Karaoke Rap

by Laurence Gough

  The thing was trying to make itself presentable. Pathetic. Steve thought about what Jake might do to him if the beast bloodied his car. Painful things, for sure.

  But Jake had all those Dobermans out there in the yard, so maybe he liked dogs. But anyway, there was no way he was gonna smoke this particular dog, not unless he got a direct order. He went over, bent and caught up the cobalt-blue anodized aluminum tag on the dog’s spiked collar.

  MARILYN. No way. He unscrewed the noise-suppressor and slid it into his pants pocket. Jake’s supply of suppressors came to him via UPS or one of the other carriers, from a small factory in Texas. Suppressors were only good for a few shots, but could easily be repaired by packing them with steel wool or fibreglass. On the other hand, pistols lasted forever but were cheap and easily traced. Steve tossed his gun into the harbour. He unfastened the dog collar and threw it away, took a moment to look around. The coast was clear. It was just him, the dog, and the bullet-riddled corpse. He picked up the spent shell casings and flipped them underhand into the ocean. He rolled the corpse over to the edge of the seawall and gave it a good push.

  Too late, he noticed that the tide was out. The dead man hit the mud and lay there, face down. He’d left a smear of blood on the pavement, but what was Steve supposed to do, call Molly Maids? He slapped his thigh. “C’mere, Butch.”

  The dog stuck close as his new master made his way back to the Bentley. Steve opened the front passenger-side door. He laid his sports jacket down on the floor, pointed at the car and told the Rott to climb aboard. The dog jumped in, curled up on the jacket. Smart. Agile, too, when you considered its bulk. Steve got in, shut the door. He rested the heels of his shoes lightly on the dog. Butch stared up at him. The look in the Rott’s eyes was warm and affectionate, tinged with doleful. Steve reached down between his legs and massaged a neck thick and unyielding as a tree.

  Marty shifted into drive and pulled away from the curb.

  Jake said, “I never seen nothin’ like it.”

  “Und me neither!” said Axel.

  “In all my days,” said Jake.

  “Six shots,” said Marty. “Pop pop pop.”

  “That’s only three,” said Axel. “Drei.” He held up three fingers.

  Marty glanced at Steve. “Was the guy so dumb he had to be shot to death to get your point? You wanted to pass judgement on him, why didn’t you kick him in the nuts like any normal person would?”

  “Good question,” said Jake. He viciously sucked at something caught between his teeth. He spat. A soggy chunk of cigar smacked into the back of Steve’s neck, and crept slowly down inside his shirt. “What’s wit da fuckin’ mutt?”

  “She’s a stray,” said Steve.

  Axel said, “You could buy a saddle, und charge for horsy rides.”

  Steve said, “Her name’s Butch.”

  “You don’t fuckin’ clean up afta’ her, her name’s gonna be Butchered.” Jake spat again. Steve flinched, but it was a clean miss. Either Jake’s aim had deteriorated, or his mood had improved.

  Jake lit a fresh cigar as Marty made a left onto Pipeline Road. Twenty years ago, Jake and Marty’s father had buried a guy not far from the limestone footpath that circled Beaver Lake. Marty had been a tiny little kid, back then. The stiff had never been found. Not that it mattered. Jake was and always had been and always would be a que sera kind of guy.

  But that wasn’t to say he was reckless.

  Decisive, yes. Ruthless, no doubt about it. Willing to take chances, for sure. But at the same time, he was extraordinarily vigilant, and cautious.

  In 1927 Jake had ridden a train to New York in search of Prohibition. He’d partied it up into the thirties, made enough dough to go home a rich man. Back in Canada, N.Y. accent intact, he’d dived headfirst into prostitution, gambling, drugs. Now, in the twilight of what was by any standard a fabulous career, he was starting to wind down a little. With Marty and Steve and Axel for company, he kept in shape by paddling around the indoor pool for an hour or so every day, and by drinking moderately and eating wisely and not to excess, by restricting himself to a dozen cigars a week, and by getting laid every third Saturday morning by an expensive young woman with a clean bill of health. He still enjoyed these little dalliances, mostly.

  He continued to dabble in the vices, mostly because they were lucrative, but also because he liked to maintain a certain presence in the industry, keep an iron in the fire. But much of his time and energy was spent flipping real estate or playing the stock market. He liked the market because it was riskier than the rackets.

