Shella

by Andrew Vachss

  I gave him a funny look, like you do in there when somebody’s close to pushing you.

  “Hey, no offense, friend. I been there myself. Armed robbery,” he said. Like it was something special. “What’d you go for?”

  “I killed a nigger,” I told him.

  “Is that right? Hey, Katie, bring me another beer. And give my friend here whatever he’s drinking. Bring them over to my booth.”

  The booth was in the back. They’re always in the back. A fat guy in a red T-shirt watched us. The way the guy talking to me looked at the fat guy, I could see they were together.

  The armed robbery guy did the talking. Nigger this, spic that. “They’re really monkeys, you know what I’m saying? You leave them alone, they’d kill each other. Animals. All they want to do is fight and fuck.”

  I looked at him. He thought I was saying something—his face got a little red. “Hey! Don’t get me wrong, pal. I like a good piece of ass better than the next guy. Fucking queers, they’re just as bad as niggers, in my book. My point, see, my point is that animals, they need control. Like dogs. Dogs are good, they learn to obey, right? Now, niggers, they ain’t the real problem. Some people think they’re the big problem, they don’t know what’s going on. You know what the big problem is?”

  “What?”

  “The Jews, man. The Jews, they’re the ones trying to bring the race down. They ain’t really white either. I mean, where’s Israel? In Africa, am I right? The Jews ain’t nothing but Arabs themselves. But you got to give this to the Jews, they’re smart. It’s in their blood, the way they’re bred. A Jew bitch has a retarded kid, you know what they do?” He made a slitting move across his throat.

  I looked at him. Every time I did that, he talked more.

  “I’m telling you the truth. See, the difference between the Jews and these other beasts, the Jews got a plan. Hitler, now he knew what was going on. There’s a man who knew the truth. He had the right fucking idea, you know? The ovens.”

  “The …?”

  “Yeah! Exterminate them. That’s what has to be done. But the white man in this country, he’s lost his balls. This ain’t a white man’s country anymore—it belongs to the niggers and the Jews.”

  He talked like that for a long time, until I told him I had to get up in the morning to go to work. “See you tomorrow night?” he said. I told him sure.

  When I walked out the door, I could feel somebody behind me. All the way to the house where I had a room.

  I went to the car wash the next morning. Just before the lunch break, a car came through. An old Ford station wagon. The guy driving it was the guy from last night, the fat guy. Only he didn’t have a red T-shirt.

  I didn’t show I knew who he was. He didn’t leave a tip when we finished wiping down his car.

  I went back to the bar that night. This time, I had something to eat. A hamburger and fries. In a booth.

  The armed robbery guy came in around nine o’clock. He saw me and came over. Stuck out his hand.

  “Hey, partner! Good to see you.”

  I didn’t know what to say so I tried to smile, but I could see that was making him nervous so I said, “Sit down. I’ll buy you a beer.”

  I must of done it right, because he sat down, smiling at me.

  While we were waiting for the waitress, he said, “My name is Mack. Mack Wayne.” He stuck out his hand. I took it, squeezed a little softer than he did. He liked that.

  “I’m John Smith,” I told him.

  “Hey, that’s funny. I mean, if we took your name and mine, we’d get John Wayne.”

  I looked at him.

  “John Wayne, get it? Like … The Duke, right?”

  Something moved in me, but I couldn’t feel it in my face. “Yeah,” I said. “Good.”

  He drank his beer, talked some more about niggers, queers, and Jews. He said the Jews owned all the newspapers and all the television stations, so the white man never got to hear the truth. Then he said he had to make a phone call.

  When he came back, he talked some more about the same stuff. A woman came by our table. A chubby woman with dark hair. She was about thirty-five, in a tight black skirt and high heels, wearing a white sweater with a low neck so you could see the top of her breasts where the bra pushed them together.

  “Hey, Ginger!” he said. “Come over here and meet a friend of mine.”

