by Jeff Johnson
“Hmm.” Suzanne shoveled up her second pancake and started loading it. “I have rock climbing from one to four, then nap time, and then I teach my swim class. Eight OK?”
“Eight is great. Lock the front door when you leave and go out the back. The key to the back door is in the flower pot.”
She nodded, chewing. “Leave the cats out?”
“Shitheads won’t come back ’till dark.” I kissed the middle of her sternum. Then I got my smokes and my cell phone off the table and went out the back.
It was raining, which was no surprise. My tomato garden was a leafless tangle of dead stalks and bare, sagging frames. Embarrassing. The weeds weren’t too bad. I carefully looked around, but there were no neighbors out. There was a decent chance Dessel would have the front and the back staked out, which meant a car was somewhere in front of the house behind mine on the next street over. He’d already busted me once that way, but that wasn’t the way I’d be going.
There were four houses between me and the first busy street, going through backyards. I could see the roofline of the cafes and crap shops from where I stood. The cafes and restaurants all had covered back patios for smokers. My target was the dive bar, dead center.
I tore off and hit my fence at a good clip for only having twenty feet of muddy runway. The fence was a rickety wooden thing about head high, but it held as I made a clean vault. I almost landed in a rain-filled wheelbarrow but just cleared it. I didn’t pause to look around, just charged the next fence, chain-link, waist high. I barely touched it as I went over. A dog barked somewhere in the house, but I kept going. It was a tidy backyard. The next fence was taller and wooden again, much newer and about head high. There was an upturned five gallon bucket against it that I could use as a launch pad, so I did and rolled over the top, barely getting my pants wet.
The dog was on me instantly, biting my wrist and snarling, impossibly fast. I lightly pushed his head away and he rolled as I sprang up. The poor thing probably weighed thirty pounds and must have been scared as hell when I landed right next to him. It looked like it was part pug and part Pekinese, old and fat and half-blind.
“Watch for cats,” I cautioned, and then I was off again. The last fence was a climber, a twelve-foot chain-link with slats to keep the drunks from the dive bar on the other side from scaling it. I caught the laugh of some breakfast drinkers on the far side.
There was nothing to launch from, so I hit the fence at full speed and dug my boot toe in and transferred as much of my momentum upward as I could. The entire fence rocked and exploded rainwater outward and I stretched. My bad hand caught the top and I rammed the fingers of my good hand through the slats. My boots caught just enough and I got both hands on top. One pull-up and I was going over fast. I caught a fraction of a second glimpse of table and chairs, and then I was falling.
I landed on the edge of a table, which partially broke my fall. The chair broke a little more of it, and then I was lying on my back, staring up at a rain-spattered plastic awning. I sat up and rubbed the back of my head. The patio was empty except for two goth chicks, paused in astonishment halfway through eggs and Bloody Marys.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hey, dude,” one of them replied. The other one snorted and shook her head.
I got up and righted the table and the chair, sat down.
“Are you, like, OK?” the same chick asked, incredulous.
“Oh yeah. Fine.” I tried to look casual. “How are you two this morning?”
They burst into laughter. A waitress bustled out, a mousy woman carrying a coffee pot.
“I didn’t see you come in,” she said, pleasantly enough. “Coffee?”
The goth chicks laughed.
“Yep. Their next round of Bloody Marys are on me. I guess I’ll have one, too. Spicy as fuck.”
“Breakfast menu?” She cocked her hip.
“Nah. Just ate.”
“Coming up.” She took a coffee cup off the counter by the door and set it on my table. I dug my smokes out.
“Can I get more limes with mine?” one of the goths asked. Her friend nodded, mouth full of toast.
The waitress went back in. I took a sip of coffee and lit a cigarette, then took a survey. Everything was fine. The back of my head hurt a little and my tailbone smarted, but it was already going away. Even my sore hand still felt the same level of sore.
“So, uh, what the hell, man?” The silent one was finally talking. I poked my cigarette at the fence and points beyond.
