by Mike Miner
"Hey that reminds me," he said. "Did I tell you what Miss Ginger did the other day? I got home from work, let's see…Tuesday I think it was. Found a dead rat sitting on my doorstep."
I looked over at her from the bar, but she wasn't looking back.
"Yeah?" she said.
"Hey," I said, "You ready for another Coke, Jimmy?"
But he didn't break eye contact with Tiffany, so she couldn't look over at me. They both acted like I hadn't said a word.
"Well, you know what they say about that?" Tiffany asked. "Why cats do that?"
"I've heard some theories," he said.
"It's like a love token," she said. "They're just showing you they care about you. Like they're protecting you from invaders."
"Hmm," Jimmy said. "Yeah, I've heard that theory before. I don't know though. I think it's just because some animals are born killers. You know? Just vicious predators that don't take kindly to little pests trying to fuck with them."
"Oh," Tiffany said, staring down at the table. "Well, I—"
"But I like your explanation better," Jimmy said, patting her hand and smiling. "Love tokens. That's nice. Nice turn of phrase. I never heard it put quite that way before."
James
When she brought my check over, I asked her to sit down and talk to me. She looked back toward Josh, all nervous, but I pulled her down on the bench next to me.
"Who was he?" I asked. "Josh says you used to live with him."
"Years ago," she said, rubbing her bruises and not making eye contact. "But he still thinks he owns me."
"You need me to deal with him?" I asked.
She looked up at me, eyes all big with surprise and optimism. Like the thought never occurred to her until I suggested it. And then she deflated and looked away again. "I couldn't ask that," she said. "I don't want to get you involved. I'll be fine."
She was playing hard to get.
"Is he the one who gave you those bruises?" I asked.
She looked over toward Josh at the bar, just for a split-second. A guilty instinct that she couldn't help. "Don't worry about it," she said. "I can't ask you to solve my problems."
"Just tell me this," I said. "Would you be better off if he was out of the picture? Would that keep you from getting more of these?" I turned her arm over and pointed at the bruises.
She didn't say a word. She just leaned her head on my shoulder like my oldest daughter used to do when she was a kid. Under any other circumstances it would have been sweet.
But then she spoke and ruined everything.
"If something were to happen to him, I could make it worth your while," she said. "In whatever way you wanted me to."
I'm not gonna lie, that kinda broke my heart. And it tempted me, too. And pissed me off. All at the same time.
Walter was standing in his driveway Saturday afternoon, buffing the wax off his Stingray with a chamois cloth as Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run played on the stereo. He could've paid someone to do this, but I got the impression he liked doing it himself. Made him feel down-to-earth, not some spoiled rich guy who'd lost touch with his modest beginnings.
"She wants me to kill you," I told him, leaning against the tailgate of my truck.
"She say it directly?" he asked. "Or just kinda suggest it?"
"More of a suggestion," I said. I figured it wouldn't help anything to let him know she hinted there might be some sexual favors available in payment for the deed. No father wants to hear his daughter's that kind of girl.
"You see those bruises on her?" I asked.
"Yeah. Tommy says she got 'em from that meathead bartender. He struts around like a fucking rooster, talking about how she likes it rough. Talks about her like she's a common whore."
I'd met Tommy in prison. Decent enough guy. He's the one who introduced me to Walt about six months back. He got out a month before me and I hadn't seen him again until I ran into him outside the building where we both met with our parole officers. We got to talking about guys we knew inside and what we'd been up to, how tough it was to find good-paying jobs with a record.
My salary had taken a hit since I got out, and Tommy thought I might like to pick up some extra work on the side. Walt was connected and Tommy said he was a good guy to know. Always needed stuff done under the table.
And Walt seemed to like me. Liked that I had a respectable job with the city. He figured I might be useful to him. He thought I'd like the Tavern and I'd probably get along with his girl. Maybe I could keep an eye on her, let him know if I saw anything.
Sure, I said. I'd be happy to visit her at work, make friends. I could make it a regular thing, stop by once a week or so. Maybe drive past her place every once in a while.
"Don't get creepy about it, though," he said. "Just keep an eye on her. I used to have Tommy do it, but she caught on. She knows all my guys."
"I'd be happy to," I told him. "I got daughters of my own."
