Black Neon

by Tony O'Neill

  Whitey powered the laptop down, closed it up, and slipped it back in the case.

  “Be-sides… it might give me more personal satisfaction jus’ to send these pictures to every major news source in the fuckin’ country. Jus’ bring down that playa-hating, baby-fuckin’, tea-baggin’ piece of shit for kicks, ya know?”

  “So how much, Whitey?”

  Whitey sucked air through his teeth and raised four fingers. “Howzat sound?”

  “Shitty. Six.”

  “Five. Final fuckin offer.”

  “Five fifty?”

  “You’d better get back on that fuckin’ Lucky Charms box, motherfucka and ask those damn kids if they wanna buy this thing for five-fifty. Cuz I’m offerin’ five-even.”

  Jeffrey ran a hand through his greasy hair. Five hundred dollars was probably a fraction of what this thing was worth, but Whitey was offering straight up cash, immediate payment. Whitey pulled out his wallet, and flashed the bills. Jeffrey nodded weakly. Whitey counted out the notes, and Jeffrey pocketed them. The fence grabbed the case, nodded his thanks to the shivering Irish dope-fiend, and headed out to the street. He pulled his cheap plastic sunglasses down over his face on his way out. Jeffrey watched him go. He was already yammering into his cell phone, making plans, brow furrowed, gesturing with his free hand.

  Moments later, Jeffrey’s cell phone – a pre-paid piece of junk he’d bought in a 7-11 for the sole purpose of communicating with his drug dealers – started ringing, pulling him out of his thoughts. For almost a year now the only calls he’d received on this thing were calls from irate dealers complaining that he still owed them money from the various small time buys that he’d showed up twenty dollars light to. He didn’t recognize the number, but answered anyway. His experience with Smooth still fresh in his memory, he picked up the phone with the intention of pacifying whoever was on the other end.

  “Yeah?”

  “Jeffrey, is that you?” said a crackly voice.

  “Yeah. Who’s this?”

  “It’s Randal, man.”

  There was a long silence. Jeffrey’s dry lips cracked a smile.

  “Randal? That’s really you?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Jesus Christ Randal, how you doin’ man? It’s good to hear your voice! Shit, what’s goin’ on? You making it?”

  “Barely. You?”

  “Not at all. So what brings you outta the woodwork?”

  “Don’t laugh,” Randal said, “But I got a business proposition for you. Some easy money, if you’re looking for a gig.”

  “Man, you don’t know the half of it. Lemmie grab a pen…”

  After he hung up, Jeffrey grabbed Whitey’s uneaten taco. He smiled to himself imagining the look on Rachel’s face when he showed up not only with money and dope, but Mexican food as well. If this deal Randal had proposed was for real, then maybe – just maybe – they’d be able to dig themselves out of the pit they were currently in. All of a sudden, life had thrown him a bone. Jeffrey headed out to the street. He shot an easy smile at the old drunk in the polyester suit. He was sitting on a dolphin-shaped kiddy ride outside of the market. Jeffrey rummaged around in his pockets and found a quarter. He popped it in the slot and the machine announced “Attention parents! Please do not leave your child unattended while riding the ride. Have fun kids!” before jerking into life, bleating out a creaky rendition of Old MacDonald Had A Farm. The drunk rode the dolphin unsteadily, raising his paper bag and toasting Jeffrey as he headed back toward

  the Metro.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Genesis was screaming.

  Tears were streaming down her face as she waved her mutilated hand around. Lupita floored the accelerator. They were tearing away from the pharmacy empty-handed. Genesis held up her bloody left hand and wailed, “My fucking finger! That bitch shot off my damn finger!”

  “It’s gonna be okay,” Lupita said as they headed toward the freeway, careful to stay 5mph below the speed limit. “Just shut up and stop waving that fucking hand around! If the cops notice you screamin’ and bleedin’ all over the damn place we’re dead meat.”

  “But it HURTS!”

