Shorts - Thriller 2: Stories You Just Can't Put Down by _Collection Read Free Book Online Page B

slid to a stop in the gravel parking lot of the bar. Midafternoon on a Wednesday and there were only a couple of other vehicles present. A smidgen of the drug remained in the bowl. Chrissie and Tom split it, sucking on the pipestem until their lungs hurt. They hopped out of the auto and pushed their way into the neon gloom of Bijoux Watson’s only legitimate business enterprise.
    The place was empty except for an old man in overalls at the bar, drinking a sixteen-ounce can of Schlitz Malt Liquor, and the mulatto bartender, an ex-pimp named Teabag Johnson. The jukebox in the corner played Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing.”
    Tom felt the meth track through his body and thought about how appropriate that song was to the situation at hand and how he sure would like to take Chrissie back into Bijoux’s office and nail her on the desk, right next to the safe, which reportedly held enough dope to get half of Texas strung out.
    Teabag wiped a glass dry and looked at the door behind them as if expecting the owner to arrive.
    Tom and Chrissie sat at the bar. Tom ordered two Miller Lites and two shots of Jose Cuervo Gold.
    “Where’s Bijoux?” The bartender set the drinks down. “Ya’ll give him the shit you supposed to?”
    “He’s been…delayed.” Tom downed the tequila in one gulp. “Said for me to get some stuff from his office.”
    “He told you to get something out a his office?” Teabag frowned and leaned against the bar.
    “Yeah.” Tom took a sip of beer to cool the fire in his mouth. He nodded toward Chrissie. “Ask her. She was there.”
    The bartender looked at Chrissie.
    “I always thought you were pretty cute, Teabag.” She ran her tongue around the rim of the shot glass. “Bet you know how to treat a lady right.”
    Tom spluttered on a mouthful of beer.
    Teabag kept his face impassive.
    “I don’t truck with no whores no more. The preacher says that’s the road to hell.” Teabag reached under the bar. “Y’all is way messed up, been smoking too much crack or sumshit.”
    Tom’s vision blurred with anger; the man called his baby a whore. He reached into the waistband of his slacks and pulled out the Glock.
    Teabag’s hand came out from under the bar with a sawed-off shotgun.
    Tom yanked the trigger and missed, from three feet away.
    Chrissie threw her beer bottle at Teabag and connected, a solid blow to the forehead.
    The bartender raised a hand to his face and pulled the trigger on the shotgun.
    The weapon was pointed about a foot to the right of Tom, away from Chrissie, and only a small portion of the quarter-inch-diameter pellets hit their intended target.
    The noise was enormous, like a thunderclap in a cave, and Tom felt a chunk of lead tear into his left bicep and another hit the fleshy part of his side, just above the hip.
    He jerked the trigger on the Glock as fast as he could. About half the bullets hit Teabag in the chest and head, the remainder colliding with the bottles of liquor on the shelf behind the bar. For one brief, surreal moment the area where Teabag stood was a virtual waterfall of liquid, a mist of blood and booze, eerily illuminated by the neon beer signs on the wall.
    The Glock clicked empty.
    Teabag coughed once and fell to the floor, dead.
    Tom placed his gun on the bar and clamped a hand over the oozing hole in his arm. He felt no pain, only a mild sensation of pressure deep inside the muscle. The old man drinking beer was nowhere to be seen.
    “He shot me, baby.” Tom grabbed a bar rag and wrapped it around his arm.
    “It’ll be all right.” Chrissie helped him tie the makeshift bandage. “We get in the office, I’ll give you dose of medicine, okay?”
    Tom grabbed the gun, stuck it in his waistband and picked up the bottle of Cuervo from the bar. Together they headed to the office in the back.
     
    Two weeks after their first encounter at the motel, Bijoux Watson, resplendent in a pink warm-up suit and enough gold chains to outfit an entire rap band, showed