DON'T BE CRUEL
By Mike Argento
Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press
Copyright 2012 / Mike Argento
Cover Design By: David Dodd
Partial cover images courtesy of:
http://manged.deviantart.com/
LICENSE NOTES
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Meet the Author
Mike Argento is a veteran newspaper columnist and has been described as "a twisted bastard with a heart of gold." He has won numerous awards for his work, but he doesn't like talking about them. He wishes people would just stop asking what's wrong with him. He really doesn't know. He lives in rural Pennsylvania with his wife, Cine Martinez-Argento, a neurotic retired greyhound named Lester, a terrier with anger management issues named Shmuley, an iguana who has remained nameless for witness protection purposes and several cats, including Crazy Ass, Crazy Ass Jr. and Monkey Boy. This is his first novel.
He loves hearing from readers and can be reached at [email protected].
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Acknowledgments
This thing, whatever it is, could never have happened without the help, assistance, support, patience and tolerance of a large number of people.
First off, thanks to my first readers: Scott Fisher, one of the great editors on the planet and a terrific songwriter; Lauri Lebo, a good pal, a heck of a writer and a pretty good dancer; my pal David "Dr. Mo" Moyar and his lovely wife, Kathy, who saw an early form of this work and did not recoil in fear and loathing.
Some others who can share blame for this include Matt Taibbi for his analysis of Thomas Friedman's threehole theory, which I still don't get; Earl McDaniel for teaching me a thing or two about a thing or two, and Tom Joyce for drunken advice that was better than anything I could come up sober.
I am also indebted to the gang at Codorus Press for believing this was a good idea. Wayne Lockwood, Scott Pruden, Tracy Vogel, Mindy Arbaugh. Ted Palik and the rest of the crew are the ones who really made this happen.
And I cannot even come close to describing how much Cine MartinezArgento meant to this and to me. Not even close.
Finally, this work is dedicated to my father, Joe Argento. Pop would have liked this.
Chapter One
"What the fuck is that on your head?"
Ed Smith stared at his passenger, Shane Spew. He wasn't sure whether that was his real name. It sound liked something he made up, a stage name adopted by the front man of a Sex Pistols tribute band. Spew was wearing a thing on his head that made him look like a prehistoric insect–a mechanical prehistoric insect.
"Night vision," Spew said. "You know, it lets you see at night."
Smith didn't like his tone of voice. It was as if he were speaking to a mildly retarded non-English-speaking child.
"I know what night vision is," Smith said.
"I don't think you do."
"I don't think you really need those. I can see pretty well and it's right across the street."
Spew fiddled with his goggles.
"Got these in the big sandbox. Makes everything look like you're looking through a bottle of Nyquil."
"Nyquil?"
"Everything looks all green and shit. One night, we were Oscar Mike, about fifty clicks outside Baquba. I was riding shotgun and watching the desert. Saw Haji about 200 meters out with an RPG. Clear as fucking day, but all green and shit. Spunkmeyer lit 'em up with the .50. Nothing left but some teeth and stuff that looked like Jell-O."
Smith had heard the story before. Spew loved that story. He told it every chance he got, making himself into the hero of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He left out the part where the Marines booted his ass from the Corps because he was wrapped tighter than a virgin's vagina. He was in country for a week before he bugged out and shot up the latrine because he thought Haji was in there taking a dump. Turned out to be Captain America, and while nobody really liked Captain America, you just don't go shooting up the shitter. There are rules.
His stint in the Corps was legendary. There was the time he blew up the wrong bridge and the time he bounced a 40mm grenade off a tree and accidentally fragged a lieutenant. And the time he . . . well, he was tightly wrapped and a fuckup, a lethal combination, and while being able to inflict lethal force was seen as an advantage in the Corps, being a tightly wound fuckup wasn't and he was given an honorable discharge.
Smith and Spew were far from that craziness. They were sitting in a Ford Focus, a nondescript car, on a nondescript street, in a nondescript suburban subdivision, on the edge of the nondescript small town they called home.
Nondescript was good, Smith always thought. He went out of his way to be nondescript. He lived his life being nondescript. Nobody can describe nondescript to the cops. Shit, he always thought he was blessed to be born named Smith. That was about as nondescript as you could get.
Spew rummaged through his duffel bag, equipping himself for the night's mission, attaching all sorts of weird tools to his utility vest. Finally, he pulled out a torque wrench and said, "It's go time."
Smith shook his head.
"Is that a torque wrench?"
"Yeah, duh," Spew said, as he slipped it through a loop on his belt.
Smith sighed.
"Hey," Spew said, "this is my area of expertise. If you want to go do it without a torque wrench, be my guest."
"Just go."
Spew opened the car door and crept out. Squatting, he looked around, lowered his night vision goggles and ran, crouching low, across the street.
Face first into a telephone pole.
