Frank Sinatra in a Blender

by McBride, Matthew;Bruen, Ken

  She took Big Tony’s drink order then asked me what I wanted.

  I gave her a hard look and told her with my eyes.

  She said I’d have to do better than that.

  I sat up straight in my chair, my posture rigid, commanding.

  I explained that I had a skilled tongue that made women weep. Perhaps, under different circumstances, I could give her a demonstration. Then I asked her for a double shot of Maker’s Mark, a Corona, and a shot of Quervo Gold. Preferably with lime.

  She looked confused.

  Doyle returned and put the new Corona in my hand. He told me they were fresh out of Seagram’s.

  I told him not to worry as I dropped the next Oxy on my tongue. Doyle said he wasn’t, then took a seat and told us what he’d come up with.

  Parker’s best man was a guy called English Sid. He asked me if I knew him.

  I told him I thought so. That sounded like Parker’s number one.

  “Uh huh, that’s him,” Doyle continued. “Well, I been thinkin’. Seems to me, we just gotta follow this English Sid. We follow him and he leads us to the money. Assuming he even has it. Assuming this tweaker fuck is even involved.”

  Doyle gave Big Tony a questionning look, but Big Tony was convinced.

  “Telly’s involved. He all but told me, the little shit.”

  “Yeah, I dunno.” Doyle shrugged. “Just seems like you’re still assumin’ a lot.”

  Doyle was right. Big Tony was assuming a lot. But they didn’t know about Norman Russo, a detail that could prove to be everything.

  A few minutes passed without words as I continued to drink at a pace that would’ve made any competitive drinker proud. I finally broke the silence with a powerful belch and a brilliant idea.

  “Let’s just follow this cocksucker. We’ll do it in shifts. Starting now.”

  I volunteered to go first, knowing full well I wouldn’t have to.

  Doyle clapped his hands together and leaned forward. “That’s what I’m sayin’! If Parker’s behind this, and he’s probably behind this, then this English cocksucker’s gotta be involved too. We follow him to the money.”

  Doyle offered to take the first watch, like I knew he would.

  I understood Big Tony’s bobbing head to mean he agreed. He was tapping his finger on the coke kit.

  “It’s our only move,” I said. “But it still doesn’t sound like much of a plan.”

  Doyle shrugged his shoulders and asked me if I could come up with anything better.

  I drained the second half of my bottle and set the empty down gently this time. Told them I didn’t know. There wasn’t much to go on.

  I failed to mention my involvement with the Chief. Thought some things were better left unsaid.

  Before we could discuss things any further, the elegant blonde—the one I failed to enchant with empty promises and pornographic advances—returned in her monstrous pedestal shoes.

  She set the tray down on the table and Big Tony grabbed his beer, told her to stick it on his tab.

  Then she looked at me so I handed her a twenty and a ten. I thanked her for being perfect.

  She met my stare when she took the money. Her eyes were gleaming bits of rough-cut jade in languid pools of lust. Everything about her mouth and throat was a warning. She made a perfect kiss with her spank me lips and marched out of my life, but she did the walk of shame to the stripper’s pole with immeasurable grace.

  Doyle seemed impressed. “I think maybe you could fuck her, Valentine.”

  I didn’t say anything. Flawless moments like that didn’t come often.

  I hammered the first two shots and thought about a bowl of chili.

  •••••

  They spent the evening with most of Telly’s body in the trunk of English Sid’s car.

  Mr. Parker said to cut him up. He wanted it done his way. He said to give Telly special treatment—his way of saying he wanted Telly cut up into eight individual pieces. The legs cut in half to make two pieces each. Each arm removed at the shoulder. The head separated from the torso.

  Mr. Parker called that The Eight Piece Deal. It simplified the transportation of the limbs during the disposal process. But the prospect of sawing through muscle and bone for hours on end proved too difficult for them to even contemplate.

  Sid had a better idea.

  “Let’s just chop his hands off, Johnny. Maybe, his feet. We should probably cut his head off, too. Long as there’s no fingerprints we’ll be fine.”

