"I'm going outside for a smoke."
###
Jack had been right about the weight of the damned cat statuette. The thing had quite a bit of heft to it. Gilda stayed downstairs as I brought the Silver Whisker up to show her dad. She had confessed the whole plot to me … well, most of it, anyway, when her crying had quieted down. She had stolen the cat in the hope of keeping her dad alive just a little longer.
She so desperately wanted him to see that she was everything that Anne had been, maybe more. She had done everything else she could think of, yet she could never compete with Anne's memory. Gilda knew it was a crazy thing to do and doomed to fail as everything else had failed, but … What she had neglected to tell me was that she, not her father, had written the book that had won the Silver Whisker. I don't know exactly how I knew that. I just did.
When I entered the bedroom, silver cat in hand, K.T. Baum was dead. Apparently, he knew it all, too. I placed the statuette near his right hand and left.
###
I couldn't seem to find Gilda when I went back downstairs. I let myself out. I couldn't blame Gilda for wanting time alone. She had too many years of emptiness and self-deception to deal with in one night.
But Jack was gone too. When I stepped out into the cool black air of the Brooklyn night, all that remained of Jack Taylor on the planks of the wrap-around porch was a crushed cigarette butt and wisps of pungent cigarette smoke. Whoosh! The genie had gone.
###
"Grandpa Moe," I heard a little boy's voice coming out of the genie's smoke. "Grandpa Moe."
"Sssshhh, honey, Grandpa is very sick," I heard my daughter Sarah say, her voice cracking slightly. "He needs to rest."
"But--"
"No buts, Aaron. God, you're just like your Great Uncle Aaron, may he rest in peace."
"I'll take over, Sarah," I heard my kid sister Miriam say.
"Where's Jack?" I said, my throat dry, my voice thin as a hair. I had trouble focusing my eyes. I saw the world through heat waves coming off hot tar and it smelled like a hospital.
"Take it easy, Moe. Rest. You really need--"
"Miriam, for chrissakes! Where's Jack?"
"Who's Jack?"
"Jack! Jack Taylor. Where's Jack Taylor?"
"I'll be right back."
The door opened and closed. That much I could make out. Then it opened and closed again.
"He's asking for someone we don't know, someone none of us know," Miriam was near frantic.
"It might be the drugs," a man's voice explained. "It might be the cancer. At this point, it's impossible to know. Just sit with him and call the family in."
"Miriam," I called to her in a whisper."
"What is it, Moe?"
"No silver cats for me, okay?"
"Okay," she said, though only I understood.
Then I went to sleep.
Back to TOC
Pearls
Originally published in Expletive Deleted (Bleak House Books, 2007)
Draw a line to connecting the matching items.
Marilyn Monroe
Her favorite flavor
Leaving Las Vegas
Her favorite toy
Fuck
Her ambition
Pussy
Her favorite tragic figure
Pearls
Her favorite thing to do, feel and say
She would pull the string of pearls out of them one, two at a time. With each gentle tug, a moan, a sigh, a twitch--the quiver of an orchid as grains of pollen are removed. She loved the look of translucent white against wet pink. For her it was the feel, the friction. Finally, their muscles taut, pulsing with electricity, she would yank the remaining pearls out with a snap of the wrist. They would near explode as the twisted end loop was set free.
"Fuck me, fuck me hard!" she'd hear them scream, breathless, gasping for air, rubbing the wet pearls against their nipples. "Oh, fuck my pussy. Fuck it! Fuck it!"
It was the last voice she recalled, one of her clients screaming. Then the sun exploded with a burning, blinding light, a light so bright she could see through shut eyelids. But after the light came darkness. She dreamed of pearls in a sea of pink.
She woke up. Was the sun up too? It was impossible to tell. The room was cool, the lights low. She felt like a bottle of chardonnay being brought down to the proper chill. She could not move. Was she dead? In the ME's ice box? The temperature was about right. But no, the refrigerator light pops off when the door closes. She knew that for a fact because her big sister had shoved her inside the big fridge her parents kept in the basement to store the extra food they never bought. Her sister had held the door shut while she sat there, a bundle of herself, cold and in the dark.
