Luke - Sex, Violence and Vice in Sin City

by Aaron Cohen

  Charlie nodded, not sure what he could say to that.

  “You take a vow of silence?” Hank asked.

  Charlie reached into the chest pocket of his flannel shirt and pulled out the index card he carried with him and gave to strangers who tried to make small talk with him.

  The card said:

  “I hope I don’t seem rude by not speaking. My tongue was removed due to cancer. I am well now, thank you for being concerned, but can no longer speak. I am a good listener, but you’ll find I’m not much of a talker. J”

  Hank handed him the card back.

  He said: “I think this might be the start of a beautiful friendship.”

  “Wrong movie,” Charlie said with his mangled mouth. It sounded like he was trying to speak while eating marshmallows and peanut butter.

  Hank, now stoned, laughed, and laughed, and laughed. And Charlie laughed with him.

  ***

  Back in The Stork, Charlie looks down at the red switch that is installed next to the cigarette lighter. He’s never touched it. Never wanted to. It is connected to the nitrous tanks. He is pretty sure the entire RV will explode if he flips that switch.

  Another shot rips through the RV. Cecil screams like a little girl. Artie issues forth a stream of creatively compounded cusswords.

  The red switch seems like the thing to do.

  “Charlie!” Artie screams. “Faster!”

  Fuck it. Charlie hits the red switch.

  FFFFFFWWHOOOOOOOOOOOO…

  He can feel his face and hair being pulled back.

  ***

  Luke, his torso popping out of the top of the RV, loses his balance when the nitro kicks in. He falls, his face banging in the roof. The box of “counter measures” flies out of his arms and tumbles backward where it is blocked by the AC air vent. He can’t reach it. He stretches. No good. He’s got to crawl out, giving up the safety of having his legs linked to the rope ladder.

  The speed burst did work though. The Black SUV and its armed passengers are now behind them and fading.

  Luke crawls out onto the roof, carefully, slowly. He reaches out and touches the box.

  WHOOOOOOOOoooooooo…

  The nitro runs out. The RV’s speed suddenly reduces, like someone threw out an anchor. Luke is thrown to the front of the van. He grabs a hold of the portal. His left hand grips hard, while the rest of his body still wants to fly forward. He remembers high school physics, and how bodies in motion want to stay in motion. He thinks about how Mr. Donald would enjoy using this scenario to illustrate how momentum works.

  “If you are on top of an RV going 150, and it then slows to 100 miles an hour, how fast will you be going?” he might ask.

  “150 miles an hour, Mr. Donald,” Luke might answer. “Can I use the bathroom?”

  And then Luke might meet up with Jenny Hotchkins, who loved to make out during class when there was a danger of getting into trouble.

  The box flies at Luke’s face. He’s got to catch it, keep it from flying off into the desert, where it would not be a help in keeping them alive.

  His right palm hits the side of the box and he brings it to a stop. Now he has no movement options. His right arm has the box pinned to the roof and if he moves, it will fall off the side. With his left arm. He has a grip on the lip of the portal. He legs are dangling in the front of the RV.

  The black SUV has caught up. A big man wearing a suit and holding an M-16 is hanging out of its rear window.

  Now I’m going to die. I am done. Good bye, life! It’s been real!

  Artie’s head pops out of the portal.

  “How you doing?” he asks.

  “I have never been better.”

  “Need any help? Hank wants to know what the holdup is.”

  “Think you can open up the box and dump it on the road when the bad guys drive along side of us?”

  “That I can do!”

  Artie climbs up so that his compact upper body is out of the hole. From a back pocket, he pulls out a knife and slices at the lid of the box. The cardboard flaps fly open.

  Luke is amazed. Artie has no fear. He’s handling this situation like he’s done it a thousand times before. He’s a little machine, point him at a task and let him work. Luke is impressed.

  The SUV pulls up and the suited man’s M-16 is pointing right at Artie.

  “Now!” Luke yells. “Now!”

