Chop Shop

by Andrew Post

  Bryce remained looking like he’d melted into the couch cushions, turned his head, close-shorn hair still beaded with sweat, and zeroed his small blue eyes on Frank. “You ever fix any of them, Frank? You ever let those wops on your slab, man?”

  “Don’t get wound up. You’ll pass out.” Frank bottomed-up his bottle and drained it by half. “Be careful driving home. See you tomorrow. Let’s say no earlier than noon.”

  Bryce sat up again, elbows on knees, head lolling. He was still pale, his eyes drifting every time he tried focusing on anything. Even sitting up too fast made him look like he was about to face-plant into the floor. “Do you ever fix any wops, Frank? Hey, asshole, I’m asking you if you ever fix any—”

  “I treat patients, Bryce. You fix cars, you fix leaky faucets.”

  The young man slow-blinked at the beer in Frank’s hand. “Can I have one of those?”

  “No, because you’ll be asleep on my couch after one sip. We worked on Vasily for three hours and I’d like to have some me-time now if you wouldn’t mind.” Frank put his feet up and clicked on the TV. “Door’s over there. I’ll watch him tonight.”

  “You into drag, dude?”

  Frank changed channels, then again. “What?”

  “Those shoes over there.”

  Frank’s heart turned to cement in his chest. Simone’s animal-print pumps lay where she’d kicked them off by the front door.

  “Thought maybe they were your wife’s or something,” Bryce was saying, “but I don’t see any other feminine touches in this place. Just those shoes. So you’re either married, got a girlfriend, had a visit from a real forgetful pro…or you like to dress up like a chick.”

  “They’re my ex-wife’s,” Frank said. “I take them down out of the attic sometimes and sniff them when I miss her.”

  Bryce stared over at Frank, partly grinning. “I don’t know if you’re fucking with me or.…”

  “Oh I’m not fucking with you, Bryce. After three hours of working side by side to save your cousin, I feel like we’ve really developed a bond. Surgeons get that sometimes, especially after really harrowing touch-and-go cases – like ours today, with Vasily. But you and me, man, we’re as close-knit as two men can get now.” Frank stifled a belch, changed the channels again. “So I feel I can share with you who I really am, the man inside, in here. So, I told you one of my secrets. Give me one of yours. Make it a juicy one or I’ll be offended, Bryce.”

  “Why are you being so weird? You get turned in the pen when I wasn’t paying attention?”

  I’m doing this because you’re not focused on the shoes across the room anymore. “This isn’t weird, it’s just not what you’re used to,” Frank said. “This is what total honesty feels like, what brotherhood feels like. I mean, we shared a cell for a while and tonight we shared a needle, Bryce. Name a way two people can get closer than that.”

  “I got a brother,” Bryce said. “And it don’t feel like this.”

  “Tell me something. Share with me. Don’t feel you need to rush, give it a minute. Think. Something you’ve never told anybody, just like with me and my wife’s shoes.”

  “You never told anybody that before?”

  “Not a soul. Now it’s your turn. Think. Pretend we’re back in the cell together except now there’s no one around to eavesdrop on us.”

  They sat watching TV together. When it went to commercials, Bryce said, “I….I sometimes stood on my bed and peed out the window at night when I was a kid.”

  “Why?” Frank said, having not looked over at Bryce for any of this. Next channel, next channel. He settled on some home-remodeling show. Nice kitchen. Oh, that’s the before?

  “Because I didn’t want to go to the bathroom.”

  “Why didn’t you want to go to the bathroom?”

  “It was dark in the hallway.”

  “I see.” Frank finished his beer, set the dead soldier aside. “Now wasn’t that liberating?”

  “I guess.”

  “So you could say we trust each other now, right?” Frank finally looked at Bryce. “Do you trust me, Bryce?”

  “I guess. You’re not gonna try and kiss me, are you?”

  “No, Bryce. I think you’re a nice young man but I don’t feel that way about you. But, maybe since we trust each other so much, you’ll believe me when I say I’m dead fucking tired and I really need some sleep. Everyone in this house lost some blood today.” Including the woman waiting in the bedroom who Bryce didn’t know was there, and who Frank was still surprised hadn’t let her presence be known in some really easy-to-avoid manner.

