Chapters (46)
- COVER PAGE
- PRAISE
- DEDICATION
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- SNEAK PEEK: EXIT .45
‘No big deal, though. We’ll hit the road. I know some folks in Philly, might check in with them awhile.’
The woman said, ‘Billy, shit, we only just got here.’
Billy Ellis said, ‘Think of it as a vacation, then. Vacation in New York.’ Then to Vincent: ‘Thanks, by the way.’
‘Yeah, thanks man. That was real helpful.’
She sounded far away, and he wasn’t sure if she was in shock, or on something. She’d told him how the guys in the DeVille had visited her at home and threatened to take a finger off with a cigar cutter if she didn’t come for a ride. Speaking with an almost bored detachment, as if it were someone else’s life, or a banal reiteration of business as usual.
Vincent gave them his number and said to call if they needed to. He never saw them again. Billy Ellis wasn’t at work Tuesday, and hadn’t phoned in.
That night, the site office was broken into and graffitied. Then on Wednesday evening, Vincent got home and found he no longer had a home: it had been destroyed by way of Molotov cocktail at around four that afternoon.
He stood out on the street with his neighbours, watching the firemen hose down the charred timber. Then he passed a very pleasant thirty or forty minutes in a bar on Riverdale Avenue, working through the precise mechanics of getting even. He figured the guy in the headphones would find life fairly difficult with two ruined knees. At six pm, he got a call from Billy Ellis, somewhere on I-95, and Billy said the guys from Monday might be around to visit. In fact, he’d told them where Vincent lived—they’d wiped his debt in exchange for an address. Pretty good deal, right? He had to take it.
Billy said, ‘I, uh. I don’t want to make any more trouble for you, but …’
‘Sure.’
‘But, uh. I guess they’re gonna want to see you.’
Vincent said, ‘I gathered that. I was out when they came by, but they left a message.’
He clicked off, and thought some more about payback. But then he had another beer, and finished off Time’s Arrow. He thought he understood the message about morality being fucked up unless you ran time backward, and he came to the conclusion that escalating things would not be a good idea. And anyway, the whole reason he’d quit was to pursue a non-violent existence. He couldn’t fall short this early.
He called Beauden Ash in California, and said he might come for a visit. Clear his head, take it easy for a while.
THREE
THREE