  Artie pulls the box over the side of the RV and several thousand sharpened spurs hit the road and bounce around. A few hundred of them are run over by the bad guy’s SUV. The front tires explode first, then the back tires. The black machine screeches, twists and then flips once, twice, thrice and comes to rest. The man who was hanging outside of the window turns into red mulch.

  “Fuck you, you cans of cunt juice!” Artie yells. “You moldy bags of jism. Fuck you in your mother’s rotten twat!”

  Luke holds onto the portal with both hands, wishing they could slow down and he could climb back inside. But he can’t. There is another SUV bearing down on them. And he no longer has a box of sharpened jacks.

  The SUV pulls up behind them. This one has two guys hanging outside of its windows with guns. Bullets start flying past Luke’s ear. Luckily, they don’t have a good angle and shooting from a moving car is hard as fuck.

  Artie’s head disappears down the hatch. Luke pulls himself closer to that glorious hole of safety, but when he does he becomes a little more shootable and more bullets fly past his head. He hugs close to the metal roof, puts his cheek to the cold metal.

  The shooting stops and Luke lifts his head to see something truly strange. A spray of black oil is cascading from the back of The Stork and coating the front of the evil SUV. Its windshield wipers go on but don’t clear off the sticky goo. The guys with guns get soaked in oil and drop back into their vehicle.

  It keeps coming though. The oil runs out, and the SUV keeps coming.

  All we did was make it angry.

  Artie pops out of hole again, this time holding a Molotov cocktail and a lighter. The bomb is a green glass beer bottle filled with some unknown fluid. A piece of white cloth is stuffed into the top of it.

  “Hank says not to get cocky. We’ve got one more to get rid of,” Artie says.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Luke says.

  “Could you hold this?”

  He hands Luke the bottle, which he takes with his right hand, as he still needs his left to keep him from falling to a painful death.

  Artie pulls out a lighter. He guards it from the wind with his body and tiny little hand. After a couple tries, he gets the lighter to issue a little flame.

  “Windy as fuck out here,” Artie says casually.

  He lights the cloth which catches quick, flame engulfing it. Luke can feel the heat in his hand.

  Artie grabs the bottle and chucks it at the SUV, a perfect throw, like he was a big league pitcher in another life.

  It hits the SUV square in the middle of its windshield. The entire van explodes in orange flames. It screeches to halt, and quickly recedes into the night. Before it’s gone, Luke makes out two flaming figures fleeing the van and running into the desert.

  Stop drop and roll is what you are supposed to do, boys. Stop, drop and roll.

  ***

  David looks at a computer monitor. Tarlik, his CEO stands next to him.

  “That was expensive,” David says. “We’ll be paying medical bills for years, not to mention the funerals. And the trucks, brand new goddamn trucks.”

  “Aggressive action was called for,” Tarlik says, sounding like a petulant child.

  “And now we will do it the way I recommended.”

  “You sure this will tell us where they are?”

  “Yes. It is working perfectly.”

  David points to a blip on the screen, a blip heading quickly down the highway to Las Vegas.

  “How much did that tracking equipment cost?” the idiot Tarlik asks. “CIA tech is expensive.”

  “It was an old
iPhone and a free app. It’s underneath a couch cushion. I had a guard hide it there. I thought it might be handy to know where that wreck might go next.”

  “A fucking app. Our entire billion dollar operation is depending on a free app.”

  “Would you rather an expensive app?”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Hank is behind the wheel, with Charlie in the back eating whatever is left in the refrigerator, which isn’t much.

  This is the best Hank has felt in years. He can’t believe that shit worked. He can’t believe he is still alive. Once again, his crazy ideas got him out of a jam. Where these thoughts come from, he has no idea. They are like some gift from a god he doesn’t believe in.

  The Stork’s oil jets, for instance, were a crazy idea he truly never expected to use in a real world situation. Got it right out of a James Bond movie, the first or second one, he thinks, where Sean Connery’s car pissed out a black stream of lubricant that the bad guy’s Porsche spun out on.

