Dungeons & Gangsters

by Marco Frazetta

  J-Maxx looked at me with utter contempt in his dark, mean eyes, and I could tell he struggled a bit to restrain himself from gettin’ into it with me there and then. “Teek,” he said, trying to keep calm. Almost good-naturedly. “What are you gettin’ crazy for? No, the Dragon didn’t ask for you, you fuckin’ nut. You’re so low on the totem he doesn’t even know you exist. And since when do you ask all these fuckin’ questions? You seem jumpy, man.” He smiled at me then, an ugly, toothy smile, and then made a quick motion to the other orc before continuing. “Are you worried? Is there somethin’ you got here that maybe you ain’t kicking up a portion to the Dragon…?” Before I realized what was happening, Maurice was already sniffin’ around me and Skreech’s private quarters, a couple of makeshift rooms we made from spare beams and plywood.

  “Hey! What the fuck is this, J-Maxx?”

  “Just havin’ a look around, makin’ sure you ain’t hiding some contraband.” The orc put a heavy, strangely muscled hand on my shoulder, keeping me right where I was. “Remember, you gotta kick up to the boss. Always.”

  “AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” Maurice hollered. I already knew what it was. “Oh, shit! Looky what we got here.” Maurice appeared, carrying in a box with Yu-Gi-Oh! cards tumbling out of it.

  These fuckin’ cards.

  “Maurice, what do ya got there?” J-Maxx asked.

  “It’s fuckin’ Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. This fuckin’ hob is sittin’ on a load of ‘em.”

  “Well would ya look at that.” J-Maxx chuckled. “You know, my kids love this shit. These fuckin’ magic cartoons, that’s a real racket right there. Maybe I could help ‘em out, give ‘em some fresh inspirations for monsters,” He thought about this for a long minute, almost as if this asshole saw a consultancy job at Hasbro in his future. I went to slip out of his grasp but his strong orc hand gripped me tighter.

  “Say, Teek,” J-Maxx went on, forgetting briefly what he came to me for in the first place. “I got a proposition of sorts for ya.”

  “Oh Yea? Another one?” I quipped.

  “I don’t want to reach into your pockets or anything like that,” J-Maxx continued, ignoring what I said. “But since you have a hoard of these things and felt like breakin’ my balls, how ‘bout I relieve you of a few boxes of these cards, eh?” His eyes looked from me, greedily to the boxes of cards that Maurice had piled up, and then back to me again. “My kids would be grateful,” the orc added, as if the gratitude of obnoxious orc children was something I could stash in the fuckin’ safe. I can’t believe this fuckin’ shit, I thought, aggravated. First the heist is bullshit—no million dollar score of wine, but some card’s for a kids game—and now this fuckin’ orc, sweatin’ and smellin’ like a fuckin’ zoo animal, is what? Taxing me? If this is a just a bad dream, please let me wake up now…

  “Teek,” J-Maxx said again, ominously this time.

  “Yea, listen,” I growled, fuckin’ pissed, “I heard you. I was just thinkin’, though—did anyone ever mention to you that you smell like a fuckin’ mouldy fart?”

  It got reeeal quiet for a few moments after I said that. Then a sound like a vacuum sucking the air out of the room. J-Maxx’s fat, wet fish lips wobbled around his tusks, and he looked down at me in confused hatred; beside him, his blood-brother Maurice, infuriated at what he perceived was a severe insult, knitted his pronounced eyebrows together and flexed his outrageously fuckin’ large muscles, arms and chest. The sallow human with them, a dope fiend that the orcs used for testing product and running game on other humans, made a face like he just shit himself. Skreech was nowhere to be seen. The little shit ran off and hid, clearly fearing a vicious reprisal from the orcs, but I swear I heard a muffled cackle from the other room.

  J-Maxx’s big-ass hand dug into my shoulder as he drew back the other tree trunk he called an arm and smacked me hard. The fucker had me seein’ stars and sunshine spots in my eyes for a few seconds. A large, ornate ruby ring, gaudy as hell, that he must have robbed off some old rich corpse—god knows when—left a savage gash in my cheek. A violent scar that, if I was ever asked about, I’d be ashamed to admit was in connection to some boxes of fuckin’ Yu-Gi-Oh! cards that, as far as I’m concerned, were fuckin’ cursed from the moment I jacked ‘em.

