"Last night's fee. Thank you."

Tony nodded and took the money. It made Tigh glad. He needed people like Tony around, and he appreciated the service the man provided. He hoped there would not be a repeat of last night's incident. Tigh needed pushers as well. Good ones. Badger was good, but he just got confused and needed to be straightened out. But not demolished.

Tony could see that the man was putting on a face. He could smell Tigh's uncertainty, and he wanted him to swear that it wasn't him that put Badger in the hospital. But the discussion was over, and you did not reopen old discussions with Mr. Tigh. Tony knew this morning's episode was going to bother him for the rest of the day. The only outside hope he had of clearing his name was Badger's talking. Tony rested his thoughts on that one probability and held on.

Breakfast landed in the middle of the table.

"Served," Boomer exclaimed mightily, removing his hands from the platter of food. Fresh bacon and hash browns interested Tony's senses and woke his stomach.

"G.o.ddammit man, you took your time this morning," Danny said smiling, reaching for a fork and a plate. "Smells good, though."

"Looks good, too," Tigh added, shovelling scrambled eggs onto his plate from a yellow hill.

"Never f.u.c.king believe what happed this morning," Boomer said. "In Saint John. Guy was a driving a little Le Car, eh? You know those little d.i.n.kies with the lawnmower engine?"

"They still make those?" Tigh asked.

Boomer grunted. "Apparently so. So anyway, the thing was run over by some bus last night. Head on collision. Twenty people involved on the d.a.m.n TCH."

Danny looked up from his food, chewing contentedly on a mouth full of bacon, and wondered where his partner was going with the story.

"They all die?" Tigh said, licking bacon grease off his fingers.

"n.o.body. That's the freaky part. Both drivers were crushed, but they were hauled off to the hospital. I mean crushed, man. Even the bus driver got it when he went over the car. I guess he lost it, flipped, went over into the other lane where the oncoming traffic started slamming into him. Cars were flipping and flying in Saint John, man! Twenty people in the pile up, litres of blood all over the place, arms and legs pinched off! Can you believe it? Phenomenal!" Boomer was obviously in heaven.

"Enuff of that. I'm eating here," Tigh warned him. "I can take the movie s.h.i.t but not the real stuff. And not this early in the morning and not over breakfast."

Tony held on, feeling the money in his fist and very much aware of it. He was very much aware of the food on the table. His stomach whined.

"But isn't that the s.h.i.t?" Boomer went on, muscular shoulders heaving. "Not one of them f.u.c.kers cacked. Odds of that happening must be next to nothing! I mean, Jesus! One b.a.s.t.a.r.d was mashed into his car, and his s.h.i.t came out like he was a tube of Colgate! And there were a f.u.c.kload of others that'll be wearing plaster for the next couple of months! I mean--whoa!!"

Tigh did not share his employee's enthusiasm. His features did light up after having a mouthful of bacon. He nodded at the chef.

"You like?" Boomer asked him. "I did them in flour, eh. Makes the bacon crispier."

"You can never leave here, Boom," Tigh answered and reached for his coffee.

"I'll be leaving now, Mr. Tigh." Tony saw his chance.

"You going now?" Tigh asked. A fragment of bacon shot forth and landed on the table.

"Yeah," Tony said, ignoring the faux pas, "I think so." He pushed back his chair.

"Sure you don't want any?" Boomer gestured at the pile of food. Tony shook his head and mouthed a silent 'no'.

"Where's the toast Boom?" Danny asked between rotations of his jaw.

"f.u.c.k. Forgot," Boomer said and got up, streaking for the kitchen.

"Bring some of your mom's jam, too, eh!" Tigh called out after him. He then settled back on Tony. "You got any plans for today?

Tony froze. "No. Well I hafta do a few things..." His mother appeared in his mind, hanging on to that last bit of life she had, measured out in IV drips and morphine. A visit to the chemo ward every now again. A stocking cap to hide her baldness. Tony never thought of going bald before, but seeing a woman go bald, the pity he felt cut him to his core.

Tigh grunted. "Check in with me a little later, okay? A day or two. I may have some work for you to do. Some straight bouncing work. Danny's got a date it seems."

Danny's face smacked and chomped and shaped into a tight smile. His eyes brightened for a moment and became dreamy again.

