Selena

by Greg Barth

  Like I say, I suck at following people. I was cognizant enough not to hit them with my high-beams the whole way. I was also careful to let them get ahead of me by about half a block at times, but I allowed no more distance than that. I was buzzed enough to lose track if anyone got between us. I blew through yellow lights the whole way to stay tight on their tail. Fortunately they were in no hurry.

  On the edge of town they turned onto a side street where the street lights were sparse. The sidewalks alongside the street were weathered and crumbled with weeds growing up between the cracks.

  I had one of the shotguns in the backseat. I reached behind me with my right hand, my left staying on the wheel, and felt around until I found its curved grip. I pulled it up to the front and held it with the barrels pointed toward the passenger door. I leaned over and cranked down the passenger window.

  They parallel parked outside of a butcher’s shop that was closed for the night.

  I slowed the car as I approached them. They made no move to get out of their car. I pulled up beside them and stopped. I left my headlights burning. I pushed the butt of the shotgun stock tight against the edge of the seat under my thigh. I held the grip in my right hand, finger near the trigger.

  The driver’s side window powered down. The older of the two men leaned his head out and peered into my open passenger’s window.

  “Well, look at this. It’s some girl following us, Carl.”

  “Nice one too,” another voice said from inside the car.

  “Hey guys,” I said in a sing-song voice. I gave a light wave with the fingers of my left hand. “Thanks for stopping.”

  “No problem, little lady. How can we help?” the driver said.

  “I’m lost,” I said. I raised the shotgun but kept the barrels below the door’s open window.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “A party. With some guys.”

  “Hel-lo!” he said. “I think you’ve found your party. What do you think, Carl?”

  “She found her party alright. And her guys.”

  “Really?” I said. “Because I was just thinking the same thing.”

  The driver chuckled.

  I raised the shogun, lined it up with his face and fired. The impact of the buckshot slammed his head to the side. Blood and brain matter splattered throughout the interior of the car.

  The barrel of the shotgun leaped upward and bumped the headliner.

  The passenger popped open his door, slid out, and ran from the car. He ran forward along the sidewalk, which was a mistake.

  I took my foot off the brake and gave the car just enough gas to jump the crumbled curb and clip his legs from behind. He went down under the grill of the car and out of sight. I backed up a bit and put the car in park. I got out of the car, taking the shotgun with me.

  I found him in my headlight beams. He lay on the sidewalk, clutching his smashed leg with both hands.

  “Damn it, lady. What are you doing?”

  “You don’t remember me,” I said standing over him, the shotgun pointed at his chest. “And that’s okay.”

  “Remember you? I ain’t ever even seen you before.”

  Something pink had torn through his pants below his knee. I realized it was a bone.

  “We don’t have time to go into it now,” I said. “You’re going to want someone to come fix up that leg of yours pretty quick. And I need to be on my way before they get here.”

  “You…you’re going to let me live?”

  “Maybe. That all depends.”

  “Just tell me.”

  “Where can I find Kurt Dello?”

  He lay back and rested his head on the concrete. He closed his eyes tight. “If I tell you, he’ll know it was me.”

  “Carl, look at me.”

  He opened his eyes and met mine.

  “Whether you tell me or not, I’ll find him.”

  He looked resigned. “Best place to find him is an office in the back of a little diner along 21st Avenue.”

  “Where on 21st?”

  “Way out, near where the neon lights turn red, if you know what I mean.”

  “What’s the name of the diner?”

  “Clifton’s.”

  “When can I catch him there?”

  “He stays over after they close most nights. It’s a drop off point for his crew. Now are you going to call for help? Doesn’t seem like anybody’s in any hurry to check out that gunshot.”

  I listened for a moment. He was right. No sirens. That didn’t mean no one was responding.

  “Fucking leg is killing me,” he said.

  I stepped closer. “Listen. Here they come now,” I said and squeezed the second trigger. Flames leaped a good three feet from the gun muzzle in the darkness. The buckshot blast hit him square in the chest. Air bubbled up from his lungs through the bloody openings in his chest wall.