  He introduced us. Just said my name was John, and we were pals. She sat down, next to me in the booth. Mack ordered some more drinks. Ginger pressed her thigh against me. She had long nails, red. She talked about niggers too—how they all wanted to rape white women and they should be castrated. She had heavy perfume and she stuck her chest out a lot.

  After a while, she got up. “I have to go to the little girls’ room,” she said. She ground her hips hard walking away—she didn’t know how to do it the way a dancer does.

  Mack leaned over to me. “Hey, pal, I know all the signs. Ginger goes for you. You play your cards right, you could have yourself a nice date tonight.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I guarantee it. I know these girls. I’m gonna take off now, leave you two alone.”

  I said okay, like it was a good idea.

  When she came back, she didn’t ask where Mack had gone. She sat across from me. I bought her a couple more beers. She asked a lot of questions, but she wasn’t listening much. She was like him—if I looked at her, she got nervous, but if I was quiet, she went ahead and talked.

  It was almost eleven when she said she had to be going. “I got to get up early in the morning—I work in a beauty parlor, over on Lawrence.”

  “I work near there too,” I told her.

  “You live around here?”

  “Just over on Wilson.”

  “Is it nice?”

  “Yeah. I mean, I guess so. It’s clean.”

  “Is it like an apartment or …?”

  “Just a room.”

  “Oh. Well, you know, I was thinking about moving from where I am, finding someplace closer to work. Do you know if they have rooms available?”

  “I think so.”

  “Maybe I could take a look at yours sometime, see how it looks.”

  “Sure. Anytime you want.”

  She walked back with me. We went upstairs. She looked all around the room, looked out the window into the alley. I stepped behind her, held her breasts from the underside. She wiggled her butt back against me. She tried to turn around, but I held her there. She didn’t fight or anything.

  I undressed her, holding her like that. Her breasts were floppy out of the bra. Her thighs were like orange peel when the panty hose rolled down.

  I fucked her on her back, her face in my shoulder. When we were done, she lit a cigarette. I laid down next to her and she talked some, asked some questions.

  “You don’t say much, do you, honey?”

  I thought I was making her nervous, so I turned her over on her stomach and fucked her again. It took me longer the second time. She made a little grunting noise just before I finished. Then we fell asleep.

  She got up a couple of hours later, moving quiet. I was lying with my head turned to the wall, my face on my arm. I can see good in the dark. She looked through the chest of drawers, at my clothes. Then she went in the closet where I keep the duffel bag. She found the gun. I could see her hold it, looking back at where I was sleeping.

  She put the gun back.

  Then she got dressed and went out.

  The room felt thick in the morning. I opened the window. They still hadn’t got that car fixed in the alley.

  On my lunch break, the Indian boss walked by. He asked me for a light for his little cigar. When he bent close, he said, “She’s with them.”

  I wanted to tell him I knew that. I’m not stupid because I don’t talk. Not stupid like they think. But I didn’t say anything.

  A couple of nights later, Mack asked me, “You really killed a nigger?”

  “Why?”

  “No off
ense, pal. Just, would you mind if we checked you out? I mean, there’s a reason, okay? There’s people I want you to meet. Important people. Big people. We’ve got something going, something I know you’d like. But the people in charge, they have to be careful, you understand?”

  “I guess.”

  “Look, what’s done is done, right? I mean, you didn’t escape or anything …?”

  “I got paroled. But …”

  “Hey, no problem. I know what you’re going to say. I’m not a cop. Cops, they’re no better than anyone else. Nigger-lovers too, most of them. Even the righteous ones, you got to remember who they work for.…”

  “The Jews?”

  “Yeah! You’re getting with the program, John. All right. Listen, all I need is some … details. Like where you did time. And when … Okay?”

  So I told him.

  I kept going to the bar. Every night. That woman Ginger didn’t come back into the place.

  I kept going to the car wash too.

  The Indian boss came by one day. When he leaned over to get his light, he said, “There’s a basement in your house, where you stay. Go there tonight when you get back from the bar.”

