Miss Massacre's Guide to Murder and Vengeance

by Michael Paul Gonzalez

  The first building on the row has no sign, but I recognize the graffiti. Our Lady of the Punctured Vein. One of Dr. Robert’s more famous cathedrals. This is not the place I’m looking for. Yet. I might return here, depending how my leads pan out. Or if my supplies get too low. There are guards posted at a small chainlink two-stage entrance. Junkies go through the first gate, wait in the holding area, show their money and try to get in. Nobody goes back out the same way they came in. You either get into the party or you get killed. The place I’m looking for isn’t quite as welcoming as Our Lady of the Punctured Vein.

  Three more churches and then I hit a left, down an alley where the buildings are tall enough to block out what’s left of the grey daylight. The drawback here is that I can’t back out of the alley quickly once I get in. It’s a straight drive through, which is how the architects planned it.

  As I approach the gates, something stirs in me. Not fear. Hope? No. I don’t know the right word to associate with it. Conflict. Part of me says get in, get out, get on with it. The other part wants to see how much medicine I can score. The only thing keeping me focused is confrontation.

  The idea of talking to Shakes was starting to hold something for me. Some real promise. Discovery that I could remember. Aside from talking to Joe at the surplus store, I haven’t had a real conversation with anyone. Not since the “accident”. I’ll try to savor this as much as I can.

  The approach is ominous, up a ramp and into a stockyard where I can’t see any people. The double row of spike strips on the ground ahead lets me know where to stop my van.

  At the gate, I’m greeted with a 9mm barrel in my face and a guy at the back of my van trying to kick the door in. I lift my palms up and point down, mouthing the phrase “no legs” as best I can.

  This is the first time the gunman gets a good look at me, and I see him waver. I press the unlock button and the rear door flies open. There’s cold steel pressing against the back of my head and I freeze. I feel my toes curl, that’s how good the phantom pain brought by the fear is.

  “The fuck happened to you?” the thug asks.

  I can’t speak. Not yet. I point to a box on the front seat. Shotgun shells. The thug picks one up and looks at it. I motion to him impatiently to give it to me. After a brief look around to make sure I’m not packing a sawed-off, he relaxes.

  “Not gonna do you much good without a fucking gun.” He places the shells in my lap, taking careful time to brush his palm across my thigh. Primates don’t get off this much on tactile sensation. Why must we touch to aid our understanding?

  I ignore him and dig a key into the top of the shell and pour three ball bearings into my hand. I haven’t been shot yet, so they’re interested. I dig my finger in again and pull out some wadding, followed by some tiny blue pills.

  The thug snatches it from my hand. He’s about to pop one of them when I lay a hand on his wrist and point to the top of the pill. There’s an inscription there, the two faces of Janus, with a scripted DRF underneath.

  The thug catches his breath. I can see the rusty wheels in his head sparking into action. Why would such a powerful man use me as a courier? How could a lady with no legs gain access to a top-level guy like the Doctor?

  I tap my wrist. Shakes, I say. Which actually comes out sounding like: “Shhaykssss.”

  I see the thug outside stifle a laugh. I hope I only have to say it once. The inside man gets the idea. The lady is here on business from Fortescu. She needs to see Shakes. Nobody questions the word of God. The thugs clear the van in a matter of seconds. The gate starts to crank open. I’m putting the car into drive when one of them taps on the window. He motions with his gun for me to lower it.

  “What happened to your legs?”

  I tap my wrist again.

  “Gate takes forty seconds to open. Come on, tell me a story. How’d you get the stumps?”

  I think about it. I could mime an explosion with my hands. Or a hacksaw. This guy doesn’t need to know my story. I say one word, the easiest one for me to form, and what my scrambled brain thinks is closest to the truth. “Bob,” I tell him.

  He, of course, misunderstands.

  “God? Damn, God must hate you.” The thugs rip into howls of laughter and a brief argument over whether I said “Bob”, “Bomb”, “God” or “Gun”. Then one of them gets a nasally whine and starts slurring, saying “Shhaaayyykks, Shaaaykks” over and over to the delight of his Cro-Magnon friend.

