Ho, now, Riddle Afield just come in the door.

Remember that?  Course you do.  That man come through any door, no one can forget it.  Block out the sun with hisself, block out the chill in the air with the heat that comes off him.  That heat stored up inside from all them years plying his trade on the steam gun.

That man, come there to swap one of his eyes, eyes so sharp they cut when they run across your face, sawp that eye to the old voodoo man for somethin regular folks don’t want to talk on.

But he forgot that swap.  That swap slipped right from his ugly mind and out the back door and never was nothin so glad to be got from a place than was anything that got from Riddle Afield’s mind.

But a new swap, not knowin no better, ambled in the front.

Necrotic Culver.

Nothin but a babe, swaddled an all, shock of black hair over green eyes, pale, pale skin.  An a murderer’s soul inside.

Not that you need to know that part yet.  But it’s true.  Necrotic had a soul for killin.  She’d come to do it natural enough.

But first a girl has to learn.

Old voodoo man had no fear of nothin.  Nothin vexed him true, nothing mayhaps but the sound of a violin bein scraped by someone who knew whathow to do it right.  But of men, he had nothin to care about.  Riddle didn’t spook him none at all.  Just a man.  A big man, yed.  An ugly man, yes.  A man who joyed on misery, yes.  An evil man, yes.  But the old voodoo man knew there was worse things than a big, ugly, evil man who joyed on misery.  He knew there was worse because he looked every morning at himself in the mirror and saw it right there.

So, Riddle came in and the old voodoo man just jabbed him with a stick he carried around sometimes when he was in an especially jabbin mood.  Say when his piles was botherin him.  (piles is like hemerhoids, which is like nothin you want to know about anyways)

He jabbed at Riddle Afield and asked him whatafter he was.  An Riddle, he never took his eyes off Necrotic Culver, just pulled off his goggles, showed em sharp and cutting, and gave with his gunner’s rumble, “Come to swap.”

Across the room, Shadding Lyttle, still recovering from the wound Necrotic put in his heart when he set eyes on her, felt that voice shiver his ribcage, and watched as two tiny twin cuts appears on Necrotic’s cheek.  Thin and red, beads welling at the end of each.

Old voodoo man, he smiled.

Talk about a smile, mostly you’re talkin about somethin happy.  Someone happy.  True enough, old voodoo man was happy, but not in any way me and you would want to feel happy.  He was happy like a spider maybe is happy.  Happy to feel a vibration on teh threads of its web.  To know it’s gonna be wrappin a meal up tight soon enough.  Suckin the melted entrails from somthin still warm.

It was that kind of smile.

Sharp as Riddle Afield’s eyes were, he’d have been payin attention to that smile, he’d have got the message.  An even a man as fearsome as himself would have taken that message and gone right out the door.

But he was still all eyes on Necrotic.

An he said, “C’mon, old man, lets you an me swap.  Got an eye here, you can see halfway to China an back again with it.  An all I want,” an here he licked his lips, “an all I want is a little somethin you got just lyin around the place.”

Old voodoo man didn’t look where Riddle was lookin, didn’t need to.  He just pulled a whittlin knife from inside that vest coat of his and shaved a point on the end of his jabbin stick.  Sayin, “Yes, Mr. Afield, I think we can make a swap, indeed.  First now, let us see about getting that eye out.”

Shadding Lyttle knew there was bad business about to come to play. Knew it cause he was born into it an all.  Pulled Necrotic Culver closer to his chest, nodded at something only he could hear, and was intimately grateful for the honed piece of onyx he kept tucked in the top of his boot.  Thought about that stone edge, and looked at Riddle Afield’s pocked cheek.

There’s violence comin in this tale soon enough.  That sort of thing can always wait.

-c

As I hinted in the previous post, the Hank Thompson trilogy is now available in a digital format that pretty much anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can access.

Starting today the entire trilogy is being hosted on Scribd.

The books can be read directly from the site over a live connection, or they may be downloaded as DRM free PDFs and kept on your desktop, laptop, notebook, netbook or any handheld with an app that reads PDFs.

Don’t know if you have a PDF reader?  Download one for free HERE.

The book downloads on Scribd do require that you set up a user account.  These accounts are free and only ask for an email and password, with a privacy policy that covers the usual territory.

Here’s where you find the books:

CAUGHT STEALING

SIX BAD THINGS

A DANGEROUS MAN

You can read them right from those pages, or set up an account, click download, chose SAVE A COPY from the toolbar, and a copy will be dropped wherever you direct it to.  Once it’s on your computer  you can print it and put it in your backpack to read on the bus, move it to your handheld, or delete it.  You can even share it if you like.  Email it to a friend, or an enemy.  You can’t make money off it, but that’s for lawyers to deal with.

I think this is pretty fucking cool.

I expressed displeasure to Random House about what I felt was the exclusionary nature of their previous free ebook offers, and they came back with this idea.  It’s not small cheese.  It’s big cheese.

The previous offers also still apply.

iPhone and iTouch owners can find the Henry Thompson trilogy preinstalled in their library when they download Stanza from the app store. (I had a middling experience with Stanza’s beta reader for windows desktop, but I hear the iPhone/iTouch version works very well. )

Kindle owners can find the Hank Thompson trilogy available for free at Amazon’s Kindle store, along with free books by Alan Furst, David Liss, and some other great writers.  An offer that expires on February 28th.

Free books.  Read ‘em.

I’m not sure where one should expect to find the bereaved daughter of a
wealthy Malibu suicide in need of a trauma cleaner long after midnight,
but safe to say a trucker motel down the 405 industrial corridor of oil refineries
and chem plants in Carson was not on my list of likely locales.
—Ouch. That looks painful.
I touched the bandage on my forehead.
—And if that’s what it feels like to look at it, imagine how it feels to actually
have it happen to you.
The half of her face that I could see in the chained gap between the
edge of the door and the frame nodded up and down.
—Yeah, I’d imagine that sucks.
Cars whipped past on the highway across the parking lot, taking full advantage
of the few hours in any given Los Angeles county twenty-fourhour
period when you might get the needle on the high side of sixty. I
watched a couple of them attempting to set a new land speed record.
I looked back at Soledad’s face, bisected by the door.
—So?
—Uh huh?
I hefted the plastic carrier full of cleaning supplies I’d brought from the
van.
—Someone called for maid service?
—Yeah. That was me.
—I know.
She fingered the slack in the door chain, set it swinging back and forth.
—I didn’t really think you’d come.
—Well, I like to surprise.
She stopped playing with the chain.
—Terrible habit. Don’t you know most people don’t like surprises?
I looked over at the highway and watched a couple more cars.
—Can I ask a silly question?
—Sure.
I looked back at her.
—What the fuck am I doing here?
She ran a hand through her hair, let it fall back over her forehead.3
—You sure you want to do this, Web?
That being the kind of question that tips most people off to a fucked up
situation, I could very easily have taken it as my cue to go downstairs, get
back in the van and get the hell gone. But it’s not like I hadn’t already been
clued to things being fucked up when she called in the middle of the night
and asked me to come to a motel to clean a room. And there I was anyway.
So who was I fooling?
Exactly no one.
—Just let me in and show me the problem.
—Think you can fix it, do you?
I shook my head.
—No, probably not. But it’s cold out here. And I came all this way.
She showed me half her smile, the other half hidden behind the door.
—And you’re still clinging to some hope that a girl asking you to come
clean something is some kind of booty call code, right?
I rubbed the top of my head. But I didn’t say anything. Not feeling like
saying no and lying to her so early in our relationship. There would be time
for that kind of thing later. There’s always time for lying.
She inhaled, let it out slow.
—OK.
The door closed. I heard the chain unhook. The door opened and I
walked in, my feet crunching on something hard.
—This the asshole?
I looked at the young dude standing at the bathroom door with a meticulously
crafted fauxhawk. I looked at bleached teeth and handcrafted tan.
I looked at the bloodstains on his designer-distressed jeans and his artfully
faded reproduction Rolling Stones concert T from a show that took place
well before he was conceived. Then I looked at much larger bloodstains
on the sheets of the queen-size bed and the flecks of blood spattered on
the wall. I looked at the floor to see what I’d crushed underfoot, half expecting
cockroaches, and found dozens of scattered almonds instead. I listened
as the door closed behind me and locked. I watched as Soledad
walked toward the bathroom and the dude snagged her by the hand before
she could go in.
—I asked, Is this the asshole.
I pointed at myself.
—Honestly, in most circumstances, in any given room on any given day,
I’d say, Yeah, I’m the asshole here. But in this particular scenario, and I
know we just met and all, but in this room here?
I pointed at him.
—I’m more than willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and say that
you’re the asshole.
He looked at Soledad.
—So, yeah, he’s the asshole then?
She twisted her hand free and went into the bathroom.
—He’s the guy I told you about.
She closed the door behind her.
He looked at me.
—Yeah, you’re the asshole alright.
I held up a hand.
—Hey, look, if you’re gonna insist, I can only accept the title. But seriously,
don’t sell yourself short. You got the asshole thing locked up if you
want it.
He came down the room in a loose strut I imagine had been meticulously
assembled from endless repeat viewings of Tom Cruise’s greatest
hits.
—Yeah, I can tell by the way you’re talking. You’re the one fucked with her
today. Made jokes about her dad killing himself. You’re the asshole alright.
The toilet flushed, Soledad yelled over it.
—He didn’t make jokes!
The dude looked at the closed door.
—You said he made jokes.
He looked at me.
—Asshole. Fucking go in someone’s home, there’s been a tragedy, go in
and try to make money off that. Fucking vulture. Fucking ghoul. Who
does that, who comes up with that for a job? That your dream job, man?
Cleaning up dead people? Other kids were hoping to grow up to be movie
stars and you were having fantasies about scooping people’s guts off the
floor?
I shifted, crushing a few more almonds.
—Truth is, mostly I had fantasies about doing your mom.
He slipped a lozenge of perforated steel from his back pocket, flicked
his wrist and thumb in an elaborate show of coordination, and displayed
the open butterfly knife resting in on his palm.
—Say what, asshole?
Say nothing, actually. Except say that maybe he was right and I was the
asshole in the room. Certainly being an asshole was how I came to be
there in the first place.

An Excerpt from the upcoming fourth Joe Pitt Casebook: EVERY LAST DROP 

 

RIPE FOR THE TAKING.

That’s all I can think as I watch them.

The crowd pouring out of the Stadium, tens of thousands

cramming out onto River and the Concourse, flooding the street

under the 4-train tracks as the trains screech in and out overhead,

more people packing the cars sardine tight, tripping up the

steps, cascading down into the tunnels, mashing into Stan the

Man’s, northbound traffic making for the Cross Bronx Expressway

and the Triborough stalled out from all the people wandering

the street. Drunk and half drunk, ecstatic from a win or enraged

from a loss, a blue-and-white pinstriped mass of thousands.

All of them full up.

Each of them enough to keep some sad son of a bitch on his

feet for weeks. For months if he has some self-control and knows

how to go about his business. Most of them strangers to the

South Bronx, never seen more of it than this one subway station

or the parking lot and the Stadium itself. Each one full to their

pumping heart with quarts of blood.

Any wonder every fucking game brings trouble?

Sure, no big secret. That’s why the cops are out there. Cops

keep the traffic moving in fits and starts. Cops keep the Bleacher

Creatures from chewing the ears off any Sox fans stupid enough

to stay through the ninth inning on a night their team came to

town and won. Cops keep an eye out for pickpockets and for

drunks falling under the buses and for snatch-and-grab artists.

If I gave a shit about any of that stuff I’d give them a hearty pat

on the back and maybe buy a boy in blue a beer sometime.

But I don’t care.

What I do care about are poachers. What I care about are

starvelings. I care about the greedy and the weak, the foundering

and the lost and the plain stone stupid. I care about them so

much that I try to show my face around here after every night

game. Just to make it plain and clear.

Clear that they should get off this turf before I come up behind

them in an alley one night and put two in the back of their fucking

skull before they even know I’m there.

The halt and the lame. They got no place. Not as long as I’m

stuck up here.

Up here.

Stand up top long after a game, well before sunrise. Stand on

the 4 platform and look south and you can see it. You can see the

City right there. One stop over the river.

Fucking China to me.

Coming down to the street, iron bars walling stairs and turnstiles

and platforms, arching overhead, meeting the steel undercarriage

of the tracks, like walking circles in a cage.

My cage.

No one shits in my cage.

So after a game I make the scene. Truth to tell, figure I’d make

it even if I didn’t have practical concerns. Figure I’d be out there

on River just to take advantage of pretty much the only time I can

stick my face out of doors in the neighborhood and not pique

someone’s curiosity.

A white face in the South Bronx after dark, it draws a little attention.

During the day, around the courthouses on One Sixtyone,

you see plenty of them. Cops and lawyers and the occasional

plaintiff. But they all go home come night. Closest any of them

live to One Sixty-one and the Concourse might be Riverdale.

More likely Jersey or Queens.

Still, during the day I could blend in real easy eating a Cuban

from Havanna Sandwich Queen on one of the benches next to a

statue of Moses bringing the Ten Commandments down the hill.

