Dog Eat Dog Read Free Page B

Diesel until Troy resurrected.
    His headache was awful, and he could suddenly smell the stink of his own body. Booze and cocaine smelled terrible when you sweat them out. Cocaine was the worst drug. Terrible shit. He hated it. Yet he also craved another fix to postpone the hours of hell fast approaching. What he really needed was a fix of heroin. That was the perfect remedy for the gray scream of depression in his brain. The crash was starting. If he could only sleep through it …
    Then he remembered the Valiums. The big ones. Blues. The vial might have eight tablets left. That many would poleax him to sleep. He wouldn’t care about the night sweats and the terrible dreams. He went to the dresser and opened the drawer. Among ballpoint pens, empty butane cigarette lighters, Pepto-Bismol tablets, and other effluvia, he found the little brown vial. He pried off the cap and dumped the contents into his palm. Six! Six! The bitch had been in the bottle.
    Anger worsened the headache. He swallowed the six blue tablets with the help of a cold cup of coffee. He threw the empty vial into the wastebasket and started to lie down.
    That was when the door opened and the overhead light went on with one hundred watts of brightness. Sheila stood there, her eyes going saucer-wide at the sight of him. She let out a little cry of surprise and her fist went to her mouth.
    “What are you doing here?” she asked.
    “What the fuck does it look like? Get outta here and leave me alone.” He looked at her and hated her moon face with the blemished skin. How could he have ever thought her pretty? It must have been because he was fresh from prison and a female crocodile would have looked good. “I told you never to come in here without knocking.”
    “I didn’t know you were home,” she said. “Your car’s not downstairs and you didn’t come down to say hello. Where is your car?”
    “It’s at the gas station getting fixed.”
    “Don’t talk to me with that tone of voice. I don’t like it.”
    “She doesn’t like it,” he mimicked with scorn. “Ain’t that a bitch.” He leaned forward, looming over her. “I don’t give a rat’s ass what you like or don’t like—bitch!” The pounding blood in his brain made him dizzy. He might have backhanded her except for the child’s voice calling out, “Mommy! Mommy!” The sound of the girl’s footsteps preceded her appearance in the doorway. She went to her mother. When they both faced him they looked alike.
    “Let’s go downstairs, honey,” Sheila said, arm around the girl’s shoulder as she turned her and walked her out the door.
    “Can I watch Star Trek ? It just started.”
    “Sure. If you go to bed right afterward. Go on.” She sent the child out and turned back to Mad Dog McCain. She had gotten herself under control. “You’ve got to leave. I don’t want you here anymore.”
    “Great. As soon as I get my wheels out of the gas station, I’m gone.”
    “Don’t even think about charging it on my card. In fact, gimme the card back.” She extended her hand and snapped her fingers.
    “Hey, if you want me to go … I gotta get the car out first.”
    “No. Give it here.”
    He saw she was unafraid. Why? Because she knew too much about the robbery of the merchant ship’s payroll. She’d worked in the offices of a shipping company, and told him that merchant seaman were still paid in cash at the end of a voyage. She’d told him what ship, when and where. He and Diesel Carson had ripped off eighty-four grand. Sheila knew everything, and even though she was a conspirator, the authorities would certainly drop charges if she testified against Diesel Carson and Mad Dog McCain, a pair of lifelong criminals. Yeah, the bitch thought she had him by the balls. Why the fuck had he trusted her?
    He took the Chevron card from his wallet and threw it at her. It fell on the floor. “Bastard,” she said, picking it up and going out, slamming the door as she did so.
    He blinked at the