  I focus on the door. It really is slow. Plenty of time for thugs to fill an uninvited car with bullets. The drug cults can’t be too careful. Other churches stick to their territory, but every once in a while, there are ambitious upstarts and cops who don’t know well enough to ignore the laws.

  Now the thug has added a limp to his performance, and he’s drooling onto the ground and shaking his head like a bulldog, going “Shaaayyks, Shaaayks.”

  These two guys. I want to amend the list. I wish I was using some kind of bomb on Shakes. Could take the whole church down. But that would bring the worst kind of heat. Cops will hunt you down if you hurt one of their own, but for the most part, they’re held back by the law, as much as they care about it. You piss off a criminal family and you’ll be lucky to see another day, or even an hour, depending on the boss. And I know the deacons at the cults, the cardinals, those guys make an art of holding a grudge.

  So I have to settle for hoping someone else does these guys in. They’re still out there, laughing and joking. I hear one of them, the guy who came in, talking about me. Something about feeling my stump.

  “I got a stump for her,” the other says.

  Maybe I can hit them with my van on the way out. They’re lost in a reverie of foul jokes. This is how they would talk about anybody. I shouldn’t be so offended. Am I not getting fair and equal treatment here?

  The gate is open. I think about it a second longer. I start to roll forward and then stop, motioning the two thugs over. They look up at me, waiting for some honest effort on my part to make them laugh.

  “Prrsnnt,” I say.

  “Present?” one thug asks. They smile.

  I reach into the shotgun shell and give them each two pills. Candy-colored and promising an escape to the nether reaches of their psyches.

  “Frr brrk timmme,” I tell them.

  “Holy shit! Cross-top DXT! I think it’s break time right now,” the thigh-grabber shouts. They share a laugh.

  I pull into the warehouse, hoping that they don’t pop the pills until long after I’m gone. Sure, it’s just rat poison, and not nearly enough to kill them. But a sick guard can still alert other people.

  I make a note to thank Joe for his incredible foresight. He helped me plan this one, all the way down to hand-carving the pills to look like street goods. It helps that these two at the gates are obviously only employed to feed their habits. They’re strung out and desperate for any kind of fix. They have no more perception of small detail. A true narcotics connoisseur would have spotted these pills as fakes a mile away.

  The van’s engine grows to a dull roar in the echo chamber of the deserted warehouse. The two men at the door have faded into shadows, silhouettes of demons dancing with pills.

  I find a parking spot among a heap of trash bags about fifty feet from the door. I spend a minute or so strapping on my legs, pausing to run my hand over my leg where the goon’s hand had been.

  That was the most contact I’ve had with a man since I became less than whole. I strap the legs on extra tight, the tiny pain driving away the little voices in my head.

  You liked it didn’t you?

  Shut up.

  Beggars can’t be choosers.

  I am not—

  You could have killed that guy. But you didn’t, because secretly… Secretly nothing.

  I pick up two crutches, the kind that slip over my forearms, and hook them on. Completely unnecessary, just a bit of camouflage. I’m out of the van, scuffing across the door, running my mental checklist, remembering my too
ls: poison pills, disguised as drugs, should get me through the door. Two knives strapped to my forearms, should get through a search if they let me lean on my crutches. And Joe’s new toy, should give me plenty of enjoyment when I cut Shakes to ribbons.

  Maybe you can get Shakes to cop a feel too. Hell, if he’s high enough, he might try to steal third base…

  I shut the voices down when I look down the hallway and see what’s waiting for me. Three hundred pounds of bald, bad attitude in filthy clothes, standing in front of a rusting metal spiral staircase. I shake my head and begin my hobble down the hall.

  I didn’t like the touch. It made me sick. I didn’t like it.

