by Jimmy Pudge
The girl waved to me and gave my cousin a kiss on the cheek. She opened the front door.
“Get back in there,” came a voice.
I watched in horror as a man with scars zigzagged across his face entered. He wore a trench coat, stood at about 6 feet and looked as if he were made of bricks. I could tell, just by his face, that this was the guy who had chopped Silky Smooth up.
“Why are your bitches asking about, Mal?” the man said, peering at Ronald.
I slowly sat back on the sofa, reached for my coat on the edge of the seat. I had left my burner in the coat.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ronald said.
The man slapped him like Ron was his bitch. Ron screamed like a girl.
I pulled the gun out, pointed it at him. My hand was shaking.
He examined the gun like it was a wooden spoon, his eyes completely dead. There was no fear in the man. Just boredom.
“What you gonna do with that?” he said, pulling back his jacket, revealing a leather strap around his shoulder and a sheath at his side. He yanked the machete from the sheath, and the stainless steel gleamed under the lights.
I pulled the trigger. There was hard recoil and the piece jumped out of my hands, a bullet smashing through the plastered ceiling. Dust filled the room.
The man laughed, leaned down and grabbed the gun.
As his huge hand closed around the gun, Ronald grabbed a silver PIMP cup off the mantle above the fireplace and brought it down.
There was a loud clang and the man went down hard, grunting as his face slapped against the floor. Ron jumped on his back and beat him with the cup until the back of his skull caved in and a pool of dark blood flowed like a halo around his head.
He got up, his clothes bloodied.
“We are in deep shit, Handy.”
“I know,” I said.
“Mal must know about us by now. People are coming to my house for Christ sakes to kill me. I have no idea what this shit is you dragged me into cuz, but I’m neck deep in it, now.”
“I can leave, just go away and do this on my own.”
“It’s too late, Handy. They know my name. They know where I live. We’re doing this shit together, homeboy.”
I examined Ronald closely, seeing him for the first time. Yeah, he was a drug dealer and a pimp, but he was also a pretty good guy. “Go change your shirt. You’ve got blood on it.”
“Not yet,” Ron said. “We’ve got to cut up this fat bastard’s body first, put him in trash bags and sneak him to the trunk of my car.”
I swallowed at the thought of this.
“Help me drag him to the tub, Handy,” Ronald said. “We don’t need any more blood on the floor.”
“What will we do after this?” I asked. “I mean, where can we even go from this?”
Ronald looked at me. “We’re going to have to find Mal before he finds us, cuz. Whoever finds the other first, that’s who’s going to win this game.”
Chapter 12
I rolled up my pants legs and had to take off my shirt. I rummaged around in the kitchen and found a box of garbage bags and pulled out a few. Lucky for me, they were the big kind, unlucky for me there were the flowery smelling ones. I punched a few holes in one of the big ass garbage bags that smelled of lavender or some other sweet smelling scent. I mean who needs these things, you throw out some nasty ass old food or dog shit and all it smells like is nasty good, dog shit and lavendar. You never really mask the smell of puke or shit or anything gross like that. Regardless, we had to get ready for a really fucked up job and I wanted to be as protected as I could from getting dead guy all over me.
We managed to haul his rather large ass into the bathroom. I went through his pockets and shoved the three hundred and eighty bucks into my pants pocket and held the drivers license aside. It would be good to have the name so we can trace it back to Mal, or one of his people and maybe it would act like a breadcrumb and lead me right to his ass.
“Why aren’t we going to try to dissolve the body, won’t that be easier?” I asked.
“Oh, what do you have in mind Handy? Hydrofluoric acid perhaps?”
“Yeah, doesn’t that shit eat everything?”
He hauled off and smacked me and said some shit about some show called Breaking Bad that I think just went off the air. I had never seen it and didn’t care this was going to be nasty as a fuck. I was a fan of Dexter, however, and knew what we had to do.
