by Steve Bailey
I let the adrenaline fade, then said, "These people promised me a thousand for coming here. You know where they keep their cash? They live around here?"
"There's no cash. They probably would've buried you with me."
To hear no money was on hand made me want to beat their already smashed skulls some more. My heart resumed its gallop.
"Can you do me a favor?" he asked.
I took a deep breath and opened my eyes.
"Can you pass me the pipe? I think he put it in his pocket."
With his breathing calm instead of near-hyperventilation, Ethan seemed to have caved into the chair even more. Just a pale husk buried in a pile of clothes. He looked down at his lap when I met his gaze and his pale cheeks blushed.
"Should be a baggy and a lighter in there, too."
Gauge's body lay at his feet. He stared up at the ceiling, walleyed. A large circle of blood, a black halo, had leaked out of the crack in the top of his head.
I dropped the bat and it clattered to the ground with a tinny echo. The bag of crystals and a cheap Bic lighter were in Gauge's front pocket. I set the table back up and lay the stash in front of Ethan.
He sat up straight at the sight of the drugs.
With the toe of my taped-up shoe I nudged Gauge's body, but it didn't work like it did on TV. I had to kneel down and roll him over with both hands. The pipe was in his back pocket, but it had busted into pieces amid smaller shards of glass. I held up my hand and showed Ethan the pipe, shattered in the palm of my hand.
He slumped in the chair and cried.
"Your friends stiffed you all around, huh?" I regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth.
"They ain't my friends," he said, hitching and sobbing. He took a deep breath and his voice evened out. "I just used to buy stuff from them and he knew how much I didn't give a fuck anymore, so he asked if I was game." He wriggled his wrists around in the tape. "I'm not the first guy that's sat here."
"But, c'mon, man. Getting your brains bashed out?" I asked.
Ethan raised his voice. "You ever go through Fallujah?"
I nodded.
"I can't drive down dirt roads no more. If a big enough rock hits the bottom I think the car's gonna explode." he said. He leaned forward like he wanted to make sure I was listening. "Dude, I got fired from washing dishes. And I was tryin' my fucking hardest." He held one of his legs in the air, showing me his shoe. "You think I wear Velcro's cuz they're cool?" He put his foot down. "And look at you." He stared at me with his cold, gray eyes. "You just killed three people and it's barely fazed you."
"I've got other stuff to worry about," I said. "They'll catch up to me later. What are you gonna do?"
"I don't know yet. I don't think I have the stomach for getting my brains bashed in anymore." He nodded at the gun still gripped in my hand. "Can you just leave me that?"
I tore the tape off of his wrists and set the gun in front of him.
"You could just go home," I said.
"So my girl can tie my shoes and change the diapers?" He picked up the plastic baggie and turned it around while he watched the dirty crystals tumble inside. "What about you?" he asked.
"I need to get to my wife and baby and I have no fucking idea where I am."
"You're in Seagoville. 175 is just north up the dirt road." He nodded toward the door. "Your prize for ridding the world of these shitheads is a shiny, new Camaro."
"Should I really be driving a car owned by someone I just killed?"
"Why the fuck not?" he said. He lit up the glass pipe. "Nobody's gonna miss these fuckers. For a while, at least."
My phone buzzed again.
He had a point.
Jasmine and Gunpowder
by Justin Porter
I saw Ma kill a man one night in 1853. I was eight.
She had a thing about white curtains. The rugs used to be brighter and the couch cushions were marked with blood and whiskey, spattered with old white stains. We kept the lamps low and the customers drunk with ladies in their laps. That night the gaslight filtered a dingy yellow through the muslin. A wall of shoulders came through the door and I went into the kitchen to get the bull from the breadbox. My brother Ronny caught me, wrapped his arms around me and the scattergun.
"Just watch," he whispered.
Curtis stood by the door. That fairy was harder than a coffin nail, twice as cold. Once he snapped a man's arm for talking loud to Ma, and he didn't twitch while they walked up to her, sitting in her chair with embroidery in her lap.
"We gotta have an answer," said the lead pair of shoulders.
"Do you now, boy?" Ma said.
