by Blackie Noir
On exiting the vehicle, the matter of hygiene was addressed, or not. Methods varied. Some, presumably those blessed with more than a glimmer of intelligence, and exceptional technique, dropped their used condoms to the gravel. Others employed mouthwash, carried in their purses. Some, simply spit, straightened their skirts, and began hoofing it back to the club.
The Widowmaker passed the time trying to guess; by noting a given fellatrix’s general appearance, dress, attitude, and the amount of slink and sway employed in her walk to the trick’s car, what method of hygiene she’d favor. He’d been right 80% of the time.
Nearing closing time, the action dwindled, the parking lot emptied, and the Widowmaker abandoned his diversion. Counting, timing, and typing cocksuckers. What had become of him?
Hey, judge not . . . Besides, should he continue to limit the availability of his fierce justice to housewives, married career women, and soccer moms? He would be willing to bet that a whore’s agony wasn’t any less when her jaw got shattered, her arm was broken, or her ribs were kicked in. In fact, this type of abuse could be considered simply as an occupational hazard of the world’s oldest profession. Perhaps he should limit his services as retaliator, strictly to working girls. Become a specialist.
Enough. Time to get serious. He had an agenda. A target. Vito ‘The Baron’ Barone. The Widowmaker had found out about Vito by accident. He’d been in the big Long Beach court building, trolling for targets. The day’s dockets, listing appearances and crimes charged, were mounted next to the doors of each courtroom. A quick scan would tell him if a potential target would be appearing. If so, he’d enter, take a seat and wait. When the case came up, he’d get a look at the mutt, hear the charges, and, if he was lucky, hear the case’s resolution. Most of the time the Widowmaker was in agreement with the verdict, and for him it was finished. On two occasions he had disagreed. Vehemently. The first one was history. His fifth kill. The second one was Vito.
Vito was a study in brutality. A long study. Vito’s violence wasn’t limited, by gender, race, or age when it came to business. Business was business. But, when it came to pleasure Vito’s violent urges were definitely gender selective. Vito’s club, JuicyTown, provided him with an ever fluctuating selection of new victims. Not all of the women working for Vito were victimized, it would have been bad for business. Bad for business and unnecessary. There was an ample array of the weak, addicted, or mentally frail to choose from.
Vito chose well, and Vito chose often.
The Widowmaker had developed a source to turn to when he required the extensive information necessary to carry out a hit successfully. If the Widowmaker needed justification to nail Vito; (he didn’t,) he’d found it, in spades. Women who had somehow gathered up the courage to file charges on Vito, there were three, never showed up to testify against him. Never showed up at home, in shelters, on records, or anywhere else. Gone? Gone.
The Widowmaker felt the tendrils of depression tentatively probing. No matter, before the night was over Vito would be gone too. That would definitely replace depression with elation. With only three vehicles left in the lot, it wouldn’t be long now. Anticipation had depression’s feelers retracting. He was good to go.
The gleaming black Escalade was Vito’s. The shabby Camero? Maybe a straggling die-hard lush cadging one last drink, or a tweaker haggling over some crank. It wouldn’t be a problem. The guy would come out the back door, hop in his piece of shit, and be gone. The Widowmaker knew this, he had an instinct.
This instinct, however, was inoperative when it came to the third remaining vehicle, a brown Econoline van. He’d been watching the van, and the two pukes leaning against it, for the past twenty minutes. Couple of shitkickers. Smoking, passing a pint back and forth, bringing their heads close together every time they wanted to talk. What, they thought someone would overhear them in the empty lot?
The whispering gave them the furtive look of plotters. Were these two assholes planning to take Vito down? Shit, if these hillbillys were planning to heist Vito’s take tonight, they’d fuck his own play up for sure. Nothing to do but wait. Sit tight. They wouldn’t see him, and if they did he’d just split. Abort. If they tried to fuck with him, well, he never limited his weaponry to the .22. His .357 was reassuringly nestled beneath his belt. Whatever went down tonight, he’d be alright.