We stripped the bastard and I ain’t gay or nothing but this boy was working with some major meat, damn, what I wouldn’t give to have a pecker half the size, I mean I can only imagine if he got a chubby it would look like Vern Troyer but bigger and meaner. Fuck, man, I could be in pornos with that dick, fuck that I would be a porn star with that package. Ron came back and scared the shit out of with a fucking handsaw that he started near my head.
“Want the saw or the machete?”
Some choice. I opted for the machete. I grabbed it and removed the covering and waved it in my hand, it was pretty heavy, this shit would do some damage, I thought about getting myself one to hold behind the counter at the Dollar Inn in case some unsavory characters showed up. I may not be the most physically imposing guy in the world but I would imagine someone like me jumping up from behind a counter waving a machete and screaming would scare the shit out of anyone. It seemed like a sound idea, I would file it away for later, and take it with me, or better yet, get one that wouldn’t have a dead guy’s blood and stuff all over it.
I went over to the tub, grabbed the dead guy’s hair and whacked the sword at his neck, it made a loud thunk as the blade sliced through and into the tub. His head came free like I was chopping up steaks on my counter.
“Handy, watch the fucking tub, man.” He got down on his knees and went to work. I was impressed with the efficiency and speed in which we broke the body down, he was very clear not to fuck with the torso or we would be cleaning up blood and tissue forever. We double bagged all the parts and brought them out to his 77 Impala. Finally, we bagged the bags we were wearing and threw all the bloody clothes and wallet in the bag and anything that may be able to identify this skell with.
“Hey man, we can take the truck, you may mess your car up, it’s some nice ride.”
“I know, man, I love this car, most of the police round here know it’s my car too, and won’t hassle me unless I’m doing something wrong, or if I am in a different car, may raise some eyebrows, you know?”
“That makes sense man, so where are we gonna go? Got any gators around here?”
“Closest would be Valdosta and Savannah in the other direction. Thought about moving down near one of those places in case shit like this came up, but shits been easy peasy for a while now until your sorry ass showed itself.”
He was right. I was bringing him a world of shit. He started the engine and drove. I, for once, remained quiet.
#
We were back in Forsyth about two hours later. We had driven a few towns over where there was a construction site, a big one, not sure what they were building and it probably wouldn’t be the best idea if I said anything more specific, but we basically dumped the trash bags inside the still wet cement of the foundation. To be honest I really didn’t think Ron had a good idea but shit sure comes his way. I wasn’t complaining. I would have found one of them turd trucks that sucks out your septic tanks and dropped the body there, the shit probably would have ate the bastard away anyway.
“Listen, man,” I said, “I thought about a place we could go to find Mal.”
“Oh yeah?” Ron said.
“A guy I hired to find out some info on me about the murder, he told me Claire was in the porn business. They operated out of a place called Sell Your Booty Pawn & Loan.
“I know where that is. I go there sometimes. There’s this really great Elvis impersonator who works there.”
“Shit, man, let’s get something to eat first. Cutting up that big bastard’s body made me hungry.”
<
br /> “You’re in luck, my friend,” Ron said, turning the Impala around and racing down the highway. “There’s a Hardees right across the street from the porn and pawn shop.
When we got to Hardees, I was temped to make a pit stop but Ron advised against it in case we had to kill someone. No sense in having a witness identify us across the street from the crime scene.
I was starving like you wouldn’t believe, all that hacking up and disposing of body parts makes you hungry. I ordered two monster burgers, ate them and moaned like I was having the best sex of my life.
Ron ate some French fries and watched me with a disgusted look on his face. “So that’s why you’re so fat,” he said.
“Shut up, Ron,” I said, spitting food out of my mouth. I took another bite and felt mayonnaise squish out on my chin.
“Man, you’re going to fuck up my car getting food all over it,” Ron said.
“I’m almost done,” I said, shoving the last bit of burger in my mouth. I wiped my face and hands off with the inside of my shirt, and then we drove to the porn and pawnshop across the road.
