by Jordan Krall
Jake sighed. “I don’t know, man. You know that creepy sonovabitch better than I do. Doesn’t he still blame one of us for that shit?”
A year and a half ago Tommy and Jake worked a job for Peachy. The job went south and the two of them got pinched. By sheer luck, they were let go because the witness couldn’t, with one-hundred percent confidence, identify Tommy and Jake as the culprits. They were released soon after.
However, someone had left a dirty diaper behind at one of the job sites and a dirty diaper at a crime scene meant only one thing to the Thompson Police Department: Peachy was behind the whole thing. With as much diligence as they could muster on a weekend, the cops cornered Peachy at the local pool hall where he was showing his fellow patrons how far he could stick the pool cue in his ear without damaging a single brain cell. He was arrested without incident but had squealed on Tommy and Jake as soon as he was taken into the station. Since they had already released those two and didn’t want to make it appear that they had made a mistake, the cops ignored Peachy’s accusations and charged him for the whole thing.
In Tommy’s opinion, the two of them had every right to be pissed at Peachy and not the other way around. They could have ratted him out but choose not to do so simply because snitching could ruin your reputation fast. Peachy, on the other hand, betrayed whatever trust they had between the three of them. To Tommy, however, all was forgiven. He never liked holding a grudge; it got in the way of executing a successful job.
Jake got more frantic. “When I was running out, I totally got the feeling that they’d be coming after me. I really think Peachy’s gonna come after us.”
“Yeah, probably, after you ran out of the room like a goddamn rat off a sinking ship.”
“Whatever. You always blame this shit on me. I’m sick of it.”
Tommy rolled his eyes. “Jesus Christ. I just don’t want any fucking trouble, that’s all. Sometimes you overreact, okay? That’s it. Doesn’t make you a bad person or anything and it doesn’t mean I don’t take you seriously. Now, is there anything else I need to know? Before Peachy came into the room, did Aaron say anything else?”
“No, he just nodded. He looked like he was into it. Until Peachy walked in. Then there was some weird vibe, I’m telling you.”
Though Tommy was doing his best to restrain himself and act like the calm half of the partnership, he felt himself falling deeper and deeper into a whirlpool of aggravation. “Fuck!” He slammed his fists on the steering wheel. If Peachy was again in Aaron’s good graces, even more so than Tommy and Jake were, then the two of them were fucked pretty good.
Jake got defensive. “Why’d you make me go in there by myself, anyway? If you were so afraid I’d fuck things up, why didn’t you do it your goddamn self, huh?”
“I did the last meeting. If Aaron was normal and let us both in, we wouldn’t have this problem but when we deal with him we have to alternate.” Tommy wasn’t too crazy about Aaron’s eccentricities. He never allowed a meeting with more than one person who didn’t belong to his organization. The fact that Peachy was there in the room with Aaron and Jake also gave Tommy some worry.
Their relationship with Aaron Jeffords was strictly business related. Because of that, there was always the chance that there would be a falling out. No personal attachments meant no assurance that Aaron would think twice before putting a bullet into both of their skulls. Now with Peachy involved, Tommy was worried that everything might turn to shit.
“What’re we gonna do, man? What?” Jake trembled, partly from the cold (the car’s heater hadn’t worked since Tommy got the car ten years ago) and partly from the stress.
“Okay, listen. We’ll stop at a payphone and I’ll call Aaron, try to test the waters, see what his reaction is. I’ll explain that you overreacted and hopefully I’ll be able to smooth things over.”
Jake’s eyes widened. “What good will that do? I told you, it wasn’t an outright threat. It was sneaky the way they looked at each other. He’ll just lie to you, tell you everything’s okay and that he was shocked when I ran out, whatever, but really he’ll just be bullshitting you. Next thing we know, both of us are in the river swimming with the Thompson squid.”
“I’m going to have to take that chance. I’ll make it clear how we feel about Peachy, don’t worry. There’ll be no confusion about that. This way, if he is bullshitting me, he’ll know that we’re fully aware of things and that we’ll be on our toes since we know Peachy’s somewhat involved.”