Look at my build, my face, my black boots and black Dickies on

a summer day, with my leather jacket draped over the warm stone

bench, and someone might naturally think undercover. Think I’m

some cop up here to testify.

But that would require I was out during the day.

Which isn’t on my agenda. Ever.

Not until I develop a serious taste for dying from instantaneous

eruptions of bloody pustules on my eyes.

So if I desire to take the air, my promenades must come betimes

at night. And, man, there just ain’t no other fucking white

people in these parts after the sun goes down. And drawing eyes

is not something I have much desire to do.

Who that guy?

Seen him around?

Gotta be Five-0.

Naw, see him for months. Never make a move on no one.

He ain’t livin’ up here.

Don’t know, could be he is.

What block? What building?

Next thing you know, go down a block on a hot night: Old

guys got their card table and their wives’ favorite kitchen chairs

out on the sidewalk to play dominoes; young guys standing

around someone’s leased Escalade, bass beats rippling their

baggy shorts, shooting texts to the shorties looking down from a

fire escape across the street; windows open, rice and beans and

stewed chicken smells coming out, mothers and grandmothers

and pregnant girls inside laughing and sipping sangria made

from jug red and 7Up; someone catches sight of me and the

party just shuts down. Hear nothing but my boots on the pavement,

see nothing but sideways eyes scoping me out all the way

to the end of the street until I turn the corner and they all look

at one another.

Who the fuckin’ white guy?

Figure a question like that can drive some people crazy. Figure

some people got to know. Figure sooner or later someone gets in

my face. Figure that doesn’t end well.

Figure that isn’t the real fucking problem anyway.

The real fucking problem is when that question circulates too

far, rumors start, people tell stories, stories spread.

The river, I can’t cross it, but any of these people can. And they

can take questions and rumors and stories with them. And once

that kind of shit is over there on the Island, no telling where it

ends up. Ends up in the wrong place, maybe someone hears it.

Someone hears it, maybe someone decides to look into it. Someone

looks into it, maybe someone sees me. Someone finds me.

And once I’m found by someone from the Island, figure my game

is played out. Figure me dead.

Well, that’s on the agenda, but I’m trying to see if I can’t attend

to that matter at a later date. More pressing business at the moment.

Places to go. People to see.

And kill.

Goals. Ambitions. They keep a man going.

Any case, all the restrictions my new neighborhood puts on

me, figure I’d stroll over after the games just to mix with the

crowd. Just to be out. Anonymous. Free is a word you could use if

you like. If you like a good laugh, that is.

And while I’m there stretching my legs, I take a look around,

take a sniff of the air, see if I maybe smell something I don’t like.

I smell something I don’t like, I can make a point of finding who

it is. Maybe find an intimate moment when the crowd eddies

around us, lean close and make myself clear.

I had such an opportunity tonight.

Waiting on the last couple outs of the ninth inning inside

Billy’s, nursing a plastic cup of tap beer, mentally adding the last

of the singles and change in my pocket to see if I could make it

come out to enough for a real drink before I wrapped up. I

smelled something waft in from the street. I knocked the bottom

of my cup against the bar and watched the foam rise, watched it

boil down, drank the last of it lukewarm and headed out to the

street where the crowd from a not very close loss was already

pouring surly out of the Stadium.

Want to smell rank? Smell a few thousand baseball fans on a

hell-humid night after a bad loss. Sweat-soaked jerseys, urinesoaked

sneakers, dribbled pump-cheese, a cloud of exhaled

peanut breath and hot dog farts.

Unpleasant.

And still, I can smell it.

Scent like slightly diluted acid, cutting my nasal passages.

Hard sharp poison. Venom.

Vyrus.

I start cutting the crowd, working my way back and forth

across the street on sharp diagonals, looking for the scent. And

finding it. Finding it over and over.

The dildo somewhere up ahead of me must be following a similar

path, but cutting for signs of different prey. Looking for a

mark. Someone who will cull themselves drunk from the herd

and wander down the wrong long street, into an absence of light

where any old bad shit can take place.

I can be patient. Wait till he starts moving in a straight line.

That will be the sign, when he stops blundering back and forth

leaving trail after trail, that’ll be the sign he’s found what he

wants. The idiot, out here making a spectacle of himself, hunting

in the open like a bag-snatcher.

Or.

Oh, shit.

Yeah, who’s the idiot now?

Right. Me.

It’s not a single trail zigzagging the crowd.

It’s trails.

A pack. A fucking pack in the crowd. A fucking pack of youngbloods

working the crowd after a game. Cocky in numbers, ignorant

of fear, dumber than dirt.

Christ, does that ring a bell.

Like my own bell tolling away before I learned a thing or two.

I can’t tell how many. Their lines are all stirred together in the

dead air by the shuffling herd. But the scent is strong. So make it

three. Maybe make it four. No more than that. Four together is

pushing any kind of balance. Four can’t last together for long.

Tear each other apart.

No more than four. More likely three. Two?

That’s wishful thinking.

But Christ, let it be no more than three.

More than three and I just won’t have enough bullets. Three

bullets being all I have at the moment. Three bullets, a likewise

amount of dollars, and maybe that many days I can get through

healthy before I need to get my hands on some more blood of my

own.

Well, not blood of my own. More like blood of someone who

can maybe spare a couple pints. Those people, they tend to be a

rare commodity. Most people need all they got. And some of us,

some of us need all we can get our damn hands on.

Every last drop.

—Now! Now! Clear the fuck off now!

—Fuck you!

—Yeah, fuck you!

—Not your fuckin’ street!

—Gonna meet the street in a second. Gonna be assumin’ the position

gangsta style, face in the gutter in a second.

—Man, fuck you!

I swing round and watch some cops dealing with four kids

whipping through the crowd on bright little pocket bikes, knees

jutting high from the two-foot-tall cycles, engines rising and

falling as they give little pulses of gas to keep themselves in motion.

The cop on point adjusts his gun belt.

—Say that word to me again! Say it again! Taser your ass right off

that bike. Know what happens I hit you with a Taser? Make you

shit your pants, kid. Lie there crying mami, mami and your pants

full of shit just like when you were a baby.

One of the kids guns his bike, the tails of his do-rag flapping

behind him.

—Man, Taser you mama.

—What? Say what?

The kids cut back and forth between cars and pedestrians,

never losing balance, staying just far enough from the cops that if

the officers get serious the kids know they can get away.

—Say you mama need a Taser for her stinky pussy.

The cops are half smiling as they walk slowly, herding the kids

away from the heart of the Stadium outflow. Enjoying the distraction.

But clearly not above busting a little skull if they can get

their hands on the fuckers.

The point cop fingers the handle of his baton and tilts his chin

at his partner.

—Kid’s clearly never met your mama, Olivera, otherwise he’d

know how sweet her pussy smells.

Olivera hoists a middle finger at him.

—Not as sweet as your mama says my dick is.

Do-rag rises on his pegs.

—Cops be all in each other mama’s pussies. I wait till you at it

and fuck you daughters.

The point cop’s fingers curl on his baton.

—That ain’t fuckin’ funny, you little shit.

Olivera adjusts his hat.

—I ain’t even got a daughter and I don’t think it’s funny.

Do-rag shrugs, weaves around a clot of baseball fans watching

the scene play.

—No problems, man. I fuck you wifey instead.

And the two cops run at the kids and the two other cops that

had been working their way over from the north end of the street

where the new Stadium is going up run at the kids and the kids

hit the gas, the tiny 49cc engines whining and the crowd scatters

and the cops scream and when the dust settles the backs of the

kids flick out of sight around the corner, one of them waving the

cap he snatched from the head of one of the cops.

The crowd rustles back into its former rhythm and shape,

everyone avoiding eye contact with the cursing cops. The cops

stand in a circle and ask one another if they’ve ever seen those

kids before, what block they maybe live on, what building they

maybe live in, discussing how much ass they’re gonna kick when

they catch up to them.

I wander across the street, crossing the path the kids took as

they rode off, knowing the cops will be lucky if they never see

that particular group of little shits ever again.

Poison in the air.

Poison left hanging by that pack.

Kids no older than thirteen. Could they be older? Sure they

could. If they were heavy feeders they could be old men on the

inside. But they’re not. Old men wouldn’t make a spectacle like

that. Old men wouldn’t bait cops. No, they’re new.

New to the life.

Jesus, thirteen, they’re new to everything there is. And destined

to never get old to it. Not the signs they’re flashing. Big

signs, neon and bright: KILL ME NOW!

I cross to Gerrard, the crowd thinner, the traffic for the CBE

and the Triborough heavy, past the long low bunker of the parking

garage.

Thinking.

Yeah, I’m thinking about the kids. But I got other things on my

mind as well. Like I’m thinking about who made them that way.

Who bled into them. And how many must have died ugly on the

way to infecting those four.

And I’m thinking how life isn’t an easy thing. Nasty, brutish

and short, so they say. And how you got to take your pleasures

where and when you find them. Because they may not come

again.

And I’m thinking just how much pleasure I’m gonna take from

scalping the guy who infected those kids. How much fun it’s

going to be to peel his skull and shove the rag of skin and hair

down his throat to muffle the screams while I figure ways to

make him live as long as possible as I yank his ribs out.

Any wonder I’m so distracted I don’t register the stink of them

as I pass the gated mouth of an alley until I’m twenty feet past it?

I pull up and walk back. The alley is right next to Cassisi and

Cassisi Accident Cases. Se habla español. Like any of the ambulance

chasers in these parts don’t habla español.

I look between the red-painted bars of the gate, down the narrow

space between buildings where old stone walls topped by

curls of razor wire separate good neighbors. There’s a concrete

staircase climbing to the backs of buildings that face on Walton.

A splash of red much brighter than the paint on the gate at the

foot of those stairs.

I push the gate open, the chain that’s meant to keep it closed

dangles, links snapped clean. At the end of the alley, a sound. Reminds

me of a cat I saw once, had its hindquarters run over by a

bus. Cat’s forelegs kept reaching out, claws rasping the asphalt,

trying to get purchase, pull itself away from the pain. People

stood on the sidewalk, stared at the mutilated cat. I stepped on

its neck and it stopped moving. Way people reacted, you’d have

thought I did the wrong thing.

She’s where they left her, on the pavement, blood bubbling

from her lips, red fake fingernails raking the ground. Her eyes roll

as my shadow falls across her. Looks at me, wheezes, says something.

—Ee iunt aigh ee.

It takes a second, but I get it.

She’s right. They didn’t rape her. A hard thing for her to fathom

about a gang of rabid kids who just bit her tongue out.

Her eyes roll again, up into her head this time, and she’s out.

I look around. Lights in the back windows of the tenements. A

collection of overfull garbage cans with a chain running through

their handles. The kind of alley where people steal fucking

garbage cans. Up the stairs it’s darker, a little alcove huddled at

the bottom of one of the buildings, a door leading into a basement.

I pick her up and put her over my shoulder and go up the stairs

and down into the alcove. The door is steel, the lock is cheap. It

pops the second time I put my shoulder into it. I take her inside

and dump her in a corner.

She’s stopped bleeding. She’s stopped bleeding for the same

reason I’m not drinking her blood right now. The kids infected

her. Could have been on purpose. Could have been an accident.

Biting off someone’s tongue, figure there’s a good chance you

might get your own lips bit. However it went down, she got some

of the kids’ blood in her.

And she liked it.

Or something in her liked it.

Or however it works.

If it hadn’t worked, if she wasn’t the kind can take the Vyrus,

she’d be dead in a puddle of white spew already. As it is, the

wound in her mouth and the various scratches and scrapes she

got in the tussle are closed up. Vyrus going to work. So I settle in.

I could kill her.

I should kill her.

I don’t and she’ll either end up drawing attention to her new

condition and making things harder for everyone else. Or she’ll

take to it and be another mouth that needs to feed. More competition

for everyone. Not that I care about everyone. Still, fact that

she’s likely got no future that doesn’t involve making my life

harder in one way or another is enough that I should kill her now.

But I don’t.

Someone had a chance to make that call on me way back and

he passed on the option. I don’t talk to that guy anymore. Not

since I stuck a nail in his femoral artery, but he did right by me

once.

Least I can do is try the same.

Give her the score.

Let her decide.

So I smoke. And wait. Wait for the Vyrus to finish working her

over. Then we can have a talk.

Christ I hope she doesn’t scream too much when I try to explain

it to her.

—Here’s how the rest of your life works. You’re fucked. Your family,

you don’t get to see them ever again. Same with your friends.

Your job is over. Wherever you live, you don’t live there anymore.

You see someone on the street that you used to know, you go the

other way. You see those people, you get tempted to talk to them.

Try to explain. What you try to explain is that you’re sick. You try

to explain it’s not what they think. It’s a virus. A thing living inside

you. It makes you sicker than they can imagine. And there’s only

one way to treat it. To treat the symptoms. That’s to feed it. And

there’s only one thing to feed it. That’s blood. People blood. Know

what happens when you tell them that? They get the same look

on their face that you got on yours right now. Know the difference?

They’re not infected. They didn’t just get jumped and

beaten and have their tongue bitten out by a pack of wilders who

proceeded to suck on their mouth like it was a water fountain.

