by John Etzil
“Yeah, how are you?”
“Fine. But I think we might have a problem.”
“I know, Debbie told me what happened at lunch. Just stay chill, I’ll handle everything.” I tipped my mug to her and winked.
“I know you will. And that’s your last beer for tonight, so you’d better milk it. You can’t afford to be slow on the draw.”
“I’m two hundred and twenty pounds, it’s gonna take a lot more than one beer to have any effect on my reflexes. But if it makes you feel any better, this will be my last beer.”
“Good.” Her smile disappeared and she turned serious. She cleaned in a little closer. “How’d it go last night?”
“Done.”
She breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank God for you, man, that’s all I have to say, thank God for you.” She raised a fist and we bumped. “Man, do I owe you.” She smiled for the first time today.
“No sweat. Just stay chill tonight and make my job easy. You do that, and I’ll owe you. We’ll be even.”
“Ha, I don’t think so, but yeah. I promise.” She grabbed her server tray and turned to leave, then stopped midstride. She turned around and looked at me, held my gaze, then stepped in close and whispered, “Be careful.”
I nodded and smiled, trying to make it appear to the other patrons that she’d said something lighthearted and witty.
She went over to the next table and introduced herself to an older couple. The place was starting to fill up, and I noticed Frances over in her usual place, a freshly lit Marlboro Red in one hand, a whiskey in the other. God bless her. We should all be so lucky.
The door creaked open and the two stooges walked in and went right towards Mary Sue. They sat down at a table and when she walked by them the fat one tugged on her sleeve.
My table was two over from them. It was too early for the band, so the jukebox was on, but it was on the other side of the dance floor, so it didn’t interfere with my ability to hear the conversation. I caught bits and pieces of it. Enough to know that for two nights in a row, I’d be getting rid of a dead body. Correction. Bodies.
25
I sat with my side to them, pretending to veg out while I nursed my beer. I kicked back, crossed one leg over the other, and tried to sink into the background and appear about as nonaggressive as a six-foot-six guy could. Slouched shoulders, head down. All-around pitiful example of how a man should carry himself. Kind of like George McFly from Back to the Future.
Mary Sue walked away from them, cool as a cucumber. I listened.
“Think she’s lying?”
“I don’t care if she is or isn’t. We take her after she gets off from work and cut the fuckin’ truth out of her.”
“Do we really need to do that?”
“What, you gettin’ fuckin’ soft on me?”
“No, it’s just that we don’t even know if Sammy met up with her.”
“Where the fuck else could he be? Sooner or later, his wife’s gonna call around looking for him. You know how he’s always checking in with her.”
“On Friday nights? Forget about it, nobody calls their wife on Friday night, it’s boys’ night out.”
“Sammy did. He really loves Sally, and when the boss finds out he’s missing, we’re gonna get whacked for it. You want that?”
“Fuck no, I’m just saying that maybe the wench don’t know nothing.”
“So what? It’s just a few hours of work, then we dig a fuckin’ hole. It ain’t like we never whacked a wench before.”
“What’s wrong with you? You ever think before opening up that pie hole of yours? You make it sound like digging a hole is no big deal. You have any idea how rocky this fuckin’ ground is up here in the mountains? It ain’t like we’re down at the Jersey shore.”
I’d heard enough. I left my beer and walked over to the bar, where Debbie was still flirting with her friend at the other end. She looked over at me, then turned back to her friend for a few more seconds. Laughing it up, having a good old time.
She finally started heading over to me and her friend’s eyes stayed glued to her ass as he licked his lips. She stopped to chat with about six more of her admirers, bending over before each one, elbows on the bar, using her cleavage as leverage to fatten her tip jar. She made it over to me and stood with her hands on her hips.
“Can I help you?”
“One more beer and then I’m going to head out.”
