by Ryan Sayles
“I heard from people that Green Fro hustled an old woman walkin’ through his streets. Bitch was mindin’ her own business. But then Green Fro come up and says he’s disrespected ’cuz he ain’t know who this bitch is so she must be new. And new blood on the street pay him for protection. So he rob her. Took her purse, her rings, earrings and some pearl necklace that meant the world to her. Done deal. Turns out the woman is Thuggie’s grandma or aunt or some shit. She tells the family and word gets to Thuggie. Thuggie gets Green Fro’s address, tells some of his new boys to go earn they way into the gang, they fuck it up and blast the wrong bitch, they go hit the right house and now whatever you said. They dead or arrested or whatever.”
He shrugs away and I let him. Hide the gun before someone else sees it.
“That’s what I know.”
“Fine,” I say. Crack my neck. “Where can I find Thuggie?”
“Don’t know. For real.”
“Where is their territory?”
“All over. They got ’hood off of Pinnacle Avenue all the way over to the piers.”
One minute.
“Whatever you do,” he says, “stay away from the corner of Baltimore and Forty-second. They own that.”
“Why?”
“It’s a four way stop. Everybody knows not to stop there. Just run the sign. If you stop, they have a car that comes outta nowhere. Blocks the road so you can’t go. A dude comes to the window and jacks your shit. Try walkin’ home in that ’hood. You wind up in the bay.”
He starts to walk towards the rail. I call after him: “Baltimore and Forty-second?”
He barely looks over his shoulder and says, “Yeah.”
Looks like I’ll get carjacked in the very near future.
20
I call Graham, no answer.
All right. Molly then.
“Hello, Richard,” she says, and I can hear the weariness in her voice. Normally her voice is bright, bordering on a little too loud, like that person in a restaurant who tries too hard to be heard over the low-level din. But not now. She’s soft. Spent.
“Hey, Molly. I called Graham. No answer.”
“He’s sleeping. The doctor prescribed something to help.”
I rub my face, inhale and exhale through my nose. On Molly’s end I must sound like a snorting racehorse. “It’d be hard. I know I don’t like it and they’re not my grandparents.”
“You’re his best friend,” Molly says, consoling me for something I haven’t said yet.
So I say it now. “Willibald is my fault.”
“No.”
I nod. “Yes. Yes he is.” Something else I don’t want to say. “And Graham knows it.”
“Richard, it’s hard enough around here without you calling up to take ownership of all our problems.” Molly is louder now. She starts crying. “When Graham needs somebody he calls you, most times before he calls me. And as a wife I’m not down with that but I so put up with it. I know what you mean to him. I put up with it because of what you mean to me. So don’t start.”
I want to tell her they must have been watching the obituaries until they saw Eudora’s. The newspapers splashed her everywhere, and from there it’s one plus one to find the funeral. I want to tell her when she and Graham and Willibald got into that stretched limo, that nine hundred foot black sign rolling down the road proudly displaying the grieving family, they must have been followed. And they were followed right back to the first crime scene. I want to say they did it because they wanted retaliation for my bullets at Moss’s house.
But instead I just say, “I’m sorry. I won’t start. How is Graham?”
“Oh, Richard,” Molly says, quietly sobbing. “He’s sleeping.”
21
2138 hours
I keep a storage unit.
Not under my name, of course. There are too many illegal guns inside it for me to do that. I really don’t do much else besides visit it two or three times a year. I pay in cash at the beginning of the year for the next twelve months. The storage company is both low rent and a shitty employer. Turnover there must be worse than an in-patient, budget psychiatric care facility. There’s only so much shit one can take when one is being paid minimum wage to babysit adults who either scream constantly, live outside of reality or do nothing but drool and break incontinence records the globe over. My friend Jeremiah Cross knows a thing or two about that.
Suffice it to say I have never seen the same employee twice. As far as I know they could be pocketing my cash. But as long as they write me down as PAID I don’t care.
