by Jordan Krall
As soon as he entered, they smelt the squid.
There weren’t many places in Thompson where you could get a one-dollar shot of whiskey with a squid chaser. Bits of the marine animal were blended together with egg yolk and extra virgin olive oil and then stuck in the freezer to make it ice cold. Among the regular patrons of the bar, it made a delicious first drink and an even more delicious last drink of the evening.
Those who have had the drink had often likened the experience to being beaten about the abdomen with a sac of warm jello. One patron even went so far as to call it “the most sexually arousing liquid seafood in the world” immediately before choking on an unblended piece of squid. That quote was now carved into a piece of wood and hung over the bar.
Tommy made eye contact with Kevin, the bartender, and mouthed the words “Is Henry around?” Kevin pointed to the back room. As Tommy and Jake made their way, they saw an amorous couple in one of the booths, sharing a huge pile of bacon cheese-fries. The man looked up at Jake and coughed. “You lookin’ at somethin’, son?” He took his hand off of his date’s ample breast, picked up a handful of bacon cheese-fries, and slowly covered the woman’s face with it, as if the grease was soap and the fries were a washcloth. The woman had no reaction.
Jake looked at his partner but Tommy just shook his head and pushed him into the backroom. “Just ignore that shit,” Tommy said as they made their way into Red Henry’s back office.
“Well, goddamn, if it isn’t Tom Pingpong and Jake Waite. To what do I owe the pleasure?” Red Henry talked stern and fast. His mouth seemed to move two steps ahead of his words.
“What’s happening, Red? How’s things?” Tommy extended his hand and Henry took it, providing a short but vigorous handshake. He gave the same to Jake.
“Can’t complain. Just came back from visiting my P.O. who is, I might add, a complete asshole. Tells me I gotta stop hanging out Kreese’s. Part of my parole, he says. Well, fuck him, that’s why I say. A man’s gotta eat, you know? A man’s gotta pay rent. What’s he think I should do? Flip burgers? Man’s a fucking idiot, thinks I’m gonna live a straight life so I could rot in some halfway house.”
Tommy nodded his head in agreement. “I hear you, man. There’s no disagreement there. Speaking of which, I was looking to buy a piece, nothing big, just something to get the job done.”
“Close range?”
“Nah, I’m not expecting it to get that intense. I don’t have much cash on me right now.”
“Well, how much do you have?”
“Only two hundred and change.”
Red Henry scratched his face. “Sorry to break this to you, buddy, but I’m almost completely sold out. Slim pickings, know what I mean? I only got a 9mm, about fifteen years old. Nothing fancy or anything but it’ll do the job at close range.”
“Last time we talked you had a pretty big inventory. You were practically begging me to help you unload it. What happened?”
“Ah, you know I keep my mouth shut about that sort of thing. That’s why I can stay in business, people know I’m not gonna name names.”
Tommy gave an open mouth smile. “You seriously going to pull that shit on us?”
The three of them laughed and Red Henry sat down at his well-worn, second-hand mahogany desk. “Okay, to tell you the truth, I don’t even know any names. I was honest to god cleaned out by a bunch of longheads. In a little over two weeks I must have sold thirty or forty pieces, all to those longhead bastards. The one I’m sellin’ you is just an old spare I keep around for myself.”
“That’s fucked up. You think anything’s going down?”
“Not that I heard. And usually I’m first or second on the grapevine so I wouldn’t worry about it. You know those guys are just paranoid war vets, anyway. Probably scared as all hell and hiding in their bunkers, waiting for the end of the world.”
Jake tapped in fingers impatiently. “So, let’s talk price.”
“Well, you said you have two-hundred. That’s a fair price.”
Jake shook his head. “Oh, no, that’s before we knew we’d be getting a piece of shit.” He turned to Tommy. “What do you think?”
“Jake’s right, Henry. I’ll give you one-twenty-five.”
