A Deadly Summer Day

by K T Rose

  “Look at him, kid. You think he can protect you? He can’t do a damn thing to protect himself!”

  I looked around for something, anything to stop Danny. Stabbing him might not go over so well. I'd have to get too close to him. I needed something heavier.

  I set the knife down and crawled to the chair in front of the desk and grabbed it. I hoisted it over my head and charged. Just as Danny caught site of the office chair, I slammed it into his face. He lost his footing. His body fell into the receptionist desk, slamming into it headfirst before collapsing to the floor where he laid still with his closed eyes.

  I pulled Tony to his feet and heaved him to the staircase. He limped, putting all his weight on me. “Tony, you have to walk!” I said. No matter how desperate, we’d both go down if he didn’t help me.

  Blood seeped between his lips and spritzed the side of my face. We got up four steps before stopping. “I can’t,” he said. He moved his hand from his belly. A deep gash tore his flesh, spilling blood onto the floor. “Just get out of here.”

  “No. You have to walk!”

  A loud bang. Tony collapsed. I pressed my hands to my ringing ears as I watched the man’s body slide down the steps and stop at Danny’s feet on the platform. Blood rushed from his mouth and ran over the landing. The staircase rained blood.

  “T—Tony?” My own voice was too much for my own mind to bear.

  “Dammit, Jackie! How stupid can you be?” Danny said, rubbing a bruise that blackened his forehead with his free hand.

  I turned and raced to the next landing. He let off a few more shots. Sparks ricocheted off the metal railing as I stumbled forward, dodging his aim by an inch.

  I shoved the door of the next landing open and ran out into what looked like a small wool factory. Spools of hairy yarn wrapped thick needles that stood tall over weaving posts decked with sewing machines and shiny utensils.

  I rushed through the host of metal tables and ducked behind a workstation, tucking my body underneath. I hugged my legs tight against my chest. How’d I end up hiding in this building behind the ice cream parlor I grew up in? A place where I’d meet Ant before we went to the beach to meet up with girls or plow those Guidos from around the way in Volleyball? All I wanted was money for school. Not to be an accomplice for murder. Uncle Pauly had different sights and plans for me: keeping me stuck here or worse, killing me in this place.

  Danny’s heavy feet pounded the floor.

  “Kid! Why are you making me chase you?” He reloaded his pistol.

  More shots went off and I put my hands on my head. I was out of options. Running in the dark wouldn’t work with my tour guide dead on the steps.

  “Jackie!” Danny’s abrupt call pounded my heart. For a second, the disappointment in his voice made me feel like Ant and Tony weren’t the only two I let down.

  He sighed. “I tell you what, let’s make a deal. Your uncle will be very upset if I hurt you. Let’s be honest, neither of us want that.”

  Uncle Pauly isn’t the one chasing me around with a gun either.

  “Look…” Something clattered to the floor and slid before hitting something hallow. “No gun. Let’s talk, Jackie. What do I have to do to get you to come out?”

  Silence. I peered around. To the left, a red exit sign shone in the corner. Maybe the fire escape.

  “It’s either you talk to me now or wait until I find you. And let’s be honest, this is a small place. It won’t be hard.”

  I scoffed. “Come on, Danny, we both know you don’t need a gun to kill me. You’re big enough to swallow me whole.” Light on my knees, I crawled over to the next workstation, inching for the exit.

  “Ah. So he does speak.” He sniggered. “Okay. That’s fair. It looks like I can only give you my word. You ready to hear me out?”

  “Depends.” I crawled three workstations over and put my back to it. A few more to go and I’d be home free. Hopefully.

  He chuckled. “You’re funny. That’s what I always liked about you. You know everything and there ain’t shit anyone can tell you. It’s almost like talking to a wall. Only thing is, the wall doesn’t speak back. Why would it? It’s a fucking wall.”

  “I don’t need advice from you.” I crawled a few feet closer to the door.

  “Well that’s not very nice, now is it?”

  “Danny, I watched you ch—”

  “I know what you saw. You don’t need to repeat it.”

  “Good.”

  “Come out, Jackie. Let’s go to Pauly.”