Every now and then criminals have a good idea, and they do this once in a while. I’ve seen dudes use them as a meth-cooking house, someplace to stash stolen goods until they cool down. Clevenger told me about a killer who kept two bodies in an unplugged deep freezer inside a unit half the size of mine. The number of MacGyvers out there who just put the focus on the wrong thing...
I mostly keep guns in mine.
The name mine is under belongs to some dirt ball that I know to be very dead. The rest of the world might still think he’s out there kicking around. Actually, I really hope so. Because if the place was ever found it’s my sincerest hope the cops go looking for him. The guy had a couple of weapons charges on his record and he associated with folks who used guns, so it all looks like a good enough red herring. I guess.
I make deposits and withdrawals from the unit in heaps. I wipe down anything that goes inside the unit to make sure there are no fingerprints whatsoever, let alone mine. After the wipe down I wear gloves until the transaction is complete. I canvas the area thoroughly before I go inside. Then, it’s all get in, get out.
Tonight I go. Key in the lock. Slide the door up. Rummage for a moment. Get the stuff; drop off the weapons from Moss’s and Phat Urban. Leave. Time to finish the prep work if I’m going to get carjacked tonight. Excited that I get to shoot a fully automatic weapon.
22
0127 hours, Friday morning
I don’t want to do this in my own car.
I listen to the police scanner for nearly an hour while I double, triple and quadruple check my gear. Finally, a noise complaint worth perking my ears over. Four calls altogether of various neighbors saying there’s a party next door that is too loud. Too much ruckus. Too many people. I know the neighborhood they’re talking about. The cops can stop by and say something but it will do no good. If SAPD does anything besides drive by and be seen I’ll be blown away. The neighborhood is south of the river and rough like a poor Mexican town on a drug trafficking route. Police presence will not bring control. It’s only punks looking to make names for themselves by fucking with cops.
I go there. Circle the neighborhood twice, making a selection. Sure enough, a house party is lighting up the whole block. Hip hop blasting. Beers. Smell the ditch weed in the air. Obnoxious laughter. Loud chatter competing with louder chatter, all peppered with vulgarities, big words used incorrectly and the occasional bottle being broken.
Park down the street, facing away. The car I want is three behind me. The house party is good camouflage. No one will notice my car in a sea of cars. Four more wheels and rust added to the mountain range of hoods, cabs and trunks that create a subtle crest and trough between the street and the ramshackle homes. No one will notice the car I’m stealing until I return it. Bullet holes and all.
Slim Jim inside. Lucky for me the steering column is already broken off. I hotwire it in under ten seconds. Bag of tricks beside me, my new sled and I ease out into the street. Half a block down I turn on the lights. I spark a Rum Coast cigarette and get comfortable. The intersection of Baltimore and 42nd is twelve blocks south.
The area is perfect for this.
Baltimore Boulevard, like most boulevards in Saint Ansgar, runs north to south. It’s miles long and on the west side of the city near the waterfront. From about 35th to 48th is all industrial park, in varying shades of use and disrepair.
Brick structures, industrial, broken windows, concrete
steps leading up to concrete stoops. Graffitied stop signs, stolen street signs; empty metal poles standing watch over intersections with no names now. Urban decay.
I figure most people, when they find themselves in an industrial park that feels so quiet it can only be a set up, they either turn around and head back to the first place where they remember life or they gun it through. No stopping. So I stop at every intersection. Complete cessation of movement. Chin to shoulder, looking down both cross streets. I’m a model driver.
South on Baltimore I get to 40th. Hushed and still, not even the susurration of the waterfront wants to be heard here. At 41st I check my gear for the final time even though that’s all I’ve been doing tonight. Crowd control-sized pepper spray cannon. Check. Silenced, fully automatic Glock 19 with a fifty round drum magazine and grip stock. Check.
Carjackers, come out, come out, wherever you are.