The three sat in silence for a minute while Hooper chewed on his fingernail. Behind him was a window frosted with snowflakes. Still, Tommy could see clear enough to notice someone looking in from the building next door. It was a longhead, naked and standing on a velvet couch. He was holding a candle which he moved slowly from right to left, tipping it over just enough to let a few globs of wax falls to the floor with each movement.
“Jesus Christ.” Tommy got closer to the window and Jake then followed. Red Henry turned around in his chair.
“Well, would you look at that? Now he’s got a candle.” Red Henry chuckled.
Jake looked wide-eyed at him. “What do you mean? What did he have before?”
“A snapping turtle. Thing must have been a foot long. That guy was just holding it by its feet, dangling it over the floor. Felt bad for the turtle but I wasn’t just about to go knock on the door of some longhead. Especially not right after I sold him a gun.”
Tommy squinted. “What the hell is he looking at? Us? What the hell is wrong with him?”
“Who the fuck knows?” Red Henry leaned forward in his chair and opened up the desk drawer and pulled out a gun that looked as if it was dragged under a truck for at least three blocks.
“That’s an ugly piece of shit, you got there, Henry,” Tommy said.
“Take it or leave, Pingpong.” He put the gun on the desk and waited as Tommy took out the cash from his pocket.
After the quick transaction, Red Henry got up from the chair and ushered the two out of the room. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I gotta go pick Susie up. She’s been out there all night and Christ knows she probably spent most of the money already. Boys, if you follow one piece of advice, let it be this: never marry a whore.”
Tommy gave a wry smile but Jake didn’t have a reaction. His mind was on Peachy.
As the door was shut behind them, they walked toward the bar to get a drink. Before they could reach it, however, a fat man in a raincoat blocked their path.
Tommy let loose the fakest smile he could muster. “Detective McMadigan, how nice to see you.”
“I’ll be a son of a bitch. You drink here, too? I had no idea.” The cop laughed and the sound that escaped his throat was filled with cigar-phlegm. He was a round man with a face full of dull, gray stubble. His shirt was stained with red wine and yellow spittle, combining to form tentacled shapes over his overwhelming gut.
“What can I do for you, Detective? You see, my friend and I here are in a rush to catch a movie.” Tommy, without realizing it until it was too late, felt his jacket pocket where he had put the gun. He was relieved to see that the detective didn’t notice. He was too busy eyeing up Jake.
“Who’s this goofy looking bastard?”
Jake started to sweat. He had heard about Detective McMadigan but never had the displeasure of running into him. From the stories that Tommy and others have told him, the cop was partial to a whole slew of odd behaviors. On any given day he may show up an ex-con’s apartment and force him to dig out his stash of girly magazines or ask the guy’s wife to strip while he played his harmonica. She’d then be subject to a wide range of mental abuse mostly involving being nude and forced to recite old Honeymooners routines. It’s well known even in the police department that Detective Shawn McMadigan is behind the prostitution ring that moved in downtown. It catered to those who liked to live on the wild side of Thompson. McMadigan made sure to provide customers with anything they desired be it born-again housewives addicted to prescription pain medication or bald hookers with dwarfism.
“This is Jake Waite.” Tommy turned to his partner. “Jake, this is Detective McMadigan. I’m sure I’ve mentioned him a time or two.”
McMadigan put his hand out and smiled, yellowish saliva
sliding off his dull teeth. Jake reluctantly shook the cop’s hand and was pulled forward. The detective put his mouth close to Jake’s ear. “If you stick with this guy, then I know you’re looking for trouble, my kind of trouble. If I gotta teach you, that’s fine by me. Ever get gang-raped by a group of angry cops?”
The twinkle in the cop’s eye was disturbingly pornographic in nature. Jake looked into the speckled orbs and saw himself being torn apart by sheer force of McMadigan’s cannibalistic penis. He saw its teeth, its gaping mouth, and its mucus-filled nose. It was joined by three others, all belonging to members of the Thompson Police Department, their nightsticks being no match for their throbbing rods of power-drunk retribution.
Jake pulled away and headed for the door. The detective’s face turned angry and shouted. “Hey, I’m not done with you.”