  The night air smelled of burned gunpowder and blood.

  I broke open the shotgun and ejected the spent shells.

  I stepped back over to the car and reached inside the driver’s window. I pushed the button on the dash that popped the trunk. I walked around the back, lifted open the trunk, and grabbed two new shells from a box inside. I reloaded, closed the breech, engaged the safety, and placed the shotgun in the trunk.

  In the trunk was a bottle of Wild Turkey American Honey wrapped in a brown paper sack that I had bought earlier at an ABC store. What can I say? When it comes to turkey, I like the dark meat. I grabbed the bottle, broke the seal, and took a big drink. The smooth bourbon hit my stomach at once, but I wasn’t nauseous. I stood there a few seconds, thinking about what I’d done.

  I felt nothing but a strong sense of accomplishment. No guilt. No remorse.

  It felt good.

  SIXTEEN

  I made my way out to Clifton’s a couple of nights later.

  I headed down Broadway. Traffic was thick and I caught every red light. I made the turn onto 21st and followed Carl’s instructions. After a couple of miles the red, pink, and purple neon loomed in the distance: strip clubs, adult bookstores, massage parlors.

  I was dressed in cutoff jean shorts with holes in the back and a half t-shirt. Girls on the corners I passed were wearing much less. You could almost smell the sick pheromones and the surging testosterone in the air.

  This is where I would wind up some day if I lived long enough. If not in this city, somewhere just like it. I would age quickly. The lifestyle would take its toll. The abuse and addictions would ravage my body. I’d be beaten up again. More times probably than I wanted to think about. My business customers and college boys would seek a fresher piece of ass. I’d be relegated to walking the streets and scoring in dark alleyways, getting a cheap fix where I could find it. That or prison. Better to die tonight than to circle that drain.

  I cased Clifton’s over the next several days. I drove by at various times of day to get a feel for the flow of business and the number of customers. I was able to time the ebbs and flows of their daily rhythms. They seemed to have a healthy amount of business for breakfast and lunch, but dinner was much slower. This part of town had other things on its mind during the evening hours. I had breakfast there one day, lunch the next, then a late dinner.

  The breakfast was served on heavy, chipped china and consisted of two eggs cooked over well, crisp bacon, biscuits with sausage gravy, tomato slices, shredded hash browns, a side bowl of grits, and a whole pot of coffee that I could pour refills for myself from into a small cup resting on a saucer. Cream came with it in a small pot of its own.

  God it was hideous. I sat staring at it all trying not to vomit. I mean, really, who eats like this? I nibbled at a strip of bacon and set it back on the plate. The waitress seemed concerned and kept asking me if everything was alright. I gave her uncertain nods coupled with frowns until she walked away.

  Lunch was no better. Ham dumplings. And they don’t serve alcohol. I shit you not. Fucking ham dumplings.

  I saw Dello there the firs
t time during dinner. I thought I looked different enough he wouldn’t recognize me. I kept the swastika tattoo covered at all times. I made it a point not to glare at him as he walked by. This was not the time.

  He came in late with a couple of goons in tow and went straight through the door to the back office. He didn’t interact with any of the staff or customers. He was dressed in a simple black polo shirt and jeans, receding hair smoothed back and dark with gel. A heavy watch was his only piece of jewelry.

  He paid me no mind, just like everyone else. I sat alone at my small table staring down at a slab of country-fried steak covered with white gravy with black speckles of pepper floating in it, wishing it could devour itself. I couldn’t eat this much in a week.

  I came back for a late dinner a couple of times, always alone, and it was always the same scene. Kurt Dello arrived late, two thugs with him, and stayed after closing. I wondered if he always had the two men with him, or if this was a new measure taken after two of his crew had been shotgunned recently. I would never know for sure, but I suspected he was more careful these days. He was a man with enemies, but I was the one he needed to be most concerned with.