  There was a guy with Mack that night. A younger guy, a skinhead. He had an earring in one ear, a metal loop, with a little hand grenade dangling from it. Tattoos all over his forearms. He was wearing a leather jacket, jeans, big stomping boots on his feet.

  “This is Rusty,” Mack said to me.

  The skinhead looked hard at me, smiling all across his face so I could see his teeth. “But I ain’t rusty, friend. I keep in practice, you get what I mean?”

  “No,” I told him.

  “Johnny ain’t no big talker, Rusty. Like I told you. He’s a man does things.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah!” It was Mack answering the skinhead, not me. We had hamburgers, like always. Mack started talking about the niggers and the Jews. The skinhead, Rusty, he wasn’t really listening. He didn’t settle in his chair, all bristly, jumpy. He kept staring at me. I looked back sometimes, so he wouldn’t think I was afraid. I know his kind—they think you’re afraid, they try and hurt you.

  “You like to go hunting, man?” he finally asked me.

  “I never been,” I said.

  “Nigger-hunting, man. You up for that?”

  “Sure.”

  The skinhead looked over at Mack. He was smiling again.

  “Just like that?” he asked me.

  “Like what?”

  “Go out cruising, spot a nigger, shoot him?”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay? Okay, huh? You got any particular … preference … what kind a nigger you want to shoot?”

  I thought about it a minute, trying to get it right. “A fat one,” I told him.

  Mack laughed so hard he spit up some of his beer.

  I could feel him in the basement when I went downstairs that night.

  “They’re about ready to break,” the Indian said.

  “They asked me tonight,” I told him.

  “You know when they want to do it?”

  “No.”

  The glow from his cigarette tip lit his face for a minute. I waited for him to tell me.

  “I don’t think they got the heart to cruise the South Side, do a drive-by on some gang-banger. But they might…. They go that route, you got to do it. Just stick the piece out the window and crank some off. Try to hit some buck flying the colors, okay?”

  “I don’t …”

  “One of them in a gang jacket, okay? You’ve seen them, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Don’t spray the stuff around. Make ’em get you close, you understand. You start firing wild, you’re liable to take down some kid…. Even late at night, they’re all over the street.”

  “Okay.”

  “I got a better idea. Don’t know if we can pull this one off, but it’d be worth it. Come on, let’s take a ride.”

  It was a black four-door Ford. We got in the back seat. A couple of Indians were in the front. I looked close—they were the same ones.

  They didn’t say anything to me.

  “We got a job order,” the Indian said. “On a pimp. He works close by, just past Belmont. Runs a string of street girls. He does the gorilla thing, works little girls too, understand?”

  “Yes.” It felt funny to understand what he was saying. I did understand, this time.

  “His name is Lamont James, but he goes by Steel. That’s what he calls himself, Steel. He’s going anyway. You get a chance, do him, it’d be perfect.”

  I didn’t say anything. The Ford turned a corner, doubled back, went around again.

  A few minutes later, one of the Indians in the front seat said something I didn’t get.

  “There he is,” the Indian next to me said. “Look at him. Right out of the fifties. Thinks he’s Iceberg fucking Slim.”

  I saw him. A tall, thin man, leaning against the fender of a big pink car with a white padded top. He was wearing a long black coat. He had a white hat too, a big one with a thick pink band.

  “You have him?” the Indian asked.

  “Yes.”

  It didn’t happen until a couple of nights later. A Thursday night it was. I was talking to Mack in the booth when the skinhead walked in. He had a little baseball bat in one hand.

  “Come on out back,” he said to me.

  When I stepped out into the alley it didn’t feel like it had so many times before. I got asked to step out into alleys a lot, and I was always alone when I did. There was a bunch of guys there, all with shaved heads.

  “I’ll let you know,” the skinhead said to Mack. Then he told me, “Come on,” and we all walked over to a car. An old white Chrysler.

