Page 91 of Dirty

“I was in bed asleep, and something woke me up. By the time I got my eyes adjusted, some fucker was asking me where his money was. I had no idea what he was talking about, and tried to explain myself, but he pistol-whipped me and took me anyway.”

“Took you?” he asked.

I nodded. “Kidnapped me. Abducted me. Whatever you want to call it.”

“Continue.”

“They took me to a building, duct-taped me to a table, then burned me, pulled my teeth with pliers, and then smashed my toes with a fucking hammer.”

“Jesus.” He winced. “Over the course of how much time?”

I looked at Alexandra.

“Roughly forty-eight hours,” she said.

He let out a long sigh. “Continue.”

“Well, he reached a point that he realized I didn’t have his money, and he told the other two to shoot me, and then--”

“He being whom? He realized you didn’t have his money. Who is he?”

“Don’t know what his name was, but I called him ‘Tattoo.’ You know, in my mind.”

“Why did you call him that?”

“He had a number 18 tattooed on his neck.”

“Front or back?” he asked.

“Huh?”

“On the front or back of his neck?”

“Front.”

“Continue.”

“So. Let’s see. He told them to kill me, and I closed my eyes. Then, I heard some sounds. Like, pop, pop, pop. I opened my eyes, and that’s when I saw him.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Tattoo?”

“No, a different him. A Hispanic male I didn’t recognize. Someone new. He had a rifle in each hand, and he was shooting at my captors. In the shootout, Tattoo pulled a pistol and shot the guy who I didn’t recognize in his leg. He fell to the floor, fired one last shot, and killed Tattoo. As Tattoo fell, the pistol discharged, shooting the guy in the other leg.”

“The man you didn’t recognize had two weapons?” he asked.

“Yep.”

“One in each hand?”

“Best that I could tell, yes.”

He coughed a laugh. “Sounds like a Quentin Tarantino movie.”

I cocked my head to the side and smiled. “Seemed like one.”

“What happened next?”

“Well, I realized the gun was out of his grasp, and somehow I got up. After kicking the weapons into a pile, I stumbled outside the building, and out into the street.”