The Life and Times of Innis E. Coxman

by R. P. Lester

  We were in his office when he asked me to get his back on the robbery. The shop was closed that day but we had made arrangements to meet. Jay had a date shortly thereafter, and may I say that he was dashing in ghetto-fab white boy garb. From his purple porkpie hat down to his steel toes, the man was dressed to impress: light-blue cholo button-up, baggy Karl Kani blue jeans, an enormous belt buckle in the shape of Texas, and a spit-shine polish so high on his boots that a man could see the reflection of his teeth before they were scattered all over the parking lot.

  He was reclining in the leather chair at his desk smoking a joint as I gave him my gut reaction about his request. I paced back and forth over the hardwood, coolly explaining to him the wrath that theft of a chemically-based entrepreneur with an illegal arsenal could bring upon us:

  “You’ve gone batshit fucking insane! Did you drink all the tea? I knew that cow shit was too old!”

  “Coxman, chill, man. Listen.”

  “Deez nutz don’t listen! Dude, have you thought about who we’re getting in bed with here? We’re talking about Alotta Shitz, the most double-dealing bitch to ever snub penicillin. You know if something goes wrong she’ll give us to the cops. And if we’re caught red-handed, Harry’s not gonna kill us. He’s gonna keep us a while—then he’ll kill us! What’s the deal? You owe her a favor or something? Why ya wanna help some strung-out geek who doesn’t even swallow?”

  “That’s not true. She swallows sometimes.”

  “Point taken. But why did she ask you to do it? Between her and her snaggletooth little brother, they should have a stable of tweakers itching to rob that asshole.”

  “They do. Which is why she asked me.” Jay leaned forward and put his elbows on the desk. “Check it out, dude. She wants to leave him but she needs some money first. Said if she gets a hold of Harry’s stash she can flip it and have enough dough to leave the state. She told me that when he starts a new cook, he leaves it to simmer for a few hours in their shed while he takes a nap. He keeps three duffle bags of speed in there, too. Me and you can snatch that shit up while he’s sleepin’ and call it Miller time.”

  “That’s a fuckin’ peach. But I’m still waiting to hear why she asked you.”

  “Because he’s gonna lose his shit when he finds out and she doesn’t want it coming back to her or anyone they both know.”

  “What’s in it for us?”

  “A bunch o’ free speed, my man.”

  He offered me the joint. I took a deep hit, mulling over the pros and cons, floored that I was even considering this suicide mission. Although I tried to come up with an acceptable out, there were two points I couldn’t ignore: I sniffed a lot of meth and blew a lot of cash.

  I told him I was in. Once I got my cut, I could sell some, sniff some, and come out as delusional as Charlie Sheen.

  I leaned against the wall, unable to believe the words falling from my mouth. “Dude, alright. I’ll do it ‘cause you’re my boy and there’s potential for some money. Truthfully, though, I think we’ll be lucky if this doesn’t bite us in the balls.”

  “Cool. Thanks, Innis. It’ll be worth it. Oh, and Alotta has a little hideaway on the other side of town. That’s where we’re gonna meet to split the load. She might be down to fuck, too.”

  “She still got the drips?”

  “Nah. Free clinic took care of that. Don’t matter, though—if the vadge is sick I got wraps fo’ the dick!”

  “Fuckin’ gross, Jay.”

  ***

  Miss America 1985 had just been given a hole in her cheek to match her nostrils. At least, that’s where the hole would’ve been had Sharlene Wells’ actual head been in the line of fire. Just as that hook-nosed sea creature was accepting her award on national television, the bullet from Harry’s 9mm tore through her face on the screen.

  Alotta’s father had just bought that TV the day before.

  ***

  Alotta Flushing and Harry Shitz met at a miniature golf course when he bumped into her on a fairway. She was trying to hammer a shot into the clown’s mouth as he was running from the concession stand with the take from the register. Their eyes locked and it was love at first sight, two hearts merging as one. They soon discovered it would be a long road before they could be happy in their aortic misguidedness. (Speaking as a man who’s been attacked by a few fathers, take my word: you always love the hardest when it’s forbidden.)

  She was a sixteen-year old Bible thumper with straight As and a pony tail.

