Test Drive Unlimited Chapter 17

Old Bella and the Last Curtain

Derek rocked once in his recliner and glanced over the rim of his mug with the sour expression of a man who'd learned to measure trouble by how loudly it barked. "That damned chihuahua," he complained, tapping his spoon against porcelain, "next door — thinks it's a foghorn. All night, yapping at shadows and the mailman and my dignity. Makes mornings last longer than they should."
Joey laughed, the sound brittle but real. He perched on the edge of the armchair opposite, knees nearly touching the coffee table, a half-eaten cookie in hand as if he hadn't slept either. The cookie went untouched after that first bite; his fingers drummed the cardboard sleeve of a cigarette he hadn't lit.

Derek stared at him, eyes narrowing. "Look me in the eye, kid. You didn't come here for Mrs. Hackenmire's cookie recipe, so what are you doing in my living room at eight a.m. on a Tuesday with coffee-stained cuffs?"

Joey set the cookie down, rubbed his thumb over the seam of the napkin, and let the words out slow. "Tim is missing," he said. "We were trying to retrieve his sister from a failed operation—" He flinched as if the sentence cut him. “Our plan was good, but the set up didn't go like we rehearsed.

Derek's face lost the little amusement it had been wearing. He reached into the cupholder and rotated a ring on his knuckles, a habit that betrayed age and metal. "Is this more mafia bullshit?"

Joey slowly shook his head. “A street gang called The Vipers”

“Just as bad,” Derek muttered as he took a sip of coffee. “Do we have his whereabouts?”

“He has a tracker embedded in his skin.”

“A Tracker? I’m still shocked you two hadn’t been shot earlier in your lives. You have got to be either the luckiest sons-of-bitches or the most cursed.”

“I need your help, Derek."

Derek leaned back and let the recliner give an unhealthy sigh. He felt tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep. He'd been tired since his knees started to complain and since the world sped up and left him on the porch. He also felt a particular kind of tired that came with knowing other people were less careful than he was, and that sometimes his shotgun and stubbornness were the only things between a neighbor and a bad headline.

He tapped the table with his finger, cracked knuckles. "You want me to go into the snake's den, kid? I'm not—"

"You'll be the oldest shotgun in the room, that's what you'll be," Joey said. He smiled without humor, because it was the only face he could pull now. “I need your hands. I need your shotgun. I need your nerve."

Derek reached for the drawer in the side table and pulled out a rag-wrapped object. Joey watched him unwrap the rag as if the act itself were a communion. Metal gleamed: a Desert Eagle, its frame altered in subtle, intentional ways. Longer barrel, a compensator bosomed at the tip, a stock affixed with an ugly velvet strap that had been chosen for comfort over aesthetics. It looked wrong in the best possible sense.

"Old Bella," Derek said, running a finger along the slide as if greeting an old friend. His voice softened in the way old men speak of women they loved and wars they survived. "I got her when I thought I might have to shoot my way out of a instead-of-retirement scheme back when I still believed in 'paying what you owe.'"

Joey's fingers twitched. "You stole that story off some paperback, didn't you?"

Derek shrugged. He cocked the pistol by the hammer and let the metal click like a memory. "I went farther than I like to talk about. Before I met my wife…at the time I would have called it my glory days. Kind of like you and Tim…but once I got married…had my daughter, I left all of that in past. Until…”

Joey watched him, studying the small shake in Derek's hand when he lifted the gun as if to check the balance.
Derek let out a laugh that collapsed into a coughing fit before he could finish. He patted his chest and the laughter eased. "But, that’s the past. I allowed that pain to swallow me whole. However, after her death, I found myself buying anything I could get my hands on. To one day settle a score. “

Joey's eyes went glossy. The cookie on the table had turned to a ragged disc; he ate it in two chews without tasting it. "You mean you would have used it on us?"

“Yeah, I had bullets with your names on it, kid.” Derek set Bella down with a reverence that suggested the gun had its own mercy. “But things change…and my life changes now once again. I’m looking forward to it, the more I think about it.”

Joey's jaw worked. "When do we leave?" he said. It was more than a line now: it was a prayer.

“You bring any artillery?

Joey nodded.

“From my storage room?”

Joey nodded again.

Derek laughed and then stood up. “Planning a two-man rescue mission. I’lll have something to tell Jerry. My neighbor thinks he was a Soldier of Forune in some past life. Son of a bitch is in a wheelchair due to falling down while drunk.”