Luke - Sex, Violence and Vice in Sin City

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Luke - Sex, Violence and Vice in Sin City Page 10

by Aaron Cohen


  BANG, BANG. Now this fucking Batman is dead, two to the face. Stan watches his breathing stop, making sure he’s dead.

  Yep. That is one big hole in the head. That is going to give the funeral home a challenge.

  “Hey fuck stick,” the Female Target says in a disturbingly cocky tone of voice.

  “Yes, dear?” Stan asks.

  “The cop you murdered? I have his gun.”

  “Of course you do,” Stan says. “But do you know how to use it?”

  “Ask the guy who tried to kill me a couple hours ago.”

  Stan wishes he could have the last three hours back and start over. He would turn down the job, or at least delay it for a few days, for long enough to figure out that one of the targets likes to shoot people, and she clearly did. She has that joyful pride in her voice that one only gets from killing someone who needed killing.

  “Alrighty then,” Stan says. “I’m going to slowly drop my gun. Just stay calm.”

  He holds his gun out away from him and slowly relaxes his arm, as if he is going to let it drop.

  He spins, ducks, aims at the bed of the gurney and fires three times. Fuck. She isn’t there. Three bullet holes smolder in the cushion where she should have been. Instead, she has moved to the side of the gurney to where the paramedic had been sitting.

  “Idiot,” she says and fires, nailing Stan in chest once, knocking him backward. He tries to lift his gun and she fires again, hitting him four more times, all right in the chest. Stan considers the fifth hit overkill and really, kind of rude, as the previous four would have done the trick just fine. He falls.

  “Beri,” Owen says, slowly coming out from around the back of the second ambulance with the second driver. “Did you kill someone else?”

  “Ever have one of those days where it seems like someone is trying to kill you and just can’t pull it off?”

  “What do you think about Mexico for a few weeks?” Owen asks.

  “Sounds good,” Beri says.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Luke has seen too much blood today, too many people staring into space with dead eyes and holes in their chests. The thought of seeing his aunt and uncle like that makes it hard to breathe.

  He bends to one knee and checks the pulse of the cop, who lies about four feet away from the ambulance in a pool of blood and sand, four holes in his chest in a tight formation. Luke has seen that before, that very same grouping, just a little while ago.

  Did Aunt Beri shoot a cop? What did he do to her? And why would the guy not wear a vest like other cops? Weird.

  Luke goes to the paramedic, also dead, shot in the face, twice. Luke thinks about his aunt and uncle, their faces half ripped off like this poor ambulance driver, and pushes the thought out of his mind. He wants to vomit but keeps it back. He’s got to keep his head if he’s going to be able to help them.

  Luke looks up into the ambulance, its door still open. Inside he sees a big cop, sitting in the seat next to the gurney. He’s slumped over, also shot in the head. His gun is missing from its holster.

  Luke backs away from the carnage and runs to the second ambulance. Empty. No one is there, thankfully. Where are Uncle Owen and Aunt Beri?

  He is relieved and still terrified. Did they get away? Were they kidnapped? What the hell did this David guy want?

  Luke knows this is his fault. He is the one who decided to get involved and run off with Artie and Cecil. He could have easily kicked them and their problems out of the house. Luke would have been home when Manny showed up and handled things.

  “There was nothing you could do,” Ben says.

  “I could have stayed home,” Luke says. “I could have been there when an asshole with a gun showed up and threatened my family.”

  “You being there would have got everyone killed,” Ben says. “The muscle let his guard down, thought he was dealing with a couple old people. He underestimated them, especially your aunt. They are alive right now because of that.”

  “We should go to the cops,” Luke says. “We can’t risk my aunt and uncle. We are going to get them killed. We need to end this.”

  “Kid, open your eyes. That cop on the ground? Look where he is, where he is facing. He was shooting into the ambulance while your aunt was shooting out.”

  The holes in the cop’s chest form a perfect four-pointed circle, just like the circle Aunt Beri put into paper targets at the range.

