"Y'know, Raul," he said. "Everything you've done tonight has just been putting off the inevitable." He sighted down the barrel at the boy. "Guess I'll have to start making some decisions for you."
As Beto swung out wide to the left, Raul took his right hand off the handle and reached behind him. For a moment he felt the handle start to slip from his injured arm, but he clamped his fist closed around the strip of nylon and held on. From behind his back he swung the gun, his gift to Selena, and fired down into Mario. Two shots hit him in the chest.
Mario's gun dropped. His hands went to his chest and he fell onto his back, his head hitting hard against the pavement.
Raul dropped the gun. It rattled against the grate. He pulled Beto up on the gym bag and lifted him over the edge to safety.
Above them, Selena had come out of her room onto the fire escape. "Beto! My baby. Come here. Get away from him. Come to mama."
Raul looked his son on the eye. He pushed the gym bag into his hands. "Take it. It's yours. You don't need to hide it from your mom."
Raul kissed his son on the forehead and gave him a small shove up the ladder.
Raul dropped to the alley. He stepped over Mario and made sure he wasn't breathing. He passed by Haji's open skull. He knew he would be the driver so Raul bent down and dug out car keys from Haji's pocket.
Sirens wailed in the distance. As Raul stood straight again he grimaced in pain. His sleeve was wet with blood, his pants slick with a line of blood running down into his shoes. His chest wouldn't cooperate with his requests for more air.
He tried to remember what kind of car Haji drove as he walked to the mouth of the alley. A half block down he saw Mario's familiar black Impala.
Raul turned to see Selena wrap Beto in a hug as he reached the top floor. Raul turned toward the car, the yellow light of a street lamp lighting his way.
Eric Beetner is the author of The Devil Doesn't Want Me, Dig Two Graves, and the story collection A Bouquet of Bullets. He is co-author (with JB Kohl) of One Too Many Blows to the Head and the sequel, Borrowed Trouble, as well as writing two novellas in the acclaimed Fightcard series, Split Decision and A Mouth Full of Blood. His award-winning short stories have appeared in over a dozen anthologies. ericbeetner.blogspot.com.
VICIOUS DAY
Matthew C. Funk
"They did Mortimer late last night," Hunter tells me over the disposable.
The Sharper Image CD player/alarm clock reads 7:03 a.m.
"Dead?" I sit up in my silk sheets.
"Laid out and leaking."
"Pull your soldiers off the Desire corners." I slide on my Ray-Bans. I slip out my bed. "Put them across the hood on Law Street."
"We backing down?"
"Never." I get the shower running. Steaming before it hits the Milanese tile. Not like growing up in the Calliope tenements. "You're arming up and forming up. I'm making a call."
"Holler back." Hunter hangs up. I toss the disposable in the shower. It soaks in the Chanel body wash running off me. I soak in memories of Mortimer.
Six kids. Twelve-inch smile. Loved the jazz divas and Disney films.
My heart aches. I punch it. It mellows.
I turn off the shower, towel off in the mirror, tap my shaved head to get the Rolodex in it turning.
I place a call to the number that comes to mind.
"Ready Freddy Dry Cleaning."
"Morning, Freddy," I slap on the shaving soap, "this is Vicious."
"Hey, big man. What's the occasion?"
"Suit needs to be rushed. Dry clean by tonight."
Freddy agrees. We work out the details while I work my Gillette. I tamp off what's left and slap on the Dior and I get the second disposable purring again.
"¿Qué pasa?" Esteban answers over the whoops and laughs of his clan of rug rats.
"Mierda mal, hermano. I need you and yours to pick up a house guest." We talk and I dress. Shirt by Monti. Suit by Armani. Beretta by my side. Colt on the ankle. Berluti loafers. By the end, I feel ready and I hear Esteban sounds reluctant.
"Problem, hermano?"
"My people all got plans later." Esteban's voice is low. He's outside, escaped from the noise, to keep business and a Marlboro Light away from the kids. "Angela's quinceañera."
"Give her a kiss for me. This won't take that long."
He breathes hard, thinks hard, exhales. "Just any girl from the Desire Projects?"