"Fuck you!" she had screamed at her sister when she was let out. It was the first time she had used the F word. She had thought it like a million bazillion times, but never said it. Like her daddy used to say, "You get arrested for what you do, not for what you think." Yeah, Daddy, like for coming into your little girls' room at night and fucking one while the other watched. Watching was harder, except the night her sister locked her in the fridge. She enjoyed watching that night. After her sister hung herself, she could not get over the shame of that enjoyment. There wasn't enough hot fucking water to wash that shame away.
She tried remembering her sister's name, her face. Nothing. Maybe she was dead. Fuck! This wasn't the way it was supposed to be. Does everything just slowly slip away like a long greased rope between your fingers? Do the details of your life fall into the abyss, one aspect at a time? She was determined that this couldn't be death. She had a plan for her death and this was pretty far the fuck away from it.
Leaving Las Vegas was her ambition. She was gonna kill herself one fucking drink at a time, but better than in the movie. Nicolas Cage, the dumbass with that nasally fucking whine, did it like by the bottle. She guessed that was due to Hollywood time constraints. When you've only got ninety minutes to drink yourself to death and fuck Elisabeth Shue, scarred ass and all, you gotta do it by the bottle. She dreamed about fucking Elisabeth Shue sometimes. Sometimes when she was pulling the pearls out of her clients' cunts, she fantasized they were Elisabeth Shue. Death would taste like vodka and pussy, Elisabeth Shue's pussy.
Her sister hanging herself was bullshit. Ninety minutes! It was over in like ninety fucking nano seconds. Coroner said she snapped her neck. What was that all about? You live how ever many years, endure all the shit life hands you and then snap, crackle, pop, you're dead!
Fuck that, big sister! No, she was going to enjoy her own dying. She'd surf the borderline and when she felt she was losing her looks and that she had become sufficiently tragic--See Monroe, Marilyn aka Baker, Norma Jean--she'd take that last drink. Her liver would do the big bang; her heart would explode; her face would suck into itself. For fuck's sake, it would be a glorious death. Though she was curious. She had heard that some men, when they were hanged, died with huge erections. When she got to the other side, she'd ask her sister, "Did you come?"
But still, she couldn't remember her goddamned sister's name. Kinda makes for an awkward reunion in hell when you can't remember your fucking sister's name. Don't I know you from somewhere? It's right on the tip of my tongue. Wouldn't cut it. You were, even in hell, expected to remember your siblings. Hey, fuck on a bike, maybe not. Maybe that's what hell was all about, forgetting. Nah, it wouldn't be that easy. Hell would look and feel like her father's cock.
She gave up on her sister. The name would come to her eventually and, if it didn't, no biggie. She tried remembering her clients' names, one client's name, any client's name. The last client, the one she was fucking with the blue foot-long, the one screaming "Fuck it!" what was her … nothing. She tried remembering their faces, any of their faces, any face, but they either looked like clenched fists or eyeless mannequins. What the fuck? This was crap. Enough of this shit. Time to move on. The wine was properly chilled.
She could not move. Her arms, her legs, her
neck, her eyelids, her lips were just not in the mood. In her head she heard … The shin bone's connected to the ankle bone. The ankle bone's connected to the … What next, the fucking Hokey Pokey? She'd seen a bumper sticker once:
THE HOKEY POKEY-
IS THAT REALLY WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT?
At least it didn't ask you to honk if you agreed. This was just stupid, she thought. What next, the Pledge of Allegiance, a Hail Mary, dirty limericks? There once was an escort from … Where was she from? Wherever it was, they spoke English there. The voice in her head spoke English. Well, it didn't have to be that autobiographical. There once was a whore from Lahore who loved to get down on all four. She could drink and fuck and drink and fuck and drink and fuck and drink …
She felt herself tiring. If her eyes weren't already shut, they'd have been fluttering closed. And she wasn't thirsty for a drink, only sleep. She felt herself relax for the first time in her fucking life.
