Friend of the Devil

by James D F Hannah

  My face was wet and sticky and flat against the kitchen linoleum when I woke up. The world looked like a fogged bathroom mirror, and I blinked until the mist burned away. A pair of shiny black wingtips were so close to my face, I smelled the polish. I lifted my head off the floor, and a shoe drove into my mouth. I grunted from the pain and rolled backward and my head thumped against the floor.

  A man’s face moved into my field of vision. Small, dark eyes shone behind large wire-rimmed glasses. His dark hair was plastered hard across his round head. His breath reeked of coffee and wintergreen mints that failed to cover the coffee. He looked like someone who made lampshades out of nursing students.

  “About fucking time you woke up,” he said. “Worried you got lazy and died on us.”

  I coughed and felt a glob of something splatter across my chin. “Would have hated to have disappointed you.”

  The man stood up and reached a hand out. “Let me help you up.”

  Because I’m a fucking moron, I stretched an arm out and grabbed his hand. He took a firm grasp of my wrist and kicked me in the ribs. I tried to double over from the pain, but he kept a hold of me, kicking me again before letting me drop.

  I fell onto my side and my body coiled up, and I struggled to get air into my lungs. I sucked in a good deep breath and pushed myself onto all fours, and he drove the toe of a shoe into my gut for my hard work.

  My body said, “Fuck you, asshole,” and collapsed under its own weight, my arms and legs giving out as I dropped flat with a thud. My forehead smacked the floor, and everything spun around me.

  I rested my head to one side and looked over at the guy. He wore gray slacks with a permanent crease and a short-sleeved button-up shirt that showed off over-developed muscles. He looked like a science nerd thrown into the transporter machine from The Fly with a Mr. Olympia contestant.

  When he smiled, he made a show of the gold-capped teeth that lined the bottom row of his mouth. “I always figured you guys were tougher than this. Movies, TV shows, they always make you out to be hard asses. Fuckers can’t take a kick.”

  I had neither the brain cells nor the oxygen to come up with something witty, so I craned my head to an angle and spit a mixture of blood and saliva on the floor instead, and let my head drop back down. That’d show him.

  A toilet flushed from the bathroom down the hall, and a dude not wider than a razor blade walked in, zipping up his jeans. He had wispy blond hair, and his mouth rolled over large teeth that jutted out underneath a nose suitable for platform diving. He pulled a chair from the table and carried it close to me and sat down, crossing his right leg over his left knee. His eyes were a shade of blue so pale they seemed almost translucent. He didn’t seem to have eyebrows, and I realized he was maybe an albino, and that my life would have been a comedy if not for my probable internal bleeding.

  I pushed myself over onto my back, keeping the men in my peripheral. I coughed and hacked up more blood that dribbled all over my chin. I wiped it off with the back of my hand.

  “Where’s Billy?” I said.

  “Who?” This was the albino motherfucker.

  “Billy. My dad. Where is he?”

  “The old man,” the albino motherfucker said. He spoke with something like the English accent kids use for school plays, over-accentuating the words and tones. “He’s in the bathroom. Before you sputter and get angry and promise revenge, he’s fine. We tied him up and kept him safe. There was no reason to harm him yet.”

  “Yet?” I said. “Fuck you and your ‘yet.’”

  Gold Teeth laughed. “See what I told you? These biker guys always want to act tough, but they’re all soft pussies. They cave like everyone else.”

  I started to say, “Biker guys? What the fuck are you talking about, you syphilitic canker sore? Do I fucking look like a biker guy, you pus-filled taint inch?” But about the time I got my lips around the word biker, the albino pressed the bottom of his shoe against my lips. It smelled like he had been walking through a dumpster fire of cigarette butts and dog shit. Bile bubbled in my gullet and I pushed back the retching noises.

