The little guy jumps back and would have run into traffic if his partner hadn’t grabbed him.
“Don’t listen to him Duck! He’s desperate. We need this.” Benny pulls his friend close and softens his tone. “You want to see your son again, don’t you?”
Duck’s eyes swell up, and I roll mine. They attack me and wave a gun in my face, but he’s the one crying. The last person who tried to kill me flung a chopping knife at my throat. His aim, as was his julienne I’m sure, was dreadful.
I roll my body weight to the tip of my toes and get ready to spring up.
“Stop!” The fat one swings out his hand and breaks my nose.
“Ow! Yew didn’t haf ta too tha.” I pull my hands away from my face, and they’re covered in blood.
Duck tugs on his partner’s coat. “Come on Benny, let’s just get out of here. We don’t need him to turn things around.”
The fat one has a taste for blood now and likes what he sees. When I thought he couldn’t appear any uglier, his face morphs into a sleazy snarl. He rises with his weapon in hand, and yet again I find myself staring down a barrel.
“No,” he says. “I think you’ve been sucking on buffalo nuts.”
“I’m getting out of here!” The short one wobbles away, and Benny kicks me in the gut and laughs. I recalculate my chances of escaping with my life.
“We’re no fools,” he says. “Just unlucky.”
I arrive at a zero percent chance of escaping and seeing my own son again. I hope he will evade his ancestors better than I did.
Benny pulls the trigger and…
“There they are!”
A NYPD cop lunges around the corner and tackles the fat one. His partner jumps on and cuffs the man who ruined my chance of winning America’s Next Top Model. I see two more officers drag Duck into a squad car a few blocks down.
Benny is yelling a string of curses and expletives, which only make the cops twist the cuffs tighter. “He’s a crow-eater!” he yells. “He ain’t like us!” The police read him his rights, and one of them looks me over to see if I need an ambulance.
“You’re lucky son. The bullet didn’t even graze you, but you may be brushing crumbs of the brick wall out of your hair for a few days. You should let a doctor take a look at you.”
“Thanks, but I’m fine. I just want to go home.”
“Of course, let me get your statement.” He waves the other two squad cars on. A few citizens stopped to take pictures and watch the action, but the officer clears them away from the scene too. Once everyone is back to their normal business and my nose stops bleeding, he comes back with a notepad.
“Say, is this your son?”