###
The surgeon walked over to a bored-looking detective sitting in the waiting room. He smelled like a thousand old cups of coffee and someone else's cigarettes. Even so, the surgeon didn't mind dealing with cops. They could be such fucking assholes, but they weren't family. They didn't need to hear his repertoire of false hope and comfort. They just wanted the real deal.
"Hey, Doc. So …"
"I got the bullet out. Looks like a nine millimeter. Bagged it for you."
"Thanks. It was a nine. Very good, Doc."
"You knew?"
"Yeah. If all my cases were this fucking easy, I'd stay on the job until I was eighty."
"What happened?"
"Woman found the vic fucking her 'partner' and decided she wasn't fond of the idea. Put one in the vic's noodle, twelve into her cheatin' 'partner,' and swallowed one for good measure. Nice, huh?" The detective snickered.
"You'll have to excuse me, detective. I guess I missed the punch line here."
"Sorry, Doc. The vic had a blue rubber, twelve inch strap-on stuck inside the girlfriend. The EMTs had to like pry them apart. Good thing they carry crowbars with 'em."
The surgeon was right. Cops could be such fucking assholes. Said, "What's the world coming to?"
"I know what you mean, Doc. Time was you'd expect this shit with husbands and wives. Maybe it is time to put in my papers."
"Maybe."
"So what's the prognosis?"
"Who the fuck knows? Bullet went in pretty clean, but it did some damage along the way. She's in a coma. Could be there for quite some time."
"Hey, at least she's alive, right? The other two are history."
"That's one way of looking at it."
###
When she woke up, the world wasn't as cold, but it had gotten soft around the edges. She had dreamt of pearls in a sea of pink, but couldn't think of why. She laid back and enjoyed the buzz. There was fuck all else to do.
Back to TOC
King Fixer
Originally published in CrimeSpree Magazine #10 (Feb-07)
Lesson 1- Never trust men named Jake.
Lesson 2- Let men named Jake solve their own problems.
The setup was sweet, so sweet I didn't waste time beating my wings and just went straight for the nectar. Jake knew I would. I was a fixer by nature, a problem solver. Worse, I was vain about it. I was that kid who saw the bus stuck under the overpass and knew without contemplation to let the air out of the bus tires. Solutions just seemed to appear in my head. So when Jake, my former partner in the trucking business, mentioned his problem to me over beers at the Cinderella Pub on Pembroke Avenue …
That was the thing with Jake, he was smart. He knew the best approach, the way to hold the mirror up to my vanity so that I'd fix his "situation" without him ever asking for help. And man, did I jump. I jumped like Dr. J picking C-notes off the top of the backboard.
Let me slow up some, because it would be a lie to say the whole thing started at the Cinderella or that I swallowed the bait in one chomp. No. It began two weeks prior when I called Jake from the road, Milwaukee as I remember, to see how the man was faring. Now as I look back, it seems clear what he was up to. That's just too bad for me. Some people like the word hindsight. I prefer retrospect myself.
"Hey, Jake, what's up?"
"Nothing good. They broke into the office last night."
"What they get?"
"Not much to speak of: the little TV, fifty bucks in loose change, one of my cell phones."
"How they get in?"
"Crowbarred the side door, bent up in half. But they ain't a bunch of rocket scientists. I called that cell number and the dummy picked up. Let's just say him and me had an interesting conversation."
"You called the cops?"
"Absolutely. We're getting the cell records and the cops are going to pay a visit to every local number that moron called. Can't wait till they haul his bee-hind in. I'm going to sit in the front row at his trial and laugh at him. In the meantime, I had an alarm put in."
"Okay, bro, you take care and I'll call you when I get back into town."