"As long as she's related to someone in the Old Crows."
We don't say goodbye. I lock and alarm the house. I stroll to the Riverwalk before making my last call on my third disposable.
He answers with no answer.
"Silas." I watch gulls eat and tourists drink down their hangovers. "Light up anybody hanging outside my house after dark."
"Any cops and soldiers?"
"Anybody."
"Even real people?"
"Anybody."
My heart aches again. I watch the Mississippi's size and speed. I stop aching.
Both disposables go in the river. My suit goes to Ready Freddy. I spend an hour over coffee and beignets at Café Du Monde as men play trumpets, eat fire, and paint children's faces on the Decatur sidewalk.
I get a call from a toll-free number. I cancel it.
"Misery acquaints men with strange bedfellows," I tell my Vietnamese waitress as she cleans up, stoic and wizened as a goblin, before I am even done.
Cost of doing business so far: Three new phones, one coffee and beignet, $20 tip. $150 total.
I'll make ten times that before I even get to Carver High School.
* * *
Carver High resembles an old air depot: rusting buildings with boomerang roofs, compounds of anonymous brick, tumult of yellow grass, cracked asphalt, rushing children.
I sit in the administration office to hear if the books I ordered came in. I make calls.
Esteban: "Bitch named Jasmine, maybe 12. Duct-taped in our basement. Pissed her pants, but otherwise no trouble."
Hunter: "Word from the shorties on Louisa is that the Old Crows are massing up. Something pissed them off. They're rolling hard on us soon."
Silas: "Some strapped Old Crows drove by. If I see them again, should I pop 'em?"
"Chill 'til sundown." I stare at a poster of Mickey Mouse with a sorcerer's hat, wielding an open book that streams stars. I think of Mortimer. I rub the edge of my eye until the stinging goes away. "Be not afeared; the isle is full of noises, sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not."
"Okay." Silas hangs up.
I smirk at kids. I ruffle sprouting braids. I lay some skin.
When a boy with a flat-brim Hornets cap comes in on a disciplinary, I give him my business card and tell him to call me.
When Assistant Principal Eugene tells me that all the books came in for the English classes, I check the numbers—200 copies of Hamlet, To Kill A Mockingbird and I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings—and I smile in contentment as she hugs both her hands around one of mine.
When Freddy calls, I'm on the way back to my El Dorado, and I stop just to frown.
"What do you mean, two days? You told me done by tonight."
"That's before I knew there were stains on the legs, sleeves, lapels, everywhere."
"Tonight, Freddy."
"Just the labor alone, Vicious..."
"I go to you because you're the best with blood stains. Tonight."
I hang up. I put Peer Gynt on in the El Dorado. I place my MBA loan payments to Northwestern by phone as I drive.
I do not smile. I sting.
Then I drive past the five bodies surrounded by cops and crying women on the corner of St. Ferdinand Street and Benefit.
I tap the CD track back to the start of "In the Hall of the Mountain King." I lean back into the leather seat and float to Federico's Florist. The humid air no longer needs to be swallowed—I can breathe it again.
* * *
Lunch is a disappointment. Emeril's is as dependably savory as ever, but Lucy, the r
eporter I'm treating today, only appears delicious.
She presses with questions and fumbles which fork to use.
I cancel another call from the toll-free number. Lucy likes this. But she looks lost when I take a call five minutes later. I excuse myself to the restroom, leaving her to sugar her coffee from her soup spoon.
"We spotless, they thoughtless," Hunter sounds keyed up and coked out, "Five Old Crows laid low for the five-O to pick up the pieces."
"Your tale, son, would cure deafness." I watch a fat cracker in a Brooks Brothers suit slip on his wedding ring again and check his shirt collar for lipstick. "Take the boys to Pass-Christian for a night at the casinos."
"And leave you undefended?"
"I got that covered."
"Like you got the Crows to come at us all fired up and crazy?"
"No. That dirty job, I gave to a Mexican."
We have some laughs and I pace the restaurant, a blur in its ubiquitous brass. Everything smells like linen and blossoms and boutique perfume. I hang up on Hunter and call the aforementioned Mexican on one of the new disposables.