  The albino tapped his foot against my mouth. The stink came and went like an ocean tide. “We all understand and appreciate the biker mentality, the freedom of the road, all those things. But you’ve engaged in a business deal with the Yakovnas, which means you live up to your end of the bargain. There’s not a do-over in this. You promised us merchandise, and you haven’t delivered on your promise. No business arrangement is worth anything unless both parties remain true to their word.” He pulled his foot back and nodded to Gold Teeth. Gold Teeth stood over top of me and unzipped his pants and pulled his dick out between the zipper teeth. I will only comment by saying either the porn or the livestock industry was missing out, since my suspicions were this dude wasn’t entirely human.

  “Go back and consort with the rest of your motorcycle-riding kindred, and tell them they have three days to deliver, or we’ll burn everything you love to the ground.”

  The albino came to his feet. Gold Teeth remained where he was, his dick staring down at me like a flesh-color viper, ready to strike.

  “Go ahead,” the albino said.

  Gold Teeth sighed and smiled and his body relaxed and he unleashed a stream of urine on me. I twisted my face to the side and craned my head away in time to feel it splash across my neck. It splattered and pooled on the floor around me. It lasted forever, and the stench of it said Gold Teeth had a proclivity for malt liquor and asparagus. He finished and tucked his tool back into his pants and joined the albino at the kitchen table.

  I wiped droplets of piss off my face and pushed myself upright. The front of my shirt was soaked and stunk in a way previously thought impossible. I glared at both men.

  “Goddamn but I need to kill you both,” I said.

  The albino smiled. “Have a good rest of the day. Have your associates reach us.”

  They left, and I crawled into the bathroom. Billy lay in the bathtub, hands and feet tied, duct tape over his mouth. There was a plum-sized knot close to his left temple.

  I pulled the tape off his mouth. He winced in pain and drew in air. His eyes settled on me after a moment.

  “You stink like piss, son,” he said.

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  Billy refused to go to the hospital, telling me over and again he was fine, that the two men had thumped him when he answered the front door, but he didn’t remember much beyond that. I made him stay awake, and after a while, he told me to go to hell and headed off to bed.

  I walked back to my place and showered until the hot water tank was empty, then stood under the cold until hypothermia seemed a chance. I got out and toweled off and called Woody.

  “Why the hell would they think you have anything to do with the Highway Saints?” he said.

  “Because we’ve been so far up their asses the past few days, we’re the next best substitute for a colonoscopy.”

  There was a pause long enough to know Woody was getting reflective. “If you opt to walk from this, I don’t blame you. I can go back, deal with this myself.”

  “Fuck all that noise. You ever been pissed on, Woody?”

  “Never in a professional setting, no.”

  “I don’t want to know what that even means. I’ll say this was about as bad as it’s been. Losing digits is bad enough, but I’ve always mustered along with something resembling dignity, and I had to scrub the remains of that off along with piss out of my ears.”

  “Am I to presume we’re returning to Raineyville tomorrow?”

  “I don’t see how I can walk away, on account these fuck-knuckles know where I live, and they’ve got no problem coming after an old man to get a point across.” A beat. “I’ll be honest here, that right now is the closest I’ve come to wanting to drink in a long time.”

  “Are you going to?”

  “Drink? No. But I’m going back to Raineyville and I’m getting answers. Dave, the Saints, Sheila, whoever, I don’t care, but
I won’t let these people come at Billy again.”

  “We’ll set this right, Henry.”

  “Fucking straight we will.”

  19

  I ached the next morning. I struggled to get out of bed and made it eventually to the kitchen where I dry-swallowed enough Tylenol to shut down my liver. I waited for them to work through my system as my coffee brewed and I soaked under a shower. I cranked the hot water to something just beneath scalding, and it felt good on my skin, turning me the color of Washington apples, loosening up the muscles that had tightened during sleep.

  I dressed and poured coffee down my throat and then took Izzy over to Billy’s. He rested in his recliner, head at an angle that didn’t seem comfortable, eyes closed, with the TV turned to one of the morning shows. His eyes fluttered open as I came through the door, and his hand shifted from the recliner arm to the end table, where a pistol rested on that morning’s newspaper. When he realized it was me, he drew his hand back, and he didn’t shoot me.

