"I- I wasn't…"
"Wasn't what? Trying to get yourself killed? Making a mess of my night? Guess what, kiddo? Until I stepped in there, you were preparing to do both with blazing probability."
"How am I making a mess of your night?" Anger edged his words.
"I have business here."
"What business?"
"None of yours. But it's business that would best be conducted without your dumb ass raining gunfire and stupidity all over the place." I rapped him on the back of his head hard enough to just hurt him and knock that stupid Yankees cap off.
His breaths were becoming ragged. "You gonna kill me, then kill me." His voice was becoming thick, but not with fear.
Suddenly, I recognized the kid, knew why he was there.
Or, more accurately, I recognized his features. He looked just like his sister, the one who had been in the newspapers a couple weeks back. The one who used to work for Elvis taking coats at his club when she wasn't removing the rest of her clothing at the Blue Ruby. I'd read about the vicious drunken assault that happened inside the strip club. Heard more detail on whispered lips in the dark places I frequent. Whispers about who had done it to her and how she was too scared to point a finger.
"I'm not going to kill you. I'm giving you a chance to walk away here. I know what Elvis did to your sister. I know—"
"What do you know. What the fuck do you know, man?" he cried as he started turning towards me.
I moved the barrel over his eye, blocking his vision as I slid to my left, keeping out of his sight line. I didn't need any accidents that a panicking overemotional kid could easily cause. "Uh-uh-uh. You just face out, kid." Tears slid down his cheeks, rolled down the gunmetal.
"He's gotta pay, man. He's gotta pay…" he mumbled, more to himself than me as he turned his eyes back onto the door of the club.
"He is, but let the courts do their thing." The statement felt ludicrous coming out of my mouth, considering I had a gun to his face.
"You can't be serious. A man as mobbed up as Elvis Maxwell?"
"That's exactly what I'm saying. The Feds have been itching for something to put him away for."
"And you think that they're gonna care about some spic stripper he raped? He kills people. I ain't stupid."
"You are if you think he's gonna let you get within fifty feet of him without killing you first."
"Then what? He just going to get away with it?"
I thought about myself. All of my sins. My history of getting away with precisely that. "Nobody gets away with it in the end."
"That's bullshit, man. And you know it."
I didn't know if it was or it wasn't, but I said, "What isn't bullshit is that cab coming down the street. That's the cab that you're going to hail and go home in. Your sister needs you. She's got enough to deal with without her little brother dead from some half-assed attempt at payback. Be there for her." I stuffed a twenty into his coat pocket. "If you turn around, I put bullets in your spine. Got it?"
He sniffed and nodded his head low. "Got it."
"Now pick up your stupid hat and go home."
He opened the door and stuck his hand out. The yellow cab pulled up and he climbed in, never looking back. I waited until the taillights cornered Broadway before I got out of the car and strolled over to Elvis's. The club wouldn't be open yet, so I buzzed the bell by the huge metal door.
A Dominican guy with a shaved head and a neck thicker than the head opened the door. His other hand slid to his side, just out of vision, but at the ready. Very professional. He turned his huge neck, looking up and down the street. "Hey T.C."
"What's going on, Jesus?"
"That dummy in the Yanks cap split?"
"Yeah," I said. I looked at Jesus straight. "Benji called me. Said Elvis needed to see me."
"Elvis is waiting on you upstairs."
"Gotcha." Jesus did some freelance for Benji, just like I did. Benji was probably who assigned him the bodyguard detail on Elvis in the first place.
We eyeballed each other for a second. Professional respect and challenge in both our eyes. Two Alpha dogs who would forever wonder which one was Beta until such time they met in a pit. "We cool?" I asked.
Jesus shrugged his huge shoulders. It looked like boulders shifting under Armani. "Ain't no thang. Benji gave me the 411."
I walked past him, down the crimson velvet covered walls. Thumping dance music reverberated down the corridor. I turned left at the end and saw Elvis Maxwell sitting alone in a leather booth. He had on a purple wool suit and a white shirt, open at the collar. All he needed was a gold medallion and he would have looked like a disco lizard, time-warped from 1979.
