Down To Sleep

by Greg F. Gifune

  “It’s ok, they’re my friends,” Jessica said again from somewhere in the darkness behind him. And then, in a whisper, “they’re angels, Daddy. They told me so.”

  Dennis, trembling as the pain pulsed through his head, slowly opened his eyes. The moon was back, having escaped the passing clouds, a crack in an otherwise dark sky, offering a glimpse of reality amidst the madness.

  And it was then that he realized the pain had finally left him.

  “Baby,” he said softly, stepping from the stool, “they’re not angels.”

  * * *

  Stephanie sat alone at the kitchen table, a freshly mixed Scotch and soda in one hand, the small prescription bottle in the other. She’d never been much of a drinker, but how much was one human being expected to endure? First her daughter had been taken from her, and now her husband lay up in bed, a shell of his former self, riddled with migraines and overcome with unrelenting guilt.

  The only thing holding her together was her faith that one day, they would all be together again, allowed to be a family again. Not here, but somewhere else, somewhere beyond all the pain of this world.

  But for now the joy her life had been when she and Dennis and Jessica had all been together was gone. Gone since the night she had allowed herself an evening out with friends. The night Dennis had been busy, and Jessica, trying to be a “big girl” had drawn her own bath, only to slip and fall and drown before he’d even realized the water had been turned on.

  Just one quick drink, Stephanie thought.Then I can face him.

  A sharp pain darted across her forehead and into her temple.

  Somewhere beyond the dimly lit kitchen, for the briefest moment, she could’ve sworn she’d heard giggles…Impossibly familiar giggles.

  A drink’s the last thing I need, she thought. She pushed it aside and rose from the table. Massaging her temple, she listened to the silence of the house.

  With a sigh, Stephanie moved wearily toward the stairs.

  CUTTING SLACK

  A telephone ringing in the night is never good news, especially when your name is Delbert McCree, and it was on one particularly dreary and moonless night that his phone did ring, disturbing a slumber he had only managed to achieve after voraciously attacking a twelve-pack of Michelob. Even before his dreams had fully given way to stark reality, Delbert had rolled over and was desperately searching for the handset on his nightstand.

  “Del?” a voice asked in response to heavy breathing.

  “Man, wha-what time is it?” Delbert managed to switch on a lamp, but only after his alarm clock had fallen to its death.

  “It’s me, man,” the voice said. “Slack.”

  “I know who it is, fool.” Delbert struggled into a sitting position, propping himself against the headboard. “What time is it?”

  “Little after one.”

  “In the morning, right?”

  “Yeah, in the morning, Del.”

  Delbert found a crumpled pack of no-name cigarettes on the nightstand and stabbed one into the corner of his mouth. “You in jail?”

  “No, but I…I got a thing.”

  Delbert had known Martin Slack since they’d been kids. Whenever Slack had a “thing,” it meant trouble. Usually big, hideous trouble. He sighed, sparked the cigarette and drew a deep drag. “I ain’t got any money, Slack, I’m busted.”

  “I don’t need money, man, I need you.”

  Delbert’s eyes began to adjust to the dim lighting in the cramped and cluttered studio apartment he called home. “Need me for what?”

  “I can’t get into it over the phone,” Slack moaned. “I need you to get over here right away. I’m at the Bidford Hotel. You know the one downtown?”

  “The shit-hole over by the porn store?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “I ain’t going to the Combat Zone this time a night, you nuts? Fucking dangerous and shit.”

  It took Delbert a moment to realize that the squeals echoing through the phone were the sounds of Slack bursting into tears. “You gotta come down here! Now! Right fucking now! I got a thing! I got a thing!”

  Delbert rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “Does this involve the cops?”

  “No.”

  “I’m not gonna get my ass kicked or anything, am I?”

  “No, I just got a situation here is all, a-and I need you, man. You’re the only friend I got, Del.”

  “True enough.” Delbert swung his feet around onto the cold floor. “I’m gonna have to get a cab, you know.”

  “I’ll pay you back.”

  “Be holding my breath on that one.”

  “Room 220, Del. Go into the lobby, up the stairs then hang a right. It’s almost all the way down on the right, ok?”

