Chapter 55 Dickfest #2
“You related to her, or something?” Finn-Finn asked. “You related?”
“No.”
“And you’re not a cop. What then?”
“I don’t like what you did to her,” Evan said. “And I’m going to make sure you never do it again.”
“Look.” Finn-Finn laced his fingers together on the table to form a curved wall, his thumb pads tapping each other.
He was going for a we’re-all-adults-here pose but instead looked as if he was preparing to have a thumb war with himself.
“I get it. I get it. You’re some kinda white knight or whatever.
And you think we’re the problem. But we’re not.
We’re not. You just haveta look at it different and you’ll see the hypocrisy. ”
“Yeah,” Big Mikey said. “The hypocrisy.”
“You all made porn legal. You all put it everywhere. And you know how many people get human-trafficked for sex? Like: a lot. A lot. I mean, it’s your world.
We just grew up inside it. It’s a dog-eat-dog world, man.
Dog-eat-dog. We’re animals, basically. It’s the only way to work the system you all built.
The only way to survive. So you made us.
You made us animals. You can’t expect us to give a shit about this or that. ”
Evan said, “She was unconscious.”
Finn-Finn shrugged. “So we bang a girl who’s outta it now and then. Everyone parties, drugs, whatever. But we didn’t keep her, did we? We didn’t keep her.”
Evan said, “You held her for five hours.”
The words had already left his mouth when he realized what the kid actually meant: that they deserved praise for not keeping Anca for good.
A part of Evan broke off inside him like a snapped match head. A tumbling flare that died in the darkness. The threat here, now, from them wasn’t physical. It was worse.
“And?” Big Mikey said. “We didn’t snuff her. And it’s not like we couldn’t’uv.”
If you put Finn-Finn and Big Mikey together, you might make one human being. Equally wretched, but at least one miserable thing instead of two. But there they sat, defiantly distinct and half-formed.
“I’m gonna have to warn you,” Big Mikey said. “You don’t get who you’re dealing with.”
Evan said, “Like Pete?”
Mikey’s mouth gaped in something like a smile. A breath washed out of him. It did not smell pleasant. His tongue poked at the corner of his mouth. “Don’t know any Petes.”
“Even the one who shares your last name?”
“Dunno. Why? What’s he got to do with this? Where is he?”
“Prison medical bay.”
“Oh,” Finn-Finn said. And then, “Oh.”
“Bullshit,” Mikey said. “Bullshit this guy takes out Dirty Pete.”
The waitress came by, wielding a pot of coffee. “Get you something, hon?”
“No,” Evan said. “Thank you. We’re doing great.”
Her gaze lingered on the tense scene but she kept moving.
Evan said, “I want the names of the other two men who raped Anca Dumitrescu.”
Finn-Finn giggled, high and jittery. “Mr. Demands-Man making demands.”
Mikey gathered himself up at Evan’s side. He had Evan by four inches and at least sixty pounds. “You sure as shit can’t prove you beat Pete up ’cuz there’s no way. There is. No. Way.” He poked Evan’s shoulder with a wide digit. “You couldn’t even go a round with me.”
“No?”
“When I go off, I keep going. Nothing stops me. I saw a decapitated rattlesnake once. My buddy’d took its head off with a shovel blade.
Its body was still squirming around, writhing like they do.
And the head? The cut-off head? Bit the body.
It bit its own fucking body. That’s me, motherfucker. Nothing can stop me once I—”
Evan palmed the back of Mikey’s head, slammed his face down into the tabletop, the Velvet Kitty move redux.
The plates and milkshake glass jumped but didn’t break.
When he drew Mikey’s head back by a fistful of hair, his nose was shattered nearly flat, smeared along his right cheekbone.
Moisture had exploded from his eyes, the tear ducts running freely.
Half conscious, he drooled out a long vowel sound reminiscent of the extended moans he’d made on the video.
Evan tilted him against the window, his dead weight shifting, cheek smashed to the pane.
He slumped there. Irregular breaths fogged the glass.
Over the din of the restaurant, no one had noticed.
Finn-Finn remained perfectly frozen, hands laced together on the table, thumbs sticking up like rabbit ears.
“How about you?” Evan asked. “You got a little speech, too?”
Finn-Finn shook his head.
“Names.”
Finn-Finn shook his head again.
Reaching across the table, Evan grabbed the bowl of his clasped fingers, seized the thumbs with his other hand, and ripped them back, tearing them right out of their sockets. They dangled in the wrong place, way up by the juncture of hand and wrist.
Finn-Finn stared down at the wreckage, disbelieving. A soft wail barely made it out of his mouth. He couldn’t remember to breathe.
“You say you’re an animal,” Evan said. “Animals don’t need opposable thumbs.”
Finn-Finn was going into shock now, trembling, lips quivering. He held his hands up before him, thumbs drooping grotesquely. That was good. Both of them would require ER visits. When Evan left, he would text Templeton their GPS locations and she could mop them up there.
He swept their phones off the table into his pocket. He didn’t want them calling ahead to warn the others.
He snapped his fingers in front of Finn-Finn’s face. “Names. First and last. Or else we move to your wrists.”
“T-Taz.” Finn-Finn’s teeth chattered, the name shoved through pale lips. “Taswell Kinley.” He pushed the words out one at a time. “He’s … in charge of tech. And B-Roll … Brandon Burke.”
“What’s he in charge of?”
Finn-Finn’s eyes juddered in their sockets. They stared at Evan, unseeing. “He’s in charge of fucking.”
“All set here, guys?” The waitress stood over them, coffeepot slung low at her hip. Then she took notice of the tableau in the booth, her jaw going slack, a dot of bright pink bubble gum visible back by her molars.
“Yes, ma’am,” Evan said, sliding out. “I believe they’re ready for the check.”