Past Due Read Online Free Page A

was out, but the moon was this bright thing in the sky. We was standing in the shadows, smoking, we was waiting, see? And the bat cold as it was in my fist, and the chill seeping through our jackets. Little leather jackets, like Travolta in that movie, that’s what we all was wearing then. And so we was waiting and then we was waiting and then the guy I’m with, he stamps out his cig and says, ‘There’s the bastard, right on time.’ And I look up, and there he is all right.
    “Just a shadow. Coming closer. And when he gets close enough, with that crazy moon glowing down on him, we get a pretty good look-see. He’s about our age, tall and lanky, his hair a mop of black that falls over his eyes. He wears jeans and a black turtleneck, he carries the suitcase. It’s a hard shell Samsonite thing like they had back then, and the light of the moon, dying on his dark clothes and hair, catches the shiny surface of the suitcase so that it sort of glows on its own. We can tells that it’s heavy, it pulls down his right shoulder so the whole angle of him is tilted, as he walks toward us.
    “And then he senses something wrong. He stops, turns, calls out, something like ‘Johnny’ it was, and he calls it out again, but he gets no answer. When he turns around again we done stepped out of the shadows.
    “There’s a moment when he figures out what is happening and then the strangest thing. You’d think he’d run, or come out swinging, or something. I was worried that maybe he’d be carrying and me, all I had was that stupid bat. But there’s this little smile comes on his face and he starts talking to us, you know, being all friendly. ‘How you guys doing? Nice night, isn’t it? Think we can work something out?’ Like he’s charming us, like he’s going to talk us out of it. But he’s not, is he? The other guy, he says to me, ‘Shut ’im up, Cheaps.’
    “ ‘Shut ’im up, Cheaps.’ And sos that’s what I tries to do. One-handedis all, I don’t mean to hurt him much, I want to get him in the arm, shake him up. I bring the bat back with one hand and give it a swing. And I get him in the arm and he starts cursing at me and he swings that suitcase at me and he slams me, he slams me. He gets me on the shoulder and it hurts, and I get pissed at this little pissant and I want to shut him up. Sos I grab the bat with my other hand and I take it back and I was never much with a bat and sos I figure I better put some oomph into it. And so I does.
    “And he ducks, and it’s like he ducks right into it.
    “In Little League I couldn’t hit a basketball with a rake, but this time, with this swing, I get him flush on the face and something gives, I feel it, and down he goes, as if a string keeping him up had been cut, down he goes, like a magic trick. Except it isn’t magic, is it? I give the bat a swing and it smacks up against his head and the string is cut and he’s on the ground and there’s blood, shit. And then we see, see that, see that he’s, that he’s…”
    “Say it,” I said.
    “Fuck you, Victor.”
    “You sure?”
    “No doubt about it. Blood everywhere.”
    “What happened to the body?”
    “Splash, man, if you get the picture. Hey, don’t look at me like that. I been sick about it every day from the time it happened. It wasn’t supposed to be like it turned out. We was just supposed to take the suitcase from him, is all.”
    “What was inside it?”
    “I wasn’t supposed to know, we wasn’t supposed to open it. But we did, didn’t we? His keys was in his pockets, we was supposed to get them too, and so when we found them we opened the thing.”
    “And?”
    “Loaded to the gills.”
    “With what?”
    “Cash.”
    “Joey.”
    “And it was heavy, too.”
    “What was this guy doing with all that cash?”
    “Who knows? But he wasn’t up to no good, that’s for sure. Justthe way he tried to charm us, the bastard, you could tell he was into something and thought he knew how to handle