  “Think about it,” Ben says “Your friend detective Jones, that asshole lying on the ground. You think your aunt killed him because the cops are on our side? Consider the cops employees of Empire.”

  “Then let’s give them the data stick” Luke asks. “Let’s just give them what they want.”

  “What they want is money and power on a massive scale. David is building a kingdom worth a trillion dollars. What’s on that data stick can bring the whole scheme down.”

  “I don’t care. Let’s just give it to him.”

  “When he gets it, the first thing he will do is kill everyone involved, you, Owen, Beri, me, Artie, Cecil, Leanne, and probably a few family members, just for good measure. I know the guy. Trust me. He doesn’t leave loose ends.”

  “Fuck!” Luke yells to the sky, full of anger. “Then what, Ben? What do we do now?”

  “We do what Leanne wanted us to do. We go to Al Duran. He’s Leanne’s father, and an old friend of mine. We will figure out how to use the leverage we have to end this without more people getting popped.

  “My aunt and uncle, they’ve never done anything to anyone.”

  “Your aunt killed two people today.”

  “She’s spry.”

  ***

  A few miles away, in the parking lot of The Las Vegas Mall…

  Owen and Beri are in the fake police cruiser, sitting in the front seat. A shaken, scared paramedic is in the back, behind the Plexiglas that normally separates the cops from the bad guys. They are parked at the furthest edge of the parking lot, as far away from the mall as possible.

  “Okay, Johnny,” Beri says. “We’re going to drop you off here.”

  The paramedic looks up surprised and happy.

  “Really?”

  Johnny doesn’t know exactly what happened back there on the highway under the overpass. He hid behind the ambulance once he heard the shots. He pissed his pants a little. He thinks two criminals shot two cops and two paramedics. He thinks he’s being kidnapped and will soon be used as a hostage or killed. He’s scared shitless.

  “Yes, really, silly boy,” Beri says. “We’re not killers.”

  “You did kill two people today,” Owen says.

  “Hush dear, the poor boy is scared enough,” Beri says.

  “All that shooting, that dead cop, my friends…”

  “Kid, you’re making me wish she had shot you,” Owen says. “Would you rather stay in the car while we drive like maniacs to get out of the country? Or would you like to shut the fuck up and go to the mall where you can call the real cops and get yourself a Cinnabon?”

  He thinks it over for a second.

  “Cinnabon,” he says.

  “Good choice,” Owen says.

  Chapter Nineteen

  In the last 48 hours, Hank Singleton has lost money on sporting events in 10 different time zones. He lost not only on the common betting sports, but also a polo match in South Africa, cricket in India, sumo wrestling in Japan and youth gymnastics in China. There is a girl there who can do somersaults on a balance beam while blindfolded and juggling Ming vases, but somehow she fell off the uneven bars at the very end of her otherwise flawless routine.

  Hank’s bookie, Joe-Joe, has been kind enough to let Hank make bet after bet, all the while falling deeper into a hole of debt.

  Hank figures one more bet and he can get it all back. His luck is sure to turn. Flip a quarter so many times, eventually it will come up heads, right?

  Hank is in Joe-Joe’s house in North Las Vegas, a five-story mansion that hangs from the side of a brown desert mo
untain. He has been drinking for two days straight. His last meal consisted of corn chips, melted cheese and jalapeños. His mouth tastes like ashes and vomit. He wants to pass out, but that wouldn’t be smart, not in Joe-Joe’s house, not with you owing him money.

  “Australian football,” Hank suggests. “Sydney plays Geelong in a few hours. I’ll give you 10 points.”

  “I’m cutting you off until we are square,” Joe-Joe says and shoves a handful of potato chips into his mouth.

  “How about a sauna competition in Finland? Pretty much a 50-50 proposition, two guys go in, guy who leaves first loses. It’s actually televised.”

  “I said no,” says the fat man, chewing on a long, red chunk of beef jerky. The man is always eating, or complaining about having nothing to eat.

  “Hot dog eating contest in Cleveland tomorrow. You’ll love it. None-stop gorging on delicious all-beef hotdogs by professional eaters.”

