by Stephen Biro
Garcia was not going to be baited into a debate with Charlie and ignored him as he walked into the gathering gloom.
After Garcia turns the corner, Charlie looks around and begins to walk away from DeMatto.
Man, I hate that fuckin' pig!” Charlie then grabs DeMatto’s hand to shake it and says, “Hey, thanks for the help, Sport. You be good now, hear? I gotta be goin'. I got a lot of..."
“Dishes to wash!” DeMatto holds Charlie’s hand in a strong grip, which surprises Charlie. The pudgy man doesn’t look to him as if he could hold a damp dishrag without dropping it. Dematto pulls Charlie along with him as he walks briskly to hail a cab. DeMatto talks as he looks for an on duty Checker.
“Okay Charlie, let's go! I meant what I said to the officer. Don't make a liar out of me, or I’ll have to turn you back in to him!"
Charlie now chagrined and trying to figure a way out of this whole, in his opinion, fucked up deal, mutters, If luck was shit, I’d never get a smell. “What do you want now? My life story? Forget it!” and then Charlie spit at the feet of Dematto and said defiantly, “I ain't gonna eat your food anyway!"
Dematto had a flash of anger walk across his face for the merest second and then composing himself replied kindly, “Your life is just that...your life. I respect other person’s privacy as mine is also very dear to me."
Charlie was not going to be swayed by sweet and simple words. He went looking for a reason to keep his resolve against dealing with DeMatto. So he thought of the most insulting thing he could say.
“Did you just call me ‘Dear’? Oh my shit. You’re a fag!"
There, thought Charlie that should send this puke packing. To his chagrin, Dematto did just what Charlie had not expected. DeMatto placed his arm around Charlie’s shoulder gripping it with a strength that even Charlie had not expected, whistled down a cab and before Charlie could protest, he was in the car on his way to DeMatto’s Mission.
Charlie sat in the cab listening to the top of the pop music hits of the day in Russian as the cab weaved its way through heavy downtown traffic its way to the soup kitchen. The cab rolled up to the front entrance of the ‘Fallen Angel’ mission where a group of other homeless people were standing and smoking cigarette butts they had caged from various locations on the street. Charlie smiled at seeing this. Even before he was homeless himself, he always marveled at the way people with no money always found a way to get their hands on liquor, smokes and drugs. But food for some reason was the tough score. Before he could begin to reason this oddity out further, Dematto gently herded him out the cab and onto the sidewalk.
As Charlie was sizing up the old converted meat packing plant, DeMatto spoke to him as he watched Charlie run his eyes up down and back and forth over the place.
“This was once my family’s business.” He said with pride. “Dematto’s Specialty Meats was a household name when I was younger man. My grandfather and my father after him always made sure that we only chose the best flesh from our private ranch. I always had dreams of going out there and becoming a cowboy.” At saying this, DeMatto looked at Charlie like he wanted his approval of his childhood fantasy.
Charlie was himself from a wealthy background. He figured that this guy was a typical spoiled brat who had not known what real hard work was and so proudly told everyone he wanted impress that he was just a regular ‘Joe’ who had never gotten his dream of riding the range and yelling “Git up. Git up little Dogie!” Well, smugly thought Charlie, this guy had come close though. To Charlie his un-realized fantasy was a load of cow shit.
Charlie shook his head and chuckled. DeMatto looked appraisingly at him and asked, “Was there something funny about what I just said?”
“Oh no! I didn’t mean to offend you.” He said. “I just thought it was kinda humorous that you thought your big doughy pampered ass could fill the chaps of John Wayne is all.”
DeMatto retained his composure and then questioned his sniggering companion about his dreams.
“Didn’t you ever have regrets about what you never got to do?”
“All the fucking time…Mr. Wyatt Twerp. But what’s that to you? Just who the fuck are you these days?”
DeMatto sighed knowing that he would not get a decent answer form Charlie unless he offered one himself.
“I’m just a man who hates waste. I take what's bad, and make good from it, understand?"
