Cold Was The Ground by B A Black

Author:B A Black [Black, B A]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-05-28T05:00:00+00:00

When Sal makes it back with his struggling captive, Houston finds himself sitting in the hall with no clear memory of getting there. The floor is steady and reassuring and the corner at his back lends him a sense of safety.

“I didn’t do it,” a man is yelling, voice high and tight with panic. “You have to let me go, I didn’t do it!”

Sal marches him in anyway, looking toussled from the chase. He’s lost his scarf somewhere. “Jeez, Mars, did you only get this far and give up?”

“Don’t go into there,” Houston warns, when Sal starts to head for the sitting room. “Take him into the kitchen.”

Something in Houston’s tone causes Sal to pause.

“What is it?”

“I’ll tell you in the kitchen,” Houston promises. “We should all be sitting down.”

Sal pushes his struggling captive to the end of the hall and into the kitchen. Houston gathers himself with a few deep breaths, then gets his feet under himself.

He knows what’s waiting in the other room this time. He passes with his eyes forward.

In the kitchen, Sal’s captive is slumped in a chair at the small round table, hunched in on himself and miserable. He’s a kid, 18 or 19 perhaps, with curly, unkempt hair and the early and fuzzy stages of a moustache on his upper lip. There’s no sign of blood on him.

His clothes—now somewhat worse for what Houston assumes was the scuffle outside—are nice. He has a highbrow, highly born look to him, though the anger and fear turn these features almost rabbitish.

“What are you doing here, kid?” Houston asks, keeping his tone firm.

“Tell your goon I didn’t do it, and I didn’t see anything.”

“My goon?” Houston asks, trading looks with Sal.

“Guido, over there,” the kid says, jerking his chin at Sal. “That’s what you are, aren’t you? Mafia guys coming to make sure the job is done?”

Sal gives him a bland expression of displeasure. “You accuse all Italians of being in the mob?”

“Only the ones that tackle me,” the kid says, giving Sal a poisonous look.

“Well, kid, you ain’t got a career in football ahead of you,” Sal says, rolling his eyes.

“What are you doing here?” Houston asks again, drawing the kid’s frightened gaze away from his partner.

“I didn’t do it.”

“What are you, a broken record?” Sal says, leaning in to loom over the kid in a threat that Houston knows is a bluff. “That’s not the question my partner asked you.”

The kid squirms in his chair and gives Houston a reluctant, squeamish look. He wonders how many blue-blood fathers would be ashamed of what their sons get up to on weekends.

“Kid, we’re not trying to pin this on you,” Houston assures him. “But being uncooperative doesn’t do much to reassure us that you have a reason to be here. Were you robbing the place?”

“No!” the kid protests. “God, no. I didn’t do anything wrong. Well…”

He doesn’t finish right away, looking down at his hands gripped on the side of the wooden chair.

“I came for the party,” the kid admits.

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