  Marty’s father, who’d logged a couple of hundred thousand miles on the odometers of a fleet of Jake’s automobiles, and helped Jake bury more guys than both of them together could count on all their fingers and toes combined, was dead of natural causes. Jake missed him. He’d been a good man, steady and dependable. Marty had all the right genes. The kid had no family, except for Jake.

  In fact neither of them had anybody, except for each other. But now, suddenly, there was someone new and interesting in Jake’s life. Butch. He called softly to the dog, and it scrambled up on Steve’s lap. Jake gently scratched the Rott behind its floppy car.

  Steve said, “Easy, now.” Butch growled low in her throat. She turned her massive head and curled her upper lip, warned Steve off with a razor-sharp incisor. He fell back as if he’d been shot.

  Jake said, “Thassa girl!”

  The Rott surged over the seat towards him, licked skin from his face with a tongue like a rasp. The animal’s breath might have come straight from a forge. It tried, all hundred and forty pounds of it, to crawl into Jake’s lap.

  Axel’s eyes, as he watched the exchange, were cold and bright. Brighter by far than Axel.

  Jake tried to push the creature away. Butch wriggled in a paroxysm of pleasure. She purred raggedly, as if she mistakenly believed she was a great big pussycat.

  Jake said, “I t’ink Butch likes me.” His voice was bleak. The words rattled off his teeth like stones.

  Marty knew how Jake’s mind worked, could see clear as if an airplane had written it in the sky what Jake was thinking as he’d watched Steve squib the dog owner.

  Jake was thinking that Steve was an idiot and the first thing they had to do was dig a hole for him and the last thing they had to do was drop him into it and cover him over for all of eternity.

  But Steve had lucked out. He’d brought back the Rott, and because Jake and the Rott had a lot in common, they were getting along just fine.

  Jake said, “Marty, when we get outta da park, stop by one a dem pet-food places ya shop fa’ da Dobermans.”

  Marty said, “Okay, Jake.”

  Jake said, “We gonna need a couple a big bowls, one fa water an’ one fa food. An’ a bag a dem fake bones fa chewin’ on, a new collar an’ leash, powders and whatever for da fleas ...” Jake ran out of steam. The cables of loose flesh beneath his jaw swayed slightly and were still. His face was horribly distorted. What was wrong with him? Marty realized he was smiling.

  The old man, as he wiped viscous strings of doggy drool from his face, appeared to be happy as a bucketful of clams.

  2

  Earlier that same day, a Supreme Court jury had filed in, milled around uncertainly, sat down. A hush had settled over the courtroom. Willows had leaned forward expectantly. Claire Parker had shut her eyes and clasped her hands together. She might have been praying.

  The Supreme Court judge, a doddering halfwit named Jimmy Morrison Sutherland, cranked up his hearing aid and inquired of the jury foreman as to whether the jury had achieved a decision.

  The foreman said, “We have, Your Honour.”

  The defence team of McRae, Fawell, and Fuller were three of the sleaziest and wealthiest lawyers in the entire city. Jane Fuller was a generation younger than her partners, and she was the sparkplug of the team. Some had it that McRae and Fawell were living on their reputations, that McRae’s intellect was receding as rapidly as his hairline, that entire mou
ntain ranges of cocaine had so thoroughly cooked his brain that he was incapable of stringing together more than two or three short, borderline-literate sentences. Fawell, who had a weakness for the bottle, was awaiting his third kidney transplant.

  “Will the defendant rise ...?”

  Jane Fuller gave the defendant an openly saucy wink, and motioned him to get up off his ass and give the court its due. Jimmy “Fatboy” McEwen was a twenty-three-year-old upper-echelon drug dealer and coke addict who, while dim-summing at a Chinatown restaurant, had pulled his Glock and calmly told the ninety-year-old Chinese waiter he was going to kill him, then done so.

  Then, mostly because he enjoyed the racket his pistol made when he pulled the trigger, he’d riddled the restaurant’s several huge saltwater aquariums full of delicious live rock cod and crab. Several patrons had been injured by flying glass, crab and fish parts, panicked fellow diners. When McEwen paused to reload his weapon, a cook named Benny Lee bounced a dull meat cleaver off his skull, and knocked him unconscious.

