Prayers For Rain Part 23

I gave him a grimace.

"Not so good, huh? You going to puke?"

I bit down on some bile in my chest. "Trying not to."

He tilted his head toward the butcher block. "Leonard puked. He also has a nasty bruise on his lower spine from hitting the floor. He's kinda p.i.s.sed off, Patrick."

Leonard scowled at me.

"What's Leonard's capacity here?"

"He's bodyguard." Cody slapped my cheek, not too hard, but not too gently, either. "After you and your friend came to visit that time, I thought I might need some protection."

"And the WWF was having a yard sale?" I asked.

Leonard leaned over the counter and the muscles in his forearm flexed. "Keep talking, b.i.t.c.h. Just-"

Cody waved him off. "So where is your friend, Pat? The big dumb one who likes to hit people with tennis rackets."

I tried to tilt my head in the direction of the front of the house, but it hurt too much and the nausea kicked in double-time.

"Out on the street, Cody."

Cody shook his head. "No, no. We took a walk while you slept this off. There's no one out there."

"You sure?"

A wisp of doubt flickered in his eyes, then vanished. "He'd have come cras.h.i.+ng through here by now, I think."

"When he does, Cody, what are you going to do?"

Cody pulled a .38 from his waistband, waved it in my face. "Shoot him, of course."

"Sure," I said, "make him mad."

Cody chuckled, then shoved the gun barrel up against my left nostril. "Ever since you humiliated me, Pat, I've dreamed of something like this. Gives me a hard-on, to tell you the truth. What do you think of that?"

"I think your erogenous zones need rewiring."

He pulled back on the hammer with his thumb, dug harder into my nostril.

"So, you going to kill me now, Cody?"

He shrugged. "I gotta be honest, I thought I'd killed you up in the bathroom. I've never knocked someone out before. I've never even tried."

"Beginner's luck, then. Kudos."

He smiled, slapped my face again. I blinked, and when I opened my eyes, both Codys had returned, the transparent one just to the right of the real one.

"Mr. Falk," Leonard said.

"Hmm?" He peered at something on the side of my head.

"This is bad news. Either call the police, or we take him someplace and do him."

Cody nodded, then leaned in to take a closer look at the side of my head. "You're bleeding pretty bad."

"From the temple?"

He shook his head. "More the ear."

I noticed a distant, high-pitched hum in there for the first time. "Inner or outer?"

"Both."

"Well, you did take a few good swings."

He seemed pleased. "Thanks. I wanted to make sure I did it right."

He took the gun barrel out of my nostril and sat back on the floor in front of me, kept the .38 pointed at the center of my face.

As I watched, the idea grew in his brain, and an icy realization billowed in his eyes and sucked the heat out of the room.

I knew what he was going to say before he said it.

"What if we really did kill him?" Cody asked Leonard.

Leonard's eyes widened and he put the towel filled with ice down on the counter in front of him.

"Well..."

"You'd expect a bonus, of course," Cody said.

"Mr. Falk, sure, yeah, but we'd need to really think this through."

"How so?" Cody winked at me from the other side of the gun hammer. "We have his wallet and keys. That's his Porsche parked in front of the Lowensteins'. We pull the car into the garage, dump him in the trunk, and then drive him somewhere." He leaned forward, grazed the gun barrel across my lips. "And shoot-no, stab him to death."

Leonard's wide eyes met my own.

"You know, Leonard," I said, "you 'do' me. Just like in the movies."

Cody reached out and slapped me again. It was starting to get annoying.

"Killing someone," Leonard managed, "is not something you just decide to do, Mr. Falk."

"Why's that?"

"It, ahm...well-"