“¿Tu es un amigo de Padre?”
I steel myself. I look back and nod.
And I am. I am Father Mike’s friend. Beery drums pound the courage and I think: fuck this guy Bryant, this lowlife motherfucker. Father Mike is a stand-up guy doing real things to help real people and this Bryant piece of shit deserves some kind of payback for destroying the church. The fucking coward. A good ass-kicking sounds dead fine with me. But then I think, Ah ... fucking hell.
I should have just gone home.
We troll by Bryant’s butt-ugly, aqua-colored ranch house and pull around the block and park just off an access alley. Enrique and Miguel tell me to follow their lead and we move fast across the backyards. Apparently Bryant sleeps in the basement of his mom’s split-level. It’s a rec room arrangement with a sliding glass door exiting onto a cheap red flagstone patio all chemoed with weeds of neglect. I guess Enrique and Miguel just figured the back door would be unlocked because Bryant is a lazy ass kid or maybe if it was locked they’d just smash it in. Regardless, somewhere several houses away, a chained up dog catches our scent and goes positively apeshit. We wear latex gloves from the restaurant and black ski masks.
From the sliding glass door, I see Bryant passed out on a plaid couch in the blue glow of a DVD player’s cue. Skinny guy, maybe twenty, with a whisper of a beard and short dreadlocked hair. There’s a low, cruddy coffee table in front of the couch with a veritable skyline of spent Steel Reserve 211 malt liquor cans on it, the towering jewel of this city being a huge, red, translucent bong. A short stack of porno DVD cases are also on the coffee table. One case is flipped open and the cover is propped up in our direction like a greeting card. Even in the ghostly blue glow from the television, I can read the title from outside on the patio: Big Wet Hiney-Hos #7. Bryant’s right hand is shoved down the front of his boxers. Guess he passed out mid-stroke.
I feel like I’m having a heart attack as I watch Miguel unzip the duffel and take out a youth-sized Rawlings aluminum baseball bat. He tracks the door open, crosses the room quickly, and chops fast before Bryant can focus out of his ganja coma as to what is happening. The bat catches Bryant at the top of his forehead with a hollow thwok and he flops back down on the couch. Miguel pops him again just to be sure he’s out cold and Enrique slips farther into the basement, taking up a position on the stairs leading to the top half of the house, in case Bryant’s mother comes padding down mid-assault.
Miguel steps back across the room and slides the door almost closed. Behind his ski mask, his eyes lock with mine and he quickly makes hand signals with a latexed forefinger. He taps his ear. Listen. He points in several directions from behind the glass and touches just below his eye. Keep an eye out.
I nod sharply at Miguel, and he turns and takes a fat roll of silver duct tape from the duffel and proceeds to wrap Bryant’s mouth shut, wrapping the tape around his head several times like a mummy. Miguel binds Bryant’s hands and feet as well.
Finished, Miguel steps back and gestures to Enrique. As instructed, I do a quick survey of the backyard, right then left, and then look back at the scene within. Through the cracked sliding glass door, I see that Enrique now has the bat and I hear two quick whooving sounds as he sails it through the air. Each swing ends with a grotesque, wet crunch as Bryant’s kneecaps explode. Bryant rockets awake like a bucking animal. The screams against the duct tape are awful.
Lights pop on. I blink away the blur.
A voice upstairs cries out.
“Jeremy?”
Holy shit. Bryant’s mom. Holy shit. Oh shit. Ohholyfucking-shit.
I can see Bryant’s mom up in the foyer. In a pink bathrobe, she is enormous ... and she is fumbling with what looks like a shotgun. She shrieks something indecipherable and Miguel charges up the short stairs to the foyer to take her out. He snatches the shotgun from her hands, flips it, and jabs the stock square in the woman’s wide forehead. Bryant’s mom crumples to the floor with a thud, hammy arms and legs out akimbo.
Enrique doesn’t appear rattled by the interruption. Leisurely he takes a can of red spray paint from the duffel bag and gang tags the basement paneling above Bryant’s heaving body. When he finishes, Enrique kicks Bryant in the shoulder and points at the wall.
