Cadillac Payback

by AJ Elmore

  I bite down on the lime, bitter like my pride, and force the liquid to remain in my stomach. Tequila has always been the only liquor to really give my gag reflex a fight. I make the fight now, trying my damnedest not to let it show, but I know that she will see my bluff. She knows my weakness to the cactus, that's what started this whole mess. It was the way she wasn't afraid to challenge me that hooked me my first night on the scene. She's never been easy on me.

  She drops the lime into her glass and slips it past me onto the bar. She brushes so close, so hot and surreal. I can feel her in the space around me. Just by moving through the air she is physically touching me. My head reels from the intoxication she brings on, deeper than alcohol could ever manage. What kind of waves would it cause just to grab her by the arms and kiss her right now?

  She must sense the desperation growing in me because she pulls away at that moment. Her loose hair whispers along my arm as she goes and I grunt. Her eyes flash at me, shadows of sex swirling between us. Her body is mere inches from mine, and her expression is dangerous. She wants me, too. I can see it and it's so hard to make myself be still.

  I've never had to fight my desire quite like this before because I never truly knew it. Yet now I find some restraint that I never imagined I had. My self-control intensifies the heat in her amber light, and I know that her attraction is also her conflict. I've never pretended that she loves me, but maybe if I step up, she won't turn me out of the family.

  My battle is hindered by the detachment she's been using as a shield. I've dragged myself through days of short, impersonal interactions and purposefully diverted glances. I'm still not sure what she's trying to get at by shoving me out of her bed with hardly a sheet to cover my wounds. I can't understand that, and all after she broke down the years I've spent denying that I wanted her to be more than a friend and partner. Maybe it's all my fault. Maybe if I had just kept my mouth shut in the car this wouldn't hurt so much.

  “You need to figure out what you want from me,” I hear myself say.

  I'm already getting hard against my khaki shorts, so I make an attempt to kill the buzz. I can't remember making the decision to go at this like a man, but the words release themselves from me anyway. They fill the space between us until the seams of our world threaten to unravel.

  Her eyes catch such an intense blaze that, for a breath, I believe she's going to jump me right here on the stool for everyone to see. Then she takes one step back. Smoky air buffers her retreat, softens the edge the gesture draws in me. Her expression chills more than I am ready to handle.

  “You're right,” she answers softly, a sad light dancing in her eyes. “But that's impossible right now.”

  The bar lulls into a strange, collective moment of silence, like one of those times that all noise dies and you're left screaming something embarrassing. I feel like the whole city has turned to observe this awkward, painful moment.

  Then the band kicks into a dirty punk rendition of “When the Saints Go Marching In,” worthy of a Second Line funeral parade straight through the Quarter. The crowd erupts into cheers and dancing and singing, and attention scatters.

  The song strings unexpected grief along my ribcage. The tequila won't relinquish its hold on me now. The punk has melted her brown eyes into muddied pools. I reach toward her like a possessed man. I see myself moving, but I can't remember deciding to do it.

  She folds into my grasp, giving in to her sobs against my chest. This embrace is not about sex. My fingers tighten in her hair as I garner my own defenses. She's right. I'm asking too much from her just now. This is Charlie's night, after all.

  I lean my lips close to her ear and say, “Whatever you decide, I won't leave your side unless you tell me to go.”

  I don't even know if she can hear me.

  Part Two

  Chapter 12 Cadillac Crown

  Frederick

  I've always been the kind of guy to instigate action. Call me a catalyst, but if you want to do something, don't fuck around about it. I'm also the kind of guy who gets the same half-cocked response from a sleek and functional weapon as I do from a hot bitch. That's why I always work guard duty.

  It's why I'm sitting in the cool of the first hours of morning, feet propped on the railing of Noah's balcony, my .50 cal Desert Eagle resting in my lap with its silencer lodged comfortably against my thigh. It's why I'm up here sitting in the open, darkened doorway instead of downstairs, behind drawn shades with a bunch of really dangerous assholes who I'd rather fight than talk to.