  “Let me at him for a minute, brother.” Maurice ground his teeth together. “I’ll break him my way and he’ll beg for a chance to do whatever we want him to do.”

  J-Maxx looked down at me and considered this new option. “No, brother,” he finally murmured, grinning maliciously at my obvious relief. “I don’t think we need to take it there. Not just yet.” He shoved me down into a kneeling position on the floor.

  “Should I grab the little guy?” the human piped up. “I bet he's around here somewhere.”

  J-Maxx looked around the room quickly, then looked at me questioningly for a moment. “That’s right, you always run with your partner, Scratch.”

  “Skreech.”

  “What?”

  I shrugged and shook my head. He turned back to the human, seemingly annoyed that his pet dope fiend had reminded him of one more thing to think about.

  “What are you doin’, Vinny, standin’ there cluckin’ for a fuckin’ hit? You can’t keep your eyes on a walking, talking green turd?” J-Maxx glanced at me again, giving me a look that almost said, ‘Do you see what I’m dealing with?’ “Tell ya what,” the orc grumbled to the human. “If you can find the little shit and bring ‘em to me hog-tied in less than five minutes, I’ll give you a prize.” The human’s eyes flashed at this. “A nice, fat line to snort up your honker.”

  “I’m on it J, I’m on it!” The junkie jumped up, eager, sniffing rapidly in an unconscious effort to free up his nostrils, drawing out a mean looking switch blade. As he was about to head for the doorway leading into our private rooms, the sound of a shotgun being cocked froze him in his tracks and drew all eyes to the doorway. The junkie whispered “Oh, fuck!” through his teeth. I saw the faint outline of a small child holding a large gun in the shadows.

  “You’re on what, dipshit? I’m right here!” Skreech’s voice was shrill, his eyes bulging out of his little head. “And if you take one fuckin’ step closer, you’ll be snorting lead up your freaking shnoz.” The goblin aimed the muzzle of the shotgun squarely at the human’s face. Fuck, this situation just keeps gettin’ worse, I thought. If he blows away one of these fuckin’ orcs, it’ll be the death of us.

  “Skreech,” I called, sounding more meek than I meant to.

  “Teek, the hell is he doing?” J-Maxx sounded much more nervous now.

  “If that goblin...” Maurice the orc was starting to sweat profusely.

  “If that goblin what?” Skreech yelped. “What are you gonna do huh? What are you gonna do if this little goblin tells you to get down on the fuckin’ ground?! You’ll do it, that’s what! Now back the fuck up!” Skreech moved forward a few paces into the room, swinging back and forth a shotgun practically bigger than himself. The sallow human junkie pissed his pants and groaned.

  “Tell him to drop the gun Teek,” J-Maxx rumbled, regaining his confidence, “or this will get so much worse.” Then, raising his voice so Skreech could hear, he continued, “I came here for business little fella, and you forget your place. Put that heat down now and we can get back to business. Make your choice quickly, but remember that you live and earn because the Dragon lets you. The Dragon owns you like he owns me, like he owns all of Los Angeles. If you fire that gun, you’ll be signin’ your own death warrant.”

  Skreech looked at me for a moment, his eyes making a silent plea at mine for direction.

  “Put it down Skreech. Come sit your ass down over here before you get us both fuckin’ whacked.” I gave him a quick nod to show him I appreciated his loyalty. He placed the shotgun on the floor gently then scrambled over to me.

  “Look, Teek, things got a little heated. It happens between… business partners at times.” J-Maxx grabbed a stool and dragged it across the floor so he could sit on it in fr
ont of me and Skreech. “No need to be slaying each other like it’s the Dark Wars all over again. Let’s start over.” He opened his arms in a sign of peace. “I came to you ‘cause I know if anybody can do this job it’s you.” He smiled that ugly, toothy orc smile again, thinking his flattery would butter me up. “And when we pull it off, you’ll never have anything to be such a fuckin’ sour puss about again. You’ll be rich. The Dragon will give you your own crew, your own territory, your own lands...Think about it. Prestige...Rank...You’ll be a made man—untouchable.” He looked around and, spotting a greasy rag, snatched it up and began to dab at the gash his ring had made on my cheek. Almost maternally.

  Skreech looked up at the orc with the wonder of a small child.