"Mr. Boyle…"
"I know what The Boyle said. The spirits told me."
"Sure they did."
"I spoke to your mother."
"My mother?" His glare slipped.
"She's calling you home for supper."
The air ripped open, roared like God clearing his throat. As if that sound threw him back into his friends and spattered the curtains and couch with red. The sawed-down eight-gauge smoked in Ma's hands and Curtis covered the survivors with a pair of Navy Colts.
"You boys hear my answer?" Ma asked.
"Yes, ma'am," they said.
"Then pick up your friend and get the fuck out."
Curtis kept the Colts on them until they left. Ma flipped over the couch cushions and Curtis looked at the windows, the fluttering white curtains dotted with blood.
"I'll get new ones, Ma," he said.
"Leave them. If the Boyle sends more, I want 'em to see," she said. "Tell Dandy his information was good. We did our part."
I almost dropped the scattergun. It's not every day you hear your Ma knows Dandy Johnny Dolan, one of the city's toughest bastards and leader of the Whyos.
She came over and hugged me. "My brave boy."
The barrel of her eight-gauge was hot on my neck, and I could smell her jasmine perfume past the gunpowder.
Ronny walked me upstairs past the ladies, all standing at the balcony above the stairs with big eyes watching Ma and the door.
Time passed. The war came and the draft with it. Business was good. Ma paid six hundred dollars and Ronnie and I got to read about the Confederate guns in the papers, but I couldn't imagine anything louder than Ma's eight-gauge.
Near twenty-five years since that night, and Ma's hair was still black as a raven's stare. She smeared kohl around her eyes while I waited.
"It would be better if I had gray hair," she said. "Nobody believes anything a young woman says."
"Ah, ma. You don't look that young," I said.
She placed a beauty mark at the corner of her mouth. "Christ, Michael. No wonder it's your brother who's popular with the girls."
One of the ladies came down the hall, gave my shoulder a squeeze. "There's a boy at the back door for you, Michael."
"Go ahead," Ma told me, spraying on her jasmine. "Then take your place."
I walked past the parlor of cooing ladies, the two or three fellas whose attentions they fought over, to the back door off the kitchen that opened on the alley. The boy who stood there couldn't have been more than six. He handed me a clinking sack. Part of a truce Johnny Dolan brokered between us and The Boyle: No more gunmen on our door and we fence for that fat, scarred fuck. When you get to be as big as Dolan, I guess sometimes you make peace instead of cracking skulls. The boy jutted out a chin no bigger than one of my knuckles as I dug through the bag. A few pocket watches sat among some pearls, and a brooch too fine by half. Gold. Engraved. There was age to it and weight, the profile carved into it was too elegant to be nobody.
"Where'd you get this?" I held it up.
He shrugged.
"Ten," I told him.
"The fuck are you? Jewish?"
I stared until he looked away.
"Twelve," I said.
He'd have to learn to hide that grin one day. The new coins in his pocket jingled as he walked toward Suffolk.
"Hey," I called.
"What?"
"You scared of me, kid?"
"No." His fists clenched.
"Got a handkerchief?"
"No."
I took mine out, stained with new blood from this morning's shave and an older spot from a broken nose. Old stew at one corner. It smelled of tobacco.
"Wrap the coins tight in this, put 'em back in your pocket."
"Why?"
"Just do it."
When he took a few steps away, he stopped and cocked his head. "So's nobody hears?" he asked.
I nodded, then went back inside and took my place behind the curtain.
"And can the spirits across the great divide hear me? Attend me, spirits of the wind, spirits of the sea, spirits of the earth, spirits of the stone. I beg you attend all yea here."
I hated watching Ma work. Gave me the fuckin' crawls. Not allowed to smoke behind the curtain, so I rolled for later—the tobacco fixings balanced across my lap with the axe handle.
"Who has a question to send across the great divide?"
I marked the gambler by his rings and the dark circles around his eyes, the widow by her 'tits and tears,' as Ronny used to say. One of the Boyle's gangsters was in attendance. Truce or not, still didn't like letting them in. He'd brought a stranger, stiff bastard wrapped up in wool and tweed, his lips buttoned tighter than his waistcoat.
