I'M NOT DEAD: The Journals of Charles Dudley Vol.1

by Artie Cabrera

  I am ALIVE, but the man covered in flies, sitting in the furthest booth in the corner over there with the trucker hat, mirrored sunglasses, and now moldy-cheese skin hasn’t moved since the last time I was here.

  Jane knows all there is to know about me now. Well—not everything. Not yet.

  Jane and I have our own paths to follow, this is certain, but from this moment, moving forward, we have each other. She and I exchanged glances and knew it was time to get going.

  She excused herself to wash up in the bathroom, and I collected our things to leave as the bell tower began to sound at St. Peter’s cathedral across the street. I turned to see the old man in the suit standing beneath the cross that hung above the threshold of the cathedral doors tinkering with his pocket watch again.

  He directed his shimmering blue eyes at me; raising the pinwheel I had given to Dusty and grinned.

  Then he was gone—just like that.

  INTERMISSION

  SKIP

  STORM RADIUS

  1

  November 23rd, 2013

  Downtown Flushing – Dynasty Bar

  5:00 p.m.

  “Cigarette?” Samson asks waving a nearly empty pack of cigarettes in front of Freddie’s face. “I quit two months ago,” Freddie answers, but Samson helps himself to one anyway and lights up—sometimes sucking up three packs a day.

  “Of course…can I offer you anything else? Beer? Tea?”

  Freddie declines, “I’m okay, water’s fine.” On second thought, one swig from the warm tap water nearly turned Freddie’s stomach. It took minutes before the stale peanuts diminished the metallic swill and replaced it with a bitter aftertaste more bark-like than nutty.

  Freddie ignored the gyrating go-go dancer circling a stripper pole, not much thinner than she was, on the stage across the room. She was wearing gold pasties over her flat breasts, dancing out of sync with the droning techno-music and awful flashing disco lights hanging from the ceiling above her. A stoned face customer watched from below, haphazardly nursing a beer, with four singles fanned out across the bar.

  “I understand. Try loosening up, huh. You are too tense. Want a back massage from Fei Yen, on the house?” Samson asks, snapping his fingers at the waitress.

  “No thanks. You know, the last time I saw you; you were sitting in that chair with the same blank expression on your face, smoking a cigarette without a care in the world. Since then, you’ve been investigated for the hit on Billy Bao and seven of his men at his nightclub—among other things. Today, you remain in the same chair; cool as a morning breeze, as if what is happening outside doesn’t even matter. I doubt me being here, of all things, makes you nervous.”

  Samson nods. “No—but it does them. They don’t trust you after you made the jump to task force. You were one of us when you were a kid, don’t you forget,” Samson said waving his finger in Freddie’s nose then motioning to his three underlings anxiously defending the doors with semi-automatic weapons.

  —One of them, he said. That’s funny. Freddie thought. I’m better than them.

  Samson calls out orders, in Cantonese, to Fei Yen, the middle-aged bartender lazily smoking a cigarette behind the bar.

  (Translation: Hey, fat ass. I don’t pay you to stand around. If I wanted a statue, I’d buy one. Come on, get moving!)

  Fei Yen moves swiftly and awkwardly in her bulging plastic mini skirt and fish net stockings, yanking beer bottles out from the cooler, preparing a tray with shot glasses and napkins.

  Samson leans into the table, discretely gripping his chest in pain. Freddie surveys Samson’s face as he tries to downplay his illnesses, but tries not to show any concern.

  The man’s getting old, death is just turning the corner when you become this sick, this fast, Freddie sensed, but the King’s too vain to show he’s lost a step among his soldiers.

  These punks would eat him up alive if they had the chance. Little does Samson know that some of his boys were doing side jobs for Bao before Samson killed him.

  Freddie wonders if the old man would request to wear his gold trimmed sunglasses at his funeral while his failing pancreas or heart gave out.

  Samson never removes his glasses in front of company and has only one eye, but not everyone knows that, not that it matters—Samson has eyes everywhere in this town. The dark glasses just added to the mystique of the aging Chinatown crime boss who’s been called the “Moshu shi”, or The Magician because of how easily he made things disappear, making him one of the most notorious men in Chinatown.

