Poor Bastards and Rich Fucks

by John Bruni

  William had sent George home hours ago—the punks had miraculously not attacked it—after getting the boy’s opinion on the whole game.

  “It was interesting,” George said. He pushed his glasses up his greasy nose. “I really liked it. I can’t wait until I can start wagering with the rest of you.”

  William ushered his son to the car, and as soon as the driver had taken off, he joined Charles for dinner and drink.

  Edward sucked the rest of his cocaine down his nostrils and now sat in the parlor, smoking a cigarette and tapping his feet in rapid succession.

  Coppergate stiffened, and Elizabeth watched his lazy, blood-tinted seed ooze down her hands. Just as the assistant offered moist towelettes for cleanup, the sound of jazz popped into the room. The three of them turned in unison just in time to see the black screen with Wayne Richards’s name on it fill with the image of a skuzzy bar and Jimmy and Jack.

  Elizabeth stood and walked to the door. “It’s back on!” she called out.

  Edward came back first, his nostrils gaping and inflamed. He took his seat without noticing Coppergate’s sticky nakedness. “It’s about time.”

  Charles and William came back in, and Elizabeth finished cleaning Coppergate’s dick off and had covered it back up. All of them paid close attention to the scene unfolding before them.

  ~

  “That’s the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard,” Wayne said. “I’m sick of this goody-goody stuff. That Coppergate guy says there’s a cure for the Red Death, and now that I’m the last one of these poor bastards alive, I can afford it. All things considered, I’ve earned it. So, fuck you.” He stood.

  Jack’s jaw muscles flexed, and his nostrils flared like a horse’s. “Sit the fuck down, dickhead. I’m not done yet.”

  “No, I’m done. I don’t know why the hell I wasted all this time. I don’t have much left, you know. Maybe, if I thought we had a chance, I’d stick it out with you guys, but my head’s going to blow up in a few hours. I can either hope losing my head in an explosion won’t kill me, or I can get a billion dollars. Hm. Let me see. You know, I think I’ll take the money.”

  Jack stood in a flash, nearly pressing his nose against Wayne’s. “The fuck you say. Sit down and hear the rest of my plan.”

  “Your plan is going to get me killed.”

  Jack’s face narrowed. He drew back an arm, ready to strike Wayne, but Jimmy grabbed his elbow.

  “Don’t,” he said. “Not worth it.”

  Jack whirled on Jimmy, who flinched. “Why the fuck not? We’ve finally got a chance to fuck up some rich folks—like we’ve been planning for ages—and this Red Death motherfucker won’t go along with us.”

  “You’ll get his blood on you,” Jimmy said. “Besides, there are other ways we can get Coppergate and his friends. I’m a journalist, remember?”

  “Fuck that shit!” Jack yelled. “I should kill this motherfucker right now!”

  “There ain’t gonna’ be trouble, is there?” The voice came from the bartender, who now held a shotgun. He didn’t aim it at anyone, but it still looked menacing.

  “No,” Jimmy said.

  “Good. I don’t like trouble.” The bartender put the shotgun on the bar and lit a new cigarette.

  “Let it go, Jack,” Jimmy said. “We don’t need him.”

  Jack yanked his arm away from Jimmy and got back in Wayne’s face. “Listen, you little shit. I’m going to fuck those rich assholes up, and then I’m going to come after you. Got it?”

  Wayne didn’t look very concerned. He took in a deep breath and prepared to say a word he hadn’t said in years and never expected to again. “Whatever. Fuckin’ nigger.”

  Before Jack could so much as move, Jimmy pulled him back. “Just get out of here,” he said to Wayne. “Now.”

  Jack’s eyes flamed, and the veins in his forehead pulsed wildly. Wayne shrugged and headed for the door.

  ~

  “See?” Coppergate asked. “Did I not tell you?”

  “Damn,” Edward said. “You’d better get Bob to pick this guy up before the black dude tracks him down. I’ve never seen anyone so pissed off before. He looked red.”