  Still half asleep, Delbert nodded into the phone. “Should I bring anything?” An odd silence answered. God help me, Delbert thought, Slack’s thinking. “Hey, tonight. Do I need to bring anything?”

  “You got any chips?”

  “What?”

  “Potato chips, you got any there?”

  “You want me to bring you fucking potato chips?”

  “I ain’t eaten since yesterday, Del.”

  “Fine, anything else?”

  “Yeah,” Slack said, his voice shaking. “You know that big knife you got? The real big one, whattaya call it?”

  “A machete.”

  “Bring that, too.”

  From force of habit Delbert glanced at his wrist, then remembered he’d pawned his watch a few days earlier. He poked at the shattered alarm clock on the floor with his foot but the digital display was only a memory. “I’ll be there in about ten, all right?”

  “Just hurry.”

  “Hey, Slack?”

  “Yeah?”

  “How come I need to bring the machete?”

  “You’ll understand when you get here.”

  Delbert dropped the phone back onto the nightstand and struggled to his feet. He’d cleared parole only two weeks prior, and now at one o’clock in the morning he was on his way to some fleabag hotel with a machete. “Some days,” he mumbled, “it just don’t pay to have friends.”

  But then, Delbert McCree didn’t have “friends.” He had “friend.”

  And his name was Martin Slack.

  * * *

  Night had cast Boston in a murky winter haze. Filthy snow plowed into tightly wedged dunes lined either side of the street, the entire landscape blurred by human breath converted to steam-like plumes as it hit the frigid night air. Just beyond the confines of the cab, the scum it seemed night itself produced had emerged, slithering like swarming maggots from various lairs. Cloaked in shadow and half-light, bathed in dull neon, alley dust and gutter grime, they littered the corners and huddled beneath streetlights, carefully testing the invisible boundaries separating their kind from the rest of so-called “normal” society.

  Delbert looked through the window at the outskirts of Chinatown and what was left of the Combat Zone—Boston’s infamous collection of strip clubs, porn shops and the like—and noticed only a few stragglers still milling about. But the drug dealers, pimps, hookers, crack-heads, heroin addicts, con artists, thieves, and perverts lingered like apparitions seen through the eyes of dementia. Yet these ghouls were real.

  The taxi lurched to a stop across the street from the Bidford, a dilapidated four-story flophouse that decades before had been one of the nicer hotels in the city. Delbert paid the fair without including a tip and stepped out into the night. He gave a quick glance around, then stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets, tucked chin against chest, and walked into the mounting wind.

  But for a few drunks collapsed in the threadbare furniture scattered about, the lobby was empty. He climbed the staircase to the second floor in silence, followed the dimly lit hallway to #220 and gave a light knock on the door.

  “Yes?”

  Delbert leaned against the door. “It’s me.”

  A series of loud clicks disturbed the silence of the hallway as S
lack unlocked the door. It opened a crack and his beady dark eyes peered out. “You alone?”

  “No, I brought the Boston Pops with me. Open the fucking door.”

  “Okay, but listen…listen to me for a second, okay?”

  “Slack,” he sighed, glancing nervously up and down the hallway, “it’s 1:30 in the morning and I’m standing here with a machete in my jacket. Let me in.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You bring the chips?”

  Delbert slammed a hand against the door and pushed it open, forcing himself in as Slack staggered back.

  Although the light from a grimy overhead fixture washed the area in a dull yellow hue, he was able to see clearly what Slack had tried to conceal. Blood covered nearly the entire bed, and had soaked the sheets to the point that their original color could not be determined beyond the thick brilliant crimson. Along the headboard was more blood, beneath which was sprawled the shattered body of a nude young woman, face down, arms dangling off the foot of the mattress, her smooth skin and blonde hair matted and soiled with blood.

  “Jesus…Jesus Christ,” Delbert muttered, eyes fixed on the gruesome scene.

  Slack closed the door then spun around and fell back against it, his chest heaving. “Lemme explain, Del. Just lemme—”

  Delbert forced his eyes from the carnage and supported himself against a bureau; his knees shaking so violently he thought he might collapse otherwise. “What the hell did you do? What the…what the hell did you do?”

