Lucky Bastard (25 page)

“No,” says Scooter Girl. “We came here to find you.”

“To find me? For what?”

Tuesday gets up and walks over to me, then squats down and grabs me by the hair. “For what you did to our father.”

“Your father?” I say, my eyes closed and my face scrunched up, hoping this isn’t going to be a repeat of having my head slammed against the ground. “Who’s your father?”

Tuesday lets out a bitter laugh and lets go of my hair. I open my eyes as she walks out of view, then Scooter Girl walks over to me in her sneakers and jeans and leans down.

“What did I do?” I ask.

“You killed our father.”

“What? I didn’t kill anyone. You have the wrong guy. I don’t even know who your father is.”

“No, but the person you poached bad luck for in Tucson does. Or should I say, he did.” Scooter Girl gives me a wicked smile.

And then it finally dawns on me.

The bad luck I poached three years ago in Tucson was used to kill their father, and they found me through my buyer, who I’m guessing is no longer in the present tense. And I’m about to join him. Not that I have anything against the past tense. He said. She said. They were. I was. People get along just fine with the past tense. But I prefer the present tense, especially when there’s a possibility I won’t have any future tense.

I never was good with grammar.

“We spent the past three years tracking down your buyer and then you,” says Scooter Girl. “It wasn’t easy. But my sister refused to give up. Said we owed it to Dad. And she was right.”

No matter how far you go, sooner or later, your past is bound to catch up with you.

“It’s too bad,” she says. “You really are kind of cute. But like I said, I don’t have sex with men who poach bad luck.”

Somewhere behind me, I hear a door open and the sound of water increases in volume.

“Look, I didn’t know what the bad luck was going to be used for,” I say. “I never know what my buyers are going to do with the luck they purchase.”

Scooter Girl shrugs off her backpack and opens it. “That’s kind of like a gun dealer not taking responsibility for the people his merchandise kills, don’t you think?”

Before I can offer up a rebuttal and grovel for my life, Tuesday is behind me and Scooter Girl is ripping off a piece of duct tape and taping my mouth closed.

This is another reason why you don’t get involved with women. Eventually you end up bound and gagged in an abandoned warehouse.

Chalk it up to bad judgment.

Once I’m taped up, they grab me by the feet and drag me across the floor toward an open door. The sun has almost set and I can see the lights of the Bay Bridge and Treasure Island in the distance.

This isn’t exactly how I saw things playing out for me long term. I always envisioned poaching enough luck until I could retire and then spend the rest of my life on a tropical island lounging in a hammock between two palm trees, drinking piña coladas and getting caught in the rain. Instead I’m beat up, tied up, and gagged while being dragged toward what I can only presume is a plunge into the cold waters of the San Francisco Bay. Plus my shirt is riding up and the concrete is skinning my lower back.

I’m thinking now is probably too late to start over with a clean slate.

Tuesday and Scooter Girl drag me out the door and to the end of the pier, which is dark and deserted. Water laps at the pillars below us. From the far end of the building I hear the street noise of the Embarcadero, people and traffic and streetcars. I don’t know which pier this is, but from the view of the Bay Bridge, I’m guessing somewhere just south of Pier 23. Maybe Pier 19 or 17. It doesn’t really matter. I’m about to become what my father always said I was. Deadweight.

They drag me over to the railing, which I can’t fit through, so they’re going to have to pitch me over. Either that or chop me up into pieces and shove me through the railing. I’m kind of hoping it’s the first option. Not that I’m looking forward to drowning, but I figure I have a better chance of getting out of this if all of my appendages are still attached.

Tuesday leans over me as Scooter Girl walks around behind me. “Dee thought we should knock you out before we dumped you over the side,” says Tuesday. “But I’d rather you experience the terror of drowning and knowing that your life is going to end. It won’t be as bad as an acetylene torch, but at least you’ll suffer. And that’ll have to be enough.”

I plead for mercy. I apologize for my sins. I offer to poach them top-grade soft at a discount. But when you’re begging for your life through duct tape, no one really pays attention.

Scooter Girl grabs me under my arms while Tuesday grabs my ankles. I figure this is my only chance to make
an escape, though with my hands and feet zip-tied, my options are pretty limited. But I’ve still got Donna Baker’s good luck flowing through me, so I’m going to trust in that and see what happens.

Just as they lift me up, I swing up and back with my bound hands and smack Scooter Girl in the face and she lets go, dropping me onto the pier, my head smacking against the wooden planks and briefly knocking me out. When I regain consciousness, my arms are pinned to my sides with duct tape that’s wrapped several times around my chest.

So much for my escape attempt.

Scooter Girl once again grabs me under the arms while Tuesday handles my lower extremities, and the two of them are lifting me up to toss me over the side and into the water when I hear footsteps running on the pier, followed by the sound of something hard hitting something soft. There’s a feminine grunt behind me and suddenly Scooter Girl lets go of my arms and falls on top of me, pinning me to the ground like a WWE wrestler.

With her body draped across my face I can’t see anything and all I hear is Tuesday shouting, “Dee!” and more footsteps. Whose, I don’t know. It sounds like more than one set of feet. Maybe a struggle. Maybe a brief pursuit. Maybe a waltz. There’s breathing and scuffling and the sound of something swishing through the air. Meanwhile, I’m trying to roll over to get Scooter Girl off me, but I can’t get any leverage. However, I have managed to adjust
my position so that my face is pressed right between her breasts. They’re not as nice as Tuesday’s and she’s wearing a thick sweatshirt, but any port in a storm.

Before I can manage to shove Scooter Girl aside, I hear something that sounds like a body slamming up against the railing, followed by flesh hitting flesh, an explosion of air, a grunt of exertion, the sound of fabric tearing, then a brief silence that’s broken by a loud
splash
. Moments later, Scooter Girl’s breasts are rolled away from my face and I’m staring up into the wide-eyed, adrenaline-pumped face of Doug.

