawton. But there she was.
“Hey,” I said slowly, my mouth dry and sore.
“That the best you got?” She smiled, but it was a frightened smile. I squeezed her hand.
“This wasn’t what I had in mind for our next date,” I said.
“It’ll do,” she said. “For now.”
Brock lumbered into view. He looked down at me. “You’re apparently a hard goddamn man to kill, Jack,” he muttered.
I wanted to reach up and smack him; Gen was right there. But my left arm wouldn’t move the way I wanted it to. I looked over and saw it was thoroughly bandaged and immobilized.
“Yeah, had to have some surgery there. Docs say you’ll be fine, but that knife did a number on…”
“Shut up, Brock,” I muttered.
He looked at Gen, and then had the good sense to look sheepish and flush a little. “Why don’t, I, uh, step out…”
He left the room and I held on to Gen’s hand for a while.
“How long have I been out?”
“Couple of days,” she said. “Brock called your boss, your boss got hold of me. I took a week. Is there anyone else you want me to call?”
“Dani, maybe.”
Gen let out a nervous chuckle. “Jack, I drove up here with her. You sent me to her place, remember? Should I call your parents, maybe?”
I thought about that one for a moment, then shook my head. “Nope. No way to escape my dad as long as I’m bedridden. I’ll let them know in good time.”
She twisted her lips in what I recognized as uncertainty, but I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, I didn’t need to be around my dad right now.
“Okay,” she said, and we lapsed into silence a moment. “You want to tell me what happened?”
“Not unless you want to hear about me killing three or four bikers,” I said quietly. I wasn’t sure if it was three, or four, or maybe five now. I didn’t much want to know. After I said the words I started to shake. I closed my eyes tightly. Gen bent down over my bed. I wrapped an arm around her.
“I really don’t,” she muttered. “But if you need…”
“Nope,” I said. “Just this.”
* * *
A few days later I found myself in Jason’s office, back home in Maryland. At his conference table, in a three-piece dark suit with a thin chalk stripe, sat Mr. Oscar J. Gogarty, owner and CEO of Delmarva Wrestling Federation.
He was a little greasy looking, a little creepy, and far too pleased with himself, if the smile plastered across his too-bronzed-for-December face was any indication. His silvered hair was swept back from his temples, his white French-cuffed shirt was spotless, and he looked for all the world like a captain of industry rather than the owner of a regional wrestling promotion.
“I’m afraid that bill is not negotiable any further, Mr. Gogarty,” Jason was saying. He was dressed to go toe-to-toe with the man who was trying to stiff us. I was in jeans and a thermal shirt, my arm in a sling.
I looked like hell and I knew it. I was mildly hungover, and I hadn’t slept more than an hour without waking up sweating, or shaking, or both. I had bags under my eyes, a week’s worth of stubble along my neck under my not-groomed-in-too-long beard, and an orange Orioles cap jammed on my head, even though we were indoors.
“The thing is, your man did not fulfill the terms of his contract with us. Our employee was kidnapped. And he did not complete the tour. Revenue fell quite short of projections.” He was so smug. So pleased with himself, sitting at the end of the table. If the BMW he’d come in was any indication, he could easily afford what he owed me.
But men like him didn’t get rich by writing checks.
I was not, to put it mildly, ready to swallow any of his bullshit. So I led with my strongest card.
“You walk out of here without writing me a check, the first thing I’m doing is calling the writer for Squaring the Circle and spilling everything I know. About why you didn’t want cops involved, about how the entire goddamn notion of threats was made up by you and Grant Aronson to generate heat for his character. And I’ll tell him about every illegal thing I saw on the tour.”
“You can’t prove that…”
Jason pulled out a manila envelope and removed the letters I’d taken from Grant’s luggage after the kidnapping. “We can certainly muddy the waters enough that you come out looking bad,” he said, laying the envelopes and letters down on the table.
“This is blackmail. Extortion,” Gogarty sputtered. “I won’t stand for it.”
“No,” Jason said. “This is an employee who almost got killed because of your disregard for the notion of consequences.”
“Blackmail would be if we held this evidence over you,” I said. “And demanded regular payments. Which, as tempting as it sounds, seems like it would be exhausting. Pay me what you owe, and I go away. You never hear from me again.”
“Those letters don’t really prove anything….”
I got out my phone and started ostentatiously dialing. I set the phone on speaker.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Tommy Wilkerson, Squaring the Circle?”
“Yeah?”
“This is Jack Dixon. We met at some DWF events…”
Gogarty’s eyes got wider.
“U.S. Grant’s bodyguard? You know how many questions I want to ask…”
“Prepared to give you some exclusives depending on…”
Gogarty rushed down to the end of the table, grabbing for my phone. He managed to shut it off.
I caught his tie with my good hand and pulled him down till we were eye to eye, our noses touching.
He didn’t like what he saw, and I didn’t blame him. His nose wrinkled. I didn’t blame him for that, either; if I could smell my own breath I’m sure I’d have hated it too.
“You split the fee into three checks, make them out to cash. You fucking got me?”
I spat the words through gritted teeth.
He nodded, vigorously. I let him go and he stumbled away, instinctively smoothing out his tie and his vest. I felt a little bad for ruining the line of his suit.
“When those checks clear,” I said, “you get the letters back. I go away. Is that clear?”
“Yes,” Gogarty said. Now, slightly humbled, he tried to regain his composure as he opened his briefcase and removed a corporate style checkbook and a silver-cased fountain pen from inside his suit.
* * *
“Who’re the other two checks for?”
“Brock,” I said, “and David Rackham.”
“Who’s David Rackham?”
I was staring at the checks Gogarty had written, moving them around, rearranging them with my hands. They were large. Not as large as one single check with all three amounts folded into it would’ve been, but I was keen on giving Brock his due for the assist. And I guess I thought a nice check could buy out some of what I owed David Rackham.
“The last guy I ever wrestled against in college,” I said. “I broke his neck. Or his back…some important part of his spinal apparatus. He hasn’t walked since. Ran into him in PA. Aesir used him to distract me.”
I thought a moment, and said, “But you knew who David Rackham was, because you would’ve researched all of that before you hired me.”
“Sure did,” Jason said. “But I think it was important for you to say that out loud.”
“Maybe. I should look him up again.”
“We should all do a lot of things.”
“Yeah.”
We were silent a few moments. Jason gathered up the papers on his table and scooted them back into the manila envelope.
“Learn some things about yourself, first time you’re in a real firefight. First time you shoot at someone who’s shooting back.”
I was silent.
He went over to his sideboard, to the French press. Poured two cups from it, both of them steaming.
“World ain’t going to miss those men, Jack,” he said. “The sooner you realize that, the better.”
“I learned I was right not to like guns. Makes it too easy. Too cheap.”
“Mmm,” Jason said. He brought the mugs over to the table and set one down in front of me. I looked at it. Then I looked up at him.
“If I hadn’t had it, I might’ve done this differently. Maybe fewer people would be dead.”
“Maybe you’d be the only one.”
“Maybe. I think I did learn something, though.”
Jason sipped his coffee. “What’s that?”
“That I don’t think I can do it again.”
“Normal to think that,” he said. “Won’t know until a next time.”
I stood up, leaving the coffee untouched, taking two of the three checks.
“Won’t be a next time,” I said. “I quit.”
The End
Jack Dixon will return in DOCTOR’S NOTE