We both entered the shop at the same time, instead of a bell announcing our presence it was the refrain from Elvis’ “Kentucky Rain.” Weird. Anyway, as we walked through the store we were impressed with the amount of junk, piles of VHS tapes, old magazines, cassettes, 8 tracks and a bunch of old paperbacks. Man I would love to come back and see if they had some old porno mags. You know the ones were the guys’ dicks have sideburns? I spied a copy of an old Richard Stark book and tucked it away so I could get it later. There was a big guy behind the counter with his back to us, putting some smaller items up on a wall.
“Jerome, my man!” Ron said.
A large black man, Jerome turned around I suddenly realized he was dressed in a white jumpsuit, rocking an Elvis hairdo and glasses. I tried to control myself from laughing when I said: “Hey man, got any Elvis 8 tracks?”
His face lit up as if he’d found a kindred spirit. “All of them, which ones are you looking for my friend?”
I was stunned and decided to keep my mouth shut about Elvis from now on. This guy was seriously obsessed. I wanted to ask him if he knew the king was dead, but he may have beat my ass for telling lies.
“Jerome, remember that time we fucked that girl we dressed up like Elvis?” Ron said.
“Shut the fuck up,” Jerome said. “You still owe me a hundred for that baking soda you sold me. Talking about it was high quality cocaine. Fuck you.” Jerome held up a finger with a heavy gold ring on it. He snarled like Elvis. “You ain’t nothing but a con artist, and you ain’t no friend of mine,” he sang, sounding just like Elvis.
“Mind if I ask you a couple of questions?” I asked, interrupting Ron and Jerome’s reunion.
“Of course,” Jerome said. “All the Elvis 8 tracks still play great.”
“It’s not about that,” I said.
“Oh,” he said, frowning.
I pulled out the pictures of Mal and Claire and for some reason decided to show him the pic of Claire first. He took it from me and lifted his shades for a moment.
“Cute. Never seen her.” He handed me back the pic and went back to what he was doing.
Ronald motioned me to show him the other picture.
“Hey, Mr Hunka Burning Love, my cuz has another pic for you to peep.”
As he turned, I held out the pic of Mal. He started to speak, then must have thought better of it. It was obvious to me he had seen him by his body language, maybe even as recently as tonight.
“Never seen him. Now if you guys ain’t buying nothing and you ain’t giving me no money for that whack ass bag of blow you sold me, Ron, I am gonna have to ask you both to leave. Now.”
He leaned forward on the glass display and I could see his enormous biceps straining the fabric of his jumpsuit. I wasn’t really in the mood to get my ass beat right now, but I knew it was either now and maybe get some information or later and Mal could cap us.
“Dude, you obviously know something. You looked shocked when I showed that picture to you, as shocked as if the King himself had walked in through that door just now. So come on, help a fellow devotee out,” I sneered my lip as I delivered my lines. I hope it looked cool instead of pathetic and needy.
Ron was reaching inside his Bomber for a burner but he was too slow. Elvis pulled a Bolt action sawed off and pressed the muzzle against Ronald’s face. “Whoa buddy, I was about to pull out my cell phone,”
“Yeah, I wasn’t born yesterday. Now how about you get your cracker asses out of here. I don’t need any shit going down here in my store.”
I tried to be reasonable and talk some sense. “Hey if you don’t know the man in the photo, there ain’t no problem, we don’t want no trouble either, man.”
He looked at Ron then at me and moved his head back and forth.
“Look, he may or may have not come in before with that girl of yours, and we may have done some business, but the last few times he brought in some shit I couldn’t move, so we had no business. Haven’t for some time now.”
Elvis eased up on the pressure of the trigger and pulled it away from Ronald’s face. There was a barrel mark on his cheek. I was going to make a joke about it, but thought better of it. Ron rubbed at it and was clearly pissed but he wouldn’t try anything now; that would be stupid.
Instead he said, “Look, he fucked around and hurt that girl, Jerome, and she’s a friend, she’s like my sister and I wanted to, you know, tune him up or something like that. Nothing about business or anything I just know he’s bad news and does some shady shit and wanted to track him down is all.”