  No Nuts agreed that was a better idea. A lot less messy too. Cutting and sawing through thigh and quadriceps muscle was hard work. But chopping off an ankle was a walk in the park.

  They walked behind the church and grabbed an ax from an old shed they’d converted to a tool room, then they took bets on who could chop the feet off in the fewest blows.

  They played rock, paper, scissors and No Nuts won, so he decided to let Sid go first.

  Sid rolled up Telly’s right pants leg and removed his boot. He drew a mental line right above the ankle. He took a practice swing at half speed, stopped just shy of blade touching skin. Sid concentrated. Focused hard. There was five dollars riding on each swing.

  Swoosh, his first attempt went clean through the bone and the ax plunked on the concrete. Sid began to smile.

  “Not so fast, cocksucker,” No Nuts said. “I don’t think so.”

  “And why not?” Sid questioned. “The bloody blade went straight fuckin’ through!”

  No Nuts squatted down, grabbed Telly’s cold dead foot and leaned back with his weight. It started to give some; they could hear cold meat peeling away from the bone.

  “Look, this fucker’s still attached.”

  The exposed muscle was vivid and pink. There were muscle fibers still connecting everything together.

  No Nuts accused Sid of being sloppy.

  Sid said, “Okay, Johnny.” Then he took another swing. This time there was no doubt. Telly’s foot detached from his leg and Sid kicked it across the floor.

  No Nuts smiled. “Not bad.”

  “Fuck you. That first one went clean through. I got jammed up on a bloody technicality.”

  “Uh-huh.” Then, with no mental or physical preparation whatsoever, No Nuts took a powerful swing himself, using every ounce of energy his short, fat body possessed. But his aim was way off; the brunt of the blow was absorbed by Telly’s boot with a dull thud. The ax bounced out of Johnny’s hands.

  Sid laughed uncontrollably. He lost his balance, had to sit down.

  No Nuts shook his head and finished with the legwork.

  It was dark when they left the church. They spent the next three hours driving the St. Louis riverfront depositing limbs. They threw a leg in the Mississippi and an arm in the Missouri. No Nuts tossed a foot into a sewer in old St. Charles.

  Sid took his time and drove the speed limit. He listened to bad music while No Nuts complained about the weather. About the price of gas. He complained about the Pope and he wasn’t even Catholic.

  They drove Interstate 270 to Highway 44. Most of the trip was spent in a heated debate over politics and healthcare. Sid asked No Nuts where he stood on abortion.

  “It’s a woman’s choice,” he said firmly.

  Sid nodded. “Agreed. But, what about the baby, Johnny? Dontchya think that little bastard’d like to make up his own bloody mind before his whore of a mum goes and aborts him?”

  “I thought you just said it was her choice?”

  Sid raised his right palm, gave half a shrug. “I’m just sayin’, Johhny.”

  No Nuts let that sit, but not for long. “So, you’re sayin’ if this broad your seein’ got knocked up you’d let her keep it?”

  “I don’t have a broad n’more, Johnny. We split up, remember?”

  Sid missed the point entirely.

  “Yeah, but what I’m sayin’ is, if you still had some gal, and you knocked her up, would you tell her to get an abortion or let her keep it?”

  “Oh,
will you come on now, Johnny? We just chopped a man’s bloody feet off, that’s no kind of example to be settin’ now is it?”

  No Nuts looked out the window, tired of Sid pissing him off.

  Sid looked over and smirked, said, “Besides, No Nuts, I got meself snipped a while back.” Sid held up two fingers and made scissors. No Nuts held up one finger and told Sid to go fuck himself.

  Their last stop was an access on the Meramec River in Fenton, just below the old Chrysler plant.

  No Nuts told Sid, “I knew this guy, this bodybuilder, used to work at Chrysler.”

  Sid nodded, urged him to continue. “They built minivans, right? Well, I used to front him money for this thing he had goin’ on. It was a helluva thing. They knew how them minivans went together, so they’d drive down to Mexico to buy steroids and sneak ‘em back across the border inside these vans. Once they got home to Missouri, they’d go back to work, filling the interior body panels with steroids then shipping the vans off.”