  He was a twenty-four-year old dope fiend with a flattop and a prison record.

  She came from an extensive line of Jehovah's Witnesses.

  His pedigree included addicts and petty criminals.

  The loving rays of the Flushings shone dim when Harry was taken to bask in their Christian glow.

  Alotta’s father, a used car salesman, had put his foot in Harry’s ass when he put his cigarette out in the lasagna. He threw Harry out of the house and promised to feed his nuts to the family Pit Bull if he ever came back. Mr. Flushing should’ve known it wouldn’t be that easy.

  Harry called Alotta’s house all hours of the night, begging her parents to let him see her. He filled his empty heart with Wild Turkey and biker speed, pining for the most beautiful underage girl he’d ever had. No matter what he did, he could smell her orange blossom perfume; taste her cherry lip gloss; feel her steel braces snag on the head of his veiny penis.

  “There’s no way a man who sells fuckin’ Gremlins is gonna come between me and Alotta!” he screamed in between plunges of the needle.

  Likewise, Alotta longed to be with her felonious bad boy. She lived in the body of a teenager—her Esprit sneakers flying her home from school to watch another never-missed episode of Charles in Charge—but beneath her pediatric shell beat the heart of a woman who was dying inside. She loved Harry deeply and was lost without him. She felt like Rapunzel, trapped in a suburban tower of brick and vinyl siding. Not even her Menudo posters brought excitement anymore.

  Alotta loved everything about Harry—the way he kissed her, his skill in sizzling a spoonful of dope, his back tattoo of a Klan lynching (when Harry flexed his muscles the victim turned into a yoyo). Being apart cut deeper than a switchblade.

  Oh, Pat, if love is truly a battlefield, then my Harry will figure out a way to break down the walls of this impenetrable fortress.

  Yeah, she’d said that as a metaphor, never thinking he would really kick in the front door and pop a cap in the TV.

  ***

  After massacring the family’s brand new Zenith console, Harry announced that he was taking Alotta to a state where sixteen-year olds could get married (there’s unsettlingly quite a few). He’d planned ahead, forging Mr. Flushing’s signature with exaction from the driver’s license he’d stolen the first night he was there. Harry then hit Mr. Flushing across the face several times with his pistol while Alotta’s mother slunk into the couch having a silent freakout. Alotta had overheard everything from the landing upstairs.

  Bowled over by Harry’s commitment, and the totally tubular way he pistol-whipped her father, she vaulted over the handrail, crashing into the sweaty embrace of her beloved kidnapper. Leaving with just the clothes on her back and the Swatch Watch on her wrist, she yelled, “Cowabunga!” to her parents and ran out of the house with one of the nuttiest ex-cons to ever pack a gun.

  Fifteen years later, me and Jay were packing guns to go rob the same nut.

  ***

  Alotta said Harry always started a new cook around lunchtime. She called us at 2 PM the day he began making a fresh batch and we went over there to scope it out.

  If Alotta was any indication, their house was going to be trashy. My suspicions were heightened when we entered the neighborhood. I use that term loosely, mind you; it was more like houses squatting on a maze of broken streets. It was called Pine Brook in its inception, but everyone, including the residents, now knew it as Pine Crook.

  Originally meant to be a middle-class suburb back in the 7
0s, construction was abandoned when the bank financing the project went under. The homes that’d already been built were sold at rock bottom prices to recoup some of the expenditure, attracting a certain “element” in the process. It was now the sort of community where drunks lay passed out on porches, where bums pushed stolen shopping carts, where every corner reeked of larceny and old garbage. A place where you could brew megatons of crystal or beat your wife without drawing unwanted attention from the cops. Not that anyone would’ve called them.

  Someone was beating somebody in every residence.

  ***

  Everything was quiet around the old clapboard house. There were black garbage bags covering broken windowpanes, aluminum foil clinging to the rest. Three gutted trucks older than the wheel itself rusted in the front yard. Filled with bullet holes and groupings of buckshot. A late 80s model Corolla sat in the driveway with no bumpers and a lot of primer. Cap it off with a lawn that was mostly dirt and you had a setting straight out of a Depression-era novel. A leaning hurricane fence sealed it all in. We’d gain access through the broken front gate.

