McKinley walked across the dirt, stepped up to the porch, and entered the house. He closed the door behind him, mumbling as he locked it. He heard himself wheezing and felt the sweat dripping down his back as he walked through the kitchen into the hall. He went by the arched cutout, not wanting to squeeze through it again, and straight into the living room, where Devra Stokes was standing, one hand kind of playing with the fingers of the other.
“I tell you to get up?” said McKinley, standing before her.
“Heard gunshots, is all.”
“Girl, sit your ass back down.”
He looked over the girl’s shoulder and saw the chain hanging free on the front door. He said, “What the fuck?” just as he felt the presence of someone behind him and turned.
What he saw in that last second was a man with size, and McKinley reached for his gun. He had his hand on the grip when something whipped up toward him fast, a blur of flat black. When the flat black thing hit him under the chin, the pain was cold electric and the room spun crazy. His feet weren’t holding him up, and he was floating, could almost see himself, like a balloon in one of those parades. The spinning room was the last thing he saw as his world shut down.
WHEN McKinley opened his eyes and his vision cleared, there were a couple of men in the room with the girl, all of them standing over him, talking about him like he wasn’t there. It was Strange and the white boy, the one he’d chased down the alley. McKinley burped and smelled the garlic and meat on his own breath.
“Look who woke up,” said Quinn.
“Told you he was all right,” said Strange.
McKinley was propped up against the plaster wall. His hands were together behind his back, and he moved to separate them. They were tied. He went to move his feet, and they were tied, too. McKinley turned his head to the side and spit out some blood. He rolled his tongue in his mouth. His teeth ached and one of the side ones he chewed with was loose. It was just kind of sitting in there, connected by threads. He could move it all around with his tongue.
Strange had fucked him up. That thing in his hand, looked like a sap, it must have been what he’d hit him with. He was slipping it into his back pocket now. And there was his own new Sig sticking out the waistband of the man’s pants. This man has no idea what I can do to him, thought McKinley. None. But the thinking made him tired, and he closed his eyes.
“He’s going out again,” said Quinn.
“He’s just resting,” said Strange.
“What now?”
“We make a trade.”
Strange took McKinley’s cell phone off his belt holster, getting down in front of him. He grabbed McKinley by the chin in the spot where he had laid the sap up into him. It opened McKinley’s eyes.
“That doesn’t smart too much, does it?” said Strange.
“Motherfucker,” said McKinley sloppily.
“Mind your language,” said Strange. “What’s your boy’s cell number?”
“His name is Mike,” said Devra, her arms crossed with her purse clutched tight, looking down hard at McKinley.
McKinley gave Strange the number and Strange had him repeat it, knowing it hurt McKinley to talk. He punched the number into the cell.
“He gets on the line,” said Strange, holding the phone to McKinley’s ear, “I want you to tell him to bring the boy here. Tell him the condition you’re in, and how important it is that he not even dream about doin’ anybody any violence. Because you will be the first one to suffer. Do you understand?”
McKinley nodded. He listened to the phone and said, “Mike ain’t pickin’ up.”
“Leave a message when it tells you to. We’ll try again.”
They did, with the same response. And tried again, ten minutes later. McKinley left his third message, and Strange stood.
“Get her out of here,” said Strange to Quinn. “Take her back to her apartment. I’ll be in contact with you by phone. We’ll meet up in a little while.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“Talk to our friend here alone,” said Strange. “We got a few things to discuss in private.”
Devra Stokes spit on McKinley on her way out. Neither Strange nor Quinn moved to stop her.
AFTER Quinn and Devra left, Strange shut down most of the lights in the house and returned to the living room. On the floor was a lamp with no shade, holding a naked bulb, and he picked it up and carried it over to McKinley. He placed it beside him and left it on. The bulb threw off heat, and its glow highlighted the bullets of sweat on McKinley’s forehead and the tracks of it moving down his face.
Strange got back down on his haunches and pulled up McKinley’s wife-beater, exposing his chest and belly.