A Long Crazy Burn

by Jeff Johnson

  I speared one and gave it a few rapid chews, nodding. Pretty soon the plate was empty and my stomach was groaning. I guzzled the orange juice and stared at her for a long minute.

  “Sleep,” I finally managed. She held out her hand.

  “C’mon, then.”

  She guided me into the bedroom and I fell face-first onto the bed on top of the comforter. I was dimly aware of her trying to pull my jeans off and finally giving up. She covered me with a heavy flannel quilt I kept in the closet, turned out the light, then went out and closed the door behind her. Somewhere millions of miles away, I could hear the sound of her doing dishes and singing something, an old Germs tune. What seemed like hours later I surfaced from a deep sleep and found her curled against my back, holding one warm hand over my chest, her face nuzzled against my neck. Then dreamless sleep.

  My interview strategy had been marginal so far. That was the first thing I thought of when I woke up. Also, I’d been a little foggy since the beating. Whatever kind of concussion I’d sustained didn’t make a shit bit of difference, though. I was just too stupid to have a pack of cops hunting me to begin with, especially federal ones with a vendetta. Maybe I should have shot for something easier to manage in life, I thought. Like a career as a guy living out of a shopping cart.

  Delia was snoring next to me. It was six o’clock at night. I turned a little and thought about a cigarette. I smelled good, I realized. Like soap and shampoo. Not so bad. I’d made a little money that week already. Also nice. Two fat big cats were between us, looking like they’d just fallen out of orbit and impacted on the bed. Also good.

  So what to do? I felt like going and talking to this Ralston guy. But he was just the anus of the worm. I needed to find the head if I was going to get anywhere. Life can be a funny thing. Also short. I’d always had simple goals. Do art, make a living, get some pussy, maybe shack up someday and have a kid. A few beers along the way, maybe a trip to Spain, or at least Tijuana. Possibly take up painting again. Watch the first season of True Blood, which meant taking a bold step toward a TV purchase.

  But it didn’t seem to be working out for the most part. I listened to Delia’s snoring for a minute and didn’t have a single thought at all. When my brain finally kicked back into gear, it was because my new scars were itching. As soon as I got up, the snoring stopped. Instantly.

  “What are you doing?” Delia asked in a muzzy voice.

  “Need a smoke.”

  “Stay away from the windows.” She curled her skinny arms around Chops and pulled him in like he was a doll. The big old traitor purred once and pushed himself into her flat chest. She sighed into his neck and started snoring again.

  I was still wearing the pants I’d fallen asleep in. I got socks and a Ramones hoodie out of the dresser and a pair of steel-toed work boots I hadn’t worn for years out of the closet. I missed my old boots. In the top middle drawer was a broken watch, a handful of old coins, some old photos, and four one-inch stainless steel ball bearings. I took out two and closed the drawer without making a sound.

  It was already dark outside. I sat down at the dining room table and put the socks on, then the boots and the hoodie. Coffee sounded good, but if I made some it would wake up Delia, and then she’d insist on coming with me. I dug an old peacoat out of the closet and pulled it on, too. Then I cautiously peered out the front window through the blinds.

  I didn’t see any poorly disguised cop cars on the corner, but after the newspaper campaign I didn’t want any of the neighbors to see me, either. The back fence again. I went back to the dining room table and picked up the keys to Cheeks’s ride and the remainder of the fat guy’s smokes. Delia had put all the pimp cash into a clean paper bag and put it in the dining room bookcase, so I pulled it out and dug out a few hundred in assorted denominations and pocketed them as well, then put the bag back. I opened the back door very quietly and crept out through the laundry room into my backyard.

  No spotlights hit me. The night air was cold and smelled like rain and grass. I let my eyes adjust to the darkness. My right eye was a little dim, but it seemed to be getting better. It was hard to tell. At least it was open again. I flexed my right hand and it didn’t make any crunching sounds. I took a deep breath and nothing popped in my guts.

  The fence was a little easier the second time. I went up to the corner and got into Cheeks’s car. The steering wheel had a few flecks of dried blood on it, but it smelled like the lemon-shaped thing dangling from the rearview. I tore it off and tossed it out the window, then lit up a smoke and hit the gas.