  “Think I could crash here?”

  “Afraid not, buddy. I can’t sleep when there are other people in the house.”

  “But Vasily is staying.”

  “Yes, but he’s on so many drugs he’s basically furniture right now. Please leave, Bryce. And don’t forget your gun.”

  “Fine, Jesus, okay, I’ll go.” Bryce struggled to his feet and stuffed his gun in the back of his pants. He wobbled his way over to the front door. “I’ll be by tomorrow. Need me to call or anything before I pull into the driveway or—?”

  “Nope. Bye.”

  The front door closed and Frank was on his feet in a second, crossing through the blood-spattered O.R., swatting aside the plastic sheet, and thumping down the hall to his bedroom. Simone lay asleep, curled on her side on top of the covers. Frank clicked on the bedside lamp and she made a small grunt and rolled onto her other side. “Turn it off.”

  “Coast is clear,” Frank said, “you’re free to go.”

  Simone sat up, squinted around the room. Her eyeliner was smeared down her cheek and on his pillowcase, a blurry black checkmark. “Did the borscht brain make it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Huh. Shame.”

  Frank picked her purse up off the floor, wondering at its surprising weight, and handed it to her. “What the hell is going on between your families?”

  Simone shrugged. “War’s on, I hear. Somebody popped somebody early last month. Dunno. Uncle Robbie don’t tell me much.”

  Frank pointed out the door. “Your uncle shot that kid on the day of his father’s funeral. Did you know that?”

  Simone scoffed. “I highly doubt it was Uncle Robbie who did it. His big ass is on his third replacement knee, him and ‘moving around quick’ aren’t on the best of terms. But maybe he did – again, I’m not involved in that part of the business. I sit in my little tiny office behind the goddamn shoe store and call my uncle when the police come around asking for him and that’s all I do.” She spread open hands. “I don’t know nothing about nothing about nobody getting shot today, yesterday, tomorrow, or when the fuck ever.”

  Frank peeked out the window. Bryce’s SUV was gone. The streetlights were coming on and the crickets had started up. Frank listened for an idling engine, for any sign Bryce had just moved his vehicle out of sight. Nothing. “All right, he’s gone. Take off.”

  When he turned around, Simone wasn’t in the bed – and the pillow with the eyeliner smear on it was gone.

  Frank rushed down the hall and had barely pushed through the hanging sheet before he heard the muffled fwap.

  Simone stepped back from what she’d done and put the small chrome pistol in her purse.

  Feathers rained about the room. The pillow over Vasily’s head quickly grew a bright red circle, further blood dribbling out from underneath, collecting with what was already spilled there trying to save his life.

  Frank pressed on the sides of his head with his hands. “What did you just do?”

  Simone snorted. “I shot him? Fuck were you?”

  “You just said not two seconds ago you don’t know nothing about anybody getting shot – and then you shoot him, right here in my house?”

  “Yep, that’s about the size of it.”

  Fran
k let his hands drop to his sides and stared at Vasily as feathers landed in the blood puddles about the room, wicking up the red.

  The smoke drifted, a rotten egg smell that stung his nose.

  “I put three hours into him. I saved him and you just walk in here and fucking kill him.”

  Simone stepped out of the room and turned into the kitchen. Frank followed, dragging his feet; the sting of losing patients was nothing new to him. But this wasn’t lasering a tumor out of a child’s brain so they might grow up to do good things. This was sticking fingers in a leaky dam, a dam that wanted to break. Pointless. These fucking people.

  As Simone ducked to peer into his fridge, Frank collapsed into a chair at the kitchen table. His hands shook as he lit a cigarette. “Why not do that when I first brought him in? Why wait until after I’d saved him to kill him?”

  “Because I’m not that great of a shot,” Simone said, selecting one of Frank’s Tupperware bowls and prying up the corner of the lid to peek inside before putting it back. “If I had shot Bryce and he got away, well, then you’d be fucked – so I didn’t, because after this morning, even though money changed hands, I still feel like I owe you one.”