"The tiger is sleeping with the copper between his paws, but the king's eyes are wide for pairs, his lady by his side," Ma told the gambler.
Shit, I could have told him Faro's a fool's game. Ma said to the widow: rest easy and dig beneath the cherry tree for her miser husband's money. If the woman came back without a dime, Ma would ask her if she felt better, tell her the digging had washed the grief from her hands, that she'd given it to the earth.
Also that her neighbors stole the money.
"I've seen enough," said the buttoned-up newcomer. "There's enough vice in this house that I'm afraid God will strike me down just for sitting here. Mrs. Lind, your business is finished."
"Who are you?" Ma asked, put her hand flat on the table—her signal for me to stay put.
"You mean the spirits didn't tell you? I represent Anthony Comstock, the city's only champion. Where's the brooch that was stolen? My wife's. We know it was fenced here."
"Brooch?" Ma asked.
That fancy brooch. The Boyle fucked us.
Glass shattered and wood splintered as the front door was kicked down and it was like Ma went down with it. She slumped against her chair and her face went blank.
Voices shouted from the parlor, "Police!" and "You're under arrest!"
Curtis shouted for Ronny and strange voices shouted about morals and Jesus Christ. Ronny was down in the ratting pits of Little Water Street.
I had no idea where Jesus was, but if he was smart he wouldn't fuck with Curtis.
I burst through the curtain with the axe handle up, tobacco scattering around my feet. "Ma, get upstairs," I said, but her eyes were far away, maybe watching Ronny lay bets down on a terrier.
I didn't know what those fuckin' dogs on Little Water Street were killing, all the rats were with us.
I grabbed Ma around the shoulders, got her to her feet. "Michael, the spirits are coming," she whispered.
"Don't need to worry about them, Ma."
"They're coming for me. They're hungry."
I glanced at the gangster and the stranger as I got Ma out of the room, but they hadn't moved. In the parlor, Curtis was faced off with two men in blue and two men in gray wool. He'd already laid one down bleeding while I hustled Ma into the waiting arms of two of the ladies.
"Get everybody out the back!" I yelled. Her hand was wrapped in my collar, talon tight. I could feel every thin bone.
"The spirits, Michael!"
I stripped her hand loose and shoved her toward the girls. "Get her out. Get gone. Now!" I yelled and dove for the middle of the brawl, sank my fists into tweed and wool. Curtis was bleeding, I was bleeding, but mostly they were bleeding.
A new pair of apes came through what was left of the door as I dropped the final copper wheezing and puking to the ground. I wasn't far from throwing up myself, salty blood trickling down the back of my throat. I looked at Curtis. One eye closed, bone busted for sure. I kicked the cop in the face and stomped on the other one's ankle. He screamed. The parlor was broken down to kindling.
"You alright?" I asked Curtis. He leaned over, watched the newcomers from under his eyebrows. I'd never been more scared of him.
"Still bend you over a barrel, lad," he said.
"We live, you fuckin' fairy, I might let you."
"Nah. You're too ugly." He pointed at one of the two new heavies. "Gonna fuck that one. Hard."
"You're telling me I'm uglier than him?" I asked as a copper's clumsy fist slammed against my shoulder and neck. I curled and rolled my shoulder away like Curtis taught me and Ronny when we were just boys. Crouching, I grabbed his trousers and stood up.
He dropped and I stomped between his legs, but he twisted and I hit the inside of his thigh. He thrashed and managed to drop us both on the splintered couch. I got a piece of it in my back, driven in sharp and fast. He punched me in chest. I pulled him close, tried to bite him, but all I got was stale, sweaty wool, salt, and something chalky. Probably bird shit.
He stood up and I kicked him in the shin. When he reared back to stomp me, Curtis laid the axe handle against the back of his neck. He fell. Curtis lifted and swung, over and over until I heard him hit wood floor through bone and meat.
Curtis sagged, sat down next to his corpse. "Get your ma."
"Ma?"
"Go!"
