Ride the Lightning

by Dietrich Kalteis

  Standing in the middle of Chinatown eating a cruller, he rang Wally’s cell, Wally telling him how they ducked out the fire escape, split up, left a squad of cops banging on the door.

  “Merle just called me,” Wally told him. “Said the FedEx guy put out Artie’s lights down on the nude beach.”

  This was getting more fucked up by the minute, Mitch saying, “I’m out.” Mitch’s mind was set; forget telling Wally face to face, he was leaving for home—the gas city, Wild Rose Country. Even painting ceilings beat chasing pipe dreams.

  “I’m cool with that,” Wally said. “Fact, what d’you say the drinks are on me?”

  “Quit drinking,” Mitch said.

  “Yeah, right, the stomach—coffee then—end things in style.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Order milk if you want. Tell me where you are, I’ll swing by in the Caddy I just jacked—give you a lift any place you want to go.”

  Mitch told him thanks anyway, said maybe he’d see him sometime and hung up.

  A chill was blowing rain clouds in from the Pacific, bringing unseasonable cold, the sun dropping behind the mass of grey. A call to information got him the number of the Greyhound office on Station Street. The next dog for Medicine Hat was scheduled to roll out at quarter past ten the next morning. With his Visa maxed out, he’d have to pay the fare out of the thousand.

  Maybe Artie was dead, maybe he wasn’t, but if the FedEx guy had told him straight and gave up the names, then Artie would have sent people looking for him. Could be someone hanging around his double-wide right now.

  Leave his stuff, find someplace to crash for the night. The L woman came to mind. Find her place in Delbrook, say sorry for standing her up, get that Yuzu Fou scent on him and wait till she dropped off to sleep, reach into her purse and take out a loan.

  He felt the Sentry key in his pocket. It got him thinking, if Artie Poppa was dead, and his wife was gone, the house was empty, nobody there but maybe the dog. All he had to do was get inside, deal with the dog and find the safe, open it with the key. Make what he had in his pocket seem like an appetizer.

  Crossing Pender, eating a third cruller, he pictured himself back in the Hat with pockets full of cash. His cell rang again, the caller ID showing it was Wally. This time he let it ring.

  His denim was useless against the angling rain, his teeth chattering, box of crullers getting soggy. A bus shelter allowed him a break, every inch of the glass tagged in graffiti, scribbles of black and green and red like what the Tesche kids sprayed on the train trestle down river from his easy-wide. Needles, broken glass, butts and used bus tickets all over the ground. His toes felt frozen inside the wet leather.

  A car alarm squawked down a lane between tenements, a couple of punks running the other way. Up on the second story, a guy with a muffin-top gut was turning meat on a grill smoking like a two-alarm blaze under an awning. He yelled inside for Peaches to get him the HP, watching Mitch like he might climb up and swipe his T-bone.

  The door to the next tenement flew open, and a crumpled old man in a porkpie hat stumbled into the street, looking down the alley at the car with the alarm and parking lights flashing. Holding the neck of a bottle inside a bag, he took a drink and flagged a florist’s van, calling it a taxi. The driver swerved wide and drove on, water splashing off his tires. Porkpie threw him the finger, cursing gibberish.

  Mitch looked at his ringing cell—Wally again. He switched it off and started west. Porkpie kept pace, making conversation, offering Mitch the bottle. Mitch picked up the pace, pretty sure Porkpie wasn’t on Artie Poppa’s or anybody else’s payroll. Stopping out front of a butcher’s, he pointed at hanging sausages and slabs of meat with rivers of fat veining through them. Porkpie ran his tongue across his three yellow teeth. The universal language of meat. Mitch tugged the door handle that boasted Coca-Cola Refreshment, gesturing Porkpie in, the guy’s shoe sole flapping up water. He handed over a couple of small bills and kept going. Hunching against the rain, he kept a steady pace until he was long past the Savoy and the Husky station.