  Lupita looked over to Genesis’ mutilated appendage. She nodded curtly. “I know it does baby. But we gotta get the fuck away from here without being spotted, otherwise we’re lookin’ at some serious jail time. That pharmacist is dead, no doubt about it. That’s murder one, for starters. Just wrap your hand up in the gauze I grabbed... It’s right there, the box by your feet.” Lupita glanced over as Genesis clumsily tended to her wound, “Uh-huh, that’s it. Wrap it tight. Keep the hand elevated, above the heart. There you go…”

  As she drove, Lupita silently dissected what had just gone down. The place had seemed like such a breeze. They kept watch for a few moments after the old lady opened up. Nobody was around. They pulled their bandanas over their faces and stormed the place, guns at the ready. “Cash and drugs!” As they burst in there, the old dear behind the counter looked like she was about to shit. The whole thing was too fucking easy.

  *

  “I’m bleeding like a stuck pig!”

  The car stereo blasted an old rock’n’roll number called Bad Boy. Lupita hummed along with it grimly, as Genesis moaned and continued to mummify her bloody hand with the gauze. Irritated by Lupita’s seeming indifference to her pain Genesis snapped, “Can you turn the fuckin’ music down? It’s ruinin’ my concentration. I’m trying to patch myself up here! I’m not in a Little Richard mood right now, you know?”

  “This ain’t Little Richard,” Lupita shot back, “it’s Larry Williams. He’s another rock’n’roll guy… he was the guy who threatened to shoot Little Richard. Over a coke deal, I think. What I know for sure is he scared Little Richard so bad he quit rock’n’roll for a while and went off to be a born-again Christian. Funny thing is, Larry ended up getting shot himself justa few years later.”

  “That’s real fascinating,” Genesis said through gritted teeth as she continued to wrap layers of gauze around her bloody hand, “But I’m bleeding to fucking death here, and the music’s too FUCKING LOUD!”

  With a grunt, Genesis turned the volume down herself, smearing the tape deck with blood. They tore on, Lupita driving in silence while Genesis whimpered and groaned, holding her freshly bandaged hand up to her chest. After a few tense moments of watching an agitated Lupita mutter angrily to herself, Genesis snapped. “You got nerve, Lupe, I’ll give you that.”

  “Huh?” Lupita glanced into the rear view mirror, obsessively checking for black-and-whites. “Nerve? Whaddya mean?”

  “Pouting ’cos I turned that fuckin’ radio down. That takes some balls, especially after what you did!”

  “What I did? What the fuck did I do?”

  Genesis snorted. “You mind telling me what the fuck that was all that about?”

  “What, Genesis hun?”

  “Don’t hun me, Lupe. You know damn well what I’m fucking talkin’ about! Why’d you insist on knocking off that place like that? I fuckin’ wake up and you’re rushing me out of the damn motel while I’m still half asleep… you shove me into the car and tear off, and the next thing I know we’re pulling up in front of that fucking drugstore and tell me we’re gonna rob the fucking place? Jesus Lupe, I hadn’t even had breakfast!”

  “What the fuck’s breakfast got to do with anything?”

  “You know what I’m talking about, don’t play dumb. What was the fucking hurry? You just had us run into that place with no fucking plan, no thought… I mean we was just asking for something to go wrong! I told you it was a stupid idea. Why didn’t you listen to me?”

  “Genesis hun… you just don’t understand. I had my reasons….”

  “If that was all then maybe I could understand. But no, that wasn’t even the worst of it. On top of everything, you fuckin’ LIED to me, Lupe! You fucking lied straig
ht to my face…”

  Genesis was sobbing now, tears of pain and anger streaming down her face as the blood seeped steadily through the bandage. Lupita looked over to her lover, her face a mixture of hurt and concern.

  Softly now, “Lied to you, Genesis hun? I don’t follow...”

  “You made me a promise, Lupe! No more killing. You fucking swore to me.”

  “Oh Jesus Christ!”

  With a screech of rubber against asphalt Lupita made a risky cut across lanes to avoid slow-moving traffic. “You have got to be kidding me! In case it escaped your notice Genesis, that bitch shot you back there! What the fuck did you want me to do? Write a letter of complaint?”

  “I don’t need your fucking sarcasm!” Genesis wailed. “I’m in PAIN! I’m BLEEDING!”

  Lupita momentarily considered kicking Genesis’s ass out of the vehicle without stopping. Genesis was sobbing, big fat tears streaking her face. Feeling her rage deflate a little, Lupita smiled faintly at her lover.

  “I know you’re in pain, Genesis hun,” she said in a half-whisper, “But you’re gonna be okay. It’s all going to be okay, sweetheart. I promise you. I just need you to keep calm until we get away from here. Look hun, I know I promised you… and I meant it… but that was a clear case of self-defence. I did it to save your life.”

