Free Bad Men by Allan Guthrie Page A

that he'd never walk again. Not caring, if he could only stop the pain.
    He heard the outside door slam.
    A split second later, he passed out.

Pearce heard about it first on the radio. It was in the newspapers, too, and on the TV news.
    Somebody'd done both knees at close range with a handgun. Pearce recognised the big guy's name. Wondered what Rodge Baxter had done to piss Wallace off.
    None of his business, though, was it?

GHOST DOG

Guapa was Flash's favourite word, so much so that he kept it to himself, and used muchacha instead when he was messing around with Rodge. A guapa was what the Americans called a babe, and guapas were always wanting to know why he was called Flash.
    Well, he could hardly own up to the real source of his nickname, could he, you know? It wouldn't be right to say to some lovely lady he'd just met, "Hello, darlin'. They call me Flash cause I nick things. Quick as a flash," although he knew some people who'd have done just that but no, Flash had a bit of style and when he took a girl out on a date, he didn't take her to Burger King, no chance, mate, no, he wined and dined his women at Pizza Hut or somewhere classy like that, maybe even Pizza Express if the lady was really special, and threw in a bit of español whichusually did the trick maybe because, who knows, it sounded a bit dirty.
    For a while, he'd taken to telling all the guapas he met that his name was Gordon and that he was known by the nickname Flash and after a minute they'd get it and go: A-ha. King of the universe .
    Never failed. Well, sometimes it did but you win some and anyway the point is he was pissed off when he found out Pearce's first name was Gordon because it was as if the fucker had stolen his monicker, even though Flash's parents had saddled him with the name Fraser, not Gordon.
    Gordon Pearce. The bastard was called Gordon. That's what Dad told him.
    Anyway, he was supposed to be doing something here, pronto. Flash was ready to rumble, even though his mouth was dry, but as Dad had kept saying, there was no danger and he was right, of course. No danger at all, just a phone call, so what was he so frigging jumpy about? Flash blew his cheeks out, tapped his foot, made a fist and thumped his knuckles into the palm of his other hand. Yeah, bring on a barrel load of radges, he was ready, man, fucking primed.
    Not that he had to beat anybody up, not this time, no, all he had to do was make this shagging phone call.
    He could use a fag right now but he'd given up, hoping to prove to Dad how easy it was, just a matter of willpower and that was the same as being stubborn and Dad was stubborn all right, so no problem.
    And it wasn't as if he was going to be face to face with Wallace, so there was nothing to get all steamed up about, but the truth was he was friggin' terrified of what the fucker was going to do next.
    Flash couldn't quite get his head round what had happened to Rodge. Never heard of anything so fucking cowardly in his life, apart from hitting May and what the jizzwad did to Louis, maybe, but the point was that it was pretty fucking low to shoot somebody like that in the fucking knees when they weren't looking and had no means of defending themselves, apart from the baseball bat, but that wasn't likely to be much good against a gun, was it, so didn't amount to much, almost nothing, which was the point, right, as he said.
    Wallace really deserved what he was going to get. No doubt about that, and Flash would dearly love to give it to him, but as if Wallace wasn't a tough enough proposition in the first place, he now had a fucking gun to contend with, which was an absolute pisser of a situation.
    Which is why Pearce was the man for the job. So he'd turned it down already and Dad had given up on him, but Flash reckoned he could still be persuaded. And he wasn't afraid of guns. Been shot already, hadn't he, and survived.
    Flash picked up the phone and dialled.

Hilda stared at the phone, tail wagging. Looked like he was