  He’s good, I pondered. In another life this fuckin’ jerk would be some dream weaver.

  “I even got a guy. I’ll take you to him, he’ll convert the cash into gold bullion for ya, since I know you hobs love the sight of pure gold. You like to caress it, huh…?” J-Maxx was rambling on and I was struggling to pay attention to what he was saying. The truth of the matter is, he’s right. Hobgoblins fuckin’ love gold. My balls tingle at an imaginary vision I’ve often had, just me in a vault with my hoard of gold, and voluptuous girls with incredibly revealing little outfits made of gold to serve me. A hoard to make my grandsire quiver with envy. I smiled.

  “What would my cut be?” I asked the orc, cutting through his bullshit.

  “Well...your cut.” J-Maxx was caught off-guard. “That’s sort of to be determined right now.”

  “Uh…” I looked at him with some confusion. “To be determined? The fuck kinda operation are you runnin’, J-Maxx? What do you mean?”

  “Look!” J-Maxx slammed a fist down, his patience long gone. “Again you’re askin’ too many fuckin’ questions! I don’t know exactly what the fuckin’ package is, alright? Could be gold, could be jewels, could be dope. Fuck, for all I know, it could be some super dope. It could be a fuckin’ weapon.” He raised his ugly orc hand up to halt my protestations. “What I do know is it’s worth a fuckin’ lot, and the dragon wants it. He really wants it, and if we can get our fuckin’ paws on it and deliver it to ‘em, we’ll be set; no more worries. Hakuna motherfuckin’ matata.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “It means no more fuckin’ worries! For the rest of our days! Have you not seen the Lion King?” J-Maxx asked, sounding disgusted that I may have failed in this. He didn’t wait for an answer. “It’s a fucking masterpiece.”

  He nodded his big misshapen head and I chose not to speak for a moment. Truthfully, I was rather surprised at how this clusterfuck was turning out. This guy is a fuckin’ lunatic, I thought. But if I don’t make this happen, if I refuse, I might miss my shot. If what he’s sayin’ is true, if it’s real, this might be the chance to actually fuckin’ make something of myself. I looked over towards Skreech and met his eyes for a moment. Not only might I miss my shot, but if I say no, what does that mean? It probably means the end of the road for me. For us. I gnawed on my lower lip and noticed that J-Maxx and his crew were all looking at me with a strange intensity. I felt defeated, annoyed, powerless; I’ve lived my entire life a proud, strong hobgoblin, and I don’t take any shit for what happened long ago. After all, what is it to me what mistake some ancestor made fucking ages ago? His bones are dust, which itself is gone; his views from a thousand fucking years ago aren’t mine, yet these orc brutes feel they can condescend to me and my kind because they suckled at the tit of the “winning side”? I looked at J-Maxx, gazed into the windows of his shitty orc soul—if orcs even have fuckin’ souls—and I sighed.

  “Tell me more, my man.” I grinned, but my eyes were daggers.

  Chapter 3

  Even though we were all sitting down together around a coffee table with cigarette singes and knife marks all over it, friends again—allegedly—I still didn’t like what I was hearing. It was strange, having these green lugs and their accomplices crowding my private quarters in the warehouse.

  “So, what you’re tellin’ me now,” I began, trying hard to keep things professional, “is a lot different from how you started this party off.”

  “How do you mean?” J-Maxx asked, slightly confused.

  “You implied that it was hot.”

  “Nothin’ was implied,” Maurice interrupted.

  The gash from J-Maxx’s ring had really begun to hurt and produce that annoying sort of itch that one gets from a fresh cut. Fuck it, I thought, Forget about it. What’s a few more drops of my blood weighed against this orc’s imaginary score of riches?

  “You implied,” I started again, glancing quickly to see if that rude fuck Maurice would interrupt me again, “you implied that this hot package was in the grey area of things, not that it was in a Halus-Corp shipping container.” The orcs looked at each other for a moment. “Halus-Corp, while shady as fuck, is also a very public company,” I continued, “and if you’re saying we’re to, I don’t even know—hijack a Halus-Corp container, you don’t think that will draw all sorts of heat?”

  The orcs and the human kept staring at me, and while I appreciated the silence and rapt attention, I got the impression they didn’t see where I was taking this.