Digging into his pocket, Tommy took out a twenty-dollar bill and discretely handed it to McMadigan. “We really have to catch that movie, detective.” He rushed out the door before the cop could do anything, though he knew that with a greased palm, Detective McMadigan would probably save his abuse for another day.
Once outside, Tommy ran to catch up to Jake who was walking down the sidewalk, away from their car.
“Christ, Tommy, that guy is a psycho.”
“Yes, I know. I told you about him. What the hell did he say to you?”
“What did he say to me? He fucking threatened me with a gang-rape! Thanks a lot for giving him my name, too, by the way. Real fucking smooth.”
“Shit, he’s a cop, man. Getting your name would be easy as fucking pie for him, anyway,” Tommy stopped walking. “Shit!”
Jake stopped two footsteps ahead and turned. “What?”
“Forgot to use the phone.”
As they both stood there cursing, Tommy felt a tug at his coat. He looked down to see a bald dwarf in a blue velvet coat. “Hey, baby, wanna date?” Even without a hair on her head, the woman was quite attractive with Russian facial features and a pierced nose that added a touch of feminine brutality to her allure.
“Uh, no thanks,” Tommy said, not finding the sight of the woman even the least bit surprising. Where there was Detective McMadigan, there was a dwarf hooker. From Tommy’s experience, that’s just the way it was.
“How about you, honey, thirty bucks, half and half.” She moved over to Jake and sucked on her finger. Her crude gesturing made Tommy so queasy that he knew that he’d vomit if she touched him.
“Maybe some other time,” Jake said. He made eye contact with his partner and shook his head slightly to the left. The woman saw this and stuck up her middle finger.
“Fuck you both, then.” She walked away and moved on down the sidewalk where she was accosted by a longhead dressed in an old moth-bitten business suit. The longhead looked at the dwarf, looked up at the sky, and then slapped the woman in the face before running off past Tommy and Jake, almost knocking them down.
“Jesus Christ, man. Tonight’s just getting worse and worse.” Jake took out a pack of cigarettes. “Hey, you know who McMadigan reminds me of?”
“Who?”
“Orson Welles in that movie Touch of Evil. Ever see it?”
“No, I don’t think I have. Any good?”
“Yeah, it’s pretty fucking good.” He took a drag and blew the smoke upwards, looking at the stars in the process. “Okay, well I’m still worried about Peachy. Do we go to a phone and call Aaron like you wanted? I think we should just get the hell out of town for a few days. Let things simmer down.”
“Despite the fact that I think you’re overreacting just a little bit, I guess I agree with you. Let’s go back to the car and get going.”
They walked back the other way, toward their car, passing another alleyway. If they had looked down that alley, they would have seen the longhead who had slapped the dwarf. They would have witnessed him sitting on a large snapping turtle and using one hand to shave his head with an electric razor, his hair falling off of his elongated skull like burnt wheat. If Tommy and Jake had looked down that alley, they also would have noticed that the longhead’s body was slowly shrinking to about the size of a dwarf.
Chapter 5
Peachy drove down Main Street blasting the radio. His head bopped to “She’s Lost Control” as he nearly skidded into a group of teens who ran across the street throwing snowballs at each other. He muttered a curse and then looked past the kids and saw Tommy and Jake getting into their car.
“Oh yes, you cocksuckers, I got you now.” He gripped the steering wheel and then felt his stomach bubble. His bowels exploded, letting loose a storm of diarrhea into his diaper. The deluge was far more than the diaper could hold, so much of it leaked out down his legs. “Oh, Christ, not now!”
He looked down at his lap to make sure he wasn’t leaking shit onto his car seats and didn’t see the ice patch that was clearly evident on the road. The car slid horizontally into a parked car that had been parked behind Tommy and Jake’s.
A fat man came running out of the bar. “Son of a bitch! Get the fuck out of the car!”
Peachy opened his glove compartment and pulled out his handgun that had been carved from an elephant’s tusk. It had been a gift from his great uncle who was a world traveler and was known within the underworld as Bootlicker Benny in reference to his tendency to steal the shoes of his rivals’ wives. His uncle had never endorsed the nickname but he had never rejected it either.