Tommy slowed the car down easy, not wanting to skid into a telephone pole or one of the many pedestrians on the sidewalk. As he parked the car in front of an alley, he looked to his right to see if he was close enough to the curb. His eyes caught something in the alley.
“Christ almighty, what the hell is that?”
Jake looked over. “What? Where?” He followed Tommy’s finger.
“Looks like a longhead but what the hell is he doing?” Tommy asked, not sure he wanted to know the answer. Ever since the war ended, he was made uneasy by the fact that a small fraction of the troops came back looking like that. Their skulls were vertically elongated, the skin stretched close to its breaking point to where it was translucent and one can see straight to their skull. One of the odd things about the whole situation was that all the longheads ended up moving to Thompson, forming a small ghetto at the south side of town. They took up with desperate prostitutes and had children who came out looking like even more sinister versions of their fathers.
The longhead in the alley was dressed in a cowboy costume and standing on a soapbox. In his arms was a strange contraption that looked like a combination of a manual meat grinder and cappuccino maker. His right hand furiously twisted a lever while his left held it tightly to his chest. Out of the top of the machine came spurting long, curly strips of what looked to Tommy like pasta.
“Tommy?”
“Yeah, Jake?”
“Is that longhead making…pasta?”
“Yeah, Jake, I think so.”
They stared at him for five minutes totally forgetting about Aaron and Peachy. Watching the pasta drop to the snowy ground made Tommy think of footage he once saw from the war of a troop getting disemboweled by a guerrilla fighter who used only a set of sewing needles. The troop’s entrails fell to the ground with the same wet clunk as the pasta.
“Tommy?”
“Yeah, Jake?”
“Can we go to another payphone?”
“Yeah, Jake, I think we can.”
They drove off, Tommy keeping his eyes on the road and Jake keeping his eyes on the alleyway, hoping to God that he would not see that longhead again.
CHAPTER 2
Aaron grinned at Peachy. “What the fuck was that about?”
“What’re looking at me for? I didn’t do anything. The bastard got scared, what’s that gotta do with me? You’re the one who said I could sit in on this one.”
“Yeah, I wanted you to sit in so you can patch things up with those two assholes.”
“So why didn’t you invite both assholes?”
“I didn’t want things to get crowded in here. You know how I feel about that. Things get too crowded, I start to get jumpy.” Aaron took a cigar out of his front pocket and lit it. “Why do you look so bulky?” He pointed at Peachy’s pants.
“Diaper.”
Aaron stifled a laugh. “Oh yeah, I forgot.”
Peachy blushed and had a seat in the chair across from the desk. Motherfucker didn’t forget. He knows I shit my pants. At least I don’t have a squid fetish.. He leaned forward, cupping his hands as if to tell his boss that he was ready to get down to brass tacks. “So, what are we going to do about this?”
He could tell Aaron wasn’t listening. His boss was too busy looking at the cigar smoke, his eyes a heavily sedated green haze of preoccupation. He ignored Peachy’s question and instead asked his own.
“Peachy, do you know why I really invited you to the meeting?”
“No….”
“I had a dream last night.” Aaron got up from his chair and came around to the front of the desk. He leaned on it like he felt a real boss was supposed to do while he looked down at Peachy, his long-time employee. “I had a dream that changed my life. For better or for worse, I don’t know. It was about my stint in the war. I told you about that, right?”
“Yes, you’ve talked about it a little.”
“Well, I probably didn’t tell you the bulk of it for fear of having you think of me as a coward or an asshole or something. Anyway, I had a dream about it again last night. I actually have these dreams quite often, but most of the time half of my body is a squid while the other half is completely covered in sunburn. So yeah, I have these war dreams a lot, you know, in between the ones where I’m screwing Chesty Morgan and that one about taking a nap in a fruit stand but anyway, let me go on.” He puffed at his cigar. “I was in battle, the rest of my fellow troops having gone deep into the shit, fighting their little patriotic asses off while I stood there, watching the sun in the sky as it turned into the face of Barbara Stanwyck. You know Barbara Stanwyck, right? I’m not that old, am I?”
