by Patti Abbott
I froze in the doorway when I saw Doug in the bath. In my head, I was packing a bag and sprinting back to work, but I found myself kneeling down next to the tub. The blood was so dark that it was all I could take in at first. Then the slow drip of the faucet, matching every few beats of my thudding heart. I studied his pale face, the dull burst capillaries, his blond wispy hair. I imagined that he had left an explanation in a folded note on the sink: black ink on fancy cream-colored paper, like he'd really prepared for the moment.
I wanted the note to say:
Sorry for coming drunk to elementary school Father-Daughter Day.
Sorry for never buying you new clothes, Mirna Foul-smell.
Sorry for being such a fucking embarrassment.
But I probably wouldn't have gotten to read it anyway.
When he fluttered his eyelids, I yelped and pulled my hands to my chest. I couldn't stop the tears. I had nothing but anger left for this man and yet I'd lost control. I wept as he struggled to speak in a raspy voice so hoarse it sounded like he had been lost in the desert for days. But I didn't listen. I didn't want to hear any of it. Our father/daughter relationship had hit rock bottom and I wouldn't risk a whisper burying me deeper. All the good memories that I'd ever have were locked tight inside me. Nothing could change the addict before me, not even death. So when he mouthed, I'm sorry, I put two hands on his chest until he was under and all I could see were my arms disappearing into the murky red. Then I lost what little toughness I had left, along with my breakfast, on the floor. The wooden bat to the stomach when the bookie's men found me didn't help either. I guess in my shock I didn't hear them kick in the door. It's a shitty apartment and it came right off the hinges.
When I turned, too late to see the commotion, wiping the back of my sleeve over my mouth, the skinny one rammed me in the stomach like he was driving home a bayonet, expecting my guts to spill all over the floor. I'd seen people like him before, stalking the losers on the Strip. It was always the little guys with the baseball bat or flashlight, an extension of their dicks they could swing around in their hands. I doubled over, dry-heaving, my freshly manicured nails grasping for purchase on the linoleum. They laughed at the sight of Doug, like it was the funniest thing to hit Vegas in years. The Bat called him a bitch and said he took the easy way out. It hurt to agree. I knew Doug was broke. I'd paid the rent for the past two years. But I didn't know he was in deep with a bookie.
I stared up at the two men with blurred eyes bleeding mascara, recognizing that part of me knew this day would come. Doug had dragged me down into the gutter and now his dead body was chained to my ankle. I grew up around men who called themselves professional gamblers. I should have known. I'd seen Doug's friends fall to drugs and drink. Show up at the apartment with broken hands and busted faces. When it got bad, some cheated. And when it got worse, they turned to other sources of funds. Anything to get another shot at the money. Anything to feel another stack of chips.
The other thug I recognized. His fat head and braided goatee were unmistakable, even with the large 49ers cap pulled down low. My eyes must have given it away because he seemed startled all of a sudden and his face darkened. He worked security at Mermaid's, a dive casino located a few blocks off the strip where Doug had moved after he was no longer welcome at the major Vegas institutions. I'd been to Mermaid's a few times when Doug couldn't find his keys, let alone his feet.
The Bat grabbed a handful of my hair and yanked. The fuck already had my attention; now he was just playing with me. He gave me the short: Doug owed the bookie over one-hundred grand, and since I was family, I now owed the bookie over one-hundred grand. I'd challenge his bullshit definition of family and began to say something snippy to that effect, but he cut me off with the back of his hand. He told me I should be thankful he didn't use the bat.
While the Bat was giving his spiel, the Bouncer took to the rest of the apartment. I could hear drawers being emptied, the bed being tossed. The place wasn't big and he was through with it in under five. I got the sense he knew what he was looking for. The blood drained from my face when he returned with the thick roll of bills.