And because that didn’t happen to them, they can’t feel what

you’re feeling. That burn inside, the heat and tingle around your

wounds. They can’t look at the cuts on their bare arms and see

they’re already closed up, turning pink to white. They can’t feel

the scab grow over their stub of a tongue, feel it flaking away, feel

how smooth and perfect it is now. Feel that it almost seems to be

growing back. Unlike you, they hear a story like that, they got no

reason to think you’re anything but out of your fucking head, and

get you locked up. And that’s the happy ending. The unhappy

ending is if they should believe you. If someone should somehow

find out you’re telling the truth. Because they sure as shit won’t

think you’re sick, they’ll think you’re a goddamn monster. And

won’t it be fun to see that look on their faces. So, no more life. It’s

over. Other things are over too. You’ll never see the sun again. Not

unless you’re about to die a horrible death. The virus in you goes

crazy if it’s hit with shortwave UVs from the sun. Your whole body

becomes cancerous. Fast. Good news, none of the other crap is a

problem. Crosses, holy water, garlic. That shit, it’s shit. You’re infected,

not damned. Or maybe you are. I don’t know. A stake

through the heart will kill you, just like any asshole. But when it’s

fed, the Vyrus will crank up your system. Stronger, faster. Heightened

senses. And tough. But keeping it fed is the thing. A pint a

week. Blood. Human. More if possible. Think about drinking

blood. Not a happy thought. Now think about getting it. The kids

that attacked you, they’re not the norm. Well, up here they may

be a little more normal, but still pretty fucking baroque. The City,

Manhattan, it’s organized. Clans got it carved up. Coalition,

Hood, Society, others. Each one’s got an agenda. A Clan takes

you in, they’ll help you get settled. Adjusted. Not a joiner, you

can go Rogue, stay the fuck off Clan turf. That means staying off

the Island. Means getting blood on your own. Means hurting

people, mostly. Means sometimes someone gets killed. But better

if they don’t. Better if you develop a system. Find a junkie on

the nod you can tap him for a pint. Vyrus doesn’t care about the

junk. Doesn’t care about any kind of illness or poison. Keep it

healthy, it keeps you healthy. And maybe I’m wrong about your

people. Maybe you’re special close to someone. Could be your

boyfriend. Could be your sister. Someone that’s got a taste for

being used. You know the type. Maybe they got it in them to let

you cut into a vein every few weeks. That makes things a lot easier.

Still need to make some moves, but you have someone like

that, a Lucy like that, and things get easier. Not that easy is a

word gets thrown around much in this life. What else? People

know about us. Not a lot, but a few. Well, some know about us,

others just hope we’re real. Some, they want in on the game, want

to make the scene. Fucking Renfields. Others, they got an axe to

grind. Some of them got real axes. Van Helsings. A real one is bad

news. Someone who can go around in the day, poke into things,

has a credit rating to buy guns and bullets and stuff, and who also

knows the real score on us, that’s a serious danger. And? What?

And there’s some infecteds think the Vyrus isn’t a virus. Like

maybe it’s something, I don’t know, something supernatural. Enclave.

They’re crazy. And there’s a bacteria. Kinda like the Vyrus,

’cept it turns people into brain eaters. Zombies. But that’s pretty

rare. So. I don’t know what else. I don’t usually talk this much.

I blow some smoke at the ceiling.

—I feel like I’m forgetting something. Vyrus. Clans. Zombies.

Stay out of the sun. Don’t get shot. Abandon your life. Drink

blood to survive.

I shake my head.

—No. Guess that pretty much covers it.

I flick my cigarette butt away.

—So, question is, can you take it? I lay it out like that, do you

think you’re the kind who can take it?

She wipes at the drying tear tracks in the grit on her cheeks.

She sticks a finger in her mouth and touches her healing tongue,

takes her fingers out of her mouth and looks at me.

Says nothing.

I nod, point up at the barred window at ground level, the night

sky above.

—Look up there.

She looks.

I pull out my gun and use my last three bullets.

 

EVERY LAST DROP

Joe Pitt Casebook Four

Out September 30, 2008

THE SHOTGUN RULE

By

Charlie Huston

ONE

Piece of Shit Bike

It started with Andy’s piece of shit bike.

-What the fuck were you doing not locking it up?

-I just went in for a second.

-I just went it for a second.  How the fuck long do you think it takes to steal a bike, dickweed?

-It was right next to the window.

-Yeah, that’ll do it, no one ever steals shit that’s next to a window.  Fucking numbnuts.

George is kneeling next to a bucket of water, submerging the half-inflated inner tube from his bike’s front wheel. 

He looks once at Paul, then back in the bucket.

-Don’t be such a dick, man, he lost his bike.

Paul picks up a rock from the huge pile that occupies half the driveway. 

He shakes the rock around his hand like a single die.

-He didn’t lose his bike.

He tosses the rock, bouncing it off Andy’s back.

-He let someone steal it.

Andy feels pressure behind his eyes and fights it. Already cried once when coming out of the store and finding the bike gone.  Can’t cry again. 

He picks up a rock of his own.

-I didn’t let anyone steal it.

He throws the rock at Paul. 

-It was stolen.

Paul stays right where he is, the rock skipping across the pavement and into the street without coming near him.

-Yeah, big diff.

George is still shuffling the inner tube between his hands, looking for the string of bubbles that will point to the slow leak that’s been plaguing him for days.

-Don’t throw the fucking rocks around, dad’ll have a fit.

Andy kicks at a couple rocks, nudging them back toward the pile.  His and George’s dad had them shovel the rocks from the back of his pickup two weeks ago.  This weekend he’ll rent a rototiller and plow up the back lawn and they’ll have to move the rocks a wheelbarrow load at a time to spread over the yard.  It’s gonna suck and he’s not even going to pay them.  He says they should be thanking him for plowing under the lawn that they hate mowing and weeding.

A line of bubble appears and shoots to the surface of the bucket.  George covers their source with a fingertip and lifts the tube from the water.

-Hand me that rag.

Andy bends to pick up a scrap of chamois that’s lying next to the toolbox, but Paul takes a quick step and places his foot over it.

-George, don’t let this guy help with your bike.  He’s bad luck.  He touches your bike and it’s gone.

Andy yanks on the rag.

-Get off dickmo.

-Make me.

-Get.  Off.

Andy pulls harder and Paul lifts his foot and Andy falls back on his ass.

-You’re such a feeb.

-Dick!

George holds out his hand.

-Give me the rag.

Andy throws the rag at him. 

Some big brother.  Think he could take his side against Paul just once.  Just today.  Fucking bike.  Still can’t believe he was so fucking stupid not to lock it up.

George catches the rag, lifts his finger from the puncture in the tube and starts drying the rubber around it.

-Did you see who took it?

Andy gets off his ass, takes the puncture kit from the toolbox and pops the shiny tin lid from the cardboard cylinder. 

-No.  If I had I would have kicked their ass.

Paul reaches up, grabbing a lower branch of the maple tree alongside the driveway and chinning himself on it.

-Yeah, George, what are you thinking?  If he’d seen them he would have kicked their ass.  He’s such a badass ass kicker.  Asses all over town are afraid of him.

Andy flips him off and hands George the top of the puncture kit. 

George drops the rag, takes the lid and uses its ridged upper surface to score the rubber around the puncture.

Paul hauls himself up onto the branch, hooks his knees around it and dangles upside down, long curls falling over his face.

-Come kick my ass, Andy, I’ll just hang here and you try to kick my ass.

Andy stays where he is, watching George fix the leak, taking the lid back and handing him the metal tube of cement. 

Inside he’s picturing picking up the hammer from the toolbox and swinging it at Paul’s face.  He’s picturing finding whoever stole his bike and stabbing them in the throat with a screwdriver.

Paul puts one arm behind his back.

-C’mon, man, one handed and upside down, you gotta be able to kick my ass.

George rubs the cement over the puncture. 

Paul puts his other arm behind him.

-No hands.  No hands.  It’s never gonna get easier than this, man.  C’mon and take a shot.  You know you want to.  Remember that time I pantsed you on the quad?  Here’s your chance to get back at me.

Andy remembers.  First day of his freshman year, bad enough that he’d been skipped a year to start high school early, but there was Paul, greeting him by running up and yanking his hand-me-down bell bottoms to his ankles while the entire student body was crisscrossing the quad on their way to homeroom. 

He pictures standing in the middle of that quad with a machine gun in his hands, pulling the trigger and turning in slow circles until he is all alone and it is quiet.

He shakes his head sharply, trying to jar the image loose, unsuccessfully.

He takes the cement back from George, caps it and drops it in the kit, chewing the inside of his cheek.

Paul swings himself back and forth a few times. 

-What’s the matter, spaz?  Looks like you’re getting twitchy over there.  You gonna freak out and start throwing things again?

George picks up one of the rocks, cups it like a marble and flicks it at Paul, bouncing it off his forehead.

Paul laughs, drops from the branch.

Hector barrels up the driveway.

-Hey!

He skids to a stop, leaving a streak of black rubber on the pavement, his front wheel scrunching into the rock pile.

-Hey, Andy, what’s up with your bike?  I just saw one of the Arroyos riding it around.

They all look at him.

Paul hawks and spits.

-Which one?

-Timo.

He sticks a finger in Hector’s face.

-You fucking sure?

Hector knocks the finger away.

-Yeah, asshole, I’m fucking sure.  We may all look alike to you, but I can tell my Mexicans apart.

Paul picks up a rock, heaves it down the street.

-Fucking Timo.

.

*****

      The Arroyos were legend long before George, Paul and Hector got to high school. 

Fernando was the first.  He spent five years at the high school, leaving behind him a shattered and exhausted administration and a faculty that was to a soul nothing but grateful that they had survived. 

He had taxed the personal behavior codes to the limit, twisted them and found loopholes so obscure the entire rule book had to be revised upon his departure.  And yet, despite the physical damage he had done to the campus and assorted classmates.  Despite the psychological scars he had left on his teachers.  Despite all this, the football coach and athletic boosters had campaigned relentlessly to have a special grading curve installed that might keep his GPA hovering just in the vicinity of a C+, just that fraction across the border from C that would have allowed him to play varsity football.  Their efforts had been inspired by the havoc he had wreaked as both an offensive lineman and linebacker in jv ball.

Any opposing player unlucky enough to have to line up opposite him, any bullrushed quarterback, any running back or wide receiver required to pass through his domain on the field was inclined to trip and fall while he was still yards away rather than endure the rib-cracking-nose-breaking-concussion-inducing hits he routinely laid down.  If the ball were fumbled while he was on the field, every player, his own teammates included, ran from it, terrified of the prospect of ending up in his clutches at the bottom of a pile.  His heavily taped fist pounding your groin, fingers gouging at your eyes and a relentless barrage of Spanish curses regarding your mother’s pussy screamed in your ear.  But, gamer though he may have been, his all but flawless record of non-attendance in class kept him from advancing to the varsity squad.

In his third junior year he had turned eighteen and passed finally into adulthood and the clutches of the criminal justice system.  His record as a minor was admirable enough that his first adult arrest earned him a conviction (sentence suspended), and a final expulsion.

With Fernando gone the School Board heaved a brief sigh of relief, and then began preparing for the arrival of Ramon.

The preparations were insufficient. Ramon engaged upon his own Sherman’s March from the first day of his freshman year.  Announcing his presence by egging the entire faculty parking lot at midday in full view of the sixty-eight year old campus security guard who had been phoned at home the night before and told that if he ever called the police on an Arroyo he would have a Columbian necktie the next morning.  He didn’t know exactly what a Columbian necktie was, but, recognizing Fernando’s voice over the line, he knew he didn’t want one.

Ramon lasted barely one year, doing as much damage in that time as Fernando had done in one.  But shortly after summer vacation began he was arrested for armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon.  The deadly weapon being a hacksaw he wielded like a machete when a clerk at the 7/11 refused to open the register for him. 

Both were long gone when George, Paul and Hector began their freshman year, but Timo was in their class making up for his brothers’ absence. 

Timo seemed to have watched the progression, and decided it wasn’t for him.  He played jv and varsity soccer and starred on both squads.  He maintained a dead-on C+ average that never faltered, the product of a series of “tutors” who were paid to write his papers and prep cheatsheets for his tests.  He was one of the school’s five letterman Mexicans. 

He is also far and away the school’s biggest pot dealer.  Stoners were compelled to buy his shit-brown ditch weed even when their was an abundance of green buds to be found.  The penalty for not purchasing his goods being a visit from one of his older brothers. 

He sported his brothers’ lowrider style.  Khaki chinos, black leather shoes with white socks, long sleeve plaid shirt buttoned at the collar and wrists, but open all the way down and left untucked to reveal the white wifebeater underneath, a net over his blow-dried jet black hair, and a thin mustache he’d been cultivating since sixth grade.  He wore the look, but minus the switchblade in his back pocket or the bag of reefer tucked in his sock or the Newports in his shirtfront.  His lackeys carried these for him.  He was always clean, ready for any patdown.  A fine enough athlete that he was always welcome at the top jocks’ table.  Sleepy eyed and handsome, he was watched not just by the Mexican girls, but by the white chicks as well. Cowgirls, cheerleaders, brains, jocketts all had an eye for him. 