“I met this chick in Vegas. She’s from here, so we kinda sorta met on the plane. Got all mixed up with her, which was fine until we got back. Turns out her family is the worshipping kind. Her, too, though she never really brought it up until we got back. Anyway, I live right over there, two houses down. Fuckin’ weirdoes are parked in front of my house in a bus.”
“No shit?” They seemed to enjoy that.
“Oh yeah. It’ll be better for everyone if they think I’m sleeping in.”
I took my cell phone out and they went back to their breakfast conversation. Nigel answered on the first ring.
“Problem one is I bought all kinds of drugs from those fucking criminal fucks. Speedy coke kept me up all night. Problem two is they cut it with laxatives, so I have wicked fuckin’ hellacious diarrhea.” Nigel could complain with great conviction once you got to know him.
“Those are problems. Where are you?”
“Don’t ask. Where are you?”
“Same answer. Meet me in twenty minutes at, oh, that cheesy bar over on 11th by the hardware store? You know the one.”
“I’m at the motel with Mikey. I’m on the toilet. He’s all fucked up, too. Wanna talk to him? Here.”
“Hi, Darby,” Mikey said. Evidently he was standing right next to Nigel, waiting his turn. “We are indeed all fucked up, but Nigel held his shit together, so to speak, a little better than I did until about an hour ago. But he’s not half as drunk as I am. We got some anti-diarrhea stuff, but so far no dice. Here.”
“Darby?” Nigel spat. “Get me the fuck out of this place. Just come get me. I can make it, but hurry.” He hung up. I dialed a cab immediately and told them where I was, and they said three to five minutes. Then I finally had a sip of coffee. Not exactly the start I was looking for. The waitress came out onto the patio with our drinks and I thumbed out a twenty and a ten and waved off the change. After a mighty, vitamin-packed slorp, I dialed Delia.
“We are all systems go for launch,” she reported. I could tell she was angry. “You should see these fucking idiots. Hey!” Sudden screaming. “Put that down! Now! Sit down, goddamn it!” Back to normal. “These dudes have a band called Empire of Shit for a reason. Not one of them is qualified to do a single reasonable, rational—Hey! Get in the van! Now! That’s the last fucking ti—” She hung up.
I shook my head. I had another sip of coffee and another sip of Bloody Mary, then stood and dusted off my pants.
“Later,” I said. The goth gals didn’t even break their conversation as I walked past, which I thought was rude, considering my theatrical entrance and the round of drinks. The inside of the bar was dim, mostly lit by pinball machines and the beer lamp over the pool table. My cab was waiting out front, so I went straight through the place and out the door, across the sidewalk, ducked against the rain, and right into the back seat almost without stopping.
“82nd and Foster,” I said. The driver nodded and pulled away from the curb. I sank low in the seat and pretended to be digging through my pocket for something. When I sat up a few blocks later there were no cars behind us.
“I’m just picking up a friend and then we’re going to lunch over on Alberta.”
“What’s on Foster? House? Apartment?”
“Nah. Some shitty motel called the Bismarck.”
The driver nodded with a wise guy grin. “Hope he didn’t get any action on the side, you see what I mean. The Bismarck is like a discount grocery store. Everything there is set to expire tomorrow.
”
“Huh.” I wondered about Monique and where she was. Cheeks had thought she was almost done. Maybe she made it with some of that money to someplace she knew, but I doubted it. If she knew good people, they would have been there for her a long time ago. Then again, maybe she was in Denver, somewhere in the snow, and some kind of helpful old pervert had taken her in.
I thought about that and kept an eye on the traffic until we got to the Bismarck. Nigel was standing under the awning by the front office, wrapped in his presidential trench coat. He’d lost his tie and the briefcase. Somehow he’d managed to shave and get some gel into his hair. Definitely grumpy, but he’d apparently achieved some kind of chemical equilibrium. He got in as soon as the cab pulled up and immediately started in with the bitching.