  “I wouldn’t worry too much about the colored man,” Coppergate said. He turned to his assistant. “Send a man out to kill him. As I recall, his name is Jack LeCroix. Use footage from Steve McNeil’s LiveStream to get any more details the man might need.”

  “What about the journalist?” Charles asked.

  “As much as I would like to, we can’t kill him,” Coppergate said. “James Monaghan is not only a popular columnist, he’s also syndicated. Were he to be murdered, there would be a high profile inquiry. I do not know if even I could keep my name out of such an inquiry. However, Mr. Monaghan is not paid well. Perhaps we can buy his silence.”

  “I doubt it,” Charles said. “He may be a cad on the ‘net, but he imagines himself to be a journalist of the old, noble school. You know, ferreting out the truth and telling the world. Such men are hard to buy.”

  “Regardless, I’m certain we can handle him. I do, after all, own the news outlet for which he works. In the meantime, notify the guards they won’t be needed any longer.”

  “What about the colored guy?” William asked. “It sounds like he’s still coming after us, and he looks pretty dangerous.”

  “The regular guards can handle him and the journalist,” Coppergate said. “Three well-armed guards against a nigger and a pudgy journalist? Please. Besides, the mob guards cost more money every minute they’re here.” He turned to his assistant. “Pay them off with a nice bonus and send them on their way.”

  ~

  Even after Wayne had left, Jack felt his nerves bristling. He’d told Wayne to use the n-word, but he still found it hard to hear, even after all of these years.

  “We’d better get moving,” Jimmy said.

  Jack forced his teeth to unclench. “We’ve got plenty of time. It’ll take them a while to get a bead on him, and I’d rather not hang around their mansion, not where they might catch us.”

  “Let’s just go. I’m sick of this place.”

  Jack looked around The Gutter and could understand. They finished off the bottle and walked outside to the car, where two young men lay dead by its side. They had to have been shocked by Drake’s security system when they tried to strip it. A few others in the neighborhood eyed the car, more luxurious than any of them had seen in their whole lives, but after seeing what had happened to the others, no one dared to touch it.

  Jack and Jimmy got in and drove away, headed toward the Wingate mansion.

  5

  Wayne strode as quickly as he could, but his sickness held him back. As he walked, he hacked wildly, coughing up blood and other gunk. His face started bleeding again, but he couldn’t do anything about that. At least the wetness kind of cooled him off a little as he made his way to the City Centre.

  His body ached, and he could feel his guts rumbling with the ever-familiar urge to shit. Finally, he knew he couldn’t keep going like this, so he dropped his pants in an alley. He didn’t even have enough time to squat down; just as he bent over to move his pants out of the way, his asshole dilated and blasted the brick wall with liquid shit. He groaned, bracing himself against the wall as more bubbled out of him and dripped down the backs of his legs.

  When he finished, he realized that he didn’t have anything to wipe with. He’d gone the last few years without wiping his ass, but now that he’d been using an actual toilet since last night, he found it hard to give up toilet paper again. He sighed and pulled his pants up, feeling the material cling to his ass and legs. He resumed his journey.

  Jack had told him where to head, and about forty-five minutes after he’d left The Gutter, he found himself in the tourist area of the city, where the buildings scraped the sky and glorious restaurants and hotels dotted the land. Whenever a movie was shot in the city, they always used its distinctive skyline. Coppergate would have no problem tracking him down here, in
front of the city’s most famous building.

  He hacked up more blood and wondered if he’d be able to make it. Wouldn’t it just be fantastic if his illness finally killed him, here, at the very last second? He forced himself to keep putting one foot in front of the other as he made his way to his destination, hoping he could hold out for just one more mile.

  Chapter 24

  1

  “We have visual.”

  Bob looked over to Keith, his new partner, and rolled his eyes. Tim could be an irritating bastard from time to time, but Keith downright sickened him. According to his social media, he was supposed to be a big shot hit man, but Bob knew after sitting with him for more than five minutes that Keith didn’t have much between his ears. Whenever he opened his mouth to say something, he had to make it sound as if he’d just been discharged from the military.

