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Mike had thoughts of his own that didn’t include tea. Bed,
yes. Not for sleeping, though. Creel was hard on his heels as Mike edged across
the narrow street to examine what Chong inserted in the bricks.
Creel reached out to touch it. Mike knocked his hand down.
“Chill, agent.” Mike kept his tone light in the hopes
Creel would sigh and bemoan the now bruised hand. It didn’t work.
“Why’d ya hit me?” The bruised part was stuck in
Creel’s generous mouth, and his words came out garbled. As the agent usually
had something stuffed in his mouth, food, drink, or coming soon, a fist,
Mike was getting used to translating.
“How do you know it isn’t a booby trap?” Mike glanced
at the tiny black wire and almost wished it were. He had a pleasant thought.
Then Creel could do as he pleased with it.
Creel gaped, but the hand remained in the mouth. Another
pleasant thought. Creel with his elbow sticking out of his mouth, the rest of
the arm jammed down his throat. Mike turned to hide a wishful grin. He studied
the door.
“You say the ho lives here?” Blood raced along Mike’s
veins to sing in his heart and burn through his brain.
“Um . . . yeah. Sweet–“
“Creel.” Mike stilled, his eyes closed. He took a deep
breath and prayed for patience.
God wasn’t done chastising him yet.
“She makes me melt,” Creel said, his voice creaky and
wistful. “Man, you’d cry just to see her.”
Mike clamped a hand over Creel’s mouth, and the wish to jam
the arm down his throat almost became reality. Jaws stretched around his own
fist, Creel gagged and tears ran down the lean cheeks.
Teeth bared, Mike leaned close to the other man’s ear and
hissed. “I said to chill.”
"M-mm.”
“What?”
Mike stopped pushing on the hand. Drool was running from the
mouth. Creel’s bout with pneumonia wasn’t quite over.
He let the man go, and Creel shuddered.
“Boss, the chick is sick.”
“Who?” Mike studied the wire. He opened his watch and
held it near the wire, waiting for some sort of action.
“Sue baby. Word is, her old man, JJ, he kicked a baby out
of her.”
Mike’s head came up. Eyes wide behind the lenses of the
night vision goggles he gaped at Creel.
“What?”
The agent cringed from Mike.
“Boss, keep it down.”
With a shudder, Mike kept his fist from seeking Creel’s
tonsils.
He cast a glance at where his mother oft’ said Heaven was,
with God watching his every move and reporting any boyhood subsequent punishment
directly to her.
“Why?” he asked.
“Uh, well, she ain’t allowed to work if she’s in a
delicate condition. The servant population is dropping too fast.”
“Shut up, Creel. I wasn’t talking to you.”
With a careful attempt to hide it, Creel glanced around, then
edged away from Mike.
“Uh . . . Sure.”
“That SOB.” Mike glared at the wire. “Dirty no account
piece of dog crap. You know, I bet there’s a hundred couples in Myock alone
that would give their right arm to adopt a baby. And this piece of shit–“ He
rammed his fist against the wall and gritted his teeth at the result.
Cradling the hand, Mike stalked back towards Antone’s Place
with a badly frightened Creel trailing not far behind.
“Call a damned car.”
“Yes, boss.”
“And stop calling me boss.”
“Yes, bos–Sir.”
From somewhere, an old Lulu Roman song drifted in the night,
the words plain and illegal enough to get the owner of the recording
lobotomized. Creel touched the lapel phone. Hearing a hiss of static, Mike tore
it from the coat, dropped it, and stepped on it.
“We’re in enemy territory, you ass,” Mike said, one
fist twisting in the front of Creel’s suit. “You do not beard a lion in his
den. Understand?”
Whether he did or not, Creel’s head rapped out a quick nod
and Mike released him.
“But–“
“Shut the hell up.”
Not cringing but not far from it, Creel whispered, “Yes,
bos–Sir.”
Mike spun and shoved himself at the bar. Antone’s Place was
locked tight against worse things than night air. Lights bounced off of
low-hanging clouds to spell out the latest soda or candy bar.
“Creel. Where’s our car?”
“I was calling one but you busted my phone.”
Mike stilled with his head hanging. Guilt caused the skin of
his neck and face to darken, burning him, and the sadness of his mother flooded
into his heart.
Creel was going to die for doing this to him. Again.
Flipping open the watch, he snarled a few words into it and
stood under a sodden sky.
Then, of course, it had to start raining.
Creel snatched off his coat and held it over both
of them. Mike turned blazing eyes on the lanky man and, backing away, Creel
suddenly developed asthma.
©2004 StoriesByEmail.com
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