"It'll keep you outta trouble anyway," Tigh finished.

"I can't find the jam!" Boomer bawled out from the kitchen. Something rattled and plastic crashed to the floor. "s.h.i.t!"

"Look in the fridge," Tigh told him.

"Did. It ain'tOh. I got it."

Tigh grunted and worked at some bacon in his molars with his tongue. He regarded Tony. "And watch yourself, too, eh."

"Watch myself?" Tony asked, wary puzzlement on his face.

"Badger has people," Tigh's voice rattled from his breakfast, and he coughed into a fist. "Close people, okay? People that don't work for me and I have no control over. That's all I'm saying. Just watch yourself for the next couple of days. If they find out you were the one that put the beating on Badger, well...."

Tony rolled his eyes and took a deep steadying breath. He wanted to scream his innocence at the man. Instead, he focused on the bare concrete floor. Tigh took the time to speak again.

"Yeah, well, you were the last one in contact with him, okay, so they may want to talk to you. They might not wait for Badger to come out of his coma. h.e.l.l, I'll be watching out for myself. I was the one that put you onto the man in the first place."

"Mr. Tigh," Tony could no longer contain himself, "I didn't hurt him that bad. I didn't put him in the hospital."

Boomer could be heard swearing again in the kitchen.

"Well," Tigh said, "if and when Badger wakes up, we'll know the truth, won't we? I'm sure he'll ID whoever it was that did him. And I'm positive he'll want payback. That boy can be b.l.o.o.d.y when he wants to. My only concern is if his clan decides to start something before he wakes. It's very...what's the word I want Danny?"

"Volatile," the man supplied in between scooping up eggs.

"Volatile," Tigh sighed. He paused for a moment and then realized that his bacon was cooling. He shovelled a forkful into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully for a bit. "Blood demands blood. Just sayin', 'Be careful'. That's all."

Tony got up from the table as if it were a poker game gone bad. Believe him or not, Tigh did have a point. He would indeed be careful from here on in. For the next few days at least. He didn't know Badger had a crew, should have expected it. He fought back the urge to swear. He was positive no one had seen him that night, but sometimes events and people could be st.i.tched together if the right questions were asked. Badger was in a coma? The information did nothing for Tony's conscience, but a dull throb of hope began in his gut. It would be a good thing if the pusher woke up soon.

Boomer came back with a plate stacked high with toast.

"Where's the whole wheat?" Danny asked him.

"Out. This'll have to do," the plate was put on the table.

"I don't know why you are so gawdd.a.m.n particular about bread. I can't taste a difference. Bread's bread if you ask me," Tigh muttered.

"Wheat's better for you," Boomer informed him. "Cleans you out. Like a deep scrub for your colon. Gets out all the red meat. You know red meat can stay in your colon for up to six months?"

"You don't be thinking about my colon," Tigh warned him, scooping what looked to be blueberry jam out of an unlabelled mason jar. "One thought I don't need is that. And I don't give a s.h.i.t about red meat. Even if it stays in my a.s.s for a f.u.c.kin' year. Wait, that didn't sound right. Well, anyway, you call me, Tony. Wednesday is when I'll be needing you."

Tony nodded and left the master and his Dobermans to their breakfast. He had forgotten about his own stomach momentarily. Tigh's reprimand had shrunk it. Then the thing growled loud and long like the rigging of some ancient galley adrift on a very big sea. Tony paid it no mind. He was going to visit his mother.

Chapter 5.

Outside the hospital, Tony jammed his Mustang into a parking spot on the first try. Getting out of the car, he closed and locked his door, looking this way and that, remembering Tigh's warning. He had a fistful of paper-wrapped flowers, which one of Tigh's hundreds paid for, white and yellow mostly. No red. Tony didn't care for red. He remembered his 'Bite Me' ball cap and cursed. His mom wouldn't care for that. He went back to the car, unlocked the door, tossed the cap inside and locked the door again. Once upon a time, such sensitivities would not have bothered him. Things were different now.