  “Halus-Corp is a public company, a very public company,” I said again, drawing out the words. The silence continued for quite awhile as I waited for the over-grown stool samples to catch on.

  “He’s sayin’ that you’re gonna bring the fuzz down on us and that whatever you’re tryin’ to get at is gonna have security up the ass.” Skreech was clearly happy to have grasped this before the orcs and the human junkie, all of which were much larger than him, but clearly not much smarter. “By the way,” he went on, feeling bold and revelling in the spotlight of the moment, “your human smells like fuckin’ piss, tell him to clean himself up.”

  “Go wait outside. Air yourself out,” J-Maxx spat at the human, irritated that this thing may have cost him some face in front of us goblinoids—his accomplice had pissed himself in a confrontation, with a goblin half his size no less. As the sallow junkie slunk out without so much as a word, J-Maxx turned towards me as though he were going to speak. Instead he just sat there a moment, pulling on his fat bottom lip, which would subsequently make a small, light smacking noise as it snapped back against his tusks. I looked at Skreech on the sly and cocked my eyebrow in such a way as though I were sayin’ to him, ‘You seein’ this fuckin’ shit?’ Then I turned back to J-Maxx, who was still fingering his lip like a moron.

  “J-Maxx,” I said ignoring his odd habit, “why don’t you just take it, if you’re not worried about drawing heat? I mean, you got the muscle. Your boss has got it even more. ”

  “The thing is, I don’t know where the fuck it is. Nobody does.” He grimaced. “You can imagine how this annoys the Dragon, and of course, anyone tryin’ to locate the shwag for ‘em.”

  “Right, so...why don’t you send a crew to Halus-Corp offices and raid their computers, their records?” I was becoming exasperated and wondering how this hadn’t been mentioned, planned, and done already. “That should tell ya all you need to know. Or at least point us in the right direction.”

  J-Maxx shared a brief glance with Maurice, then shook his head. “We already did that dance. We lost a brother, and got nothin’ for it.” J-Maxx clenched his huge fist and Maurice put an equally huge hand on the other orc’s shoulder, then glared at me.

  “I’m sorry to hear.” I nervously ran a finger along the top point of my ear, not wanting to offend the dead orc or his grieving brothers, but not exactly comprehending how nothing was recovered. “But what do you mean? No clues? Nothing to go off of?”

  “I don’t like to admit it, especially not to someone like you,” J-Maxx said, though his slight was nullified by the sadness in his voice. “But we dicked it outta there with nothin’ but our balls in our hands, and even then, it was by the skin of our balls. A good brother was lost, and all we could gather was that Halus
was keepin’ this shit off his books.”

  “Now that’s interesting. Very fuckin’ interesting.”

  “How is that interesting, you fuckin’ nut? You find it interesting to consider orcs runnin’ away with their balls in their one hand, helping to carry a fallen brother in the other?” Maurice raged, his grief and anger bleeding into his distaste for me.

  “No, that don’t matter, it’s—”

  “THAT DON’T MATTER?!” The orcs roared in unison, both on their feet, shaking and about to pounce on me, muscles swelling against the cotton of their shirts.

  “Hold up! Hold up! I’m sayin’ it’s interesting that this guy is keepin’ the records off the books. Why would he do that? Why’s he playin’ this so close to the chest? What’s he got in that container that he don’t even trust his own employees to know about?” I looked at both orcs, then went on. “You see what I’m sayin’? That’s pretty interesting.”

  “Oh.” J-Maxx’s shoulders relaxed. “I see what you mean. But what do you make of it?”

  “If you ever talk shit about us again…” Maurice flexed his jaw, his tusks glinting..

  I swear orcs are like fuckin’ children, I thought One moment they’re throwin’ a tantrum, the next they’ll talk civilly...if there weren’t so fuckin’ many of ‘em, I’d avoid ever dealing with another good-for-nothing orc again.

  “Well, the way I see it, if he’s runnin’ whatever he’s got in there to the point that his own people don’t know about it, then it’s gotta be somethin’ big. The guy that skippers Halus— Sentega—he’s one rich, shady prick, and if he’s goin’ out of his way to move this shit on the low, it’s probably somethin’ he shouldn’t have. Legally, that is.”

  “What do you know about Sentega, Teek? Anything that could help us?” J-Maxx asked.