  They were at a stop light, so Bob checked out Coppergate’s intranet connection and saw that Wayne’s screen transmitted images once again. He saw a sleazy bar in the background. He saw a nigger and . . . wait, could that be Jimmy Monaghan? The columnist? Yes, he couldn’t mistake Jimmy. His nose had to have broken at least once, and his face looked hard, like he’d taken many punches over the course of his life. Though age had softened him a bit, he still looked like a badass. Bob loved Jimmy’s columns, especially the ones set in Lenny’s Tavern.

  Speaking of bars, Bob thought he recognized the one Wayne and Jimmy sat in. Yeah, he saw Brian, the bartender, wearing the same skuzzy shirt he’d had for years. Brian probably still hadn’t taken a shower. Yet, Bob supposed Brian’s slovenly ways weren’t too bad; the dude still got plenty of pussy, and that was all that counted.

  The Gutter. It was halfway across the city. It would take a while to get there.

  He pulled into a McDonald’s parking lot and turned the car around.

  “Do you have a positive ID on his location?” Keith asked.

  Bob resisted the urge to say, “Affirmative.” Instead, he said, “Yeah. Used to drink there. I knew some guys who played poker there. Small time stuff, you know? Still, it was pretty fun. Then I fucked one of their wives. Forgot which one. She was pretty hot, though. Real dirty, too. She stuck her tongue so far up my ass I thought she’d tickle my prostate.”

  Keith turned away so Bob wouldn’t see his grimace.

  Bob caught it anyway. “What, you don’t like it when a gal licks your asshole out?”

  “Negative, sir,” Keith said. “I like my women the old fashioned way.”

  What a fucking bore. “You’re missing a lot, Keith. Anyway, I fucked her, and her hubby found out. Tried to beat me up, but I broke a bar stool over his fat fucking head. Fucked him up real good. They won’t let me play cards with them anymore, though.”

  Keith cleared his throat. “May I speak freely, sir?”

  “You’re not in the army, Keith. Say whatever the fuck you want.”

  “I’d rather not talk during this operation. It’s not in my job description, and I don’t like you. You’re filthy and insensitive. Sir.”

  Bob laughed. “That’s pretty harsh, Keith. It hurts, you know? To be called filthy and insensitive. Jesus, is that the best you can come up with? You kill people for a living.”

  “I’m trying to be polite,” Keith said. “Just because I kill people doesn’t mean I have to be a jerk.”

  True enough. Bob kept his mouth shut as they headed for The Gutter.

  “Target is on the move,” Keith said.

  “Where?”

  “He’s headed north, but it’s hard to say more than that. He’s still in the general area of the bar.”

  “Why the fuck would he go north?”

  “The heart of the city,” Keith said.

  “I know that, fucker. But you saw the picture of him. How long do you think he’ll last with all those high-and-mighty cocksuckers before the cops give him a taste of the long knuckle? He knows he’s not welcome there. So why?”

  “Too soon to tell, sir.”

  Bob sighed. He never thought he’d say it, but he missed Tim already. So much that he didn’t know if he wanted to do this again next year.

  2

  It never failed to amaze Wayne. No matter how much he hated the city, he always felt enthralled by the skyline. The city contained some of the tallest buildings in the world. Even on clear days, their tops were invisible from the street. The offices on the upper floors were pressurized like the cabin of a plane, so the workers didn’t have to wear masks. The city was truly beautiful; the people, on the other hand, sucked.

  The buildings were all lit up despite the early hour, and cars flashed around him brightly. Pedestrians made sure to keep their distance, not just because of the blood on his face, but also from the horrid stench coming from his pants. He didn’t see any cops, though. Most of them kept to their cars, anyway. Crime almost didn’t exist in the City Centre.

