by Adam Howe
I fetched a brewski from the icebox, glugging it down as I showered the shit off me, but I couldn’t sluice away Shelby’s look of disgust.
Face it, Levine. You’re just a broke-down strip club palooka, living in a shoebox above a thrift store. A classy broad like Shelby Boon would never look twice at a pug like you. Hell, you’d be lucky to land a date with Lorena Bobbitt.
The shame of it was that I’d actually had a second chance to get my shit together and make something of myself. Instead I’d let the opportunity slip through my fingers. Sure, after the skunk ape thing, and the money from the movie, I’d made a half-assed attempt to better myself. I’d put that deposit on the house. Even made some enquiries about opening my own boxing gym, thinking maybe I could help disadvantaged kids—which in Bigelow was most every kid in town—help ‘em stay out of trouble by beating hell out of each other. But it was all just a pipedream. No different than Walt kidding himself (at my expense) that he was a Wall Street whiz. In the end I’d been content just to sit on my ass at The Henhouse, pissing away my fifteen minutes of fame until all I was left with were the familiar regrets and self-loathing. I couldn’t shake the feeling that by giving Walt my money to invest I’d subconsciously sabotaged myself. What the hell was wrong with me; did I just fear change?
I showered for about an hour. Avoided my reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror as I cinched a towel around my spare tire. Fetched another cold one from the icebox. Then I went and slumped on the sofa bed, gazing up at that poster of Rocky and Adrian. Was it really too much to ask?
Hearing faint ticking, I glanced at my watch on the upturned orange crate that served as my side table. The watch had been a gift from Nicolas Cage, thanking me for my contribution to the Damn Dirty Apes movie, and for being a good sport about how the movie turned out. It had a snakeskin strap like the jacket Cage had worn in an earlier, more prestigious movie, the jacket that symbolized his individuality, and his belief in personal freedom—rules to live by. The face had a picture of the Bigelow Skunk Ape that gave me the willies whenever I checked the time. The beast’s long arms formed the watch’s hour and minute hands. Not to seem ungrateful, because the watch was pretty sweet, made sweeter by the fact that it’d come from Nicolas Cage … but after everything I’d been through, sometimes I felt I deserved more than just a watch, ticking to remind me time was slipping away.
Luckily I hadn’t worn the watch to work that morning. It was waterproof, but I doubted that extended to piss-and-shit-proof. I checked the time and saw it was business hours; Harry Muffet’s car dealership would still be open. Was I still mad enough with Muffet to pay him a visit … ?
You’re goddamn right I was.
6.
* * *
Harry’s Pre-Owned American Auto was located in the hazy gray area between the bad and worse sides of town. One look at Harry’s fleet of cars and you could see why more people were buying foreign these days. The place was little more than an automobile graveyard. The chain link security fence was probably to prevent folks from junking their own clunkers here; if that happened, I figured Harry would’ve just slapped a sales sticker on the piece of shit.
Draped above the lot like patriotic cobwebs were ropes of red, white and blue plastic pennants, snapping tackily in the breeze. The mess of ropes was connected to an ancient Airstream trailer that looked like a big rusty toaster. Moored to the roof of the trailer was a twenty-foot tall balloon man. The balloon man’s likeness to Harry was unmistakable. He wore a checkered sports coat and slacks, even sported Harry’s trademark mustache and shit-eating grin. The giant balloon man was filled with helium, I knew this because every month or so he’d ‘mysteriously’ break free of his bonds and float above town like the Goodyear blimp. For Harry it was great free advertising.
I trucked down the wide central lane, bracketed by banks of used-cars, and stopped outside the Airstream. The inflatable Harry loomed above me, grinning and swaying in the breeze, the mooring ropes creaking as he strained against his bonds like a chained King Kong. A bird had shit on the balloon giant’s head and smeared Harry’s grinning face with guano. Maybe another unsatisfied customer.