  Glisan to 39th, then over to Sandy, then a straight shot up to 82nd.

  People were just getting off work and the streets were packed. For some reason it always makes me a little angry when I have to stop behind some snowboard dickhead’s SUV sporting a GREEN OREGON or I VOTE SOLAR bumper sticker. It happened twice. It’s true I was in a stolen Continental and I’d killed the owner, so I didn’t dwell on it, but I was a little grumpy when I hit 82nd, a big, nasty slick of shit I normally avoided. I was thinking about Ralston, bombs, my face and my ass, the stupid car, the cops, and I don’t know. I just felt wrong.

  I trolled down 82nd from the deep end, just another fucked-up guy in a tricked-out ride, surfing for poon, one of hundreds. But I could feel the fuse burning in me. My right thumb was twapping away on the steering wheel. I took a deep breath and tried to settle down. When I lit another cigarette, I felt my heart beating in my swollen face. I thought about Delia and the cats, sleeping in the warm bed, and then I wondered if the cops were back in front of my house eating donuts and drinking coffee.

  I spotted Monique and the Bismarck motel at the same time. Both had seen better days. I pulled into the parking lot of a bar about a block away, on the far side of a pickup. Monique would recognize Cheeks’s ride and I didn’t want to freak her out.

  The Bismarck was a crappy one-story place with a lit-up vacancy sign. Monique was standing out front talking on her cell phone. A passing car full of kids honked at her and she flipped them off, so she wasn’t working. I went around the back of the bar and cut across several parking lots and dumpster zones to the courtyard of the motel. There were a few plastic benches littered around between the doors to the rooms, some of them with bags of trash on them.

  “Ambience,” I said to myself.

  I sat down on one of the benches and pulled up the collar of my coat, then lit a smoke. I was looking for a stringy white junkie in his forties. Unfortunately, that probably described half the people on 82nd, and at least half the residents of a shitbox like the Bismarck. So I did what I could. I smoked and I waited.

  After about half an hour, a bald tweaker and a woman who looked like she was pregnant went into room 11. Not my guy. A little while after that a scabby-faced guy in a leather coat and pajama bottoms raced out of one of the rooms to the vending machines, got a Coke, and raced back. Not my guy. I was getting really cold after an hour and running low on the fat guy’s cigarettes when a tall, lanky white guy wearing cowboy boots and sporting a greasy pompadour appeared, coming off the street down by the office. He was carrying a six-pack of Dr Pepper in one hand and a 40 of Old Colt in the other. Monique’s dinner, as she liked to call it. He went into room 17, two doors down from where I was sitting.

  Ralston had probably just scored. I waited through another cigarette. I didn’t feel like fighting with him. I just wanted to beat the shit out of him and then talk to him. Then maybe beat on him a little more. Giving him enough time to shoot up and slow down was a good idea.

  When I was done with the smoke I took the pair of socks out of my pocket and stuffed one inside the other, doubling them up. Then I dropped in the two ball bearings I taken out of my dresser. With one quick twist it spun neatly around my hand. My pinkie was still in pretty bad shape. Then I got up and went to the door. I rapped on it with my knuckles, the ones not wrapped in my favorite socks.

  “Pizza,” I called.

  No answer. I rapped again.

 
“Pizza.” Louder this time.

  “Fuck off.” Weak and distant, even sleepy.

  “Got pizza. Half off.”

  “I said fuck off!”

  I thought for a second.

  “Clarence is going to butcher you.”

  Silence.

  “Got a little information. You got some money, I mean.” I let that dangle. The door opened and there was Ralston, gun in hand.

  “Maybe you should come inside,” he suggested quietly. “We could take a walk, but—” He gestured with the gun.

  I cracked him across the back of the hand and the gun went down. Before he could swing I put my boot into his knee and then I was on him, pounding the shit out of him with my good left hand. It took about fifteen seconds for him to go limp. I kicked the door closed and turned back as he spat a little blood up onto his already bloody face and started to wail, so I kicked him one last time in the stomach. He stopped.

  His gun was a flat black thing with a magazine, rather than a rolling device. I looked it over for some kind of safety and there it was. I clicked it around and pointed at his head.

  “See, dude,” I began, “I don’t like guns. You had one and now you’re all fucked up and I have it.” I prodded him with one boot. “You listening?”