  And the tire spikes, he was high when he thought of that. They were regular old jacks, the same ones little girls play with. He bought out five toy stores to get them. Then, for a few pounds of free pot, he had a bunch of hippies from a nearby communal farm file the points to sharp little spears, perfect for inviting a following car to get the fuck lost.

  The hippies ran a weird little farm that illegally sold raw milk. Why they did that, Hank could not figure. Pot is easier to grow than cows were to care for. Pot doesn’t need to be refrigerated. And Pot doesn’t make you puke your guts out on occasion. Raw milk is just about as illegal as pot, except no one is writing prescriptions for raw milk and college kids don’t march in the streets to legalize it.

  Stupid fucking hippies. Have they ever been good for anything? How many wars have they not stopped?

  When he got back from Iraq, he lost it. He hated everyone. It was too much…best to take a break from the world…try and forget…

  Explosions. Sand, blood, limbs, brains. Fire your weapon! Fire! Take cover. Wait. Wait. Don’t sleep. Keep waiting. Frank was hit. Frank might be dead. Who knows? Stay put. Copters on the way. Kids. There are kids in that building. Fuck. What are we doing here?

  Too many thoughts. When he gets like this, he needs to slow down, just slow down…

  One thing at a time, one breath at a time, sky is blue, grass is green, trees are tall, the sand is warm, the waves break, the sun shines…

  So much blood…

  “Hey!” Leanne is sitting in the co-pilot’s chair. When did she show up? Great legs. Great fucking legs.

  “What are you thinking about?” she asks.

  “Why do women always ask that? I’m a guy, so I’m thinking about my next meal or sex. What’s it to you?”

  “Are you always such a charmer?”

  Hank stays quiet. Arguing isn’t the way to go. He wants to bang this chick, not beat her in a debate contest. Best to change the subject.

  “So where are we headed to?” Hank says. “I think my job is about done here.”

  “We’re going to blow up The Dark Star, figuratively anyway. We are going to visit the one man who knows exactly how to do that.”

  “No seriously. Where to? I’m beat. I need some sleep.”

  She tells him the address.

  “Sounds good, Princess. Your wish is my command. So hey, not a bad bit of rescuing back there, huh?”

  “Don’t flatter yourself. You aren’t Indiana Jones.”

  “I’m the guy who saved you crazy bi…”

  “Ah! Don’t say it! I’ve had a bad day and I don’t want to be called that name.”

  “Look…we risked our lives to get you out of there, and for what? What!”

  “That data stick. It’s got all of David’s emails on it and almost all of his hard drive, all the planning about how to get The Dark Star open, how to get prostitution legalized in Las Vegas, who should be paid off when, and how. It’s a bomb big enough to destroy Empire Gaming and put a few billionaires in jail.”

  “I can see why David is trying to kill us.”

  “Until we get The Dark Star killed, it’s not over. There is more work to do. That information has got to get in the right hands.”

  “Sister, you can put whatever you want into the right hands. I expect to be paid for my services, and then I’m done. The deal was we rescue you, we get paid. So, when are we getting paid?”

  “As soon as the banks open, asshole. I can’t wait to get out of this shit can. It smells like piss in here.”

  She twists out of the seat and with steady feet on those tall heels, she strides into the back and away from Hank.

  She bumps into Luke, who is on his way up front.

  “Quite a hero you hired,” she tells Luke. “He doesn’t give a shit about anything but money.”

  “I give a shit!” Luke tells her, but says it to her back. She is walking away from Hank as fast as she can.

  Nice going, Hank thinks. You are quite the charmer. Excellent work. No wonder you haven’t been laid in a decade.

  Luke slides in and sits down in the co-pilot’s chair. He’s got some kind of grumpy look on his face, his too, too handsome face.

  Such a youngster, doesn’t know shit about shit, probably thinks having a couple bullets thrown his way makes him a man. Still, he held up okay, has a bit of a backbone. There are worse guys to get stuck in the shit with.

  “She is quite something, isn’t she?” Luke asks.

  “Oh yeah, she’s many things…whore, bitch, annoying, pimp…”

  “Not into her then?”