He saw me and lifted a remote. The techno music cut off abruptly. The annoying bass line echoed in my ears for a couple seconds.
"Tee-SEE!" he yelled, my name echoing through the spacious emptiness. For a man who cherishes anonymity as much as I do, hearing my name not only yelled, but echoing, made the hair on my neck rise. He opened his arms wide, a brandy snifter in his hand, amber liquid sloshing at his gesture.
"Elvis," I said, considerably softer.
Elvis slicked his oily hair back with his fingers before he offered his handshake. Despite my disgust, I took it. The grease rolled around my fingers like I'd just eaten a cheap slice of pizza.
He popped a thin brown cigarette between his thin lips directly from the pack, then offered the pack to me.
"No thanks." I did want one, but couldn't stomach the thought of his lips touching one of the filters that might touch mine.
He shrugged. "Your choice. It's become decadent to smoke in my own fucking bar. You believe that? I can't even smoke in my own place?" He swirled the cognac in affectation before he tossed what remained down his gullet. "You have any idea how much money I put into this motherfucker? Next thing you know, they'll say you can't drink in a bar." He poured himself another healthy dollop of Frapin from the bottle out on the table. He chased the seven hundred dollar bottle of liquor with a can of Red Bull. Classy guy all the way.
"Times have changed."
"Ain't that some shit? Christ, just remembering when you could smoke in a bar makes me feel like a dinosaur. Who knew fucking Bloomburg would make Giuliani look like Caligula. During Rudy's days, I was still doing lines off of Ford Model titties. Now I can't even light a fucking Camel? Ain't that some shit?"
"Like I said. Times have changed." I sat down opposite him at the table. "So, what happened?"
He dismissed my question with a wave. "That's not important. What is…"
I interrupted him. "Actually, it is."
He glared hard at me. He wasn't used to being interrupted or challenged on what he considered to be his own turf. Thing about fuckwits like Elvis? They never seem to get that the turf they considered "theirs" was only due to the grace of God and the people who employ me. "You're kidding me, right?" His tone indicated that I might be.
I wasn't. I went on. "Do you know how money much the Gayden sisters have in The Blue Ruby?"
"C'mon, T.C., that run down little nudie bar?"
"Exactly. It's run down for a reason. The Yuens move a sizeable amount through there too."
"I know." He huffed a humorless laugh. "So imagine my surprise when that little spic whore calls the cops. She works here for me, playing the cockteasing princess in a mini-skirt. I go to Blue Ruby, and there she is, naked as a jaybird. She's cock hungry enough to take my money, to walk me into the fucking Champagne Room and rub her cootchie all over my cock, then she's gonna bitch when Lil' Elvis comes out to play?"
"She said you raped her, beat her after the lapdance."
"That's not the point."
"What is then?"
"I need you to take care of her. That's why I called Benji. Benji calls you. You getting my drift?" His attitude was shifting from appreciative to smarmy. A little man with a little power.
"Nobody wanted the police poking around The Ruby. You should have known better."
He st
ood up sharply, red impatience creeping up his neck. "You listen to me, and you listen to me right now. You are hired fucking help and no more. I ain't paying for your fucking opinion on what I do and do not fucking know. You hear me?" Two fingers curled around the snifter, stabbing his anger at the air in front of me.
I placed my hands on my lap, listening to him without expression.
"You get paid to take care of this shit, and nothing more." He took a manila envelope held together by a thick rubber band from inside his jacket pocket. "You're a tool. An employee, at best. If I hand you money and say to kiss my ass, you ask where and whether or not I want tongue." He slapped the envelope on the table in front of me. "Now you been paid, do your fucking job."
I shot him five times in the chest. The reports thundered down the corridors of the empty club. The snifter shattered in his hand as his body clenched around the new holes that I'd rudely punched through him. Smoke wisped from the perforated wool jacket just as it curled from his cigarette, somehow still miraculously clutched between the fingers of his other hand. He looked down incredulously at his condition.
