Page 78 of Deadly Aloha
Kensi pouted over her shoulder at her husband.
I chuckled. “If your man is too insecure to let you stab hooks through another man’s balls, you can put them in his feet.” I looked at Aftermath, baiting him. “Unless that’s too much for yoursensibilitiestoo.”
“Keep it up, Aloe Icky, and you’ll be going overboard too.”
I waggled my eyebrows, daring him. “But then my men would toss you over? What would be the point? Of the two of us, which do you think is the strongest swimmer?”
Konstantin’s pitiful whimpers continued as we added more hooks. It was almost like he was too exhausted to scream, the lazy bastard.
“If Aftermath’s overboard too, then it’s two-on-two,” Tangaloa pointed out. He added two hooks to the man’s ear. In my experience, it was a tight squeeze, but a grown man could fittwelve to fifteen hooks per ear. I doubt those two were the only ones going in.
“Yeah, but Kensi’s one of those two,” Aftermath shot back at him.
“And you think we’re too honorable to fight a girl?” Tangaloa asked him, amused.
Aftermath snorted. “Fuck no, but once you see her fight, you’ll be jumping to join us in the water.”
Kensi looked up at her husband from where she was making a heart shape out of hooks in the top of Konstantin’s foot and blew him a kiss.
“This might take a while,” I said to Capone, who was watching our banter like it was a tennis game. “You’re welcome to start questioning him.”
Capone pulled out his phone, lucky fucker. The one Neo had given me was aNokia 3300, which brought back a lot of childhood memories. They claimed I couldn’t go off fighting evil without a phone but they were not giving me yet another phone to be destroyed. If I managed to keep this one intact by the time I got back, they would consider replacing my smartphone. It was why I only had printed pictures of Nishi.
Capone turned his phone around to face Konstantin. The same picture of Nishi that I had was on the screen. “Almost three months ago, you sold this woman. We want to know to who.”
Konstantin blinked, his eyes filled with pain. His throat was likely sore from the seawater, but if he could scream, he could talk.
“Have you tried putting a hook through someone’s eye before?” Capone asked me.
I was still working my way down Konstantin’s right arm. Each of his fingertips now had one too and I did four in his palm. “Sure. It was disappointing the first time I did it because I learned they don’t pop like balloons. Instead, it’s like an oozykid’s ball being deflated. And normally I don’t do it until the end. I like them to see and admire my handiwork first.”
Capone took a look over Kensi’s crouched form at the bucket with hundreds of hooks still inside. “Seems to me, he only needs one eye for that.”
Kensi handed me up a hook.
“Thank you, darling,” I smiled down at her as I took the hook. “Have I told you yet just how utterly fantastic you look on your knees before me?”
Aftermath growled. “Have I told you yet that I have Lu’s cellphone number?”
I looked over my shoulder at him. “Sending dick pics to mywahine? Naughty, naughty, Mr. Jacobs.”
Aftermath raised his chin. “’bout time she saw what a real man’s dick looked like.”
I grinned and then nodded to Konstantin. “Hold his head still. He’s going to squirm on this one.”
Aftermath stepped forward, his legs wide over his wife’s hunched back. He grabbed Konstantin by the hair, tipping his head back, and then locked his jaw closed. As soon as I brought the point of the hook closer to his face, he seemed to register what was going on and struggled.
I paused, holding the hook up in front of his nose. “This is going in your eye. The question is if it’s now or later. Later, you might be too out of it with pain to notice. By then, there will be several in your frank and beans anyway. I wonder which is more painful,” I added offhandedly. “Now, answer my friend’s question and don’t make him repeat it. He’s nicer than I am when it comes to repeating questions, but it’ll still piss me off.”
Aftermath lowered his hand from Konstantin’s jaw but kept hold of his hair.
“Yonkers,” the man gasped out as soon as his mouth was free. His voice was raspy, like a chain smoker, and his chest heavedwith the effort it took to talk. “He’s in Yonkers. Please… It was just?—”
I touched the tip of the hook to his cornea. “If you finish that sentence withbusiness, I will tie a rope through the eyes of all one thousand hooks in your body and use them to secure you to the keel. Are you aware that in the open ocean, a vessel like this can reach seventy, seventy-five miles per hour at full speed? You’ll be ripped apart bit by little bit, the hooks ripping from your flesh one by one. Now,” I removed the hook tip from his eye, “tell me again what the sale of my woman’sbest friendwas.”
He swallowed hard, the sound rough rather than smooth. But he kept his mouth shut.
“Where in Yonkers?” Capone asked in the following silence.
