He shrugged. “Sure, talk.”
“Well, I think maybe you got a little upset earlier, when you heard what she does.”
“I was a little surprised, maybe. Yeah, I guess I was surprised.”
“I can get that. Here’s the thing though. You don’t tell anyone about her,” the man shrugged as he spoke. “She’s a private girl.”
“I wasn’t planning on telling anyone, Tom. It’s not their business and it’s not my business.”
“Good boy.”
“Are we done? I have school in a few hours.”
“Almost. I just need to make sure we really understand each other, okay?”
Before Ben could respond, Tom landed a fist in his solar plexus and knocked the wind from his body. Ben had never been a fighter. He didn’t have any plans on becoming one, either. He dropped to his knees and tried to suck in a breath, but it didn’t happen.
Tom helped him along with a knee across his cheek. Ben was already seeing constellations when his head rebounded off the door. That was pretty much all she wrote on the subject. Ben fell flat against the ground, the ringing in his head enough to make him wonder if he’d been permanently damaged.
The ugly blond giant with the acne scars leaned down and appraised his condition. Apparently he wasn’t quite satisfied with his handiwork, because he kicked Ben in the ribs, and then in the stomach, the crotch, and the upper thigh.
“I’m glad we had this chance to talk, Ben. I feel much better about the situation than I did before.” He crouched over Ben and looked down at him with malignant eyes. “Remember, it’s our little secret. But you know what? Just to show there are no hard feelings, I can give you a night with Maggie for half-price. Would you like that?”
The nausea rolled through his stomach and mingled with the agony in his testicles.
“You give it some thought. Trust me, she’s an amazing fuck.”
Ben closed his eyes, wishing he could come up with a properly obnoxious retort, and settling instead for not puking out his spleen. His eyes stayed closed until Maggie woke him up.
“Shit, Ben.” She was looking down at him, her eyes worriedly checking the damage to his face and head. “What happened to you?”
“Tom came by. We talked.”
“That prick. He’s a fucking animal.” She took his arm and helped him sit up. The axis of the universe didn’t completely fall away, but it sure felt to Ben like it wanted to. He coughed several times and leaned his head back against the door, hoping he wouldn’t make himself look like more of a loser and hurl. “Come on, let’s get you inside.” She offered her hands and he took them. Maggie pulled and he leaned into it, letting her give him the much-needed boost.
A few minutes later she was helping him to his bedroom again. “We gotta stop meeting like this.” He broke a smile and looked at her face, her perfect face, now marred by her anger. “People are gonna talk.”
“Shut up,” she was smiling as she said it. “I’m trying to stay pissed off.”
“Okay. Shutting up now.” He sat down hard on the bed and felt the room spin a bit.
“You don’t look good. I’m gonna call you an ambulance.”
“No. Don’t do that. They’ll have to tell the cops.”
“So?”
“You don’t need the grief if I talk to the cops.” He lay back on his bed and clutched at the sides of the mattress to make the spinning go away. “I just need to rest.”
“Why would there be trouble for me if you talked to the police?”
She wasn’t getting it. He wasn’t really in the mood to discuss it with her. So he closed his eyes, and a few moments later he was asleep again.
III
Some plans don’t work out the way you want them to, no matter how good they look on paper. Brian Freemont knew that going into his excursion to the campus, but he’d tried anyway and met with resounding failure.
He hadn’t figured that at a potted ivy university like Winslow Harper he would have trouble finding just one of the girls he’d had celebrations with before. He was mistaken. If any of his previous conquests were there, they were doing a great job of not being seen. The closest he came to finding a familiar face was the girl from the church the morning before, and while he wanted to get to know her better, he also didn’t think he could intimidate that one. Maybe if he was in uniform, but not in his street clothes. And there was something weird about her: every time he saw her, there were crows all over the place.
So after spending most of the day on the campus and looking at what he could not touch, he’d decided to call it a day and head off for a couple of beers. Half a keg or so later at the Rusty Scupper, he ran across Boyd and Holdstedter, the detectives on his wife’s case, as they were coming into the restaurant with the homicide detectives, Bob Longwood—the walking mountain—and Nancy Whalen, who was still on Brian’s list of most fuckable cops.
He smiled at them as he was heading for the door.
As an afterthought he looked at Boyd and said, “Heard you had another disappearance.”