"Dump her," I tell Esteban.
"Where?"
"Pick a swamp." I flash five fingers at Lucy as I pass. She tries a smile and fails. "Just make sure you put holes in her torso so that she stays under it."
"No problemo, jefe."
I step outside to call Silas on a different phone. I can use the fresh air, even though humidity sticks on me like marzipan. I pace along the roar and rattle of orange-tinted afternoon on Tchoupitoulas Street.
"Anybody else yet?"
"Nobody." Silas has his mouth full.
"Soon."
Three minutes later, I'm back with Lucy.
"Problem?" Her expression lacks any question mark.
"No, just had to make arrangements with a florist for a friend's funeral."
"Oh, I'm sorry. Want to talk about it?"
"I don't have much to say about flowers."
Lucy doesn't know if she's supposed to laugh or not. She settles with, "Dessert?"
"I'm not one for sweets."
* * *
I drop off the white lilies from Federico's to Mortimer's wife. She cries, face digging into my chest, as I pat her back and tell her it's all right. And it is all right. She doesn't get any snot on my jacket.
Then I drop off the other white lilies to Mortimer's other wife. She just slams the door in my face. That's all right too.
I drive back and forth on the I-10. I'm listening to Peer Gynt over and over, but I'm seeing "Night on Bald Mountain"—the scene from Fantasia, a summit erupting over a sleepy village, scattering ghosts and fire and shadow, a tempest directed by a monstrous black devil. Replaying that scene is the closest I let myself get to thinking of Mortimer.
I see it vivid against the screen of the sunset—swollen equatorial sun melting its red sherbet into the scant gray teeth of New Orleans skyline. New Orleans swallows. Night closes its wet blue mouth.
Silas calls. I ignore it.
I exit onto New Orleans Street.
The toll-free number calls. I answer.
Police Lieutenant Morrissey talks on full-auto. "Where you have been in the middle of this slaughter, Vicious? I've had six homicides, a broad-daylight kidnapping down at the Desire Projects, and now the murder of a French Quarter resident walking his dachshund right in front of the steps of your apartment building."
I hope Silas didn't hit the dog. I have other questions for Morrissey, though.
"I've been lying low, Ethan." I breeze down Broad Street with all its sleepy cottage shops and dozing oaks. "There's a war sparked between the Crows and some Mexicans from the bayou, and I didn't want to get caught in the middle."
"Well, you are in the middle. But it was this Royal Street copyeditor who caught one on your doorstep."
"We can't have this boil over into the polite society."
"Agreed, and I've been looking for you to talk about solutions, but your phone has been going to voicemail all day."
"I'm ready to resurface."
"Whatever. I want the lid on this pot, Vicious. No more dead white people."
"You want the lid, I'll need a lead."
That gets Morrissey silent. Now Saint Bernard Avenue is whistling by outside. I roll down the window to let a brew of boom box bass beats and laughing kids drift in.
"Just one address, Ethan."
"You know I can't do that."
"I know you have done that."
"Only in emergencies."
"Will it be an emergency when a tourist gets shot?"
He groans like a headache commercial. "It can't be someone made by the Ace or Stagger Crannock."
"It won't be. Give me Fish Williams."
"Fish is all paid up to me."
"No Fish, no foul, Ethan."
"What the fuck does that mean?"
"It means I don't like just repeating myself."
I can hear his teeth about to snap. He makes me wait. That's fine. I like this part of the drive—when the ancient oaks reach their arms out and gather the Avenue into the bold colors of the French Quarter and the evening feels like an angel snuck a bit of rum into it.
"This ends with Fish?" Morrissey asks.
"He that dies pays all debts."
He gives me a number. I give him a goodbye, just as I'm turning onto Rampart. Ahead, I can see the Ursilines Street corner cluttered with the coroner van, the white unmarked cars, the patrol cops and the ever-present New Orleans crowd come for death watch and gossip.
I talk my way past the cops into parking inside my building.
Then I give Silas a call. I give him a 24-karat chuckle.
"My valiant monster," I call him.
"Word, nigga."