He woke to Smith standing over him. His night vision goggles were shattered. A piece of a lens was embedded in his forehead. Blood ran into his eyes. He blinked repeatedly.
"I told you I don't think you need those things," Smith said.
Walter Nunn slept the sleep of a child inside his McMansion. He slept well these days. After a long search, he had found peace. Sure, some people thought he was crazy, but it really worked. You just had to let the program do its magic.
At first, his friends were concerned. It was like Scientology or some shit like that, they said. That guy, Papa, was a con man. It was a cult. It was dangerous. Papa was a fucking lunatic. Nunn was an idiot for falling for his bullshit.
Nunn wasn't buying any of it. It gave him peace. He had tried Jesus, Yahweh, the Maharishi, Cocaine and Jack and a bunch of other shit to quiet the self-loathing that had chewed at his soul all of his life. None of them gave him this feeling, this contentment, this peace. His friends, as far as he was concerned, could go to hell.
Next to him was the blond and practically pneumatic Traci With an I. Everybody called her that because whenever she met someone, she introduced herself as Traci With an I. She thought it was quirky. Everybody else thought it was fucking annoying and just used it to mock her, something she never seemed to notice.
Traci With an I wasn't sleeping as well. She couldn't get used to the bulky brace on her right knee, the result of her recent surgery. She hurt herself on the job, tearing her ACL when she fell off her six-inch platform shoes on the runway at Nunn's club.
Nunn was nice enough
to take her in while she rehabbed. He was merely following one of the church's commandments – what goes around comes around. It was a variation of the Golden Rule, the notion that you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.
But tonight, there was no back scratching going on. Nunn dreamt of strippers wearing knee braces, twirling on the pole while red and blue stage lights reflected off stainless steel orthopedic appliances.
He was about to tuck a dollar bill into one of the stripper's knee braces when his dream was interrupted by Traci With an I shaking him awake.
"Walt, honey, do you hear that?" Her voice had the nasally regional accent common in this part of Pennsylvania, like a band saw cutting through corrugated steel.
Nunn mumbled something. He wanted to get back to the strippers of his dream.
Traci With an I sat up straight in bed and tilted her head, reminding Nunn of a semi-intelligent dog, maybe a Labrador. She listened. The sound was gone. It was quiet.
"Must be hearing things. I swear I heard something outside."
She looked at Nunn, anticipating a response. Nunn snored.
Traci With an I laid her head down and drifted off. She dreamed of knee braces too.
In the driveway, Spew was under Nunn's Mercedes, grappling with the torque wrench and swearing under his breath.
"Fuckin' German engineering shit."
Smith waited impatiently in the car. He tried to find something on the radio to calm his nerves. Some soothing music would have been good, but he wasn't finding any. There wasn't much on at four thirty a.m. He scanned past station after station of preachers describing the variety of miseries that awaited people like him in the afterlife.
Lakes of fire. Eternal torture. The screeches of the damned piercing the very synapses of your slowly rotting brain like a red-hot knitting needle jammed up your nose. He settled on a station where some guy was droning on about how UFOs are really time machines and space aliens were really people from the past, or maybe the future, or maybe another dimension.
Right about now, another dimension sounded pretty good to Smith. This was taking way too long. Spew banged into the passenger door and slid into the car, grinning at Smith.
"Piece of cake," he said.
Smith started the engine and put the car in gear.
"What're you doing?" Spew asked.
"Getting the fuck outta here."
"We have to watch."
"No, we don't."
"It was part of the deal. I told Papa I'd do it, but I get to watch."
"Jesus…"
"Jesus ain't got nothing to do with it. Papa said I get to watch. You want to fuck with Papa, go ahead."
"Shit," Smith said, killing the engine.
You didn't fuck with Papa.
Dawn came and went. Smith looked at his watch and figured he had been sitting in the car for about eight hours. He tried to read a book he found under his seat, "Double Indemnity." But he couldn't concentrate on the words. He fidgeted in the seat. He gave up hope of ever regaining feeling in his ass hours ago.
Spew was leaning against the passenger window, sleeping. A line of drool ran from his chin to the chest of his Megadeth T-shirt. It looked like the skull on his T-shirt was weeping.
At about eleven, Nunn walked out the front door and headed to his Mercedes. Smith woke Spew by smacking the back of his head. Spew shook himself awake. It looked like he was used to being awakened by being smacked on the back of the head.
They watched Nunn climb into his car and put the key in the ignition. They flinched as he turned the key.
Nothing.
"Fuckin' German engineering shit," Nunn muttered as he twisted the key more violently, somehow believing that would resurrect his car.
The car was dead. He went inside and called AAA.
"What the fuck?" Smith asked.
"Oops."
"Fuck."
"Yeah. Fuck. That's what I meant."
"What the fuck happened?"
"You saw it. Nothing happened."
"Something was supposed to happen, right?"
"Well, it didn't."
"Jesus."
