Blood, Guts, & Whiskey

by Todd Robinson

  Davey’s hands were still flat on the bar. He’d never even tried to draw his own gun. Tom’s sawed-off was now leveled at Davey’s heart. Tom said, “One barrel left, asshole.”

  “You don’t need it,” Davey said, calm now. “I’ll help you get him out of here, bury him out back, I guess, and then clear out.”

  Tom considered that. He lowered the gun, but kept it at hand. Davey said, “We go back, me and Angelo, like you guessed. But it’s been strained for a long time. And this latest, over my lady, that was the breaking point. Fuck, I nearly shot him myself on the drive over here.”

  Davey stood up carefully, looked at the tables, and walked to the closest one. He moved the ashtray and condiment tray to an adjacent table and pulled off the table’s vinyl red-and-white-checkered tablecloth and spread it out on the floor next to Angelo’s body. He looked up and said, “Tom, you want to help me wrap this fucker up in this thing, or what?”

  The vet stowed his gun under the bar and came around to Davey’s side. Tom locked the bar’s front door and then Davey took Angelo by the ankles and Tom got him by the shoulders and they rolled Angelo over onto the plastic sheet. Tom took another tablecloth off another table, and they bundled up Angelo, then wound several turns of duct tape around the body to hold the plastic in place. Davey rose and waved a hand at the spotless floor. He said, “Neat fucking job. Not a single bloodstain.”

  Tom said, “I can take it from here. You bein’ his friend and all. Just get your ass out of here.”

  Davey said, “Nah. I owe you for your trouble. I tried to talk him out of this. And like I said, he and me go back. Least I can do is see A in the ground. I’ll take his legs.” Before he stooped down, Davey took a look around at the tavern and said, “You’ve really got a real nice place here, Tom. I like this joint.”

  Tom shrugged. “That’s great,” he said.

  They hefted Angelo’s body up between them and lugged him out back and through a stand of shoulder-high weeds down to the bank of a small stream. “I own the acreage back here—all flood plain,” Tom said, “so there’s no danger of anyone developing this later and digging up your friend here.”

  They dropped the body there, then went back to the bar together to fetch a pickax and two shovels. The creek bank was relatively moist and the digging went quickly. Tom said, “Think that’s big enough?”

  Davey turned his head to one side, narrowing his eyes and measuring angles and depth. He said, “I’m worried about erosion. Hate for you to have to do this again. I think we should go deeper. Maybe a little longer too.”

  They dug for another twenty minutes. Davey looked at the mounting dirt pile and decided he didn’t want to have to deal with more than was already there. He said, “I think we’re good.” They muscled Angelo’s body into the hole. Davey groaned and pressed his hands to the small of his back and said, “Jesus, I’m too old for this. Think I pulled something.”

  Tom nodded and dragged Angelo’s body farther towards the top of the hole so his feet would fit in. Davey said, “You know, I’m looking at all that plastic and thinking it’s a mistake—gonna slow down decomposition.” He reached into his sports jacket’s pocket and pulled out a switchblade. He sprung the blade and handed it down to Tom. “For the tape,” he said. “I think we ought to unwrap Angelo before we bury him.”

  Tom nodded and set to work on the duct tape, his back to Davey. “Makes sense,” he said. “Back doing any better?”

  “Yeah, better,” Davey said. “That place of yours really is a nice one.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So nice, I’ve decided to take it over.”

  Davey shot Tom twice in the back of the head, pressing the gun up tight behind Tom’s ear to muffle the sound.

  Tom fell across Angelo’s body, most of his head gone.

  Davey tucked Tom’s arms into the hole and bent the big man’s legs at the knees, forcing those in too. When he was done, it looked like Tom was humping a checkered mummy.

  Davey set to work filling the hole.

  Community Property

  Pearce Hansen

  “Three months, Gordon. Maybe four if you don’t stress yourself out, if you give up burning the candle at both ends, and if you’re lucky.”

  Gordon heard Doctor Benson’s words on an intellectual level, but forced their meaning to wash over and past him. All his attention was on the MRI scan printout of his abdominal region, trying to see if he could spot the tumor for himself. But it was no use: to his untrained eye the MRI was only a jumble of color representing his internal organs. Gordon was irritated to have no idea what was supposed to be there inside his body, and what was the cancerous parasite betraying him.