When I was sixteen, I caught Doug stealing from my ceramic piggy bank. He'd smashed it on the kitchen floor and was bent over, groping at the money. I moved to stop him and he struck me. It was a light, drunken punch, but it stung. I gathered two handfuls of cash and ran out the door. I wandered until my feet hurt and ended up outside of a Quick Cuts hair salon. I thought I saw one of Doug's gambling buddies so I ducked inside and sat down in the waiting area. It was cool, clean and smelled of cherry shampoo. I didn't realize I was still clutching the crumpled sweaty bills when the owner walked over to me.
She took pity; I could see it in her eyes. I wanted to run out the door but I was too hurt to be embarrassed. She coaxed me into a chair and gave me highlights and cut it into a short bob. She got me to open up. I told her about the gambling, Doug, the money. She listened without saying a word. When she spun me around in the chair and I saw my reflection, I could barely breathe. I felt alive. There was no way I could repay her, but I told her I'd help out after school. She eventually took me on as an assistant. It wasn't much but I saved every dollar I could toward an education that would get me the hell away from Vegas.
It hurt more to see the cash in the Bouncer's hands than seeing Doug in the bath. Almost five grand for the Academy of Hair Design; I'd even sent in the application. He tossed the roll to the Bat who caught it and gave it a look like he'd rather light my dreams on fire to see me squirm than turn it over to his boss.
They dialed 911 for me and watched as I told the operator about Doug. The Bat cackled as they walked out with the money, issuing threats on my life and friends; they knew about the salon. When I watched the first cop who showed up outside the apartment complex fist-bump with the Bouncer, I knew I was in deep shit.
*****
I look out at the bright lights of the Vegas Strip through the large frosted window of the bathroom and I feel powerful, like I can take back this city and my life. I wonder if this feeling is what Doug was chasing after. I pull my dress on and stuff close to fifteen thousand in my purse. It's heavy, like the addiction I feel pumping in my veins. I walk out of the room like I've started my streak and I can see the Mustang down the hall. This is just the beginning.
Brass
by Roger Hobbs
It was a rainy Tuesday, around 7pm, when my boss dialed me up and told me he had a couple of big-balls hitmen coming to town. Since I was the low guy on the totem pole, it was my job to show them a good time. "Make sure you don't piss them off," he said. "These guys will waste a guy like you in a minute."
I started to say something, but my boss hung up on me before I could spit it out. I sighed, went to my bedstand, and wrote down the address where I was supposed to meet them. That was my job for the night, I guess. I was the babysitter to a couple of hitmen.
My name's Joe. In every criminal organization in the world, there's a guy like me. I'm the young guy in new leather who stands in the back keeping his mouth shut and his head down. The criminal world has a lot of room for advancement, sure, but just like any other job, it takes some time to get there. When you're as fresh to the game as I am, you're everybody's bitch. I bring coffee to wiseguys two times a day, and drive the working girls around so they don't miss a date. The first few years are just getting a foot in the door, I'm told, and right now that's where I am. Sure, I'm the lowest guy in a gang of low guys, but I can't complain. Before the Outfit I had to deal drugs and hold up gas stations just to survive, and I'd rather be somebody's bitch than spend one more minute selling black tar out in the freezing cold. When my boss calls me up and says I've got to show a couple of grade-A murdering buttonmen around for a night, I can't say no. It's just not how it works.
The address was this hotel bar way out by the Oregon Coast, maybe two hours away by car. I checked my watch. If I drove fast, I could probably beat the hitmen there and have time for a beer in the mea
nwhile. God knows I'd need one. I put on my leather jacket and was out the door in five minutes.
I'd never met these two hitmen coming in, but I'd heard about them. High-profile rub-outs don't happen much anymore, but when they have to, every organization has a couple of guys around to do the dirty work.
For the Outfit, our murderers were a pair of Italian brothers-in-law by the names of Vincent and Mancini. That's what everybody called them—Vincent and Mancini, like they were some sort of Abbott and Costello riff. I'd seen them once at an Outfit party, and heard stories through the ranks.
Vincent was the kind of guy who talked far more than he should have. He'd blab on and on, like he felt the need to narrate every single one of his daily experiences as they happened, all the time.