  McEwen’s initial defence had consisted of the unarguable fact that his dim sum order had been royally screwed up. Inordinately cheerful cops patted him on the shoulder and told him they didn’t blame him one little bit, offered him a ballpoint pen and pad of lined paper and invited him to describe the entire disgraceful incident in his own words, as best he could. They advised him not to worry about sentence structure or spelling or the cheapness and commonality of his sentiments. The key to a successful confession, they assured him, was to keep everything nice and simple, so anybody with basic reading skills could understand what he was saying. They bought him a Coke and cigarettes. They told him to take as much time as he needed.

  But the carnage and attendant publicity had lured the publicity-hungry defence team of McRae, Fawell, and Fuller to McEwen’s cell. When McEwen told them he’d have no problem coming up with their criminally outrageous fee if they didn’t mind suitcases full of small-denomination bills, a deal was swiftly struck. A sample of McEwen’s blood was taken and analysed, and it was discovered that McEwen was a walking pharmacy, that he’d ingested so many varieties of drugs that it was a wonder he was able to function on even the lowest plane.

  The prosecutor’s case was further eroded when a number of witnesses abruptly embarked on lengthy vacations in Eastern Europe or the Caribbean. Other witnesses suddenly became proud owners of a shiny new car or light truck or power boat. Benny Lee, who was considered a crucial prosecution witness, vanished unexpectedly. He was located three weeks later, when a city works crew was dispatched to investigate a plugged storm drain.

  For these and many other gruesome reasons, McRae, Fawell, and Fuller expected the prosecution’s case to fizzle. The defence team oozed confidence.

  Addressing the jury foreman, the judge said, “Would you please read your verdict to the court.”

  The foreman cleared his throat. “Your Honour, we find the defendant, Jimmy “Fatboy” McEwen, not guilty.”

  There were at least three dozen cops in the courtroom. Most of them had attended on their own time. McEwen had been a career criminal since age eight, when he’d started boosting and crashing cars. He’d been in and out, in and out. Willows and Parker had him pegged for three previous shootings, all fatal. A sneering McEwen had strolled each time, when the Crown witnesses had faded.

  Now, unbelievably, he’d walked again. Willows exhaled with a rush, and realized he’d been holding his breath. His stomach churned sourly. He stared hard at McEwen until McEwen finally sensed that he was being watched. Their eyes locked.

  Grinning, McEwen gave Willows the finger. Jane Fuller playfully slapped at his hand. McEwen grabbed her bejewelled fingers and raised her hand aloft in a victory salute.

  Willows kept staring at him. All his life, McEwen’s temper had led him around by the nose. Willows told himself that, sooner or later, McEwen would take a heavy, heavy fall. In Kingston, or whatever maximum-security hellhole they eventually sent him to, the personality traits that served him so well on the street would betray and swiftly kill him. The kid was a murderous, halfwitted hothead punk. It would only be a matter of minutes until he leaned into the wrong con, took a shank in the gut and died in a fountain of blood.

  Willows’ eyes, as he stared at McEwen, read the kid his whole pathetic story, from first page to last.

  McEwen was there, but he wasn’t there. His fate was signed and sealed and about to be delivered. He was, whether he knew it or not, a goner.

  Fatboy blew Willows a kiss. He turned to Parker, lewdly cupped his crotch, and blew her a kiss too.

  Willows flushed. He could still hear the echo of Fatboy’s laughter long after he’d walked out of the courtroom.

  3

  Ozzie fed quarters into the machine, pushed buttons. Two frosty-cold cans of Coke and one can of Pepsi thumped into the dispenser. He scooped up the cans, tossed the Pepsi to Dean as he crossed the faded linoleum of the lunchroom floor.

  It was eight minutes past twelve by the big electric clock on the wall above the door. Ozzie straddled the bench seat. Dean sat hunched on the far side of the table with his brown paper bag in front of him. The situation, the way the lunchroom was laid out and furnished and the way they were sitting, it was like being in the slammer. All that was missing was a whole lot of cons and a whole lot of noise. Ozzie popped the tab on his first Coke. He sipped, examined a cracked, dirt-packed fingernail, scratched idly at a dime-size callus on his palm.

  Dean plucked a sandwich from the bag. His teeth cut through floppy white bread, lettuce, a solid inch of tinned meat. Spam, maybe. His jaws rolled. A glop of yellow mustard dribbled out of his mouth, ran slowly down his chin and went splat on the table. Ozzie sat there, enjoying the show.

  Dean gulped down the mouthful of sandwich, wiped his chin with the back of his hand. The reason they were in the yard, they’d just finished a job. Dean said, “Charlie got anything for us, or we gotta take the rest of the day off?” As usual, he was edgy about his cash-flow situation. The rent was due, the fridge was empty, etc., etc.