  Doctor Benson’s hand touched his arm. Startled, Gordon turned away from that hypnotic MRI to look down at his plump, pretty primary-care physician. There was nothing wrong with plump, he considered as he eye-fucked her up and down. He was on the husky side himself, after all.

  “You can get another opinion if you like, in fact, I recommend it,” Doctor Benson said. “But I’ve run the tests more than once and there’s absolutely no doubt. The MRI is only confirmation. Would you like me to point out the malignancy on the display?”

  “No,” Gordon said, refusing to look at the MRI again, wondering why he wouldn’t make this last acknowledgment of a truth he’d suspected since the first night he’d spent hugging the toilet bowl and vomiting up blood. Instead, he focused his attention on Doctor Benson.

  “Linda,” Gordon said, using her first name for the first time in their acquaintance. That old seductive croon had entered his bass voice. “Linda,” he repeated, letting his unspoken offer color his words. He had nothing to lose anymore, after all.

  Linda looked at the floor from under lowered lashes, avoiding his eyes. “Good luck, Gordon.” Her voice was soft and almost regretful, but the shutdown was firm.

  “Don’t waste any time,” Doctor Benson said to his back as he left the examination room.

  Out in the parking lot, Gordon lit up a Marlboro and started hotboxing it, toking hard. He noted five missed messages on his cell phone when he turned it back on. He grimaced as he saw that four of them were from his wife, Yang. The fifth was from his attorney Chris Kellum, and Gordon hit REPLY as he walked towards Yang’s Mercedes, touching his thick head of hair to make sure his coif was still immaculate.

  “Gordon,” Chris said on his end as he caller IDed Gordon’s cell. “We have to talk, my friend.”

  “I know, I know,” Gordon said as he hit the alarm button on his key ring. Yang’s Mercedes chirped a greeting as he reached it and gave the hood an affectionate pat, admiring the perfect lines of his soon-to-be-ex-wife’s car. The Benz was top drawer, a 2008 S65 AMG, and Gordon enjoyed its luxury as much as he enjoyed the taunt he was sending Yang by keeping it from her.

  “Don’t you blow me off again, Gordon,” Chris shouted, loud enough that Gordon had to pull the cell away from his ear a bit as he threw down his smoke and got into the Benz. Gordon hit the SPEAKER PHONE button and tossed the cell onto the passenger seat as he buckled up, chuckling to himself even as he did it. He’d always been a careful man (except in his love life of course) and a lifetime of habit was hard to break even now when it didn’t matter anymore.

  “How long have we known each other, Gordon?” Chris asked, voice a little lower, a little calmer. “She says she wants her Benz back as part of her share of the community property. I’d say she really just wants the closure. You sign the papers, you show up tomorrow in court and hand her the keys, and I’ll bet I can keep her from fucking you too hard.”

  Gordon laughed out loud as he started the engine and lit another smoke. “You don’t know Yang as well as you think you do, Chris. The divorce is just her opening salvo, and the Benz is just the first trophy she’s going to scalp off me. She’s going to burn me down to the waterline. She’s taking this all the way no matter what I do. Besides, I don’t really have to give a rat’s ass anymore.” Gordon realized he’d sai
d too much even as the words came out of his mouth, but it was too late to backpedal.

  “And what exactly do you mean by that statement, my friend?” Chris asked slowly, his attorney brain chewing hard on Gordon’s words.

  Gordon pulled out of the Kaiser Hospital parking lot and took Broadway west towards Oakland Civic Center, thinking hard himself. He powered down his window and flung out his latest butt, then fumbled another from his pack and lit up while he drove one-handed.

  “I’m dying, Chris,” Gordon said, wondering even as he uttered the words why he was burdening his friend with the information. Maybe he was trying the fact of his imminent death on for size. Maybe he wanted Chris’s legal brain to show him some kind of loophole from his upcoming death.

  “Jesus,” Chris breathed, and was silent for several seconds himself. “Get your ass over here, Gordon. Screw the divorce, you shouldn’t be alone right now.”

  “You always were a good buddy, Chris,” Gordon said. “I’ll be in touch.” He reached over and picked up the cell phone, ended the call. But it started ringing again immediately. Gordon powered down his window again and tossed the cell out of the car without bothering to see if it was Chris or Yang vying for his attention.