Mancini was the opposite, I'm told. He'd just sit there, listening to Vincent talk, and stare off into the distance, or sometimes right at the boss, like he was about to say something brilliant but he couldn't quite figure out how to put it. One never went anywhere without the other. If Vincent stood up to go to the bathroom, then Mancini would go too. It was like they were afraid to be alone, even just for a few seconds. They'd only split up if the job absolutely called for it.
They were an odd pair.
That Tuesday night the drive was easy. I got there in record time. The hotel bar was part of a little place out in Seaside. The Outfit doesn't do much out in Seaside, but I knew my way around. It was a quiet little place with a long wild beach and Cape Cod-style architecture wind-bitten from the cold. A low fog rolled in off the Pacific Ocean and clung to the windows of the hotel bar like blood clots. Vincent and Mancini had beaten me there, I don't know how, and they looked up at me as I came through the door.
"Hey, fucker," Vincent said. "Are you the guy?"
"Yeah," I said. "I'm the guy."
"Then open a tab already."
And that was how we met. I laid my credit card down on the bar and ordered a double bourbon, neat.
When I first saw these guys a few months ago, Vincent and Mancini had been all expensive suits and ties. This night, though, they had switched back to what I could only presume was their usual attire: leather jackets, blue jeans and no-bull cigarettes. Mancini had perpetual stubble and hair as slick and black as a beaver pelt. There was a scar the size of a dollar bill along his cheek that turned pink when he drank. Vincent spoke to his brother in Italian and laughed loud enough to scare people. He was thinner and had cheekbones that sunk into his face like strip-mining pits.
I was ostensibly there to show them a good time, but I knew what was expected of me. Guys like these attracted trouble like flies to vinegar. Hitmen aren't like normal criminals. Normal criminals try to be subtle, but hitmen don't mind being noticed. They'd shoot a little girl in front of her parents, if they wanted to. I took the barstool next to them and Vincent clapped me on the back and tried to talk to me, but all I could think about was whether or not at the end of the night he was going to slit my throat and kill me. We fell into a conversation of sorts, but I can't remember half of it.
A lotta time passed that way.
I drank with Vincent and Mancini for hours. They ran up a six-hundred-dollar tab on my credit card, buying rounds for everybody in the place. Gran Patron. Johnnie Walker Blue. Grey Goose. Vincent's voice had a little squeak at the end of it, and when he drank it got louder and louder. The three of us moved to a back booth after a while, where nobody would bother us. After a few more rounds, Mancini took out a small mirror. He used the edge of a black American Express to cut cocaine into lines. Vincent and Mancini cut a whole bag into big, fat lines and did a couple though a five-hundred-Euro note. Mancini came up off his line with a look like molten lead on his face. It was something like pain, almost, but I couldn't tell. He was the kind of guy where you couldn't tell.
Vincent slapped him on the back and told him to do another.
I drank another bourbon and half-listened.
"Hey," Vincent said. "You smoke?"
I looked up from my drink. "What?"
"Come on," Vincent said. "Lets go outside and have a cig."
"Outside?"
"Yeah. Outside. Let's go."
Vincent basically picked me up by the collar. I got the impression I didn't have a choice in the matter, so I followed him out to the parking lot. Mancini followed me, flanking me between the two of them. It was half-raining, like it does by the coast, where the water pools up in the cracks in the pavement and sinks into the soft brown forest earth in great big sludge-like pools.
Vincent lit a Marlboro Red for himself and then another one for Mancini back behind the neon sign. The two just stared at me for a while, like I had just appeared out of the ether and they didn't know what to make of me. We stood like that for a while, in the rain, and listened to the sound of the ocean wind come through the pine trees and watched the rear floodlight flicker over the dumpsters.
Then, after a while, Vincent said, “You ever been in a fight, kid?”
I nodded, but didn't say anything.
Vincent smirked. He said, “Of course you haven't. Your hands are as soft as a baby's.”
I said, “I got in a lot of fights when I was younger.”