  Hank looks over at the kid, sees the longing on his pretty face, sees a heart just aching to be broken by that harpy on heels. Hank can’t help but to take advantage of that.

  “Well, she does have spirit, and smarts, you’ve got to give her that. Running a whore house can’t be easy. What do you think? A smuggler like me and a madam like her…”

  “No.”

  “No? Just no?”

  “No.”

  Luke leans back into his seat, stares out the side window.

  Hank has to smile. The kid doesn’t even know how to handle being jealous.

  From Charlie’s Notebook

  On God Existing, Though He Probably Doesn’t

  If you are a chef, and all your hopes and dreams depend on your sense of taste, and you get tongue cancer, you develop a few opinions about God.

  After my diagnosis, I thought that God must exist and simply had a truly warped sense of humor. What a tremendous joke he was telling, cruel, ironic, and painfully appropriate. I would have traded in tongue cancer for a lot of other varieties, even testicular cancer. Absolutely, I would swap one nut for my tongue. Not two, probably, but surely I could live without one.

  Then, after I learned more and more about cancer, I decided that God can’t exist. Why would he create us and then build into our DNA little time bombs that will kill us in the most painful way imaginable? I saw a lot of people dying of cancer while I was undergoing radiation therapy, then chemical therapy, and then my surgery. Did God create those people simply to destroy them as slowly and cruelly as possible? It made no sense. So away went my belief in God.

  The whole idea makes no sense anyway, a man up in the sky, watching over us, everywhere, omnipotent, all seeing, all knowing, given joyful credit by Super Bowl winners and rappers receiving Grammies, the sender of hurricanes, earthquakes, and pestilence of all kinds. Could a single consciousness be all around us, keeping track of us, helping us, hurting us, guiding us to do his will, and punishing the shit out of us when we don’t?

  On the other hand…cats. You can point to any animal and come to the same conclusion, but cats are the ones that make me scratch my head and wonder about God. Graceful, proud, cruel, passive aggressive, charming, lazy, loving, sensual, complex, moody, agile, I could go on. Cats amaze me. They seem like a design from a creator who decided to make something beautiful and confusing, a thing that can be a
pet, yet will not take commands, who acts more like an owner than a creature owned.

  How can cats not be designed? I know any decent evolutionary biologist can explain natural selection and hunting instincts and how physical prowess develops over tens of thousands of years. I’ve read all the relevant work on the subject.

  And yet still, part of me looks at a cat and says, “Wow. Nice work, God. I still don’t believe in you. But good one.”

  Then there is the human ear, a series of tiny vibrating bones set behind a drum, perfectly designed for the task of relaying vibrations to the brain. The ear seems designed, well-designed in fact.

  That brings me to music, and its effects on the human brain, and on me. I love music. It doesn’t seem to have any reason to exist, has no purpose other than to please me, has nothing to do with survival, and yet humans refuse to live without it, surround themselves with it.

  I’m sure that the same evolutionary biologist can explain why musical appreciation also developed within the human brain, probably something to do with music being created as a means of communication within hunter-gatherer tribes, and then it grew more complex as our societies grew more complex. I get it. I know. Still, I feel some small need to give credit to a creator for music, a creator I don’t believe in.

  I don’t have a tongue and millions of people will die of cancer this year and if God exists, he really loves beetles because there are more than 400,000 varieties of them. He spent an awful lot of time designing beetles, don’t you think? Nothing about this world makes sense. It could not have been created by anything resembling a sane being.

  So God probably doesn’t exist, because if He does, He is fucking insane. And mean.

  But still…cats. Wow.

  Chapter Fifty

  The Stork rolls through Las Vegas as the sun comes up.

  Down through the suburbs of the Northwest they go, past miles and miles of retirement housing, where old people live out their golden years with convenient access to slot machines, bingo and $4.99 steak buffets.

  Further along, they enter a sea of single-family homes, the dwellings of Vegas’ middle class, nurses, cops, pit bosses, casino middle management, accountants, contractors, office dwellers and anyone else who could put together a $10,000 down payment to buy a $120,000 home.