Baltimore Boulevard and 42nd street. I pull up to the intersection and slow down, stop. As soon as I do some old ’80s sedan comes flying out of nowhere on my left. Slams to a stop right in front of me. The car is more of a boat, up on a lift kit with golden spoke rims. It blocks the entire intersection. I expected the windows to roll down and gun barrels to emerge, but they do not. Excellent. This is a firsthand example of complacency. By the time they get those windows down to shoot it’ll be too late.
A lone thug comes strolling from a shadow, cigarette dangling from his lips. Turd has a pimp walk, extra-large jacket, flat-brimmed ball cap cocked off to the side. Early twenties. The mouthpiece for this shitshow.
Turd moves with the confidence that if anything starts to happen to him, the car will squash it. But, unless the fuck-faces inside that hooptie are willing to blow out those midnight-tinted windows in an effort to shoot me first, I’ll be winning this evening.
I’m anxious to get this started. The smell of the rubbing alcohol and diesel fuel I brought with me inside is getting to my sinuses.
I position myself. Turd gets to the window, hands in pockets and leans over at the waist to talk. Thank you for offering your face. I start to roll the window down.
He says, “What’s up?”
“What is up?” I ask as I raise the pepper spray cannon.
Blast off. A cone of aerosolized devil spit hoses this thug queef up and down his fuck-ugly face, fake diamond grill and all. The liquid hurt mask digs under his lids, crawls up through his nose to the back of his throat and layers the inside of his mouth thick enough to steal the breath from his soul. It’s all fire and claws hugging his mug. He falls back and I’ve already got the Glock 19 tucked into my shoulder, aiming at the hooptie.
This isn’t my car so I don’t give a shit. I point the barrel at the windshield and press the trigger back. Bullets cough out and before the thugs inside the car get their windows rolled down they get showered in lead. I sweep the gun across the passenger side windows and then lower it to the doors for a pass. A ballet of shattering glass and rippling metal bring the car to life as the thing transforms from a hulk of the ’80 s to a block of Swiss cheese. The chamber clicks empty and I drop the magazine. Load the second one. Exit the car. Charge the hooptie from behind; come up driver’s side. Spray it. Yank the driver’s side rear door open. Four dead.
I move. Turd is rolling around in the street. Exquisite torment. The spray awakens every alarm klaxon in the human body.
Indians—dots, not feathers—have weaponized the ghost chili. That’s what I have here. It’s no longer the hottest chili in the world, but it’s hot enough to make an atheist beg God for relief as he shits himself empty and writhes in agony.
I brought a one-gallon jug of water. That’s not nearly enough to alleviate the pain of standard pepper spray, let alone this new excursion, but splashes of water will be cruel teases that may coax out answers.
Grab the water. Grab Turd. Drag him off to a curb bathed in shadow. Splash water.
“Where is Thuggie?”
He cries.
“Answer me and you get some relief,” I say and jiggle the gallon jug over his ear. “Where is Thuggie?”
“I don’t know!” he screams through his teeth. His nostrils have become leaking faucets. Thick streamers of snot have gooed him from the upper lip down to the lower lip and have even touched the concrete. I look at this ghost chili spray and give it an approving nod. If it were a dude I’d buy it a stiff drink.
“So where is he?”
“Don’t know! Water! Please motherfucker! Water!”
“Who does?”
“Candy! Candy knows!”
Splash. “Who is Candy?”
“Candy Man! He deals straight for Thuggie! He’ll know! Gimme some water! Fuck!”
Another splash. “Where?”
“Over at the John Wayne Theater! Water!”
“I’ll decide when you get more water. The John Wayne Theater? You mean the old Pinnacle Theater? At Fiftieth?”
“Yeah! Yeah! Please! This shit burns like fire! Water! I need water!”
Splash.
“What’s he look like?”
“Dark glasses and he’s always on the phone! That’s it! That’s all I know! Water!”
I give him a splash and then pour the rest of the gallon out next to his head.
“Get up.”