  Finally, after so much walking, he reached his destination and looked up. The Coppergate Tower rose majestically into the sky, where you couldn’t see the spire at the top without a government grade telescope. It went so high that Coppergate had sold the rights to using the roof to the government, who planned to use it as an anchor for a ring they wanted to build around the entire planet. Wayne didn’t know why Earth needed a ring, but he kind of hoped it would be used as a place to launch space ships into deep space without needing all that rocket fuel to break free from the Earth’s gravitational pull.

  He found a vacant bench in front of the building and sat down, waiting, hoping Coppergate’s men would get to him before the police.

  3

  Wayne didn’t have to wait long.

  One moment, he sat, listening to the street musicians from a block down. The next, he saw a Ford Temptation parked by the sidewalk. A man in a crisp suit stepped out, looking directly at him.

  Wayne stood up. “I take it you were sent by Coppergate?”

  The man nodded. “Get in.”

  Wayne slid into the back seat of the Ford, and the fat guy in the driver’s seat turned around. “How’s it going, Wayne?”

  “All right, I guess. All things considered.”

  “I’m Bob. I’m going to have to drug you so the doctors can get that bomb out of your neck.”

  “Okay,” Wayne said. “Make it quick, though. I don’t want my head to explode and ruin your nice upholstery.”

  Bob laughed. He liked Wayne much more than Keith. Too bad he had to stick Wayne instead. He pulled on a rubber glove and reached into the back seat with a needle. “Gimme your arm.”

  Wayne produced his uninjured arm and watched as Bob jabbed the needle in. In some distant part of his mind, he felt the burning pain of having metal penetrate his skin, but the other pain—not only from his crash through Elizabeth Drake’s window, but also from his sickness—overshadowed it.

  And then he felt himself drift away into the fog.

  4

  “That was easy,” Keith said. “What did you need me for?”

  “Back up,” Bob said. He stowed the needle away and programmed the car to go back to Wingate’s place. “You never know with some of these guys.”

  ~

  Edward went back to the bathroom to see if he could get anything else out of his empty vials. He stuck the open end of each into his nostrils and sniffed for all he was worth. He got a little bit, but not much. Not enough for the rush.

  Dammit. He’d had too much whiskey. He felt wiped.

  Defeated, he went back to the observation room and saw Wayne’s screen had gone black again.

  “He didn’t bug out on us again, did he?” Edward asked.

  “No,” Coppergate said. “Mr. Richards has been drugged, and he is on his way here with Robert and Keith.”

  “Good,” Edward said. “I’m getting kinda’ tired.”

  Chapter 25

  1

  Jimmy and Jack never knew how lucky they were. Just fifteen minutes before they arrived at Wingate’s mansion, the mob guards had left. Only t
hree remained. Two stood side by side at the enormous front door, and another made his rounds on the property. They wore flowing red cloaks which concealed submachine guns strapped under their arms. A decorative rapier stood out from their waists, but they weren’t good for actual violence. They just looked pretty.

  “I thought there would be more guards,” Jack said. “I can see only two from here.”

  “Maybe they have attack dogs,” Jimmy said.

  “I don’t see any.”

  “Could be in the back.”

  “Besides, I don’t see any signs. It’s a law. If you have attack dogs, you have to post a warning at the gate.”

  Jimmy smirked. “Yeah, and these guys are pretty good at obeying the law.”

  “All right, fine. You’ve got a point. But check that out.” He pointed.

  “Check what out?”

  “Those sensors. If anyone with an unauthorized chip passed those things, alarms would go off. I don’t have one. What about yours?”

  Jimmy held up his hand, tapping a ring on his pinkie finger. “This is my chip. Since I’m a journalist, we have to be able to disguise ourselves. By law, we don’t need a chip implanted. We can wear them on a ring.”

  Jack couldn’t help but grin. “Aw. I was looking forward to cutting yours out.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “I guess you’re going to have to ditch the ring then.”

  “But—“

  “No buts. I don’t want to get my ass shot off because of your vanity.”

  Jimmy scowled, pulling the ring off. He set it down in the grass on the very edge of the property, fully intending to retrieve it when this was all over. “So, what do we do now?”