  I scoffed.

  “I promise I won’t hurt you,” Danny said.

  “My own uncle lied to me. Why would I believe you?”

  “I’m not your uncle, now am I. My word is my bond. Come out, and this’ll end.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “I’ll carry you up to the roof and toss you off.” His voice rose as he crept closer. I crawled over to the next station.

  “How will Uncle Pauly feel about that?”

  “You won’t be alive to find out, will you?”

  He had me there. “I guess I won’t.”

  He sounded closer. “Look kid, come out and I’ll deliver you straight to him. He’s here. I know you saw him walk in before you locked us out of the freezer. Now, he’s riding my ass and…I need you to make my life easy and come out. I promise I won’t hurt you.”

  “Is Tony dead?” I crawled to the next station.

  “What do you think?”

  “Tell me and I’ll come out.”

  He scoffed. “Let me guess, you want to tell your little friend about his uncle’s accident? I can’t allow you to do that.”

  “It wasn’t an accident. And Tony’s his Dad.”

  “And may he rest in hell.”

  My face crumbled. I crawled over to the workstation next to the door and put my back to it. Chest pumping, I watched Danny’s shadow loom over the station as he crept pass.

  “Don’t be stupid. You know why I can’t allow you to tell anyone about what happened here. Come out, I’ll take you to your uncle, and he’ll tell you why. I swear. I won’t hurt you. Shit, I can’t. You know what Pauly would do to me if I hurt you? You think I’m scary? Wait until you have to face your uncle. He hates wasting time. And trust me, you’ve wasted a lot. I just need to get a job done and you’re making it difficult. Almost impossible.”

  The floor rumbled underneath me and the table behind me rose. I ducked and ran, only for my sprint to be cut short. My jacket tightened against my chest as Danny gripped it from behind. My feet left the floor and I went flying before crashing into a table. Wood chips went flying, stabbing me with splinters and stifling my bones with aches that stiffened my body.

  “Why’d you have to make this so hard, huh?” Danny said as he stomped over.

  He grabbed me and tossed me over into a spool, knocking it loose from its post. Wool and bolts cascaded, littering my body as I grunted. I hustled to my feet before the floor was pulled from underneath them. He bear-hugged my body and carried me off for the door. “To the fucking roof we go!”

  “No!” I clawed at the air as he carried me off. “Wait, please! Stop!”

  I scratched the door post, loosing nails and skin as shredded wood let up under my efforts.

  He ascended the steps. I kicked the whole way, grabbing at the rails and missing hopelessly.

  A burst of cold air hit me as he kicked the top door open.

  “Say hello to the ledge, you fuck!”

  “Danny!” Uncle Pauly yelled from below.

  Danny stopped and huffed. “Yeah?”

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “I—we wanted to get a closer look at the stars.”

  “He’s trying to throw me off the roof!” I said.

  “Snitch,” Danny grumbled.

  “Wh—you’re a crazy bastard! Uncle, help me!”

  Uncle Pauly climbed the steps like he had all the time in the worl
d.

  “I’ll ask again,” he said. “What the hell are you doing to my nephew?”

  “Uh, he wanted a shortcut out of the building.”

  “Fucking drop him, Danny.”

  Like a dog with a forbidden bone, he dropped me to the floor. My hands and knees met the tiles.

  “Damnit, Danny.” Uncle Pauly stopped at the platform at the end of the staircase “You got blood all over my steps. You probably fucked up the tech office and the spooling stations. How the hell do you expect people to come into work Monday and find this place such a fucking mess?”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll get it cleaned and—”

  “And what the hell are you doing with my nephew? My family?”

  “He—” Danny huffed. “This little twat almost made me lose my shit.”

  Uncle Pauly raised a brow. “It looks like he succeeded. I knew I shouldn’t have let you train him. You have shit for patience, you know that?” Uncle Pauly climbed the steps and pulled me to my feet. He dusted the fronts of my jean and my jacket off. “You all right?”

  I gave a stiff nod.

  “He didn’t hurt you did he?”