“Nope.” Charlie replied, not only hoping to frustrate DeMatto enough that he would see that Charlie was too disrespectful and ornery to help. DeMatto was no fool. He had dealt with people like Charlie many times before. He continued his explanation of just who he was.
“Between losing most of our cattle due to several bad winters out West and the coming of the big super store chains to this area, my family had to shut the place down. It took me many years of working hard at becoming a top notch butcher to afford the back taxes and buy at least the building back. This is a lost art mostly and a valuable one to a certain Michelin three star steakhouse. This made me a very wealthy man. But like you, I was homeless during most of my early days. I swore that I and anyone else who warranted my help would not be hungry or without hope. So, I opened this place and now hundreds are fed every day so that they can stay alive to find ways out of this terrible existence. Add to that, I find them work in other areas away from this city. Sometimes a change of scenery is all it takes to make a person lose the ghosts of a life that haunts them. We’re kind of, ‘Brothers in Arms’ against the war on poverty and hunger.”
Dematto beamed at Charlie figuring that this would win him over. He figured wrong and Charlie had already been to war and wasn’t having any of DeMatto’s typical civilian bullshit take on that phrase.
“So.” said Charlie. I was right.”
“Right about what, exactly?” queried DeMatto.
“You are a FAG!” Charlie said, while laughing at his own nasty response.
DeMatto looked angry now. But before he could say anything back, Charlie ran with this like a horse with the bit gone from his mouth.
“Only a Fag would have such a bleeding heart attitude about this stuff!” Charlie then started to rub his eyes with his grimy fists while going “Oh boo hoo, I never became a ‘broke back’ cowboy, my daddy lost our business, my life and hard times are just like yours.”
Then Charlie raised his middle finger and literally shoved it under the nose of DeMatto.
“FUCK…YOU!” he yelled. “My life is nothing like yours! You know what I did a few years back when I was so hungry that I was out of my mind from it?” Saying this Charlie reeled his anger back in quickly. No, he thought. I was not going to give this fuck anymore reasons to pity me or give away that secret. So, he quickly added, “I robbed an old lady… and then desperate to finish on believable note added, “and…umm… cleaned out her fridge.”
Charlie looked with defiance at DeMatto. The large man smiled. His reaction to the fib threw Charlie for a loop. He figured the guy would call the cops and then at least he’d be taken somewhere he could get a meal without having to pay with his gratitude to anyone except the city’s taxpayers. And screw them too, thought Charlie. Mr. Alphonse DeMatto didn’t believe one word of what he’d heard. He could tell the homeless man he was with was covering up. This pleased DeMatto.
“My poor friend,” Said DeMatto genially, “Now that you’re here. You need not think about those dark times. Here, we will show you the light of good fellowship.”
Saying this, and before Charlie could protest further, he placed his heavy grip on Charlie’s shoulders again and hustled them both off the street and into the warmth of “The Fallen Angel”.
The mission was filled with shabbily dressed people moving like zombies from the serving station to the assortment of mismatched tables and chairs that took up most of the room.
Charlie looked around and then sniffed at the air. He wrinkled his nose in disgust and commented,
“Man! What is that stink? I smelled somethin' close to that when I was
in the Army.” Then it hit him. The smell was familiar, but he couldn’t place it. Then he thought he figured it out and yelled right into Dematto’s face.
“Wait! Why you lousy fuck! You put that shit in food that stops a man from gettin' it up! I ain't eatin' that crap!" DeMatto merely sighed and replied,
"That smell is disinfectant. We use a lot of it here.” Then he added, “And we don't put salt-peter in the food either. Besides, why should it bother you? Got a hot date Charlie?"
"One never knows, does one? I'm known as a smooth operator."
DeMatto slapped Charlie and the back almost knocking him over and laughed like he’d shared a joke with an old friend.
“Ha, ha! Very good, Charlie! Well why don’t you operate yourself some chow, and then report to the kitchen. We'll run into each other again soon."
Charlie was glad to be left alone by the grinning man, but couldn’t resist one more childish jest at his benefactor’s expense. Charlie sneered, “Not if I see you first…Dear!"