St. Mary's was one of the older hospitals in Halifax, and it showed. The outer concrete blocks were a brownish yellow and begged for new paint. Cracks showed in the surface, and the windows were coated in a late winter frost. Steam issued from the roof from unseen vents and Tony momentarily thought of hot coal in the middle of a snow drift. Pigeons fluttered in and about the eight stories, disappearing into hidden nests. That was great. With Tony's luck, one of the little flying rats would probably s.h.i.t on his car. He walked across the lot, projecting dirty glares at the pigeons' roost and vowing unholy revenge on the little b.a.s.t.a.r.ds if any took a s.h.i.t on the beast. He made his way to the visitors' entrance, not noticing the other people pa.s.sing through the doors. He hated the hospital. Supposed most people did. He hated seeing the hurt. It was always the hurt you saw, always waiting. He never saw anyone leaving with a smile on their face, and he had visited this place on many occasions in the last year.

One year?

It had been three years since his mother had discovered the lump in her breast. They removed the breast quickly enough. But it took one week for the doctors to discover the rest. It was a shocking case of cancer, they said. The disease had started in her breast and eventually dug into both her lungs. They slowed down the advance with chemotherapy, but the disease was in both lungs and stubborn. It was supposed to be two years for Miss Levin at the most and an unpleasant two years. That was three years ago. Elizabeth Levin, widow for four years after her husband's car accident, entered the hospital's cancer ward and stayed there, her body playing out the endgame with the disease. Then, the Cancer got impatient, probably p.i.s.sed at being slowed down by modern medicine, and went for her stomach. It wasn't satisfied with robbing her of her ability to breathe without a.s.sistance. It wanted more.

The doctors' latest prognosis was weeks. Lung Cancer victims are fortunate to last a year. Stomach cancer victims are even more so. Yet Elizabeth Levin defied the odds. She hung on a year after the attack on her stomach. And Tony counted the long days, thinking thoughts he couldn't help thinking. Helpless to only watch the losing battle waged within his mother's body. He wanted to remember his mother as the young woman that reared him up in Dartmouth. He didn't want the image that resided in his mind these days. All he could picture now was a woman, so pitifully small, tied to her bed in a mesh of sterile plastic and handmade quilts of the brightest Christmas red and green. She used to be a hundred and fifty pounds packed onto a five foot four frame.

Now she was seventy five.

He did not want to think of her flesh stretched out like tight plastic on a stick frame. He didn't want to see the bruises in her skin where the nurses stuck their needles, often missing her shriveled veins and having to try again and again. Of how her eyes would sometimes squeeze shut with a machine aided breath. Of how she would ask him what he ate for breakfast, and how that simple question would make his eyes red with tears. How he dearly wanted her to be able to eat...anything.

Tony only wanted...

Only...

A horn blared at him, jerking him back to reality.

"Watch yerself!" the man roared at him from a car. Tony realized then he had just walked in front of some dude's old Impala. He quickly got out of the path of the moving car and went up to the automated doors. A minute later he was in an elevator and thankful for it. He hated the hospital sounds. The cacophony of coughs, the baby cries and the dead voices calling out missing names. He hated the impatient looks the nurses gave him, no doubt hoping their shifts would pa.s.s quickly without any real emergency. Tony would hate to work in a hospital. He only put people there.

A pneumonectomy. That's what the doctors thought would do the trick. But the removal of her left lung did not save her right one from the cancer metastasizing-that lung looked like a scorched battlefield-and, gawd, were the doctors surprised to find the little b.a.s.t.a.r.ds honeycombing her colon, and talking to her son about the blood in her stool was not something Elizabeth would have at the supper table.

The pain was something else that Tony did not want to think about. It was hard for him to see his mother in agony. He thought his childhood, and of her reading books to him at night just before sleep, helping him clean his ears or hearing that wind chime laugh when she was watching something funny on TV while folding freshly dried clothes. Those memories were now under a web of surgical tape and plastic. The cherished laugh replaced by the steady beeping of machines. She had had enough biopsies for someone to construct their own G.o.dd.a.m.n Frankenstein.

A year. No more.

Three years later.

His mom could be spiteful at times, Tony knew. Part of him was proud of her fight. She was like a big league wrestler, beaten down, knocked out on their feet, and yet, when she felt her shoulders pinned to the mat, heard the referee's distant count, somewhere she found the guts to flip out from under the cancer. She found the strength to fight back and to hang on for another count of three. She wasn't going down easy. Not Elizabeth Levin.

