by Sean May
"Let's get to work. I'm getting tired, need to get home." Walker said, popping his door open and looking towards Jones to follow suit. Jones got out as well.
Walker strolled to the back of the car and stuck his keys in the trunk lock. He turned his head away as he lifted the hatch...Jones didn't, and he paid the price dearly.
"Oh, fuck!" Jones screamed, his voice peeking over the thud of Walker's choice of music. Jones stumbled a few steps away and covered his nose with his sleeve "That shit burns! Motherfucker!" Jones choked and spit bile onto the dirt.
"Told you..." Walker smiled. He pulled Madison's limp arm out of the way and pulled out a shovel. It was his good shovel, composite with a nice sharp blade. He'd leave the shitty, rusted one for Jones. Walker made his way back around the car and walked into the patch of dirt illuminated by the Impala's headlights. He dug the shovel into the dirt and got to work. "Just go ahead and start helping me whenever you feel like it, OK, Jones?" Walker said, voice dripping with sarcasm.
A couple minutes and some dry heaves later, Jones came around the car, shovel in hand. His shadow cast across the nice-sized hole that Walker had begun. He started hacking into the dirt a couple of feet away from Walker so that they'd meet up in the middle when they got to a good depth.
"You know, Jones, you should be more appreciative that Tortelli makes you come out and do stuff like this. This is the closest thing to honest work that a guy like you or me can do in his life. Getting out there, moving some earth out in the fresh air. It's a good chance to see how the other ninety-nine percent grinds it out every day."
Jones bounced his shovel off of a rock then dug under it and threw it out of the way. "What you just described is the exact fucking reason I hate doing this kind of stuff. You think I'd put myself into a life of crime because I liked it? Hell no, I only did this because I had to...because I didn't have a goddamned choice in the matter. But, as it turns out, I'm good at it, and I like it. Mainly because it saves me from doing joke work like this."
"I guess it's all a matter of perspective." Walker said, digging into the earth, really getting his back into it. After a few more hearty digs, he pulled back and wiped his forehead of the murky layer of sweat and dirt that had gathered on it during the digging. "I think that looks deep enough to me. What about you?"
Jones didn't respond, he just threw his shovel toward Walker's car "Hell yes, I was done ten minutes ago."
"That was the easy part. Now we gotta get Madison in the grave." Walker slammed his shovel into the ground and let it stand. He then went to the back of his car. Jones followed, reluctantly as humanly possible.
"You take the head, I'll take the feet."
"Why do you get the feet? I don't want to look at the fucking guy's face." Jones said, trying to position himself so he could grab Madison's feet. Walker pushed him away.
"Because I said so, alright? You bring your car out here with a dead body, and you can start to call the shots, deal?"
"Yeah, yeah, whatever. You know, Walker, you're a real asshole."
"Only as much as I need to be. Stay on my good side, I'm a pretty agreeable guy."
"Remind me to invite you to my next Christmas party...I'm sure my parents will just fall head over heels for you."
Walker tapped Madison's feet. "Shut up and grab his head."
Walker grabbed Madison by his feet and swung him out of the trunk of the car. Jones was slow on the uptake of lugging Madison's upper half, but he soon enough had a hold on the back of Madison's head. The two men walked Madison's body around the car. The clear plastic tarp had become slick with blood that had already started to clot in clumps down at the bottom of it. The smell was only getting worse, and Jones was pretty sure Walker was completely accurate about that whole thing about dead people shitting themselves, because Jones had to do all he could to not throw up once again.
With Madison's two hundred pound frame, their trek to the hole in the ground was slow and deliberate. The last thing they needed would be to drop the body and spread blood and who the fuck knows what else all over the dirt. So they were careful, they took each step and ensured solid footing. The fifteen feet from the car's front bumper to the edge of the grave was excruciatingly paced for Jones' natural feverish rhythm.
"Alright, we gotta roll him out of the tarp."
"What?"
"He can't be in the tarp when he gets into the ground. We need him to decompose, not sit in a protective shell that won't biodegrade for fifty thousand years."