Peachy gripped the gun in his hand but hid it in his sleeve as he stepped out of the car.
“I’m so, so sorry,” Peachy said, smiling and trying to sound like a remorseful driver. Then he saw who the fat man was and the smile quickly dropped into a frown.
Detective McMadigan smiled sinisterly. “Well, if it isn’t Mr. Keen. You’re in a world of shit, now, aren’t you?” He put his hands on his hips and nodded his head. Oh, I’m gonna have a whole lot of fun with this motherfucker, he thought, and after I’m done with him, he’s gonna need more than a diaper.
With one slick motion, Peachy swung his arm up and unloaded three shots, hitting McMadigan twice in the torso and once in the neck. The detective fell backward, barely able to register what was happening. His last living thoughts were of an elephant with diarrhea spearing him repeatedly with its tusks.
Screams echoed through the streets as the terrified pedestrians ran to take cover. Peachy ignored them and went back into his car. His mood quickly darkened as he realized that more shit had leaked out of his diaper and had formed a trail along the street.
After getting back into the car and pulling away, he ejected the Joy Division cassette from the car stereo and continued the ride in silence. In honor of his great uncle, he kissed his warm, ivory gun and pretended it was a boot.
Chapter 6
“Hey, Tommy, how about we stop home?” After being threatened with a law enforcement gang-bang, he was less worried about Peachy.
“First you want to get out of town, then you want to go home? If Aaron’s got someone after us, first place they’ll look is our place. Then the barn. We’ll stick with the original plan.”
Jake leaned back. “Okay.”
The car swerved to the right and Jake grabbed the dashboard. Tommy groaned and slammed on the brakes. “Would you look at that shit?”
Walking across the street, through the slush and ice was a longhead.
“It’s another longhead. Yeah, he’s walking his dog. So what?”
Tommy pointed. “That’s not a dog.”
The longhead was walking a snapping turtle on a leash. The animal was wearing snow boots that were obviously made for an infant. While Tommy and Jake watched, the longhead stopped at the sidewalk, unzipped his pants, and proceeded to urinate on a parking meter. The passersby ignored him as they do whenever they see a longhead. To acknowledge them was to bring thoughts of war, guilt, and consequences.
“Just drive, man, just drive,” Jake said, making himself look away from the scene. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the snapp
ing turtle take a step into the stream of piss. It splashed off of its shell in large droplets that mixed with the downpour of snowflakes.
Tommy pulled away and went one more block. He slowed down in front of the movie theatre. “I have an idea.” He pulled into a side street and parked the car. “Let’s see a movie.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Nah, listen, we’ll hold up here, keep our eyes on the door, and see if anyone’s following us. What’s a better hide-out than a big, dark room?”
“I don’t know. A big, dark room out of town, maybe?”
“I’m just saying, if we go out of town and Aaron gets wind of it, it’ll look like we got something to hide which isn’t the case, am I right? So, this way we’re not doing anything but watching a movie.”
Jake nodded his head reluctantly. “Okay, fine.”
They walked around the corner and up to the ticket booth. Tommy looked up at the marquee. “Hey, which movie do you want to see?”
“What’s the difference? We’re not actually here to see a movie.”
“Oh, whatever, just pick one.”
Glancing up at the titles, Jake was surprised to see that they were all old movies. “Let’s see…Ball of Fire, um, Remember the Night… Flesh and Fantasy….Never heard of these.” He directed his statement toward the ticket seller.
“We’re running a marathon. All Barbara Stanwyck pictures. We’re also showing Clash by Night.” The ticket seller was a lanky bearded teenager who, Jake thought, looked happier than he should’ve been to be working on such a cold night in an unheated ticket booth.
Tommy took out the remaining money from his pocket. “Two tickets, then.”
“For an extra five dollars, would you each like a Barbara Stanwyck Halloween mask?”
Jake made a face. “Are you serious?”