“I don’t think I know her, no.”
“She was an actress from when I was a kid. Beautiful, beautiful woman. I was looking straight at the sun, being blinded by her face but also by the rays of sunlight. I swear I even felt the heat in this dream, like my skin was going to burn off. Then my troops came back, half of them were blown to bits, being brought in on wheelbarrows, donkeys, and I think even an elephant. Their eyes were falling out of their faces and their cheekbones were all busted up. But the ones that weren’t wounded were even more disfigured. They were the longheads. That’s one thing I never told you about my tour of duty. I was there when that shit happened. I’ve felt guilty about that every day since. I should’ve been one of those longheads. I choose not to go in there and all those boys came out looking like….that.” He made a face of disgust.
Peachy’s eyes bugged out of his head in shock. He never gave much attention to what he considered just mutated freaks of war. In fact, he never gave much thought to politics in general and for all he cared, the country could blow itself up along with the rest of the world. But to think his boss was intimately involved; that was incredible. I guess there’s more to Aaron than just money and squid-smelling. Peachy nodded his head and listened as his boss went on.
“And so I realized this morning as I shook myself out of the dream that not a single thing I do can make a difference. Whether I was a longhead or just a short head, nothing really matters, not a goddamn thing. I might as well be a longhead. Get it? Do you get what I’m saying? I was looking at the sun, at Barbara and the men came back. So even in the sunlight, where everything is lit up, illuminated or whatever, I still was blind to the fact that I was pretty much the same thing as them. What I was doing and what they were doing were the same. But still, I still feel that gnawing guilt, you know? The feeling that my life deviated from its predestined path. But now, I don’t know.”
Aaron sucked on his cigar and exhaled. A few puffs of cigar smoke enveloped Peachy’s face and he coughed.
Peachy felt uncomfortable. He knew he had to act sensitively but it was something he wasn’t used to. “I’m…sorry…about everything. But what’s this got to do with anything? I mean, business-wise.”
“What I’m trying to tell you is that whatever you choose to do, it’ll be done. What’s done is finished. That path I’ve always thought was there in front of me, it doesn’t exist. Everything is done, over with. So with those two assholes,” he rubbed his cigar in the squid-shaped ashtray, “you can do what you like.”
Peachy contemplated this. Not many people can say that they have received philosophical lectures from their boss. Still, though, he didn’t feel like it was something he would like to hear on a daily basis. After all, the more time one spends with Aaron Jeffords, the more one becomes used to all of his habits and routines. He couldn’t count the number of times he had to sniff Aaron’s squid collection or ride the albino pony that was kept locked up in a large closet in the office. If it wasn’t for the large sums of cash, Peachy would have left years ago.
He still wasn’t sure though. “Are you serious? I can take those fuckers out?”
“Yes.” Aaron opened his drawer and took out his pony harness. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
With a smile, Peachy got up, adjusted his diaper, and left the room.
CHAPTER 3
A few blocks from where Tommy and Jake were scouting for a new payphone, a man clad in a trench coat, black leather gloves, and a fedora hat stood outside of a go-go bar. He had been standing in the snow for an hour, waiting for Ms. Isabella Martino who was known mostly by her stage name, Sweetie Martini.
Despite the warnings from her coworkers, Isabella left the bar without an escort and started to trot her way to the bus stop. Her car was in the shop and it was only a ten minute bus ride home even with one stop before hers. She couldn’t wait to get home and curl up next to the window with a good book, with complete view of the snow-covered streets. Having worked a five hour shift most of which was spent on her feet, dancing and gyrating, she was more than simply exhausted. Isabella wanted to spend as much time lying down as possible.
Isabella never planned on becoming a stripper but she knew perfectly well that no one does. Little girls don’t dance around in their rooms to bad rock music, pretending to be on stage in front of sweaty old men or obnoxious frat boys. When she was a child, Isabella was like many girls her age; she dreamt of getting married, having a huge wedding, and perhaps pursuing a career in a myriad of fields.