That was it, a simple burglary. Perfectly believable, nothing suspicious, but even now I feel like I missed something. It's what I missed that I can't figure out. Then, when I got back home, came the beers at Cinderella's. Man, it didn't take him but five minutes to suck me in and all he had to do was look put upon.
"What's with you, Jake? You acting all distracted and bothered."
"The women, man, they're getting to me. It's like I can't breathe no more."
"The wife?"
"Both. It's bad enough my wife makes me want to cut my own throat, but now I got this other ball and chain. Nothing I give her is never enough. I been trying to hint to her for more than a year now. I treat her bad, don't call her, but she won't let go. She just won't let go."
"And you can't risk being straight with her cause you're afraid if you hurt her too bad, she'll go right to your wife."
"See, man, I knew you'd understand. You always get stuff without me having to explain it to y'all. I'll never get involved with no divorced woman again. She all gun shy, if you know what I'm saying. She been hurt once and don't want to go there again. There's just no dealing with her."
"She want you to leave your wife?"
"She says no, but she's always wanting more. That's the weird thing. On the one hand, she don't wanna be responsible for breaking up a marriage. Cause, like I say, she got hurt herself. On the other hand, I can't never give her enough. Either way, I can't win. And just lately she tells me about how her crazy-jealous ex-husband been sniffing around again. Hey, it's one thing I got to contend with her, but I didn't bargain for no jealous ex. Keeps getting worse and worse. Man, I just got to find a way to get her to cut me loose. But just like you say, I hurt her bad enough, no guarantee she won't go to my wife to get back at me."
Bang! The solution popped right into my head the way it always does. There are just some gifts God gives you that you wish you could return after Christmas. You're right, I know it, I didn't have to say nothing. I could've kept my yap shut, let Jake deal with his own mess, but there's that vanity of mine.
"This woman, the one you been trying to get to cut you loose, she know about the break-in at the yard?"
"Uh huh, she knows. Why you ask?" Jake wondered, all wide-eyed and innocent-like.
"She know about the cell phone?"
"Yeah. Had to tell her. It's the one she always calls me on."
I didn't have to look in the bar mirror to feel that self-satisfied grin on my face. "Man, I do this you're gonna owe me. All you gotta do is follow along and I'll saw right through that ball and chain like it was butter."
"How's that?"
The plan was simple. I would go to a payphone in the town Jake lived. I'd call his girl's cell phone number, wait till she picked up, said hello, and hang up. She call back, I'd pick up and slam the phone down in the cradle. I'd do it for a few days in a row, making sure that Jake was at work. This way if she suspected it was hi
m and called the office number, he'd be there. The second step was the charm, but only if Jake could play it cool. I was a little worried about that. What an idiot I was to worry.
Just like I said for him to do, he took his family up to their timeshare chalet in the Poconos for a few days. Nothing unusual in that. Jake does that stuff once or twice a year. The delicate part came next. Everything, as far as the plan working, hinged on this next part and for it Jake was on his own. Didn't stop me from writing a script for him, even filling in stage directions. I guessed at her responses. Like I said, I needn't have worried.
Jake (whisper): It's me.
Girlfriend: Jake! What are you whispering for?
Jake (whisper): Listen, I don't have much time. I snuck out of the cabin for a few minutes. I made an excuse about running to the store for beer.
Girlfriend: What is it? What's wrong?
Jake (louder): The damned phone company sent my cell phone records to my house instead of my office. She got hold of them.
Girlfriend: Your wife? Oh God!
Jake: Yeah, she confronted me about all the calls to your number.
Girlfriend: Oh God! What did you tell her?
Jake (nervous): That it was my driver, Tony, sneaking into the office and using the phone. He has keys to the gate and the office and she knows he's not above being, you know, sneaky.
Girlfriend: Did she believe you?
Jake (urgent): No, but it did put some doubt in her mind, enough to make her stop talking about divorce for the minute. The crucial thing here is if you get any calls from a number you don't recognize, don't pick up. No matter what, don't pick up!
The Brooklyn Rules Page 3
