by Ken Bruen
She checked her rankings on Amazon – nothing better than 500,000. And worse, she’d gotten yet another shitty review from Booklist.
The thing was, she knew she was good. She had three good mysteries under her belt, one nomination for the Barry – she’d lost to Tess Gerritsen, but that was no biggie, everyone lost to Tess – and Laura Lippman had promised her a blurb. Even Val McDermid had smiled at her that time in Toronto.
But she’d been termed “midlist” when she’d started out and more recently had slipped to “cult.” Cult equaled nada, sorry, hon. She just didn’t get it. She thought only those creepy noir guys got demoted to cult. She’d never even written a short story for Akashic.
She seriously didn’t understand why her books hadn’t done better. She wrote what she thought was a nice blend of cozy and medium-boiled. Nothing too dark or too scary. Her heroine, McKenna Ford, was a lovely combination of sensitivity and street smarts.
But not according to Kirkus, which called her last book, “Tired, unoriginal and pointless. Read Megan Abbott for the real deal.”
Jesus, she hated Megan Abbott and Alison Gaylin. Not only did the guys love them but they got rave reviews. Don’t get her started on female mystery writers, except for Laura of course. Hey, that blurb might still happen.
Her agent ran her rapidly through lunch, then said, with no gentle breaking in, “You’re screwed.”
Lunch that.
He added, “SMP’s dropping you.” Then asked, “You ever try true crime?”
What? She was an artist. She couldn’t slum and write non-fiction. She was going to just say, fuck it, it wasn’t for her. If she couldn’t write mystery fiction she’d rather go back to the telemarketing cubicle.
But then her agent told her about the Max Fisher story and something sparked. She thought, Hello? This could be a goldmine; it was like the book was already written. She couldn’t believe Sebastian Junger hadn’t beaten her to it. Could The… A.X. be her ticket all the way to the top? Or, well, at least back to the middle.
As usual, she got ahead of herself. She imagined winning next year’s Edgar Award for best true crime book, with her old editor sitting in the audience watching, thinking about the one that got away. Maybe Laura herself would present the award. Though they’d only spoken that one time, at the bar at the Left Coast Crime convention in El Paso, and let’s face it, Paula had been so nervous she barely spoke. She just did a lot of smiling, nodding, and blushing. Still, she felt like Laura actually liked her, that they’d, dare she even think it, made a connection that went way beyond mystery writing. The encounter had ignited something in Paula, gotten her off the fence, so to speak. She’d experimented in college – who hadn’t? – and a bit after college, too, and yeah, once or twice in recent years, but basically she’d thought of herself as straight. But that smile Laura gave her had pushed her over the edge. Hell, over the cliff. Yep, Paula was playing for the other team now. She was on the lookout for a pretty, intelligent, mature, successful lover and Laura Lippman fit the bill. She imagined them living in Baltimore, their Edgars side by side on the mantel, traveling the festival circuit in Europe together…
Okay, okay, it was time to focus, buckle down, get this damn book written.
She attended the trial of The… A.X. She sat in the back, taking lots of notes. This Max Fisher, he was some character all right. She’d never seen anyone so caught up in his own delusion. He was on trial for major drug charges, and it was like he was gleefully oblivious to it all. Even when the judge sentenced him, Fisher didn’t seem to get the gravity of the situation. As he was led out of the courtroom, he chanted, “Attica, Attica, Attica…”
Paula knew she’d have to dig deep, really make readers understand the psychology of Fisher, but deep wasn’t her strong suit. Her writing was surfacey, superficial. She often told friends that this was purposeful, that she could write with more depth any time she wanted, that she consciously tried to “dumb it down for the masses.” As if the masses had ever seen one of her books. She had a better chance of bedding Laura Lippman than of getting a book into Wal-Mart.
But a superficial take just wouldn’t work for a guy like Fisher, and neither would her usual cozy-to-medium-boiled style. This guy made In Cold Blood seem like chick lit. The things the man had done, the unsavory people he’d been involved with, especially that woman he’d been engaged to, Angela Petrakos – she sounded like she could be the subject of her own true crime book. Paula was already thinking, sequel? But telling the Fisher story properly would require some serious hardboiled, noir writing. She didn’t know if she had the chops to pull it off.
But the telemarketing cubicle loomed large and made her refocus. She Googled like a banshee and by the time she was done she was thinking, Edgar? Just the beginning. Why not a National Book Award? Or, hell, maybe even a Quill…
She had to sit back and try to take it all in. The Fisher story had it all. There were, get this, Irish hit men who even had, whisper, IRA connections. There was also some odd stuff about Down Syndrome and gold pins that she didn’t quite get but hey, if there was a handicapped theme, hello Oprah, right? What would she wear on the show? Would Oprah cry when Paula talked about her long personal journey from unknown cult writer to literary goddess? Yeah, probably.