  Lupita took a deep breath and then said something she hadn’t said in many, many years. “I … I love you Genesis. That’s why I did it. Because I love you.”

  Genesis smiled painfully through her tears. Pacified, she blubbered, “I love you, too, but I just don’t understand…”

  *

  Just before they’d turned their guns on the pharmacist, they’d locked the door after them, put up the CLOSED sign and pulled the shade down. “Cash and drugs!” Lupita spat, “Don’t make me kill you over some goddamned pills…” However, as the old woman stood there with her mouth hanging open, shit started to unravel fast.

  Moments after they’d burst in, someone started trying the door.

  The bell rattled, as someone frantically tried to force it open. Instead of paying attention to the CLOSED sign, the dumb fuck kept rattling the damn door. That was their first mistake, Lupita realized. They both took their eyes off the old woman for a moment. They turned instead to watch the silhouette of this dumb-fuck as he rattled the door incessantly. He eventually gave up and split. They turned their attentions back to the pharmacist. Lupita had a fraction of a second to process the sight of the gun in her hand before it went off with a loud crack. Genesis hit the ground screaming. Her gun skittered across the floor.

  The next shot came from Lupita.

  The bullet hit the pharmacist in the chest, knocking her over in a spray of crimson. Cursing, Lupita checked Genesis out. Her left hand was a bloody mess. The bullet had hit her pinky finger, blowing it clean off. She looked back to the dead pharmacist, lying there in a slowly expanding pool of blood. She dragged Genesis to her feet. Told her that they needed to get the fuck out of here. Right. Fucking. Now. They stopped on the way out to retrieve Genesis’ weapon and grab a box of bandages from the shelves. That was the sum total of their haul, Lupita thought grimly. A few dollars worth of fucking bandages.

  *

  As they drove Lupita said, “Look, I know this is kinda hard for you to understand… and it might sound a little, I dunno, crazy or somethin’… but that fucking bitch… she put a fucking hex on us!”

  Genesis was wincing, looking at the bandaged hand. The bandages were fat and heavy with blood. “I need to get to a hospital…” she groaned.

  “Keep that shit elevated! And don’t worry, hun. I got us covered. Mama Z is gonna fix you up, Genesis. Just hang on.”

  “Who the fuck is Mama Z?”

  Lupita looked over to Genesis and then back at the road. “Mama Z is about the only one who can help us right now,” she said through clenched teeth, “I hate to break it to you, but we been cursed, girl. Getting to a doctor is the least of our fuckin’ worries right now, believe me.”

  Genesis held the bloody, bandaged hand to her chest desperately hoping for relief. The pain was intense, an unbearable fire spreading up the whole arm. She groaned. “Whaddya mean cursed? Whaddya mean we don’t need a doctor? I need someone to sew me up! I could bleed to death here…”

  Lupita shook her head. “You ain’t gonna bleed to death, hun. You could lose a couple of pints and not even notice. Wrap the bandage tighter, and you won’t bleed out. Not by a long shot. Mama Z’s no joke. She’ll fix you up. You just gotta hold on ‘til we get to Los Angeles.”

  “Los Angeles? Oh my GOD Lupe, I’m in fucking PAIN here! That’s gonna take hours…”

  “It’s gonna take eight hours to be specific, a little less if I don’t hit traffic. Like I said, you ain’t gonna bleed to death. You just gotta sit tight and deal until we make it to Mama Z’s place. Take a fuckin’ Dilaudid. Take two.” Lupita nodded toward the glove compartment, “Go crazy. I can get more pills in LA. This is no joke, Genesis. And what I mean by cursed is what that old bitch did to us back at the motel. Santeria.”

  “Huh?” Genesis squirmed around, pulling at the glove compartment with her good hand, “What you talking about, Lupe?”

  “Santeria. Magic! I got a weird vibe from the old bitch that ran the motel. And then you caught that bitch in our room? Suddenly we hit this kinda luck? That’s no coincidence. That bitch you found snooping, she was probably looking for some of our hair, or nail clippings, or blood or something. To help the old lady make the curse with. The fuckin’ powder on her face was a dead giveaway that she practiced that stuff. GODDAMNIT. I shoulda figured! Shitty luck like that don’t just fall from the damn sky. Now look at us! You got a missing finger, we didn’t score no dope, and there’s a dead fuckin’ pharmacist back there. This is FUCKED UP, Genesis hun.”

