BEAT to a PULP: Hardboiled

by Garnett Elliott

  "Ha. You're jerking my chain."

  "Nah. I'm sure you can jerk it yourself."

  He laughed, maybe a little too hard. "Good one. I'm Ray-Ray." He stuck out his hand.

  Efram glanced at his outstretched hand, took it, gave one pump, and then turned back to the mirror.

  Ray-Ray gestured to the bartender, raising a meaty paw. She brought him a glass of whiskey, rocks. He slurped half of it and then turned to face Efram.

  "El Dorado's a nice little town. You moving down here?"

  "Nope. Just visiting. Seeing the sights."

  "There's a lot of nice stuff to see, you know. El Dorado is the city of gold, if you know what I mean."

  "That right?"

  "Sure."

  "Interesting thing to know. You a history teacher or something?"

  "No." He laughed again, this time with less force.

  "You the local bully boy, then?"

  "Damn straight."

  "I'll keep that in mind then, pard. Thanks for the heads-up."

  Ray-Ray finished his drink, ordered another one, and sat with his arms crossed on the smooth dark wood of the bar.

  "''Lissa tells me you want to move some merchandise."

  "She did, huh?"

  Efram tilted his head to peer around Ray-Ray's bulk, down the length of the narrow building, where Melissa sat in a booth. When she saw him staring at her, she fumbled with her cigarettes, lit one, and then looked into her drink.

  "Yeah, that's right." Ray-Ray smiled again. "I can help you move whatever you got."

  "You must've got some lines crossed, pard. I ain't got nothing to move."

  "Right. Not what she says."

  Efram finished his beer and ordered another.

  "Well, thanks for the offer. I'll let you know if I need your help."

  Ray-Ray stood, raised his glass and knocked his head back. He set the glass on the bar and leaned in close. "This here's my town. You shitbag fucks come down here from Little Rock and try to do business, I'm taking what's mine, you hear?"

  Efram took a swallow of beer.

  "That right?"

  "That's one hundred percent right."

  "Okay, hoss. Next time I try to do business in this dump, I'll be sure to let you know."

  Ray-Ray stood like a bull, air coming through his nostrils, all trace of joviality gone. Efram waited. When it became obvious Efram wasn't going to throw a punch or pull out a wallet and give him all the cash, Ray-Ray turned and walked stiffly back to Melissa in the back booth.

  Efram drank his beer and watched the reversed television in the bar's mirror.

  * * *

  The air conditioner had totally beaded the window with condensation when the knock came at the door, so he had to wipe it clear to check if she had anyone with her.

  Shirtless, he opened the door, but kept on the chain.

  "Yeah?"

  "It's me."

  "I can see that. You forget something?"

  "No." She huddled in the yellow glow of the parking lot lights holding a bag with both hands, pushing her tits together with her arms as if she was cold, even though it was steaming in the dark. "He was..."

  She sobbed and turned her head so he could see her face. Her left cheek was swollen and her eye socket purpling and streaming with tears.

  "You look like shit."

  "Ray-Ray got mad after you talked."

  "Sorry to hear that. Looks like he did a number on your face."

  She shivered again, took a deep breath of air, and then said, "I didn't have anywhere else to go."

  "You don't have here."

  "Please. Let me in."

  "No."

  "I'll take care of you, baby. Please."

  The whine in her voice made Efram want to slam the door, but he stood there, looking at her for a long time. Finally, he undid the chain and opened the door all the way. She came inside.

  He said, "Empty the bag on the bed."

  "Why? It's just clothes."

  "Don't give a shit. Empty it."

  She stepped to the bed, opened the bag, up-ended it and shook out the contents. Clothes, panties, unopened cigarettes packets, a pint of Old Crow tumbled onto the bed followed by a cheap patent-leather wallet, tampons, and a hand-gun. Chrome.

  "See you got a Saturday Night Special." He snatched it up, took the magazine and worked the action to make sure there were none in the chamber. He tossed her the gun, walked back to the motel room safe at the bottom of the closet, dialed the combination, and put the magazine inside. She watched him closely.

  "What, you don't trust me?"

  He laughed, then, and grabbed her pint of whiskey. He poured them both a drink in the small motel glasses.

  "Thanks. I needed the laugh."