A few days later found a clean and almost well-fed Charlie Reilly doing dishes. He had not found the mission so bad after all. He’d even found a place to hide his gun in the cavernous building. It was right up near DeMatto’s living quarters. Charlie also found that DeMatto was pretty shrewd. He had the main freezers and refrigerators that held the mission’s provisions right next to these. Charlie figured that the huge pad locks on the cold units was DeMatto’s way of keeping his supplies from being taken during a “Midnight Snack” run by the hungry rabble sleeping below.
As he labored at scrubbing a glob of gravy from a chipped plate which then fell to the floor shattering and earned him the laughter and applause of his fellow homeless. He threw down his dishrag and thought to himself, Aw, this sucks! I'm outta here! Tonight I’m gonna break into those coolers and grab enough grub to get me to the next state.” Then his thoughts turned to his hidden gun. He’d need it just in case DeMatto was a light sleeper. His reverie was interrupted by two of his fellow “Fallen Angels” who were arguing by the stoves.
A man wearing an old “Iron Town Rollers” ball cap was arguing with a woman who might have been to Charlie’s eyes pretty sweet looking before electricity had been invented. The woman was heatedly speaking her mind.
"Have you been sniffing glue again! I'm tellin' ya, he's got bucks out the wazoo! This place ain’t cheap to run and no one but him puts up the cash for all this! Besides, I’ve seen him take out his wallet a few times and it's always fulla cash!"
The man in the ball cap yelled back, “Shut up, ya skank hoe! Why would DeMatto live in this shit hole if he had money?"
His adversary was not backing down and said, “Simple, like you.” The man balled up his fist but a dirty look from Charlie stopped that. The woman looked over and when she did, Charlie was working on picking up the broken pieces of plate on the floor. Seeing this, the old woman still was not convinced that the dishwasher wasn’t eavesdropping and whispered, “His dead daddy was like him. It was in the old man's will, that his kid keep on doin' his charity or he's cut off like nuts on stallion."
Charlie almost dropped the pieces he had just picked up. Dematto was lying! He thought now. He further thought, Good! Now that I know he’s full of crap, it’ll make what I’m gonna do tonight easier. Charlie had a reason now to leave and not worry about any repercussions. If anyone asked him later, he would say that the guy was a liar and up to no good. And that the mission was just a way for a rotten privileged asshole to keep his trust fund flowing. Charlie finished his last dish and waited later on his cot for the lights to go out. Which, they soon did.
As Charlie quietly lifted himself up from the cot, careful not to disturb the snoring chorus of coming from the sea indigents around him, he waited till his eyes adjusted to the gloom and thought, “I bet he's got a trunk of money up there. Keepin' this place was part of the deal! These old places are like fortresses though. Breaking in here would be almost impossible
Charlie grinned to himself and thought, well at least that part ain’t going be a problem. Now to go and make sure no other problems will stop his planned escape. Charlie got up and quietly moved to the stairs at the back of the room that led to the coolers. And DeMatto’s personal living space. The freight elevator still worked, but the noise from its ancient gears would wake the dead.
And if DeMatto did hear him without using the elevator…then he would prove that the dead truly do tell no tales.
He started up the stairs. On the first landing, he pulled out a loose brick and took out his gun. Charlie thought, "If what that old rummy said was is true, then maybe I don't have to take charity or be hungry again! If I can get away with it, I’m gonna find out just where he keeps that nice fat wallet of his.”
Quietly to himself he muttered while looking at the gleaming barrel of his weapon.
This should be a piece of cake! No one saw me sneak up here. I should be in and out quick!
He then walked up the last flight of stairs and this brought him near the gleaming coolers and just a few yards away, was the steel door to DeMatto’s rooms. That was going to be a problem thought Charlie. I can get to the food, but the money is gonna take some doing. That door looks pretty tough and…
Just in mid-thought, Charlie could have sworn that the door that looked closed earlier was now slightly askew. Charlie rubbed his eyes and figured that the dark was playing tricks in his vision.
