Not a slap but a real, grown up punch, like a boxer whacking another boxer. KC and me were so shocked that we started laughing. Johnny Seven dropped like a brick. Then Johnny’s dad picked him up and hit him again. Hit him three times, holding him steady so he could get a real good aim. Now it wasn’t funny anymore.
“Jesus, I don’t believe this,” said KC. “Do you believe it?”
“No way.”
That kid must have got punched and thrown and kicked around that room a hundred times. KC got upset. I knew he would.
“Hey! Fuckin’ cut that out!” he shouted. He picked up a stone and threw it at Johnny’s window. I threw another. We both missed.
We kept on tossing those damn stones but missed every time. Johnny’s dad didn’t hear us yelling. He was enjoying himself too much. He just carried on beating up his boy. KC and me had to go home, we couldn’t watch it anymore.
We started walking. “That’s bad,” said KC. His voice sounded strange. “That fuckin’ sucks.”
“Shit, you see the way his dad laid into him?” I said.
“I saw,” said KC. “That is so wrong, man. My dad may have smacked me round once or twice, he never hurt me. That bastard was using his fists. Goddamn.”
There was a train coming. Me and KC slid down the slope to get out of its way. The train whooshed past. It was a cold lonely feeling, seeing all the passengers through the windows and knowing not one of those motherfuckers knew about me or KC or Johnny Seven or would have given a shit if they had. To them, we were just a bunch of kids.
We watched the train until its tail lights snaked out of sight.
As we headed for the bridge I said: “So what’re we gonna do?”
“About what?“
“Someone getting half-killed, that’s what! Do we call the fuckin’ cops or not?”
“Are you joking?” said KC. “What good would that do?”
“We witnessed a violent assault.”
“We witnessed shit. We were spying, for fuck’s sake. Things you see when you spy don’t count.”
“Hey, I’m shaking,” I said. “Look at me. I’m shaking all over.”
KC sniffed. Might have been snot, might have been tears. I didn’t ask. “I hope that kid’s all right,” he said. “Because, God help me, if he dies, it’s your fucking fault.”
* * * *
But Johnny Seven lived. A week later, he was back at school. His mouth was all swollen and his left eye was so bruised he could hardly see out of it. No one asked him how it had happened, not even the teachers. By now, both me and KC felt we owed Johnny something so in recess we went over to be nice to the kid. At first, he ignored us but we wouldn’t let up. It became like a fucking mission with us.
We asked him to play catch. But he was so sore he couldn’t raise the mitt properly. So instead we sat on the wall and talked. We didn’t say anything about the terrible way Johnny looked and you could tell Johnny was real relieved that we didn’t mention it. And we certainly had no intention of telling him it was our fucking fault he looked that way.
“I was thinking of going shooting after school,” said Johnny Seven. “Wanna come?”
“Shooting who?” I said. “Griff?” The idea kind of appealed to me.
“M-h.” Johnny shook his head. “Just trees and stuff. My old man collects handguns. He wouldn’t miss one.”
We were impressed but trying not to show it.
“What happened to your mom?” said KC. “She die?”
“No sir. She just walked out, man. My dad never wanted to go anywhere or have friends over so she kept getting depressed and finally she just left.”
“Where’d she go?” said KC.
Johnny shrugged.
“What’s it feel like, not knowing if you’re ever gonna see her again?” I asked him.
KC acted all shocked. “Fuck, Garrett, what kind of asshole question is that?”
“S’okay,” said Johnny. “Way it is, when you got a mom, you sometimes think you’d be better off without her. But when you don’t even know where she is, it feels like you wanna hurl all day long.”
KC nodded respectfully. “I bet it does. I bet it really does feel that way.”
* * * *
We met in the woods near the lake. There was a fucked-up old ruined house near the lake. It was called the Retreat, because that was its name when people lived there. The walls were half down and it didn’t have any windows because so many kids had thrown rocks at them. KC told Johnny “The Retreat” was an unlucky name to give a house, because retreating was what cowards did in a battle. Johnny looked at me and smiled. He could see that KC was pretty dumb but would never have said it out loud. That wasn’t Johnny’s style.
So Johnny took this gun, this police special with six chambers and he let me and KC hold it and said we could have two shots each. We got a rock and scratched the shape of a naked lady on the side of the wall, then we each took a couple of shots at her. When the gun went off, it was real loud, like thunder, so loud that we were sure someone would come running, but no one did. Johnny walked half a mile away. He fired twice and got the woman smack in the nipples. It was like he was Clint Eastwood or somebody.
“Where’d you learn to shoot like that?”
“We had a ranch in Oklahoma,” said Johnny. “That’s where my folks come from. We used to shoot at things all the time. I can drive a car, too.”
“No fucking way,” said KC.
Then it was my turn to shoot. The gun went off before I was ready and I didn’t hit a fucking thing. KC laughed but he didn’t do any better. I had one more shot and I fired it straight into the ground because I felt like it. Johnny said what I’d done was a waste of ammunition. “What?” I said. “But it ain’t a waste to shoot at a picture of some tits?”