  “Owe me one?! How is killing a man – or anyone – in any way helpful to me?”

  “Quit screaming. Jesus. I’m talking hypothetical. I didn’t shoot Bryce, here, because if he lived he’d squeal on you and you’d get in a heap of shit with them thinking you was in cahoots with me and my family. So I held off, and only offed the cousin instead. Who was not a very nice boy, for those at home keeping score.”

  “I can’t believe this is happening.” Frank could imagine the rattling of a cell door shutting behind him again. This was murder. And without his family’s money around to shoehorn him out of trouble again, this would stick. Not to mention if there was one Petrosky in prison with him before, who was to say there wouldn’t be another next time? Or more than one. And this time they wouldn’t be trying to make friends with him.

  Simone pulled open drawers until she found a fork and stood leaning on the counter harpooning olives out of a jar. “Ain’t nothing like this ever happened here before?”

  “No, nothing like this has ever fucking happened before.”

  “Don’t whine. It ain’t manly.” She bit another olive off the fork tines, scraping teeth on metal. “Look at it this way, as far as the Petroskys are concerned, Vasily just died in his sleep.”

  “Oh? Correct me if I’m wrong but in my personal experience, people’s brains don’t tend to fly out of their head when they sleep.”

  “Don’t interrupt. Look at it this way. You got a blank canvas in front of you right now, paint what you want on it. Tell whatever story you want to tell. Something like, I dunno, you thought you saved him but forgot to button up some blood vessel or something and he up and fucking croaked anyhow. Best intentions and shit.” She returned her focus to the olives. “They’ll get over it.”

  “He got shot in the balls. And now there’s a bullet in his head? How am I going to explain this to them? Huh? They’re coming back tomorrow morning to pick him up – and they’re expecting him alive.”

  “Get the fucking gum out of your ears. I just told you. Shit, tell them he left. Snuck out in the night when you was sleeping. They’ll go off on their wild goose chase and you’ll be in the free and clear.”

  Before he might pass out, Frank put his head between his knees. “Unbelievable,” he told the kitchen floor.

  “Okay, you know what? I kind of fucked up,” Simone said. “A little bit. I fucked up a little bit. I’ll give you that.”

  “You fucking think?!”

  “Hey, be nice. I’m trying to help you here. You gonna be nice?”

  Head between his legs, Frank just laughed.

  “I was just gonna say, if you want, I can help you lug him wherever you usually dump your stiffs. I ain’t got anything going on tonight. Already missed my appointment at the salon.”

  “I don’t have a place where I take bodies,” Frank said as he quickly sat up, comets streaking before his eyes, “because I’ve never lost a patient. Not here, anyway. They’ve all walked out on their own two feet.”

  “Not nobody never?”

  “No.”

  “Huh. Good job, doc.”

  “Do you have somebody? Someone your uncle uses?”

  Simone was busy angling her fork down into the jar where the more stubborn olives kept dodging her attempts. “Somebody to do what?”

  “Somebody who gets rid of bodies, Simone. Jesus Christ.”

  “See, my uncle does have a guy, but I’d have to call my uncle to get in touch with him. And I’m not real over the moon about doing that because, see, I’m not supposed to be involved in this side of things – bumping off the competition and whatnot. That’s boy work. And the few times in the past I’ve done shit like this they got all bent out of shape about it. Like it requires a dick shooting somebody. They definitely would this time since they tried doing Vasily earlier today, apparently, and failed. If they hear I did it, Shoe Store Simone? Nah. No, thanks. Thanksgiving is awkward enough.”

  Frank took three deep breaths. “So you’re not going to call your guy because it’ll hurt the feelings of the men in your family? You’re willing to sell me up the river if it means protecting their fucking pride?”

  “You don’t need to shout at me, I’m standing right here. And ain’t nobody being sold up no fucking river neither. Relax.”