  I shook my head, lying about my possibly broken arm and twisted knee. I looked at Danny out of the corner of my eye. He stared at the floor.

  “Let’s go.” Uncle Pauly looked at Danny. “He still needs to be trained and I guess I’ll take over from here. You can start by cleaning off my stairs and straightening up my offices and workspace. Can you do that or do you plan on throwing the whole building over the ledge too?”

  “I got it, man.”

  Uncle Pauly stared long at Danny, reducing him to nothing but a minion with his dick tucked between his thighs.

  Uncle Pauly nodded at me and I followed.

  ***

  Tony lay on the counter with slouching eyes and dangling arms, lifeless. Uncle Pauly pulled on the face shield, apron, gloves.

  “Now, the secret to butchering a cow is to slice it up the middle and let the blood drain from the carcass.”

  Uncle Pauly tied Tony’s ankles together and hauled him up. His raven hair drifted just over the floor in the center of the room. Uncle Pauly slid a blue bucket underneath Tony’s head, hiding his eyes and nose inside.

  “But cows don’t wear clothes.” He ripped Tony’s button up free from his body, exposing his round belly. He tossed the shirt aside.

  “Neither do they have lead in their flesh. Because Mr. Meathead shot our cow, we have to discard his chest. But that’s alright because all we need is his muscles.”

  He tapped Tony’s center mass. His smile faded when he looked me in the face. “You’re shaking. Why?”

  “I—I—”

  “Uhn. That’s right. You’re good friends with his boy. You see, Tony isn’t loyal. Just like anyone else that tried crossing me, they have to pay up somehow. He turned on this community. He brought that fucker Joe around here, tried buying out the threads that make this place whole. Make this place, our home, into some liberal hub full of vape smoking, teched-out millennials who don’t know shit about what living really is. Worst off, he tried turning you into one of the skinny jean-wearing, scooter-riding fags. I say no. Absolutely no. Not a guy in my outfit. Not one of my hood crawlers. I want you to take his place.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because he tried to get you too. Send you off and away from your Ma and me. Away from this hood to go get an expensive, useless sheet of paper.”

  “That was my choice,” I muttered.

  “Bullshit it was. Ever notice how much pressure they put on your generation? Go to college. Get a hundred thousand-dollar degree. Spend your entire working life paying those loans back while making some other asshole rich? I say, why not make yourself rich? You never heard me talk about college. Tony walked around, lecturing the young about it like he was a fucking prophet. I let it slide for a bit because you had time to change your mind.”

  He sliced Tony’s middle, spilling blood down his face and exposing innards. It looked like crimson, chewed up bubble gum.

  I held my stomach and dry heaved.

  “You swallow that shit, nephew!”

  He pulled Tony’s intestines free and dropped them into the bucket.

  “Credit, loans, and the fantasy of renting a lifestyle is how they’re making their money off most people. It’s all a game and your generation are the pawns, kid.”

  He saw something inside Tony’s carcass and pulled a pink sack free. “Fat fuck. This here is the bladder. You don’t want that either.” He dropped it in the bucket.

  My head throbbed as a dizzy spell hit me. I fell back into the wall.

  He placed the knife on the magnet and unlatched a long thin blade. He pressed it against Tony’s side and carefully sliced. “Now, you have to get rid of the skin and hairs. You don’t want that either.”

  He paused to look up at me. “You wanna know why I butcher these fucks up?”

  I said nothing. I only stared at the shell of a man before me. Not even an hour ago, he was alive. Now, his guts sat in a bucket. Sweat soaked my brow. In that moment, I could only wish for Ma to come pull me from this nightmare. But she was warm in bed, somewhere I should’ve been.

  “No body. No evidence. And they make the best burger and hot dog mix in the world.”

  My mouth moistened as my stomach flopped. I willed the vomit to come up, but there wasn’t any food left.

  “Oh, now it ain’t all bad. You’ve been eating it for years.”

  He dropped loose skin into the bucket.

  “I never said it’ll be easy. And your first time is the hardest. I remember when me and Tony started out, before Danny came along. There was a politician who wanted to clean out the police station. Senator Tilson Bates was running for mayor and the sole target for his campaign was getting rid of our friends who looked out for our business down at the precinct. See, we were well past being corner boys. Well past distribution. We’d graduated up to loan officers, running our own bank, so to speak. You got a bank account?”