  Gordon reached Jack London Square and turned south along the Estuary to the industrial park his office was located in. He entered the lobby, took the elevator, and entered his office. His secretary Sarah looked as relieved at his arrival as if he was the Second Coming.

  “She’s been burning up the phone lines,” Sarah said in that husky Midwest drawl that had turned Gordon on since the first time she opened her mouth at her job interview two months before. “I just about ran out of note paper keeping track of her calls. Oh, yeah: a process server came by, but I refused to accept whatever paper he was trying to hang.”

  “Good work, babe,” Gordon said, reaching up to make sure his hair was unmussed. He angled to get a look down the front of her low-cut dress at her cleavage, but realized he was just doing it from habit, going through the motions. His heart wasn’t really in it today, so he just took the paper listing Yang’s calls from Sarah and walked past her towards his office.

  “Gordon,” Sarah called out from behind him, and he turned. “Is everything all right?” Was that honest concern he saw on her face? Or did she only smell the possible end of her meal ticket?

  Gordon made himself try to smile, not realizing that the facial rictus made him look anything but pleasant. “Everything’s fine.”

  Sarah nodded as though she wanted him to think she was relieved, but he sensed she had more to say and waited in unaccustomed patience. “Do you think your wife knows about us?” she blurted after a moment, her face gone a little red.

  Gordon almost laughed at the irrelevancy of the question, but restrained himself. “You have nothing to worry about, Sarah. Why don’t you take the rest of the day off?” As he saw the pleasure fill Sarah’s face, Gordon was moved to add: “Hell, take the rest of the week off. I’ve got some things to attend to and I’ll be away from the office for a few days. Here’s an advance paycheck to tide you over.”

  Gordon ignored her murmured appreciative words as he made out a company check for a month’s wages to the girl. “Cash this right away,” he said, figuring Yang would be attaching his assets soon enough.

  He watched Sarah’s perky ass as she left, remembering how that tush had felt when he’d clutched it with both hands as they did it on his desk yesterday, and she’d called out his name over and over. But now she was gone, and he was alone.

  Gordon lit up a smoke as he walked back into his office. He hit the wet bar behind his mahogany slab desk, poured some Walker Red neat, and tossed it down his gullet without the scotch even touching the sides of his throat on the way down. He poured another tumbler and sucked hard on his smoke as he moved to stare out his window, which took up the whole outer office wall.

  His office was on the fifth floor, and he could see Yang’s S65 below in his reserved parking space, he could look across Embarcadero to the Estuary, the deep water shipping channel separating Oakland and Alameda. High-end apartment buildings and condos paraded out of sight to his left and his right on the Oakland waterfront. Across the water he saw the low skyline of Alameda’s upscale homes, sprawled under their omnipresent canopy of trees like a high-end version of Leave It to Beaver. Yachts and cigarette boats crowded slips and marinas on both sides of the Estuary.

  It had taken Gordon four decades of hardscrabble labor to earn this view, to belong in high-priced commercial real estate like this. He’d come straight out of the trailer, nobody had handed him a thing, and he’d never asked for any favors. He’d built this consultancy from scratch, all by himself. But right now, with the knowledge of his upcoming demise forcing him to take a step back and examine his life objectively, Gordon realized that the good life had always been just out of arm’s reach for him no matter how much cash he threw around. What had he been chasing, giving up his irreplaceable time to scamper after?

  Doing his best to keep it equally impersonal, he also thought about his soon-to-be-ex-wife Yang, and wistfully recalled their first meeting over in Shanghai. She was a part-time model, she’d even done some bit parts on Chinese TV, but she and Gordon had met when she was moonlighting as a taxi driver and she’d picked him up at the airport. Yang was northern Chinese, almost as tall as Gordon at six feet even, thin but shapely with ivory skin paler than Gordon’s own. He’d had to have her, and the trophy of merely bedding her hadn’t cut it at the time. He’d slapped a wedding ring on her finger as soon as humanly possible.

  He admitted to himself now that he’d been an abject failure as a husband. He knew he was a proficient enough lover. Women had always wanted more of him than he was willing to give. But with Yang underfoot twenty-four/seven as his wife, Gordon realized that he hadn’t the foggiest idea of what to do with a woman outside the bedroom.