  “Lighten up,” Noah says beside me, setting his lips in a grim line. He makes a dramatic pause, waits for the scathing look that is my reaction. Then he laughs.

  I hold the serious expression just long enough to make his smile fade. Then, just as everyone always does, I fall victim to his charm. I grant a dry laugh at his questioning gaze. If it were anybody else, he'd be knocked out already or defending himself, depending on his reaction time. But it's Noah, so I sneer into the early morning.

  “I'm high as a damn kite,” I scoff, watching him produce a cigarette from a pack of Camel Turkish Royals. “Doesn't get much lighter than that.”

  He, too, has been fettered to this guard post. We are strange company, my temperament too salty for negotiations, his far too lighthearted. Noah is the type who'd just as well stay out of that shit. Generally, so am I, if for different reasons. This time, though, I'm pissed that she didn't take me.

  “Don't you have faith in our girl?” he asks, pushing back the brim of a black, tweed Trilby hat with the barrel of his Glock 9 mm as he closes his lips around a smoke.

  “Faith doesn't stop itchy trigger fingers.” I wave away the pack he pushes in my direction, his arm like a muscled art exhibition. He knows I don't smoke.

  I look to my own tattoo, a red-banded daisho on my left forearm, the handle of the katana starting at the elbow and its sheath running to my wrist. I'm supposed to be her guard, but she ordered me here, where I can't do a damn thing. I won't say that shit to Noah, though.

  The cigarettes linger in the space between offering and rebuke, and his features crunch in suspicion. I'm used to it, nobody ever really believes me when I say I don't smoke. The weight of the street life that keeps our heads above water also drags life to a sluggish halt in moments like this. Then he sighs and the haze of introspection clears.

  He pockets his smokes and lights up. A haunting, urgent tune drifts from the stereo inside, a song of hot grunge guitar and a high-hat-punctuated beat. My knee bounces with the aggravating rhythm, but I won't react on base response. I opt for the cold truth that's been nettling at my resolve.

  “Josh doesn't know dick about protecting her.” I shrug, eyes latching onto a shiny black Crown Victoria below, which creeps into view near the store front. The windows of it are darker than the shadows that hide us.

  “Josh is good,” Noah points out, exhaling a thin stream of smoke.

  The Vic rolls on down the street and I turn my blatant “beg to differ” on him. The smoke curls against his shoulder like his thick hair, both of which upset as he laughs at the ferocity of my reaction.

  “He's a joke, can't take anything seriously,” I spit, pulling my legs down and leaning forward anxiously. I nail Noah with a humorless stare and my tone flattens. “Like you.”

  “And you're a dick, Freddy, but they keep you because you've got a good eye. That and some twisted fetish with weaponry.”

  He leans forward, too, flashing his little boy smile in my direction. That's Noah: never gets angry over the small hitches in the road, has a penchant for the truth.

  It's not the whole truth, really. They keep me because I have connections they never could. They keep me because I'm a walking arsenal with a need to intimately know the tools that will keep me alive. When you grow up in swamp country, you gain a little respect for personal protection.

  There's humor in Noah's eyes, but his voice is serious when he says, “That's why you're here, it's w
hat you do.”

  I don't think I've ever seen Noah cut the clown shit and lay it down.

  “Besides,” he sniffs, taking a drag, “Jack runs a good meeting and Izzy's there, too. They'll be fine.”

  I stubbornly stare at the street below, and say, “Yeah, great, so Izzy can shove his hands in his pockets and shrug at them.”

  It doesn't matter who else is there – if it's not me, it's not good enough. I've got the best gun, fastest, most accurate. We all know it. And I've got rank. Josh doesn't know his gun from his ass.

  I stand just to move. I lay the black piece against the railing with a clang as I lean on it. Just as several potential nasty replies surface in my thoughts, the Crown Vic glides back into view. I freeze, glaring at it, and so does Noah.

  “Still wish you were inside?” he wonders with a hint of sarcasm.

  “Negative,” I grunt, straightening and training my barrel on the passenger window just in case.