She snapped herself back into focus, thinking, And, wait, there was even more handicapped stuff, some guy in a wheelchair who photographed women in, let’s say, compromising positions. Hello Playboy serialization. And there was also
A hero cop: Hello Hollywood. At worst, a TV series.
Boyz in the hood: Hello Spike Lee.
Southern crackers: Hello National Enquirer.
And above it all, loomed The… A.X. There was no doubt that was the book’s title: The Max. She’d thought about Hot Blood, Tough City, toyed with Songs of Innocence. But, nope, it had to be The Max.
She was so excited. She went and made herself a dry martini; no one, she knew it, no one, made them drier. It was good, just the right amount of martini, and gave her the boost of confidence she needed as she wrote the following to Mr. Max Fisher, c/o Attica State Penitentiary: Dear Mr. Fisher, I am a mystery writer of high standing in my genre, a friend of Laura Lippman, Tess Gerritsen, etc. I have been commissioned by a very high profile publisher to write a true crime book and I truly feel you are the subject most deserving of my time. I believe you have been the most appalling victim of our Justice System and I would like to set the record straight and I must confess, as a woman, I find you hugely appealing. I enclose a photo. Yours sincerely Paula Segal (MWA, IACW, ITW, PWA)
She had the perfect photo for this schmuck – her, bursting out of a bikini, nearly topless. And her favorite part about the photo, she looked demure. Demure was a word you got to use when you were a writer of her caliber. Recalling the photos of Petrakos from the trial, she knew this asshole loved big busts, and was he ever getting the max with this shot. Her previous lover, an Annie Lebowitz wannabe, had taken it. The girl was a lousy lay but she sure could take good photo.
Delighted with her herself, she practically skipped down to the post office and sent the letter. Attica, just the thought of it made her shudder.
Four
“I think you should get on my body now.”
DAVID MAMET, Edmond
It wasn’t like Max had never been raped before. During a drinking binge in the south he somehow wound up in a motel room in Robertsdale, Alabama with a Chinese guy named Bruce. Maybe it wasn’t technically rape because Max might’ve gone up to the room willingly, but really the saving grace was that he’d been so bombed he couldn’t remember any of it.
Man, what he would have given for some hard liquor right now.
The worst part, it was only around noon, and he had nine hours till Rufus and lights out. First, lunch in the mess hall. Jesus Christ, eighty percent of the prisoners were goddamn black. He felt like it was that time in the city he was so absorbed reading a copy of Screw that he missed his stop on the 6 train and got out at
fucking 125th Street. Walking through the mess hall he was thinking, Be Richard Pryor in Stir Crazy. He was even whispering to himself, “That’s right, I’m bad, I’m bad.” But he must’ve been shaking his ass too much because the walk didn’t get him any respect – it had the opposite effect, getting him catcalls from all the guys. They were whistling at him, calling him “sweety” and “honey,” and Max, shaking, thought, Jesus Christ there was gonna be a goddamn gangbang.
He knew he had to do something to get some respect. Maybe he should make a shank and cut somebody. Isn’t that what that Eddie Bunker said you were supposed to do? Yeah, but how the fuck was he supposed to get a shank his first day in the joint. Eddie, couldn’t you’ve given us a goddamn instruction manual?
Later, in the yard, more guys were eye-fucking him, saying things like, “Gimme some a dat” and “I wanna tap that big ol’ ass, gran’pa.”
Gran’pa?
That was the part that stung the most. Yeah, Max was in his fifties, but he’d always seen himself as a hip, happening dude. It hit Max that not only was he a lot whiter than these guys, he was a lot older. It seemed like every guy was a goddamn twenty-two-year-old. What, was he the only guy in the world over fifty who was into drugs and shooting people? He had thirty plus years on all these guys, so how come they weren’t treating him like the wise elder statesman? How come he wasn’t getting respect, like Morgan Freeman in Shawshank? Speaking of Shawshank, Max wasn’t going into the prison laundry room any time soon. Not until he made that shank, anyway.
As much as he feared the inevitable sexual assault, Max had to admit, on some level, all the attention was kind of, well, flattering. He couldn’t get women to look at him the way these guys were unless he was paying them good money, and even then Max never felt liked. Jesus, it was bringing tears to his eyes. The… A.X. crying? At Attica? Jesus, that had to be the absolute wrong thing to do – show your weakness. But he couldn’t help it. Maybe he was channeling his inner sissy, but what could he say? It felt good to be wanted.
A guy in the yard was bench-pressing – he looked Mexican, Puerto Rican, Dominican, something Spanish Harlemy. And the son of a bitch was huge, looked like he could be a linebacker for the fucking Jets.
Benching what looked like at least three hundred pounds he said, “ Hola, jovensita,” and blew Max a kiss.
The… A.X. knew his Spanish, the guy was calling him “young lady.” Jesus H.