I give him Fish Williams.
"You know Fish killed Mortimer?" I can hear Silas is already driving.
"I don't know that. I do know Fish is the only Old Crow smart and connected enough to come back at me, though."
"Hrn," Silas says. He gets it now. He gets on it. I go to get my suit.
* * *
I brush my suit as I hang it up, even though Freddy put a dry-cleaning bag around it. All the blood stains from beating Euphezine to death last week are gone. Freddy is a miracle worker.
The boy from the Carver High office left a voicemail while I was hanging up the suit. I open my Cartier address book and enter his number with a Mont Blanc pen. I input it into my main cell phone. I set a Task to call him back.
I check the clock—7:35 p.m.—and call the Carver Desire Missionary Baptist Church about Mortimer's funeral services tomorrow. Pastor Willis and I talk, soft as candle flame, reverent. I wait until we're finished to eat my double-stuffed roast beef sandwich from the QuarterMaster Deli, so that I don't chew in the ear of a Man of God.
I dine while looking at pictures Esteban sent my phone: Him and his boys at the quinceañera, sweaty and rumple-suited and backlit by rainbow flash bulbs. I smile at one of Esteban and his cousin holding the birthday girl, Angela, upside down, her skirt flared above her like a white phosphorous sparkler.
I get in bed. I read the new novel everyone is praising, Atonement. It's exquisitely crafted, but I don't see what the big deal is all about. I spend most of the time with the TV on mute and the cops talking outside my window.
Silas calls my disposable after midnight.
Someone is gravelly with sobs in the background. Silas's voice is ironed. "You want to talk to this short-time motherfucker?"
I think on this and stroke the open pages of the novel with my thumb.
I decide I have nothing to say. I could call Williams "thou deboshed fish thou," but the quote would be lost on him. I educate through other means.
"I'm good, Silas."
"All right." On the phone, there's a sound like a door slamming in a distant room. Silas is using a silencer. He talks again, now without sobbing behind him. "Do the family, too?"
"Sure. I want to sleep soundly."
; "And you're all right tonight?"
"I have the NOPD camped at a headline-grabbing murder scene outside my window. They'll do for bodyguards."
"Peace out," Silas says.
I turn on the volume and watch SportsCenter, surprised that the Saints beat the Bucs again, and realizing suddenly, inexplicably, that I don't like Disney films much at all. Only Fantasia and even then, only the "Night on Bald Mountain" part. I wonder if my memory lies to me, or if I lie to it.
I doze. I sleep. I dream of open books floating on the Mississippi.
Matthew C. Funk is an editor of Needle: A Magazine of Noir and a staff writer for Planet Fury and Criminal Complex. Winner of the 2010 Spinetingler Award for Best Short Story on the Web, Funk has work at numerous websites and print venues, indexed on his Web domain.
HARD TIME
Tom Roberts
"How long you gonna keep me in this place?" shouted the boy, his freckled face pressed awkwardly between the steel bars overlapping one of his green eyes. The coolness of the metal felt oddly refreshing to his skin. His tongue came out and touched a steel bar. "Well?" He exhaled forcefully.
After a few moments, he shouted louder down the hall: "I said 'How long you—'"
"I heard you," the middle-aged turnkey replied. "You know the answer to that as well as I do."
The sheriff turned in his chair, the wood protesting as his stout frame shifted, to lay the tattered copy of Harper's he had been reading onto his desk, and look behind him toward the cells.
"Marshal's ridin' over to get you. Said to keep you locked in that cell 'til he gets here. Be here tomorrow."
"Tomorrow?"
"Yup."
"Cripes. I'll rot by then."
"That ain't so long given what you got comin' to you," Sheriff Lindsey countered. "You know what they say about Deputy U.S. Marshal Taggart? You heard them stories, boy? Toughest sumbitch north of the Picketwire. Would not want 'im on my trail, I can tell you that. Bust your jaw jus' for looking cross-eyed at 'im."
"He ain't so tough," the redheaded boy said flippantly.
"That so, huh? That's what you think?" Lindsey put his wide hands onto the arms of the chair as if to rise, but did not.
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