  Suddenly the night and my slim cut, short-sleeve button-up are stifling. Noah has mirrored my actions, leveling his gun through the bars of his balcony, cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. No room for equivocation now.

  The car passes and becomes two huge glowing taillights. I consider lowering my gun for only a moment before the hunk of metal slows to a crawl. Anticipation gathers in my gut and my hands as they connect with my Desert Eagle in a steadily familiar way.

  “I don't like this,” I say so low I can hardly hear myself.

  The shiny black back window begins a smooth roll downward. The muscles of my left arm flex, each pulling against another in a long tension that connects directly to my trigger finger, squeezes once, twice. The back tires of the Vic pop, begin deflating. The car lurches then drops onto its rims and drags to a complete halt.

  “Fuck,” I hear Noah wheeze and now I can't help but grin.

  The earth's motion stills, creating a sickening backlash within my stomach. For a long, hot, and heavy minute, I believe that Hell is waiting behind those midnight-shaded windows. Why? Something about the way the door swings open slowly tells me that this time I've ruined the Devil's gleaming, twenty-inch rims.

  Sometimes I surprise myself with my brazenness.

  Mocha-chino hands emerge from the open doorway, long, bony hands the likes of the shifting tarot. I get the impulse to blow them both off at the wrists as I see a thick, gold ring on the thumb of the right hand, gleaming in the dirty illumination of public lighting. That single, tiny detail heralds a full-body chill and then an affirmation: it is the Devil.

  A tall, wiry man in his late forties with mulatto skin unfolds from the car. He's wearing a suit the color of red wine by moonlight, and he keeps his hands in the air as he begins a slow pace toward the restaurant.

  “Let me be the welcome party,” Noah says, but I'm already halfway to the apartment door.

  “Cover me,” I call over my shoulder, palm sweating against the grip of my gun. I can hear him cussing as the door closes behind me. It takes every bit of self-restraint not to fling myself down the entire case and land at the bottom already running. My surroundings blur under the intensity of conviction.

  I don't know if Charlie ever really trusted me, even for as long as he let me work for him. I've never been like him, didn't grow up the same, and he could feel that. He didn't like my old crowds or my philosophies. He didn't like my mentor. But I never had a friend like him in my past. It was always Maria's faith in me that he trusted. Now Charlie's dead, and the embodiment of all the things he hated in me has shown up on the doorstep of his funeral.

  It's all I can do not to exit the building at a sprint, although I can't be sure why I'd want to rush into such a cold embrace. I keep the Desert Eagle close to my side, ready for a big-screen quick draw. I force the most distant expression I can manage and take post before the restaurant door, leaning my right arm against the awning's support beam in false casualty.

  The lanky form saunters ever closer, his slow pace mocking and lackadaisical. The temperature has cooled to something pleasant, but my skin feels grimy, covered in the sweat of reluctant anticipation. The car's driver flips on the emergency flashers, stunning scarlet stabs of high agitation.

  “Thought you moved on with your life,” I spit, raising the Eagle to point it at the chest of the approaching darkness. Never trust this man, something I learned the hard way. “Thought you found a new gutter to squirm in.”

  The familiar voice drawls in answer, “There was a time when I found your insolence endearin', in a way. Howevah, I find it to be tiresome after so long of bein' rid o' you.”

  This is the man who put the first-ever gun in my hand some ten years ago, a Ruger sixer that's still packed safely among my belongings.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask, unable to keep the question from sounding like a threat. Five consecutively better summers have passed since I last saw him.

  “You see, mah car broke down, and I was just wonderin' if a strappin' young lad like yourself might lend a hand…”

  I flash forward, twining my fingers into a thick gold chain around his throat and digging the distant end of the silencer into the bottom of his chin as I stretch his neck.

  “Okay,” he says, hands carefully pushed into the air to avoid misunderstandings, “maybe I miss you jus' a lil' bit.”

  I grind my teeth, fighting the urge to pistol whip him. He must have expected such a response from me.

  “Why are you here?”