  That much.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The inside of the church is far from immaculate. It’s overrun with rust, broken bottles, broken bodies, the reek of the homeless and the strung out mingling with the smell of rotten food and soiled mattresses. What used to be offices on the side of the halls are just filthy pits now, bony bodies piled and slumped on the walls, heads twitching, eyes darting, overworked synapses and neurons firing and discharging. It should be nicer in Shakes’s room. Have to go through Hell to get to Heaven, right?

  The junkies on the floor are too burned out or high to take much note of my passing. Those that do see me freak out. It’s either my face or the legs, I can’t tell, but the sight of me is sending them on a bad trip.

  I get to the end of the aisle, and the big bald guy is still waiting for me. He’s sweating, his shirt damp and looking like a map of a forest. Here are the green hills of his stomach. Further north, you can see the great lakes during flood season. They’re spreading slowly. There’s just my angry exhalations, and the echoes of his breathing down the corridor. He’s not even really looking at me. He motions me up the stairs after giving me the once over. Not an elevator in the whole place. Great.

  I don’t ask for sympathy for my condition, but every once in a while it’s nice to have the perks, if you can call an elevator a perk. I’ve got to wind my way up a circular staircase that’s falling apart in some places, each step only about a foot and a half wide. No room to swing my legs up sideways, and I don’t trust the siderails enough to climb by hand.

  Puppy eyes do nothing to the man mountain. Even if the blob did offer me a piggy back, the stairs probably wouldn’t take our combined weight. I’m not even sure they’ll take mine.

  Each six-inch rise feels like a small mountain. I can hear the goon at the foot of the stairs breathing through his nose. He reminds me of Frances. Frances would have volunteered to carry me. Each move on my part sends the whole staircase wobbling. It’s making little screeching noises, like an old backyard swingset. I can hear the support pipes below as they pop and crumble away. Shakes, thy church doth not tithe enough. Charge more for your shit, fix this place up. These are things I will not be saying to Shakes.

  Halfway up, I catch a lucky break. Literally. The staircase has been bisected, replaced with a poorly welded ladder. I can climb the rest of the way. A good way to prime my arms for making the kill. But the dark cloud to my silver lining is – how am I going to get back down after I pull this off?

  I’m greeted at the top of the stairs by a black, congealing stain on the floor that I hope is grease. I have no choice but to slide through it. My leg brace snags on the ledge, pulling it out of alignment, but I’m up. I roll onto my back for a moment to catch my breath.

  I feel hot breath on my face and I turn to see a face that looks like a city roadmap, leathery brown crisscrossed with deep wrinkles and puffy scars.

  “Shit,” he says.

  I want to tell him I was about to say the same thing. He just stares, not offering to help me up. Even as I lift my torso slightly, he stays there. If I try to sit up from here, my face is going to head right for his. Don’t want that.

  I spin. He spins with me. I sigh and try rolling back the other way. He scurries alongside. I take the direct route and sit up. My face is about an inch from his before his breath beats me back down. I don’t want to speak to this guy. Mostly because opening my mouth would let more of his smell in. I can feel the warmth of his crotch as he crouches lower.

  He laughs. Would it alert anyone up here if I drove my thumb into this guy’s throat? Not that it would help, since he’s got a collar on. Odd fashion accessory. It takes out my first option. We’ve still got eyes, ears, and nose. Let’s see what happens.

  I roll again, just to move away from the edge. He climbs onto me. Little gobbets of phlegm patter my cheek. He doesn’t seem like he’s getting anything out of this. More like he’s a big, overly friendly dog that wants to say hello. His pants are warm and wet. He leans in close to sniff me.

  A three count. Just like shooting. Prep your weapon. Exhale slowly. Find your target: The nose.

  Three.

  Two.

  One.

  I swallow and lunge forward, biting down as hard as I can on the front of his nose. Just a quick snap. Holding on would make him hit me. A fast bite startles. It makes him protect himself, draw back. If I had legs, this would be the part where I kick him hard in the gut and then pounce on his skull. Instead I use my arms to crawl back from him to get a better look.

  He cowers on a pile of dirty mattresses underneath a shattered window. His eyes water, burning with rage. His nose bleeds from three little moon-shaped cuts. I did good work. He lunges. Three inches from me, he comes to a dead stop and falls to the floor.