  Sid was genuinely impressed at the blue-collar ingenuity of the autoworkers. “So where’d they send the gear to?”

  “You know, different dealerships and shit. They hauled ‘em on these transports; they’d know all the destinations before hand. They tracked it all on computers and GPS. They kept it tight, only a few guys knew about it.”

  “That’s pretty fucking spectacular, I’ll say. How’d these blokes ever come up with such a thing?”

  “Completely by accident.”

  Sid walked to the edge of the broken concrete slab and tossed an arm out into the river by the elbow.

  “Go on, Johnny. How’d those cheeky bastards get a thing like this together?”

  “That’s what I asked my buddy. He said they met online, some bodybuilding site. One thing led to another, guess they started talkin’, realized what they all done for a living. One guy worked at a dealership in Indiana, he knew a guy at a dealership in Virginia. Like social networking for drugs.”

  “But how’d they get the roids out of the vans?”

  “That’s the beauty of it Sid. These guys at the dealerships who were in on it’d take the vans apart soon as they got off the truck, then dole out the juice to their people. Then that guy’d take the ‘roids to a gym, distribute to all the gym rats. Then BOOM, everybody buys’uh couple bottles, they sell’uh couple bottles, before long it spreads out like birdshot.”

  Sid told Johnny that was a hell of an idea. He asked him what happened to the plant?

  “Greedy corporate cocksuckers. They run that place into the fuckin’ ground.” No Nuts spit a wad of solid yellow into a patch of mud as he walked to the very last speck of shore.

  “Go on, punt it out there, Johnny.”

  No Nuts screwed his face down tight and pushed wrinkles together on his forehead. He lowered Telly’s head out in front of him and dropkicked it. The wind took it and the head traveled high into the dead black air. They never heard it hit the water.

  Sid and No Nuts walked back to the Lexus as the snow began to fall and pelted Sid’s face. They got inside the neckline of his jacket and melted.

  As they left the access road Sid cranked the heat and it warmed their faces. He yawned and stretched his neck to the side, happened to look down and saw Telly’s dirty white tube sock with bright wet patches of blood showing through and staining the immaculate floorboard.

  “Oh Johnny, ya wanker, you forgot the bloody teeth.”

  They’d smashed a few of Telly’s teeth out with the hammer. No Nuts pulled out a few from the side with channel locks, but quickly abandoned the task after he got to the ones in the back.

  “Them sumsbitches ain’t coming out,” he’d declared.

  Now Sid looked down at his floorboard and told No Nuts he could fuck up a crowbar in a sandbox without bloody trying. Said he was gonna buy him a new floor mat.

  “I’ll throw ‘em out the window, Sid.”

  “You do that, Johnny.”

  They drove under the Mraz U-turn exit as they passed the old minivan plant where a new Town & Country once perched high atop a platform in front of the complex. Now it was a lifeless carcass being demolished brick by brick. Sid told No Nuts that was too bad about Chrysler.

  They left Fenton and blew past Hot Shots and the Stratford Inn headed back to the city. No Nuts started complaining about the economy.

  •••••

  We finished our business, had a few more drinks, and did three more lines of coke. I took another Oxy. I was about as ruined as I’d ever been when I felt that familiar sense of total disorientation about to overpower me. I thought I’d lost my keys. It didn’t take long to realize I should’ve never taken that last Oxy.

  Even I recognized it was time to go, and Nick Valentine was all about memorable exits. My system was operating on a monumental supply of alcohol and a Whitman’s Sampler of chemicals, but at least I’d given up coffee.

  I told the boys I’d see them tomorrow and bumped Big Tony’s fist. I told that stripper with the pigtails and the platforms shoes she was the most amazing woman I’d ever seen in my life. And I let her know in no uncertain terms how much it would mean to me, on a personal level, if only I could take her back to the office and introduce her to Mr. Stout.