  A couple of late night drive-bys revealed that he stayed after closing each night, the light on in his office, and various late-night colleagues dropped by at odd hours.

  I bided my time.

  SEVENTEEN

  Lenny asked me to make a run with him one afternoon.

  Lenny and I had a good thing going as roommates. His business was booming. We spent the evenings cutting and dividing his product. Then he’d work at the bar, and I’d go out and do my website customers. Next day he would make his deliveries. We weren’t Ozzie and Harriet, but it worked.

  “Make a run with me today,” he said. “I’m going to deliver product to some new customers, and having you with me would give me some good cover. I go into this neighborhood looking like I do, and people think ‘drug dealer.’ If I’ve got a pretty woman like you with me, all they see is you.” He smiled.

  “So you need me to be your pretend girlfriend? I thought you’d never ask.”

  “Yeah, I need a prom date too.”

  “No problem. Just let me get dressed.”

  Lenny rode a Harley Davidson Softail Classic. The sun was high, the sky blue, cloudless. A light breeze blowing. Beautiful day for a ride.

  Now that I had recovered from my injuries, I didn’t dread getting on the bike.

  Lenny stuffed his leather saddlebags with product—a lot of product. If we were caught, this would be stiffer than a simple possession charge. He was taking a risk dealing this much product to a new customer.

  I pulled my hair back in a ponytail, doubled it up, fastened it with a hairclip. Made the ride on Lenny’s bike more pleasant without my hair blowing all over the place. No helmet laws in our state, so you have to take care of your hair. Besides, Lenny doesn’t own a helmet even if I’d wanted to wear one.

  I sat on the seat behind Lenny. The bike is small, but we fit it pretty good. My crotch pressed against his backside. Instead of wrapping my arms around his waist, I held onto his shoulders with my hands. Lenny had wide, strong shoulders, the muscles rounding them and giving them a granite-hard feel. I leaned into him. He wore his long hair in a ponytail that blew back over my shoulder.

  We both had our sunglasses on to protect our eyes from the sunlight and road debris. Lenny wore a white t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. I had on a pink babydoll tee, jeans with frayed spots up the thighs. No bra. It was turning spring, and it was time for the nipples to come out. The jeans flared out at the bottoms over my Nikes and ruffled in the breeze.

  I leaned in against Lenny as he steered us through the downtown traffic in the bright sunshine. I massaged his shoulders when he stopped at the red lights and held the bike up with his feet. I kept my feet parked on the bike and talked into his ear. Mostly I said things to make him smile, things like, “You’re so hot when you’re riding on your bike, baby.” If I was here to make people think he was just a normal guy taking his girlfriend on an afternoon ride, then by god they were going to think that he had a damn good girlfriend. When the lights turned, he’d rev the loud engine, engage the clutch, and we would pull away with a jerk back into the flow of traffic.

  I loved riding on the bike with him, the road a blur just inches beneath my feet, the wind in my face. I loved the way the bike leaned under me as we weaved through traffic, all the funny centrifugal force and center of gravity changes I felt as the bike moved this way and that, and the feel of Lenny’s strong shoulders. He was all man, that one.

  We got to the place too soon for me. I wanted a longer ride. It was in an area of town that had once been a nice suburb before urban sprawl crept up on it and the nicer neighborhoods moved farther out. It was a long, tree-lined street with residential houses on either side, half-acre lots with lawns that had been let go.

  Lenny parked the bike by the street two houses up from the one he wanted.

  He got off the bike.

  “You sure you’re comfortable with this?” I said. It didn’t feel right to me. My gut churned with nervousness.

  “Yeah, this is fine.” He took a duffel bag out of his saddle bag. “You just stay here. If anything weird happens, just get away.”

  “How? I can’t drive this thing.”

  “Learn,” he said, and walked away. He approached a two-story house covered in yellow vinyl siding. He took the steps up to the covered porch and tapped at the door. It opened, and he went inside.

  I got off the bike and stood on the sidewalk under a large shade tree, watching for him to emerge from the house.

