Head Games (The Hector Lassiter Series) by Craig McDonald Page A

hit me with fell to the carpet.
    She said, "Are you all right?"
    She asked that as she ran to Bud Fiske.
    Fiske struggled up onto on elbow, rubbing his neck with this other hand. I struggled up too.
    The young poet, my trellis-thin Boswell, took one look at me, cocked and let fly. His right caught me just under the left eye. I saw stars again. Fiske grabbed a handful of my graying hair. He was all lion now. He snarled into my face, "I'm a fucking diabetic, Hector! I tried to tell you, you cocksucker. I'm a fucking diabetic!" He let go of my hair and my head bounced on the tile floor. I saw more stars.
    Alicia helped Fiske to his feet.
    He picked up his hypodermic vial. "Insulin, Hector," he said. "It's insulin, not fucking heroin. Jesus Christ, Hector."
    I struggled up onto my elbows. "Alicia, sweetheart, leave us alone a minute," I said, rubbing my eye. "Please? Just give me a minute with Bud?" Her eyes were still blazing at me --- like she really hated me.
    She glanced at Fiske and asked, "Do you want to be alone with him, Bud?"
    " Sí. Gracias , Alicia."
    She smiled uncertainly. " De nada ." She bent over, holding the sheet over her swaying breasts with her left arm. With her right hand, she picked up the copper bucket she'd brained me with and tossed it to Fiske. "Just in case, yes?"
    He smiled and pitched the pail onto the bed. "I can handle myself."
    Alicia backed out and closed the connecting door behind her. Fiske shrugged into his shirt and buttoned up past the needle scars on his belly. He extended a hand and I took it. He wrapped his other arm around me and helped me to my feet. My ribs hurt ... my eye hurt ... my cheek hurt ... my head hurt. And I felt sick inside. "Kid," I groaned, "I'm so fucking sorry."
    "Yeah," Fiske said. "Sure. Now you know why I'm so attuned to your own sugar problems --- first-hand experience."
    "I get it now."
    "What if it had been the other way? What would it be to you?" Bud shook his head. "Christ, Hector, I've seen you put away a bottle of whiskey a day --- sometimes along with a couple of beers or a bottle of wine. You smoke two packs a day, easy. You've got more than your share of monkeys clinging to that scarred back of yours. So what's it to you if I was shooting smack?"
    I limped to the side table and liberated a couple of Bud's cigarettes. I picked up the hotel's complimentary book of safety matches and struck one and fired us both up. I set an ashtray between us on the chenille bedspread and shook the match out and dropped it in.
    "We off the record, Bud?"
    "Sure."
    "I mean it, friend." I don't expect he felt much like a friend about then, but I plunged on as though he was. From my direction he was. Maybe even more than a friend, now. "Nobody gets this story but you," I said. "And you never share it, right? Swear?"
    "On my life, Hector. But the talk about what happened between you and your wife has been out there for a while ... you know that."
    "But not the reasons...and I've never confirmed the other --- my wife's addiction --- not to anyone, Bud. My wife, Maria, was a heroin addict. For years . She hid it well from me. She shot up between her toes. Through the soles of her feet. Under her arms so the scars could be confused for razor stubble. Shot up through her pubic hair when she could will herself to do it."
    No words needed there. Bud just nodded, sucked down some smoke.
    "That was bad enough. But my daughter, Dolores, she was born with a hole in her heart ... and other birth defects. From day one, it was just one thing after another for my little girl. Eventually, the latest in a long line of doctors told me he thought my daughter's problems might be a result of her mother's addiction. Meant to warn me off having other kids with Maria, I guess. Almost on first meeting with my wife, that particular sawbones correctly deduced what I had never suspected ... even though I lived with the woman, and slept with her. The doc knew when he looked at Maria. I didn't know until he