  His face looked like an unpaved county road, and the few words he mumbled out, he pushed past fattened lips. He told me to drive safe. I didn’t feel like going into the grammatical wrongness of the statement; I appreciated the sentiment.

  Woody was waiting for me when I drove up the road to his farm. He sat on the back step, smoking a cigarette and drinking coffee. He set the cup inside the doorway, finished his cigarette, and got into the passenger seat.

  “You look like hell,” he said once we were back on the main road.

  “Better than Billy.”

  “How sad for the both of you. How was he when you left?”

  “Less talkative than usual.”

  “Hardly seems possible.”

  “You’re one to talk. Or not talk, I suppose. Fuck it. What did you find out about the Yakovnas?”

  “Russian crime family out of Chicago. One of the charming groups of motherfuckers the Russians let out of prison once the old Soviet Union crumbled and fell apart in the early nineties. Came to America and found a niche moving knockoffs into New York. They tanked out when the Chinese began shoveling their own cheap shit our way. Headed to Chicago as the Italians lost their grasp on that game. The family’s been making strides. Got into the payday loan business and used that as a funnel for running book and actual loan sharing.”

  “The way those guys talked last night, it sounds like the Yakovnas are working illegal goods again with the Saints.”

  “Everyone loves the persistence in an American success story.”

  “You know, there used to be weeks—months, even—where people didn’t show up at my house and beat the fuck out of me. I miss those times.”

  “Dark days lie ahead, Henry.”

  I caught the occasional glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror as we drove. The swelling wasn’t terrible, but I still looked like they had beaten me with an ugly stick. I didn’t shave that morning, which I hoped added a touch of grizzled toughness, but probably only made me look homeless.

  There wasn’t a word said on the way to Sheila’s house. We knocked at the back door and waited. Iris, Sheila’s ex-mother-in-law, answered the door. She looked up at us with a fierce determination bordering on psychotic anger, and a ridiculously skinny cigarette between her fingers, smoke trailing into the air.

  She took a drag on her cigarette. “What the hell do you want?”

  Woody smiled. “Good morning to you, also, Mrs. Hatfield. We’re here to talk to Sheila.”

  “What makes you think she wants to talk to you?”

  “Nothing. She may think we’re the assholes of the universe, but it doesn’t change that we need to speak with her.”

  She smiled. Kind of. She contorted her mouth until the corners bent upward enough to register a shift in emotion. She smoked her cigarette and left a perfect crimson circle on the filter.

  “I hated you when I met you,” she said. “I hated you because I knew as sure as the sun rose, you weren’t nothing but trouble for Jay. He never once kept a secret from me, all of his life, until he met you. Then everything was a secret. Whatever you two did, he wouldn’t talk about. Wouldn’t tell me, wouldn’t tell Sheila. Said he couldn’t. You call him, middle of the night, and we’d drive him to Charleston and watch him fly out to wherever. Watch him come home with a tan, or frostbite, or scars and bruises and stitches. Never telling us what happened. And when you’d show up, you wanted to act like everything was normal. Like the two of you were nothing more than work buddies.” She smoked more. “When he died, the least you could have done was tell us what happened. All these years, asshole, and I still don’t know what my son was doing when he died. A mother’s owed that, isn’t she? If she’s got to bury her only child, she should get to know why, right?”

  Iris didn’t tremble with emotion. She wasn’t on the verge of tears. She kept her gaze on Woody, and he met her look with the same steadfastness. Woody broke most people with that, with his sense of stillness, that resolute blankness that registered less emotion than a one-night stand. Not Iris. She stood there, a tiny statue, never budging, the immovable object meeting an unstoppable force.

  Woody folded one hand over top the other and rested them in front of himself. “We need to talk to Sheila, Iris.”

  They could have gone like this forever, this emotional Mexican standoff. There was something in seeing the steely resolve of this little woman holding firm against Woody, who had a gift for bulldozing his way to wherever he wanted to be.