She learned quickly, however, that life doesn’t always work out as planned and sometimes people have to do things that they aren’t proud of simply so they can eat and pay the rent. Her father’s brutal murder at the hands of Terry Silver (war veteran, millionaire, and organized crime boss) left her with little faith and even smaller hopes for herself.
As she was walking past the alleyway next to the club, the man who had patiently waited for her all of that time grabbed her hand. He whispered something into her ear and led her to the alley.
“So you knew my father, then?” She smiled, recognizing the handsome face of the man who wore black gloves.
He answered in a frantic whisper as if it pained him to get the sound out. From inside his jacket he pulled out a straight razor, opening it like he had practiced so many times before, although in those instances he had been nude and standing in front of a full-length mirror.
There was a quick horizontal whoosh of his arm and Isabella’s throat exploded in a fountain of deep red squirting that stained the snow both on the ground and in the air. Crimson snowflakes sparkled like tiny rubies in front of the man who was now breathing heavily and whispering bittersweet verbal abuse.
Isabelle’s body fell to the ground, landing in the soft snow like a stuffed animal on a shag carpet. The man looked down the alleyway and saw that everyone who walked by was distracted with their own lives, be it business or pleasure, and didn’t as much as glance down the alley. Grunting with joy, he turned Isabella on her stomach and ripped her jacket and dress off, revealing her pale, bare back.
He dropped the razor and took out a black permanent magic marker. With delight similar to that of a child in art class, he meticulously sketched a comic strip across the back and upper buttocks of Sweetie Martini. The comic wasn’t an original idea; the man had memorized it from a book he had found, a book he had stolen after he killed its original owner, Terry Silver.
Two strips of five panels in black marker, colored in only by the hues of stripper skin. In this grim adventure, Fauntleroy Le Roux was on the bloody trail of Little Bing Bong, the Apocalypse donkey. Even with assistance from his stalwart side-kick (ex-boxer Mushy Nebuchadnezzer), Le Roux ultimately fails and in the tenth panel, the world is brought to its knees by Little Bing Bong.
The man looked down at his work and was satisfied that it was an exact copy of
the original. He capped the marker and put it back in his jacket pocket. Through the whole ordeal, the man’s fedora hat had stayed on and he could now feel a puddle of sweat forming on the top of his head. He felt like an infant with a warm, soft spot in its skull.
He dragged Isabella against the wall and positioned her so that anyone walking down the alley would have full view of the comic strip. They would therefore be able to admire his artwork not only for its esthetic value but also for its soon-to-be historical significance. He looked at his work once more, memorizing the image, and then ran off with his mouth open, catching snowflakes on his tongue.
CHAPTER 4
“I think we’ll stop here, see if Red Henry is around,” Tommy said, pulling the car over to the right, nabbing a spot right in front of Kreese’s Bar and Packaged Goods. It was a place well-frequented by people just like Tommy and Jake, citizens of Thompson who wanted to keep a low profile but still be able to get what they needed when they needed it.
Red Henry Hooper was their firearm supplier. If there was a clean gun somewhere, Red Henry could get it, though often it was attached to a ridiculous price. Still, Tommy knew he could rely on him to keep quiet even under the most pressing of circumstances. Not to mention the fact that Red Henry had helped save Tommy from an unfortunate fate at the hands of some very angry haberdashers.
“Do you even know if he’s there?” Jake asked, “Why don’t we just stop at the barn, pick up a couple of shotguns.”
Tommy shook his head. “That’s in the complete opposite direction and Peachy knows about that place anyway. If you’re so worried about him, the barn should be the last place you wanna go. I want to get a drink and use the phone. I’d rather sort this shit out with Aaron before running ourselves out of town for no good goddamn reason.”
“Okay, let’s go then.” Jake opened the car door even before the car stopped moving. He jumped out onto the sidewalk, put his hands in his coat pockets, and waited at the doorway of Kreese’s, trying to stay out of the way of the barrage of snow flurries that twirled over the sidewalk. Once Tommy was out, Jake walked into bar.