Later we went back to Johnny’s house and he let us in, said his dad was out and wouldn’t be back until late.
“Like how late?” I said.
“Who knows?” said Johnny.
“Wow,” I said. “You could stay out until midnight if you wanted.”
I could see KC looking pretty surprised. Me and him usually had to be home by ten, on the fucking dot, or we got grounded. And there’s Johnny coming home to an empty house. The place was a fucking mess, though. There was this thick layer of dust on the TV and the kitchen looked like someone had been throwing soup at the walls.
Johnny took the gun back to his dad’s room then got us some cold beer from the icebox. We couldn’t believe it. It was real German beer. He got out a CD, someone called Martha somebody. “Listen to this, she swears her head off in it.” It was a boring song, except at the end when this woman calls someone a mother fucking asshole. She sang it about six or seven times. Man, we rolled about laughing. When the song was over, we played it again just to see if we’d heard it right the first time. After one can of beer each we were all pretty drunk.
Johnny got us another beer, even though he’d said we could only have one each. Then he put on another song we hadn’t heard. It was some really old party record called The Monster Mash. On account of the song being about monsters, KC had the bright idea that we should listen to it in the dark. I knew what he was planning. I fucking knew. Sure enough, next thing he was asking Johnny if he had a flashlight. Johnny said sure. So KC asked Johnny to aim the flashlight at him while he did a dance to the record. In no time at all, Johnny was pointing the spotlight at KC while he flashed his big white ass in the dark. Jesus, it was funny. Johnny was laughing so much he was crying. KC wasn’t laughing, though. His face was all serious, like he was concentrating on giving an artistic performance.
Then the light turned on and Johnny’s dad was standing there. From a distance, he’d looked like the main villain in a gangster movie. Close up, he was just a normal looking guy, average size, ordinary hair and clothes and his belly starting to bulge, like any dad from anywhere in the world. He just looked at us. No expression on his face or nothing.
KC tried to pull up his pants,
his belt buckle rattling. Johnny’s dad walked over to him and pushed him. KC did this sort of hopping dance, still holding onto his pants. Then he fell over. Johnny tried to get up off the sofa, but his dad got to him first and held him down with one hand over his throat. I thought he was going to hit Johnny, but no. He just kept on squeezing his throat like he wanted to strangle him. I said: “Stop.” That’s all I said. Johnny’s dad turned and slapped me on the ear so hard I could hear humming.
Now Johnny was turning red, trying to knock his dad’s arm away. But he was too little and weak. He was making clucking noises in his throat. And what was really scary was that his fucking father still hadn’t said a goddamn word. Both me and KC felt sure he was going to kill his own kid. We kept yelling at him to stop but he was like a maniac. The guy was so mad his forehead was throbbing.
KC was crying his eyes out. He picked up the shitty dusty old TV and used it like a battering ram, slamming Johnny’s dad in the side of the head. Johnny’s dad looked confused and blew out air like he’d just done ten push-ups. Then he fell over. KC smacked the TV down on top of the guy’s skull. The TV didn’t break. The guy’s head did. When he was lying down, all three of us started kicking his head and stamping on it. There wasn’t nothing mean about it. We were just scared shitless of what the bastard might do if he ever stood up again.
When we’d finished stomping, it was pretty fucking obvious the guy wasn’t much of a threat to anyone no more. He wasn’t moving, his eyes were wide open and his tongue was hanging out. He looked like a dog I saw once that had been hit by a car.
“He fucking deserved it,” said Johnny.
“He really fucking did,” I said. Even my voice was shaking.
KC hadn’t stopped crying the entire time. “You dumb fucking bastards,” he kept saying. “Now we’re all going to get lethally injected, just like that guy Griff told us about.”
I was scared and trying not to show it. “They won’t kill us. We’re minors.”
“They wait until you’re eighteen and then they fucking do it,” said KC.
“They won’t do nothing,” said Johnny. “Because they ain’t gonna find out. My dad had no friends. He never spoke to nobody. Who’s gonna know?”
“The body’s gonna stink,” said KC. “It fucking stinks already.”
“There’s a big old freezer in the garage,” said Johnny. “We can put him in there.”
“I ain’t gonna cut anyone up,” I said.
“We don’t need to,” said Johnny. “We just take the frozen stuff out and lift him in.”
“Someone’s gonna know,” I said. I was shivering just like Scott of the Antarctic. “You can’t live here on your own without someone knowing.”
“This is America,” said Johnny. This kid was calm as anything. I think he was even relieved. “Long as you keep paying bills, no one cares about you. I lived in lots of places, that’s how it works. People only knock on the door if you owe them money or they want you to join their church. I’ll keep going to school, just like normal. I’ll pay the bills and sign checks while the money lasts out.”
The more we thought about it, the more it seemed like the ideal solution. Even KC could see the sense of it. We wouldn’t admit to killing Johnny’s dad, we’d just pretend he was alive. It wasn’t such a big lie, anyway. Most kids spend their entire childhoods pretending their parents are alive.