  “Enough is enough,” Joe-Joe says and takes a bite of Twinkie. “I want my money. Or a hundred pounds of your very best, and that souped-up RV you run around in. What do you call it again?”

  “The Stork.”

  “The Stork. Heh. Cute. Why do you call it that?

  “Because it delivers, and it flies, when it wants to.”

  “I want it, The Stork.”

  “It isn’t available.”

  “Then give me my money.”

  “I don’t have it.”

  “Then go get it. Take a cab. Leave The Stork.”

  “I’m going to puke.”

  “Not on my carpet! Get to the bathroom! Down the hall, to the right.”

  Hank trots away, bile rising up from his stomach, the bitter acid leaking onto his tongue. He can taste old beer and nacho cheese.

  He closes the bathroom door, drops to his knees, empties his stomach into the toilet, Joe-Joe’s toilet, where that fat-fat man shits.

  Hank wretches until nothing is left, then throws up some more. He swears to never drink again, and throws up some more. He thinks about warm sunshine, and throws up some more. He thinks about warm blankets and fluffy pillows, and throws up a little more.

  He is empty and panting. His stomach muscles are sore from the merciless contractions. He flushes.

  Slowly, so as not to start the room spinning, he stands, turns on the water, washes his face, rinses his mouth out until the vomit taste is gone. He looks into the mirror.

  “Okay Hank, what are you going to do now?”

  There is no answer, just the reflection of a handsome man with great hair thinking hard. Then it comes to him. A grin crosses the face that has wooed a thousand women.

  “You good looking devil,” Hank tells himself, admiring his own charmingly lopsided grin. Even after puking up everything he’s eaten since the Reagan administration, he still looks good.

  In the mirror, he sees a window, a big one, right behind him. It is a big bathroom with a huge Jacuzzi tub in one corner and a three-headed stand-up shower in the other. True, this bathroom is two stories up, but no matter. Drop and roll is what he remembers from his days as an Army Ranger.

  Out the window he goes, landing as gracefully as a cat. He tip-toes around to the front of the house and to the Stork, a big, beige motor home that looks like shit on the outside, but which is tuned up and enhanced on the inside with the engine from a Mack truck and a couple massive bottles of nitro.

  Hank is a pot smuggler. He grows his own stuff in a field deep in one of Oregon’s many forests. Then he loads up The Stork’s many hidden storage spaces and makes stops all along the west coast, going wherever the price for herb is highest. As the grower and distributor, he cuts out the many middle men it takes to run a good weed operation. He can negotiate his own prices, work when he wants, and go where he wants.

  With a Winnebago – especially one that looks rusted, rickety and ready to fall apart – no one suspects anything going on other than camping at shithole camp sites that never seem to have hot showers even though they all advertise hot showers. By hanging out amongst the retirees and their little dogs, no one suspects Hank of being a guy who makes a million dollars a year selling pot (and has lost almost $2 million on gambling).

  He has one employee, Charlie, a 350-pound, six-foot-five Samoan who is a truck engine genius, snores like a jack hammer, and has a mop of hair down to his ass. He is happily snoring on the queen-sized bed the in the back of the Winnebago. The bed barely holds him. His arms and legs dangle off of the sides. Next to his hairy head is one of his many notebooks. Charlie is constantly scribbling things down, sometimes for hours. Hank has never asked to see what’s in Charlie’s diaries, but he’s curious. Maybe one day he’ll take a peek.

  Hank slides in behind the wheel, ready to speed off, but there is a problem. No keys. Charlie had driven. He has them.

  “Charlie,” Hank says and gives the snoring lump a soft kick. “Wake up.”

  Nothing happens. He gives a harder kick.

  “Charlie!”

  The snoring continues unabated. Charlie had drunk a bottle of Jack the night before, followed by a bottle of Quervo and a bottle of red wine he declared “dry with the subtle undertones of chocolate and cherries” shortly after downing half of it with one swallow.

  “Hey Chuck,” Hank whispers into Charlie’s big hairy ear. “They’re cooking up pancakes and sausage. You hungry?”

  Charlie’s eyes spring open.