She looked at me for a minute, a deadpan expression on her face, and walked over to the cooler in front of Bobby. She bent down and reached into the cooler, feeling around like she couldn’t locate a mug, all the while flirting with Bobby. Now it was his turn to lick his lips. I should open up a Chapstick stand in this place. I’d make a fortune.
She finally pulled out a frosted mug and held it under the tap. She walked back over to me, placed it in front of me, no coaster, and walked away. It wasn’t even a full glass, and the head was four inches thick. Fine. Be like that.
I sat down on my stool, determined not to look at Debbie for the rest of the night. Screw that bullshit. I had work to do and couldn’t afford to be distracted.
I lasted four seconds before I caught myself staring at her again. Sheesh.
I needed to come up with a plan. What the hell was I going to do with these guys? How would I get them alone?
I thought Bobby’s eyes were going to pop out of his head when she leaned over in front of him again.
Focus!
What if another of their “associates” was already on the way up here?
I could just wait in the bushes until they made a move on Mary Sue, but that was risky. I could miss them, or someone else might see me beating the hell out of them and tossing them in the bed of my truck for their final ride.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Fatty get out of his chair, pick up his beer, and walk towards me. He passed right by and headed to the men’s room. With his beer? I guessed that he was the nontrusting type. Probably had to be that way to survive in his racket. Either that, or he’d been roofed before. The male rape scene from the movie Deliverance popped into my head and I couldn’t help but chuckle.
Then all hell broke loose.
26
Her timing was impeccable, perfected over decades of daily practice. Fatty huffed his way down the bar, his tough guy chest stuck out, and Frances nailed him. I’m talking the grand pooh-bah of ass-grabbing finger probes that would have made a proctologist blush. Fat Boy jumped so high I thought he would hit his head on the smoke eater hanging from the ceiling. He didn’t, but he did spill his beer all over his fancy shirt. I was laughing so hard I almost choked on mine.
One man’s funny isn’t necessarily another’s. Fatty whipped around so fast, his arms extended, and whacked poor Frances in the shoulder, knocking her off her barstool and sending her rolling to the floor. He finished his violent pirouette with a profanity-laced rant that even Ralphie’s dad would admire.
“Jesus fuckin’ Christ, you stupid little cunt!”
The silence that followed was deafening. Everyone in the place stopped what they were doing. Beers were paused midway to mouths, kisses interrupted, the cook’s finger hovered over the bell, Debbie stopped in midstride. Even the jukebox stopped. Every set of eyes in the place was daggered at Fatty. For a second the tension was so thick that my hand went to my Glock. I caught myself and pretend to scratch an itch in my side, looking down to conceal my smile. I’d seen the wrath of the Summit Savages before, and this was not going to be pretty.
Punches, kicks, elbows and beer bottles all rained down on Fatty as every patron in the place, except me of course, decided to teach the fat New York City asshole a lesson. Turned out that, despite all of Frances’s faults, she had a lot of friends in Summit.
Some of the more humorous ones had even made a shield out of a cast-iron skillet. It had a big red sign on it that read “Frances’s Skillet—100% Success Rate” and was meant to be tied around the rear of one’s waist when you had to venture past
her to use the restroom. It hung on the wall behind the bar, right next to the clock. Too bad Fatty didn’t know enough to ask Debbie if he could use it.
While Debbie and Mary Sue helped Frances up and led her away from the melee, every one of her friends voiced their displeasure at Fatty and how he’d treated a long-upstanding citizen of Summit.
Now I knew better than anybody that we had our share of, let’s just say, “imperfect” men, who’d done way worse than Fatty. But that didn’t matter. They’d witnessed one of their own being abused in their house, and there was no tolerating that. Civic pride and all.
Within seconds, Fatty was on his hands and knees, trying to cover up and crawl away from the onslaught of what was now profanity-laced kicks to his ribs and thighs with sharp-toed cowboy boots.
But to no avail. All he succeeded in doing was giving the fellows who couldn’t reach him a clean shot at him when he managed to crawl over to them.