Behind the tape, Bryant screams again, bug-eyed. The paint drips down the wall like a diagram drawn in blood.
Bryant’s face shines with tears and snot. The veins in his neck are wires.
“¿Padre Mike?”
Bryant whines as Miguel turns out the lights in the foyer upstairs. Enrique whispers.
“¿La próxima vez?”
My mind tumbles the translation: Next time?
Bryant freaks.
Enrique hisses, “Machete.”
A month and a half goes by and I keep waiting for the police to come a tap-tapping on my apartment door, or strolling into The Raised Jar’s kitchen, or finding me in class, wrenching the handcuffs on me in front of a room full of slack-jawed peers. But no. Nothing. Not a peep. No aggravated assault charges or attempted murder charges or anything. The cops eventually link Bryant to the desecration of Sacred Heart but there’s nothing in the papers about him or his mom or the attack.
Miguel doesn’t speak of that night, until one Friday we’re both in the walk-in refrigerator together.
I’m shouldering a case of Amstel and I have the necks of a couple bottles of the house white in my right hand. Crossing his arms, Miguel blocks the heavy, pebbled metal door.
“Hey, Miguel.”
“Sup?”
“Can I get by?”
Miguel squints. “Father Mike ... right thing, G.”
I shrug. “You hear anything?”
Miguel shakes his head.
“Me either,” I say.
Miguel laughs. “Somos fantasmas.”
“Huh?”
“Boo!” He points at his chest then at me.
“Ghosts?”
“Sí. Ghosts. We ghosts. And Enrique and me, we owe you, G.”
I look away. “No, you don’t.”
“No. We do.”
I catch his eyes. “Okay.”
Miguel’s face goes flat, hard.
“But Enrique, yo, he has doubts.”
“Doubts?”
“Sí.”
“What do you mean fucking doubts?”
“Doubts, yo. You ... no familia ... entiendes? We cool and all, but I tell him and I tell him, but he’s like ...” Miguel shrugs. “¿Quién sabe?”
I puff out an incredulous snort.
“D’fuck, dude?”
“Hey, amigo. I jus’ tellin’ like it is.”
I shove past him.
I step out of the walk-in into the heat and clattering chaos of the kitchen and I look back at Miguel standing in the walk-in’s doorway. He flashes me a crooked upside M with his fingers and winks and starts laughing. Howling actually.
Mara Salvatrucha. MS-13.
And I remember the sound of Bryant’s breaking knees and I head to the bar.
The bar, the bar, the motherfucking bar.
Mahogany and Monogamy
Jedidiah Ayres
The first time I saw Janis I knew she was a ballbuster. That was part of the appeal, honestly. Mom had been one and my kid sister, Denise? That’s all I got to say. But Janis had something special and I’m not just talking about her industrial-strength rack and bear-trap thighs. She also had that elusive thing that I just can’t resist, and if I knew what it was I probably wouldn’t have a story to tell.
We had our own song, “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” It was our first dance. She danced, that’s what she did, and when it got to the “where do we go?” part, she slowed way down and tried to grind it outta me with her hips. Then she did something strange. She stopped and looked me right in the eye. It made me pop. She rocked my world with just a look, then kept on dancing. Sure, she helped lotsa guys do the same, but me? After the first time I saw her, there wasn’t anybody else, you know?
You’re ne
ver gonna find anything, my old man said, written down in a book. He was a loser till the day he died, fucked over and left by my mom, but he did manage one memorable line near the end when the lucid spells were brief and unpredictable. He was talking about when he first met my mother. He said he knew she was the one for him because she made him wanna grow up and produced the previously impossible in his life—mahogany and monogamy. I thought it was just a nice rhymey thing to say till that night.
Janis didn’t notice anything special about me at first, and that was okay. Working at the Beaver Cleaver, she didn’t meet many prizes, and to look at me, you’d not stop and think, “Guy’s a sex machine” or “What’s his secret?” But people change. They do grow up. They can surprise you sometimes. Gimme a chance and who knows? Could might be I make an impression.
Could be I’d made a life change. Could be I’d got my shit together. Could be I had fifty-thousand dollars in a gym bag in my trunk. Could be.