  Guitar strains rang from the doorway of the Commerce Bank, the singing coming from behind a nest of grey beard. No telling how old the guy was looking out from under the JG ball cap, his guitar case open, a few coins in the wet lining. The old Barry McGuire tune about the eastern world explodin’ brought Mitch back, had him thinking about his old Washburn in the pawn shop window, wondering if it was still there. Fishing change from his pocket, he dropped it along with the box of crullers in the guitar case, the guy calling thanks.

  The Eastside gave way to downtown, the rain letting up as he passed the new Woodward’s Building, getting on the 254 bus at West Georgia, shivering like a junkie. Mitch sat in a wheelchair seat behind the driver, not wanting to miss the stop when they came up to it. The guy across from him took up two seats and spread out his Province, glancing at him now and then. Riding up the Lions Gate bridge, Mitch grabbed the bar and pulled himself up. Looking down, he hoped to catch a glimpse of his double-wide, see if anyone was hanging around. He barely made out the rooftops from this angle.

  He wouldn’t miss the double-wide, cramped and depressing. He just wished he wasn’t paid up till the end of next month.

  A phone call to Tesche and maybe the old man would get his boys to box up his stuff and walk it over to the post office in the mall, forward it to the Hat. Maybe get a few bucks for the Camry.

  Getting off a block before Poppa’s Tudor, he flipped up his collar and shoved his hands deep in his pockets, the air cold enough to bring snow. He walked by the house a couple of times, no paw prints or turds on the lawn. No sign of life. Sure would be nice to get out of the wet clothes, fill Artie’s tub good and hot, maybe catch a nap under the archangel, the blanket pulled over his head.

  coffee’s on karl

  A key stuck in the lock, a fob with a skull dangling down. Dara pulled the door open, put on the bored look, her hand staying on the knob, blocking him from coming in. She called him Uncle Karl and said, “Thought you were the guy with the moving truck.”

  “Afraid not.” Karl fought to play it calm, thinking how Bruna fucked this up, not getting to Miro and Stax in time.

  “You bring any of those muffins?” Goth eyeshadow, barefoot in track pants and a White Zombie T-shirt, Dara told him her mom wasn’t home. Boxes stood stacked behind her.

  “Need you to get out of the house for awhile,” Karl said, guessing how this would go.

  She blinked her goth eyes, then looked up at the sky, the rain pattering down on Karl. “You for real?”

  “Could be some bad people coming. Look, Dara, I need you to get out till I call you—Cam, too. Come on.”

  “What does that mean, ‘bad people’?”

  “Just trust me, okay?” He needed to get back in his car, race to his place, get to PJ.

  “You can see I’m moving my shit, right?”

  “It’ll have to wait.”

  “You go from uncle to daddy without anybody sending me a memo?”

  “What I’m doing is asking you nice, trying to do this the easy way. You going to call Cam or you want me to?” He tried to go around her.

  “This a joke, right?” She pushed at him.

  “Go down to Turks, get yourself something to eat—on me.” Reaching for his roll, he peeled off a twenty, saying he’d come back later and help her load the truck.

  “Suppose I’m not hungry?”

  “Coffee then.”

  Cam the groper came up behind her, eyes bloodshot and glassy, hair sticking up like he just got out of bed. “What’s he want?” He asked her like Karl wasn’t there.

  “Wants us out of the house.”

  “Yeah, he want more one-on-one time with your mom?”

  More aggressive than their first meeting, Karl guessed Cam switched up his medication.

  “Think you scare m
e, man?” Cam said, trying to pull Dara back inside.

  “Not me you need to be scared of, but the guy coming.” Karl looked back at his idling Roadster, saying, “He’ll lay some welts and bruises on you, go with that nice purple hair.”

  “That right?” the groper said, taking a step, getting in his face, sticking a finger against Karl’s chest, his nails painted black. “Maybe I’ll tell him to fuck himself like I’m telling you.” Cam stepped back, trying to close the door.

  The flat of Karl’s hand stopped the door. Reaching out, he caught a handful of purple hair and tugged Cam onto the stoop, pulling Dara out with him, all three of them getting wet, Dara and Cam barefoot.

