Page 25 of Baiting Kong

“Then leave it,” Creature said. “I can pick one up while you’re at work.”

“I-I’ll pay you back as soon as I can.”

“No, you won’t,” Creature insisted. “It’s two fifty a month for a furnished room, not an empty one.”

Axel opened his mouth, then snapped it shut. Good. There was no argument in the world that was going to get Creature to change his mind, and Axel looked too exhausted to make even a half-hearted effort.

“Thank you,” Axel said before yawning.

“Come on, let me grab a pillow and some blankets, and we’ll make up the couch for you. It’s old, so you’ll want to lay a few blankets down first before you test your back on that lumpy old thing.”

“You don’t stay here much, do you?” Axel asked before yawning again.

“Nope,” Creature said. “But now that the place won’t be so lonely, it might be time to do a bit of redecorating. Might be a good thing to spend a few nights in every week. My arm can’t handle back-to-back nights at the arm-wrestling table the way it used to.”

“You arm wrestle?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Think I could watch sometime?”

“Absolutely.”

“Nice,” Axel said before a loud, drawn-out yawn that ended with him blushing a little.

Chuckling, Creature grabbed some spare blankets from the hall closet, and they made quick work of creating a makeshift bed for him. As Axel drifted off in the living room, Creature turned out the lights, checked the locks on the door, and headed down the hall to his own room to touch base with Kong and tell him what he’d learned about the robbery and the way Scout’s mouth could have gotten the boy hurt today.

Chapter 9

(Kong)

Ever since their conversation on the beach, Scout had been making himself scarce whenever Kong was in the clubhouse, despite his declaration that he wanted to belong to him

“He’s been leaving that bike of his behind when he goes off to wherever he’s been going,” Mark said as he sat across the Chapel table from Kong, the blueprints to expand the custom motorcycle shop stretched out on the gleaming wood between them. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about why that is?”

“Not for certain, but I have a few ideas.”

Mark rolled his finger, indicating that Kong should get on with it and tell him everything he knew. The problem was that he didn’t know anything with any certainty. There was little he could say that wouldn’t be speculation.

“He’s hiding something about what happened during the robbery,” Kong admitted, “and after the conversation Creature and I had the other night, we’re certain that Axel is too. Creature said that both Scout and Axel got a bit mouthy with the robbers. Personally, I think they might have provoked them and are too scared to admit it because an innocent got hurt.”

“Any word on how Ms. Esperanza is doing?”

“She’ll pull through, but it’s going to be a long road of recovery, and she’s got a son to look after, so we’ve alreadystarted passing the boot around and put out coffee cans at every shop. If those two were responsible, the club will make it right,” Mark declared. “And Scout and Axel will just have to make it right with the club, starting with owning up to their part in whatever happened.”

“You think that’s all they did?” Kong asked. “Provoked them? You don’t think one of them was stupid enough to make a play for one of their guns, do you?”

Mark steepled his fingers on the table in front of them and tapped his fingertips together. “I don’t think, for one second, that Axel could get to one of them from behind the counter, but then, he wasn’t the one with blood all over him. I ran into Byron Pennyworth at Sharkie’s when I popped in for a few rounds at the table with Bruce. He was one of the EMTs on scene, and he had an interesting take on what he noticed when he stepped inside. Bruce, incidentally, is ready to sell but would like to wait until after the annual tournament to make the announcement and have the deed change hands. I’m good with that and with his request to keep the tournament going every year in his son’s honor.”

“That’s the fundraiser for the children’s hospital, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. That’s the one. I went to school with his boy. Patrick passed away from leukemia when we were fifteen. He said that the folks up there were a godsend because he wouldn’t have been able to afford the treatments they did try, or the hotel stays.”

Nodding, Kong made a mental note to add the pool hall to the growing list of club-owned businesses he needed to do extensive walk-throughs of to make certain that they met state building and fire suppression codes.

“So, what was this interesting take of Byron’s?”

“That it looked to him like Axel and Scout had something that they weren’t sharing,” Mark said. “He said they kept making eye contact with one another, and that Scout subtly shook hishead and even shot Axel what he read as a pleading look when the cops asked Axel if the story Scout told, about the robbers getting into an argument over some chips, was really the truth. He also said that there was a bloody footprint on the ground, leading away from the bodies, one that Scout deliberately stepped on and smeared when the EMTs took over treatment of Ms. Esperanza’s injuries.”

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