"I'm not asking for a favor, Jim," he said. "I'll make it worth your while. Lemme know if you see anything you think I oughta know about. You know, keep me in the loop."
So here I was. Keeping him in the loop.
Walt grabbed a beer out of the fridge in his garage. He held up one for me, but I shook my head. Springsteen was singing about a girl "that tells such desperate lies and all you want to do is believe her."
"So what do you want me to do?" I asked.
"Way I see it, that kid Josh is the one instigating all this. No doubt in my mind. Tiff never wanted my money. I've offered it, offered to set her up with a real job somewhere, but she wants to be 'independent.' So if she's suddenly all interested in my money, it's beacuse of him. We get him out of the picture, she'll move on and forget about it."
I raised my eyebrows.
"I'm not saying kill him, Jimmy. We'll just send him a message."
Even though I didn't work in Animal Control anymore, I still had friends who did. Hell, I trained the guy who took over after me. So when I asked to borrow a few things to deal with a pest problem, he trusted me to bring everything back—and he didn't watch me like a hawk after unlocking the supply cage for me.
I grabbed a pressurized CO2 rifle, some tranquilizer delivery darts with 3/4 inch collared points, and a low dose cocktail of ketamine and diazepam. Just enough to quietly, humanely sedate any medium-sized animal that represented a physical threat to the citizens of our fair city.
Walt called up Josh and invited him over for a friendly round of golf. They both cared about Tiffany so much, it was a shame they didn't get along better. Walt just wanted to try to make peace is all. Have a nice little chat, just the two of them.
The golf course had all sorts of quiet, secluded nooks and wooded areas where I could hide. All it took was a quiet shot in the ass from the pneumatic rifle and a little staggering around. Walt rushed him off the course on a golf cart to a car waiting in the driveway of his nearby house. If anybody saw, it'd look like he was taking him to the hospital. Josh was out cold in ten minutes. Tommy and I met up with them in a deserted garage Walt owned across town.
Walt pulled a fancy-looking pair of hedge shears out of his trunk as Tommy and I laid Josh out over a drainage grate. "So what are you thinking?" Walt asked me. "Index finger? Middle finger? As long as it ends his guitar playing career, it's all the same to me."
The way I figured it, the universe owed me a severed finger. I lost thirty months of my life, my job, my wife, and the right to unsupervised visitations with my daughters all because some asshole lost a finger. I paid the price for that and it was time to get what I paid for.
I looked at his stupid knuckle tattoos. Love and Hate. "I don't wanna mess with LOVE," I said. "I'll take the T. For Tiffany."
"The wedding ring finger? Jimmy, you're a fucking poet. Go ahead, take two if you want."
I snapped the shears open and shut in the air. They made a snick-snick sound in the quiet garage. Nice and clean, smooth action, so much better than the pair I usually worked with.
"
Let's just get it over with before he wakes up," Tommy said. "I don't wanna listen to him screaming."
"Go ahead, Jim. Take your payment," Walt said.
I heard somewhere that the amount of force needed to snap a human finger bone is about the same as it takes to bite through a baby carrot. Of course the mechanical advantage you get with good shears makes it much easier.
A few seconds later, I was wrapping two fingers in the rag Walt used to check his oil. Tommy tossed the clippers in Walt's trunk and closed it. If Tiffany kept her cats inside overnight, she'd find a little 'love token' on her doorstep in the morning.
Then Tommy pulled a snub-nosed handgun out of his waistband and pumped two bullets in Josh's head and one in his heart before I could react.
"What the fuck? This wasn't—I didn't sign up for this!"
"Sorry about that, Jimmy," Walt said. "But think about it. If somebody was messing with your daughter, what would you do?"
I watched the blood seep out of Josh and tried to think of an answer. A different, better answer. Nothing came to mind.
"I'm gonna need you to clean this up," Walt said, climbing in his car and starting it up.
"You'll need to keep eating at the Tavern like usual," Tommy said, hopping in the passenger seat. "If you stopped visiting Tiff or said anything about this, people might think you had something to do with it. Given your violent history and your criminal record and all."
"Especially if a corpse with missing fingers turned up," Walt said. "Or a pair of bloody clippers with your prints on them. You understand me?"
I understood.
Walt and Tommy drove off, leaving me with a mess to clean up.
AUTHOR BIOS
Nikki Dolson's fiction is forthcoming or has appeared in Vignette Review, The Northville Review, and The Red Rock Review.
