Free Slide by Jason Starr Ken Bruen Page B

was distracted by the arrival of a white limo. Slide slipped past him, moving towards his car, parked on Nassau Street.
    He threw the guy in the front seat, buckled him in, and burned rubber outa there.
    Outside the city limits, he pulled into a lay by. He wanted to see the famous guitarist up close. But then, pulling the sack off the man’s head, he echoed his favorite words of James Joyce, going “Aw shite...shite and onions.”
    Whoever this guy was, he wasn’t Keith Richards. He was in his fifties, thick lips, with a scar to the right of his mouth, a button nose and blue eyes. The guy had to be fooking Irish.
    The guy came to, seemed completely lost for a while. Then he focused, looked at Slide, and asked, “What the hell is going on?”
    Slide nearly whined, “You’re not Keith Richards?”
    The guy gave a laugh, no humor in it, a sound that seemed to reflect a life where shite happened often and always.
    The guy went, “Don’t you know me?”
    Slide didn’t, said, “I don’t.”
    The guy sighed, as in Give me patience Lord , then said, “I’m a crime writer.”
    “A what?”
    “A crime writer. I’ve won the Macavity for—”
    Slide shut him off, roared, “Ary Christ, shut the fook up or I’ll remove all your fookin’ cavities and your tonsils too! Are you somebody? Anyone give a damn about you?”
    The guy looked crestfallen, stammered, “I-I got starred reviews in Publishers Weekly and Booklist ...well, maybe I caught them on an off day b-but—”
    Slide gave him a slap in the mouth, said, “I don’t want to hear about your bloody career. I want to hear somebody will pay cash, lots of cash to have you back.”
    The guy rubbed his face—poor fuck looked like he’d been beaten and hard, many times—and went, “Maybe my agent....” The bastard paused, reached in his jacket and took out a pack of Major and the Zippo. He lit up and asked, “Got any Jameson?”
    Slide was suddenly thrown into that total rage that sometimes just snuck up on him. He said, “Shut the fuck up. I need to think and I need you to shut the hell up, can you do that?”
    The writer couldn’t. Began to list the titles of his books and how he’d once been nominated for an Oscar, or Edgar, or some other odd name, and how the U.K. had a hard-on for him.
    Slide said, “I’m gonna let it slide, hear?”
    But a moment later he had the crowbar in his hand and was beating the bejaysus outa him.
    The thin fook was going, “I wrote a book with another guy. Maybe he can—”
    But he never got to finish as Slide lashed the crowbar into his teeth, then took out the bastard’s left eye with an almighty swing. “Keep yer eye on the main chance,” he muttered.
    Then Slide looked up to see a family in a nearby car, looking on in horror.
    Slide panicked. He opened the door, kicked the body out, and went, “That should sell some books.” Then he drove off like your proverbial bat out of hell.
    Looking in the rearview, with the pedal to the floor, Slide knew one thing—the kidnapping biz in Ireland had gone bust. He and Angela were going to have to get the fook out of the country, and fast.

Nine
    One day he told me he wasn’t going to eat meat anymore because of mad cow disease. I said, “Ron, you’re mad already, that’s why you’re locked up in Broadmoor.”
    K ATE K RAY, WIFE OF R ONNIE K RAY
    Felicia didn’t know how much more Max Fisher she could take. Lettting him touch her—shit, that was the easy part—it was everything else about the man that was driving her crazy.
    At first she thought it was gonna be easy. She was sick of dancing anyway, was looking into doing something else. Thought maybe she’d be an escort. She’d do it high end cause, damn, she knew girls didn’t have half her ass making a thousand a night. Or maybe she’d get back into pornos. She used to do that shit, back in the nineties. But she was thirty-six now and knew if she tried to get back into films them fat white-ass producer motherfuckers