"I've already been paid. And I am doing my job. Prick."
"Nguuuuhhhhhhh," Elvis said as he plopped back down onto the leather banquette. It was the smartest thing to come out of his mouth all night.
I picked up the envelope; put it in my own pocket. "Thanks for the tip." With the edge of the tablecloth, I wiped Carlos's prints off the gun and dropped it on the floor. I figured it was only right that I used his piece. It felt like justice that I did. "You never even tried to deny raping the girl, either. That plain ticked me off, just so you know."
And with that, Elvis shuddered once and left the building.
I went to take a leak before I took the drive back to Brooklyn. As I zipped myself up, I took a long stare into the mirror. I didn't look too bad, but I felt older than dust. The three white hairs at my left temple bugged me more than they should have.
Carlos was at an age that I couldn't remember being anymore. I was glad that I got him gone. He didn't need to---
BOOM!
Instinctively, I hit the deck, praying that the janitor had done a good job on the bathroom floor.
Silence.
My heart pounded as I stood, pulling my own gun as I pressed flat against the tile wall. With my free hand, I slowly opened the bathroom door. The club was just as I'd left it. Carlos's gun was still on the floor. Elvis had been considerate enough to stay dead. That meant there was another gun in play other than one in my hand.
"Jesus?" I yelled down the dark hallway.
Nothing
"Jesus, if you're here, give me a heads-up!" I wasn't worried about giving my presence or my position away to the shooter. If whoever it was headed up the corridor, I had him dead-bang.
Still nothing.
Then a pained wail, too high-pitched to be the meaty Dominican.
I pressed myself against the velvet-covered wall and moved slowly towards the cries, gun leading the way. In the dim light over the door, I could make out Jesus, flat on his back in a pool of blood, still clutching his huge revolver. A sizeable piece of his head was squashed in and had split over the ear, a spike of bone jutting out. I assumed that the piece of rebar that lay at his feet had done the job.
I picked up his gun. It must have looked impressive in Jesus' massive paws. Unfortunately for him, all that bulky muscle combined with a handgun too heavy for its own use enabled a high school kid to get the drop on him with a piece of iron.
Carlos was curled against the wall, his wrist tucked under his arm. Blood gushed from his ruined hand. Two of his fingers lay scattered next to Jesus. The shot I heard must have been the one pull of the trigger Jesus got off before his skull collapsed.
Guess Jesus wasn't as good as I'd given him credit for.
Carlos rocked back and forth in pain, not all of it physical. "I killed him. I killed him," he wept.
I knelt down next to him and placed my hand on his back, right between his bony shoulders. "You had to. He would have killed you," I whispered gently. The words were for God to hear as much as they were for him.
"I had to. He would have killed me. He would have killed me," he repeated between gasps. He said the words over and over as though trying to convince himself that they were true. He looked at me. His terrified eyes seeking further consolation in my face, my words.
I shot him once behind the ear. The red Yankees hat flipped off his head as the bullet passed through. Carlos sighed peacefully, then slumped to the carpet.
I put the gun back into Jesus' hand and walked out.
It had started to snow.
I let the heavy knob fall again on the oak door at St. Barbara's Church. I was freezing, the cold of the brass knocker penetrating my leather gloves, but knew Father Ken would eventually open up.
A scowling face under a Celtics hat peered through the door crack as I waved the half bottle. The scowl remained even as he asked, "What's this?" his Dublin lilt dripping with suspicion.
"Frapin. It's cognac." I knew he preferred a good Irish whiskey, but I used what was at hand.
"Any good?"
"Seven hundred dollars a bottle. Retail."
"Only about two hundred left, but I'll take it." He took the bottle from me and I followed him inside. The warm church air was heavy with the ghosts of old incense. The snow was melting into my hair, ice water dripping down my collar. I followed him into the sacristy where he pulled two Dixie cups from the dispenser next to the water cooler. "Will you be joining me?"
"No thanks."