  “I fucked up, Del, no doubt I definitely fucked up.” Slack pushed away from the door and approached him cautiously. “I didn’t mean for none of this to happen.”

  Delbert drew a series of deep breaths in an attempt to control his violent heart rate, and slowly met his friend’s panic-stricken gaze. Beads of perspiration and a spattering of blood dotted his face, his deep-seated eyes blinking rapidly. “You motherfucker,” he mumbled. “I’m two weeks off parole and you drag me down here into the middle of this shit?”

  “You? I’m thirty-three years old,” Slack said, his voice shaking. “I spent almost half my life in and out of the can. I ain’t going back to jail, Del. I need your help, who the hell else was I supposed to call?”

  Delbert watched him a while, listening to the rapid cadence of their breathing. Sounds of the city outside had become muffled, reality in general strangely malleable. He knew all too well that Slack was a petty criminal—a lifer—but he’d never imagined his friend was capable of murder. “What happened?”

  “I had a deal going.” Slack wandered to the bureau. “I met up with this…person who was looking to move some guns. I talked to Jimmy the Wedge about it and he told me if the merchandise was clean he’d take it off my hands, gimme a grand in cash, no questions asked. I needed the money, Del, so I set the deal.”

  “What’s that got to do with the body?”

  “That,” Slack snapped, pointing to the body with a trembling hand, “was my contact, the one who had the guns to sell. But the deal went bad.”

  Panning his eyes across the small room, Delbert focused on a pile of handguns piled into a large open suitcase propped on a chair in the corner. “Fucking evidently.”

  “Well, I thought she was kinda hot, you know?” A spasm-like grin twitched across Slack’s lips. “And she was into it so I figured we’d have a little fun and then make the deal, right? I didn’t have to meet Jimmy the Wedge until tomorrow at noon so—”

  “Get to the fucking point!”

  “That…that…thing,” Slack said as he pointed at the corpse again, “ain’t no woman, Del. It’s a fucking dude.”

  Delbert turned slowly, forcing himself to look at the body. “What are you talking about?”

  “I thought it was a chick, but it ain’t.”

  Delbert squinted, focusing on the sides of two large breasts crushed beneath the corpse. “She’s got tits.”

  “He’s got tits.” Slack ran a hand through his sweaty hair. “Here I am making out and feeling her up, then she drops her pants and out pops this fucking rod. I shit my pants, Del,” he said, beginning to cry. “I shit my fucking pants.”

  “So…that’s a she-male?”

  “They don’t like that name. They prefer pre-op transsexual.”

  Delbert glared at him with a look that should have maimed if not killed.

  “Yeah,” Slack muttered, “it’s a chick with a schlong.”

  Delbert lit a cigarette. “What the hell’d you have to kill her for?”

  “I just meant to smack him around a little, cause I was pissed, but he fought back so I threw him a beating.”

  “Threw him beating?Threw him a beating?”

  Slack blinked tears from his eyes and shook his head. “It was an accident.”

  “You sure she’s dead?”

  “Oh yeah, real dead.”

  “Fuck.” Delbert smoked his cigarette with quick, violent drags. “I can’t believe you got me mixed up in this shit, man.”

  Slack fidgeted about like a child in need of a bathroom. “Yeah, well what about me? With my sheet if I get clipped for this I’ll rot in prison for the rest of my life. Besides, Del, I ain’t never killed anybody. Think about how I feel.”

  Delbert reached his free hand into his jacket and pulled out the machete. “I swear to God I’m gonna whack you in the fucking head with this if you don’t shut-up and lemme think.”

  “I got it all worked out,” Slack assured him. “There’s a convenience store down on the corner. You run down there and get me some of them lawn and leaf bags. I’m gonna dump Melody in the tub and use the machete to…you know…then we put her in the bags, grab the suitcase and get the hell out of here.”

  “You’re gonna cut her up?”

  “How else we supposed to get her outta here?”

  “What’s this ‘we’ shit?” Delbert stomped over to the bureau and crushed his cigarette in a small plastic ashtray. “I should just go home and leave your ass here.”