I snatch him up onto his feet and march him over to the hooptie. I open the passenger side doors and swing him into the corpses of his friends. Get their blood on him. All over. Over to the driver’s side. Same thing. When Turd is good and slick I push him off to the rear of the car where he immediately resumes his flailing and screaming for water.
I go to the car I came in. Put on the gloves I brought and yank the windshield free from the car. Toss it off to the side and forget about it. Grab the diesel and the rubbing alcohol. Pour the diesel all over the inside of the hooptie. Splash the alcohol around. Got the accelerant, got the long, slow burn. I light it up. With a tremendous whoosh the inside of the car turns to an oven. Flames lick at the sky. Everything I do now is backlight in snatches of orange and yellow.
I loom over Turd. Put the barrel of the Glock 19 to his head.
“You’re the only survivor of this grand fuck-up. You’re soaked in your buddies’ blood and you don’t have a scratch on you. Smell that? That’s your friends burning. You just sold out one of Thuggie’s top dogs. You better fucking run. Got me?”
“Water!” he says. I laugh and toss the pepper spray canister in the fire. Heat will pop it. I get inside the car. Drive off.
Gloves on, I strip the Glock 19 as I drive. The barrel goes out the window as I cross an overpass. Under it there is a stream fattened with winter snow runoff. I slow to a crawl as I pass a storm grate. The slide goes in it. I flick out the remaining rounds into the bag I have. Stop at a dumpster and drop the receiver in. Toss a few bags over it. Stop at another dumpster and put the fifty round drum magazines in it.
I drive by a homeless pile and toss the gloves their way. The first one who comes to and tries them on will be the lucky winner.
The spot I took the car from is newly occupied as I return to the house party. I sneak the car into a space down the block and walk to my car. Get in. The car I stole isn’t too bad off; it needs a new windshield but that’s about it.
Folks are about, hanging out. Walking here and there. A second house has opened for business with the party so there are now two porches lit up with music blaring, people mingling, clouds of smoke rising. A grill is going. I can smell something pretty tantalizing in the air.
It’s not a party until someone starts a mass panic to the tune of gunshots. Muddy the waters. So as I put my car into drive and pull out onto the street, if for nothing else to be an asshole, I stick my .44 out the window and squeeze off two rounds into the sky.
Both house parties go apeshit. Poked hornet’s nest. People scramble, cars peel out. I know guns are drawn and pointed at everything under the sun.
Now, if the car I stole is somehow attached to the Carnivore Messiah bloo
dbath, it’ll be traced back to this ridiculous house party that I’m sure is filled with felons and other gang members. No one else treads through this particular neighborhood. No one here will talk. No reason.
And if it’s not attached, oh well. Anyone who saw me arrive or leave will have their memories muddled by the mass exodus going on right now. Human cattle turning into a frenzied stampede, a million directions taken by a million fools all at once.
Overall, it’s a good night.
23
Morning
I call Carla Gabler, lean back in my office chair and put my feet up.
The morning light spilling into the single room hasn’t quite yet reached the opposite wall, but it’s making a steady march towards it. Never ending, I guess.
“Hello?”
“Carla, it’s Richard Buckner, the detective who was asking you about Mickey the other day. How are you?”
“Oh. I’m fine. Did something come up?”
“Yes. While you were in prison and Mickey was getting out, you said he talked about a big score.”
“The one he disappeared after. Yes.”
“Can you tell me anyone who might know anything about that? Anyone. Friends, family.”
“His parents are both dead. He has a sister named Joann. She lives somewhere north of the river. We don’t speak.”
“Okay. What’s Joann’s last name? Cantu?”
“She married. It’s something French. Starts with a P. I’m sorry. She never cared for me. Mickey said his little sister never cared for any girl he brought home, even when she was eight years old and he introduced his homecoming date.”
“All right. Joann P-something French. Got it.”
“She lives in a posh townhome. I know that. Her husband is an accountant.”
“All right. I appreciate your help.”