Read Online Tumblin' Dice by John McFetridge - Free Book Online

beside a minivan with Quebec plates. The trunk popped open on the M3 and a guy got out, walked around it to the minivan and slid open the side door.
    Boner got there the same time as J.T. and the hangaround, coming from the other side so the BMW driver was trapped between his car and the minivan, guys coming at him from each end. He said, “You don’t know what the fuck you’re doing,” and J.T. said, “Yeah, we do.”
    The guy went for his gun, tried to get it out of his belt but Boner hammered him from behind, smacked him across the head with a goalie stick, and the hangaround grabbed the gun, twisting the guy’s arm till they heard it snap. Boner slammed the guy’s head, bringing the stick down two-handed, whack, whack. Rolling on the ground between the cars the guy was saying, “You stupid fucks, you’re dead. You’re so fucking dead,” and the hangaround was putting the boots to him.
    J.T. said, “Ankle holster,” and the hangaround grabbed the guy’s foot, his five hundred dollar leather shoe coming off, and snapped his ankle. No holster.
    Boner already had the two hockey bags out of the minivan and was tossing them in the back of his truck, and J.T. got a bag from the trunk of the BMW .
    The hangaround said, “The fuck you want me to do with him?” and J.T. said, put him in his car, so the hangaround picked the guy up by his shirt and slammed him onto the hood of the BMW and then let go. The guy scrambled around, falling onto the dirt of the parking lot and getting into his car, the whole time saying, “You stupid fucks are so dead. You have no fucking idea what you’re doing, you fucking hick morons,” looking at the hangaround as he was saying it, but when he got behind the wheel he looked over at J.T., who was looking right back at him, and the guy shut up, put the car in gear, and took off.
    The hangaround said, “Fuckin’ A!”
    J.T. said to Boner, “You play goalie?” and Boner, getting into his F 350, said, “Every Wednesday, you should come out.”
    J.T. said he’d think about it, and Boner said, “See you at the club,” and pulled out. J.T. dropped the bag, the smaller one he knew had a hundred grand in it, into the trunk of his orange Challenger.
    The hangaround watched, still pumped, looking for something else to hit, and then said, “Shit, this new Challenger, first one of these muscle cars cool as the original.”
    J.T. said, better. “The old one, it was all power. It was great for straight line acceleration but it couldn’t corner for shit, had no suspension. This one, it’s got a Hemi V 8 but it’s also got ABS , coil springs, and stabilizers.”
    The hangaround said, “Cool.”
    J.T. said, “Why don’t you go back inside, get laid. That Valerie, she can deep throat like a shop vac.”
    The hangaround laughed, said, cool, then stuck a thumb towards the strip club and said, “What about the asshole?”
    J.T. said, “Fuck him. He doesn’t make his delivery, it’s his problem,” and the hangaround smiled, said, fuckin’ A, and went back inside.
    J.T. put his Challenger in gear and drove slow out of the parking lot. He liked this. Assholes thought they had everything nailed down, then they got lazy, got sloppy. Yeah, he liked the idea of taking back the whole province — made him feel patriotic again, like he did in the army.
    â€¢ • •
    Loewen was sitting at the bar with a woman he figured to be in her late thirties, maybe a couple years older than him, listening to her tell what a hero she was in the boardroom, saying how there may be more women in business, but not that many in sales. “And almost none in group sales.” Which was where, she told him, the big money was.
    When Loewen had come into the bar after dinner, the rest of the cops still in their own groups, Anjilvel and the black G.I. Joe