“Diarrhea stuff kicked in just in the nick of time,” he began, without so much as a hello. “Mikey drank about twenty beers and the big bastard actually fell asleep. Did you bring me coffee? No? Prick. I have plans later, so let’s not waste my whole fucking day. The hoes at the Bismarck are disgusting on a level that reminds me of—”
“Driver,” I said sharply. “Let’s hit a Starbucks drive-thru and otherwise haul ass. Dudeboy here is going to motor his mouth like this for the entire ride, I can tell.” The driver nodded and did a high-speed swerve toward an upcoming coffee stand. Nigel wheeled on me.
“I shit my guts out all night and this is what—” I stopped him with a raised fist.
“Nigel, I like you. You know that. But right now I need to think, and that means you have to quiet down.”
He pouted, of course.
“Can we smoke in here?” he asked. The driver glanced in the rearview.
“No.”
“Fuck,” Nigel muttered.
The cab pulled into the drive-thru and the driver ordered a large latte. I got a medium black coffee with four sugars. Nigel refused to talk, but he was a cappuccino man, I knew, so I ordered him one. When the drinks came the driver handed ours back. Nigel took his without a word, and we made it all the way to Romero’s in silence.
Gomez’s brother’s restaurant was a medium-size place with an L-shaped parking lot that wrapped around the back. The big windows were festively painted with crappy pictures of sombreros and jalapeños. I’d forgotten about those windows, which took up two walls, one of which faced the street. The lights were on inside and one or two people were moving around. Gomez’s Ford Taurus was in the parking lot and I could see the bug-encrusted, dented nose of the Empire of Shit van poking out just around the corner. The closed sign was up and there was a sign on the door that read PRIVATE PARTY.
“Here?” the driver asked, glancing back.
“This is my party,” I replied. I looked up and down the street as we pulled into the parking lot. Traffic was light. If anyone had been tailing us, there was every chance I would have noticed. I paid the driver and gave him a decent but not conspicuous tip, then patted Nigel’s bony knee.
“Get your game face on, boy,” I said. Nigel cursed under his breath.
We went through the drizzle fast and I knocked on the glass. Gomez appeared out of the gloom and opened it.
“Hola, vato,” I said. We bumped fists, which was high affection.
“Man, dude, your cheek …” His deep brown eyes were hard. He studied my scar without a hint of shyness, then finally shrugged.
“Lose the party sign,” I said. “Where is everyone?”
“In back with Flaco. Man, homie, your waiters? They ever need work, tell them to stay the fuck away from me.”
Gomez nodded to Nigel and locked the door behind us. It was just before eleven a.m. As we approached the kitchen, I could hear laughter and the clatter of pots. Nigel was still silent behind me as we pushed through the kitchen doors into what I knew was going to be the first genuine crisis of the day.
Empire of Shit, fully decked out in pristine waiter regalia, were lined up like French show dogs for inspection. They looked crisp, clean, rested, and professional in an utterly bland way. The transformation was astounding. Flaco had five pots of something going on the massive twelve burner stove and was monkeying around by the dish machine, himself decked out in checkered pants and a chef coat. He looked highly amused.
Most shocking of all was Delia. She was wearing a prim, professional-looking vanilla power suit and her hair, now raven-wing black, was neatly combed to the side. Her makeup was tastefully light, perfect for a therapist or an airline executive. She’d cleaned off the kitchen operations desk in the corner and set up her laptop and a complicated-looking printer. She was watching the miserable Empire of Shit dudes with a gnarly prison guard grimace. She was also holding a huge meat cleaver.
“I’ll be damned,” I said, mostly to myself. Nigel came alongside me and grunted.
“These idiots are lined up like this because if I look away for one fucking second they turn into howler monkeys.” Delia slapped the flat of the cleaver against her palm.
“You look fabulous,” I said. Her eyes flicked to me and Flaco made a tittering coo of delight.
“Darby, that kind of talk is so absolutely unacceptable that it actually stymies my imagination when it comes to a graphic death threat rebuttal. A singular event.”
I turned to Nigel, who was studying Empire of Shit with a restaurateur’s eye. He’d owned one-sixteenth of a gay bar at one point and his mother had a share in a Denny’s in Phoenix, after all. I tapped him on the shoulder.