Damn, it was like watching a genius at work. Elvis thought about it for a moment. “Shot House.”
“What?” I asked.
“He’s at the Shot House on Mercer. Usually hangs there when he’s in town. If he’s in town.”
“Thanks man, we really appreciate it,” I said.
As we walked through the store toward the exit I wondered if he was aiming at my fat ass with his shotgun. Damn, I had never been happier in my life to hear Elvis sing about that fucking rain in Kentucky.
We got in the car and I could tell Ronald was pissed, so was I, I mean I really wanted to grab that Richard Stark book, but this was more important. There would be plenty of time for that when we got this mother fucker Mal. Ronald turned the ignition and drove as he knew the right way to go. I didn’t know shit about Forsyth, and didn’t want to ask anything. I reached to the small of my back to make sure my gun was there, but that was it. We drove past an Arby’s and a Taco Bell. Man, I was already starving again. I would have to sneak out later and grab me something to eat. We heard the music about half a mile or so before we saw the place. The closer we got, the louder the music got, and soon enough we pulled into the lot of this little dive where there was a neon sign that flashed on and off, The Shot House. Though the S was not lighting and it said merely The hot House, but it was the right place. Our friend who was nice enough to tell us about the place probably phoned ahead and told Mal as well because just as we parked the rear window of the Impala exploded.
I ducked down and opened the door and fell to the gravel of the parking lot. I think Ronald was a second ahead of me because when I got to my knees I saw he had gotten his gun out and was firing in the direction of the shot. I looked up and saw Mal. Clear as day. He pointed the gun at Ron. I got up on my knees, using the Impala as a shield, and withdrew my gun and fired. I came close, but he was still firing.
From out of nowhere a small bald tattooed Mexican looking guy with a big ass moustache fired at us too. He was muttering something in Spanglish as he fired. He apparently was covering Mal who ran towards a car. I couldn’t get a bead on Mal, so I chose the Mexican guy as a target. I fired and hit him high in the arm, and Ronald hit him two more times. One of Ron’s bullets found its mark as well, and the Mexican guy fell down hard.
“Come on,” Ron called, and we crab walked forward toward the fallen ma
n. We were looking for more signs of Mal, but when we were in front of the main path a motorcycle came barreling out of nowhere; it was Mal. He shot at us three more times before he got to the main road and took off. He missed us but managed to punch a hole through Ronald’s bomber. “That motherfucker, I’m gonna take that out of his ass, Handy.”
“You and me both,” I said.
We got to the Mexican. He was hurt, he had been shot in the right arm, and the right shoulder and he was just nicked on the left. He couldn’t grab hold of the gun, which I managed to step on while his hand was on it. He grimaced and I grabbed the gun and put it into my pocket. We grabbed the guy and half carried, half dragged him to the Impala. All the while he was muttering something about my weight and my mother or something like that, I mean all I got from him was words like gordo, and madre and that’s about it. I mean it really didn’t matter because he was our only lead right now, and when it comes to interrogation, everybody understands the language of pain.
I managed to stick my finger in one of his bullet wounds.
“Where did your boyfriend go, motherfucker?” I asked.
“Aye pinchay gringo!” he screamed and struggled to catch his breath and deal with the pain. “I ain’t telling you shit.”
See, I knew he spoke English, or at least understood it.
I managed to drop him and kick him simultaneously in the nut sack. He didn’t find that refreshing at all.
“Cabron!!!!” was about all he could say at that moment. I know it was wrong to deny a hurt man medical attention, but fuck this motherfucker. I mean, he tried to kill us and he probably knew where Mal was.
“Handy? Any ideas?”
“We beat it out of him?”
Ronald smiled. “I like the way you think, cuz, but I got to feel this guy for bugs or wire taps, know what I’m saying?”
I smiled. This was going to be fun. We duct taped his hands and legs and mouth and tossed him into the trunk.
Ron and I got into the car.
“Hey, man, want to hit another drivethru? This is going to be a long night.”