  Instinct says to pull the trigger and be done with it. My gut says there is nothing in the world worth the trouble he will bring. Logic says this doesn't make sense.

  “I hear this is a bus'ness negotiation,” he grins, showing his large, yellowed teeth. He's wearing a wide-brimmed, leather hat pulled low over his eyes, hiding them from anyone who might dare to see his dirty secrets.

  “You don't do business in this town,” I tell him, twisting my wrist to make the weapon bite him.

  He makes a drawn-out chuckle that reverberates through both metals in my hands, then forces an exaggerated bow, jaw clenching to push my hold on him down as well. He says, “I'm into mediation these days.”

  All I can see beneath the shadow of the hat is his Cheshire cat grin, his smoke-colored teeth stretching for miles. Once upon a time, that smile reassured me. Now it just makes me sick.

  “On whose account?” If I didn't have such a firm hold on something, my hands would be shaking in my fury.

  “Gram Margalis,” he hisses. I slam him against the support beam, knocking his hat askew and looking him in the eye.

  He's so pleased by the distress I know he can sense within me. Or perhaps that look is amusement at the heat he's so easily and quickly produced in my temper.

  Gram Margalis is an old dirty name in our part of the drug trade, especially in this city. He's a fast-talking deviant who knows every crevice and crag of everybody's business. He's a con-man and a junk dealer, a pusher, and he's the demon in charge of the trafficking ring known collectively as the Reapers, a name they earned from their heartless debt management practices. Again, I know I should blow the middleman's brains onto the sidewalk, but it's not my place despite my history. The blinking hazard lights feel like physical attacks on my collectivity.

  “Hold that thought, Freddy,” Noah says, behind me suddenly. Strange, I didn't notice him arrive. It's not like me to drop my guard like that.

  The man under my grip snickers as Noah inches past me to unlock the restaurant door and slip inside. My hard attention stays on the fragment of my past.

  “You're the lowest slime this city has to offer, made of blood, puke, and piss,” I say in a somehow controlled meter. My bones chill at the malice in the gaze he returns.

  “How long have ya waited to say that to me, kid?” he asks, his smile fading into a dangerous set that I also recognize. I have scars associated with that look. “How many hours of sleep have ya lost?”

  I'm staring straight at
him, but I can't see a damn thing. His heart must be beating beneath my grip but I can't feel it. Maybe he doesn't have one. All I can hear is my breath, strained, long and shallow. I can't speak to answer, so he does it for me.

  “I hope they are countless,” he whispers as the door cracks open and Noah makes way for both of us.

  The moment stinks of agony and irony. I'm getting my wish, gaining admittance to be at the side of the new queen of the ring, yet it's in the worst of scenarios, with the worst of players. Silence yawns, stretches into a ragged apprehension, and for the indeterminate amount of time, I can't move to release my hold. The conflict in my head rages long enough to break down the salacious curve of those evil lips that still sometimes haunts my darker hours. For just a moment – it must be only a moment – he believes that he is about to die.

  Then Noah softly says, “Freddy, c'mon.”

  It's enough to pull me back a couple steps, to pry my white-knuckled hand from choking him with his own chain, and to dislodge my gun barrel from the underside of his chin. He straightens himself indignantly, brushing off the front of his shirt like it'll shake my traces from him. I watch him turn toward the door with pomp and, finally, I force my words.

  “Derrik,” I growl, a staccato piece of verbal sandpaper that makes him freeze, and then slowly turn back to me, hatred flashing in his slitted eyes. I hold the eye connection that threatens to make me sick and say, “The only hours I've lost to you are the ones spent wondering how I'll finally kill you.”

  Bad blood chokes back the reply he wants to give me, and his repulsive voice sours on his tongue. I can see it in his hardly-controlled spiteful expression. “Don' shoot the messengah, Freddy,” he sneers. “I taught ya better.”

  Then he turns away, leaves me to dwell on the dagger-points of his words as they tunnel deep into the emotional triggers that I pretend not to have. I could stand and seethe forever. What does one do when the messenger is the Devil?

  Just before the door closes, I catch it. What can I do?