  The first thing we smelled upon exiting Jay’s Caddy were the industrial fumes of primo speed hanging in the humidity.

  Since this was Jay’s deal, I waited by the car and smoked on a joint while he did some reconnaissance. He crept around the side of the house, fighting trash bags puffing in the breeze to peer into the den. Through a slit in the foil, he saw Alotta’s husband, Harry “Crazy” Shitz, sleeping soundly on their green canvas sofa with a muted episode of Friends providing the only light in the room.

  Clutching a 12 gauge like a murderous teddy bear.

  Jay wheeled his arm for me to come over. I roached the joint and stealthed through the graveyard of Fords and scrub brush. We circled back behind the house to the dilapidated tin shed. My bolt cutters razored through the padlock like a hot knife through butter.

  When we flung the door open it looked like New Jack City starring Bill Nye the Science Guy. There were beakers bubbling with caustic chemicals, lung-melting vapors frothing from clear plastic containers, interstates of tubing converging on top of one another, and enough packs of Sudafed to cure a hospital ward. Our eyes drifted to three black duffle bags in a far corner that were big enough to smuggle Asians.

  We rushed over and unzipped them with shaking hands, careful to mask our faces with shirttails so as not to breathe the rotten air. We uncovered more than we bargained for: all three were filled to the brim with gram-size baggies of glass—that speed that looks like chips of a bottle after you’ve smashed it over someone’s head.

  Erections were achieved.

  We looped the duffles on our shoulders—one for Jay, two for me—and hauled ass back to the Caddy where we threw them in the back seat. I followed them, yelling, “GO! GO! GO!” at the top of my lungs. I hadn’t had a chance to shut the door. It slammed back on my shins when Jay peeled down the street.

  Next stop, a shithole.

  ***

  Alotta’s duplex was a fireball waiting to happen. It’d been built during the 40s and was smack dab in the middle of the ghetto. One of the oldest structures in the city, it had a front porch made of boards harvested from retired riverboats. It ran the length of the building, so loosely put together that it acted as a doorbell for both apartments; you could hear a mouse crawl over those planks. Concrete steps in front of the tinderbox had sunk into the Earth over time, lying six inches below the porch, and God help you if you weren’t paying attention; first-time visitors unmindful of their steps were treated to a face full of splinters. A white flowerpot with bright, plastic petals hung from a hook on one of the beams, doing its best to offset the dead chrysanthemum plants that lined Alotta’s side of the porch. A puke-green paint job was severely malnourished by fifty-plus years of exposure to the elements. The broken metal mailbox on the front post was supposed to read 669, but a rivet on the nine was fucked so it fell to read 666.

  I would’ve taken that as my sign to turn around if I’d known what was going to happen.

  ***

  Our plan was to split the booty into thirds. When we arrived, Jay chucked the bags on the untidy coffee table in the living room, sending empty Michelob bottles and the flaming nubs of orange-scented candles plummeting to the carpet. After stamping out the resulting inferno, we divvied up our plunder, each of us getting a duffle, Jay plunking a tattooed arm into his to retrieve a baggie. We left Alotta inspecting hers in the living room while the two of us hurriedly walked into the kitchen to crush the contents of the plastic with a ladle. As thanks for helping him with the theft, Jay let me do the honors. He dumped the powdered cargo on the grubby counter, cutting it into three lines with his pocket knife. I leaned over and hoovered the channels of transparent crystals one after the other through a severed Mcfatty’s straw.

  My brain came alive after the first bump.

  My nose fried from the second.

  My face was prickly after the third.

  I shot up from the formica ready to choke a Hells Angel and take his bitch, staggering to the faucet to wet my fingertips and sniff the droplets to coax the grains down my throat. My pupils were small but my eyes were huge, taking in strobes of color I hadn’t known existed. Successive waves of light reverberated around my field of vision like I’d taken a blow to the face. I was soaring with eagles through clear-blue skies, sharing airspace with every manner of flying fowl, thinking I’d never come down from the burning wonder of unknown oxidants mauling my cerebral cortex.