  Legend has it, a smart mouthed wannabe gangster named Lee Cong gauged Samson’s left eye out in a knife fight back in ‘78—a dispute over a shipment of young women who had just arrived in New York from Macau, China, to work in an escort ring. It ended in a bloodbath that solidified Samson’s place in the Fang crime syndicate.

  Samson walked away minus an eye, but Cong wasn’t as fortunate. Samson made him go away forever rather quickly. By midnight, Cong’s head was on a pike at the intersection of Mott Street and Canal, his arms and legs went to various dumpsters on the Lower East side, and his torso was left in the gutter somewhere underneath the FDR bridge.

  “Bao was loose ends that needed tying up, do you understand? It was a business matter,” Samson assured Freddie, but Freddie knew it was all bullshit. It was a dick-swinging contest turned ugly, and Samson won.

  “That’s a colorful way of putting it,” Freddie scoffs, flicking empty peanut shells off the table.

  “I told you, Bao made the orders to move on you; I did what was necessary. Law enforcement isn’t a valued commodity around here if you haven’t noticed—despite who you’re married to, but what do you care? You were getting too close. I told you to stay back,” Samson insists, his voice becoming hardened and grave.

  “My hero to the rescue, I’m so honored,” Freddie sighed. “Besides, I didn’t hear anything about it, and I would’ve taken the proper measures to have prevented that from happening. That’s what we do,” Freddie reminds him.

  “We who? You and your dirty little cop friends waiting around with your thumbs up your asses for the warrants? You would be dead by now if I didn’t take care of it. And don’t flatter yourself, I didn’t do it for you, scumbag. I did it for Lilly and the kids. My daughter’s married to a cop—fuck me. You’re even starting to sound like a cop, do you realize that? You should really hear yourself sometimes. It makes me sick. I should have let Bao have you after all, huh?”

  Freddie thought it over; they were only words, delusional, but harmless. Samson often played Freddie off as being expendable, but Freddie knew he was the only man who kept Samson alive in recent years. There were many upstart gangsters waiting in the wings to bring The Magician down, to make a name for themselves, but it was Freddie Chen who came knocking before they even had the chance to grow a set of balls to do it. Freddie was the real muscle around here as long as Samson played by his rules.

  “We agreed as long as you kept business clean around here and kept feeding me leads on Bao, I was willing to turn my head on some things, but with this, you made headlines. This time you went too far. It’s a little hard to sweep eight dead bodies, including a seventeen year old prostitute under the rug when you make the news, don’t you agree? We were days away from bringing the whole operation down and bringing Bao in; you knew that. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say it wasn’t good enough for you to just let him go. You got sloppy.”

  “She was seventeen?” Samson said without a drop of remorse in his voice, blatantly ignoring Freddie’s accusation of his motive in Bao’s death. His words drifted as cold as the ice clinging around in his drink. “She took three bullets from a tech 9: one to the heart, the lung, the kidney. Only three days in the country—go figure. We had a lot of cleaning up to do, thanks to you,” Freddie said with no illusions of Samson mourning her death, asking for names, or sending a card. Samson won the war, and what’s another hooker?

  “There are a lot more where she came from,” Samson
smirked, stirring his glass.

  “I bet. Look, I know we don’t see eye to eye on some things,” Freddie paused, aware of the awkward irony of his statement. “I’m not your biggest supporter, but I am here to give you an opportunity to leave before it gets worse out there. It’s a one way ticket. What are you gonna’ do? I’m giving you a chance to come with us, to be with your family and your grand children and start over. It would mean the world to…”

  “Come with you? No, that’s not possible. No offense to Lilly, she’s a big girl now, she can handle herself,” Samson replied.

  “It’s over. You can vanish forever and leave your many wonderful contributions of racketeering, extortion, murder, illegal gambling and prostitution behind you.

  You can spend the remainder of your life countryside watching the children grow up happy or stay here and die with those bums standing over there.”