Both of the shitheads took turns pissing openly in the lot, leading him to think they were about to leave. Finally. Then, they both lit up smokes, and resumed passing the pint. Fuck. Maybe he was wrong, maybe this wasn’t the night. The back door swung open, a woman stood in the shaft of light, and he knew his patience was about to be rewarded.
It wasn’t going to go as planned, but, it was gonna be better. He knew, just by looking at the woman. The woman, and the two assholes by the van. Their reaction to her, they weren’t waiting for Vito, they were waiting for the woman. The way they had come to life when she appeared. Predators. He could feel it, taste it, and, a predator himself, he’d be content to go with his instinct.
Chapter Fourteen
Pausing to light up, Satana jetted thick streams of smoke out her nostrils. Well, that was it, another night. Over. What made this one special, it was the last one. Not that she had known when she’d started tonight’s turn. Funny, she’d been so worried about Vito giving her the boot. Way it turned out, she’d made the decision to quit.
She’d been six months sober, and had laughed at her brother, Bob, the big deal Wal-Mart manager, when he’d first offered her a job. A job, and the small apartment over his garage. Chump change job, and a garage apartment. Fuck that. Satana was a fast-lane kinda gal.
Was. Key word here girl. Was. Hard to keep up your speed when you’re stuffing your bunions into four inch stiletto heels. Or carrying the weight of four hard, mean, alcohol and crank fueled decades on what’s left of your conscience.
Tonight. Tonight was the first time her brother’s offer looked good to her. Really good. Maybe it was the fact that in a week she’d be getting her one year chip. One year, sober. Face it. A.A., that was about all she had going for her these days. Hey, that and one year sober? That’s one hell of a big step in the right direction.
Work your own program girl. One day at a time. Tomorrow was a big one. She’d call Bob, take him up on his standing offer. Then she’d call Vito, tell him she wouldn’t be dancing at JuicyTown anymore. The news certainly wouldn’t devastate him. Still, she’d been too bone-weary to go through the hassle of quitting tonight.
Now, as she leaned against JuicyTown’s back wall, smoking, she noticed something. Something that made her glad she was still under Vito’s employ. Across the parking lot, half a dozen spaces from her battered Camero, leaning against a dark van, passing a pint to his hulking companion, was the freak.
Satana quickly made a second decision. No way in the fuck was she crossing the, now empty, parking lot. Not with those two waiting there. Chills ran up her spine. Electric. Zing. Tailbone to skull. Not just a couple of hillbilly geek motherfuckers. There was more to those two, a lot more. None of it good.
Actually, she’d had considerable prompting, toward her decision to quit, from those same two hillbilly geek reprobates. Nothing that they said, or did. Just the eyes. The older one’s, madly alive, glinting, burning, pools of black mercury. The young one’s, antithesis to those of his companion. Dead. Empty. Flat and dull as sun-bleached blacktop.
The door closing behind her, Satana’s heels sent sharp clicks reverberating throughout JuicyTown’s cavernous emptiness. Vito, behind the bar counting a stack of bills, raised his eyes.
Satana started, “Vito . . .”
Raising his hefty hand Vito grunted, “Count. . . ”
Stopping mid-sentence, Satana tried not to show her impatience while she waited, watching the 350 pound simian try to count without moving his lips. Her chances of getting a favor from Vito will be nil if she interferes with him and his money.
Finished, Vito dumped the bills into a tin strongbox, placed t
he box under the bar, looked at Satana, said, “No.”
“No? No, what?”
Vito smirked, “No money. No crank. No coke. No X. No booze. No nuthin.’ That clarify ‘what’ for ya?”
“That’s not what I came back for.”
“Well Satana, if you suddenly got a mad urge to suck my cock, sorry. You’re too late. Cindy took care of that before she left. Now, I still got work to do.”
“Shit Vito. All I want you to do is walk me to my fuckin car. There’s a dude out there, I don’t know, he gives me the creeps.”
“Smile at him. Give him the creeps back.”
“Goddamn it. He scares me. There, you happy? I’m scared. OK?”
“You still carry that ice-pick in your purse?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I seen you use it before. You’ll be alright.”
“Vito, there’s two of them.”
“You’re giving me a headache. Go home.”