He got a chill up his spine and decided against going for the money. Right now, all he wanted was enough food to keep him for the journey ahead. DeMatto may be light sleeper and that would only cause bigger problems. Then he thought, besides maybe DeMatto wasn’t even here. The place is dark and maybe that fag is over at fucking Garcia's giving him head? They seemed real buddy-butt-ee!
Charlie stifled a laugh at his own joke. He moved cautiously to the door of the first cooler. He was surprised to see that there was no longer a big pad lock on the door. Charlie went back to his military training. A target that became too easy all of a sudden could be a trap. Charlie cocked the gun and pulled the door open. He was ready for anything now he figured. He stopped as the first rush of cold air hit his face. It was like a slap to his senses. He chuckled at his paranoia. DeMatto was no threat! In his mind he played out the thought that DeMatto was just a typical clueless do-gooder! Asshole! He probably figured that because he’d been so good to all these poor fucks that their loyalty to him and the continuous flow of food would be enough that no one would want to jinx a good thing by stealing food.
Charlie then slipped inside the cooler and began to rummage around to find a light. The door had no window, so he could turn on the light and get even better stuff than just grabbing anything and running. When he found the old style knob that when spun would ‘Click’ on the lights, he twisted it left and got nothing. On the right turn, he got more than he bargained for.
In the glowing incandescent light he saw a sight that sent him spinning. The cooler was filled with bodies hanging from meat hooks. Charlie fell backwards against some steel shelves from the sight of this. He turned around only to see several heads with the eye sockets stuffed with herb bags staring up at him before they rolled onto the frozen floor. The worst thing was that Charlie recognized one of the heads. It belonged to the man he had killed behind the Chinese take out place. Bad enough for that to happen, the other head belonged to the biker who had once owned the gun he was holding.
In shock and throwing caution to the winds now, he said aloud “Oh fuck! No! He's the one! He's the guy who’s been killin' them gang kids! What he said about waste into useful stuff must’ve meant…Oh shit! I shoulda known! I knew the smell and the taste of what I ate was…”
A voice like thunder rumbled into his ears as Charlie heard behind him, “The last one you’re ever going to get, Charlie Reilly. Don’t move!”
Charlie lowered his gun so that his body blocked it from DeMatto’s view. Charlie in a fevered thought hoped that if he could just fall back on his training, that
he could nail DeMatto quickly upon turning around when the chance came. He just stood there as DeMatto began to speak again.
“You Moron!” said DeMatto to Charlie’s back. “I know who you are, Private Reilly. I have some very deep connections in the government. I never bring anyone here that I don’t do a full background check on. If they have family, I leave them on the street. If not, then no one is going to miss them. And you, Dear sir,” he said snidely before going on, “Will not only be missed, but my contact in the defense department is going to fund other missions like this one. Soon, the state and federal government will not only be able to brag about the lowering percentages of homeless in this country, but the “Fallen Angel” missions will be abattoirs for scum and burdens on society like you!”
Charlie had well and truly had enough! Enough running and enough hiding, enough was enough! No thought except one was in his mind as he spun quickly around to see that like he, DeMatto had a gun in his hand. DeMatto looked surprised as well from seeing Charlie’s weapon. Like a “Mexican Stand Off” from the old westerns, the two men leveled their guns at one another.
But having a gun pointed at them from across the cooler was not the only thing they both had in common. They both had the exact same thought too. That thought was; “Well, at least I’ll eat tonight.”
CORPSE INTOLERANT
Andrew Allan
That last piece of thigh flesh about did him in. It had started to tear smooth, but then hung on too tight for his blood-slippery hands to break it off. The raw flesh slipped his grip and dangled off the soft angle of her dead pelvis, until finally, he had to use the little clippers on the tiny utility knife he kept on his key chain. And, of course, the blades were dull, so it was more like a gumming gnaw than a sharp, clean cut. But, he cut that flesh off. He held it up, its slack form clinging to the back of his hand, blood dripping down his wrist. It felt like a cold cut. Ham, he thought. Room temperature, exquisitely delicious and which is why he fought so hard to sheer it off.