All of this concealing from the faculty what an enormous dick he was.

      *****

      Paul bounced on his toes.

-I’m gonna kill that fucking faggot.

George is sitting on the ground, turning his bike’s front wheel in his lap, tucking the inner tube back up inside the tire.

-Where’d you see him?

Hector is picking up tools.

-Over by their house.

-Was he fucking around or just headed home?

-He was headed toward Fernando’s pad.

George is using a screwdriver to flip the edge of the tire back inside the wheel rim.  He stops.

-Fernando’s?

-Yeah.

George goes back to work.

-Shit.

Paul is on his bike. 

-So fucking what, he’s going to his brother’s.  I’m still gonna fucking kill him.

Hector shakes his head.

-Fine, man, go pedal over there and kill him.  Not like Fernando won’t be home.  Not like Ramon isn’t didn’t get out of Santa Rita last month.  You see him since he got out? 

-Fuck him.

-Looks like all he did in there was eat and pump iron.

He spreads his fingers wide and holds them out over his chest, showing how big Ramon has gotten.

George slips the wheel back onto his bike’s front forks.

-When’d Timo move out of his folk’s?

Hector has pulled out a nearly full pack of Marlboro Reds.  He takes one for himself and hands the pack around.

-Don’t know.  My sister says he got in a fight with his mom and hit her in the stomach and his dad threw him out.  Like dragged him out the front door and threw him and a bunch of his shit on the lawn.  So now he’s at Fernando’s.

The others are quiet as they each take a smoke from the pack. 

George takes out a Bic sheathed in the stainless steel and turquoise case he bought at the Devil’s Workshop head shop last summer, and they all bum a light. 

Hector takes the pack back and looks at Paul.

-And that’s all.  He’s over there with his brothers.  You ride over there and fuck him up, they’re gonna kill you. 

Paul bites the filter of his cigarette and gets back on his bike.

-Fuck ‘em.  I’ll fucking kill those faggots if they let me take ‘em one on one.  Only way they can take me is if they gang up.

-Well, shit, man, that’s what they fucking do.

George packs the last of his tools away.

-Doesn’t matter what they do.  We got to go over there.  They got Andy’s bike.

And that’s when they look around and realize that Andy’s gone.

©Copyright 2007, 2008 by Charlie Huston.  All rights reserved etc.

 

CAUGHT STEALING

By

Charlie Huston

PART ONE

SEPTEMBER 22–28, 2000

Eight Regular Season

Games Remaining

My feet hurt. The nightmare still in my head, I walk across the

cold wood floor, shuffling my feet in the light grit. I’m half-drunk and I

have to pee. I’m not sure which woke me, the piss or the nightmare.

My john is just a bit smaller than the average port-o-potty. I sit on

the pot and rest my forehead against the opposite wall. I have a pee

hard-on and if I try to take a leak standing up, I’ll end up hosing the

whole can. I know this from experience. Plus my feet still hurt.

It takes a while. By the time I finish I’m just about asleep again. I

get up, flush, and shuffle back to bed. On the way, a last bit of piss

dribbles onto my thigh. I pick up a dirty sock from the floor, wipe the

urine off and toss the sock in a corner.

I crawl back under the covers and twist around a bit until I’m

arranged. I start to drift back asleep and the nightmare begins to rise

up again in my mind. I force myself fully awake to keep it from getting

back in. I think happy thoughts. I think about a dog I used to have. I

think about Yvonne. I think about baseball: long, lazy games of base

ball, plastic cups of cold beer between my thighs, peanut shells

crunching beneath my sneakers. Fly balls soaring over loping outfield

ers. The beautiful ease of the long pop fly out . . . No! Wrong! Base

ball is a mistake and the nightmare is rushing back in. I think about

home. Home does the trick and I start to ease back asleep. And only

then as I finally fall asleep do I register the blood I saw on the sock

when I wiped my leg, the blood from my piss. I sleep.

***

These things are not related: my aching feet, the nightmare, the blood.

My feet have hurt for years because of the job. The nightmare has

been going on for half my life. The blood in my piss is brand new, but

I know exactly where I got that too.

I got the bloody piss from the beating I took from a couple of guys

last night. By last night I mean a few long hours before the nightmare

woke me up. And when I say I took a beating from these guys, I really

mean they gave it to me. Free. I got lucky; they both had small hands.

Go figure, two big guys with small hands. It happens. They didn’t

want to bust up those little hands working on my face, so they gave it

to my body. It didn’t take long. They put some good ones in my gut

and ribs and I dropped. Then I took a couple boot shots in the kidneys. That’s where the blood is coming from.

The alarm goes off at 8:00 A.M.Now that the booze has worn off I

hurt everywhere, but my feet are what’s really killing me. I go to the

can, sure enough: more blood. I brush my teeth and hop in the shower.

Bruises are starting to well up all over my torso and the hot water feels

good. I leave the shower running and walk dripping to the fridge, grab

a cold beer and take it back to the shower. The water feels good, but

the beer is better. It takes the edge off my hangover, kicks up the dust

of last night’s drunk and gives it life. I take the washcloth from the

shower caddie and gently scrub my feet.

Out of the shower now, I finish the last of the beer while trimming

my toenails. I clip them very short and even and make sure there is no

grit hiding at the edges. I find a clean pair of socks with no holes and

get dressed. I head out the front door. There’s time for breakfast.

At the diner I have bacon and eggs and another beer. The first beer

was good, but the second is even better. I’m heading into the third

week of a pretty good binge and the first couple drinks of the day are

always the best. I have to ease into it with beer because my job starts

late. If I hit it too early I’ll be drooling by the time the shift begins. I

sip the beer, eat my chow, and look over the sports pages.

As a rule, the Daily News consists of equal parts violent sensationalism, feel-good human interest, celebrity gossip and advertising.

I read it every day and feel dirty all over. But it’s New York, and everybody

gets dirty sooner or later. Today it’s all election coverage and stories

about yet more dotcoms biting the dust. I flip past the photos of the

interchangeable candidates and get to the important stuff. See, the

reason I started buying this rag in the first place is because it’s the only

way to get West Coast scores in the morning. Unless you have cable. I

can’t afford cable.
Back in California, the Giants are suffering their usual late season

collapse. A week ago they were in striking distance of first place. But

after a seven-game skid, they’ve been eliminated from contention for

the division and are trailing the Mets for the wild card by four games

with eight games left in the season. Meanwhile the Dodgers are red

hot and have the division clinched after winning twelve of their last

fourteen.
I look at my watch and it’s time to go see the doctor.

I hate the Dodgers.
I’ve had this appointment for a week. I’m not here about the blood,

I’m here about my feet. I’ve tried every kind of shoe and insert I can

find and my feet are still killing me. So now, after years of bitching, I’m finally seeing a doctor. I could ask about the blood while I’m

here, but what the hell is he gonna tell me? He’s gonna tell me to go

to an emergency room and they’re gonna tell me that it’s not life-

threatening. They’re gonna charge me a few thou I don’t have to tell

me to rest a bit and not to drink alcohol or caffeine. I don’t drink caffeine. It makes me jittery. I sit in the waiting room and think about

that second beer and how good it was.

I’m not worried about the kidney. If the kidney was serious, I’d be

unconscious by now. It’s contused: my kidney is scraped and it’s

bleeding a bit. Dr. Bob comes out of his office and calls my name.

Dr. Bob is a great guy. He’s an Ivy League med school graduate who

came to the Lower East Side and opened a community practice. He’ll

take anybody as a patient insurance or no insurance, his rates are as low as they get, and you pay your bills whenever you can. All of which

suits my situation. He told me once he didn’t want to make people

healthy just to make them poor. Like I said, a great guy.

I told him about the feet a week ago and he sent me out for some

X rays. Now, in his tiny office, he turns from where the X rays are

clipped to one of those light things on the wall and sits on the stool in

front of me. He starts to look at my feet. He really takes his time, inspecting them. He holds each foot, first one and then the other, and

kneads a bit, searching for some imperfection. All the while, he directs his eyes upward, as if they might interfere with the examination:

a safecracker with his eyes shut.

—Doc?

—Shhh.
He squeezes my feet a few more times, then stands up. He’s talking

now, but I’m having trouble hearing what he’s saying. He’s gesturing

from my feet to the X rays. I’m thinking about getting out of here and

drinking my next beer. I’m thinking how I wish I were lying down right

now because I feel a little strange. He is looking at me oddly.

The roaring in my ears is not the hangover. I cannot hear over it and

it occurs to me that something must be wrong. The examining table

spins out from underneath me and I thump to the floor. I try to lift

myself up, but I can’t. I feel a warm wetness spreading over my lap

and down my legs. I can see the tops of my feet. I can see the tips of

my three-hundred-dollar sneakers that are supposed to be the most

comfortable things that money can buy but are not. And I can see

the bloody urine trickling out the cuffs of my jeans. Something is very

wrong. I sleep.
***

When I wake up, the first thing I think about is the fucking cat. I’m

looking after this guy’s cat for a couple weeks. God knows how long

I’ve been out and if the thing is even alive. Fuck! I knew this would

happen. I told the guy I wasn’t good with animals, that I can barely

take care of myself, but he was really up against it, so I took the damn

cat. Then I see I’m in the hospital and figure out I may have more important things to worry about.
A joke: Guy is born with three testicles and spends his whole life

feeling like a freak. Boys make fun of him in gym class, girls laugh at

him. Finally, he can’t take it and goes to have one of them lopped off.

The doctor takes one look and tells the guy no way, it’s too dangerous,

might kill him or something, but he sends him to a shrink who might

help out. This counselor or whatever he is tells the guy to take it easy,

he should be proud of this third ball, he’s special. I mean, how many

guys have three testicles, right? So the guy feels great after that. He

leaves the doc’s office, walks into the street, goes up to the first man

he sees and says, “Did you know, between you and me we’ve got five

balls?” This dude looks at him funny and says, “You mean you only

have one?”
First guy I see when I walk out of the hospital I go up to and start

talking.

—Did you know, between you and me we only have three kidneys?

He doesn’t say anything, just walks around me like I’m not there.

New York, baby, New York.
I’ve been in the hospital for six days: one unconscious and five conscious. The doctors removed the kidney, which had been nearly ruptured by the two big guys with four small hands and further damaged

by my negligence and massive consumption of diuretic liquids. Booze.

The kidney was at “four plus” when they took it out. At “five,” they

simply explode and kill you. I have been told that I should never again

consume alcohol in any amount for the rest of my life on pain of

death. Likewise no smoking or caffeine. I don’t smoke and, like I said,

caffeine makes me jittery.
After I blacked out, Dr. Bob called the EMTs and had them take

me to Beth Israel. He rode with me in the ambulance and when we

arrived he got me past all the emergency room crap and directly into

an operating room. He saved my life. One of the doctors told me all of

this and when Bob showed up I tried to thank him, but he waved it off

in a just-doing-my-job kind of way. Then we get to my feet.

—So, your condition is chronic and brought on by the amount of time

you spend on your feet at work.
I’m a bartender. I work a ten-hour shift five nights a week. Sometimes six or seven nights.

—You could buy a lifetime supply of Dr. Scholl’s and get your feet

massaged every night and it would not help. If you want the pain to go

away, you are going to have to get off your feet.

—What if I?—

—Off your feet. You’re like a computer worker with carpal tunnel: if

you want it to go away, you are going to have to change your work

habits forever.

—Wow.

—Yes, wow. Furthermore, the pain in your feet has been exacerbated

by poor circulation, which I would say is related to excessive alcohol

consumption.

—Wow.

—Yes. So stop drinking. Period.

—Yeah, sounds good.
And that was that. He told me good luck and was on his way out

when I asked about the bill.

—When you get a new job and you’ve paid off your bill here, we’ll talk

about money.
A great guy.
Booze and my kidney. Booze and my feet. A pattern emerging.

I called the bar and talked to Edwin, the guy who owns the place. I

apologized for the lack of notice, but Edwin was cool and just told me

not to be a stranger.
Would I have quit if it was just the booze and the kidney? If someone said, “Get away from the booze and the drinking life or you’re

gonna die,” would I have quit? I don’t know, but my feet are killing me

and that tears it.
I called my folks, made sure they knew I was OK and told them not

to come out or expect me to come home to be nursed. Mom cried a

little, but I made her laugh in the end, telling her the testicle joke.

Dad asked if I needed money and I said no. We talked about Christmas a bit and how long I’d stay when I come out and then I told them

I love them and they told me they love me and we hung up and I just

fucking stared at the ceiling for a while.

I called one of the other bartenders from work. Her name is Yvonne,

we used to see each other quite a bit, still do from time to time. So

she’s a girl I see from time to time. She’s more than that. She’s my best

friend. But I also see her from time to time. She has a key to my place,

so I told her about the cat and she promised to check on it until I got

home. She offered to come by the hospital, but I said no. I want to be

alone. I need to figure out what the hell I’m gonna do.

