Resurrecting Midnight Read Online Free Page B

King Kong’s and looked dead into my eyes.
    For many, my handle had been their last word before dying.
    I was near the men’s room, no one else on that side, even though the glass exposed us to the parking lot. I hit the guy with a rabbit punch, a shock to his temple, stunned him, then yanked his shirt before he went down and tugged him inside the empty bathroom, then slammed his head into the tiled wall, swept his feet from underneath him, and dropped him on the floor. He hit the floor like he’d been thrown face-first out of a third-story window. While he embraced his pain, I locked the door and pulled out my piece, aimed it at the door in case anyone else was on his team. They never came alone. Not anymore. They knew better.
    Head and mouth bloodied, he scampered like a crab, didn’t know which way to go.
    My foot connected with the side of his head and he rolled over.
    I said, “You want Gideon, you get Gideon.”
    By the time he stopped seeing stars, he was being yanked up again, eyes fluttering as he was bitch-slapped and shoved against the back wall, my forearm across his neck, cutting off his circulation. He twitched and opened his bloodied mouth, choked on saliva, struggled to scream.
    I hit him again and he went down, terrified, moaning. I wanted to hit him over and over, beat his ass the way I wanted to grab Scamz’s tight-suit-wearing son and slam his face into the concrete. Voices were outside the door. A woman on her cellular, heading toward the next toilet. I waited. Women were just as deadly as men, twice as conniving. She had moved on. I heard the door to the ladies’ room open and close, then heard it lock.
    I went back to the fool, patted him down, found no weapons, took another cellular phone out of his pocket, dug his wallet from his pocket, then, as he struggled to breathe, I checked his ID. He had two driver’s licenses, both with the name Nicolas Jacoby. One was from Denver. The other was from Florida.
    I slapped him conscious, then shook him. “Who are you?”
    “She . . . she . . . she told me to bring the phone to you.”
    I hit him again. “What she ?”
    He was talking about the woman in the pink blouse, the olive complexioned blonde who had a body like the devil. The type of woman who could send a dumbass nerd on a fool’s errand by flashing a smile that promised nothing.
    Again I growled and asked, “Who are you?”
    “Nicolas Jacoby. From Denver. I’m from Denver . . . what did I do?”
    I hit him again, slapped him like he was a simple woman. Then I introduced the side of his head to the butt of my gun.
    “Last time,” I spoke in a hard whisper. “Who the fuck are you?”
    He cried, pulled himself into fetal position, and repeated the same name over and over.
    I snapped, “Who was the girl?”
    “I swear I don’t know who she . . . oh, lord . . . oh, God . . . are you a psycho boyfriend or something?”
    “You were with her a long time.”
    “We were just talking. Nothing between us. I asked her about her tats and we started talking. Just asked her who did the Asian tats on her arms. Was my first time seeing her.”
    I hit him again. “What did she say about me?”
    “Said you were her ex. Asked me to take you the phone, said you left it with her when you and her broke up in Antigua. I don’t know . . . was too busy looking at her tats . . . and her tits.”
    “Describe them.”
    “They were . . . nice . . . about this big . . .”
    I hit him again. “I’m talking about her tats. What kind of body markings?”
    “Lots of flowers and Zen kinda stuff.”
    I hit him again, asked him the same questions.
    He told me the same story, that the girl had asked him to bring me the cellular.
    “Why do you have two ID cards? One from Florida, the other Denver.”
    “Because . . . you can get away with having two driver’s licenses in Florida . . . they don’t report to other states . . . thought it was cool . . . if I get pulled over I show them my Denver ID . . . get out