Read Online Round Robin by Joseph Flynn - Free Book Online Page B

going to lose this time. No way he could lose.
    Because if he did he might have to shoot himself.
    After what had happened with the girls, word had gotten out. Two women who had claimed to have personal knowledge of his manhood had gone on record as saying he had a party frank between his legs. The story hadn’t made things easy for him when he’d had to do a locker room interview after the following night’s basketball game. The home team had won with a buzzer-beater from thirty-five feet; there’d been two fights and five ejections. The second brawl had spilled over so far into the stands that the commissioner had his soft drink spilled on his lap. But as soon as Tone had opened his mouth in the locker room, all the drama and anger of the game had been forgotten. Everybody had looked at him and started smirking. Especially those pencil-pushing creeps from the newspapers. One SOB had even said they were doing amazing new things with silicone implants these days. Tone hadn’t been able to get a straight answer to any of his questions. So he’d had his crew shoot the answers to the other assholes’ questions and then shoot him asking the proper questions back at the studio and then edit the whole mess together.
    Which was when Tone had thought of his latest idea. He’d take his cameraman to Mimi’s and have him shoot Tone ripping Robin to pieces. If she got him back, well, that would end up on the old cutting room floor. Then he’d use the tape in one of his sports segments and a million people would see it. He’d be redeemed.
    If the people who were in the deli tried to tell a different story, so what? They couldn’t hope to compete with the power of television. In fact, it might be better if they contradicted the tape. That way Tone could spread the word that all the other things people had heard about him were lies, too.
    Tone had greased his cameraman a grand to back his version of events and make sure that technically there’d be no way anyone could tell the tape had been edited. The guy swore with the new Japanese equipment he had the tape would look cherry.
    Tone had also hinted darkly that if the cameraman knew what was good for him—and his family—he’d stay bought. And never even think of blackmail. Tone didn’t actually know any leg-breakers, his dad was a roofer, but it didn’t hurt to have an Italian name.
    So, as he entered Mimi’s, Tone was feeling pretty sure there was no way he could lose this one. When the camera’s lights came on and blinded just about everybody in the joint he felt even better. Everyone was squinting and shielding their eyes and whining, generally acting like the no-talent, off-camera doofuses they were. He was sure that Robin was going to photograph like a beached whale, too.
    Except, looking around, he couldn’t see that tub of lard anywhere.
    And Tone heard his cameraman scream, “Hey, get away!”
    He knew what that hysterical, stay-away-from-my-baby cry of distress meant: Somebody was trying to touch his guy’s precious camera, probably put a grubby hand over the insanely expensive lens.
    He turned to see that the assailant was Mimi herself.
    She had, in fact, squirted the camera with brown mustard.
    Tone’s accomplice was furiously trying to clean his valued piece of equipment and Tone could tell from the look on his face that this attack was going to cost him extra.
    Then Mimi was in Tone’s face.
    “What kind of stunt are you trying to pull here?” she demanded.
    “Hey,” Tone responded, the picture of innocence, “what’s the problem? I thought I’d do a little slice-of-life piece. How we all face competition in our everyday lives. Put your place on the air. Make you famous.”
    Tone leaned in close. “Where’s Robin?”
    Mimi hadn’t just fallen off the turnip truck. She wasn’t sure what this moron was up to, but she knew he had something that wasn’t kosher up his sleeve.
    “Robin?” she asked.
    “Yeah,” Tone said with an oily smile.