  The suggestion nearly knocked Samson out of his seat, and he let out a hard cough. “Countryside! No thanks! I think I’d rather die here. When did cops become so fucking boring? Here you are trying to reform an old bastard like me. That’s one for the books, huh?” Samson replied, examining the glob of blood he had just coughed up into a cocktail napkin.

  “Are you coming or not? We have an escort taking us to the chopper in the meadow. Lilly will be waiting. I pulled a lot of strings with men that would rather see you die,” Freddie told him.

  “How bad is it out there? Is it something we can handle?” Samson asked, discretely glancing at his crew.

  “No. It’s out of our hands now. We’ll have no support after tonight; tomorrow we’re on our own. We have no chance of survival if we stay. You’re going to need a lot more than sub-machine guns and supe’d up Escalades and Hondas to take these things on, so I don’t recommend it.”

  Samson slams another shot of whiskey down his throat and extinguishes the burning with a deep breath. “You’re talking of the red monster aren’t you? Have you seen it? It’s been bad for business.”

  “Is that what we’re calling it now? Yes, I’ve seen it,” Freddie paused, “I am also talking about the hordes of creatures that killed four of my friends—good men.

  You’ll all be dead within a week, guaranteed. I’m asking you for the last time—are you in or are you out? There is nothing stopping you from leaving with me, and you know how much your daughter loves not getting her way. Be ready to go in five minutes and remember—no tag-alongs, this isn’t a road trip,” Freddie said, standing to step away.

  “They won’t let me go that easily,” Samson warned.

  “Leave them to me.”

  2

  Freddie's Penthous Overlooking Downtown Flushing

  5:15 p.m.

  Lilly watched the world burn from the tall windows of her living room as police helicopters whooshed past her view—that’s two more in less than five minutes.

  The glass shook; the floors quaked. The Emergency Broadcast System’s alert, from two days ago, still echoed in the recesses of her mind, ringing from every television in the apartment. This was NOT a test.

  She could hear people screaming on the streets amidst the riotous swarm and howling of sirens. Lilly stopped mentally rushing the clocks hours ago. Her body grew numb and her eyes ached from not sleeping, but it was time to go. The agent assigned to bring her to the meadow stood waiting at the front door tapping on his wristwatch urging everyone to speed things up.

  The babysitter hurried, preparing the children to leave. Lilly placed her palm on the glass as tears streamed down her face and over her pale lips.

  “Be strong. I will see you soon, I promise,” Freddie had told her before kissing her and the children before walking out the door earlier that afternoon.

  3

  On the street – Blockade Southwest

  5:20 p.m.

  The last of the police and utility vehicles blockaded the four corners of College Point Boulevard and Roosevelt Avenue—two sole survivors remained. The creature had dismantled and crushed the other blockades within a ten block radius of Main Street.

  “What’s the play here, Sarge?” Officer Brodowski and Sergeant Tompkins both huddled, exhausted and beaten, behind a patrol vehicle. Tompkins clutched his ribs and folded over in pain.

  Sergeant Frank Tompkins was feeling the wear and tear of being on the force for twenty-five years, and every icy breath he pulled into his lungs, broken ribs, went down as a searing reminder that he should really have quit smoking ten years ago or retired.“Your guess is as good as mine, kid. I got a busted gut over here,” he heaved heavily. “We’ve been fighting this fucker for almost two days now, and he ain’t letting up. How are you doing with ammo?”

  Brodowski replaced the magazine in his gun with another. “I ain’t got shit. I hit that thing with everything I got. We need back up, Sarge.”

  “You’re looking at the back-up, kiddo,” Tompkins huffed, lighting a cigarette. “All the radios are down. We’re on our own.”

  “I don’t know how much longer I can do this. I mean, my wife, we just had a kid. I just wanna’ go home, ya know. I just don’t know how much more I got.”

  “Don’t fall apart on me now, son. You’ll be home sooner than you know it—and you’ll go home a hero. You’ll be able to tell your ol’ lady and the boy how daddy brought down the big bad monsters.”

  The thought brought an instant smile to the young man’s face. “A hero, huh? That sure does have a nice ring to it, don’t it? It beats you calling me a moron all the time.”