The sign on the trailer door said OFFICE. The trailer was pitching and rocking like the coin-operated spaceship outside the laundromat in town, where the mommas parked their rugrats while they did laundry. Squeals and smutty laughter echoed from the trailer as it rock n’ rolled.
Blueballs were the least I owed Muffet; I hammered on the door.
The trailer abruptly stopped rocking and swayed to a standstill. I heard whispered voices and a frantic scramble for clothes. Then the trailer door swung open and Harry appeared. He was beet-red, panting for breath, tucking his shirttails into his slacks. Artfully zipping his fly with his wedding ring hand, he raked his other hand through the sweaty corkscrews of his hair, and then gave his fringe a Bobby Kennedy-flick. In the office behind him I saw a pretty young woman I guessed was Harry’s secretary. She was hastily rearranging her desk clutter and straightening her blouse, which she was wearing inside out with the label poking up like cowlicked hair. Apparently I’d knocked while Harry was in mid-sentence: “—and be sure to bring me those papers to sign the moment they arrive, Miss Clemens.”
It might’ve been a more convincing performance if not for the bitch-in-heat stink baking from the trailer, Miss Clemens’s brassiere draped over her desk lamp, and Muffet angling his hips to hide his hard-on.
He saw who I was and panic flashed across his face. Then he plastered a grin across his mug. “Reggie! You made it!” Like I was a long lost war buddy.
“No thanks to you,” I said, and tossed his wallet at him.
It bounced off his shirt and left a stain. Seems like I hadn’t cleaned all the muck off it, after all. I almost smiled. “You left this behind when you ran out on me.”
Harry was crestfallen. “Ran out on you?” he said in disbelief. “Is—is that how it looked?”
“That’s how it was.”
He chuckled at how I’d got this all ass backwards. “Reggie …” he said. “As God is my witness, nothing could be further from the truth.” He took a moment to invent the truth. “I had to race back to the office, was all. Poor Miss Clemens here was holding the fort by her lonesome. I only stepped out for a quick bite to eat—” A beer and a lap dance must have been Muffet’s idea of a power lunch. “When that ruffian attacked me. Without provocation, I might add.”
“Then it’s not true what Otis said about his sister?”
He dismissed my pedantry with a wave of his hand. “Let’s not dwell on that.”
He leaned towards me and whispered, “Is he dead?”
“You mean Otis? Of course he’s not dead.”
Harry looked disappointed.
“You think I’d just up and kill a man? I’m a bouncer, not a stone-cold killer.”
“The way I hear it, you have before … Killed, I mean.”
“That was different. That was self-defense.”
“Even the orangutan?”
“Especially the orangutan.”
Just then a plump gray rat darted from the trailer, claws clicking on the asphalt as it scuttled towards me. It clamped itself to my ankle and started humping my foot furiously, like the world was about to end and it wanted to go out fucking. With a cry of disgust, I started shaking my leg like Chuck Berry doing the duck-walk, but couldn’t dislodge the critter.
Then I realized it wasn’t a rat; no, that would be an insult to rats.
It was a dog—the ugliest fucking dog I’d ever seen in my life—a Chinese crested terrier. I’m more of an American bulldog man myself. Or a cat, if my only other canine option is a Chinese crested terrier.
The beast’s hairless body was a sickly plucked-pink, spackled with markings like liver spots. The straggly gray fur of its mane, tail and booties had been groomed like a My Little Pony from hell. It pumped away at my foot, emitting high-pitched yipping noises with each thrust. Its eyes were narrowed to lusty slits.
A stub of pink tongue poked between snaggly yellow fangs.
I could feel a damp patch developing on my ankle.
Harry chuckled, a little too indulgently for my liking. “Quit that, Gizmo.”
He clawed the little beast from my foot and tucked it under his arm. The dog started angrily yipping at me, as if I was a tease playing hard to get.
“Cute dog,” I lied, frowning at the semen stain on my shoe. “Gizmo?”
“Like the movie,” Harry said. “You know, don’t feed ‘em after midnight?”
“Looks like someone already has.”
