Plugged - Eoin Colfer [62]
Deacon’s face says what the fuck?
‘My plan was fine, until the last bit about you breaking out and going Rambo.’
Deacon doesn’t say anything for a moment, and I’m pretty sure she’s thinking about shooting me in a vein.
‘You’re a good cop, Ronelle. I know it. This is your chance to be a good cop again. It might cost you a few brain cells, but you can offer that up to Jesus. That’s what we do in Ireland.’
Deacon mulls it over, then hands me my jacket and nods at the freezer door.
‘You’re right. I gotta go back in, fuck it.’
It really is the only way. If the blues find Deacon strapped to a gurney in a locked freezer, then she is totally clear. She can even claim memory loss.
‘It’s just for a few seconds; they’re right here, and I turned the temperature up.’
Ronelle lets me hoist her back inside. ‘Well turn it back down, dipshit. I hope it’s not Krieger and Fortz. Those two couldn’t find their dicks with a dick-o-scope.’
Dick-o-scope. Nice.
I lay Deacon on the trolley, hoping her frozen marrow doesn’t snap, and strap her down just tight enough.
Before I can secure her right arm, she reaches up and catches my jaw with one shivering hand.
‘I’m cold, Daniel,’ she says.
‘It’s just for a minute.’
She pulls me down for an icy kiss. I feel our lips stick together.
‘Thanks for coming back. I won’t forget it. Next time I catch you for murder one, I might break it down to manslaughter.’
‘Appreciate it.’ It takes a lot for someone like Deacon to say thank you; I expected the barb on the end as soon as she started the sentence.
‘You better get out of here before I start warming up.’
Cute.
I am out of there.
CHAPTER 11
I worked for Zeb off and on for a few years, mostly around Manhattan, and I saw gallons of Botox injected into acres of skin. The money was irregular but good, and I have to admit that the perks were exciting; only problem was, the ladies that Zeb had ministered to were not supposed to do a lot of jiggling for twenty-four hours, so things could be a little muted.
We got on okay at first. When I say okay, I mean I never had to ask more than five times for my money, and he never tried to hold back more than forty per cent. On one occasion I was forced to shake him by the collar, but that was as rough as it got. Nobody tried to rip him off either for the first year, which really pissed Zeb off; in his twisted mind, nobody ripping him off was tantamount to me ripping him off, as he was paying me for nothing. I tried explaining that I was a bit like a nuclear deterrent, but Zeb refused to see the sense in this, as it didn’t align with how he was thinking. It got so that he started to pick fights with people, daring them to screw with him, or rather with me. Mostly these people were confused housewives who had never heard verbal abuse before that wasn’t filtered through the TV, but every once in a while the household had its own security and I took a couple of unnecessary punches because Zeb felt the need to big himself up. It got so he took to strutting down Eighth Avenue like Tony Minero, tossing insults left and right. He barely noticed me, just took my presence for granted. One night I just stopped at the crosswalk and let him go ahead with his motherfucker this and get out of my way asshole that, until some college kid pounded him a good one in the side of the face. The kind of punch that makes everyone who sees it go damn.
We parted company soon after and I upped sticks for Cloisters, but after six months Zeb tracked me down and set up Kronski’s Kures in the mini-mall. For almost a year he claimed the relocation was on account of me being his only friend. But one night in O’Leary’s, he got so drunk that he forgot who I was and confided in who he thought I was, saying how some pusher’s girlfriend in Queen’s had a permanent droop on one side of her face on account of the cheap botulism he pumped into her forehead and he was hiding out here in the Styx with the big Mick until things cooled down. But then he started making good green