  “You bet it does, but you’ll always be my moron, moron,” Tompkins said, patting Brodowski on the cheek.

  “I’m going to sit in the tub with a nice cold beer and rest my bones for a week,” Brodowski drifted, shutting his eyes, easing his mind into that warm bath.

  “And I’ll go home to my cichlids and enjoy a hoagie, maybe work on my deck.”

  “I tell ya’, Sarge, these last two days sure put things in perspective.”

  “Save it for your shrink, son—we don’t show our lady parts in the face of death. That son of a bitch is gonna’ come back around, and we better be ready to give it hell.”

  4

  Back at Dynasty Bar

  5:30 p.m.

  Freddie made one last attempt to call his younger brother Peter, but got nothing—just noisy cross talk and busy signals on the cell phone. Peter had instructions to bring Freddie’s parents to the meadow by 6 p.m.—the deadline—but he hadn’t seen him since the night before.

  Freddie feared the worst: What if Peter doesn’t show? What if they are already dead? Freddie didn’t have time for fear or speculation now; he had to snap out of it fast. He had to extract the boss without any bullshit from the crew.

  Freddie returned to the bar. The bodyguards, guns drawn on Samson, shouted demands in Cantonese, their eyes darted between Samson and Freddie.

  “Okay, easy guys, what’s the problem?” Freddie asked, carefully sliding his hand over his holster. Fei-Yen, the stripper, and the clientele took cover behind the bar.

  “I told you these shit for brains wouldn’t let me go that easily,” Samson smiled, exhaling smoke from his nostrils—and calmly stretching into a Tai-Chi pose with a cigarette clenched between his teeth.

  “Are you okay? Because whatever you’re doing right now is really weird,” Freddie asked without taking his eyes off the guns now pointed in his direction, “and very distracting.”

  “You think this is the first time I’ve had a gun pulled on me, asshole?” Samson responded. “Watch and learn, hot shot.”

  Freddie pulled his hand away from his holster and slowly raised his palms forward.“Listen, guys. I’d prefer you didn’t do anything stupid, so I’ll take you with me, under two conditions: the burners stay here, and you take your own ride. If that’s cool with you, then let’s get the fuck out of here, if not, then make your move because I don’t have time for your—”

  Pop! Pop! Pop!

  “—Bullshit.”

  Within the bl
ink of an eye, blood flecked the smoke filled air and bodies toppled to the floor like marionettes cut from their strings.

  “You talk too much, Freddie,” Samson groaned, looming over the bodies of the three men he just shot in the head, his neck and shirt covered in fresh brain spatter. Two were dead; the third frantically bawled and clawed at his face as his eye dangled and bounced over his gaping jaw from its optic nerve.

  “Shit, Freddie, I must be getting sloppy, huh?” Samson sneered and fired another bullet into the man’s ear.

  Blood and teeth exploded across the shiny black floor tiles and onto Freddie’s slacks with a thick wet burst.

  The man is a monster.

  Waves of shock quickly engulfed his senses, as Freddie stood, trance-like, while blood pooled around the soles of his shoes. Samson yelled something to Fei Yen, but it all sounded like a speeding train rumbling between his ears: the screaming, the scattering, gold pasties racing to the door, gunfire, death, the thumping of music, cheap techno lights, all rolled up into a nightmarish blur.

  Samson calmly discarded his gun and marched toward the exit past Freddie. “Leave them to me, he says,” Samson chuckled.

  “What were you going to do, talk them to death?”

  5

  Blockade Southwest

  5:45 p.m.

  “Sarge?”

  “Yeah, kid?”

  “We’ve got company,” Brodowski stressed, quickly rising to his feet. Tompkins was fading, slumped against the fender of the police car. “Is it the monster?” Tompkins mumbled.

  “Sarge, this is fucking bad. You have to see this.”

  Sergeant Tompkins’ eyes fluttered open and focused. “Yeah, that’s not good.”

  In the distance, an assembly of shadowy figures emerged from the ash-muted light of day, quickly rushing and weaving around each other like a tribe of savages towards the blockade.