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

told me. He broke the news just a few hours before my little girl died of the birth defects caused by my wife's addiction. I confronted Maria later, after we lost Dolores, and she confessed it all. Then Maria tried to turn me into a junkie."
    Bud sat there, perched on the end of the bed, waiting to see if I'd go the distance ... maybe confess complicity in my wife's infamous overdose.
    But I'd gone as far as I was prepared to. "So," I said, blowing smoke through both nostrils, "that's why I attacked you when I saw the needle and all those scars. When I got a glimpse of the scars on your arm last night when you reached for your watch. It ate at me. Then walking in here this morning and seeing all your scars ... seeing that damned needle and hypo ... well, you know.... took me back to bad places. I made a shitty deduction and acted on it."
    "I understand how it could happen." I hadn't gone far enough for him.
    "I'm so fucking sorry, kid." I went ahead and said what I thought he must be thinking. "I might have killed you if Alicia hadn't brained me with that damned bucket..."
    "You might have," Bud said. He reached into his pocket and pulled something out. I heard a click and a swish. He held the switchblade up to catch the morning light through the window. "Or I might have killed you, Hector. I was in the process of deciding when she hit you."
    I took a deep breath and rubbed my eye.
    All right then .
    I said, "Good. That's good, Bud. There won't be a next time, but if there ever was ... don't hesitate."
    Bud smiled. "I ain't saying 'likewise.'"
    I laughed and stood up, cracking all over. I extended my hand. "We're okay then?"
    Bud took my hand and shook it. "We drive on." He nodded at the wall between our rooms. "What do you tell her, though?"
    "I don't know yet."
    Bud slipped on his socks, tugged on his new boots and snagged his room key. He put on his hat and clipped some shades over his glasses. "Use my shower. Clean up. I'll take her to breakfast ... patch things up for you."
    I searched his eyes behind the sunglasses. "You sure about that?"
    "Leave it to me, Hector."
    Would Bud tell Alicia what I'd just confided to him? Probably ... if he thought it was necessary to mend things. But maybe he'd be so smooth it wouldn't be needed. Hell, he was a fucking poet, after all. And I was past caring, either way. "I'll owe you three times, then," I said.
    Bud Fiske said, "How do you figure?"
    "You've saved me three times. Once in Mexico, putting that pic in the federale's eye; a few minutes ago, when you had every right to shiv me and chose not to; and making things okay with Alicia again."
    "Haven't done the last yet." He smiled and shook his head, his hand on the doorknob. "Hector, do you deliberately make a mess of your life just to keep yourself interested?"
    I chuckled and shook my head. "Kid," I said, "you're the first person in this screwed up excuse for a world to really get my act. Well, the first who isn't a woman to get it."
    Bud Fiske smiled sadly. "My God," he said, "what a terrible way to live." He hesitated, then said, "You know, there's a big difference between living for the moment and really trying to live in the moment, all the fucking time, Hector. The first is just wrong-headed and shallow. The latter is not only impossible, it's downright dangerous."
    I remembered something Hemingway said to me in Captain Tony's so many years ago. I said it aloud: "We all have a right to hurt ourselves."
    "No," Bud said. "It's plenty dangerous to you living like that, but it's also dangerous to the poor bastards closest to you. It's not right for you to choose for them."
    I shrugged. "Maybe not. But you know, Bud, poets have to try to live in every moment ... and then live to write about it. It's the path you've chosen for yourself. You may not know it yet, but that's the truth. Got to feed the beast; feed the hungry muse so she'll spread her legs for you."
    He nodded, but looked skeptical.
    19
    After Bud left I sat there,