No Such Thing as a Free Ride

No Such Thing as a Free Ride by Shelly Fredman Page A

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Authors: Shelly Fredman
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Star, it made an already intolerable situation for this kid that much worse. I wanted to tell Bobby, but my hands were tied. According to Crystal anyone responsible for getting the cops involved in street business was an automatic target for retribution of the worst kind.
    I needed someone who understood the code of the streets, someone who could offer real help, without jeopardizing Crystal’s street cred in the process. Someone who felt the need to flee the continent after I professed my undying love for him, but was still the only person in the world I’d trust with Crystal’s life as well as my own.
    Swallowing a huge gulp of pride I took out my cell phone and punched in his number. “Nick, it’s Brandy. I need your help.”

Chapter Four
     
    Nick’s Mercedes truck has been parked directly outside my house since Alphonso brought it to me three months ago. I move it once a week for street cleaning and sit in it every night, because it smells like Nick and, yes, I’m
that
pathetic. I don’t drive it because I feel like he loaned it to me as a consolation prize for not loving me.
    Crystal and I sat in it now, on our way to Nick’s studio. We’d made a pit stop at my house so I could feed the dog and grab the truck. Turns out, Adrian had already eaten. I found the chewed up remains of a bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos strewn about the kitchen floor. Adrian sat nearby wagging his overgrown tail, his snout sprinkled with red dye number six.
Great. There goes my dinner
.
    I left Crystal in the living room playing with the dog while I ran upstairs to change. Not that I was trying to impress Nick or anything. I just figured with my ankle still being swollen and all, I’d be more comfortable in sandals and,
technically
, strappy stiletto heels qualify as sandals.
    I paused on my way back downstairs, peering over the railing at Crystal and Adrian. The dog was licking her face and she was laughing. It was pure and sweet and very childlike. I fake sneezed to let her know I was coming and the mask went up again.
    She glanced over at me as I descended the stairs. “How come you’re wearing hooker shoes? You like this guy or something?”
    I turned around, walked back upstairs and changed back into my All Stars.
    *****
     
    Nick’s martial arts studio is a two-story, red, brick building located in a section of the city the verbally indelicate would refer to as “the slums.” The accuracy of the label is inarguable, and yet there is a Zen-like quality to the little patch of land the studio sits on that can only be attributed to the man who owns it.
    I’d been here on several occasions and had gotten to know some of the locals. I waved hello to Lonnie Juarez as he stepped out of the bail bonds place next door.
    “Yo, Brown Eyes. Whaddup?” Lonnie grinned, showing a lot of gold teeth, one of which had a diamond glued to the center of it. Franny’s husband, Eddie, is a jeweler and he could tell if it was merely cubic zirconium, but my eye isn’t that discerning.
    Lonnie runs a lucrative extortion business, but, according to Nick, most of his profits get eaten up by a rather hefty addiction to black tar heroin. Nick says Lonnie’s harmless and maybe to a fifth degree black belt that holds true, but personally, the guy gives me the creeps, and I could tell Crystal wasn’t lovin’ him either. She slipped her hand into her back pocket and extracted a butterfly knife, palming it discreetly against her leg.
    Lonnie hocked a good sized lugie and winked at Crystal.
    “Okay,
then, Lonnie, good to see ya,” I said, steering Crystal toward the studio.
    As I reached for the door bell my stomach began to tighten. That unfortunate encounter in the Betsy Ross wig not withstanding, I hadn’t been face to face with Nick since the morning I’d poured my heart out to him and he’d handed it back to me with a polite “thanks, but no thanks.”
    Then I got to thinking.
Maybe I’d read the situation all wrong. Maybe he’d been up all

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