  Slack held his hands up in front of him like a crossing guard stopping incoming traffic. “Just do me this one favor, that’s all I’m asking. Go get me them lawn and leaf bags, the big heavy-duty ones. I-I’ll do the rest.”

  “Then what?”

  “We’ll bury the bags someplace.”

  “Bury them? What do you think you’re in the woods? We’re in the middle of a city you demented motherfucker. Where the hell we gonna bury body parts, snapper-head?”

  “Fine, we’ll toss them in a Dumpster or something.” Slack shrugged. “Look, I’m pulling down a thousand for the guns from Jimmy the Wedge, all right? I’ll flip you half for helping me out.”

  “Great.” Delbert headed for the door. “Run the risk of spending the rest of my life locked in a cage on the end of some guy’s pole for five bills.”

  Slack nearly tripped following him. “D-Del? Del, where you going?”

  Delbert hesitated, his hand clutching the doorknob. “I’m gonna hit one of them bars outside before last call and have a couple drinks, then I’m gonna go get your fucking lawn and leaf bags. That should give you enough time.” He pulled open the door, then seemed to change his mind, and pushed it nearly closed before looking at Slack. “So get hacking.”

  * * *

  A flabby woman who had to be fifty if she was a day stood on a platform in a g-string near the bar, dancing with a bored expression to the strains of an old Rod Stewart tune, surrounded by mostly vacant tables lit with individual candles encased in glass. Delbert took a stool at the empty bar, ordered a vodka and tonic and lit a cigarette. He still had twenty minutes until closing time and planned to settle his nerves before he returned to the hotel room. Like Slack, he’d been in trouble nearly his entire life, but he’d never been involved in anything this heavy. Still, Slack was the closest thing he had to a brother, and as much as he wanted to abandon him, he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

  “Hey, Del.”

  Attempting to downplay how startled he was, Delbert turned nonchalantly and saw Pe
te Mancuso leaning against the bar a few feet away. An overweight loan shark with a terrible complexion and a weakness for expensive suits two or three size too small, Pete was someone from the old neighborhood he’d known for years. “Hey, Pete,” he managed. “What the hell you doing here?”

  Pete struggled onto the stool next to him with a muffled grunt and ordered a drink. “I had some business, figured I’d have a drink for the road, saw you sitting here. Slumming tonight?”

  Delbert shrugged. “Couldn’t sleep.”

  “Hey,” Pete said, leaning closer, “you seen your buddy Slack lately?”

  With his heart somewhere around his knees, Delbert shook his head in the negative. “Naw, ain’t seen him in a couple weeks, Petey.”

  “Well, do me a favor, willya? Next time you see him ask him to gimme a call, okay?”

  “Christ,” Delbert sighed. “He’s not into you again, is he?”

  A man like Pete Mancuso never discussed business with anyone unless it pertained specifically to them, but having known Delbert for so long, and realizing he and Slack were best friends, he felt comfortable doing just that. “Afraid so, Del.”

  Delbert threw his drink back in one gulp. “Is he late?”

  “No, but he always is so I figured I’d mention it.”

  “I know it ain’t none of my business, Petey, but, how much is he into you for?”

  “Six bills, including the juice. Supposed to come see me late tomorrow afternoon and pay me back in full, but you know Slack. If you see him, tell him I’m looking for him, all right? Tell him to do the right thing.”

  “Definitely, Petey, definitely.” Delbert wondered if he’d noticed his hands trembling. “What the hell’s he need with six bills, for Christ’s sake? Stupid shit’ll never learn.”

  Pete sipped his drink, glanced around quickly then leaned closer still. “Well, that’s the thing, Del. It’s why I mentioned it in the first place. Me, I’m an old friend, right? We go back to the old neighborhood for crying out loud, I ain’t looking to bust nobody’s balls, I’m just doing business. Now Slack, he’s not a bad guy, but he ain’t the brightest bulb in the box, you know what I’m saying? He has a hard enough time covering a fifty-dollar loan, so I made him tell me why he needed five hundred, and when he told me I almost shit. I covered it because I knew the people he was dealing with were people to be respected, but Slack’s such an idiot, I—”