  Genesis swallowed a couple of Dilaudid, and washed them back with a slug from the half-empty bottle of Wild Turkey that was rolling around under her seat. She put the bottle between her legs, and shoved the cork back in with her good hand. The pain was receeding a little now, but her head was foggy. Lupita’s crazy talk about magic and curses definitely wasn’t helping matters. Suddenly too tired to argue, Genesis changed tack and tried to reason with Lupita.

  “Lupita, honey, I don’t believe in any of that stuff. Black magic, curses, all of that horseshit. I’m sorry, but I just don’t.”

  “It don’t matter whether you believe in it or not,” Lupita said evenly, “It’ll still bite you in the ass just the same. I don’t wanna freak you out but… I found something last night. Outside of our room. A tongue, y’know, from a cow?”

  A hysterical whine crept into Genesis’s voice. “What the fuck are talking about? I don’t understand…”

  “Shh. It’s okay. It’s just… you wouldn’t understand. I don’t expect you to. All I know is that we gotta get to Mama Z’s place, and we gotta get there fast.”

  “Honey, I need to get to a doctor. I get that you’re a bit fucking… freaked out right now, but what about my hand? I can’t wait eight hours, no way! I can’t TAKE it…”

  “Oh yeah? Genesis honey, believe me, you can. You lost a finger. I know it looks bad, and I don’t doubt it hurts like hell, but what you got there is a non-life-threatening injury. You gotta trust me on that. If we stop around here to look for a doctor, we’re toast. It would be madness to stop anywhere near here to get that injury loked at. We might as well go turn ourselves into the cops. Once we get to Mama Z’s we can get you fixed up nice and quietly, nobody needs to know.”

  Despite the fact that Genesis thought all of Lupita’s talk of curses and hexes was crazy talk, she couldn’t argue with her logic here. She closed her eyes and started to whimper like a kicked dog.

  “…we could get a fuckin’ lethal injection for what just went down back there, Genesis hun. You gotta trust me girl, I’m the only one thinking straig
ht right now. Just keep the rag wrapped tight around the wound. Once the Dilaudid hits, you ain’t gonna feel shit. You’re gonna feel like a million fucking bucks, okay?”

  Genesis groaned.

  “Okay?”

  “Okay!” Genesis snapped. Then she muttered, “Talk to me, Lupe. Talk to me about something else. Distract me…”

  “Talk? Talk about what?”

  Genesis closed her eyes. “Tell me how you lost your arm.”

  They drove in silence for a while. With a resigned sigh Lupita said, “Shit, Genesis hun. It’s a long story…”

  “So I guess it’s the perfect time then, isn’t it? You just told me I’m gonna be sitting around bleeding for the next eight hours…”

  “Yeah, I guess you got a point.”

  Genesis stared at the horizon as they whizzed on down the I-80 West towards California. The pain in her hand was almost unbearable, but she knew that the pills would soon dull most of the edge from it.

  “Come on then,” Genesis said through gritted teeth, “Start talkin’.”

  PART TWO

  TWENTY-TWO

  Gibby had just made it back to his apartment when the phone rang. AZURA, KENNY the Caller ID announced. He considered ignoring it and then, realizing the futility of such a gesture, picked up the phone.

  “Hi Kenny.”

  “Gibby. One second, okay?”

  There was a click as Kenny hit the hold button. Gibby found himself stuck, listening to some hideous digital musak.

  In his Beverly Hills home, Kenny looked over to the bed. A nineteen-year old Russian whore called Kristina was lolling around on there, fully dressed, tapping lethargically on her Blackberry. He bent over and snorted a huge rail of cocaine from the case of a Michael Bublé CD. He sprung upright again, red-faced and sniffling. He barked at the girl, “Hey sugar tits!” She looked up. “Yeah, you!”

  “Yes Mister Azura – is… problem?” Kristina pouted.

  “Too right there’s a fuckin’ problem. You’re on the goddamned clock here! I’m not payin’ you to check your fuckin Facebook status! Why don’t you make yourself fuckin’ useful and take your fuckin’ clothes off or somethin’? The bathroom’s over there – don’t you bitches usually like to go clean up first?”