So now I’m out. I walk up to the stiff on the street and tell my kidney

joke, and then I’m taking a cab home. They wanted me to stay for ten days so they could keep an eye on me and take out my staples before I

left, but my lack of a) cash and b) insurance encouraged them to let

me go. I’ll have the staples out in a few days and just take it easy until

then. I have one kidney, I’m being forced to go cold turkey, I have a

hospital bill that makes the ten grand I carry in credit card debt look

like a bad joke, and I have no job. On the other hand, I pick up a paper and the Giants are on a four-game winning streak and have picked

up two on the Mets, who split a four-game stand against the Phillies. I

lean back into the cab seat and feel a sharp stab in my former kidney

and wonder what the hell was eating those guys who beat the crap out

of me.

***

Paul’s Bar closes at 4:00 A.M. On a Thursday it’s usually all regulars by
2:00 A.M. So when I’m working, that’s when I start my serious drinking. Last Thursday there were about ten regulars hanging out in the

place and I was starting to get my head on when the big guys came in.

They plop down at the far end of the bar and I wander over. These

guys are genuinely big; even sitting on the stools, they loom a little. But

big means nothing, I’m more curious about the way they’re dressed.

Both guys are wearing Nike tracksuits: one in black, one in white.

They are sporting several gold chains each, which go well with the

gold-rimmed Armani sunglasses they both have propped up on their

shaved heads. These guys are not our usual crowd. I take them for

Poles or Ukrainians left over from the old neighborhood before the

East Village went Latino and then arty and now yuppie. They order an

Amstel Light and a cosmopolitan. Each. They have Russianic accents.

And this is still far from the weirdest pair we’ve ever had in the place,

so I fix the drinks and take the cash and they say thank you.

As I walk back down the bar to get my own drink and resume my

game of movie trivia on the MegaTouch, I hear cursing behind me. I

turn and the guy in the white tracksuit is holding his cosmo like the

glass is full of vomit.

—This is shit.
He turns the glass upside down and spills it on the bar. The guy in

black tastes his and promptly spits it back up, also on the bar.

—This is also shit. I cannot drink this.

To prove his point, he takes another sip and spits it on the bar, then

he stands and walks to the trash and drops the drink, glass and all,

into the can.
I don’t like to fight. I have fought very little in my life, but what I

have noticed is that even when you win, you get hurt. I work out four

days a week and take boxing and self-defense on the weekends. I have

steel-toed boots and a Buck knife. I have an ax handle behind the bar.

None of this will help, because I don’t want to fight and these guys

clearly do. I smile. I walk down the bar to the two tracksuits, a smile

plastered on my semidrunk face, radiating joy and love. I am Martin

Luther King. I am Gandhi. I will ask these gentlemen if they would prefer another drink or their money back. I will carefully wipe their spit off the bar and all will be at peace, because I don’t want to fight.

They sit at the end of the bar, Amstels untouched, the one upturned

cosmo glass before them and, as I approach, they both slip their sunglasses over their eyes like they’ve been blinded by my smile. And that

is when I notice the small, girlish and simply beautiful hands they

both have. I am not afraid. These men are lovers, not fighters. These

men are concert pianists with graceful digits made for music, not

pugilism.
I reach the end of the bar and open my smiling mouth to offer them

a round on the house as compensation for their disappointment. They

grab me, drag me over the bar, and beat the crap out of me. Then they

leave.

I’ve been beat up before and had it hurt a lot worse. I don’t even

look that bad. But I do close the bar early and spend the next several

hours drinking and holding an ice pack to my ribs while Tim, a couple

other regulars and I tell fight stories: the high and low moments of

beating and getting beat. We have chalked up the tracksuits as psychos and, hey, what more can you say? A few hours later the blood shows up in my piss.

©Copyright 2004-2008 by Charlie Huston. All right reserved etc.

 

SIX BAD THINGS

By

Charlie Huston

PART ONE

DECEMBER 4-11, 2003

Four Regular Season Games Remaining

I’m sitting on the porch of a bungalow on the Yucatan Peninsula with lit cigarettes sticking out of both my ears.

I like to go swimming in the mornings. When I first came to Mexico I liked to go drinking in the mornings but, after I got over that I took up swimming and I discovered something. I have unusually narrow ear canals. Go figure. I discovered this while I was trying to sober up paddling around in the lukewarm morning waters, and found that my ears were clogged. I tilted my head from side to side and banged on my skull, trying to dislodge the water, but no luck. I plugged my nose, clamped my mouth shut and blew until it felt like my brain might pop out of my ass. No good. I crammed Q-tips up my ears, prodding at the blockage. That’s when things got really bad. For a few days I walked around half deaf, feeling like my entire head was packed with water logged cotton. Then I went to a doctor. I have a habit of saving doctors for a last resort.

Dr. Sanchez looked in my ears and informed me of the tragic news: unusually narrow ear canals. The water was trapped deep inside and my irresponsible Q-tip use had sealed it in with earwax. He loaded a beer-can-size syringe with warm mineral water and injected it into my ears until the pressure dislodged the massive clogs of wax and washed them into the small plastic basins I held just below my ears. He gave me drops. He told me never to stick anything in my ear other than my elbow and laughed at his own joke. He nodded sagely and told me the solution to my problem was quite simple: when my ears became clogged, I must stick a cigarette into either one and light them. The cigarettes, that is. Then he handed me a pack of Benson & Hedges and told me they were his preferred brand for the task and charged me a thousand pesos.

So. I am sitting on the porch of a bungalow on the Yucatan Peninsula with lit cigarettes sticking out of both my ears. The cigarettes burn and create a vacuum in my ears, sucking the moisture into the filters. I have a towel draped over each shoulder to catch the hot ash as it falls. I’ve been doing this a couple days a week for years and it always works. Of course I do now smoke two packs of Benson and Hedges a day, but there’s a downside to everything in life.

The sun has dipped far in the sky behind my back and the reds of the sunset are reflected in the perfect blue sea before me. I adjust my sarong so that the soft breeze waft higher on my legs. The heat of the cigarettes has become intense. I reach up and pinch them out of my ears, careful not to squeeze so hard that the waxy fluid trapped in the filters leaks out. I dump them into an ashtray resting on the porch near my feet, slip the towels off my shoulders, stand up and start walking toward the water. The beach is pretty much abandoned. A ways off to my right, I can see a small group of local boys covered head to toe in sand, kicking a soccer ball around on their homemade field. In the opposite direction, the silhouette of a pair of lovers kissing. When my feet hit the wet strip of sand near the waters edge I give my sarong a tug, it falls to the ground leaving me naked and I walk down into the gently lapping waves. The beach slopes away so shallowly from the shore that I can walk upright in the water for almost fifty yards before it will cover my head. I walk in the water with the sun sinking behind me, hearing the soft slap of the tiny waves quite clearly in my unclogged ears. I’ll probably have to do it all over again when I get out, twisting the cigarettes into my ears, lighting them and waiting patiently while they burn down, but it will be worth it. I want to take one last swim today. I’m going home tomorrow and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to come back here.

Machineguns wake me up in the morning, but they’re just in my head. I have my backpack ready by the door, the waterproof money belt draped over it. I go to the bathroom and stand under the showerhead. The water is a gentle warm sprinkle, not the thing to snap you out of a nightmare. Still sleepy, I close my eyes. Pedro explodes past me backwards, his torso stitched open by a cloud of bullets. My eyes snap open. I walk out of the shower and drip water across the bungalow floor to the boombox. I search the CDs for something loud. Led Zeppelin? Something fast and loud. The Replacements. I put in Pleased to Meet Me, the opening chords of I.O.U. flare out and Paul Westerburg starts screaming. I turn it up.

I finish my shower, pull on a pair of cotton fatigue-style pants, grab keys, sunglasses, my papers and a hefty wad of pesos. I check the money belt, make sure the extra passport and ID are where I can get to them easily, and strap it on. A tank top, short-sleeve linen shirt, a pair of trail sneakers and I’m dressed. I grab the backpack and sling one strap over my shoulder.

-Come on, cat.

Bud leaps from the comfy chair, walks over to the kitchenette cabinet and meows.

-Sorry, Buddy, no time. You can eat at Pedro’s.

He meows again. I walk over, grab him by the nape of his neck and put him on top of the pack.

-Fresh fish at Pedro’s. Trust me, it’ll be worth the wait.

I turn off the box, take a last look around. Did I forget anything? I mean, other than not to fuck up my life again? Nope all taken care of. Back door bolted, storm shutters padlocked. Good enough. I walk onto the porch and set Bud and the pack down next to the door.

I’m pulling the tarp off the Willys when I see a white Bronco turn off the trail a quarter mile down the beach and come bouncing across the sand towards me. Could be they just have a few more questions, but I don’t think cops roll up on you at dawn to ask questions.

I drop the tarp, wave, and point to the bungalow with a big smile on my face. One of the Federales in the Bronco waves back. I walk to the bungalow, grab Bud and the pack, step inside, lock the front door, go out the back, and dash across the sand into the jungle that is my backyard. All I have to do is get to Pedro’s and I’ll be OK. Unless the cops are there too.

The Bucket is right on the beach. It’s a small place, a thatched palm roof over a bar, no walls. Stools don’t work on the beach so eight rope swings hang from the beams and sets of white plastic tables and chairs are on the sand. There’s no electricity. Pedro hauls bags of ice down here every morning on his tricycle and dumps them into corrugated tubs full of bottles of Sol and Negro Modelo. If you order a cocktail, you get the same ice the beer sits in. If you want to eat, Pedro has a barbeque he made by sawing a fifty-five gallon drum in half.

I’m at The Bucket around nine every day after my morning swim. Pedro gets the coffee pot off the barbeque grill, pours me a cup and drops yesterday’s Miami Herald in front of me. His wife gets the paper every day when she goes in town for the shopping or to pick up the kids from school. Pedro brings it to me here the next day. I glance at the sports page. Dolphins this, Dolphins that.

Pedro has chorizo on the grill and a frying pan heating up. He cracks a couple eggs into the pan, gets a plastic container of salsa from the cooler bag on his tricycle and stirs some in, scrambling the eggs. He takes a key from his belt, unlocks the enameled steel cabinet beneath the bar, grabs the bottles of booze and starts to set them out. I walk around to the grill, give the eggs a few more stirs and dump them onto a plastic plate. The chorizos are blackened, fat spitting from the cracks in their skin. I spear them, stick them on the plate next to the eggs and sit back down on my swing at the bar. Pedro brings me a folded towel and sets it next to the plate. I open it up and peel off one of the still warm tortillas his wife made at home this morning. I stuff a chorizo into the tortilla, pack some of the eggs around it, fold the thing up, take a bite and sear the inside of my mouth just like I do every morning. It’s worth it.

Pedro is about my age, 35. He looks a little older because he’s spent his whole life on the Yucatan; his face is a dark, sun-wrinkled plate. He’s short and round, has a little pencil moustache and wears heavy black plastic glasses like the ones American soldiers get for free.

He tops off my coffee.

-Go fish today?

I look out at the flat, crystal-blue water. Up in town, the tourists will be loading into the boats, heading for the reef to go diving or to the deep water to fish. The local fishermen here have already gone out and Pedro’s boat is the only one still in, anchored to the shore by long yellow ropes tied to eight-foot lengths of rebar driven into the sand. I could fish, take the boat out by myself or wait for Pedro’s brother to show up and go out with him for an evening fish. If he doesn’t have a job tonight.

-Not today.

-Nice day for fishing.

-Too nice. I might catch a fish. And then what? Have to bring it in, clean it, cook it. No, no fishing today.

-Game on later?

-Every Sunday, Pedro, there’s a game every Sunday except for the bye week.

-Who today?

-The Patriots.

-New England.

-Right.

-Fucking Pats.

-You’re learning.
I met Pedro up in town a few years back when I first came to Mexico. I came to Mexico hot. Running. I walked out of the Cancun airport, got into a cab and told the guy I wanted to get out of Cancun, down the coast somewhere. Someplace smaller. He took me about an hour down the road to a little vacation town. Small hotels along a nice strip of beach. It was OK for awhile. The tourists were mostly mainland Mexicans, South Americans or Europeans. Not many North Americans at all. Then they started building this giant resort community on the south end of town and that was it for me.

I found this spot: driving distance to town, a handful of locals with vacation palapas, some expatriates living in bungalows, some backpackers and day trippers looking for a secluded beach. But no bar. Pedro was working in the place I spent most of my time in. I knew he wanted his own business and he knew I wanted a place to hang out in. We made a deal.