“Get ’em, Nige. Pretend like it’s their first day at your dream bistro.”
Nigel nodded, the terrible coke episode forgotten. He was in his element now. He vectored up to Empire of Shit, who still had little or no idea what was going on, other than impersonating waiters at a Mexican food place was leading to a record with cover art. They studied Nigel with subtle alarm.
“Present hands!” Nigel snapped. They did so as one, instantly. Nigel carefully inspected them from head to toe. He had suggestions for each of them.
“Suck in that gut, boy,” he barked at the first Empire kid. He must have weighed all of a hundred and twenty pounds, but he came to attention. Nigel glowered at him and moved on to number two.
“Tuck that shirt in.” The kid did so with all possible haste. Nigel moved on to Dildo.
“Hank. Your hair.” Hank looked particularly henpecked, but he smoothed his hair and shot for a neutral expression. The last guy got “belt” and “eye booger.” When he was done, Nigel took a few steps back and addressed them.
“Empire of Shit. I am Nigel. Other than Hank Dildo, I don’t know your names. I don’t need to. Now, Darby has offered you some kind of deal. I want you to understand that dudeboy is a sociopath. So am I. You fuck up, you play around, you screw this up, I will rape each and every one of you. Is that clear?”
“Yes,” they said as one.
“What we have here is an easy to understand situation. We of the Lucky Supreme camp? We are high-order scumbags. You four are anarchists. Ideologically, we are cousins. But make no mistake. You are inferior. We are stronger, smarter, faster, and we make more money. We are superior in every way. For the next few hours, you too will be higher scum. If it helps, we’re going to fuck up a greedy-ass rich real estate guy, all the shit you can’t stand rolled into one. Are we clear?”
“Yes!” This time with a great deal of enthusiasm.
“Excellent. Now, no matter how much glue you sniff, no matter how drunk you get, no matter how awful your next acid trip is, even if an untold fortune in pussy is one story of conquest away, you will never, ever, ever speak of this day to anyone, even to the people here right now, even among yourselves, at any time. To do so will invite my personal wrath and Delia’s as well, and it will also attract Darby’s attention, which is a thing to be avoided in the extreme, as you will see shortly. Is that clear?”
“Yes.” A little scattered this time.
“Good. Now, we serve from the left and clear from the right. Dildo. You’re the bartender. Go out there and familiarize yo
urself with the setup by getting me four shots of vodka. If you return with a stain or a bruise or even a hair out of place, I will—” Nigel droned on. I went over and sat down next to Delia, who was loosening up now that Nigel had taken control of the lobby, as they say.
“Great job on their hair,” I commented quietly. “The uniforms, too.”
“Don’t get me started.”
We both lit cigarettes and watched Nigel pace and lecture. Hank had gone for the drinks. Flaco was watching the proceedings with the same expression he pointed at his TV. I turned back to Delia and leaned in a little. She smelled like lilies.
“So, this getup. You have to tell me.”
“It’s what you called my civilian infiltrator of secret real-world power costume, or whatever. I have to register the sale of the building later at the county clerk’s office and go to the bank again, plus I have to file some permits. The kind of shit you don’t want to hear about.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s not a big deal. I feel kinda like a spy when I dress up like this anymore. Believe it or not, I have errands of my own which occasionally require this getup. Squeezing your shit in isn’t all that big a deal.”
“Groovy.”
“Yeah,” she said quietly, not taking her eyes off Nigel. “I’m shifting some investments around. My portfolio. Plus I’m having some of my designs transferred to fabric for a textile show in Taos next month. Those people take you more seriously when you dress like they do.”
I knew Delia had all kinds of art projects on the side, but that was the first I’d heard of a textile show in New Mexico. She read my mind, as she often did.
“I’ve been busy.”
“I see.”
“Pills?”
“Check.”
“Mikey?”
“Passed out.”
“What the hell is wrong with Nigel?”
“Speedy coke. Diarrhea.”
“You?”
“Fell off a fence.”
“Chick?”