"I said oops."
Nunn watched from his living room window as the AAA guy pulled his wrecker into the driveway. He went to the door and yelled, "Keys are in it. Be out in a minute."
He went back to the kitchen where Traci With an I was drinking coffee and reading "People."
"It says here," she said, "that that guy on that TV show with all the kids was screwing around on his wife. That bastard, screwing around on her while she's stuck at home with all those kids."
Nunn had no idea what she was talking about.
"Listen to this," she continued, "he says that people are being too harsh in judging him, that they should mind their own business. He's on TV and we're supposed to mind our own business? Some people."
"Tow truck guy's here," Nunn said. He bent down and kissed Traci With an I on the forehead.
The AAA guy slid behind the wheel of the Mercedes and turned the key, just in case this numbnuts didn't know how to start his Mercedes.
Nothing.
He popped the hood, and when he lifted it, he immediately diagnosed the problem. The positive terminal on the battery was disconnected. The AAA guy thought it was weird, but what did he know.
"Fuckin' German engineering shit," he mumbled as he slid the lug over the terminal.
Those were his last words.
Chapter Two
Nunn had just made it to the front door when everything turned white and then black. Next thing he knew, he was waking up on the living room floor with a headache that brought back memories of his coke and Jack days. He heard Traci With an I moaning from the kitchen.
Nunn started to sit up, but the pounding in his head convinced him it wasn't such a good idea and he fell back to the floor. He heard Traci With an I coughing in the kitchen. Then, he heard her cry, "Walt, my knee!"
Three blocks away, the UPS man was leaving another McMansion. He had been making a delivery. Kind of.
He was, in fact, picking up a little MILF action. Tons of that in this subdivision, Green Acres. Green Fucking Acres, the UPS guy called it when talking to his fellow drivers. Lots of desperate housewives out there in Green Fucking Acres, he liked to say. These women watched that TV show and it made them feel obliged to fuck the UPS man.
That was all right with the UPS guy. He thought it was one of the greatest TV shows ever.
He was practically skipping when he returned to his truck. As he slid the truck's door open, he felt a hand slap his ass. Oh, man, he thought, she wants to do it in the back of the truck. He always fantasized about that, screwing a desperate housewife among the Amazon.com packages.
He turned, expecting to see a cougar ready to pounce.
Lying on the ground at his feet, instead, was an arm. It wore a sleeve bearing a patch that identified it as belonging to an authorized AAA service member.
Smith screeched the Focus around the corner, straightening it up on the main road and pushing the little car to its limits, hitting nearly 70. Fire trucks, sirens blaring, passed going the other way. The guy on the radio was interviewing some trailer park denizen from Arkansas who was describing his abduction by some little gray men.
"And then one of them – he sort of looked like that guy on the TV, Larry King – well, he, um, well, it was like, um, you know, like when the doctor puts his hand up your butt…"
Smith snapped the radio off.
"Fuck," he said.
"Yeah. Fuck."
"Is that all you got to say?"
"Um. Oops?" Smith rolled his eyes. "How are we – I mean – how are you going to explain this?"
"What? Oops pretty much covers it, doesn't it?" Spew pulled out his cell. Smith slapped it from his hand.
"No. A pay phone."
"Fuck's a pay phone?"
Kids today, Smith thought.
Smith had wondered about the wisdom of killing Nunn by blowing him up in his car and
had shared his concerns with Papa the night before. It seemed as if that kind of thing would attract a lot of attention.
Papa insisted, saying it was part of the plan. He had someone on the inside, someone who could control things and deflect suspicion by making Nunn's explosive death look like part of a jihad against him. The feds were all busy chasing imaginary terrorists anyway. This would give them one more to pursue.
Papa showed Smith a note he had composed with letters cut out of magazines and newspapers. It was a screed against Nunn's strip joint and its role as an affront to Islam, being as it featured naked women and drinking and other things that were signs of a decadent, depraved culture.
Smith skimmed the note. He was impressed with its authenticity, the misspelled words, the fractured grammar, the random use of capital letters. He did have one concern.
"This part," he said, pointing to the offending passage. "I really don't think Islamic terrorists issuing a jihad would use the phrase 'shaking their lady parts for to engorge us with hard-ons.' "
"Really?" Papa asked.
"I'm pretty sure Islamic terrorists wouldn't use 'hard-ons.' But hey, I could be wrong."
Smith had to drive around for half an hour to find a pay phone. Used to be one on every corner. Smith felt old. It was getting harder and harder to live the life. He enjoyed it more when it was easy and all he had to do was collect money from bookies and degenerate gamblers who never knew when to stop chasing the big win.
He found one mounted on the wall outside a check cashing joint. Spew dropped some coins into the slot and punched the number.
"Dude's gonna be pissed," he said.
"That's your problem," Smith said, leaning against the wall. "Just make sure you tell him 'oops.' "
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