"Still dry, eh?"
"Still dry." Little bit of a lie, but Father Ken didn't need to know that. I put the brakes on just short of drinking myself to death when I realized that the alcohol didn't make my thoughts any cleaner, my demons any quieter. It just got them drunk too. And they were mean drunks.
I still drank slightly more than my annual birthday scotch, but a Dixie cup full of French cognac in a church somehow felt like crossing a line.
Father Ken sighed at the injustice of having to drink alone. He poured himself a double and sipped it gently, rolling it around his tongue. "It's no Jameson's, but it'll do. How many?"
"Four."
Father Ken raised a bushy white eyebrow at me. "Busy night?"
"Bad night."
He opened a drawer and took out four tea candles. "You know where she is. You can let yourself out." He tucked the bottle under his arm and walked back to the dormitory.
I went into the church and made the sign as I passed the cross on my way to her statue.
St. Barbara. The Saint of Gunners.
She was the closest I could find, saint-wise for what I did.
I lit the first candle at St. Barbara's feet for Elvis. As a man, he wasn't worth the match, but his soul needed the candle. I prayed silently.
Underneath my prayer, a voice told me that I had to do what I did. The kid's life was over, one way or the other. There was no way he was going to get away from that point. The place was covered in his blood. His fingers were on the floor, for Christ's sake (sorry). I pushed away the voice and concentrated on who I was specifically praying for.
The second candle was for Jesus. The wrong man at the wrong place at the wrong time, even though he was a bad man and a worse bodyguard. I prayed some more.
The voice came back. I'd saved the kid from an eternity in jail, it said. It said what life remained in him, the State would have ripped out by the time he breathed free air again, if ever.
It was better this way.
For him.
For his family.
It said.
It said.
The third candle was for Carlos. In my prayer, I apologized to him as a lump of guilt filled my throat. I prayed for his forgiveness. The voice told me that I didn't kill him for my own sake.
Because they'd catch him.
Because he'd seen my face.
Because he could then point his remaining fingers at me.
>
The voice said the words over and over as though trying to convince me that they were true. It said that my act, in the end, was a merciful act.
I lit the last candle for myself.
And prayed as hard as I could.
The Legendary Great Black Cloud of Ralphie O'Malley
"4DC Security," Junior answered the phone in a falsetto about as feminine as Hulk Hogan. Junior had been answering our office phone like that for a good three years running and the joke never seemed to wear on him. He called the voice "Wendy".
Wendy was our imaginary receptionist, which was fine since our imaginary office was a desk stuck in the liquor room above The Cellar, Boston's shittiest rock & roll bar.
I try not to let Junior answer the phone all that much.
I hit the button to turn on the speakerphone just as a weary sigh replied to Wendy's greeting. I recognized the sigh as belonging to Barry Hardon, Boston's lowest of the low-end parole officers. "I don't know why I even call you turkeys."
"Because we work cheap?" I replied.
"Boo, that you?"
"It's me," I answered. Because it was.
"Don't forget me, sexy," Junior said, as Wendy again.
"You're about as sexy as ten-foot catheter."
"Thanks, Hard-On" Junior said in his natural voice, which was somewhere closer to a Rottweiler chewing on gravel.
Barry sighed at the dig, which he'd probably heard at least three times a day during the fifty years he'd been on the planet.
"What've you got for us, Barry?"
Barry sighed again. Seventy to eighty percent of conversation with Barry Hardon consisted of him sighing in various tones and pitches. "I need you guys to go get Ralphie O'Malley again."
"What now?"
"He had a hearing two days ago. Dummy fell asleep drunk on the train. He got picked up for vagrancy.
"Vagrancy? Seriously?"
"Seriously."
"That still a law? The fuck is this, the Great Depression?"
Barry went on. "Kinda. Probably would have gotten it dismissed, if the fuckwit had actually shown up for court."
I swear, only Ralphie O'Malley could get arrested for vagrancy. "We'll have him in by this afternoon. Fee?"
Dirty Words Page 12