The doors opened and his thoughts vanished. He ignored the other people in the cancer ward. He ignored the sounds of pain around him. Tony made his way down a corridor to his mother's private room. It was expensive, but her insurance covered it. And then she was before him. The TV hanging above her, glaring. She wasn't watching its snowy reception. Her eyes were shut, and there was a full drip dangling above her head. Tony went to her side and sat there, simply watching her, his face scowling, concerned. He dealt with the anger of finding out about her non-resuscitation request. He obviously wasn't consulted in that decision. It hurt, but he knew, and G.o.d knew, it was for the unhappy best. It could be any day now. Any moment.

That made Tony smile just a little. His mom had made it through a thirty man Battle Royale. She was a bullfighter. A tiny bullfighter. Gazing at her coc.o.o.ned in her bed, he again found it impossible that she lasted this long with so much weight gone. There was a stocking cap on her bald head. A guy could lose his hair, and that was fine by Tony, but he abhorred seeing women lose their hair. It was bad enough that they bled every month. His mom had nothing left on her own crown now, and he felt his throat tighten. She always had a l.u.s.trous, jet mane which bounced when she walked. And she had been proud of it.

Now, Tony knew that all that remained of that hair were a few scant ribbons.

All the while he watched her, she did not register his presence.

Her face was mottled and haggard. Her cheeks were nonexistent, mere cavities draped in the barest skin. The room smelled of some alien disinfectant, and pictures of rugged coastlines and sweeping forests covered each wall. A vase of flowers, bright and fresh, stood on the bedside table. He wished he could move her back to her own bed, in her own home. Put the magical healing powers of home to the most trying of tests. When he was a boy and was frightened in the night, he slept between his parents. He was just fine nudged in between the protective hearts of his mother and father, knowing he was safe. He wished he could do something like that now.

He wished she would just get up.

"Tony."

His mother spoke.

"What are you looking at?" she said in a soft voice, the voice of one just waking up.

Her son smiled and felt his throat constrict tighter. He clutched at her hand. She gave the barest of squeezes back and, with whatever strength she still possessed, smiled at her son.

Chapter 6.

One floor up and a dozen doors to the right of Tony's mother's room, the Stickman sat beside his still friend of ten years. Badger was in bad shape, the doctors had said so, but the Stickman didn't need to hear a professional doctor to tell him that. His own eyes could plainly see that his friend was seriously f.u.c.ked up. A broken jaw needed time to heal, but a crushed jaw needed ages. As did crushed shins, kneecaps, femurs, forearms, fingers, toes and shoulders. The things not broken merely looked like s.h.i.t. The fact that the man was still alive was a thing of awe and pity. Apparently, when they brought him in, his body was a horrific black with the amount of internal bleeding.

The Stickman looked at the casting job done by the hospital. It looked like a good one. He was told that the steel and the wires were in there to help the healing. They would replace what refused to do so. Stickman did not want to be around when Badger had to eat, however. The absence of teeth was one thing, but imagining him trying to slurp up blender-shredded soup through that mess of a mouth turned the Stickman's guts. Badger was just f.u.c.king lucky he was in a coma. If he ever did regain consciousness, it would only be for a second to realize that he had been f.u.c.ked up, and then he would probably pa.s.s out again. The pain would pull him under like a harbor riptide on a moonless night.

If it were anyone else, the Stickman would've laughed at the thought. But this was the Badge.

This was blood.

Not by actual blood but by deed. Badger had helped the Stickman back when he was still Crawford Ryan, a delinquent youth from the isle of Newfoundland trying to get away from the rugged hopelessness of that place. He had left his father in the tiny town of Heart's Delight. He did not care what happened to the abusive drunk. He never looked back once he left the hole of his youth. Hitchhiking his way across the island with a pocketful of money he scabbed from his father and his ancient blue piggy bank, he got his short and skinny a.s.s to Halifax. Once there, he became a haunt of the back streets between Hollis and Barrington, asking for loonies or quarters or even a f.u.c.king nickel-who needs a nickel, right? Begging was set in his mind as a career, but he made a short living of it. The soup truck that appeared on Hollis Street every day gave him at least one meal a day, and there were a few shelters around that supplied a bed for a night. No, life wasn't so bad, and if there was something he really needed, there was always money to be made doing an a.s.sortment of jobs-hand and blow included when he really needed the money. It wasn't something that he liked doing, but he was surviving. He was on his own.

