“I didn’t phrase it that way.”
“Now is your chance.”
“I’m simpatico here, Jack.”
“I’m not. I don’t like you.”
“I’m all busted up on that.”
“You hurt young people.”
“Yeah? They don’t look like they’re hurting to me,” he said. “Maybe that’s because we’re a family.” He popped a match with his thumbnail and touched the flame to his cigar, his eyes hooded. “You got nothing to say?”
“No, I guess not. To tell you the truth, I’m out of gas.”
“I saw you looking for something in your shit-mobile. You find it?”
I lifted the .38 from the back of my belt, my finger outside the trigger guard. I tilted up the barrel so he could see the shells in the chambers. “Want to hold it?”
He took a contemplative puff off his cigar. “What I want is you out of my fucking life.”
“You said Saber and I screwed up at the listening post. You said we got people killed.”
“So fog of war.”
“You’re saying I got my best friend killed?” I said. “Don’t look away from me.”
Smoke was leaking from around his cigar. He took it out of his mouth. He had lowered his eyes. I saw his weight shift from one foot to the other, his chest rising and falling. A fly crawled across his face.
“Apologize to those girls up there,” I said.
“Apologize?”
“For pimping them out.”
“Who’s bopping the teenage poon in the stucco house?” he said. “Not me. Could it be you?
“I’m glad you said that.” I grabbed his right wrist and pushed the gun into his hand. Then I pulled the cigar from his mouth and slapped his face and shoved him against the bus and pinned him by the throat and stubbed out the cigar three inches from his eye. “Use the gun or apologize.”
“You’re a section eight, man.”
“You got that right.” I slammed his head against the bus, again and again, my fingers sinking deeper into the green-and-red dragons tattooed around his throat. Then I pulled him away from the bus and slammed him again. This time his eyes crossed.
“Apologize!” I said.
“No!”
I twisted his right wrist and forced the gun barrel upward and into the soft spot under my chin. “Pull the trigger or apologize.”
“No.”
I tightened my grip on his windpipe. He began to gurgle as his face turned color. I pushed the gun’s muzzle deeper into my own throat.
“Pull the trigger. You can do it.”
The people on the bus had ducked below the windows except for one. I heard a window in back drop to the sill, then saw Stoney’s head and the top half of his body lean out like a broken jack-in-the-box. His face was streaming with tears. “Ice cream guy! Don’t hurt him any more! It wasn’t him hurt Moon Child! Don’t do this no more, ice cream guy.”
“Who hurt Moon Child, Stoney?” I said.