<
* * * *
BUMPING UGLIES
Donna Moore
“Hey! That’s my fucking bag, you fat junkie bitch.” Nice mouth on her, for all her expensive gear and fancy-looking Prada handbag. The handbag that was now inmy possession as I legged it across the concourse of Central Station. Serves her right for putting it down on the seat beside her. Everyone knows that Central is like a well-stocked buffet of Glasgow’s junkies, pickpockets and lowlifes. I considered it teaching her a lesson.
I could hear her stilettos pecking away like a crow on steroids as she tried to run after me. I wasn’t worried that she would catch me - the shoes were too high and her skirt too tight. As I dodged startled passengers hurrying for their trains, I heard a shriek followed by the thwack of a bony Versace-clad arse hitting concrete. Excellent. Now I just had to avoid the cops. Half of Strathclyde’s finest hang around Central Station. It’s an easy way of meeting their arrest targets for the month. Just nip into Central and huckle a few likely characters - the nylon shell suits and Burberry baseball caps are a dead giveaway.
There are plenty of exits out of the station and, within seconds, I was down the stairs and out onto Union Street.
“Fuck’s sake, hen . . .” The Big Issue seller I slammed into spun like a bearded prima ballerina.
I raised my hand in apology but didn’t turn. “Sorry pal.” I didn’t stop until I got to the Clyde where I stood puffing and wheezing for a while, wondering if I was going to throw up. Running is not my forte. My chest is too big and my lungs are too wee. It was quiet by the river at this time of day and I sat on a bench and emptied the contents of the handbag out beside me, giving each item the once over before laying it down on the flaking blue paint of the bench.
First out was a wallet containing five crisp twenties, some loose change, gold credit cards and a handful of store cards -Frasers, John Lewis, Debenhams. Mrs Gillian McGuigan — according to the cards - certainly treated herself well. Then there was a top-of-the-range mobile phone with a diamante-studded G hanging from it. Tacky. Enough MAC cosmetics to stock a stall at The Barras, an appointment card for hair, nails and sunbed at The Rainbow Room and a couple of letters. She lived in Bothwell, and she would certainly fit in there amongst the footballers wives and ladies who lunch. High maintenance and flashy.
I opened the mobile phone and thumbed through the messages from oldest to newest. There were a couple from female friends and one or two from someone called Stewart. Since they were of the “Need loo rolls” and “working late, c u at 9” type, I assumed that Stewart was the poor, long-suffering Mr McGuigan. Probably had to work late to keep his wife in bling.
Most of the texts were from Tom. “Wear the red basque on Friday,” “Kate at sister’s this weekend. Can u get away?” “Can’t live without u. We need to do something about K and S” and “Seeing lawyer Thurs.” It looked as though poor Kate and Stewart were in for a shock.
There were a couple of texts from someone called Billy. The most recent read, “One hit £10k, cd do both for £15K.” Billy might be the solution to the problem, but if he was a lawyer, he was pricing himself out of the market. I checked the rest of Gillian’s received texts and moved on to the sent box. They told quite a story. It would appear that the shock for Kate and Stewart was of the “shot in the head and dumped in the Clyde” sort rather than the “I now pronounce you ex-husband and wife” sort. Still, it was nice to know that “buy one, get one half price” extended as far as contract killings. I assumed that even taking into account the cost of the hitman, Gillian stood to make more as a widow than she would as a divorcee.
As I sat with the phone in my hand, pondering the best course of action, it rang. I might have guessed. The woman had to be my age at least. Nearly forty and she had a Justin Timberlake ring tone. The screen said “Home” so I flipped it up and answered.
“Gillian McGuigan’s secretary. How may I help you?”
“You can fucking help me you cheeky fucking skanky whore by letting me rip that greasy ponytail out by the fucking roots you bitch. I want my bag back.”
“Ouch. I’m hurt. Not all of us can afford to go to the Rainbow Room you know. I wonder what it is that Tom sees in you . . . your bleached blonde hair? Your orange sunbed tan? Your hatchet face? Your shrill voice with its extensive vocabulary?”
The sharp intake of breath practically sucked my ear off. “You’ve read my text messages you nosy bitch. I’ll fucking kill you.”
“Well, why not? That seems to be your answer to everything. Hopefully you’ll get a bulk discount from your friend Billy.”
“I . . . shit . . . I . . . You’re fucking dead. Fuck . . . you’ve got to let me have the bag back. Please . . .” In the space of one sentence her voice changed from harridan to whiny six year old.
“No. Actually, doll, I don’t have to let you have the bag back. I don’t have to do heehaw.” I shut the phone when the shrill voice started up again. I wondered whether Stewart was deaf. I’d been speaking to her for two minutes and that voice was really starting to grate on me. Some women give the rest of us a bad name.
I hugged my jacket closer to me and stared at the muddy Clyde as I thought about what I should do next. When I stole the bag it was a spur-of-the-moment thing. I’d been watching the woman for a while and when she put the bag down I just acted on impulse. Things had taken a surprising turn, but I was sure I could turn the situation to my advantage. I just needed to work out how.
Best British Crime 6 - [Anthology] Page 44