  It was the best glass I’d ever done in my entire drug career.

  Harry Shitz knew his shit and my olfactory singed with appreciation.

  Jay and Alotta snuffled three lines apiece as well, sending us all into the stratosphere. Alotta was so tweaked that she actually started cleaning up the layers of pizza boxes and Carby’s sandwich containers that’d started paying rent on the kitchen floor. Her unwashed coochie-cutters and used-to-be red halter top flecked through the kitchen performing household chores that’d been neglected for God knows how long. As she scurried over the linoleum, I couldn’t help but wince at the sound of her naked feet retracting from the sticky material.

  That girl was nasty.

  Jay and I were in the living room on her brown leather couch watching a rerun of All in the Family, frozen in place by Archie Bunker’s take on race relations in 1970s America. Alotta materialized at the doorway, her thin brown hair stuck to her forehead from speed-sweat, the sunken cheeks rosy from an elevated body temp, with her brown eyes indented like a skeleton’s. Without so much as a buttery lead-in, she said she wanted a bigger slice of the pie. Her reasoning behind this astonishing demand:

  Since it was her husband she’d stabbed in the back, she should get a majority of the spoils.

  I would’ve fainted had it not been for the speed.

  Jay turned to me, doubt slathered across his face with the beginning hints of anger in his usually deep-blue eyes. His nostrils flared and it wasn’t just from the glass. For a second, we glared at each other, telepathically agreeing that Alotta could go fuck herself. But the implications of her declaration were clear:

  Do it, or get the Crazy Shitz.

  I knew we were treading on thin ice when I’d agreed to deal with this bitch. Then Jay told her to kiss his dick.

  Our world.

  Was fucked.

  This was a serious predicament, good people. We were at odds with an erratic speed freak whose drug use only intensified her erraticism. If we didn’t cohere to her terms, she’d tell Harry who stole his product and we’d be forced to go on the lam. Sure, he’d beat Alotta half to death for hatching the scheme—how would she know who stole his speed unless she was in on it?—but at the end of the day, that was his wife. He’d leave her breathing and her broken bones would heal. The same would not be said for us.

  I stayed on the couch watching TV, listening to Jay and Alotta argue in the kitchen, plotting my new life performing donkey porn in a Mexican village if his inte
rference didn’t produce results.

  I was impressed with his restraint. He didn’t slap her or anything.

  He gave a deep breath—“WHOOOOOOO!”—then took it down a notch. Over Archie’s racist dialogue, I heard him calmly inform that greasy slag how yes, she’d provided the information, but we actually took the risk; how there was a shotgun ready to blow our heads off at any moment; how, in light of that news, we were being nice by not taking the whole load and sticking her in the ground somewhere; and how yes, an even three-way split was more than fair considering all the information placed at her feet and because fuck that slimy bitch.

  Shotgun, goddammit.

  His arguments proved to be fruitless. No matter how well he explained it to her, that brainless junkie wouldn’t leave it alone. Jay finally gave up on diplomacy, steering the conversation toward sex. He knew that Alotta would drop a newborn for a good fuck and her predictability didn’t disappoint. He suspected that she’d see the light after the speed wore off.

  And if she didn’t, he lived next to a light-yellow cornfield.

  They walked into the living room without explanation, knowing I’d heard every word from the kitchen. Alotta smiled slyly, saying she’d always wanted to fuck both of us at the same time.

  I’d always wanted to hump a wolverine before I put my dick in Alotta Shitz, but if this was the way it had to be for Jay and I to keep our share of the loot—and our lives—then so be it.

  Alotta stripped out of her shorts and halter top. Jay got naked as well, his clothes joining hers on the floor. Mine wound up on top of the pile. Jay got ready to silence Alotta’s mouth with his dick. I donned a rubber and got ready to silence her ass with mine.

  ***

  We moved to the couch where Alotta positioned herself on top of me. I cushioned my head with an armrest as Jay nestled his schlong firmly against her tonsils. I was buttfucking her from the bottom while he was buried asshole-deep in her throat. I know this because his asshole was directly above me and I was looking straight into its ungodly hairiness. I tried to shut my eyes, but the speed wouldn’t let me.