  When he gets up again, gasping for breath and screaming in anger, I see the collar has a chain attached to it, leading to a bracket in the wall.

  “Shut up! Shutshutquiet!” There’s a voice I recognize.

  The little mongrel falls silent at the sound of it. I’ve managed to use the wall to pull myself back to my feet. A skinny man leans against the wall, almost indiscernible in the jumble of loose pipes and boards piled there. I hope he doesn’t recognize me. My pants are draping as they should. I don’t think he saw me stand up, so as far as he knows, I’m a normal girl with a limp.

  “Pardon my dogdog. Who—who the fuck are—are you? Are.”

  I remain silent and stare at Shakes. This won’t be a short conversation. We’ve got enough speech impediment stored up between us to last the rest of the year. I throw one of the hollowed-out shells at him. This one is special, painted sky blue with the good Doctor’s logo stamped on the side. He pries the top and pours out three pills and a typed note. His eyes go wide.

  “No I din’t. Nonono. Supposed to befreefreefree…”

  Now he’s laughing. The mongrel by the wall starts to join in, which earns him a kick in the head. Shakes reads the note again. He turns to get it into better light. He barks a few more quick laughs and places the note in his pocket. He motions for me to follow him as he walks away.

  It’s when he’s not standing still or leaning against something that his namesake becomes apparent. He moves like he’s hooked up to a stuttering cattle prod. Couple that with the drugs that he pours into his system, and he’s just twitching his way happily toward oblivion.

  I follow him through a series of rafters and catwalks, over the open production floor of his factory, where a large stained glass window hangs. Every drug cult has one. A way to identify themselves. It’s usually a reproduction of what they put on their pills, something that’s easy for spray painters to tag on buildings, a little logo they can hide on their “remanufactured” vehicles.

  Shakes’s design is sort of like a block-letter Japanese symbol that’s fallen on its face. It’s blue on an orange background. A small operation. Scared to stand near the big dogs, willing to cater to clientele too poor to frequent quality establishments. It’s a living, right?

  Shakes takes me to what used to be the floor manager’s office when this was still a factory. It’s a small, glass-walled booth high above the production floor. You can see the chem labs down on one side and the sparks from the auto grinders on the other.

  “You like—like the décor?”

&nbs
p; I make a noise from my throat, something between indifference and slight interest.

  “It’s all me. Growing—I’m growing this bitch, you know? S’why you’re here, yeah? I’m—yeah—getting’ noticed up top? He’ll take me back if you say…if you say, yeah, you tell Doc what you saw. Tell him I’m a hard worker—hardhard. But I’m not…” Shakes’s eyes sweep around the room, “…stupid,” he finishes.

  The walls are coated with a parade of photographs. One section dedicated to newspaper ads for his cover businesses, the used-car dealers, the massage shops, the phone-sex lines.

  Another wall is covered with a series of crayon drawings on construction paper. Little squiggly representations of pills and needles, arranged like math. Blue pill + (Vicodin) + Orange/Red (DXT) = 3 smiley faces. That sort of thing. A rating system, a how-to series of flash cards.

  Behind his desk is the shrine. Victims and headlines. He’s got crime-scene shots. Autopsy photos. Newspaper clippings of stories regarding the growing drug problem, mostly from his turf. There are obituaries, other stories detailing the short weeks before someone’s death, when they entered witness protection or took out a restraining order.

  There’s one photo I can’t take my eyes from, hard as I try. A woman standing in a doorway, her face in her hands, hair falling forward. A smile playing between her fingers. Did I really look so sexy?

  Memories spark in the back of my brain, too quickly to stop or really pay attention. I get the snippets. I see Shakes in a white room, sitting near me. But it wasn’t that. Earlier than that, the night the guy got burned in the alley, I was supposed to die too. Cops showed up. Earlier than that. Before I took a bottle to my jaw. Someone pointed me out. I was at that bar on private business, but someone pointed at me…