Vincent laughed and stared at me and took another deep drag off his Marlboro Red. He said, “That doesn't mean you've been in a fight. Not a real one. Maybe a few scuffles. Maybe some guy on your corner giving you lip, so you break his nose on a brick wall and put him down for a while. But I don't think you've ever really been in a fight. Not really. Not a drag out all-or-nothing brawl, the kind where you're spitting out teeth on the pavement and praying to God for it to just be over, before the adrenaline hits you full force and you let go with all your strength, pounding your fists into some guy and hoping that maybe one out of five makes contact because you know that when it does, you're going to straight up kill that motherfucker.”
I said, “I don't like fighting.”
“Nobody does,” he said. “Not if you do it right.”
Vincent took another drag off the cigarette and I got a good look at his hands. His knuckles looked like a construction site, with deep brown scarred ridges and heavy bulging calluses at the top of his fingers. He held his cigarette like another man might hold a pencil. There was no finesse in his hands. His thumbs were the size of sausages.
Mancini flicked the butt of the cigarette and took a set of gold-plated brass knuckles from his left jacket pocket. There were scratches along the ridges where the gold plating had flaked away to reveal the solid steel underneath. He slipped them over the glove on his right hand and flexed his fingers until they were snug right above his second knuckles. He formed a fist. The metal caught the light and glimmered. Mancini didn't say anything. He took a small vial of cocaine out of his pocket, poured a little on the soft spot between his first finger and this thumb, and snorted it.
Vincent said, “You ever been punched with brass knuckles, kid?”
I didn't say anything.
Vincent said, “It's much more important to know how to avoid getting hit. You see, the knuckles preserve the force of the punch by concentrating it all into one small little place on the hand. Makes the punch stronger, and keeps you from breaking your fingers when you give it. Normally if you want to kill a guy with a punch, you've got to practically break your hand to do it. This makes things easier.”
“Kill?”
“Yeah, you heard me. Kill. A sap or a stun gun knocks a guy out. Brass knuckles don't. They break bones. Powder teeth. Snap ribs like a twig. You don't punch a guy with brass knuckles to incapacitate him. You punch a guy with brass knuckles if you want to crack open his skull and send fragments of his nose into his brain. You punch a guy with brass knuckles if you want to break a man's jaw so hard he bites off his tongue and swallows it.”
I didn't say anything. Mancini stood there in the half-light, looking up at the flickering neon sign. He didn't move. He hardly even breathed.
Vincent said, “Mancini here? He got hit by brass knu
ckles. We were just kids, you know. Seventeen, maybe eighteen. It was a fight outside church one Sunday afternoon. This dealer came up from the left while we were walking out of service and blindsided Mancini with a right hook, knuckledusters to the jaw. Mancini went down after that. Lost about ten teeth, bits of his gums, a good half his tongue. He spat it out on the pavement like chewing gum. Had a hole in his cheek he could breathe through. But Mancini got up. Kicked the guy in the kneecap to bring him down. Beat that kid to death, right there on the church steps. Took him by the collar and slammed his head into the marble until his skull broke and his eyes went dark.”
Mancini didn't say anything.
Vincent said, “Ever since then, he's kind of had a thing for brass knuckles. Every guy's got a preference, and that's his. Some go for knives, some for shotguns, some for piano wire. But Mancini? Brass knuckles.”
I said, “What's your point?”
“What's my point? Look around you. If you want to survive in this business, you have to know what you're dealing with.”
I shook my head.
Vincent said, “My point is, if you're going to work with men like us, you've got to know what it’s like to kill someone up close. Personal. As far away as you're standing from me, right now, no further. If you're going to work with us, you've got to kill someone close enough to smell their fear and watch their eyes go dark. Plunge a Ka-Bar into somebody's chest until you can feel his heart stop. Can you do that?”
I said, “I told you, I don't like fighting.”
He said, “And killing?”
I shook my head. “That especially.”
“That's cute,” Vincent said. “Real cute. You practice that? You say that to yourself in front of the mirror?”