  I felt more and more nervous. I lit a cigarette. Why would he do this? Bring this much product to a place like this, this time of day? You don’t do what I do for long without developing a sixth sense. This situation reeked.

  I walked further down the street from the house Lenny had entered. I didn’t go far enough to be completely out of sight, but my self-preservation instincts were kicking in big time. I stood watching and smoking.

  After about fifteen minutes a group of men emerged from a house on the opposite side of the street. They all had black pistols in hand, wore black ball caps and thick, heavy vests.

  “Oh shit, shit, shit,” I said. “Shit!”

  Two unmarked Police Interceptors pulled up in front of the yellow house.

  I walked away quickly. I tried to move with urgency but not attract attention at the same time. I knew their attention would be on the house, but I also knew that they saw us pull up together.

  At the corner, I made a right turn and followed the sidewalk. This street led me back to the business district. I slipped in through the front door of a corner convenience store and ducked into the women’s room. I took the stall in back and closed the door, stood inside until I calmed down.

  I thought through what had just happened.

  I hadn’t heard shots fired. That meant that Lenny was probably in cuffs now.

  If they had him and his product, they also had his ID and his bike. They would soon know where he lived. Which meant they would be snooping around the place where I lived too.

  I had to get back to the apartment and get my car. Fast.

  I called a cab, asked them to have the driver call my number when he arrived at the store.

  I ended the call and stood there, looking up to the ceiling for guidance. “Shit!” I said.

  EIGHTEEN

  I had to make my move against Kurt Dello.

  Lenny was going down. I had no doubt about that. He had been caught with product in hand during a sting operation. He was gone, and that’s all there was to it. There was nothing that I could do to help him at this point without putting myself in jeopardy. The cops would be all over his apartment, and there was no way I could clean that place up even if I had time.

  If I was going to go down, it was for murdering Kurt Dello, not some stupid drug shit.

  Other than my clothes, everything I had, incl
uding the shotguns and ammo, were in the trunk of my car.

  When the cab got me to the apartment, I packed a duffel bag with a few changes of clothes, some personal items, and the last of my cash. I stowed the bag in the trunk of the car with the shotguns. I started the engine and left it to idle while I went back inside Lenny’s apartment.

  I sat at the dining room table and did two lines of coke. I took small amounts of coke and weed with me—not enough to get in serious trouble if caught. I allowed myself no more than thirty seconds to mourn the loss of my dear friend Lenny. Then it was time to move on. On my way out the door, I realized that, at best, I would never see the inside of this apartment again.

  I got a motel room and spent the day there, trying to relax while watching TV from the bed.

  I took a long, hot bath, soaking in the tub with my eyes closed and my ears under the water’s surface. I didn’t think about what I was going to do. Instead, I tried to empty my thoughts of everything, meditating on nothing. I lay there until the water cooled. I opened my eyes and knew I was ready.

  I got out of the bath and dried myself. I put on fresh underwear, a pair of short denim shorts, a black sports bra, ankle-high socks, and a pair of Nike sneakers. The last thing I put on was a belt with an attached pouch that I filled with 12-gauge, double-aught buck shells.

  I pulled my hair back in a tight ponytail and did two more extra-fat lines of coke. My senses kicked into high alert. My heart beat double time.

  The drive over to 21st Avenue was too short. I didn’t feel ready. The coke had me amped to full throttle, but this was my one and only shot to get it right. I chain-smoked Winstons as I drove across the city, flipping them out the window to the sidewalk one by one.

  Getting into the diner could be a challenge. The entrance would be locked, and the door opened outward. The door frame was an old-style type with a wooden door jam. The front door was glass set in a wood frame. I was confident I could blast my way through by firing both at the lock mechanism and door frame, or by shooting my way through the glass. It would have to work the first time, and I’d be limited to three shots once I stepped inside. There would be at least three men waiting for me that would have already heard me coming. If they were watching the parking lot, which I had to assume they would be, they would be on alert even before I broke in.