  “Fuck you,” he whined.

  “Good! So here’s the deal, slim. Your gun has this little clicky thing on it. I really want to talk to you about a couple things, but I’ll be honest with you. I’m angry. Fury management issues. So let’s play a game before we get to the question and answer part of the evening. I can’t see all that well right now. Any idea why?”

  He looked up at me. “Your eye is all fucked up.”

  “Good answer. And like I say, I don’t know shit about guns. But the clicky thing, I’m betting it’s the safety. Maybe it isn’t. But I got it pointed at your head and I’m going to pull the trigger. Just can’t make out the writing and I clicked it back and forth. So you have a fifty-fifty chance. How’s that sound?”

  “Fuckin’ shitty,” he whimpered, eyes wide.

  “Fuckin’ shitty is right. But when you blew up my tattoo shop, well, I’d rate my odds at about almost zero. So I’m being really fucking nice here.”

  Ralston’s jaw dropped.

  “You,” he gasped.

  “Me,” I replied.

  “Don’t!” He sobbed. “Don’t! I’ll talk. Just don’t.”

  I looked at the gun. I thought about it. Urine spread across Ralston’s pants around the zipper and his right thigh and he covered his face.

  “Shit, dude.” I lowered the gun a little. “Why don’t you get up and sit down in that chair. I was only kidding about the shooting you in the head thing. Plenty of crap I can blow off first.”

  “I think you broke my leg.”

  “No I didn’t, you big fucking baby. But if I start stomping on your knees with these boots and shit … I’m getting sick of threatening you. Get the fuck up. Right now.”

  He peeled his hands away from his eyes and stared at me. “OK, just, shit. I’m a little shaky here.”

  “I’m sure. Now get in that chair.”

  “So.” I sniffed the gun and looked at it. It smelled bad, like potato chips mixed with pencil shavings, and I still couldn’t make out any of the code on it. Witnessing the act of someone smelling a gun had a bad effect on some people. A shudder went through Ralston and he made a toy dog whimper. I pointed it back at him.

  “So,” I began again. “You blew up my tattoo shop. I know you did. Who hired you?”

  Ralston sagged in the chair he’d made it into. “Shit, I don’t even know where to start.”

  “Start at the beginning.”

  “OK, OK. It was this dude named Cheddar Box. That’s like a nickname. This kind of cracker out of the commissary in Deerburn. Fuckin’ guy lived on ’em.”

  “Cheddar Box.”

  “Yeah.” Ralston rubbed his oily scalp and his hand came away bloody, but not bad. His hand looked like it was swelling after the smack I’d given it with the sap. He looked at the whole mess and licked his lips.

  “Dude,” I prompted. “Still here. Cheddar Box.”

  He let out a big breath. “Yeah. Real name’s Chet or something. Puerto Rican or Mexican or some shit. Anyway, I knew him when I was inside. He was in the pile. Dudes lifted anything they could. Cheddar’s a big fuckin’ motherfucker. They took all the weights out at some point, but this dude, he just lifted people. Pumped. Like a fuckin’ Mexican Conan, but, I dunno, he sort of had class, if you see what I mean.”

  I made a spinning motion with the barrel of the gun.

  “Yeah, so anyway. He gets out. I don’t see him for a few years. Then I get out.” He rubbed the top of his head again. “So, like, about twenty years ago I was in the army. I fucked with bombs. Not as stupid as I look. Anyway, one day Cheddar comes up to me in this little burger place down on 11th, you know the one?”

  I rotated the gun again. He nodded.

  “Yeah, so he’s wearing this nice suit. Nice ride, too. Some big new Escalade type of thing. Told me he’d seen me through the window and wanted to chat.”

  “Bullshit,” I said. Ralston let out a poof of breath.

  “Same thing I thought. Cheddar knew where I was. Him talkin’ to me? Right then? Shit, that night, I mean, shit. Didn’t even have enough for a fuckin’ toothpick after the fries I was eating. Ketchup can go a long way if you see what I’m saying, so yeah. I listened.” He looked at the gun. “He’ll probably kill me if I tell you the rest.”

  “I definitely will if you don’t.” I sniffed the gun again for effect.