I’m a silent partner, I pay my tab like any customer and nobody knows I backed Pedro to open the place. I gave him half the bar for moving here to run it; he’s working off the other half. Shit, I could have given him the whole thing outright. I got the money. God knows I got the fucking money

The day trippers are starting to drift onto the beach. They hear about it in town or read about it in Lonely Planet and come looking for unspoiled Mexico, but they’re usually pretty damn happy they can get a cold beer and a cheeseburger. The expats will come around in the evening when they get back from fishing trips or working in town. The locals mostly show up on Friday and Saturday evening to drink the way only a hard-working Mexican can drink. Me, I drink soda water all day, haven’t had a real drink in over two years. I take another sip of coffee, light the first cigarette of the day and get back to the sports page. It’s the healthy life for me now.
The Dolphins have a problem. Their problem is a head coach who happens to be an idiot. I have a problem. My problem is the Miami fucking Dolphins of the National fucking Football League. When I got down here, I found out I couldn’t give up sports. I tried to get into futbol, but it just didn’t click. A basketball season is like a basketball game, only the last two minutes count. And unless I was ready to watch bull fights that left football. Baseball? Yeah, I like baseball. I would have liked to have spent the last three years watching, listening to and reading about baseball just like I did the thirty-two years before them, but that’s one of the things I had to give up. I got into football because I always hated football and nobody looking for me is gonna look for a guy who likes football. It makes it harder for people with Russian accents to find me and kill me.

Why Russian accents? Because that’s the way the Russian gangsters who want me dead talk.

At noon Pedro takes the radio from beneath the bar, clicks it on and twirls the dial ‘til the fuzzy sounds of WQAM Miami come through. He extends the antenna, alligator clips one end of a wire to it and clips the other end to the sheet of chicken wire that covers the palm roof. Suddenly the signal jumps in loud and clear.

I sit at the bar, sip seltzer and smoke and listen. The game drones on predictably. The Fins jump out early with three unanswered touchdowns, stand around while the Pats cut into their lead just before the half, and then come out flat for the third quarter. By the start of the fourth quarter, they’re hanging onto a three point lead, and the coach is calling plays as if they were still up by twenty-one.

A shaggy backpacker wanders up the beach and over to the bar. He shrugs out of his pack and takes a seat on the swing next to mine. Pedro is poking at some ribs on the grill. The guy is sitting backwards on the swing with his elbows on the bar, looking at the ocean. He looks over his shoulder at the radio. The Pats have just pinned the Fins on their own two-yard line. He looks at me and nods his head.

-Football.

Nothing odd about that, a perfectly reasonable observation. Except that he says it in a Russian accent, which is not something we get a lot of around here. Me, I take it in stride, just spit-take my seltzer all over the bar. I’m smooth like that. The guy slaps me on the back while I choke.

-OK?

I nod and wave my hand.

-Fine. Choke. Fine.

I point at the radio.

-Fucking Dolphins.

He shrugs.

-American football. Too slow.

The Fins try to run up the gut three times, get one yard and punt miserably to their own thirty-five. Pedro comes over and the guy orders a shot of tequila and a Modelo.

-Hockey, very fast, good sport to watch. You like hockey?

-Not really.

-European football, soccer?

-Not really.

-But to play, yes? Americans like to play soccer, but not to watch.

-I guess.

The backpacker guy nods his head and smiles like he approves, takes a sip of his beer.

-What about baseball? You like baseball?

Just after sunset I walk back up to the north end of the beach. My bungalow really isn’t much, but it’s bonito in its way. Wood walls up to about waist level topped by screen windows that circle the one room building, with heavy storm shutters that I mostly keep open. I step up on the porch, past the canvas-back chair, small wooden table and hammock, and dig the key from the Velcro side pocket of my shorts. In the normal course of things, if I was just a guy down here living on the beach, I wouldn’t really need to lock my door. But I’m not that guy and I do need to lock my door. I have secrets to hide. I open the door and secret number one says hello.

-Meow.

I got into some trouble when I lived up in New York. I did a guy a favor and I got into some trouble for doing it. The favor he asked me to do that lead to all the trouble, to me being on the run in Mexico, was he asked me to watch his cat. I said yes. And here I am three years later, still watching his cat.
Bud jumps down from the bed and limps over to say hi. One of his front legs was pretty badly broken in all that trouble, so he has that limp, and some of the fur on his face grows in a weird little tuft because he has a scar from the same encounter that broke his leg. The guys that did the leg-breaking and the scarring are dead. Someone felt bad about that, not Bud. He rubs his face against my calf and I bend down, scoop him off the floor and drape him over my shoulders.

-Jesus, cat, you’re getting fat. You are a fat fucking cat and no two ways about it.

I open one of the kitchenette cupboards, grab a can of Bud’s food, scoop it into his bowl, and he leaps off my shoulders and digs in.

-Enjoy it while it lasts, cat. You’re going on a diet.

I leave the music on and walk down to the water. The water is perfect. It’s always perfect. I wade out, lean back, let my legs drift up and my arms float out until I am bobbing on the surface of the Caribbean, looking up at the stars. And for half a second I almost forget the Russian backpacker who set up his tent at the opposite end of the beach. The one who might be here looking for me and the four and a half million dollars that the Russian mafia thinks is theirs.

I have that money.

But It’s not theirs. It’s mine.

I killed for it. And I’m gonna keep it.

©Copyright 2005-2008 by Charlie Huston. All rights reserved etc.

A DANGEROUS MAN

By

Charlie Huston

Part One

Monday, June 20 2005

Preseason

I find the guy in the Laughing Jackalope just like they said I would. 

I take a seat at the bar, order a seltzer and ask for a roll of quarters.  I let the seltzer sit, and start slowly dribbling the quarters into the video poker game built into the surface of the bar.  I stare at the cards as they blip across the screen.  I play a quarter a hand, flying in the face of the most basic rule of video poker that says you always bet the max.  Quarter bets pay a bare fraction of the max bets.  Hit a big hand on a quarter bet and you’re gonna feel like an asshole. 

I hit a straight flush with a quarter in once, paid 1200 to 1.  Sure enough, I felt like an asshole.  Well that’s happened before and it’ll happen again.

The machine blips me a pair of jacks along with a nine, a ten and a king.  I pass on the even money the pair promises, throw one of the jacks and go for the inside straight.  Deuce.  I drop another quarter in the slot. 

There’s only a handful of people in here.  The guy, the bartender, a couple sitting on stools, feeding nickels to one of the slots; an old timer nodding a bit at the bar; and the evening cocktail waitress straightening the tables and getting things set for the crowd that will come in when the shifts change across the street. 

I keep my face in the game, sneaking peeks at the guy, keeping my hand next to my face, hoping no one notices the palm-size patch of white scar tissue around my right eye.  I’d just as soon no one remembers that scar if the cops come around later.  But really, I only have to worry about that if a body turns up.

I’m on my third roll of quarters and little has changed.  The couple’s shifted from the slot machine to the juke box, so now “Crazy on You” complements the blips of the poker games and the recorded come-on of the slots.  The guy still hasn’t moved.

He’s been sitting at the far end of the bar, sliding c-notes into his own video poker game and going through them about as fast as I’ve been going through my quarters.  Every fifteen minutes or so he throws back another shot of chilled Jager and bangs the glass on the bar, indicating the bartender should get his ass over there and give him a refill. 

Back in the day, when I had to do that job, when my biggest worry was getting the drunks out the door before the sun came up, I’d never have put up with that shit.  Someone banged a glass on my bar or snapped their fingers or something like that and they’d be sitting dry a long fucking time before I remembered they were there.  This bartender is different, he’s working the day shift at the Laughing Jakelope for Christ sake, glasses banged on the bar are the last fucking thing he’s gonna raise a sweat over. 

The bartender pulls the frosted green bottle of Jagermeister out of the cooler, fills the guy’s shot glass and puts the bottle back.  The guy doesn’t even look at him, just keeps peering into the game screen, his credits rolling up and down as he scores on two pair here, three of a kind there; searching for a full house or a straight flush or even a royal.

There’s a blast of sunshine as someone opens the tinted front door and two drunk couples come stumbling in.  They’re college kids, the boys in shorts and tank tops, their faces sun burnt red except where their eyes have been raccooned white by their sunglasses, the girls in shorts and tube tops, skin tanned cancer brown, harsh bikini lines climbing up out of their stretchy tops and creeping around their necks.  All of them are double-fisting plastic cups full of something bright blue and frozen.

The bartender looks down from the TV hanging above the bar.  He’s been watching one of those behind-the-scenes shows; this one cracking the lid open on a reality show that teamed up stars from older shows that have already been behind-the-scened.  He sees the cups the kids are carrying and shakes his head.

-Uh-uh, not in here, can’t bring outside booze in here.

One of the guys, his tank says DON’T DRUNK WITH ME, I’M FUCK!, looks at the drinks in his hands, and back at the bartender, trying to connect the dots.

-What the fuck, man?  We been carrying drinksh in and out of cashinosh all fucking day.

The other guy, his shirt says I’M WITH ASSHOLE and has an arrow pointing up at his own face, hoots.

-Been drinking all fuckin’ day!  All fuckin’ day!  Gonna drink all fuckin’ night!  All fuckin’ night!

The bartender nods.

-Sure, just not those drinks in here.

Everyone’s watching now, the guy, the old timer, the slot couple, the cocktail waitress.  Asshole takes a couple quick sloppy steps toward the bar.

-The fuck, dude?  Gonna drink!

Drunk Fuck grabs the tail of his shirt and yanks him back.

-Dude, no, sheck it out.

He drapes an arm over his buddy’s shoulder, spilling a little blue slush down Asshole’s arm, and whispers in his ear.  Asshole listens for a second and then busts up.

-Yeah, yeah, dude, tha’sh it!

He straightens up and bows to the bartender.

-Yesh, shir, we will be pleashed to do ash you wish.  Fuckin’ A.

He gestures toward the door and Drunk Fuck leads the way.  Asshole pushes the door open and they turn into dark silhouettes against the fierce late afternoon sun.  Asshole points out the door.

-After yoush.

Drunk Fuck bows.

-Shank yoush.

He takes one step outside and chugs the contents of his cups and throws both empties into the parking lot.  He steps back in and holds the door as Asshole steps out and repeats the performance.  The girls are laughing and snorting, hanging onto each other to keep from falling down and struggling to keep their tits from popping out of their tops.  Asshole steps back in.  He wags a finger at them.

-Ladiesh!  No fucking drinksh from outshide!  Pleash!

He points at the door.  One of the girls straightens up, tries to curtsy, almost falls, and weaves out to the sidewalk.  She up-ends one of her cups and gets half of it in her mouth while the other half slops down her chin and neck and into her cleavage.  She explodes laughing and the slush that went in her mouth sprays onto the ground.  She stuffs a hand inside her top and tries to dig out the blue daiquiri.  Asshole wiggles his fingers.

-Allow me.

He tries to jam his fingers between her tits and she slaps his hand, still coughing and choking.  Drunk Fuck tries to get into the act and they jostle the girl around, plucking at her top.  The other girl steps outside.

-Hey!  Hey, assholes!  Check this out!

She tilts her head back, holds both cups over her face, opens her mouth wide, and starts to pour.  Frozen blueberry daiquiri fills her mouth and overflows down her face.  The guys watch, one with his arms wrapped around the waist of the choking girl and one with his hand halfway down her top.  The two-cup girl lets about half of each daiquiri pour over her face, then just dumps the remainder over her chest and belly.  Asshole and Drunk Fuck abandon Choking Girl and pounce on Two Cups.  Asshole kneels in front of her and sucks blue ice from her pierced navel while Drunk Fuck picks up a straw from the pavement, sticks it between her tits and starts to suck on it.  Two Cups giggles and screams. 

By now the door has swung shut and we are all watching the action as a shadow play taking place beyond the darkly tinted glass front of the Jackelope.  Still, we hear it pretty clearly when Choking Girl coughs, gags and begins to vomit blue onto the sidewalk and her friends’ sandaled feet.  By then the bartender has come out from behind the bar, crossed to the door and locked it.  He walks to the kitchen door and sticks his head inside.

-Jesus!

A Mexican kid in greasy dishwasher whites comes out.  The bartender points at the scene outside.

-Clean that shit up.

Jesus stares at the carnage taking place beyond the window and nods.

-Si.

The bartender walks back to the bar, picks up the remote and turns up the volume on his show; the slot couple punches in another song and “Saturday in the Park” starts playing; the old timer shakes his head and mutters something about Goddamn fucking college kids; the cocktail waitress goes back to cleaning out the votives that she’ll be setting on the tables soon; the guy knocks back another Jager and bangs in on the bar.  I take a last look out the window just in time to see Two Cups start puking, too, as the boys watch, laughing and high-fiving each other. 

Then the guy gets up and goes to the bathroom. 

Jesus is standing by the glass with a mop bucket, waiting for the kids to leave so he can do his shitty job.  I follow the guy into the bathroom so I can do mine.

He’s pissing loudly into one of the urinals.  I edge past him into a stall, close the door and pull the handful of tiny coke-filled glassine bags out of my pocket.  The urinal flushes and I pinch one of the bags open and drop it along with several others onto the floor, most of them scattering out under the stall partition.

-Shit!  Oh, shit!

I slam my shoulder loudly against the stall as I get down on my knees and start scrabbling under the partition for the dropped bags.  I peek out and see that the guy has moved to the sink and is washing his hands and ignoring me.  I scoop up the bags, and flick the open one with my middle finger.  It skitters across the tiles, leaving a thin trail of white powder, and comes to rest at his feet.

-Fuck!  Oh, fuck!

