Page 23 of A Long Con

It was an aggressive move to make, so I removed my 40 cal Glock from my waistband and confronted Pothole in a basic Weaver position, my right foot back a tad.

Even that didn’t stop him. He was going about thirty when I shot him in the shoulder, and yes, I meant to do that. I know many people say you should only shoot to kill. But if I killed Pothole, how would we get our intel from him?

He was down for the count, and Berkeley even had to high jump to avoid the horizontal spinning bike. Pothole would have a nice case of road rash as he slid in the wake of his bike. I holstered my piece and walked over. Kokami, he really should wear a helmet. His cheek was ground straight to bone.

But I had no mercy.

“Where’d the painting go, asshole?” roared the Samoan Slammer. I had become him again, and it wasn’t an unpleasant feeling.

Pothole wasn’t responding. He was alive, though, because he panted and spat blood onto the asphalt. Making a split-second choice, I lifted him with one arm around his knees, one around the small of his back. The higher I lifted him, the more backbreaking this move would be, so I got down on one knee and absolutely pounded his lower back against my thigh.

“Agh!” he cried in a strangled voice.

So he was still cognizant. Standing, I loomed over him and repeated my query. “Where’d the painting go, you backstabbing motherfucker?”

Pothole covered his face with his good arm. “What painting, man? I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

I shared a look with Berkeley, glad when he nodded. But I was going to slam this traitor regardless of what he told me to do.

Lifting Pothole with only my hand around his neck, I choke-slammed him to the asphalt, not once, but twice. “The painting!” I yelled. “The one you stole from Berkeley’s dining room table!”

Mouthfuls of blood spurted down his tattered cheekbone, but he still spat, “I don’t know a painting.”

This time when I looked to Berkeley, he rolled his eyes.

“Eat a hundred calorie pack of dicks!” I roared.

I gripped my hands together behind Pothole’s knees. I lifted his entire torso off the ground until he “stood” on his neck, and I flipped him onto his face. When I squatted down on him, he could only grab at the roadway, thus why this move was called the Boston Crab. The more I bounced, the closer I got to breaking his back.

Now Berkeley stepped up. “That was my painting, you shitdongle! Who’d you fucking sell it to?”

“Look in his pockets,” I suggested. “At least we can take his fucking ill-gotten money.”

“My money, my money,” Pothole kept muttering into the pavement.

Berkeley snarled, “No, our fucking money, you assmuncher. It was our painting, ergo our money.” To rifle through Pothole’s pockets, Berkeley had to kneel. He brandished an official piece of paper before folding it into his jacket pocket, and continued searching. “Who’s the buyer, you condom breath? This Rodriguez Jimenez asshole?”

To punctuate this question, I bounced Pothole a few times on his face. Since we were not faking it for TV cameras and we were on asphalt, I was actually scraping meat from his skull, and some coins went rolling from his pockets.

“Who, asshole, who?” I roared, smashing him like a pogo stick. “This Jimenez asswipe?”

“No!” cried Pothole.

Berkeley said, “’Cause if it is, I’m just gonna storm into this house and demand the fucking painting back. Nothing else,” he told me. He stood and kicked Pothole in the ribs with his high-top sneakers, then sprinted to Pothole’s downed Dyna.

“No, no!” I cried. “Not the Dyna!” Was I playing good cop, bad cop? Or did I sincerely not wish to see a Dyna trashed?

Either way, it got to Pothole. I loosened my grip on his ankles as he raised his torso in time to see Berkeley, like a kid having a tantrum, jump up and down on the Dyna’s rear wheel.

The thrill of role-playing overcame me, and I rushed to Berkeley’s side. “No, stop it! He said it wasn’t this Jimenez fucker!”

“Then who is it?” screeched Berkeley, jumping harder and doing some actual damage to the wheel. “If not Jimenez, then who?”

“Stop, stop!” cried Pothole hoarsely. “Jimenez doesn’t even live here! It’s just the name of this ranch. I gave the painting to a guy name of Dennis O’Bell. He went straight to the airport to fly to Mexico.”

Both Berkeley and I froze. “Aha!” Berkeley cried, pointing at the bloody kid. “Dennis O’Bell! And where in Mexico did he fly?”

“Hermosillo! And that’s all I know! He said before he delivers the painting, he’s going to some hunting club in a place named after one of those ’70s Show guys. I can’t remember it!”