“Hey, Holmes,” he says, his voice high and shaking, his hands trembling as he reaches down to help me out of the duct tape. “What do you say we bounce out of here?”

W
e’re driving down Market Street to my office in Doug’s lemon-yellow Prius. People keep trying to flag us down, thinking we’re a cab, as Doug explains how he ended up at the warehouse on the pier.

“After I dropped you off, I was pretty upset,” he says, his head nodding to the thumping bass line coming out of the speakers. “All the stuff you said really hurt my feelings, Holmes. But then I figured you didn’t mean nothin’ by it.”

“I’m sorry, Bow Wow.”

“It’s all good. Anyway, I figured you were on a case so I decided I should stick around, make sure you had everything under control.”

Which I didn’t.

“When I saw you come out of the bar with that hot number, I figured you was just out tapping the talent. So I decided to cruise. Then I saw you get taken down by those two bitches and I followed you out to the piers.”

“Thanks, Bow Wow. I owe you one.”

“I told you I got your back. Bow Wow is on the case!” Apparently, the initial shock of battle has given way to a postcombat testosterone rush. “I almost left. You’re lucky I didn’t leave, Holmes.”

Lucky. Yes. Definitely.

Color me leprechaun green.

I’m a regular human rabbit’s foot.

“That one I laid out,” he says. “She drove off in the cab right after they got there, then came back on her scooter. Cracked that bitch a good one!”

I think Doug’s been listening to too much rap.

Before we left, I checked on Scooter Girl to make sure she was still breathing, then I found the keys to her scooter and tossed them into the bay. The metal flashlight Doug used to knock her out with was on the ground a few feet away, next to what turned out to be Tuesday’s black sweater, which was torn down the side.

“I tried to grab her when she started to go over the railing,” says Doug. “But all I got was her sweater and a handful of one of her breasts.”

Some guys have all the luck.

Apparently Fake Tuesday was still conscious when she went into the water, but neither of us heard her moving around below us and we didn’t exactly stick around to help her out.

I’m just happy to be alive, though my balls are still throbbing and my head is filled with cement that someone is trying to break up with a jackhammer. I feel like
I’ve been kicked and beaten and dragged around, which I pretty much have. I’d like to think I could have avoided all of this had I not allowed myself to get so distracted by the charms of two women that I failed to realize they were planning to kill me.

These are the kind of details you’d think I’d notice.

Grandpa always told me I needed to learn how to read people, to see through to their true intentions. A good poacher nurtures his intuition, he used to say. A bad poacher nurtures his desires. Eventually, they both end up nurturing the soil, but the bad poacher gets there first.

Had it not been for Donna Baker’s good luck, Doug wouldn’t have shown up in time and I’d be dead. You’d think that having her luck would have prevented me from being in that situation in the first place. But good luck doesn’t affect your decision-making. It just helps to save your ass when you make bad choices.

When we reach my office, I thank Doug again for coming to my rescue. “And sorry about the whole dissing of your lifestyle. My bad.”

“No worries, Holmes. We’re cool.”

I reach out with my left hand and put it on his shoulder, a small display of man affection that won’t pose any risk of my poaching Doug’s luck, since all I’m touching is his New York Jets throwback jersey. That’s when Doug’s facade crumbles a little and I see the emotion of what we’ve been through building up in his eyes. He’s about to cry and I don’t know what to do.

Before I realize what’s happening or have a chance to react, Doug reaches out and grabs my right hand with his in a soul handshake and gives me a bro hug, pulling me close. I try to pull back and let go, to stop things before it’s too late, but as soon as our palms touch, Doug’s luck is suddenly flowing into me through our clasped hands.

I’ve never mingled luck before. It’s not good practice as it tends to dilute the value of each score. Especially when you’re dealing with different grades. Mixing top-grade soft with low-quality good luck would be like mixing a hundred-dollar bottle of merlot with a twenty-dollar bottle of chardonnay and expecting it to taste like sangria. Or like mixing LSD with crystal methamphetamine.

You never know how the two are going to interact.

But Doug’s luck is higher quality than I thought—not top-grade like Donna Baker’s but still pretty good. And because Doug is so emotional, his luck surges into me with the force of an ocean wave crashing to the shore.

I nearly gasp as I pull my hand away, hoping that somehow by letting go I can stop the flow of luck. But it’s too late. The damage has been done and there’s no way for me to give Doug’s luck back to him.

“You okay, Holmes?” he asks, sitting there looking hurt and confused.

“Yeah. I’m just a little weird about touching people, you know?”

“You mean like OCD and shit?”

“Something like that.”

I sit there with Doug’s luck pulsing through me, mixing with Donna Baker’s top-grade soft, filling me with adrenaline, cranking my perceptions up to eleven.

I smell beer and sweat.

I see the whiskers on Doug’s chin and I hear his heart thumping.

I taste the garlic hummus falafel he had for lunch.

I feel strong and fragile. I feel elated and subdued. I feel hungry and satiated.

I feel more alert and attuned than I’ve ever felt before.

And for the first time in my life, I feel dirty. For the first time in my life, I wish I didn’t have this ability.

I should have warned him. I should have told him the truth so he knew not to grab my hand. I should have worn gloves. I should have done something to prevent this from happening. Instead, I’ve stolen the luck from the only person I consider a friend.

Except who am I kidding? I don’t have any friends. No one I hang out with or call up to grab lunch or to catch a movie. All I have are acquaintances. And distant ones, at that. I don’t even have a relationship with my sister or my nieces.

I don’t know if Doug is a friend or just a temporary acquaintance, but he deserves better than this. Especially after saving my life.

“I’m sorry, Bow Wow.”