  They showed me where to sit. Next to the window in the back, on the passenger side.

  The car started moving, heading south.

  The skinhead reached in his jacket, took out a pistol. A big one. He handed it to me.

  “I got one,” I said, showed it to him.

  He slapped hands with the guy in the front seat.

  “Let’s do it!” he said.

  I saw the pink car at the end of the block. A lot of people on the street. I couldn’t see him. The Chrysler was moving good—like they had a long way to go.

  “There’s one,” I said.

  The guy driving slowed down. “What?”

  “A perfect nigger,” I told him.

  “Where?” Rusty said.

  He was just stepping out of the pink car. “There,” I told him.

  “A pimp,” Rusty said. “You wanna do him? It’s pretty close to home.…”

  “Go around the block again,” I said.

  Rusty rubbed the top of his head. “Do it,” he said to the driver.

  We came back around, moving slow. “I don’t know about this,” the guy in the passenger seat said.

  I was afraid they’d go someplace else. I wished I could think of something. Then I said, “Stop the car.”

  They pulled over to the curb.

  “Let me out. Keep driving. I’ll catch up with you at the end of the block.”

  Rusty looked at me. Like he never saw me before. Then he nodded. I took out the gun, held it next to my leg—the way the guy with the eyeliner did in the hall when they told me to get out of the rooming house. I opened the door, stepped out. The car moved away.

  I walked up the block. The pimp was back against his car, talking to a fat little white girl. He had his hand on the back of her neck. She was wearing a pair of red shorts and a halter top, looked about fifteen.

  I walked up real close, people all around. I held the gun up, pointed it at his chest. He saw it. “Hey, man! Don’t…”

  The girl put her hands over her mouth, like trying to stop a scream. I pulled the trigger. It made a loud bang. The pimp grabbed his chest. I put the gun real close to him and kept pulling the trigger. I heard a click, the gun was empty. The pimp was on the ground. People were running around, ye
lling. I walked away. I can move faster than it looks.

  The white Chrysler was at the end of the block. I started running when I saw it. The back door was standing open. I jumped inside.

  “Go!” Rusty yelled.

  We didn’t hear the sirens until we were a couple of blocks away. The Chrysler pulled over to the curb. We all got out, got into another car, a small red one. It was a tight fit in there.

  The driver went down by the lake, then he came back, driving slow. They stopped right in front of my house.

  “You think you got him?” Rusty asked. “We didn’t see nothing, just heard the shots.”

  “I got him.”

  “Better give me the gun. We’ll get rid of it for you.”

  “Okay.”

  “We got one!” the guy in the front said. Like he was surprised. Scared too.

  When I walked in the bar Saturday night, Mack had a newspaper in the booth. I sat down next to him. He pointed to something in it.

  “Lamont. Ain’t that a perfect nigger name?”

  “What?”

  “The nigger who got it last night. That was his name, Lamont.” He was smiling, a big smile, looking at me.

  “I didn’t know,” I told him.

  “Oh, man, how would you know? Listen, John, you showed me something last night. A lot of guys, they’re just talk. Like those boys who took you around …? They’re pretty good with baseball bats, doing little ‘actions,’ they call them, you understand?”

  “No.”

  “Like nigger-stomping, get it? Strike a blow for the race. I mean, lotsa people talk about they going to kill this or kill that, you know what I’m saying? But doing it, that’s what separates the men from the boys. Like going to prison. You see a lot of guys can’t hold themselves together in there, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, it’s the same thing. You can’t really tell about a man until he has to do something. The people I’m with, they do things.”

  “I thought you said …”

  “Not those kids, Johnny. Men. Men like us. The kids, they’re with us all right, but they’re not really down for race war. They’re like a … gang, or something. Not an army. Not professional. They’re too wild. You can’t count on them. Like the leader says, the niggers got us outnumbered. For now, anyway, until the white race wakes up. So discipline, that’s what we need.”