  My throat strained and my tongue went dry.

  “Don’t worry about it. We’ll get you one.” He chuckled. “A real one.”

  He dropped more skin in the bucket.

  “I thought Tony was nuts for proposing such a thing. The whole dismembering and tossing out body parts was so cliché. Evidence would be everywhere. But then he told me about an important friend he'd made, Mr. Chin.”

  He laughed like he was chatting with an old friend. “Mr. Chin was high out of his mind on cocaine when he made a strange request at the Titty Hop. He was high and somehow needing something to eat. He wanted flesh. Real human flesh. We thought he was sick as shit but then he gave up one million for our worst girl. She didn’t come out of the room in one piece, I can tell you that much.”

  He slapped the bloody bare meat on Tony’s side. “Now that’s what we want.” He cut it off and placed it on the counter.

  Uncle Pauly went on. “He came out and told us, ‘Don’t knock it until you try it.’ And I said ‘Never in a million years you chinky bastard.’ That was until we did try it and it was good. A little gamey and soft but nothing that a little beef couldn’t fix. You see, I get rid of the guts and muscles and Mr. Chin comes by and picks up the rest. If you think this is sick, you should see what they do with the limbs. Jackie, don’t feel bad for this man. Let me let you in on a little secret. He’s been doing this for years. How do you think we kept control of this place? Open your eyes. Play time's over.”

  He placed another slab of meat on the counter. “Beautiful,” he said, ogling his work.

  “Sick,” I grumbled.

  “Pfft. You think that now. But just wait until you’re making a hundred thousand a month. Sometimes, you can make that in a day.” He sighed. “It’s getting late. I’ll get you your phone and unlock the door. Be back here at nine in the morning. We’re going to clean this place up and I’ll show you how to grind this
up. All right?”

  I sniffed and nodded. About an hour ago, I would’ve dropped to my knees and praised him for setting me free. But in that moment, I couldn’t remember outside. The metallic stench of blood clung to my senses, trapping me in a cage full of gore.

  “Jackie, you’re like a son to me. You know that? Stick with me and I’ll make sure you need for nothing so long as you don’t mention this to your Ma. She doesn’t need to know what you do anymore. You’re a grown man now and it’s time to start making money like one. I have another offer to make you and it’s an offer of a lifetime. Say no now and I’ll give you the money tomorrow after we’re done here. Say yes, and well, I’ll let the perks speak for themselves.”

  ***

  Sleep didn’t come to me that night. I laid there, trying to relive that ambition that had sparked my heart, keeping me up all night before I met up with Danny. It drained dry with every limb Joe lost and every ounce of blood Tony bled.

  Why did it have to happen like this? Why didn’t I go to Cornell with Ant? The dick swinging contest was over and there was no winner. Only dismembered bodies in my uncle’s secret basement.

  I rolled out of bed and staggered into the hallway. I listened. Ma’s soft snoring blended with the easy sounds of a peaceful night. I pulled my jacket from the front closet and put it on. I looked down at the wetness on the back of my hand. Tony’s blood licked the cuffs of my jacket, leaving them moist.

  I left the apartment and walked down the steps. Old Smitty blasted his records and sang along with a drunken slur. The baby in 1A shrieked as Ms. Haven yelled obscenities at her boyfriend of the week.

  I pushed the door open and welcomed the moist chilly air to caress my face. I inhaled deep. This place would always be the same, unlike my thoughts. They were damaged forever, stuck in that building that could’ve been the last place I’d seen.

  It was the last thing Tony had seen.

  I walked fast and hard with nothing but the police sirens singing their urgent song and crickets humming in the night.

  Loyalty: the word of the day. Probably the word that determined the rest of my life. A morbid, heavy weight fell on my chest. There wasn’t a way out. My mind and body belonged to Uncle Pauly, the man who Ma had warned me about. Sunday night dinners with Pauly were enough for her. Why couldn’t they be enough for me?