Then Badger appeared. Brother Badger in his brown leather jacket, grinning from ear to ear in that scalding, s.h.i.t-eating grin that he had. The kind that could make a person feel stupid even if they were only asking for the time. Badger had got him working as a courier. Got him out of the odd job business and gave him enough money to actually rent a small hole in the slums of Quinnpool. To a seventeen year old runaway, it was a free kick to the mouth of the world. It was the chance that the Stickman was waiting for. He didn't care what he was delivering. He never asked. It was for money, and after a while, it was for Badger. And Badger was good to him. He gave him cash, bought him CDs, meals and even some furniture for his apartment. He would bring over flicks to watch on a second hand Sanyo DVD player (once he even brought him some p.o.r.nos) and got him his first leather coat for his birthday. Badger was cool.

Then, the fall had come. When he was twenty-one, Stickman had been arrested and prosecuted on drug charges. It was a s.h.i.tty deal, and Stickman knew right away he shouldn't have done time for a first offence. The prosecution knew otherwise and convinced the judge that an example had to be made of the young man. He was going to Saskatchewan if he didn't give the RCMP the name of his supplier. Stickman had watched enough movies to know that the cops really wanted Badger and that the promise of prison was just to light the fire under his a.s.s and to make him give his brother up. Stickman laughed in their faces. He kept silent.

And stayed silent for four years.

The Stickman had seen movies about being in prison and decided whoever the h.e.l.l had written such untruths should be sent to one, themselves. There were no A-list actors there with Brad-Pitt looks, but there were plenty of mean b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. It wasn't an R version like he remembered seeing on DVD, but it was hard core enough to make him become as paranoid as four years in prison will make a person. He was sent to the Shuckfort Provincial Correctional Facility in the flat province of Saskatchewan, where he was told a person could see an escaped con run away for days if one ever got out. Stickman believed it. After living most of his life by the water and surrounded by hills and forests, the plainscape where the land met the horizon in an almost perfect line totally weirded him out. He was raped on several occasions in his first year to the point where his a.s.shole burned when the soap hit it. His stick frame and small size made him a natural b.i.t.c.h for some of the hardcore types in jail. He submitted to survive.

Reflecting back, Stickman knew that he was meat back then.

But he had time to change things. And Badger did not forget him. It took him a year to show, but he finally did. The cops had tried to take him down but screwed up, or at least according to Badger, they had. They had him in a tight spot, and he told the Stickman the same, but they couldn't make their charges stick, and Badger had f.u.c.ked them over gleefully. Now, it was payback time, and Badger called in some favors. One of them was the protection granted by one Gerald Burr. Burr had actually raped the Stickman in the shower with his gang, but that was in the past once he found out that the Stick wasn't just another stupid Newf from the Rock and that he was actually tight with Badger. After that, Burr was a guardian and even something of a mentor. Burr kept folks off the Stickman's back. And helped him weight train.

There was always one thing which little Crawford always wished to do, and that was to lift concrete and steel. There, in C-wing of Shuckfort, he had all the time, free weights, square meals, and, above all, hate to grunt, bark and puke his own weight in the bench press. And then beyond. When Badger started getting him juice-steroids-Crawford's frame exploded to nearly two hundred pounds by the time he had served his sentence.

People might have scoffed at the mention of steroids as an enhancement, but it was funny that no one did so to Stickman's face. In the last year, Crawford was gone, and the Stickman was hammered into existence. The nickname, which was given to him in the first few months of his imprisonment, became a whisper often filled with fear. It happened shortly after he broke Burr's neck in his nineteen inch biceps, just after Burr had taught him a choke hold. Burr made the stupid mistake of wanting and trusting the Stickman to practice on him and believing that the rape of long ago was forgotten. Stickman remembered how Burr tapped his forearm for release and only got increased pressure. Stickman could not see the man's face, but he imagined Burr was thinking the man wasn't so stupid after all. Right up until the vertebrae in his neck snapped.