Satana can’t believe it. Not Vito’s shitty attitude, but her reaction to it. She is crying openly, tears streaming down her sunken cheeks. Jesus, isn’t she a person? All these years, just meat. Now? Not even meat. Garbage. Just garbage. What’s comes next? Maggots? Hell, the maggots are already here. Waiting for her in the dark parking lot.
Vito, having lost interest, is funneling cheap bar bourbon into a Wild Turkey bottle. He looked up when Satana said, “You know, I hate to admit it, but, they were right.”
Stopping his pouring, Vito said, “What’re you talking about? Who was right.”
Satana may be over the hill, but anytime she can’t win a battle of wits with an unarmed man she’ll be glad to give up the ghost, voluntarily.
“Those two hillbillys out there. I didn’t really want to come in here and bother you. I know you’re busy, got responsibility and all. I just told them, if they didn’t split? I’d come in here and get you. Figured that’d be more than enough to scare the shit out of them. Boy, was I wrong.”
“Wrong?”
“Yeah they laughed. Thought it was fuckin hysterical.”
Vito frowned, “Satana? You playin’ me?”
“You really think my crank addled brain is up to playing anybody? Much less someone with your street smarts?”
“You got a point. They say anything?”
“Said, ‘Go ahead. Whatever you tell that fat slob, wop motherfucker, bet it won’t be enough to tear him away from his sausage and meatball sandwich.’”
Vito peeled off his jacket, laid it on the bar, said, “No shit? Anything else?”
“Please Vito, don’t get pissed at me. It ain’t me talking. I’m just repeating what they said.”
“Anything else?”
“Yeah. The older one, not the big one, he said, ‘Hey bitch, I’ll bet you twenty bucks, that if you do manage to pry that tub o’ guts cocksucker off his bucket of spaghetti, he’ll drop dead of a heart attack when he tries to make it across the parking lot.’ That’s when I got really frightened. I figured anybody, didn’t have the sense to be scared of you? Well, they’re either crazy, or bad to the bone.”
Stepping out from behind the bar, Vito hefts a Louisville Slugger in his right hand. Smacking the business end into his left palm, he says,
“Shit. Either - or, who gives a fuck? Tomorrow they’ll both be on crutches. If they’re lucky. C’mon, I’m gonna walk you to your car.”
#
Walking three feet behind Vito’s left shoulder, car keys already in hand, Satana figures speed is the issue here. Into the Camero, and out of the lot. Fuck Vito.
Let the fat fuck fend for himself. If the asshole had treated her decently; not refused to help her, humiliating her in the process, finally forcing her to dupe him into assisting her, Satana wouldn’t have her keys in her hand. She’d have her ice-pick.
Have her ice-pick, and, be willing to use it.
Use it to back Vito’s play, should he need help.
Not now. Not after, “Smile at him, give him the creeps back.” No, Vito was on his own. Not that she really believed he’d have a problem handling these two dirtbags. Should things get desperate, Satana knew that Vito wouldn’t hesitate to pull the .380 auto he carried, snug in its clip-on holster, from his hip pocket.
Veering off towards her Camero, Satana pauses when the smaller guy says something to his partner, who moves over to the Camero, and, grinning, leans against the drivers-side door.
Pointing with his bat, Vito snarls, “You, cocksucker. Off the fuckin’ car.”
The guy stares at Vito, blinks, then glances over at his companion.
Vito says, “Hey! Numbnuts. Don’t look at him, look at me. I’m the one’s gonna crack your fuckin’ skull open.”
The other dude, fuckin’ freako, raises his hands, and says, “Whoa. Hey big fella. No need to talk to the boy like that. What’s the problem?”
Ignoring the freak, sneering at the dummy, Vito says, “Last chance Gomer. Move.”
Freako laughs, “Gomer. Hey, that’s a good one, goombah. Maybe you two oughta pair up. Gomer and Goombah.”
Vito, his attention now on freako, is ready to take the motherfuckers head off, when the guy says, “Just funnin’ with ya. Don’t mean no offense. Sorry. Boy’s a little slow, but he listens to me.”
“He listens to you, tell him get the fuck off the car.”