  His infidelities had been nonstop, his emotional unavailability had hung over their home life like a pall, and Yang finally got fed up. Lo and behold, Gordon discovered that she had powerful relatives, both in China and the United States. Her seemingly placid beauty concealed a ruthless dragon nature as aggressive as Gordon’s own. And now that she was royally pissed, she was going to gut him in the settlement.

  Gordon was surprised to find he actually liked this side of Yang as much as he feared it. Seeing her flex her claws made him wonder what their marriage would have been like if he’d tried even a little bit. Now he’d never know, with a tumor time bomb in his belly, and Yang’s scorched earth version of a divorce looming over everything Gordon had managed to accomplish in his life.

  Gordon sat at his desk and opened the drawer. He pulled out his Desert Eagle XIX, and unholstered it from its shoulder rig. It was only the six-inch barrel, but he’d found that the ten-incher hung up too much on the shoulder holster when he was competing in quick draw competitions, or at the combat hand-gunning range he trained at every weekend religiously.

  Gordon spun in his leather office chair and faced his reflection in the office window. He put on a gunslinger’s snake-eyed scowl as he held the Desert Eagle up, as if for his reflection’s inspection. “Draw pardner,” he said, pointing his pistol at his mirror image. “Bang,” he said softly.

  As the gun was in his hand, it was only natural that Gordon would hold it up in front of his face for a better look. Twisting and turning the 50-caliber Magnum as he examined it from multiple angles, Gordon reflected on how easy it would be to just stick the gun in his mouth and pull the trigger.

  He holstered the Desert Eagle, stood, and took off his Brioni suit coat to strap on the shoulder holster. Gordon buttoned his coat back up, ground out his latest smoke, and lit another. He looked at his reflection again, twisting from side to side to see if the holstered Desert Eagle bulged too conspicuously as it hung down the length of his ribcage. He decided it looked okay.

  He started to reach up a hand to reflexively smooth the thick mop of hair on the top
of his head, but stopped with a grimace. He dug his fingers into the hair, ripped off the toupee it actually was, and tossed the hairpiece to the carpeted floor where it lay like a dead poodle. He examined the revealed, reflected, bald Bozo-like dome of his head, scalp pale from years out of the sun. He left his office for the last time, pistol still holstered under his coat.

  Gordon drove Yang’s S65 around aimlessly for a while, even through his distraction able to enjoy all the bells and whistles in this automotive piece of community property. The heated leather seats, the harman/kardon surround sound currently featuring Rush Limbaugh on the station preset, the agile handling and the feeling of overwhelming power barely constrained within the six-hundred-horsepower V12 engine. There was no way Gordon would let Yang have this car back, even though he knew it was stubborn spite as much as possessiveness on his part.

  Gordon drove and drove, towards where he didn’t know, all around the East Bay. What was he looking for, now that all meaning had turned to ash? Where was he going to, besides the upcoming grave? He couldn’t say, but he knew that as long as he kept driving he didn’t have to think, he could just react. As long as he kept sharking forwards, he could pretend he was safe, and that Yang wasn’t hot on his tail eager to prove just what a failure his entire life had been.

  He was in Berkeley when he finally decided on a semi-ultimate destination: Grizzly Peak Boulevard up in the Hills: a winding, scenic stretch of highway where he could let the S65 off its leash, really let it howl on those curvy inclines and slopes. It would be an easy enough thing to twitch the steering wheel to the side on one curve or another, send the Benz rocketing through space on a fatal, final ride down to impact. If he wanted to, of course. He’d decide when he got up there.

  Gordon reached for another smoke as he headed up Ashby, planning on taking Claremont up to Grizzly Peak. But the pack was empty, and Gordon tossed it out his open window as a black guy stumbled backwards out of a storefront about half a block ahead of Gordon’s approaching Benz. Two white boys with guns followed the man out the door. As Gordon continued getting ever closer, he saw one of the kids raise his pistol and shoot the black guy. The man fell backwards on his ass with one hand clutching the side of his gut, the other hand palm out and fingers splayed at the end of his outstretched arm, palm facing the gunmen as if in supplication or defense. The second gunman shot the man in the face, and the man’s arm lowered to the ground as he subsided the rest of the way onto his back.