I stand up, jerk on the locked stall door a couple times, bang it open and stumble out.  The guy is just straightening, the open, now almost empty, bag pinched between his thumb and forefinger.  I shuffle toward him, the rest of the bags peeking from my fist.

-Um, that’s mine.

He stands there, a couple inches shorter than me, balding, flashy tasteless clothes, pinkie ring, a bulky upper body that’s settling into his mid section but still powerful around the shoulders.  The same build my body is starting to develop.  He looks from the bag to me.

-Yours?

-Yeah.  So, you know.

I put out my hand. 

He points at the bag.

-This?

He points at me.

-Is yours?

I shrug.

-Yeah.

He shakes his head.

-Well.

He reaches for his back pocket.

-Looks like this might be your lucky day.

He pulls out a wallet, shows it to me, and lets it fall open, revealing the LVMPD badge within.

-Except it ain’t.

©Copyright 2006 - 2008 by Charlie Huston.  All rights reserved etc.

ALREADY DEAD

By

Charlie Huston

 

      I smell them before I see them.  All the powders, perfumes and oils the half-smart ones smear on themselves.  The stupid ones just stumble around reeking.  The really smart ones take a goddamn shower.  The water doesn’t help them in the long run, but truth is nothing is gonna help them in the long run. In the long run they’re gonna die.  Hell, in the long run they’re already dead. 

So this pack is half-smart.  They’ve splashed themselves with Channel No. 5, Old Spice, whatever.  Most folks just think they have a heavy hand at the personal scent counter.  I close my eyes and inhale deeper, because it could just be a group of bridge and tunnelers in from Jersey or Long Island.  But it’s not.  I take that second breath and sure enough, there it is underneath: the sweet, subtle tang of something not quite dead.  Something freshly rotting.  I’m betting they’re the ones I’m looking for.  And why wouldn’t they be?  It’s not like these things are thick on the ground.  Not yet.  I walk a little further down Avenue A and stop at the sidewalk window of Nino’s, the pizza joint on the corner of St. Mark’s.

I rap on the counter with the ring on my middle finger and one of the Neapolitans comes over.

-Yeah?

-What’s fresh?

He looks blank.

-The pizza, what’s just out of the oven?

-Tomato and garlic.

-No way, no fucking garlic.  How ‘bout the broccoli, it been out all day?

He shrugs.

-Fine, give me the broccoli.  Not too hot, I don’t want to burn the roof of my mouth.

He cuts a slice and slides it into the oven to warm up.  I could eat the tomato and garlic if I wanted to.  It’s not like the garlic would hurt me or anything.  I just don’t like the shit. 

While I wait I lean on the counter and watch the customers inside the joint.  The usual crowd for a Friday night: couple drunk NYU kids, couple drunk greasers, a drunk squatter, two drunk yuppies on a East Village adventure, a couple drunk hip-hoppers, and the ones I’m looking for.  There are three of them standing around the far corner table: an old school goth chick, and two rail-thin guys with impossibly high cheekbones that have fashion junkie written all over them.  The kind of guys who live in a squat but make the fashion week scene by virtue of the skag they bring to the parties.  Just my favorite brand of shit dogs all in all.

-Broccoli.

The Neapolitan is back with my slice.  I hand him three bucks.  The goth and the fashion junkies watch the two NYU kids stumble out the door.  They push their slices around for another minute then follow.  I sprinkle red pepper flakes on my slice and take a big bite and sure enough it’s too hot and I burn the roof of my mouth.  The Pizza jockey comes back and tosses my fifty cents change on the counter.  I swallow, the molten cheese scorching my throat.

-I told you, not too hot. 

He shrugs.  All the guy has to do all day is throw slices in the oven and take them out when they’re ready. Ask for one not too hot and you might as well be requesting coq au vin.  I grab my change, toss the slice back on the counter and take off after the junkies and the goth chick.  Fucking thing had garlic in the sauce anyway.

The NYU kids have crossed the street to cut through Tompkins Square before the cops shut it down at midnight.  The trio lags behind about eight yards back, walking past the old water fountain with Faith, Hope, Temperance, Charity carved in the stone above it.  The kids reach the opposite side of the park and keep heading east on Ninth Street, deeper into Alphabet City.  Great. 

This block of Ninth between Avenues B and C is barren, as in empty of everyone except the NYU kids, their trailers and me. 

The junkies and the goth pick up the pace.  I stroll.  They’re not going anywhere without my seeing it.  What they want to do takes a bit of privacy.  Better for me if they get settled someplace where they feel safe before I move in.

They’re right on the kids now.  They move into a dark patch under a busted street lamp and spread out, one on either side of the kids and one behind.  There’s a scuffle, movement and noise, and they all disappear.  Fuck.

I jog up the street and take a look.  On my left is an abandoned building.  It used to be a Puerto Rican community center and performance space, before that it was a P.S.  Now it’s just condemned.

I follow the scent up the steps and across the small courtyard to the graffiti-covered doors.  They’ve been chained shut for a few years, but tonight the chain is hanging loose below the hacksawed hasp of a giant Masterlock.  Looks like they prepped this place in advance of their ambush.  Looks like they may be a little more than half-smart.

I ease the door open and take a look. Hallway goes straight for about twelve yards then hits a T intersection.  Dark.  That’s OK.  I don’t mind the dark.  The dark is just fine.  I slip in, close the door behind me and take a whiff.  They’re here, smells like they’ve been hanging out for a couple days.  I hear the first scream and know where to go.  Up to the intersection, down the hall to the right, and straight to the open classroom door. 

One of the NYU kids is face down on the floor with the goth chick kneeling on his back.  She’s already shoved her knife through the back of his neck, killing him.  Now she’s trying to jam the blade in deep so she can split his skull open.  The junkie guys stand by, waiting for the piñata to bust.

The other kid has jammed himself in a corner in the obligatory pool of his own fear-piss.  His eyes are rolling around and he’s making the high pitched noise that people make when they’re so scared they might die from it.  I hate that noise. 

I hear something crunchy.

The chick has the knife in.  She gives it a wrenching twist and the dead kid’s skull cracks open.  She claws her fingers into the crack, gets a good grip and pulls, tearing the kids head open like a piece of rotted fruit.  A pomegranate.  The junkies edge closer as she starts scooping out clumps of brain.  Too late for that kid, so I wait a couple seconds more, watching them as they start to eat, and listening to the other kid’s moaning go up another octave.  Then I do my job.

It takes me three silent steps to reach the first one.  My right arm loops over his right shoulder I grab his face with my right hand while my left hand grips the back of his head.  I jerk sharply clockwise, pulling up at the same time.  I feel his spinal cord tear and drop him, grabbing the second one’s hair before the first one hits the ground.  The chick is getting up off the kid’s corpse and coming at me with the knife.  I punch the second junkie in the throat and let him drop.  It won’t kill him, but he’ll stay down for a second.  The chick whips the knife in a high arc and the tip rakes my forehead.  Blood oozes from the cut and into my eyes. 

Whatever she was before she got bit, she knew a little about using a knife, and still remembers some of it.  She’s hanging back, waiting for her pal to get up so they can take me together.  I measure the blank glaze in her eyes.  Yeah, there’s still a little of her at home.  Enough to order pizza and pick out these kids as marks, enough to cut through a lock, but not enough to be dangerous.  As long as I’m not stupid.  I step in and she thrusts at me with the knife.  I grab the blade. 

She looks from me to the knife.  I’m holding it tightly, blood spilling out between my clenched fingers.  The dim light in her eye gets minutely brighter as something gives her the word: she’s fucked.  I twist the knife out of her hand, toss it in the air and catch it by the handle.  She’s turns to run.  I grab the back of her leather jacket, step close and jam the knife into her neck at the base of her skull chopping her medulla in half.  I leave the knife there and let her drop to the floor.  The second junkie is just getting back up.  I kick him down, put my boot on his throat and stomp down, twisting my foot back and forth until I hear his neck snap. 

I kneel down and wipe my hand on his shirt.  My blood has already coagulated and the cuts in my hand have stopped bleeding, likewise the cut in my forehead.  I check the bodies.  One of the guys is missing a couple teeth and has some lacerations on his gums.  Looks like he’s been chewing someone’s skull.  Probably it belonged to the clown I took care of a couple days ago, the one with the hole in his head who tipped me off to this whole thing.  Anyway, his teeth aren’t what I’m interested in. 

Both guys have small bites on the backs of their necks.  The bite radius and size of the tooth marks make me take a look at the girl’s mouth.  Looks like a match.  Figure she bit these two and infected them with the bacteria.  Happens that way sometimes.  Generally a person gets infected, the bacteria starts chewing on their brain and pretty soon they’re reduced to the simple impulse to feed.  But sometimes, before they reach that point, they infect a few others.  They take a bite, but don’t eat the whole meal if you get me.  No one really knows why.  Some sob sisters would tell you it’s because they’re lonely.  But that’s bullshit.  It’s the bacteria compelling them, spreading itself.  It’s fucking Darwin doing his thing. 

I check the girl’s neck.  She infected the others, but something infected her first.  The bite’s been marred by the knife I stuck in her, but it’s there.  It’s bigger than the others, more violent.  In fact, there are little nips all over her neck.  Fucking carrier that got her couldn’t decide if it wanted to just infect her or eat her.  Whatever, all the same to me.  Except it means the job isn’t done yet.  Means there’s a carrier still out there.  I start to stand up.  But something else, a smell on her.  I knee next to her and take a whiff.  Something moves behind me. 

The other NYU kid.  Right, forgot about him.  He’s trying to dig his way through the wall.  I walk over to him.  I’m just about to pop him in the jaw when he does the job for me and passes out.  I look him over.  No bites.  Now normally I wouldn’t do this, but I lost a little blood and I never got to eat my pizza, so I’m pretty hungry.  I take out my works and hook the kid up.  I’ll only take a pint.  Maybe two.

©Copyright 2005 - 2008 by Charlie Huston. All rights reserved etc.

NO DOMINION

By

Charlie Huston

The glass is breaking.

That’s not the surprising thing; the surprising thing is that it didn’t shatter when he threw me against it. Shouldn’t come as a shock. This place, they went through a few front windows the first year they were opened and decided it was more cost effective to lay out the extra cash for the safety glass. Save them from having to replace it every time there’s a brawl in here. Which is pretty regular I’d imagine. Any case, I’m not bitching. Wasn’t for the guy who had the bright idea, I’d be on the sidewalk right now, my good leather jacket cut to ribbons and my face sliced up in all kinds of new and interesting ways. But now it’s breaking, it is most definitely breaking. I’m sure about that because my face is jammed up against it and he’s trying to push me right through it. The big question for me is whether this is the kind of safety glass that bursts into thousands of tiny pebbles when it breaks or the kind that turns into shards. Pebbles would be fine. Shards, not so much. The window creaks. Tiny fissures appear in front of my eyes.

OK, time to stop worrying about the glass, time to start worrying about getting this guy off of me. I can’t expect any help from the bartenders or the crowd, not after they watched him pound on the bouncer with that pool cue. And I don’t see any helpful officers of the law rolling up outside at this point. Not that I have any intention of being here when the cops show up. So, I guess it’s just me and him. That’s OK, I can go this one alone. Not like it’s new to me or anything. I just wish he really was on PCP; if it was just PCP he’d be pretty easy to deal with. But this? This is gonna take grace and style, maybe even a little tact.

He shoves my face harder into the big front window. People out on the sidewalk flinch as they see my features squashed yet flatter against the glass. The glass creaks again. The fissures grow another millimeter. He’s still screaming, babbling insanity at the top of his lungs, howling so loud I can barely hear the Boxcar Willie on the jukebox:

You load sixteen tons and what do you get?

Another day older, and deeper in debt.

Ain’t that the fuckin’ truth.

He’s enraged that my face won’t just explode through the damn glass the way he wants it to, the way he’s pictured in his head. He rears back, and before he can slam my face forward, I’ve slipped to my right, spun, twisted my arm free of his grasp, winced as a clump of hair is torn from the back of my scalp, planted my right foot in the hollow behind his right knee, hammered my elbow into the back of his neck, and sent him face first through the window in my place. The sidewalk audience scatters as he hits the pavement. I step through the dagger-edged hole he left behind. Shards it is.
He was spazzing the second he came out of the bathroom.

Before that, I hadn’t even noticed him. Why should I? Not like I’m working; not like there’s any reason I should be doing anything but paying attention to the booze in my glass, the cigarette in my mouth, the pool game in front of me and the girl by my side. Especially the girl. Girl like this, most everyone in the place is paying attention to her. Want to be invisible? Hang out with a girl like Evie. All that red hair, the body that not only won’t quit but works weekends and holidays, too. That smile. She’s the kind of girl guys like to look at, but most aren’t sure how to go about approaching her. Too bad for them. They miss out on the best part, they miss out on how cool she is, how funny, how sharp, how down to earth. Anyway, a girl like Evie on your arm, and you turn into a shadow, just the lucky fuck taking up space next to the best view in the place.

So a night like this, when it’s so cold out Evie is wearing her leather pants and that tight, old thermal top with the Jack Daniels label silk-screened across the front, a night like this where she’s glued to my hip and every guy in the place wishes he was me, is it any surprise I didn’t smell him the moment he came through the door?