The thing about a guy like me having that kind of money on him? Yeah, it means somebody else is short that much. I never invested in stocks or had a business. I never went to high school or had anything fancy education-wise and I never paid taxes unless you count cigarettes. Which, come to think of it, maybe you should. Because, damn if they don’t go up all the time, for real. So, yeah has to be somebody missing it.
The question then, is who?
Relax, might not be an Einstein or any other brainy hebe you care to name, but I’m not as dumb as you might initially think. It’s not like I robbed a bank and got my picture took, or ripped off some solid citizen who’d wanna bring lawyers into a fair fight. And I ain’t about to take on no badass, because I know a thing or two about when I’m outta my depth.
No, it was just Benji, that skinny tweaker with the fuzzy upper lip you wanna scrape for him. Seriously, I’m no square, but damn, some motherfuckers just ain’t intended to wear mustaches. I took it from a hole in the wall behind his medicine cabinet. Just stumbled onto it and took it.
Pee-Wee, the guy who runs Carl’s Bad Tavern down off Cherokee? He sees me getting up to leave the other night and slips me twenty bucks to take Benji’s ass home. Benji’s passed out in the bathroom, puke everywhere except the fucking toilet and a cloud of that rat poison he smokes stinking up the place.
Not one to look a gift horse up the ass, I take the twenty and put him in my Chevette. Thought about just dumping him around the corner, because he stank like he’d been practicing, but I shut that shit down because it was time to get a little forward-thinking in my game. In the future, could be Pee-Wee knows I’m solid for this kinda thing. Could be he thinks of me first, next time. Could be some regular gigs coming, or at least a free drink now and then. Never know. Could be.
I wasn’t about to fuck with that possibility by taking the man’s money then not doing what it is he says he wants, like some short-sighted asshole who thinks he just played a man. So I took Benji back to his place, wasn’t far, and let myself in with the keys I found in his pocket. Not a part I relished, reaching into a man’s pants like that—especially a stank-ass motherfuck like Benji—but, like I said, I wanted to do this right. I was already thinking about future jobs.
Maybe I’d get some of those disposable rubber gloves, if this was gonna be regular. You know the kind they make them wear at Subway to make sandwiches? Or maybe, and this is even better, talk to my cousin Rob, the plumber. Find out what he does when he’s gotta reach into some shit water and find a wedding ring, because you know plumbers don’t fuck around when it comes to that. Hell, I could just get some Ziploc bags and put them on. Would be cheaper. If I paid taxes, I bet I could write that off.
I was getting a little carried away, but it felt good, being trusted with a job like that. Pee-Wee was a serious guy... . Shit ... That was something else. Stop calling him Pee-Wee. He was connected to real people, and I didn’t wanna blow any chance I had with him now by offending him. Herman hated that nickname.
The way I saw it, it was time to take a little responsibility. Time to think about a career. Not that shoveling shit outta bars was a career I’d like to have, but you know, it was a start. I’m sure Janis didn’t wanna climb a brass pole for amateur gynecologists the rest of her life.
I brought Benji inside the door and no further. Fuck him if he thought I was gonna tuck him in or give him a bath. Not for twenty bucks. No way. But, I’d have a look around, thanks. It was how I made most of my money anyhow. A little B&E here and there, I wasn’t above it. The beauty of this was, it was E without B, and Benji wasn’t conscious the whole time, wouldn’t have any idea how he got home when he woke up.
Benji was poor white trash, up and down. His basement apartment had plain white walls decorated with black light posters of like Pantera and hemp plants and shit. His clothes weren’t in the dresser except for some underwear and socks, and those that were on the furniture and the floor were one pair of jeans—black and ripped, like the ones he was already wearing—and heavy metal T-shirts. There was no jewelry (surprise, surprise) and no electronics worth taking.
There were cassettes all over the floor, not in the cases, which is something that personally really irritates me. It was the same story with the VCR stuff. Couple tapes just marked with pen: Missing in Action, The Running Man, Bloodsport. Say what you want about his lifestyle, his taste in movies was righteous.
