Son of a bitch.
He flicked a few fifty dollar chips to the dealer as a tip, and walked out the door with fifty-eight thousand and change. Plus the title and keys to Chilikers’ 2007 Volvo, which bit his ass, but whatever. More than usual. He usually averaged ten thou a night, and that was playing more carefully and consciously than he had tonight.
He limped out into the predawn chill. Chilikers was there, staring morosely at his Volvo, smoking a cigarette. The final blow for his infected lungs, no doubt. Kev crossed the street toward him. “Hey.”
Chilikers did not turn. “Two fuckin’ outs,” he said, teeth clenched.
“More like seven. Eight, with Steven’s quad Queen draw,” Kev replied quietly. “You were the 4:1 favorite. I just got lucky.”
Chilikers muttered something obscene under his breath. “Asshole,” he growled. “You didn’t even have the fucking odds to call.”
“No. I didn’t.” Kev gazed at him for a long moment. He fished the title and keys out of his pocket, and held them out.
Chilikers stared. “You won that,” he said slowly. “It’s yours.”
“You paid,” Kev replied. “But I don’t need it. Got no place to park it. Don’t want to insure it, or deal with selling it. Take it back. Please.”
Chilikers looked tempted, but then his mouth hardened. He flung his cigarette down, stomped it. “What, feeling sorry for me, now? I don’t need any fucking favors, freak. You won it. You keep it.”
Kev held his breath, teeth clenched. Whew. Before Twin Tail Falls, that interchange wouldn’t have registered on his radar screen. Walk away. He already had a lawsuit in course for assault and battery.
He walked away, careful not to limp. So he was driving home, with Chiliker’s unwanted fucking car. He refused to let himself feel grateful. His leg was better, but it would have taken forty painful minutes to stagger home on foot with a headache like this.
He peered up at the sky as he got into his new car. It smelled like Chilikers, he noted. Not good. But he’d unload the car soon. It was later than usual, and when the sun rose, it would drive long, cruel nails of light into his throbbing brain tissue. But with the wheels, he could afford to make a detour before he holed up in his dark lair.
He parked by the battered brick front building on NE Stark. A sign by the door read “ANY PORT IN A STORM.” It was a shelter for runaway teens. It provided twenty-four-hour-a-day crisis intervention, emergency shelter, individual and family counseling, transitional living programs for homeless youths, street outreach, emergency housing, help for kids who were addicted to drugs. He’d done some cyber snooping, and he liked the place. He pulled the wad of cash out, shoved it into the brown envelope he’d shoved into his coat pocket for that purpose, scribbled the name of the director, and sealed it up. He’d give them the car, too, if it would fit through the slot, but he wasn’t up for anything that would require human interaction. His head hurt, his jaw hurt. He worked the envelope through the letter slot, waited for the thud. Saved him the bother of writing out a bank deposit slip.
He’d had some incidents, on these morning walks. He’d once brought a young prostitute to the door of Any Port, after saving her from being beaten up by her john. The john he left where he lay, moaning in the gutter. Fuck him. Punching a teenage girl in the face. Kev tried to be tolerant, but there were limits. Another time, he’d been ambushed by a couple thugs near this very shelter, but he’d flattened them with no trouble. All in all, though, his morning walks were mostly uneventful.
But Christ, his thigh hurt. And his ribs. His arm. Everything.
His reflection in the glass window in the door caught his eye. So thin, haggard, cheekbones jutting, cheeks hollowed. He stared at himself, seeking recognition in the face he saw. But it eluded him.
All he had now was what he’d made of himself since Tony found the bashed up wreck of his body eighteen years ago. That ought to be enough, but it wasn’t anymore. Not since the waterfall. Memories were stirring, and his hunger to know more itched and burned, prodding him along with nasty, anxious urgency. Almost as if something terrible might happen if he did not succeed in remembering.
He parked by the unlovely brick warehouse building on NW Lenox that housed his loft apartment, an alley in the less swank, not-quite-gentrified-yet northern outskirts of the Pearl District. His hand shook with gratitude as he stuck the key into the lock…until he smelled Bruno’s aftershave. Shit. He himself had taught Bruno to pick locks, back when Bruno was a delinquent teenager. Now, Bruno was a delinquent thirty-year-old, with skills more suitable for a career criminal. His own fault. He shouldn’t have taught the kid to pick locks.
Bruno lay in wait, lounging on a stool and drinking coffee like he owned the place. The smell of frying bacon assaulted Kev’s olfactory nerve like a wrecking ball when he stepped in the door. So did the perfumed cream that fop had smeared over himself after he’d shaved. The stink was enough to knock a brain damaged guy right on his ass.
Kev switched off the overhead, and pressed a switch that brought the shades over the high skylights. “What are you doing here?”
“Came to see you eat breakfast,” Bruno said.
Kev slowly took off the sunglasses. “Breakfast,” he echoed, in hollow tones. “Uh-uh.” He sank into a chair, rubbing the thigh that had gotten snapped in two places in the waterfall plunge.
“Played cards tonight?” Bruno asked.
His brother’s tone put him on the defensive. “And? So?”
“Win anything?”
“Some,” Kev admitted, reluctantly.
“How much?”
Kev rubbed his eyes. “Don’t remember,” he said. “Dumped it on the way home. I don’t need it. That’s not why I play. You know that.”
“Yeah, I know that. Mr. Pure doesn’t need money. He floats above the grotty obsessions of us normal folk. That’s exactly the elitist, improvident thinking that’s always driven me nuts about you.”
Kev rubbed his aching head, feeling the thick ropy scars on his scalp. “I told you. It’s not about the money. I do it for—”
“Yeah, you explained. I get it, insofar as a mere mortal could. You only cop a buzz when your brain is maxed to the limit counting cards. I’m not sure yet if that’s technically cheating or not, but it definitely classifies you as a fucking weirdo. Not that this is any surprise to me.”
Kev snorted. “Quit it with the ‘mere mortals’ bullshit, Bruno. I’m brain damaged, OK? I do the best I can with what I’ve got to work with.”
“That’s negative thinking, dude,” Bruno said in a lecturing tone. “If you want to get your life back on track, you’ve got to—”
“I am trying!” The force of the words drove a hot nail of pain through his head. He held his fragile eggshell skull together with his hands until he dared to breathe again. “Or trying to get a life, period,” he amended. “I’ve never been on anything resembling a track.”
“What’s wrong with your life?” Bruno demanded. “It was fine! So get back to it! You haven’t worked since the waterfall, and you’ve been