I got to my feet and tripped over a moaning copper, careened off the wall, and ran up the stairs for the bedrooms—but they were empty. The hall stretched, stairs too, and the room tilted. Nothing hurt yet, but I could feel that sliver of wood rubbing against muscle and bone.
"Ma!" I screamed. "Ma!" She wasn't answering. Where did she go? "Ma!"
"Michael!" Curtis yelled from downstairs. "Quit yelling like a fuckin' idiot. You sent her out the back!"
I tumble-ran down the stairs, caught the banister in my ribs, and spun to a stop in the doorway to the kitchen as I vomited onto the table. I could feel the splinter in my back with every heave. Then I was out the kitchen door and into the alley. It was empty, yawning and black like heavy ink dumped over the world. I was swimming in it. A shape hunched in the alley, a bundle of rags that shifted and wheezed.
"Ma!"
I slid on my knees, collided with her. She groaned.
"I'm sorry, Ma. I'm sorry."
"The spirits are coming for me, Michael."
"No, no, we gotta get you to a..."
I tried to pull her up, but my hands slid, slick and too warm. I smelled salt. Salt and jasmine. No. Jasmine and gunpowder. That's her. Not salt. Not salt. Please, not salt and copper. I put my face in her neck and sobbed. I don't know when she went. I held a bundle of rags that used to be my ma and I felt the black reach up for me. Maybe it's the divide, maybe I'd find her over there.
Maybe…
A cool hand stroked my forehead, a hand I remembered.
Her name was Eveleen. Once, when I fell while running down Suffolk with the other boys, she cleaned the cuts and my split forehead. Told me I was brave for not crying.
Later Eveleen took up with a counting clerk had a judge for a father. He married her and paid her debt. Maybe it was love. At first. Few months later he gave her an East River divorce. Ronny told me she tried to sail to England with an extra smile. I heard the clerk became a judge. I think about her sometimes, floating across the Atlantic with a dirty white sail over her rowboat and there's always a storm on the horizon.
The hand on my brow was warm. Was I lying in the bottom of Eveleen's boat?
"Wake up, you stupid bastard. Wake the fuck up!"
Ronny slapped me. I jumped and Ma's body slumped to the ground. I grabbed her and Ronny screamed and shook me. "We
gotta get outta here!"
"The coppers and the Boyle, Ronny. Ma. Ronny, Ma's…"
"I know. Curtis too. C'mon. We gotta go. They know they didn't do the job all the way."
"Job?"
"Job!" He gestured, a big sweep that took in the busted up house, the alley we knelt in, our dead mother on the cold New York City ground.
Our ride uptown was silent. I watched Broadway's lights from the window of the cab, and they blurred together as we neared 24th Street, but I wasn't crying. I wasn't. When Ronny told me where we were going, I didn't believe him. Satan's Circus: a fancier ring of gambling and brothels never existed.
And I'd never been this far uptown. "Ronny?"
"Yeah, Michael?"
"I couldn't… It's my—"
"Don't, Michael. Don't you fuckin' say that."
At the door to the Golden Stag, two bouncers in fine suits blocked our way.
"Where do you think you're going?" said one.
"Service entrance's round the back," said the other.
"We're here to see Mr. LaCroix. Remy LaCroix," Ronny said.
"Go round back. Somebody'll see about a job for ya." They laughed and looked past us. I showed them one of Curtis' Navy Colts before Ronny could take out his club, a nasty piece of old fence iron with leather around the end.
"We're here to see Remy LaCroix," I said.
They nodded. "We'll let him know."
"We know the way," Ronny said.
"But…"
We passed into a glowing hall filled with dirty pictures on the walls and gold on everything. People in suits yelled, and under their voices were the sounds of cards and dice. I glanced behind a pillar and saw an old fella with a girl on her knees going French. He took a glass of whiskey off a tray carried by a waiter and put a coin in the man's waistcoat pocket.
"What are we doing here, Ronny?" I asked as we made our way between the tables and long stares.
"LaCroix's an old friend of Ma's. Owed her a few favors and he's got money, connections. Now he owes us."
"Don't see how anybody in a place like this owes us anything."