Pisser was, I didn’t find any drugs. Turned over his mattress, checked the freezer, behind the toilet, went through all his food, a jar of mayonnaise, some Sanka and Kool-Aid. I was so frustrated, I went back to his grungy-ass bathroom and grabbed his razor. Didn’t bother with any water or foam. Shaved that shit dry. Bled a little, but still looked better. Shit, that was two favors I did for him in one night.
When I put the razor back in the medicine cabinet, I noticed it was a little loose, like it was on a hinge or something. I gave it a little tug and it swung open, revealing a little hiding spot in the wall.
Fuck, there was a lot of money.
It was arranged in those neat little stacks you see rubber banded together in movies. I didn’t even count it, just threw it in a gym bag and drove straight to the Beaver. I peeled off a couple hundred and went in looking for Janis.
Could’ve been my walk or the intensity in my eyes. Could’ve been the super-heavy testosterone vibes pouring off of me. Or could be she just saw me changing a couple C-notes for singles. Whatever it was, she knew right away that I was different. She put on “Sweet Child O’ Mine” before I could even request it. She got every penny too.
I started hanging out at Carl’s every night. I’d keep my eyes peeled for losers ready to pass out or puke in the john. Fifty-thousand dollars was a nice start, but not exactly enough to retire on and I was serious about making a good impression on Herman. Besides, I couldn’t tell anybody about my good fortune, because when a little shit like Benji had that kind of scratch? Right again, somebody else was missing it.
That was one thought causing me mild discomfort when it came up. How had Benji come upon that much money? When? And what the hell was he spending it on? I decided it wasn’t my problem and I didn’t want to know, so I shut down that negative shit quick. The way I saw it, if I kept up my regular schedule and didn’t get flashy, I had it made.
The only change in my routine was stepped-up visits to Janis. Most nights, I’d come in with a single hundred-dollar bill and leave when it was gone. Though I realized I’d made a tactical mistake that first night bringing two hundred in and spending it so quickly. Janis had come to expect a little more from me, but so had I, and I was trying to show a little discipline. So it was one hundred every night ... let’s not go crazy, you know. I was trying to pace myself a bit and make her work a little harder for it.
Janis wasn’t the only one working a little harder for her money either. Herman had noticed me and given me a couple more disposal jobs. Nobody I knew, though. I had to dig out their IDs and find an address, and then I had to figure that shit out. Got to be, I was calli
ng cabs and going with them to make sure they got inside. Oh well, it’s like they say: you gotta spend money to make money. Yeah, I was, most of the time, blowing what Herman gave me on cab fare. But I was counting on that back end score once I got them home, and most of the time that worked out. A couple times there was a pissed-off wife or mean-ass dog waiting for me, but it was a safe bet anybody passing out at Carl’s doesn’t have much waiting for them at home.
I heard a preacher on the radio once say, “Love is patient. Love is kind.” All I could think was: he didn’t love Janis. It was getting a touch restless between us. She was less patient, I was less kind, and we were becoming something of an item. One night during my dance I guess she felt I was being a little stingy because she stood up suddenly and said, “What the fuck, Ethan? I am not doing one more number for a lousy hunnerd bucks. We’re halfway through the first guitar solo and I barely got thirty-five outta your tight ass!”
Well, that pissed me off a bit. The way I saw it, I’d been spending my money on her exclusively for some time now and hadn’t got so much as a friendly hummer to show for fidelity.
“At least one of us still has one,” I said, and left with money in my pocket for the first time. I decided she’d got her last score off of me.
Did I stop going? Hell, no. I still went every night after leaving Carl’s, but I wasn’t a one woman man anymore. No, I spread the wealth. New girl every night. I’d watch Janis out the corner of my eye and I could tell my being there pissed her off. The tension between us could tune a piano. Could be our thing had gone to the next level. Could be I was in my first serious relationship. Could be, I was finally growing up. Could be.
The night they broke Benji’s arm, everybody assumed it was over sports action. It happened from time to time. That or drugs. Everybody knew that happened when you fucked around with the drugs. I had to keep it to myself that I suspected it had more to do with some missing cash.
Blood, Guts, & Whiskey Page 20