  Karl pulled the key from the lock, pocketed it and smiled at Cam’s raised fist, ducked under it, sending the palm of his hand into the groper’s belly, just hard enough to fold him in two. He caught Dara’s fist, the big skull ring on her finger. Stuffing the twenty between her fingers, Karl patted her shoulder and went down the stairs, telling her, “Be a doll and wait at Turks for my call.”

  “You just locked my fucking phone inside,” Dara screamed after him.

  Karl hurried down the walk to the Roadster, calling back, “Sure they got one at Turks.”

  “How about shoes, they got those, too?”

  Getting to the driver’s side, he looked at their bare feet on the wet steps, toes curled up. “It’s the Drive, babe. Nobody gives a shit about footwear down here, trust me.” And he was gone, rubber squealing.

  toeing the line

  She was an older babe, nice strawberry hair, not stacked like Bruna or packed tight like Sunny, but good enough. Despite his mangled leg and getting zapped, he had thoughts of giving PJ a jump right after he put a bullet in Morgen.

  She was standing inside the front door like she was waiting for somebody, feeling the flu settle into her bones. He guessed who she was and who she was waiting for when he walked up to the door with the fob he took from the Knox box around the side of the building, the box that held emergency keys for firefighters and cops. One crack from the pistol butt and the cheap plastic housing fell away like a walnut shell.

  Swiping the fob, he stepped into the lobby, giving her a smile, PJ putting together who this guy was a second too late. Forcing her into the elevator, he showed her the Vaquero and holster inside the folded jacket under his arm, pressing the fourth floor button, digging through her pockets, finding Karl’s door key. Inside the apartment, he bound her wrists with a scarf he found in the hall closet, looked around for something he could use as a gag, a cleaning rag he found under the sink doing the trick.

  Sitting her on the beanbag in the living room, he strapped on the low-slung holster and leaned on the kitchen counter, taking the weight off his leg, letting her have a good look at the pearl handle. In spite of his chewed leg, he’d stand there, in line with the front hall. When Morgen walked in, he’d give him the surprise of his life.

  “That’s some racket, sounds like it’s in the next room,” he said, meaning the construction noise. Reaching in a pocket, he pulled out his Newports with two left in the pack, sure he put a fresh pack in his jacket this morning, asking, “Mind if I smoke?”

  She couldn’t help being scared, mumbling through the gag, sure it was the same rag she had used to clean up Chip’s furball, trying to ask what he wanted.

  Wishing he had more of the Oxy, he lit the cigarette and told her he just wanted a word with her boyfriend. “Only way to communicate with that fella.” He took a drag and patted the handle, playing the gunfighter now.

  So this was the guy Karl dragged to jail, served papers on, playing the FedEx man. He didn’t look like much, kind of like that creep from Fargo on a bad day, eyes crazy and hair all wild.

  “Gonna set things straight.” He blew smoke, kept on talking, thinking he caught her smile under the gag. “You think it’s funny what he did?”

  She shook her head, trying to say through the gag, everybody thought it was funny.

  He let it slide, saying, “We’ll see who’s laughing when him and me go mano a mano.” He blew more smoke across the room.

  “Karl doesn’t carry a gun,” she tried to say.

  He stepped over and tugged the gag down, saying maybe they didn’t need it, patting the pearl handle again as a warning.

  “Said he doesn’t carry one of those.”

  “Should have seen him going crazy with his little stun gun down on the nudie beach.” Miro opened the top of his shirt and showed her the red bites where the electrodes hit him.

  In spite of the fear, she couldn’t help the grin, thinking what’s that, three times now?

  Miro practically fell on her. The slap rang hollow in the near-empty place, sending her sprawling on the floor. Then he had her by the throat, pressing his lips against hers, her trying to twist away, tasting the menthol tobacco. He let her go, grimacing, getting up and reaching for the counter, saying she was a lousy kisser.

  “Sorry to disappoint,” she said, seeing the blood soaking his pant leg.