He glanced at the ugly little monster squirming under his arm. “What can I say? It’s my wife’s dog. Sometimes I think she loves this damn mutt more than me.”
“Hard to believe.” Actually, it was pretty easy.
The dog’s yipping was giving me a headache. “Listen, Muffet—”
“Hey! Call me Harry—”
“Muffet,” I said. “I just came to return your wallet.”
“A regular boy scout.”
“Not really. You’ll find it’s light. I reimbursed myself the cost of a new shirt and pants.” The soiled shorts were gratis, but he didn’t need to know that. “Plus a copy of Ring magazine.” I grinned. “That okay with you, Muffet?”
He peeked inside his empty wallet and winced. “Hell, it was the least I could do.” He almost sounded magnanimous, as if he’d coughed up the dough himself.
I said, “And you can bet your ass Walt will be in touch with the bill for the damages.”
He paled. “Damages?”
“About a men’s room worth,” I said, and then I doffed the brim of an imaginary hat. “Fuck you very much, Mr. Muffet. You have yourself a shitty day.”
I started back to my truck.
“Reggie, wait—”
I stopped, sighed, slowly turned around.
“I feel terrible about what happened,” he said. “Just plain terrible.”
“Yeah, well. I’m sure Miss Clemens will lend you a shoulder to cry on.”
He chuckled sheepishly and quickly changed tack.
“You know, I followed your boxing career.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Oh, sure. The Bear Hug Brannigan fight—”
“Boar Hog Brannon—”
“Helluva fight,” he said, without skipping a beat.
I figured the extent of his knowledge about my boxing career came from the news cutting on the wall of The Henhouse. “You know I lost that one, right?”
“Well, sure. It was a close fight.”
“Not really. Unless you count when he broke his hand on my head.”
“All the same, I could use a man like you.”
“For what? Protecting you from disgruntled customers?”
“No, no. Nothing like that. What happened with Otis was an aberration.”
I strongly doubted that.
But against my better judgment, I said, “What exactly did you have in mind?”
TWO
JOHN WAYNE WAS A FAG
1.
* * *
Harry and me were huddled in my Ford, in a bad neighborhood, hidden in the shadows between two moth-haloed streetlamps. We were parked across the street from the debtor’s clapboard bungalow, on a narrow street of identical dirt-poor domiciles. The red Caddy Eldorado was perched at the peak of the debtor’s sharply sloping drive. Jewels of moonlight glinted off the windows. Harry was ogling the Caddy like a lion who’s spotted a lame antelope wander from the herd. Me, I was frowning at the debtor’s paperwork pinned to my clipboard, which the old woman—Dorothea Antwone, 67—had filled out when Harry sold her the Caddy on layaway.
It was my first week on the job and I still had newbie nerves.
Walt wasn’t happy when he learned I was moonlighting as Harry’s repo man.
“You’ve already got a job,” he’d complained. I said, “And maybe if you paid me a living wage, I wouldn’t need another one.” He said, “Another raise? In this economy?” I said, “The hell d’you mean ‘another’ raise?” The threat of raising my wage quickly put an end to the matter; Walt had grudgingly given me his blessing.
I put away Mrs. Antwone’s paperwork. “I don’t know about this one, Harry.”
He tore his eyes away from the Eldorado. “What’s the problem this time?”
“She’s—what—only two weeks behind on her payments?”
“I should let things get out of hand?”
“You said she’s a nurse.”
“I said she works in a hospital.”
“Probably she needs the car to get to work.”
“Yeah?”
“It could mean someone’s life.”
“Oh, please! She’s a cafeteria worker, for chrissakes, not Florence Nightingale.”
“What the hell are you doing selling a Cadillac Eldorado to a cafeteria worker?”
“It took some convincing, lemme tell you.”
“But you must have known she wouldn’t make her payments.”
He grinned. “I suspected.”
I shook my head at him. “You’re some piece of work, Harry.”
“Thanks.”
“That wasn’t a compliment.”