Most nights I would have picked up his scent right off. Couldn’t miss it. After all, he smells just like me, only different. But what with the Early Times I’m pouring down my throat and the Luckys I’m sucking on and Evie rubbing up against me, I just can’t be bothered. Still, he couldn’t have been in here all that long. Sooner or later I would have smelled him no matter how distracted I was. It wouldn’t have meant trouble necessarily; we would have eyeballed each other a bit, sniffed each other’s asses like a couple of big dogs, but there wouldn’t have been any trouble, not in here, not where everyone can see us. That shit just doesn’t happen. As it was, I was lining up a neat little combo that was gonna let me run out the rest of the table and he came out of the john and started spazzing out.

This wasn’t your run-of-the-mill junkie-who-just-shot-up-in-the-can stumbling around. He came out of there like the Tasmanian Devil: spinning, arms flailing, kicking anything that came in range, sending tables and people flying; a full on spaz. A space quickly opened up around him while he whirled and gibbered and foamed at the mouth. The bouncer, a nice enough guy goes by Gears, came over and tried a little sweet talk.

-OK, man, settle down, settle down. Take it easy. Got yourself a dose of some bad shit, but we’re gonna take care of you. Got some 911 on the way, gonna get you to an emergency room and get that shit out your system. Just take it easy.

Moved in slowly, arms spread wide, talking soft. Might as well been trying to sooth a rabid dog. The guy stopped spinning long enough to jump at Gears and swing his arm like a club. Guy was freaky fast. Gears got lucky when he fell on his ass out of the way. Guy’s arm hit the backside of a bench made out of two by fours and a couple of them cracked. Then he went back to spinning. By this time folks are starting to clear out, and I’m starting to pay attention. Gears gets back on his feet, muttering something about fucking PCP, grabs himself one of the cracked and twisted house cues from the rack and goes after the guy. But I’ve taken a good whiff by this point and I know the guy ain’t on PCP. Gears would be lucky if that’s all it was. I mean, I don’t know what he’s on, but I know he doesn’t need it, he’s dangerous as hell to start with.

Gears waits ‘til the guy has spun his back to him and brings the cue down on top of his head. It makes a nice noise, but before Gears can get too proud of himself or maybe think about bringing the cue back up for another swing, the guy has turned around, snatched the cue away, kicked Gears’ legs out from under him and gotten busy finding out how hard it is to break a pool cue by pounding it on someone’s face. That’s when I figured I should do something. Not that Gears is so big a friend. I barely know him except to call him by name when I come in the place, but this guy is out of control, causing the kind of scene that’s bad for business. If I don’t deal with him, the cops will. That will get very ugly very fast. Nothing causes a scene like when cops start putting bullets in a guy and the guy refuses to go down. Sure, Gears and the law and the press may just chalk it up to a PCP freak out, but there are other people who will hear about it. And some of those people will want to check it out. And I don’t want those people around. Not down here. Not in my neighborhood. So I jump on the guy’s back. Figure I’ll get him to the floor, put a sleeper hold on him and drag him out of here. Make up some story for the crowd about how I know him and I’ll take care of it. Get him out before the cops come; get him someplace private and get rid of him before he can make another scene like this one. That’s the thing to do. Except he shrugs me right off his back, picks me up off the floor and throws me at the window. And when I bounce off the glass instead of going through it the way he wanted me to, he grabs me by the hair and tries to shove my face through the glass. Lucky for me, strong and fast as he is right now, he’s a lousy fighter.
Once he’s on the sidewalk I handle it pretty much like I wanted to inside. Knees in the middle of his back, pin him to the scummy pavement, arm around his windpipe and cut of the O2 until he goes asleep. He does a fair amount of thrashing around, and I have to hold on good and tight to keep from getting bucked clear, but once I’m locked on to him I’m not going anywhere. When he’s nice and sleepy I toss him over my shoulder and point at one of the bartenders who’s come out to watch how the story ends.

-Get me a cab, will ya?

-Ambulance is on its way.

-Let ‘em deal with Gears. This guy, I know him. I’m gonna take him back to his halfway house. See if I can keep him out of the shit.

-What about the cops? What about the window?

-Hey, come on. I got the guy out of the place. Give me a fucking break.

-Yeah, sure.

She flags a cab.

The cabby’s none too happy about me piling in with blood-drippy guy, but he sees I’m in no mood for debate and just gives me a dirty rag to put over The Spaz’s face. Before we pull away, Evie runs up and passes my pack of smokes and my Zippo through the window.

-Want me to come?

-Nah, I got it covered.

-Meet you back at your place?

-Yeah. Maybe a half hour at the most. You gonna be OK?

-Don’t start.

-Right. Sorry ‘bout this.

-‘S OK. Nobody can say you don’t know how to show a girl a good time, Joe.
©Copyright 2006, 2007, 2008 by Charlie Huston. All rights reserved etc.

HALF THE BLOOD OF BROOKLYN

By

Charlie Huston

I don’t like him.

I don’t like the way he smells. I don’t like the way he looks. I don’t like his shoes. If I stuck a blade in him and drank the blood that shot out of the open wound, I wouldn’t like the way he tastes.

But Terry told me to be cool.

So I don’t kill the guy.

-You can’t get somethin’ for nothing,’ is all I’m sayin’.

Terry nods, waves some of the thick cigar smoke away from his face.

-No doubt, no doubt.

The guy I don’t like blows another cloud off his stogie.

-If I bring the Docks into your thing, I got to know what’s in it for my members. Not like I’m here for my own self. I’m an elected representative, it’s the members decide these things, and they decide nothin’ they don’t know what they got comin’ in their end of the deal.

Terry coughs into his hand.

-Well, like I say, the way we work here, the way we, you know, like to go about this kind of thing, is with the understanding that we’re all working toward a greater good. The Society, it’s not just, you know, a Clan in the traditional sense. We’re not just trying to get along and go along. We’ve got goals. We’re all about, and I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, but we’re all about empowerment for anyone and everyone infected with the Vyrus. And does that mean folks that aren’t even in the Society? You bet it does. But does that also mean achieving our goal will be easier with as united front as possible? Absolutely. What I’m, you know, getting at is, whether you bring the Docks into the Society or not, you’ll still reap the rewards when we break through one day, but, man, we could sure use as much help as possible right now.

The Docks Boss nods, ponders, chews the frayed end of his hand rolled Dominican, and glances at the goon he brought with him.

-I think he’s tellin’ me there ain’t shit in it for us.

The goon shifts the baseball bat perched on his shoulder.

-Sounds like it.

-Sounds like he’s tellin’ me he wants somethin’ for nothin’.

The goon nods.

-Sounds like it.

The Docks Boss takes the cigar from his mouth points it at Terry.

-That what you’re tellin’ me, Bird?
Terry presses the palms of his hands together and puts the tips on his fingers at his chin, a prayerful moment.

-What I’m trying to get across is that there’s something in it for all of us. Me, you, your man there, Joe here, your members, the Society, all the Clans and Rogues, and even the folks out there that never heard of the Vyrus. I’m talking about how we’re gonna make the world a bigger and more wondrous place when the day comes we go public and let them know we’re here. I’m saying that there’s something in it for everyone. Every person on Mother Earth, man.

The goon raises a finger, a point’s been proved.

-Yeah, he’s saying there ain’t nothin’ in it for us.

The Docks Boss pushes his chair back, stands, drops the smoldering stub on the floor and stomps on it.

-C’mon, Gooch, let’s get the boys and get the fuck out of here.

Terry shrugs, rises.

-Well, I can’t say I’m not disappointed, but it’s not the first time we’ve been turned down.

He puts out his hand.

-And I just want you to know, we’re still fighting for you, man. Anytime you want to join the struggle, we’ll be happy to have you by our sides.

The dock boss looks Terry up and down, from his Birkenstocks, past his hemp jeans and his fur is murder t-shirt up to his graying ponytail.

-You’re a freak, Bird. We ain’t never gonna have nothin’ to do with you and your hippies and your college kids and your queers and the rest.

He pulls out one on the cigars that stick up from the breast pocket of his cheap suit, bites the end off it and spits it at Terry’s feet.

-And I’m gonna tell Predo as much when I go see him.

He scrapes a match alight on the surface of the kitchen tables and puffs the cigar to life.

-The Docks are a serious Clan. We make the move over the bridge here and swing our weight behind someone, they’re gonna know their backs are covered. You don’t want to give somethin’ back for that security, to hell with you. Predo knows value. And he’ll pay for it.

He drops the match.

-Hell, I only came to see you out of curiosity. Had to see for myself it was true what they say. How one of the top Clans over here is run by a pansy.

Terry tugs at the soul patch below his lower lip.

-Well, if that’s how you see things, that’s how you see things. Probably all for the best that you set up house keeping with the Coalition. And still, still, I wish you nothing but health and happiness, man.

The Docks Boss rolls his eyes and heads for the door.

-Fuck you, Bird.

Terry looks at me.

-You mind showing them out, Joe?

I open the door.

-Sure, no problem.

I close the door behind us and lead the boss and Gooch down the hall toward the front room where his other two boys are cooling their heels.

The boss steps alongside me.

-A guy like you, a regular lookin’ fella, what the fuck are you doin’ with that clown?

I crack a knuckle.

-It’s a job.

Gooch laughs.

-A job? Hope you get paid through the nose, havin’ to live in the middle of this freak show.

I stop at the front room door, rest my hand on the knob.

-What you gonna do, it’s all I know.

-Too bad for you.

-If you say so.

I open the door and stand aside to let the Docks Boss step into the room ahead of me.

Stupid fuck that he is, he goes right in and only stops when he sees the headless bodies of his boys on the floor, and Hurley swinging a fire axe at his face. I got to give it to him, he does manage to get his arm in front of his head before the blade comes down.

As his arm is hitting the floor and Hurley is going into his backswing, the boss has got his remaining hand in his jacket, going for the iron bulging at his side. Hurley takes his hack Lou Gehrig style and the other arm comes off and slaps into the wall, the gun dropping.

The boss stomps, splinters the floorboards beneath the sheets of plastic Hurley spread before he went to work. He kicks the body of one of his headless bodyguards.

-Fucker! Useless faggot!

He stands in the middle of the room, the spray from his stumps slowing to a steady trickle as the Vyrus clots the blood, scabs visibly forming over the wounds.

He looks at Hurley, spits blood at him.

-That all you good for, pussy, a fucking ambush? Come on! I can take it.

He sets his feet, turns his face upwards, eyes wide open.

-Come on, pussy!

Hurley hefts the axe over his head.

-Just as ya say, den.

The Docks’ boss screams as the blade drops. He stops when it splits his head down the middle.

Stupid fucker.

All those cigars, they keep him from smelling anything else. Otherwise he’d have whiffed the reek of blood the second I opened the kitchen door; he would have known there was a problem. In that tight hallway, he could have taken me apart. Another reason to like smoking.

Gooch leans into the room and looks at his boss flopping on the floor. He ducks back as a last jet of arterial blood sprays the ceiling and the dead thing goes still.

-Jesus, that’s gonna be hell to clean up.

Hurley gives the axe a jerk and pulls it from the Docks Boss’s face.

-Ayuh.

Gooch points at the mess.

-I ain’t helpin’ ta clean this. That wasn’t part of the deal.

Hurley wipes the blade of the axe on the Boss’ shirt front, sees the cigars and pulls one from the dead man’s pocket.

-No one said ya gotta clean nuttin’.

-Just so it’s clear.

Hurley finds a match, thumbs a flame from it and puts it to the cigar.

-It’s plenty clear, boyo.

Gooch points his baseball bat at the corpses.

-So you guys clean up your mess and I’ll round up the rest of the Docks and let them know we’re joinin’ with ya.

Hurley looks at the cigar, wrinkles his nose, and drops it to hiss in the Boss’s blood.

-Boyo, the way ya fellas sell one ‘nother out, we would nae have ya ta clean our privies.

Gooch is about as quick as his dead boss. He gets the bat up in a hurry to block Hurley’s axe. But the axe never leaves Hurley’s shoulder.

I tickle Gooch’s earlobe with the barrel of his dead boss’ revolver.

-Hey, Gooch.

He doesn’t move.

-Yeah?

-I like this freak show.

I put a bullet in his ear. And when he’s on the floor, I put a couple more in.

Hurley shakes his head.

-What’s da point a dat, Joe?

I drop the piece on the corpse.

-No point. Just that he was an asshole.

Terry comes down the hall and looks at the mess.

He takes off his glasses and bows his head.

-What a waste.

I put a Lucky in my mouth.

-If you say so.

-Labor should be our natural ally. They could have been a big help.

-A big help fucking things up. If this is the best Brooklyn has to offer, we don’t have much to worry about.

Terry slips the glasses up his nose and gives me a look.

-The best isn’t the problem, Joe.

He heads back down the hall toward the kitchen.

-The worst is what we have to worry about. The worst is still over the bridge.

He turns in the doorway.

-But they’ll be coming.

©Copyright 2007,2008 by Charlie Huston. All rights reserved etc.