"Oh, look at fuckin' Al Gore here, all concerned for the environment."
"Hardly. I could give a shit less about the environment. But, the quicker this guy's stripped down to bones, the harder it is for cops to do fuckall about it."
"Makes sense."
"Jones, it seems to me that you don't know a whole lot about dealing with dead bodies."
"Man, shut up. I know plenty."
"No, I think this is your first time dealing with this kind of thing and you're trying to act all hard, but the fact is that you're petrified that you're out here disposing of a body with a guy you hardly know."
Jones stood there, silent. Madison's body was gaining weight in his hands with every passing second.
"I knew it, I fucking knew it!"
"Everybody's gotta start somewhere, right? Now show me how to get rid of this sorry piece of shit so we can get out of here." Jones began to swing Madison back and forth slightly.
"You gotta grab an edge, like this." Walker gripped his hand on a corner of the tarp and wound it around his hand, smudging blood on his knuckles. It took Jones a bit to figure out the angles, but soon he had his hands placed just like Walker, ready to throw. "Alright then. One, two, three!" Jones and Walker threw Madison forward and released him from the tarp all in one smooth motion. The tarp unrolled and Madison's body tumbled out. His arms spun out and his legs followed suit on his short trip to the bottom of the grave. His body landed in the soft earth with an almost inaudible thud.
"Now what do we do with the tarp?"
"Burn it, later. I'll deal with it. We have something else we need to do."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, go get the bucket of lye from the back seat."
Jones got the massive, fifty pound bucket from the back seat of the car and dropped it at Walker's feet. Walker pulled the lid off. "Here, dump it on him."
"Wh--"
"Just do it, Jones. You're really testing my patience."
Jones tipped the bucket over and began pouring the white lye pellets onto Madison's body. As the pellets hit the wet portions of Madison's body, small plumes of smoke started to rise. "This is fucking gross." Jones said.
"Yeah, try not to breathe much while you're dumping that...don't want to burn up your lungs."
"Thanks for the advice." Jones poured more and more of the lye on to Madison's body, until it covered the corpse like a light blanket of snow. Jones rose up from the grave and dropped the empty bucket at his side. He walked about twenty feet away from the grave and started gulping lungfuls of fresh air. This was a lot more than what he was used to when it came to crime. Holding up drug dealers, squeezing cash out of shopkeepers who needed to pay protection, that stuff was easy. Working with real dead bodies wasn't Jones' game, but he knew he'd have to get used to it if he wanted Tortelli to pay attention to him.
Walker was over by his car, smoking another cigarette and looking up at the full moon when Jones came over. "Nice job, kid" he said "especially for a first timer. You didn't lose your shit, and I appreciate that."
"Thanks." Jones said, wanting to get back into the car and away from all of this.
"Boroni would be pretty happy with your work, that's for damn sure."
"I hope so..."
Walker got up from the car and went over to Jones, reaching into his breast pocket and withdrawing his gun. He put it against Jones' forehead.
"The fuck are you doing?" Jones tried to back away from Walker, but Walker kept mirroring his movements, keeping the
gun planted in the middle of his skull.
"I knew it. I knew it."
"Knew what?!"
"I just said Boroni would be proud of you." Walker sucked his cigarette down to the filter and tossed the butt into Madison's grave.
"Yeah, so, what the fuck are you getting like this for?"
"Well my boss' name is Tortelli. What's yours?"
"Uh--I--I--"
"Mr. Tortelli's pretty damn good at sniffing out moles in his organization, Jones, and it looks like, once again, his assumptions were right."
"It was a mistake! You said an Italian guy's name, all those fucking names sound the same, and I wasn't paying attention, so I just agreed that, yeah, he'd be proud."
"Oh, Jones, it's nice that you think I'd be dumb enough to believe that, it really is. You must take me for some kind of prick who doesn't do his research on the people he's working with."
Jones' knees started shaking as Walker seemed to get more and more serious about putting a bullet into his head. He looked for places to run to, to get away from Walker, but there was nothing but flat land in all directions. He could try running to the Burger King, but it wouldn't save him. Walker was the kind of guy who would put a man down in the middle of a fast food restaurant if that's what it came to.