But I had to hand it him. Harry must have been some kind of salesman. How else could he have sold me on taking this rotten job? Or maybe I was finally learning to take every opportunity that came my way, no matter how dubious.
“Your concern’s duly noted,” Harry told me. “Now c’mon, c’mon, c’mon.”
With a heavy sigh, I climbed from the truck and glanced up and down the quiet street. In the movies, they called this kind of quiet, too quiet. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary—apart from me—I crossed the street, ducking into a crouch as I approached Mrs. Antwone’s bungalow. Perched on the neighbor’s porch rail was a raccoon, his burglar-masked eyes mocking my clumsy attempt at stealth.
I crept up the steeply sloping drive on the balls of my feet. Unsheathing the slimjim from inside my coat, I wedged the tool down inside the window frame and popped the door lock. A slimjim wouldn’t work on a modern car. But for Harry’s ancient fleet—‘vintage,’ he called them, once I even heard him use the word ‘classic’—the tool worked like a charm.
I opened the door with a leather-gloved hand. The rusty hinges squealed like Freddy Kruegar raking his claws across sheet metal. Even the raccoon winced at the noise. I shot a peeved glance back at Harry—would it have killed him to oil the doors? Harry grinned and gave me a thumbs-up. I climbed inside the car. It still had that stale, secondhand showroom smell.
Harry had dismissed Mrs. Antwone as “just some old broad, nothing for you to worry about.” She’d taped a photo of her grandkids to the inside of the sun visor. A Christ-on-His-cross religious ornament dangled from the rearview mirror. Seeing Christ’s agonized features gave me a moment’s pause. I’m a God-fearing man, and I have every right to fear Him; the sonofabitch enjoys tormenting me like a cat with a broke-backed mouse. Silently begging His forgiveness for what I was about to do, I slid my skeleton key into the ignition, and was turning the engine—
When a voice from the backseat said: “Bitch, I got you now.”
2.
* * *
Startling in surprise, I damn near filled my shorts again—and I hadn’t even eaten microwave burrito. There was no time to turn around. I glanced in the rearview and saw a ninja behind me. Before I could make sense of what I was seeing, the ninja lunged forwards, looped a length of cord over the headrest and around my neck and then hauled back on it.
Reflexively raising my hand, I managed to slip my fingers inside the noose before it snared tight around my throat. The cord crushed my hand against my larynx, mashing my fingers, my pinkie snapping like a stick of chalk. Choking, I tried to cry out—in pain, and to Harry for help—but could only produce a series of pitiful spluttering sounds, like Donald Duck cussing his nephews.
The back of my head was pinned fast to the headrest, tetheri
ng me to the seat. Unable to turn my head, I fidgeted wildly, watching helplessly in the rearview as the black-clad assassin garroted the life from me. I could see his eyes through the slit in his mask. He seemed surprised to see me. Maybe not as surprised as I was to see him, but close. It was as if he’d expected to be strangling someone else. I would’ve gladly switched places with his intended victim—I’m agreeable that way—and attempted to communicate this to the ninja in my Donald Duck voice. With my free hand, I slapped the steering wheel like a mixed martial artist tapping out of a cage fight. The car horn warbled an off-key verse of La Cucaracha. All of Harry’s cars came with a melodic horn. He saw it as a classy selling point—
And where the fuck was Harry anyway?
As if in answer to my prayers, I heard the familiar phlegmatic roar of my truck engine. I glanced in the wing mirror. Across the street, I saw Harry behind the wheel of my Ford, gunning the engine like a drag racer at the starting line. I would have sighed with relief if only the ninja had let me breathe.
Thank God …
The cavalry was coming—
No …
The cavalry was driving away in my fucking truck!
I watched in disbelief as Harry burned rubber down the street. I pictured him hightailing it back to the lot, maybe saying a quick prayer for me before he slapped a sales sticker on my truck.
My fury at Harry gave me newfound strength. I should have let Otis drown him in the crapper when I had the chance; hell, he should have been drowned in a crapper at birth. I was determined to survive, if only to kill the bastard.