  I yelled for Flames to have a good one, not even realizing I’d gotten this current drunk confused with my previous drunk. Then, with all the confidence and false sense of security that a good pharmaceutical high can offer, I yelled out for those guys at the end of the bar to go fuck themselves. I stumbled out the same door for the second time and walked right into the waiting arms of another topless dancer. But this one was holding a bowl of chili.

  She was the skinniest girl I’d ever seen and her nipples were hard and sharp, like carbon tacks in the freezing air. If I had locked my keys in the Vic, I could carry her to the car and turn her sideways. Use her nipples to cut through the glass and unlock the door. She asked me if I wanted any chili.

  “Fuck yes!” I grabbed the bowl from her hands and kept walking.

  I found my keys hanging from the ignition, which meant I hadn’t lost them. I wouldn’t need to use her stripper locksmith services after all.

  When I pulled out onto Franklin Street, I punched the accelerator hard and made the rear tires spin across the intersection. I licked the plastic spoon clean and tossed it onto the passenger side floorboard along with the empty bowl. Goddamn that was good chili.

  I only had one rule when it came to drinking. Don’t eat while you’re drinking.

  There’s nothing worse than fucking up a fifty-dollar beer buzz on a five-dollar hamburger, so I always kept the two separate. Like any good drunk should.

  And as much as I enjoyed Oxy, one of the unfortunate drawbacks from painkillers was hunger. I hadn’t eaten all day. I’d bought a pizza from the gas station but when I took it out of the mini to get the last ice cubes, I forgot to put it back.

  As hungry as I was, I was not entirely opposed to the idea of eating a frozen pizza that had been thawing for five hours. But Frank Sinatra would have already gotten to it by now. In fact, I doubted he waited longer than it took for me to close the door.

  In some ways, I envied Frank. His days were filled with eating, football fucking, and shit taking. He greeted each day on his own terms. You just had to admire that kind of philosophy.

  I could see my destination looming in the distance—White Castle. Second only to Denny’s as the restaurant of choice after a hard night of drinking, coke snorting, and pill popping.

  I pulled into the drive-thru with nervous anticipation. I was about to play a dangerous game. I’d always considered myself a gambling man, but combining both chili and White Castle in the same sitting was like playing Russian Roulette with your asshole.

  I ordered a crave case to go and a large Dr. Pepper and I shared my thoughts on string theory vs. quantum mechanics with the black gentleman at the window. I screeched out of the parking lot as more snow began to fall and I went home to eat dinner with the only fr
iend I had.

  •••••

  Ron Beachy grew up on a farm in Illinois, in Amish country. He had nine brothers and sisters and all of them worked from the earliest hints of morning light until the welcome darkness that late evening brought. He never liked that life. Nor did he support the idea of a life spent foregoing simple things everyone else in the world took for granted. Like electricity.

  Ron was a firm believer that some things were just worth having. Even from an early age he could see there was life beyond the trees that separated his county from the next. At night he’d see the lights on the horizon, blazing through the pitch-black darkness with a cornucopia of swirling colors. The thought of crossing that line became a goal when he was twelve and his father forced him to set up his own cabinet shop.

  Little Ronnie was up by five every morning, out in his shop ten minutes later. He’d start working on the pieces he’d stained the night before. His tools were a hammer, a tape measure, and a box of finishing nails. He’d work in the shop until dusk. Then he’d go out to the woods at first light the next morning to check the traps he’d set the night before.

  He’d bring whatever opossum, squirrel, coon, or coyote he trapped back to the shop and turn them loose. Let them run all day in his cabinet shop until he got home from school. Then he’d kill them and skin them out.

  After breakfast, the Beachy children would arrive at school by horse and buggy. His older brother David would operate the reins. This was the pattern his life took until the day he turned eighteen, when he left home with a trashbag full of clothes and three hundred dollars. He walked to the county line and as the sun came up he took the steps he had waited so long to take.

  Then he crossed into a world of brutal violence. A world where men murdered other men because they didn’t like their haircut. He joined the Police Academy and his first job was Deputy Sheriff of a small town in Franklin County. With a population of a couple of thousand, it was a place to start, but Ron missed the excitement that he’d found in the big city. He’d been to the racetrack, the casinos, and nightclubs.