  She scowled and then sat down on the bed. "I don't like being laughed at."

  "Don't like being lied to."

  "I didn't lie to you."

  He didn't say anything. It was late now, but he turned on the TV to ESPN SportsCenter and slid back against the headboard, holding his whiskey on his chest. She stayed at the foot of the bed, hunched over. After a while, she scooped her clothes and belongings back into the bag, picked up her glass and moved to rest beside Efram.

  He sipped his whiskey and put his arm around her, pulling her in close. His hand hung above her breast with the tattoo, and eventually she bent over, worked open his jeans and took him in her mouth. He sipped his whiskey and watched the television while her head moved up and down and he brushed back her hair and held it so he could watch her bruised face in the blue light of the TV when he came.

  A long time later, he fell asleep, her head cradled in his lap.

  * * *

  The muzzle pressed into his eye-socket but it was more than the pain of the muzzle that woke him, it was her screaming and the opaline stink of Ray-Ray in a tight space and the sensation of his sclera popping and his own blood and vitreous fluids gushing from his socket like tears.

  "You said you wouldn't kill him!"

  "Where is it?" Ray-Ray wasn't playing the gadabout now. He pulled the muzzle from the ruined eye-socket and swiped it across Efram's skull, which made the world go white and sounded like the tolling of a bell.

  "You crushed his..."

  The blurry figure tilted and righted itself.

  "He's bleeding from his eye. He's gonna have to go to the hospital..."

  "Shut up." The closer silhouette raised an arm, and even blurry, Efram could tell he was threatening to hit her. "Just shut your fucking mouth."

  He grabbed Efram's arm and jerked him up. "Where is it? I'll jam the barrel so far in your hole that it'll tickle your goddamned memory."

  Efram tilted his head toward the closet. It was disconcerting that Ray-Ray called it his "hole" but there it was. No more eye. Ray-Ray pushed him toward the back of the motel room, one beefy hand on the nape of his neck. He shoved him onto the floor in front of the safe.

  "I told you he had it in the safe, baby. I did just like you said."

  Ray-Ray put the gun to Efram's skull.

  "I don't give a shit about this carpet. I'll decorate it."

  Efram went through the combination, once, twice, but couldn't make it open.

  "You're dead if you're fucking with me." The way Ray-Ray made threats, unnecessarily and with such force, it made Efram redouble his efforts to calm his hands.

  "Having trouble seeing. Can we turn on a light or something?"

  "Turn on the light, 'Lissa."

  She moved to the light switch near the TV credenza and switched them on. Things began to come into focus for Efram, the safe, the threadbare stained carpet, the trash bin under the motel sink. His head spun and he put a hand up to his eye—it throbbed, full of pain, yet it had an empty, slack feel and he couldn't open his eyelids, even when he tried.

  "You ain't never seeing out of that motherfucker again, Popeye." Ray-Ray gave a hoarse laugh. "Now open the fucking safe if you want to keep your other one."

  Efram went thro
ugh the combination again, turned the miniature safe latch, and the steel door swung open. Ray-Ray put a boot in his ribs, bowling him over, and reached in the safe and withdrew a gym bag. He tossed it on the bed.

  "Open it." He waved the gun at Melissa and then back at Efram.

  From where he lay on the floor, Efram could see the magazine to Melissa's handgun still in the safe. Not much help without the pistol to go with it, but he reached out and grabbed it anyway while they inspected the gym bag. He pushed himself to his feet and backed into the sink, keeping his hands at his sides.

  "What's this?" Ray-Ray said. "Where's the fucking gold?"

  "Gold?" Efram said. For a moment things didn't make sense. He shook his head. The motion made his socket and face erupt with pain but it was too funny not to laugh. "What gold?"

  Ray-Ray swelled in the small room, inhaling air.

  "Baby. Look." She held up the brick.

  "Yeah, so what?"

  "It's blow, baby." The brick gleamed dully in the motel room's light and they moved it to the small table. Melissa sat down, cradling it like a baby. It had been dipped in some sort of paraffin.

  "Bullshit."

  "Honey, it is."

  "Open it."

  She found a pen in the bedside drawer and jammed it into the paraffin, past the plastic wrapping so the cocaine spilled onto the cheap wooden table top. She swiped the powder with her finger and rubbed it on her gums.