  “Hope that knocked the bitch out of you,” he said, waiting for the pain to subside, tossing the broken cigarette in the sink. “Got plenty more if you need it.”

  She inched back onto the beanbag, her head reeling, tasting blood.

  “You ought to think what happens to you after,” Miro said and hobbled across the room, bending to go through Karl’s CDs.

  “The cops’ll be here, give you all the shootout you can handle.”

  “Be long gone when the donut squad shows up.” He tossed CDs into the corner, one by one. “Boyfriend’s sure got shit taste for music.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Far as shootouts go, you know anything about speed shooting?” He stepped back to the counter, taking the weight off his leg.

  She told him no, getting how crazy this guy was, guessing Karl’s chef’s knife was still in the sink where she left it, the blade smeared with Skippy. Right behind him.

  “You ever hear the name Bob Munden?”

  “Can’t say so.”

  “Munden was the fastest man alive, that’s all—saw him one time.”

  She wanted to ask if he ever heard the name Carole Lieberman, the psychiatrist on Talk Radio, tell him she was pretty fast, too. Instead she asked, “So, you as fast as this Bob guy?”

  “Munden,” he said, liking that she took an interest. “Hard to say. See, there’s a difference between drawing on an armed man and drawing on a coin tossed in the air, but, yeah, I’m likely as fast, at least in a real situation I would be. Who knows, probably faster.”

  PJ sniffled to keep her nose from running, hoping she had passed on her flu bug when he forced his lips against hers.

  “Of course, shooting’s not all I’m about.”

  “No?”

  He asked if she needed a tissue. She nodded, but he didn’t move to get her one.

  Looking at the blood-stained pants again, she said, “There’s coffee. You want I can fix you one,” putting on a little Florence Nightingale, wanting to get to the knife covered in Skippy. She tried working at the scarf binding her wrists. “You want, I can take a look at that for you.”

  “I’m a fast healer.” Then he asked what she knew about honey oil.

  “That a foodie thing?”

  It got him laughing. “Yeah, a foodie thing. Dumb broad. Let’s just say I’m as handy with the butane as I am with this.” He tapped the pearl. “When I finish up here, I can go anywhere, set myself up anyplace I want—Toronto, Montreal, even New York. Write my own ticket.”

  She nodded like she knew what the hell he was talking about.

  Glancing around the place, Miro asked, “So, what’s our boy got against furniture?”

  “It’s a work in progress. Got a few things coming from IKEA,” she said, wishing the delivery was scheduled for right now instead of tomorrow. “S
ure you don’t want me to look at the leg?”

  “You go playing cute, I’ll put one in you. Understand? Don’t matter you’re a girl.” He limped his way around the counter. “How do I do it?”

  She asked what, and he said make coffee. She told him to check beside the stove, said there was half a bag of Folgers.

  “You got any instant?”

  “Who drinks that?”

  “I do.” He pulled the fridge door open. Drinking from an open Frooti Cool, talking to take his mind off the pain, he told her about this book he had taking shape.

  “Oh, yeah, what’s the book?”

  He offered her some of the Frooti Cool. “Grow Right, Grow Rich.” He watched her nod, then said, “That’s just my working title.”

  “This about you?” She hated doing it, but she let him put the Frooti container to her lips, and she took a swallow.

  “Yeah, how I made my name, tell some of my tricks and growing secrets, some of the characters I’ve met along the way, shit I’ve seen, record shot I made.”

  “Guess people would read it.”

  “Damn right they will.”

  “I’ll keep an eye out for it.”

  “I mapped out some of the chapters, wrote the intro,” he said. “Probably need one of those ghost writers, guy knows where to put the commas and shit.”

  PJ thinking he really should write Carole Lieberman’s name down, give her a call.

  king of handguns

  Stax took the Fern exit, easing the Caddy down the ramp, making the lights, the big Holiday Inn across the intersection.

  “This ain’t it,” Wally said, everything inside going to high alert. “Got to go up to Taylor Way. You can turn here.” He pointed left.