  “Figures. So Cheddar offers me some big dough to blow up that building. Sorry, dude, but I needed the money. Bad. So yeah, I took it. Got some C4 off these guys I know. Built a timer an’ all that. See, that took me about a week, an’ man, I started to get scared. I was living in the Jack London downtown and Cheddar was coming by every day to sort of check on my progress.” He scratched his chin with his clean hand.

  “I kinda sorta got the feeling that Cheddar was gonna do something bad to me when I was done, like cut my head off. Tidy up the trail, that kind of thing. So I went to see Cheeks.” Ralston shook his head.

  “See, that’s when shit really got all fucked up. Cheeks was my cellie for a couple years. That fuckin’ nigger is scary and way fuckin’ smart, too. Cheddar Box, well, he’s not scared of a piece of shit like me, but Cheeks? Different story there.

  “So Cheeks, he does what he does. Great big fucking faggot becomes my representative.” He squinted at me. “See, same dudes that wanted you out of Old Town to build them yuppie loft spaces, they were hittin’ Cheeks’s string hard. Cop action down there is fierce on his end. They’re cleaning those streets. Spotters calling every time a girl gets picked up.” He shrugged. “Hard for a pimp to make a buck.”

  “Ralston, you’re a fuckin’ retard. But keep going.”

  “Yeah, so Cheeks represents. Next day when Cheddar comes around, Cheeks is waiting with me. Just like an old friend, lazin’ around, watching TV. Cheddar, he wasn’t happy.”

  Ralston stalled out. I knew why. He knew about the dumpster.

  “Can I get a smoke?” he asked politely.

  “Go for it. Do anything stupid and it’s showtime.”

  “Sure, sure. You want one?”

  “Got my own.”

  He got up and limped over to the dresser, shook a menthol out of the pack there, and fired it up with a match. After a couple of massive drags he sat down again and let the cigarette smolder between his yellow fingers. His eyes were hard then, like marbles.

  “So Cheeks, he’s going to upgrade. Start himself a real, like, bordello. That’s like a whorehouse. Top string, fuckin’ martinis and the whole nine yards. See, he’s going with the flow. They want to upgrade the hood, he wants it, too. So there. Cheddar’s workin’ for some Russian dude named Turganov. Oleg Turganov. A real estate guy. I never met him, but Cheeks did, bunch of times. They had plans.�
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  “Hmm.”

  I considered. Ralston puffed away.

  “So Cheeks set you up out here? With Monique?”

  “Yeah. Fuckin’ bitch is crazy. Gives good head.”

  “Ah. I see. So we’re almost done here, Ralston. Last question.” I curled my fingers tight around the gun. “The last question is the hardest. If you don’t answer, I have to shoot you, but it’s the big one. Where is the fuckin’ money you got to blow up my shop?”

  Ralston took his fifty-fifty odds and came out of the chair as quick as a snake. I pulled the trigger and nothing happened. His big foot, all dressed up in a snakeskin cowboy boot, hit me right in the sternum.

  I flopped back in the chair I’d been sitting in and he was on me, wrestling for his gun with both hands. My wrist was bending, so I snapped out and bit off his ear. I wrapped my legs up around his chest and scissored off his scream, then started pounding on his head. He let go of the gun and I used the butt of it to finish.

  When Ralston stopped gripping me, I gave him a few more choice thumps and rolled him off me. He didn’t make a sound. He was still breathing, but it was whistling in a bad sort of way.

  “Well, fuck,” I said. “Number two.”

  Every shitty motel has a big TV bolted to the wall. Every shit-ass with a pile of cash unscrewed the back of it and stored their crap inside. It took me about a minute to fish out a stack of bills, everything the bleeding junkie on the stained carpet had earned from taking so much from me. About twenty thousand, in hundreds. I turned him over and fished through his pockets. A hundred and eighty-three bucks. I took that, too.

  The whole wad barely fit in my coat pockets. Twenty thousand in hundreds is roughly the dimension of a standard brick. I looked at the bloody gun I’d tossed onto the dresser and decided to take it. Ralston wouldn’t need a gun for a few days, and I really had to look it over and find out how to make bullets come out of one of the damn things. I stuck it into the back pocket on my pants, hoping I wouldn’t butt-dial and shoot myself in the ass.