  "Oh shit."

  "Lemme try."

  Ray-Ray jammed a finger into the paraffin's breach, wormed it around, and then rubbed his gums as well.

  "That's one helluva nummie. Fuck." He turned around in a circle, as if trying to find what had brought him such good luck. "Can you believe this shit, babe? You said Krugerrands and I thought he had a few thousand in gold on him. But this! It's like winning the fucking lottery."

  They made Efram sit in a chair, but didn't bother to tie him. When Ray-Ray saw his balled fist, he swiped the top of his head again with the pistol and pulled the clip out of numb fingers.

  "What were you gonna do with this, asshole?"

  Efram sat cocooned in pain, his eye socket throbbing and pulsing and sending tendrils up to join with his aching, gun-sapped head. Melissa couldn't find a mirror, so she took down one of the cheap framed pictures from the wall—a hideous farm-scene done in pink and orange sfumato style—and cut the blow on the glass. She huffed two lines, one in each nostril, and then tilted her head back and held out the rolled up twenty to Ray-Ray.

  He took it and bent to snort the lines. For an instant, Efram thought of attacking him while the man was occupied with the cocaine, but Ray-Ray still held the gun and Efram's head was spinning. The blood welled in his eye-socket and dribbled down his cheek.

  "You know you guys are dead, right?" The vibrations from speaking nearly made him vomit. Bile burned in the back of his throat.

  Ray-Ray held a finger against a nostril, shutting it, and snorted cocaine deep into his sinuses.

  "That right, tough guy?"

  "That's right, dumb ass."

  Ray-Ray stepped toward Efram, but before he could pistol whip him again, Efram vomited yellow bile on the floor.

  Melissa squealed, ignoring the retching sounds from Efram.

  "Baby, this is good shit." She thrummed, her leg bouncing.

  "Cut some more. Then I'll take care of this asshole." He ignored the vomit.

  She dug a key into the brick, knocking loose powder and rocks onto the picture's glass and cut them with a driver's license. Before, she had seemed concerned for Efram's health, but now, with an unlimited high in front of her, she wasn't as finicky about his welfare. Typical.

  "You just can't walk with a brick of coke and think nobody's gonna come lookin' for you." It was better now that he'd vomited. His eye still throbbed horribly and the pain made it hard to think, but he could function. Could still speak. Feeling was coming into his hands and legs. Maybe I'm going into shock. Or coming out of it. Better than feeling it. Fuck. My eye.

  "They won't give a shit about me, but the brick..." He shifted in the chair. "They'll find you."

  Ray-Ray laughed again then bent to do two more enormous lines. When he straightened, nose caked in powder, he grinned. "'Bout time we visited family down in Lake Charles, huh, babe?" He gestured for Efram to rise with the gun, a casual gesture like it was an extension of his hand.

  Efram stood and moved to the door.

  "I'll be back in a little while, 'Lissa. Just gonna put him on the next bus back to Little Rock."

  She looked up and smiled at Ray-Ray. "Really?"

  "Sure. Why not? We got what we wanted, right?" He put the pistol below Efram's crushed eye, brushed his bloody cheek. "He's got a little taste of how we play down here."

  "Okay, baby. 'Bye Efram. It was fun."

  He looked at her, her wary bruised face, her long slender neck and the slope of her breasts and realized that a forty minute fuck and a blowjob weren't worth this shit.

  Ray-Ray shoved the gun in his back. "Put on some clothes, asshole."

  Efram pulled on a T-shirt and boots, watching Ray-Ray. The big man grinned and worked his jaw, in and out and around, the way the blow takes them.

  Ray-Ray shoved Efram out the door once he was dressed, into the over-bright afternoon sunlight and sweltering heat. He held Efram's arm. The man was strong.

  He led Efram to a sunburst Camaro with "Ray-Ray" painted on the jet-black rear window-shield. It had a shovel and tool box in the bed. There was dirt on the shovel blade, which didn't make Efram feel much better.

  "Nice." Efram nodded at the paintwork. "Subtle."

  "Shut up, dead man."

  He shoved some keys into Efram's hands. Efram got behind the wheel and the seat burned his back and legs while Ray-Ray raced around the front and hopped in and jammed the pistol into his gut.