"Listen, listen..."
"Go ahead." Walker said.
"You got me, OK? Yes, I work for Boroni, I'm a low-level nothing that wanted to get ahead, so I took on this job, finding out how Tortelli's outfit works."
"At least I can praise you for your honesty."
"But I haven't learned anything, you see? I know _you_ work for them, that's it. That's not that dangerous. You let me walk tonight, I'll get out of here. Get out of the city, out of the state. Out of everywhere. I don't go back to Boroni and spill."
"You do have that part right." Walker pulled the trigger and Jones stumbled back, the .22 round turning his brain into a slurry. Walker kicked Jones' lifeless body a few feet until it tumbled into the grave, a grave big enough for two men.
The only thing Walker regretted was that now he'd have to digging himself.
Subway Jack
The subway car jerked as it pulled out of the station at 59th and Lex. It was an 6 train running up and down Manhattan. Ty's parents didn't know he was in Manhattan...with it being one in the afternoon they probably assumed he was sitting in a classroom in The Bronx like a good student. But Ty wasn't a good student. Never was. He had only become a worse student since he'd met Quan three months ago. Quan was his teacher now, teaching him shit that he really needed to know, like how to break into cars without smashing the windows or how to steal things from the corner stores. All school would teach him about was shit about dead white guys and the last thing he wanted to hear about were fucking dead white guys. His grandfather was a dead white guy and Ty hated that bastard.
Quan sat on the bench seat next to Ty, bouncing his head around. He had a pair of earbuds in so everyone would think he was just another sixteen year old on the train, oblivious to everything in the world around him, but there wasn't anything coming through the headphones, they weren't even connected to anything, the plug just shoved into Quan's pocket. While nobody was paying attention to Quan, or Ty for that matter, Quan was paying attention to them. Watching for the ones with the flashy jewelry, the iPhones, the money clips with hundreds on the outside. Targets. Quan scoped them out like a predator, figuring out when to strike.
Ty let Quan work, not even disturbing him to point out the girl in the tube top with tits so big her nipples popped out of the top whenever the train made a sudden movement. Ty couldn't help himself to look, though. While he was watching, staring, he was jolted out of his fixation when he felt one of Quan's sharp elbows crack into his ribs.
"Goddamn, man!" Ty said, rubbing the sore spot on his ribs. "The fuck was that for?"
"We got work." Quan said, flicking his toothpick to the other side of his mouth. His wide, deep-set eyes squinted as he cased the car. Quan pointed to a businesswoman sitting about midway down the car. She was dressed in a grey suit and had a short haircut that made Ty think she was some kind of dyke or something, but she was too pretty for it. She sat with her purse at her feet, the top of the bag open, clutched between her shoes. The woman had her nose in a book, and Ty knew she would be an easy target. When the train rumbled to a stop at Grand Central, Ty and Quan made their move toward the woman. Ty saw the glint of coins flashing in Quan's hand, and he knew exactly what Quan was going to try to pull on her. He would throw down his change, pretending to be jolted by the subway's movements. While he was down on the ground picking up the change, the woman wouldn't even notice him reaching into her purse, she'd be more concerned with him just getting the fuck out of the way, stupid kid. As the train exhaled half of its riders and taking on just as many at the station, Quan got within a few steps of the woman while Ty kept watch. Quan looked down at his hand, moving coins around with his fingers, faking mumbling to himself.
Quan was just about to drop the handful of change when Ty saw the Chinese guy walking onto the train carrying three big plastic bags with the Apple logo on them. Ty didn't have enough money to pay for any of the overpriced shit from that company, but he knew that the logo was basically a big bull's-eye, a "Rob me, I'm rich!" sign. The Chinese guy was obviously a tourist, in a crisp red windbreaker and acid-wash jeans that were in style before Ty or Quan were even born. The bags were stuffed to the gills with boxes, three each to a bag. The bags were clear, so Ty could see that all of them said 'iPad' down the side of the box. Ty didn't know much about any of this stuff, but one day when his mom was watching the news, he heard that each of those things sells for about $600. Ty did some quick math in his head, math being the one thing in school he was actually good at, and added up that this Chinese guy just carried over five thousand dollars worth of electronics onto the subway.