Freako squints, “You ain’t the boss of me.”
“Tell him.”
Freako says, “Ray Bob?”
His partner says, “Yeah Wolf?”
“Shoot this man.”
The dummy leaning on Satana’s car might be a slow thinker, but the motherfucker could flat-out move. Satana heard the two shots, but hadn’t quite been able to track the dude’s gunhand as he whipped it from beneath his shirt. Two shots, both catching Vito in the face. Bam! Bam!
Showing some impressive speed of her own, Satana doesn’t wait for Vito to topple. Spinning and sprinting, she is fifteen yards away when the shooter, laughing, catches up and grabs her by her, thick, long braid.
Triumphant, he grunts, “Gotcha, bitch.”
A jolt to Satana’s neck, and then she is free, and flying. Digging in, running for her fuckin’ life. Behind her, the dummy stares, dumbfounded, at the long, braided, blond fall in his hand.
His partner, running past him, in pursuit of Satana, says, “Drop that, you asshole, it’s fake. C’mon, we got to get her.”
Fat fuckin’ chance. Satana was a rocket ship, desperation her super fuel. Zoom. She was gonna make it.
Then her heel broke.
She went down, flat on her chest and face. Whoever got to her first dropped a hard knee, backed by his bodyweight, between her shoulder blades. She was helpless when the second guy stomped the back of her head.
Dazed, Satana saw the few front teeth she’d had left lying in a pool of blood, where the parking lot’s gravel surface had snapped them off. She was moving away from them, being dragged, each attacker having grabbed an ankle, across the parking lot. As the gravel tore through her blouse, shredding her belly and breasts, she knew.
It was over. The end of Satana.
Satana? Shit. Who the fuck was she kidding? She was just Sally Brown. Always had been. Funny, her new plan? Tomorrow she was gonna be Sally Brown, full time, for real. Damn, she had almost made it. Almost. Out of the parking lot. Out of the perpetual gutter her life had become. Almost.
Well, ‘almost’ didn’t count for shit. Never did. The little girl, who had once been Sally, learned it early. That hard truth had been relearned, tonight, by Satana, the over the hill, booty shaking lap dancer, whose final dance was about to begin.
Chapter Fifteen
Widowmaker
By the time the dancer’s face hit the gravel, the Widowmaker had covered half the distance between himself and her assailants. He knew at least one of the scumbags, the guy who’d capped Vito, had a handgun, wasn’t squeamish about using it, and had shown a fair degree of proficiency with the weapon. Accordingly, he would b
e the first to go. Not that the Widowmaker would waste any time in blowing away his companion. Armed or not, these freaks were dead men.
Both men had grabbed an ankle, and bodies bent into the task, facing away from their victim, were making good time dragging the dancer to their van. Heads bowed with effort, they didn’t notice the Widowmaker until he stepped into their path. Stopping short, neither man relinquished his grip on the captive woman’s ankle. Focusing on their free hands, which were empty, the Widowmaker cocked the .357 he held behind his leg.
Black eyes aglitter, yet fully composed, the smaller man says, “Ain’t nuthin’ here for you friend.”
Aggressively hostile, sneering, his companion adds, “Not a fuckin’ thing, friend.”
Long seconds pass, and with no remark forthcoming from the Widowmaker, the two men exchange a quick glance, then the smaller man grins, says, “What we got here is some family business. This here’s the boy’s wife.”
Finally breaking his silence, the Widowmaker says, “Must be one of those ‘runaway brides.’”
The smaller man says, “Not exactly, but she is a problem to the boy. Ain’t that so Ray Bob?”
“Fuckin’-A right she’s a problem, Wolf.”
Both men are grinning. That, and their open use of their names tells the Widowmaker that his adversaries have silently agreed to kill him. Having witnessed Vito’s execution, the Widowmaker accepts this as fact. Smiling, he addresses Ray Bob, “What kind of problem?”
“Personal problem, asshole.”
To the man called Wolf, the Widowmaker says, “Little touchy isn’t he?”
Releasing his hold on the woman’s ankle, Wolf says, “Well now, that’s understandable. Bitch broke the boy’s heart.”