I should have come to his aid, but no freakin’ way was I stopping this show.
Skinny Boy had different ideas, and he came running over, swinging a chair to try and get the mob off the mobster. He was met with a blackjack from the off-duty corrections officer from the shock treatment facility. The same guy who had been sitting on my stool, trying to make time with my Debbie.
I had to admit, despite his puke-ugly face and portly body, he had good aim. Must have had a lot of practice. He nailed him dead center back of the head and dropped him like a sack of potatoes. Some of the patrons who hadn’t had their lesson-teaching quota satisfied with Fatty turned to Skinny Boy, and I felt like I was watching a replay.
I smiled, downed my beer, and ran out the door.
27
I found their SUV in the parking lot and tried the door. It was unlocked. Jeez, this was perfect. I couldn’t have orchestrated this any better if I’d had a ten-thousand-dollar budget and two months to plan it. I climbed in the backseat and looked out the tinted windows. The smell of the interior reminded me of Ostrich Boy. Must have been his cologne.
A few minutes later I saw Fatty and Skinny being tossed into the parking lot, followed by cursing, some “don’t ever come back here again,” and a few more kicks for good measure. I felt a pride in my town that I hadn’t known existed in me, and I couldn’t help but grin as I lay down across the backseat and waited for Curly and Moe to go on their final ride.
It took ten or so minutes, but they finally made it close enough to the vehicle that I could hear their groaning and expletive-laced mumbling. I raised my head and peeked out the window a few times to check on their progress, and it was like watching paint dry. Skinny, the less injured of the two, was helping Fatty crawl across the gravel at a pace so slow that I started nodding off.
I was afraid that my body heat would fog the windows up and that they’d notice as they got closer. Not sure if they would put two and two together, even if they hadn’t just had the shit kicked out of them, but there was nothing I could do about it anyway.
If they picked up on it and checked the backseat, I’d just have to beat them and slap the cuffs on. Part of me favored that scenario, and I had a mini-fantasy of grabbing them by their greasy slicked-back hair and slamming their foreheads together a couple of dozen times. But in the long run I’d have to put aside my selfish petty wants and just settle for killing them.
The passenger-side door was pulled open, and I felt the SUV sink to that side as Fatty tumbled into his seat. I could tell by the grunts that Skinny was doing all the work. He wasn’t shy about telling us that, either.
“Jesus, you need to lose some weight. Fat fuck.”
Fatty grunted an expletive in response. I couldn’t make out all the words, him mumbling through broken teeth and all, but I was pretty sure that it was something about ball-licking.
The door slammed shut, and I heard Skinny Guy’s footsteps on the gravel as he stumbled around the front of the SUV. I pulled out my Glock and screwed on the silencer. I prayed that I didn’t have to use it yet, then realized that praying in a situation like this had limited value, so I laser-focused on the different scenarios if I was spotted in the backseat. I was nothing if not practical. Except when it came to Debbie. Damn her flirting! That’s enough. Focus.
Skinny might be a neat freak and reach back to grab the paper towels to clean up Fatty’s bloody drool. Then I had a decision to make. A head shot would be the easiest, but it would paint the windshield with his blood. That would suck. I wouldn’t be able to drive without cleaning that mess up. I was sick and tired of cleaning shit up, I felt nauseous just thinking about it.
A back shot through the leather seat would work, unless I happen to clip something hard inside the seat, like a piece of the metal frame. I was confident that the nine-millimeter would brute-force its way into his back, but maybe it wouldn’t do enough damage. He might cry like a baby and draw attention to his demise.
I could hear Fatty struggling to breathe through his nose, and he hadn’t moved since he’d gotten in the SUV, so I figured he was out cold. I peeked around his seat and almost gasped when I saw him.
Holy crap, he looked like shit. He had a huge open gash on the bridge of his nose, another one over his eyes, which were already swollen shut, his nose was leaking blood all over his shirt, and his cheeks were so swollen that they looked like little aliens had burrowed under his skin and were setting up camp. And the worst of it, God help us all, his hair was messed up.