  “Yeah, I could eat,” he says.

  Hank understands the words, but anyone else would have heard the strangled vowels of a man with no tongue, lost years ago to tongue cancer. When you spend every waking moment for weeks with a person, driving up and down America’s highways, you learn to speak his language no matter what it is.

  “Later,” Hank says. “Right now, we’ve got to get out of here. Joe-Joe is about to be pissed.”

  “What did you do?”

  “It wasn’t me! It was a little Chinese girl. She flubbed the dismount.”

  “How much do you owe him?”

  “Too much.”

  “So what we are actually doing is escaping.”

  “And we don’t have much time. I’m supposed to be in the bathroom.”

  Charlie springs off the floor. It always amazes Hank how fast Charlie is. The guy had played college ball for University of Hawaii and keeps himself in incredible shape. His football career ended a couple years early when he demonstrated his distaste for being yelled at by throwing the offensive line coach into the defensive line coach.

  After college, Charlie moved to France, went to cooking school, and became chef. Then he got tongue cancer. Poor Charlie. Life has kicked him in the balls on more than one occasion.

  Keys go into the ignition. Motor cranks. A roar issues from the twin, chrome exhaust pipes, the only external clue that this Winnebago is not a typical floor model.

  Away they go, leaving Joe-Joe behind them, knowing that at some point, the man will have to be paid. Everyone pays Joe-Joe, without exception, either in cash, or in body parts. That was Joe-Joe’s thing. He gives liberal lines of credit and says with a laugh to new customers, “And if you don’t pay me, all it will cost you is an arm or a leg. I’ll let you chose. Ha!”

  He isn’t kidding, and there are guys limping around Las Vegas on prosthetic legs to prove it. At least that’s what Hank has heard.

  “You really think Joe-Joe chops off people’s limbs?” Hank asks Charlie, who had The Stork up to 100 miles an hour going downhill on a curvy road.

  “I think you need to pay the man, and you need to stop gambling.”

  “On gymnastics at least.”

  “Where to?”

  “The Booby Hatch. We can sell a couple pounds and then figure out our next move.”

  “Stripper time!” Charlie shouts with glee.

  “And they have a buffet.”

  “Dinner time!” Charlie shouts with even more enthusiasm.

  From Charlie’s Notebook

  On Being Mute

  There are t
imes I would like to talk, to explain, to joke, to dazzle with verbal agility, to argue with great insight and passion, to woo with sweet words whispered into a lovely ear.

  I can’t speak. I attempt to speak, but words do not leave my mouth. Gargles, growls and strangled vowels do. There are ways I verbally communicate. A grunt, a hum or the occasional howl can get a point across, but I’m never going to be accused of being chatty.

  Being a mute has taught me something. In the same way a blind man might find his hearing becomes more acute and his touch more sensitive, I have found being silenced has made me better at seeing.

  When you can’t speak and don’t need to worry about what you are going to say next, don’t have to worry about appearing smart, charming or witty, your brain can do other things. I find what mine does is observe, process, and analyze. I have the mental bandwidth available to compare what a person is saying to what their face and body are saying. They often say very different things.

  It’s amazing how often you can spot liars just by letting them speak uninterrupted. When silenced, you learn that a squint of the eye tells you about a person’s suspicions. Eyes searching around a room as if for escape tell you about a person’s fear. When the eyes linger a little too long on a pretty face, you learn about desire and hiding what you really want.

  As a silent man, who is also large, I find that people go through phases when encountering me. First, they try to ignore me, as if I’m furniture. I’m too strange a presence for them to deal with. Then, as they continue to talk amongst themselves, they become aware that I’m listening. Soon, they are directing more and more conversation and energy to me, and I’ve expressed no interest whatsoever. I’m just taking in their words, perhaps offering a polite nod on occasion.

  Eventually, I become the center of their attention. By not speaking, they send their speech to me, working to earn a verbal response, desiring what exactly? To please me? To see if they themselves are interesting, witty or charming? My silence is a vacuum, and people strive to fill it with their own words, become drawn into my orbit.

 

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