  "Right about now, you're thinking all kinds of shit, I imagine. Just forget it. If you so much as put a hair out of line, I'll just start pulling the trigger."

  "Right."

  "There ain't nothing you can do to stop what's coming." He smiled. "That's just the way it's gotta be. Start the car."

  Efram twisted the key and then followed the burly man's directions. They drove out of town and turned off the highway, and followed a gravel road for a few miles and then turned off it into a cypress brake where the air grew thicker. They followed the road and Efram noticed that the jitters that had affected Melissa before leaving the motel were hitting Ray-Ray now. He was pale and flushed with sweat. He considered running the car into a tree, but they weren't going fast enough here anyway and the other man was built like a damned tank.

  "This is Bayou Bartholomew. You're gonna get to know it better than you've ever known anything before or since."

  The sun was directly overhead, hazy and bright and pounding, and Efram could feel his shirt sticking to the fake leather Camaro seats. His armpits were wet, and he felt the trickle of sweat down his obliques.

  The coke must've really been working on the man because Ray-Ray was chalk-white and dripping when he told Efram to stop.

  He stopped the car and opened the door.

  "Slow down, fireball," Ray-Ray said, grinning. He snatched the keys from the ignition. He mopped at his face with his forearm.

  They exited the car and the big man motioned Efram to walk in front. Crickets whirred in the cypress and the grass of the rise. The path was surrounded by stagnant water, thick with the scum of blue-green algae. The air was still.

  "Like soup out here."

  "Shut up." He jabbed the gun in Efram's back again.

  They walked the path, grass tugging at their pants cuffs. It became overgrown, edged in ball cypress roots, shaded by trees. The grass diminished until the ground was covered in brown cypress fronds and golf-ball sized seeds. The trail ended in an old dock. There were a couple of flatbottoms upturned on the muddy shore.

  "Keep walking."

  They walked to the end of the dock, a good twe
nty feet out from shore. There was no reflection of sky in the scummy water but, out in the distance, Efram watched a moccasin sliding across the bayou's surface.

  "Ok. Here's where you get off."

  The silence of the bayou drew out, and everything stilled as he turned to face Ray-Ray, who mopped the sweat from his forehead with his gun arm, and this time Efram moved, slamming his shoulder into Ray-Ray's gut and propelling him into the air and down to the water with a huge splash.

  The pop sounded muffled and indistinct, under the water, and when they broached the surface, Efram on Ray-Ray's back, one arm tight around his neck and the other grappling with his gun hand, Ray-Ray pulled off two more shots, away and in the air, and then the gun clicked and Efram drew the larger man underwater again.

  When they came up again Ray-Ray didn't have the gun anymore and Efram had both arms locked around his neck, pushing his chin hard down into his chest. Efram gasped and took in a huge draught of air, while Ray-Ray grunted and tore at the bands cutting off his breath, digging red furrows in Efram's arms. They rolled on the surface and submerged again into the dark water.

  The cicadas whirred, their drawn out chirrups rising and falling. The circle of water where they had risen was slowly choked out by the returning ring of algae.

  Efram rose to the surface, alone, gasping.

  He only had to swim a few feet before he could stand and then he trudged back to the shore and was halfway to the car when he realized he'd have to dive for the keys.

  He found the gun, water-logged and useless, before he found Ray-Ray's body, and was able to swim him close enough to shore to dig the car-keys out of his pocket.

  From the Camaro, he retrieved the shovel and used the blade to put a hole in Ray-Ray's belly and throat so that he wouldn't float, at least not for a while, but it was tough going, jabbing a dirt encrusted shovel into a corpse. Finally he had to get back into the water and swim Ray-Ray as far out as he could and shove him away, hoping that the bayou had alligators.

  Four hours later he pulled Ray-Ray's Camaro into the motel parking lot, twilight seeping up into the western sky and the halogen lights of the parking lot buzzing, swarmed with insects. He could see the blue light flicker of TV through a gap in the drapes. He went to his room and held the key, staring. He put a hand on the door and imagined he could feel the fluttering beat of the heart of a bird beyond it, tenuous, frantic, powerless. He didn't know what he was going to do once he opened the door.