My creative mind already had “Summit Savages” T-shirts designed, complete with flying beer bottles and hammer fists as part of their logo, that I could hand out at the upcoming Red Barn Christmas party. As my present for everyone, I would have Debbie’s T-shirt made up two sizes too small.
I sat up behind the driver’s seat and slouched down as much as my muscular body would allow. I pointed my Glock at the seat back. Skinny pulled open the door and I heard voices. Shoot. I peeked out the window and saw a small mob, maybe four or five guys, leaving the Red Barn and trotting towards us.
Bobby and the shock camp corrections officer were in the lead, and Bobby had Frances’s Skillet in his hand. This was not good. My mind went into negative overdrive. I found myself rooting for Skinny Boy to just shut up and drive away.
The voices got louder and grew into yells. “I thought we told you to get the fuck out of here.”
Skinny Boy yelled back at them, “Fuck you, you redneck assholes,” then slammed the door and started the SUV.
That was original.
I ducked back down in case they smashed the window. I heard loud banging and felt the big SUV shake from side to side. I knew that the savages were attacking. If they saw me in the backseat, my plan would be shot to hell.
An explosive sound came from the back of the vehicle, so loud that I jumped in my seat and then ducked for cover, hands over my head from instinct. Someone had shattered the back window.
Something rolled around on the floor and caught my attention. It was a ball from the pool table, and when it stopped spinning I could see that it was the eight ball.
Now these guys were getting out of control. I silently prayed that one of them didn’t toss in a hand grenade. Those Summit guys could be pretty rough around the edges.
Skinny slammed the vehicle into drive and sped away from the mob. I could hear the loose parking lot gravel being kicked up by the spinning wheels and bouncing off the bottom of the vehicle.
I heard loud crashes banging off the sides and roof of the SUV, and I peeked out the back window and spotted Max and Gus throwing pool table balls at us. Wow, they really did love Frances.
Skinny Boy accelerated so fast on Route 10 that I felt like putting my seat belt on, but I couldn’t risk him hearing the click. I gripped the seat so tight that my hands started to cramp up. Freakin’ New York drivers…
He zoomed straight past the Sawyer Hill Road turnoff that would have taken us to the Lakeview House, and kept going on Route 10.
Shit. Where the hell was he going?
28
It was voyeuristically eerie, sitting in the backseat behind the driver and listening to him mumble to himself. I fought the urge to grab his shoulder and scream Boo! in his ear at the top of my lungs while blasting a round from my Glock through the roof.
The only thing that stopped me was that he’d probably drive off the road and kill us all. Would’ve been funny as hell though.
After a few miles, the SUV slowed down to what I felt was a more appropriate speed, and I relaxed my death grip on my seat. I guessed that Skinny wanted to make sure no one was following, or that none of the savages from the Red Barn parking lot saw us turn off at Sawyer Hill Road. They might figure out they were staying at the Lakeview House and show up carrying pitchforks and torches.
He slowed the big SUV and turned off onto a back road, went a couple of hundred yards, and pulled over to the side.
I could hear him trying to catch his breath, to calm his nerves. He started with some feel-good affirmations but that didn’t last. In no time, he was cursing everyone, including “the guy who founded this shit-eating little town.” I liked our little town, and found his remarks offensive. He even stooped so low as to take the Lord’s name in vain. Again.
I’d heard enough. I shot him three times in the back.
I leaned over to the front seat and whacked Fatty in the forehead with my pistol butt, just to make sure he stayed out cold. Then I hopped out of the SUV, dragged Skinny Guy from the front seat, tossed him in the second row and slammed the door closed. I took out the sanitizer-soaked towels from my Ziploc bag and cleaned the blood off the seat, then stuck the towels back in the Ziploc bag and in my pocket. I hopped in the front seat and took the back roads to Eminence.