ADAM HOWE is a British writer of fiction and screenplays. Writing as Garrett Addams, his short story "Jumper" was chosen by Stephen King as the winner of the On Writing contest and published in the paperback/Kindle editions of King's On Writing. His short fiction has appeared in places like Nightmare Magazine, Horror Library 5, and Plan B Magazine. His first book, Black Cat Mojo, a collection of offbeat crime/horror novellas, is published by Comet Press.
J. David Jaggers lives in flyover country, where he spends his days in the white collar world and his nights feeding the thugs, pimps, and enforcers he keeps caged in his basement. He has been published in Near to the Knuckle, Yellow Mama, Spelk, Out of the Gutter and various other magazines and anthologies.
Don LaPlant is a Knoxville-based writer originally from upstate New York. An award-winning playwright, Don has had his plays produced in half a dozen states across the country. His play Two Body Problems won the Getchell Prize and the PlayWorks New Play Prize, and was published in Southern Theatre magazine. His short story "Hard Knox" was recently accepted for publication as part of Akashic Books' Mondays Are Murder online crime series.
Mike Miner is the author of Prodigal Sons (All Due Respect Books), The Immortal Game (Gutter Books) and Everything She Knows (SolsticeLit Books). His novella, Hurt Hawks is due out in September 2015 from One Eye Press. Miner's stories can be found in the anthologies, Protectors: Stories to Benefit PROTECT and Pulp Ink 2 as well as in places like Thuglit, Beat To a Pulp, All Due Respect, Burnt Bridge, Narrative, PANK, The Flash Fiction Offensive, Shotgun Honey and others.
Brandon Patterson is a former fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. This year his stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Free State Review, Thin Air, Virginia Literary Journal, and Night Train. "Bruin" and his other crime pieces are inspired by his youth in a broken-down part of southwestern Virginia, and by an adult life that had a few misspent years trying to help ex-cons go straight.
Thomas Pluck is the author of the action thriller Blade of Dishonor, Hot Rod Heart: a Noir Novelette, and the editor of the anthology Protectors: Stories to Benefit PROTECT. When not writing, he trains in mixed martial arts and powerlifting, and hosts Noir at the Bar in Manhattan. His work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Dark City Lights, edited by Lawrence Block. Online, you can find him at www.thomaspluck.com and Twitter as @thomaspluck
Eryk Pruitt is a screenwriter, author and filmmaker living in Durham, NC with his wife Lana and cat Busey. His short films Foodie and Liyana, On Command have won several awards at film festivals across the US. His fiction appears in The Avalon Literary Review, Pulp Modern, Thuglit, and Zymbol, to name a few. In 2015, he's been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and is a finalist for the Derringer Award. His novel Dirtbags was published in April 2014, and Hashtag was published in May, 2015. A full list of credits can be found at erykpruitt.com.
TODD ROBINSON (Editor) is the creator and Chief Editor of Thuglit. His writing has appeared in Blood & Tacos, Plots With Guns, Needle Magazine, Shotgun Honey, Strange, Weird, and Wonderful, Out of the Gutter, Pulp Pusher, Grift, Demolition Magazine, CrimeFactory, All Due Respect, and several anthologies. He has been nominated three times for the Derringer Award, twice shortlisted for Best American Mystery Stories, selected for Writers Digest's Year's Best Writing 2003, lost the Anthony Award both in 2013 AND 2014, and won the inaugural Bullet Award in June 2011. The first collection of his short stories, Dirty Words and his debut novel The Hard Bounce are now available and his upcoming novel, Rough Trade will be released by Polis Books in 2016
ALLISON GLASGOW (Editor) fought the law.
She won.
JULIE MCCARRON (Editor) is a celebrity ghostwriter with three New York Times bestsellers to her credit. Her books have appeared on every major entertainment and television talk show; they have been featured in Publishers Weekly and excerpted in numerous magazines including People. Prior to collaborating on celebrity bios, Julie was a book editor for many years. Julie started her career writing press releases and worked in the motion picture publicity department of Paramount Pictures and for Chasen & Company in Los Angeles. She also worked at General Publishing Group in Santa Monica and for the Dijkstra Literary Agency in Del Mar before turning to editing/writing full-time. She lives in Southern California.