  Footsteps sounded behind Iris, and the door opened wider and Sheila stood there behind Iris. She gave me the once-over and said, “Jesus, are you okay?”

  I smiled, and I felt a tooth loosen. “Why do you ask? Is something wrong?”

  Woody said, “It’s about Dave.”

  “Dave’s not interested in talking to you,” Sheila said. “I’m not interested in it, either.” Sheila laid her hand on Iris’s shoulder and nudged her backward and moved to close the door. Woody slipped his foot inside into the doorway, blocking it. Sheila pushed harder. Woody didn’t give an inch.

  “Goddammit, Woody,” Sheila said. “You don’t ever fucking quit, do you?”

  Woody placed the flat of his hand against the door and drew his foot back. “There’s something going on with the Saints, and it’s bigger than just whatever’s going on with Dave. Whatever it is, Dave might be a part.”

  Sheila stared at us, then opened the door wide. “You won’t go away otherwise, will you?”

  “I can’t, Sheila. You know this.”

  “Then come on inside. I made coffee.”

  Iris moved back into her position blocking the doorframe.

  Sheila tapped her on the shoulder. “Let the man inside, Iris.”

  Iris didn’t budge. “Him and his friend, they’re nothing but—”

  “Let him in, Iris.”

  Iris held her ground another second, then stepped to one side, and Woody and I walked inside.

  Sheila poured us each a cup of coffee and offered us chairs.

  I shook my head. “If I sit down, I won’t be able to get back up.”

  Iris positioned herself at the table and lit a fresh cigarette. “Might have something to do with the choice of company you keep.”

  Woody said, “Men came after Henry and his dad yesterday. They thought he’s involved with the Saints.”

  Sheila sipped her coffee. “I’m sorry for your father, Henry, though for you, not so much. Why would they think you’re involved with the Saints?”

  “My guess would be because I’ve spent the better part of a week with my nose up their asses, either getting into fights with them or trying not to get into fights with them.” I shrugged. “If you saw a duck hanging around with a dog for a week and you didn’t know the difference between the two, you might assume the duck’s a dog, or the dog’s a duck. Whatever. This analogy seemed better when I started.”

  “Duck or dog either one, I’m not sure what to tell you except go talk to Mickey Nevada.”

  “
We would, except Mickey’s about as useful as a fart in a hot tub. Plus, I’m not holding my breath on his sympathy to my plight.”

  Woody said, “Can you talk to Dave, get him to give us a few minutes? There’s a chance Dave may know something about what’s going on with the Saints.”

  Sheila crossed to the other side of the kitchen. She swung around and leaned herself against the stove. “You’re not understanding any of this. Dave won’t talk to you, Woody. He barely talks to me. I don’t know what you think you’ll accomplish, you assholes pushing people around like pieces on a chessboard—”

  “Are you okay with Dave being in prison?” I said.

  Sheila blinked. “What the hell did you say?”

  “I asked you if you’re okay with Dave going to prison.”

  “What the hell kind of question is that?”

  “The one that needs asked. Because Woody and I are the only two people besides you who care if Dave goes down for this. And I’m less concerned for Dave’s life plans over the next seven to ten years based on good behavior than I am about gangsters smacking me and my father around. I hope you understand that while you might be okay with your husband going to prison, I’m not good with my father being dragged into this. Your choices are either Woody and me finding out who killed Jimmy Omaha coinciding with us reigning down bloody vengeance on people, or hope Dave survives in prison and you can read about dead bikers in the newspaper. I don’t care either way; this is just how this shit will roll now. Your choice.”

  Iris stubbed out her cigarette. “Hell of a speech there, little man.” She pointed a finger at Woody. “Now why don’t you and that asshole make your way back to whatever hole you crawled out of, and die there while you’re at it?”

  Sheila’s fingers twisted together into knots as her eyes danced back and forth. “Iris, could you give me and Henry and Woody a few moments alone?”

  Iris’s expression registered disbelief like a Geiger counter at Three Mile Island. “You can’t be serious, Sheila. These assholes? After everything—”