Most of my pay check was in the cash register behind Blake’s bar.
There wasn’t enough in my pocket to get me all the way back home.
Them goddamn cabbies are on a good thing, way they bump up the price of a fair at Christmas they need their heads bustin’.
Uncharitable prigs!

But that’s what got me thinkin’. Good will to all men an’ all that crap. All I hadda do was ask somebody an’ they’d hand me over their change. An’ if they weren’t feelin’ up for the season, I’d just hafta remind them.
Problem was, there weren’t too many people out in the weather, ‘ceptin’ one guy who’d been sittin’ in a corner of Blake’s half the night.
Once over I almost went over to him and asked him what the hell he was lookin’ at, but Billy and Clem had told me to leave it.
Some sorta bad ass this guy was supposed t’be.
Joe friggin’ Hunter, Bill said in a whisper, the mutha who did the dirty work for that dick over at Rington Investigations.

Well, I owed Jared Rington big time.
That slant-eyed gook stuck a shotgun in my neck an’ led me back to my bail bondsmen an’ got me a six-month stretch in the big house.
It even got as far as me gettin’ up, but my buddy Clem grabbed holda me.
He knows karate, Clem warned.
Like I gave a crap! He starts all that Bruce Lee jumpin’ about bullshit, I says, an’ I’ll show him what a kick in the balls feels like.
Plus, in my coat I had ten inches of lead pipe.

Maybe this Hunter asshole knew to get the hell outa my face. He got up an’ walked outa there before I could show him who he was messin’ with. Bastard doesn’t know how lucky he was. I downed another coupla drinks before I heard Brenda’s hot little ass callin’ me home.

Shoulda wondered what Hunter was doin’ standin’ there in the snow.
But like I said, I was in a good mood, a bottle of JD down, an’ lookin’ forward to givin’ Brenda her Christmas treat.

Gimme fifty bucks an’ I’ll let my beef with Rington go, I told him.
To show him I wasn’t beggin’ for charity I pulled out my lead sap.

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