Gods of Mischief Read Online Free

it was just an eyesore begging to be torn down.
    We called it “the chicken shack” or the “shack,” or just “box of shit” on a bad day. A few weeks after David dropped off the planet, Detective Kevin Duffy of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department knocked on my apartment door. Duffy was the lead investigator on my friend’s case and had heard I’d been inside Johnny’s the night of the assault. Everyone knew the Vagos had something to do with David’s disappearance, but no one was willing to talk to the cops. It was too dangerous.
    Detective Duffy’s investigation was dead in the water.
    Duffy was a fair and honest cop, a decorated narcotics officer whohad climbed the law enforcement ladder all the way to homicide. I’d known him since I was a young punk and he was just a kid deputy from the neighborhood. We had history, Duff and I. In fact, his was the first loaded gun ever pointed in my direction.

    My friend Detective Kevin Duffy of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.
    I don’t know who was more scared that day, me or Kevin, but I can still picture that service revolver trembling in his hands, finger hard on the trigger and the barrel looking wider than a fuckin’ drainpipe. I was eighteen and about to face charges that could put me behind walls for a long, long time.
    Two years before facing the business end of Kevin Duffy’s revolver—and just months after turning sixteen—I’d finally had enough of my adoptive father’s bullshit. After Pat busted my arm, I vaulted the backyard fence for the last time and kept running.
    It would be another twelve years before I returned to even the score. I can still picture the look on Dodi’s face when I walked through the door as a grown man and asked to see her husband. She knew what I wanted by the look in my eyes.
    I had inherited the same dark expression my father had when he was about to destroy someone. When I was ten years old and my uncle gave me a black eye, Dad checked himself out of a VA hospital and paid a visit. When he saw what his brother had done, I swear I saw that warrior’s eyes go charcoal black. Dad stormed through the house, found my uncle and repaid him with a couple of shiners that lasted more than a month. I called that asshole “Raccoon” after that.
    Now, twelve years after I’d vaulted the backyard fence to escape Pat’s abuse, I was back as a twenty-eight-year-old man looking for some payback. And Dodi knew it too.
    â€œPat!” she finally called out. “George is here!”
    â€œGeorge?” came a puzzled voice from down the hall.
    A moment later Pat appeared.
    â€œWe’ve got business,” I told him straightaway. And he knew what I meant.
    â€œLet’s take it out back,” he said.
    I remember the grass was high. When I was a kid I used to mow the backyard and rake the leaves, but now everything was an overgrown mess.
    â€œWell?” said Pat as he turned to me.
    I didn’t waste time. I hit the man hard. He fell to the ground, then tried to get back up. So I hit him again and he stayed down. And that was the end of it.
    Fuck . . . is that all?

    Me at sixteen years old, just before dropping out of high school.
    Seeing my adoptive father bleeding in that tall grass might have given me a brief moment of satisfaction, but it was followed by a lifetime of regret. I wasn’t proud of myself. I should never have done it. I should have let bygones be bygones.
    As I reentered the house Dodi said to me, “I knew this had to happen someday.”
    I gave her a hug and walked out the door, never to return.
    There’s one thing I have to say in Pat’s defense; the man mighthave been a hard-ass, but he provided for his family the only way he knew how. I took that work ethic with me—that and his knowledge of landscaping and tree trimming that I’d picked up while watching him work