Darkness, Take My Hand Read Online Free Page A

subtraction, the alphabet, shit like that. Hell, you guys must remember that from the old days.”
    “We’d wondered if he’d changed.”
    Bubba laughed. “Nope. Gotten worse.”
    “So he’s dangerous,” I said.
    “Oh, yeah,” Bubba said. “Like a junkyard dog. Knows how to rape and fight and scare hell out of people and that’s about it, but he does those things well.” He handed me the bottle and I poured another shot.
    I said, “So two people who knowingly took a case that pitted them against him and his boss…”
    “Would be morons, yeah.” He took the bottle back.
    I glared at Angie and she stuck her tongue out at me.
    Bubba said, “Want me to kill him for you?” and stretched out on the couch.
    I blinked. “Ahm…”
    Bubba yawned. “It’s not a problem.”
    Angie touched his knee. “Not at the moment.”
    “Really,” he said, sitting up, “no sweat. I built this new thing, and what you do is clamp it around the guy’s skull, right here, and—”
    “We’ll let you know,” I said.
    “Cool.” He lay back on the couch, looked at us for a moment. “I didn’t figure a freak like Kevin for having a girlfriend, though. He seems like a guy either pays for it or takes it by force.”
    “That bothered me too,” I said.
    “Anyway,” Bubba said, “you don’t want to meet Jack Rouse and Kevin alone.”
    “We don’t?”
    He shook his head. “You go up to them, and say, ‘Back off our client,’ they’ll kill you. They’d have to. They ain’t real stable.”
    A guy who used a minefield for home protection was telling us Jack and Kevin weren’t stable. This was good news. Now that I knew just how dangerous they really were, I considered walking back into that minefield, doing a jig, getting it over with quick.
    “We’ll go through Fat Freddy,” Bubba said.
    “Are you serious?” Angie said.
    Fat Freddy Constantine was the godfather of the Boston Mafia, the man who’d wrested control from the once preeminent Providence outfit and consolidated his power. Jack Rouse, Kevin Hurlihy, anyone who so much as sold a nickel bag in this city answered to Fat Freddy.
    “It’s the only way,” Bubba said. “You go through Fat Freddy, you’re showing him respect, and if I set up the meet, they know you’re friends, they won’t whack you.”
    “Bonus,” I said.
    “When you want the meet?”
    “Soon as possible,” Angie said.
    He shrugged and picked up a cordless phone off the floor. He dialed and took another swig from the bottle as he waited. “Lou,” he said, “tell the man I called.” He hung up.
    “’The man?’” I said.
    He held out his hands. “They all watch Scorsese movies and cop shows, think it’s the way they’re supposed to talk. I humor them.” He reached across his whale’s-hump chest and poured another shot into Angie’s glass. “You officially divorced yet, Gennaro?”
    She smiled and downed the shot. “Not officially.”
    “When?” He raised his eyebrows.
    She propped her feet up on an open crate of AK-47s and leaned back in her chair. “The wheels of justice turn slowly, Bubba, and divorce is complicated.”
    Bubba grimaced. “Smuggling surface-to-air missiles from Libya is complicated. But divorce?”
    Angie ran both hands through the hair along her temples, looked up at the peeling heating pipes stretchedacross Bubba’s ceiling. “A relationship in your hands, Bubba, lasts about as long as a six-pack. So what do you know about divorce? Really?”
    He sighed. “I know people seem to go out of their way to fuck up things usually should be snapped off clean.” He swiveled his legs off the couch, dropped the soles of his combat boots to the floor. “How about you, home-boy?”
    “ Moi ?” I said.
    “ Si ,” he said. “How was your divorce experience?”
    “Piece of cake,” I said. “Like ordering Chinese—one phone call, and everything’s taken care of.”
    He looked at Angie. “See?”
    She waved a dismissive hand in my general