"Yo, Quan, hold up." Ty said, grabbing Quan by the shoulder before he was able to create the distraction with the change. The lady looked up from her book for a second and sneered at the both of them. Uppity bitch. Ty pushed Quan down the car and around a couple wrapped up in each other at the same time, their kissing making wet smacking sounds that were audible even in the loud car.
"Motherfucker, what the hell?" Quan said. Ty pushed Quan some more until they were both against a door. "Just fucked up my chance at scoring some cash."
"Listen, look at that Chinese dude over there. The one in the windbreaker." Ty pointed him out to Quan.
"Yeah, so?"
"His bags, they're fucking full of those iPad things. Motherfucker's got nine of them."
Quan leaned against the door and narrowed his eyes while he observed the Chinese guy. The Chinese guy, meanwhile, was busy looking at the subway map above Quan and Ty's heads. He had a content smile on his face, like he thought there was nothing weird about carrying a boatload of pricey gadgets onto the subway. Maybe you could do that in Beijing, but here, you were asking for it.
"How much those things run?"
"Six hundred."
Quan rolled his eyes back as he crunched the numbers. "That's gotta be like twenty thousand bucks worth of stuff then."
"Uhh...more like five and a half thousand."
Quan glared at Ty for correcting him. They were still in the mentor/pupil phase of Ty's budding criminal career and saying shit, including correcting, your mentor was one of the biggest dishonors you could pull. Still, Quan was wrong. "Yeah, Five and a half g's, whatever, I knew that, just makin' sure you knew it."
"So how are we gonna do this?" The girl in the tube top walked by as the train stopped in another station. Focused now, Ty didn't even look at her tits for a second.
"Can't do it on the train, it'd be hard to get away from the guy once we took them."
"What about snatching them as we hit a station?"
"Nah, still too risky...he'll yell, one of those fucking MTA rent-a-cops will have us on the ground in a second."
"...How about we follow
him when he gets off the train?"
"Follow him to where?"
"Somewhere we can jack him, where the fuck do you think?"
Quan and Ty kept an eye on the Chinese guy as the train passed through every station. If the guy was smart about things, wasn't such a damn clueless tourist, he would have taken the express 4 or 5 instead of jumping on the 6 and dealing with every local stop down the line. They stopped at 28th and the Chinese guy just sat there, same dumb look on his face, those iPads sitting there like poorly hidden treasure. But if those things were hidden treasure, Ty and Quan were fucking Indiana Jones. They stopped at 23rd and it looked like the guy was going to stand up but he turned out to be just shifting his weight and his loot.
Ty was about to tell Quan just to forget the whole thing, this guy was never going to get off this fucking train, when the guy finally stood up at Bleecker Street. He wrestled to get past a couple of even more clueless tourists. He was leaving out the door Quan and Ty were perched against but they let him through without incident and then spun around to follow him. It wasn't hard because, even though the guy was short, his windbreaker was like a beacon broadcasting his position to the entire Lower East Side.
"C'mon, keep up." Quan said, even though Ty wasn't having any problem staying by his side.
They got out of the station and into the light of day, the sudden sunlight blinding Ty for a second but when his vision came back he still had that red windbreaker in his sights. It was 1:30 so the streets weren't packed but they couldn't exactly rob this guy in broad daylight. Without alleys their choices were limited, but there had to be some place.
Ty looked over at Quan to ask for his opinion when he saw something he hadn't noticed before bulging out the side of his waistband. The blackened steel and crosshatched handle of a 9mm stuck up ever so slightly.
"Quan where the fuck did you get a piece?"
"Don't worry about it man it's my cousin's. He came up from North Carolina with it so I borrowed it."
"Does he know you borrowed it?"
Quan laughed slightly