  Through gritted teeth he said, “I’m sorry, Simone. But this is kind of a big deal. There is a dead man in my house who the Petroskys are going to expect to not be dead. I can tell them he snuck out, maybe that’ll work, but in order for there to not be a Vasily in the other room to make that story convincing, we need to get rid of him. He isn’t a goldfish we can just flush down the toilet.”

  “I understand he ain’t a fucking goldfish, Frank.” She set the olives aside. “You ain’t gotta talk to me like I’m a fucking retard, okay? I grew up in shit like this. Seen this shit all my goddamn life.”

  “Then help me. I’m begging you. Fucking help me.”

  “I really can’t. Wish I could, but I think this is out of my depth. Sorry. Anyhoo, I should scoot. Seen my shoes?”

  “You think you’re just going to leave? No. You’re helping me.” Frank grabbed her by the arm – and in one smooth motion she twisted, pulling him along, and ran him into the floor, his collarbone banging on the hardwood. She turned his arm back against itself, wrenching his elbow toward the back of his head.

  “Stop, stop!”

  “You don’t wanna touch me. Joey gets slappy with me sometimes, and if I don’t take it from my boyfriend I sure as shit ain’t gonna take it from you. Now look, this has been a fucked up day. They happen. You gonna try grabbing me again if I let you go?”

  “No, no, no.”

  “Good.”

  When she released him, Frank held his arm, sitting in the doorway of the kitchen. He watched Simone snatch her shoes off the floor, pause at the mirror mounted next to the front door to touch at the eyeliner smudge on her cheek, and step outside. The screen door screeched shut and Frank, alone with the dead body, heard the beleaguered engine of the Honda start up and drive away. Stepping into his O.R., clutching his wrist, Frank looked at the dead body – and the fire-engine-red thong lying in a twist in the corner, covered in blood and feathers. Vasily’s blood. Bryce’s blood. Some of Frank’s, too.

  Frank took his phone out, dialed in Ted’s number, hesitated longer than he did when he’d stuck a used needle in his arm, and hit call.

  Blaring, bouncy cartoon music was playing in the background when Ted answered, two little voices singing along shrilly. “Hey, can you guys turn that down? Daddy’s on the phone. Hello?”

  “Ted, it’s Frank.”

  “Hey, what’s going on, brother? You sound kinda stre
ssed.”

  “I am stressed. I have.…”

  “I’ll take that hesitation to be you have something of a sensitive nature you wish to discuss with me.”

  “You could say that.” Frank stood in the doorway of the O.R. looking at Vasily’s dead arm hanging limp and gray off the side of the table. The pillow was still leaking feathers, each heavy with blood, hitting the floor without a sound.

  “I’m gonna ask you what it is,” Ted said, quickly adding, “I have not asked yet, mind you. But when I do, your answer must be worded very carefully. Gimme a sec.”

  Waiting, Frank listened to the cartoon music coming through on Ted’s end fade, then the creak of a door. When Ted spoke again, it had an echo to it, like he’d gone into the bathroom.

  “Okay, go, what is it?”

  “Rover died.”

  “Uh, a little less cryptic maybe?”

  “My dog died, Ted. One of my dogs died.”

  “Well, uh, okay, did Rover come over to play with a doggy friend who might be able to help you take your furry friend somewhere? Is there a name on Rover’s collar?”

  “No. Rover’s alone. No collar. But his dog buddies are going to expect him to be able to play fetch with them tomorrow morning.”

  “How did dear old Rover, uh…? Fucking dog metaphor. This is so fucking dumb.”

  “He got Old Yellered, Ted.”

  “Holy shit, Frank. By you?”

  “No, not by me. Christ. I spent three hours trying to save his life. I gave him two pints of my own blood.”

  “Let’s keep it cool here, Frank. Remember we’re just talking about dogs.”

  “Okay, okay. Sorry.”

  “It’s all right. Now, was Rover the type of dog inclined to bum around with a pack of mean junkyard-type dogs?”

  “Very much so.”

  “And you say he got put down?”

  “Yeah.”

  “By his pack?”

  “No, a dog from another pack.”

  “Just now?”

  “Yes.”

  “In your house?”