Wild Thing: A Novel by Josh Bazell Read Free Book Online Page A

out of my restaurant.
Get
.”
    “Can I just—”
    She picks up my plate and smashes it to bits on the table. “GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY RESTAURANT!”
    By the time the burger parts hit the floor I’ve got Violet out of her own seat and am scanning it in case she’s left a purse. She hasn’t. Violet Hurst, alone among women wearing cargo pants, actually uses the pockets.
    At the door I turn back for one more try. “Can—”
    “You want a monster? Go find Reggie Trager!” Debbie yells, winging the other plate at my head.
    I get the door shut just as the plate bursts against the plywood.

    “Jesus
fuck
,” Violet says as we back toward our rental. The car’s a chunky station wagon from a division of GM that I thought went out of business five years ago. “What the fuck was that about?”
    “Lady doesn’t like scientists,” I say.
    “No shit. It’s too bad: the French toast looked good.”
    “It was frozen.”
    “Really? That bitch! How do you know?”
    “I saw her take it out of the freezer.”
    Violet stops with her hand on the handle of the passenger door. “Were you going to tell me that?”
    “I thought you would enjoy it more if I didn’t.”
    “That’s some kind of joke, right?”
    Luckily, just then there’s a noise from behind the restaurant like someone knocking a bunch of garbage cans over while they or someone else shouts in pain.
    I slide the keys to Violet over the roof. “Start the car and stay here.”
    “Fuck
that
.”
    “Do it. If I’m not back in three minutes, call the cops.”

    Out back there are a dozen or so teenage boys stomping the shit out of what looks like another teenage boy, though it’s hard to tell because they’re packed around him pretty tightly and his face has blood all over it. Not a lot of technique happening, but the enthusiasm’s good.
    I ignore the attackers and let the blood pull me through to where I’m kneeling over the kid on the ground and shielding him. He’s unconscious but breathing. Laceration over one eye you can see bone through. A bunch of less serious cuts on his face and scalp. His skin is strangely cool.
    His eyelids start to flutter. “Don’t move,” I say.
    He scrambles onto his back. Touches his face and sees the blood on his hand. “Aw, shit!”
    So much for a C-spine check. While he’s distracted, I pick agory canine tooth off the asphalt and put it in my jacket pocket. “Stop moving. Tell me if this hurts.”
    “It hurts!”
    “Wait till I start.”
    “Hey!” someone shouts. “Mister!”
    I look up. Despite my ignoring them, the other teenage boys don’t seem to have vanished.
    They’re a weird range of ages. Thirteen and childlike to about seventeen and shaggy. Different species from each other, practically, though they all have on the same outfit: oversize coat and baggy jeans, both so covered in brand names they look like downtown Los Angeles in
Blade Runner
. At least these kids seem healthier than the born-to-be-wired lardtards I usually see dodging their grandparents on the cruise ship. Like they spend a lot of time outdoors, even if it’s just to kick someone’s ass.
    On the other hand, a lot of them are now pointing guns at me.
    Mostly shotguns and hunting rifles, but—particularly among the older kids—some expensive-looking handguns as well. The kid who seems oldest, in the center, has a Colt Commander that’s as shiny as a disco ball.
    “Yeah, you,” this kid says. “Mister
Dumbass
.”
    I have no idea what to do.
    Nonviolent crowd control is the hardest part of the martial arts. You can’t spend your nights just heart-punching the heavy bag in the officers’ gym and expect to stay good at it. You have to practice your joint locks and your leg sweeps and so on—something I can’t really say I’ve been doing, at least not to the level where I feel confident I can defuse ten close-together firearms without someone getting hurt.
    And it
is
kind of important to me that no one get hurt here.Does not