  Ozzie drank some of his Coke, leaned across the table, slid his finger into Deans brown paper lunch bag, tilted the bag towards him and peeked inside. Dean had another sandwich tucked away in there, a couple more rough-cut slices of white bread wrapped around another pound of meat, the whole thing glued together with some kind of purplish jelly-like substance. What else? Ozzie wiggled his finger, probing. A great big chocolate-chip cookie, must’ve weighed a quarter of a pound. A shiny green apple. A banana that had gone spotty. Dean hadn’t bothered to wrap anything in wax paper. The food was all jumbled and mashed together.

  Dean said, “You hungry? Want something?”

  Ozzie pushed the bag away. He shook his head.

  “Go ahead, help yourself. Take something.”

  As if that were advice Ozzie needed. He hesitated a moment, and then dug deep, pushed his hand down in there, swirled his stiff fingers around in the food, snatched the banana and squeezed it to mush, busted the cookie up into crumb-size pieces. He grabbed the apple, plucked it out of the bag, grasped it in his two hands and rotated his hands in opposite directions. The apple tore apart in a burst of sticky juice. He broke the two pieces into two more pieces, tossed one at the garbage can, a lazy, looping shot that fell a little bit short.

  Dean watched him but didn’t say a word.

  Ozzie paced himself, took his time. He kept breaking the apple into smaller and smaller pieces, picked bits and pieces off it as methodically as a cruel child might pull the legs off an ant. Occasionally he hit the can, but usually he missed. Finally there was nothing left of the apple but a few small wet glops that lay there in the palm of his hand.

  Dean said, “I guess I should’ve told you that you’re supposed to eat it. People in China are starving, Ozzie.” He’d tried to come across as ironic, but to Ozzie’s ear only managed to sound whiny and petulant.

  Ozzie smiled. “People in the downtown eastside are starving, last time I looked
. Hell, there’s poor people all over the city dropping like flies. So what? In my opinion, there’s still way too many of ’em.”

  The linoleum all around the garbage can was littered with fragments of apple. Dean pushed himself away from the table and shambled over there in his scuffed workboots and baggy-ass jeans, unbuttoned pale-blue-and-soft-yellow plaid short-sleeved shirt. His chest hair gleamed healthily in the shaft of sunlight that came in through the open door. Muscles bulged all along the tanned length of his arm as he lifted up the near side of the garbage can and used his boot to sweep the mess under the can. He let the can drop with a clang that reverberated off the unpainted walls.

  Ozzie thought, that’s you in a nutshell, Dean. Tidy, in a pigshit-sloppy, half-assed, bone-lazy kind of way. Handsome, but about as intelligent as a wheelbarrow full of rocks. He drained the Coke, popped the tab on can number two. Squinting out the doorway at the dusty, sunlit yard, he saw stacks of cut stone, granite mostly, looming over wafer-thin shadows. A forklift crawled across his field of vision, past his gleaming, hell-red ’56 Chevy short-box pickup. The truck’s moon hubcaps and chrome trim had been polished to a mirror-bright shine, and the freshly waxed paint was so glossy it almost hurt to look at it.

  Ozzie was a stonemason by trade. Dean, a first-year apprentice, had been working under him for three months going on four. In Ozzie’s considered opinion, Dean was a man of moderate talent and severely limited intelligence. Not that Ozzie was complaining.

  Dean glanced up at the clock. He said, “Hey, Ozzie. We got a job, or what?”

  “Don’t worry about it.” StoneWorks was a medium-small company, family-owned. Mom answered the phone, Dad did the estimating. A trio of plodding middle-aged sons were, nominally, foremen. A daughter in her late thirties, plain as a tailgate, pounded the computer. Four guys worked in the yard, drilling and splitting and stacking the stone. Depending on the size of the job, anywhere from two to a dozen men prepared the sites, cleared away brush and trees, dug trenches, laid concrete foundations. The company employed one apprentice, Dean, and two journeymen stonemasons, Ozzie and a older, quiet-type guy named Bob. A couple of minimum-wage hulksters drove the flatbed trucks loaded with cut stone from the yard to the job, humped the rock from the trucks to the site. It was young mens work, hard work with sudden lengthy periods of unemployment, the kind of work that attracted footloose types who came and went.