Goddamnit. By now, I was about to piss my pants. I pounded on the door again and noticed that when I hit it really hard, the latch came all the way out from the door. Hmm. I leaned my shoulder into it, and now I could get a thin glimpse of the room. Already, I saw a story formulating in my mind. Indefatigable PI checks out a lead. Walks up the front porch stairs, trips, crashes into the door, which opens up. He “accidentally” finds himself inside the house! Flippin’ brilliant!

Excuse in hand, I lowered my shoulder to the crap-ass poplar frame and plowed my way forward. There was a loud pop and a crack, and the door gave way. I stumbled straight into the living room and the working end of a .357, held in the firm, unwavering hand of none other than Laurence Grasso.

“You took long enough you little fucking punk,” he said.

•

He’d changed his appearance from his mug shot. Bleached hair, a bleached goatee. But it was the same guy. The same little predatory weasel eyes, coupled now with breath reeking of cheap wine.

“You just keep comin’, don’t ya?” he said.

“Like a fly with a nose for shit.”

He pulled back the hammer on his revolver. If I had to guess from the aroma of his breath, he’d been partaking in a local wine, probably a merlot. A 2003, perhaps.

“You know what a punk is?” he said.

“Kill him and let’s go,” a woman’s voice said from the kitchen. I didn’t know what startled me more: the voice or the utter lack of emotion it carried. Unlike me, Grasso paid the advice no attention whatsoever. He was focused on me.

“Let’s go,” the woman said again. Wherever she was, I couldn’t see her. I didn’t recognize the voice. The calm authority, the bored indifference in her tone, however, was unmistakable. I was more scared of the person attached to that voice than I was of the ex-convict with the gun pressed to my forehead. Not to say I wasn’t scared. Quite the contrary, actually.

Grasso moved around behind me, sliding the muzzle of the gun across my forehead and around my scalp, like he was tracing the line of a bowl to give me a haircut. He stopped behind me, and then I felt his forearm go around my throat. He pressed in against me and either he had a screwdriver in his front pocket or something very bad was going to happen to me.

“I used to fuck guys like you in prison,” he said.

“I’m married,” I said.

“Goddamnit, we don’t have time for this,” the woman in the kitchen said. “He probably called the cops already.”

I tried to see, leaning forward slightly and looking from the corner of my eye. All I could see was a doorway and a kitchen cabinet and countertop. I heard the sound of a chain lock sliding, then a deadbolt thrown. She was definitely getting ready to leave. I hoped Grasso would follow her example. Quickly.

I craned forward a little more and the left side of my face exploded in pain as Grasso used the barrel of the gun to deliver a karate chop to my face. “Don’t worry about her,” Grasso said. “Worry about me.”

The side of my face was on fire, and I felt blood running down my chin. The gun slid along my scalp again, this time ending up at the very back of my head.

“The cops are on their way,” I said. “They know I’d tracked you down. Do you really want another murder on your sheet?”

I was throwing out marshmallows here, I knew. But I was scared to death of dying. I needed to somehow convince him that not killing me was the right way to go.

“It don’t fuckin’ matter now,” Grasso said. He shifted, and I sensed that he was moving the gun to his left hand, which begged the question: what did he need his right hand for?

“Come on, let’s go!” the woman called from the kitchen.

“Shut up!” Grasso yelled into my ear. And then I felt something so hideous I froze.

With his free hand, Grasso tried to pull down my pants.

“Mister Nosy Bitch following me around, chasing me, just who the fuck do you think you are?”

“I—”

“Shut up, punk!”

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” the woman in the kitchen called.

“Nothin’ better than a virgin punk ass,” Grasso said, and as he yanked on my pants, I grabbed one of his fingers and bent it back until I felt the bone break, which it did with a sickening little crunch.

Grasso screamed in my ear, and then he curled his leg around mine and pushed me forward. He pinned my arms so that I smashed face first into the hardwood floor. I felt something give in my face, and a searing pain ricocheted around inside my skull. Blood was in my mouth.

I felt air on my skin and knew with a panic that it was my ass. Grasso had my pants down.

“Fucking bitch,” he breathed into my ear. His breath was hot and fast. I didn’t know if it still smelled like wine, I figured my nose was broken.

I heard the sound of Grasso’s zipper, then the rustle of fabric as he lifted his shirt to pull down his pants.

A sound came from the front of the house that had a tinny quality to it. It sounded suspiciously similar to a police siren. We all heard it at the same time, and the woman in the kitchen said, “Shit!”

“Motherfucker!” Grasso said. Doors slammed outside, and heavy footsteps pounded up the front walk. I heard a lot of shouting, but everything seemed fuzzy and out of focus. I tried to move, tried to roll, but nothing happened. I had a funny tingling sensation down my spine.

“You fuck,” the woman said.

I heard Grasso run to the front door and shout.

“Shit,” the woman said, but her voice was further away now. Had she left?

“Just let me—” Grasso started to say, and then there was a loud crashing sound followed by two shots close together. Boom. Boom.

Grasso garbled something, and I heard him drop to the floor just as the walls around me exploded and the gun boomed. A cacophony of sounds greeted my ears. More crashes, shouts, tires screeching, the back door slamming shut, more heavy footsteps.

I rolled as best I could. A stabbing pain raced up my left leg, and then the back door banged open.

A newer tinny sound from the front porch was going strong. A cop’s radio. There were running footsteps as I tried to get my bearings and then someone behind me said, “Freeze.” What a stupid thing to say, I thought.

I desperately wanted to pull my pants up, but at this point, it wasn’t worth the risk. Besides, the cops had arrived, probably because a neighbor had seen my dramatic entrance. Compared to the fear of being raped and killed, having a Grosse Pointe cop see my bare fanny was no big deal.

I lay still, my heart beating, the pain in my body building to a crescendo.

And then I heard a voice.

“Not one of your finer moments,” my sister said.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Later, we were standing outside the house on Barrington. I’d given my official statement, been given a quick once-over by the paramedics, and was now ready to receive the wrath of my sibling. Ellen pointed at my leg, which had gotten a basic bandage from Grosse Pointe’s finest emergency medical response team. It was a giant Band-Aid.

“So were you shot?” she said.

I shook my head. “It was a sliver from the floor.”

“A sliver,” she said.

I could tell she was on the verge of either laughing at me or slapping me silly.

“Yeah, it was a sliver,” I said. “A big one.”

“Only you could be in the middle of a shooting and come out of it with a sliver.”

“A big sliver.”

“Whatever,” she said.

Grasso had already been bagged and tagged. The crime scene technicians were done and gone. Ellen turned to me. “So why don’t you tell me how you ended up presenting your ass to Grasso.”

“It was some fine detective work, if I say so myself” I said.