Damaged Goods Read Online Free

“Betty’s leaving for Los Angeles tomorrow and I don’t want her to see me like this.”
    “Yeah, Doc’s around somewhere, maybe in the office.” Tilley stepped forward as his partner turned away, examined the cut more closely. “You positive you don’t wanna go to the emergency room, get it sewn up by a professional?”
    “Almeda knows how to keep the scar tissue down. That’s his job.” Moodrow turned, began to walk away. “You wanna hear the story, Jim, you gotta keep up with me. Betty made a farewell dinner and I’m late already.”
    Resigned, Tilley trotted along behind, waited patiently until Moodrow was seated on the trainer’s table, a lump of greasy coagulant stuck to the wound in his scalp.
    “This was really stupid, Jim. I feel like a complete jerk.”
    “There’s a first time for everything.”
    Moodrow looked at his ex-partner, wondered exactly how he was going to explain his bloody shirt and bandaged head to Betty. He did have faith in Doc Almeda’s skills, had seen Almeda work dozens of times, but a big part of his reason for coming to the gym for help had to do with Jim Tilley. He wanted to run the story by his best friend, see how it played before taking it home.
    “The thing about it was it happened too fast. I didn’t …”
    “Just the facts, Stanley. Save the excuses for later.”
    Moodrow flinched as Doc Almeda pressed a square of gauze soaked with antiseptic into the wound. The reaction was pure reflex, gone almost as soon as it appeared, though the pain continued.
    “There’s not all that much to tell. I was going into the liquor store, the one on Avenue B just off Fourteenth Street, to pick up a bottle of wine for dinner when this kid bumps into me. Crashes into me is more like it. A real punk, Jim, with a shaved head and four earrings in his nose, swastika tattoos on both arms.
    “I think he expected me to fall down or something, because he looked surprised when he bounced off my chest. ‘Hey, pops,’ he says, ‘why don’t ya watch where the fuck ya goin’?’
    “Jim, I should’ve stopped it right then and there, just backed off and forgotten about it. But what I actually did was slap him in the face. That’s when his buddy sandbagged me from behind with a wire trash basket.”
    “Did you go out?” Tilley asked.
    “Go out?”
    “Out cold, Stanley. Unconscious.”
    Moodrow blinked as he tried to absorb Tilley’s question. When he finally got it, he shook his head in contempt. “Are you crazy, Jim? I already told you these guys were punks.” He stopped as if expecting a reply, then continued. “What I did was stuff the second prick into the trash can. It was a tight fit, which is why I’m so late.”
    “What happened to the first kid? The one with the earrings?”
    “When I slapped him, he took off like a rabbit. Left his partner to face the heat alone. A real punk, Jim, and what bothers me is that two years ago, he would’ve been able to look at me and know enough to back off without gettin’ his face slapped. And, me, I would’ve never let a jerk like that get under my skin. Hell, two years ago I would’ve seen them coming.”
    Tilley didn’t say anything for a moment. Moodrow was a couple of weeks short of his sixtieth birthday, the mention of which had been entirely forbidden. As was the fact that, two months before, a prostate infection had put a catheterized Moodrow in the hospital for several days.
    “Ya know, Stanley,” he finally said, “you gotta stop being so hard on yourself. Last week I got sucker punched by a mutt as I went to put on the cuffs. The asshole turned and hit me before I could react. You know what I did? I beat the living shit out of him. You know what I didn’t do? I didn’t see it as the end of my youth, the loss of my manhood.”
    It was a complete lie and Tilley knew it. He’d gotten drunk after coming off duty, pissed and moaned to his wife, Rose, for days. It was a complete lie, but James Tilley couldn’t think of