A Hard Ticket Home by David Housewright

Bobby’s file, Merci Cole’s apartment was on the fourth floor. I never reached it. When I was midway between the third and fourth floors, a well-muscled black man wearing only blue jeans burst from his apartment, an aluminum Lady Thumper softball bat in his hands. He swung at my head and I jumped backward down the stairs, the barrel of the bat missing my chin by inches and smashing a hole into the thin plaster wall. I grabbed for the railing as he swung again. I lost my grip and fell, tumbling down to the third floor landing as his bat bounced off the wall where my head would have been if I had kept my balance.

     
    He followed close behind. I hit the landing with my shoulder, rolled, jumped to my feet. He pulled the bat back. I did a little hop and stomped his knee with the flat of my shoe. He cried out, an animal in pain, and dropped the bat. It rolled down the stairs, going thump, thump, thump as it fell to the next landing. He grabbed his knee. I hit him in the face. He threw a long, complicated, and entirely filthy curse at me. I hit him again. As I hit him I thought, This is what Kirsten must have meant by associating with “wrong people.”
    “No more, no more,” he moaned, doing a fair impersonation of Roberto Duran. Apparently, he didn’t like pain any more than I did.
    “Why did you come after me?” I was snorting, my breath coming hard and fast.
    “Are you a cop? You look like cop. You a cop you gotta tell me, that’s the rules.”
    “You swung on me because you thought I was a cop? What are you, a moron? The police would’ve blown your brains out you swing on them like that.”
    “No, no, man. They got new rules. They can’t just shoot people, no more. They gotta bring in counselors and shit. I read ’bout it.”
    “Hey, pal. Don’t believe everything you read. It’s healthier that way.”
    “You’re not a cop? You look like a cop.”
    “Have it your own way. Where’s Merci Cole?”
    “Hey man, you not a cop? Fuck you, then.”
    “Wrong answer.” I raised my fist menacingly, giving him a good look at it. Normally, I abhor violence, except I had a hard time getting past the fact the sonuvabitch tried to bludgeon me with a woman’s softball bat.
    He brought his shoulder up to protect his face.
    “She’s gone, man.”
    “Gone where?”

    “I don’t know.”
    “What do you know?”
    “She got outta Shakopee a month ago, longer.”
    “Okay.”
    “Right after, she and another bitch come by lookin’ for some clothes and stuff she stashed here before she got busted. Then they took off.”
    “She didn’t say where she was goin’?”
    “She didn’t say nothin’ except scream ’cuz most of her shit was gone. What the bitch expect, man?”
    “Does she have any friends here?”
    “Nobody’s got any friends here.”
    “Where did she hang out before she went inside?”
    “Cheney’s. When she wasn’t workin’ she was there. Cheney’s, you know, like the vice president.”
    I was amazed he even knew who the vice president was.
    “Tell me about the other woman. What did she look like?”
    “A good lookin’ piece. Nice ass, tits out to—”
    I hit him again.
    “What the fuck, man?”
    “I don’t need an anatomy lesson.”
    “What you want me to tell ya?”
    “What did she look like?”
    “White girl, looked like Cole.”
    “Hair?”
    “Real blond, almost white.”
    “Eyes?”
    “Didn’t see ’em. She was wearin’ shades.”
    “Height?”
    “Same as Cole, man. Look, Cole stashed her stuff in the trunk and they split, that’s all I know.”
    “Tell me about the car.”

    “It was a Beamer, man. Fuckin’ white BMW convertible. Wait, now I remember. James Bond.”
    “What?”
    “Merci called her James, the other one. Called her James and I was thinking what the fuck kinda name is that for a woman. James. Then I see the license plate. It had a JB on it.”
    “JB what?”
    “Just JB, man. You know, one of those vanity plates.”
    “Thank you, you’ve been