Max turned away and the guy said, “Hey, I finish talkin’ to you, mi puta?”
Max tried, “ No hablo espanol.”
“Don’t worry,” the guy said, “you don’t gotta talk espanol. When you got my dick in your mouth all day I ain’t gonna hear nothin’ you sayin’ anyway.”
The guy laughed then let the weight fall onto the brackets so hard the whole bench shook.
“Look,” Max said. “ No necesito trouble.” Then, hearing the hillbilly in Deliverance saying, You in trouble now, boy, he said desperately, “I mean, I’ve got nada against Puerto Ricans.”
“Puerto Rican?” The guy sounded offended. “I look PR to you? Man, I should cut you just for saying that shit. I’m fuckin’ Panamanian.”
Jesus, weren’t Panamanians supposed to be, like, midgets? The only fucking Panamanian giant on the planet and Max had to run into him. Was that shit luck or what?
Then the guy said, “I should introduce myself properly, if you’re gonna be my little puta. Me nombre es Sino.”
Sino? What was that, fucking Chinese? The guy wasn’t fucking part Chinese, was he, some kind of ChinoManian? Max had had enough Chinamen visit his ass for one lifetime, thank you very much.
“Sino’s what they call me in the Bronx, shit’s short for asesino. You know why I got that name? ’Cause I like to kill people, that’s why. I killed sixteen people and you gimme your ass you won’t be number diecisiete. Most people in here, they don’t like to talk about people they took out, think it’s gonna fuck up their parole. But Sino got Life, No Parole hangin’ over his ass. Sino ain’t goin nowhere so Sino don’t give a shit.”
Max was about to give a shit – in his pants. But out of nowhere Rufus appeared and said, “Yo, lay off my bitch, bitch, ‘fore I beat yo’ ass.”
Sino stood face to face with Rufus, both mad bastards about the same height, and a crowd formed around them to watch the confrontation. Max felt like he was in high school – well, not like he himself had felt in high school, but like he might’ve felt if he’d been a popular girl in high school. It was like Max was head cheerleader and the two jocks were fighting over him. Max had to admit – it felt pretty damn good.
But the good feeling passed quickly. Max was thinking maybe he should’ve taken the Ed Norton in The 25 ^ th Hour route after all, gotten somebody to beat the crap out of him before he went away. He was just too damn pretty. A face like his, naturally guys couldn’t resist it. Maybe if he hadn’t been so interested in getting laid during his last forty-eight hours, and hadn’t wasted all his time reading books and watching movies, he could’ve thought of this practical shit.
Rufus was yelling into Sino’s face, “Mohammed Fisher’s my bitch. Stay off my bitch, know what I’m sayin’, bitch?”
And Sino was screaming back: “I don’t see no sign on his ass say he your bitch. I don’t see your dick in his ass neither.”
Rufus said, “There don’t gotta be no dick in his ass. Just ’cause there ain’t no dick in his ass don’t mean the bitch ain’t mine.”
Max was tempted to yell, You’re both fucking morons! but had a feeling that wouldn’t go over well. Maybe the guys would decide to share him, holy fuckin’ shit.
A guard came over and told the guys to break it up. Rufus grabbed Max by the hand and led him away.
Later on, back in their cell, Rufus said to Max, “You clean yo’ ass out good tonight, know what I’m sayin’? I don’t want no brown on my dick. My dick got enough brown on it, don’t need no more, know what I’m sayin’?”
There was nothing for Max to do now but lie in his bunk and wait for the inevitable. He was thinking about, of all people, Elvis. Max, in those last forty-eight hours of freedom, had watched so many movies, his fucking eyes hurt and how he ended up with Jailhouse Rock in his DVD player was anyone’s guess. The King, singing on the tiers, had brought tears to his eyes. He’d never really given Elvis a whole lotta time. Let’s face it, The Max was a classical music kinda guy, could pronounce Tchaikovsky without a single moment of hesitation. Fucking hum that, yah morons.
Shit, he realized he’d been talking aloud again.
“Well, fucking excuse me!” he shouted. “I’m under a little goddamn pressure here!”
Inmates in the other cells starting laughing and Max blocked it out, thinking about Elvis again. The El was one good looking hombre and Max wondered if that’s what he should do later when Rufus was, er, visiting him – pretend he was getting screwed by The King. Yeah, he’d pretend to be Priscilla. Max pledged that if he ever got out of this hole, he’d go straight to Graceland, give his thanks for help in a tight spot. Maybe hang with Priscilla. The babe had mileage but serious bucks – he could use some of that.
He was weeping now, and he knew, dammit, only a real man could allow himself that freedom.
After the slop they called dinner it was lights out. Jesus Christ, Max was sobbing again, begging for his mommy. He wished he’d read more of that fucking Genet book so at least he’d know what to expect. He would’ve paid a fortune for some Vaseline so at least it wouldn’t hurt. But he knew, worse than the pain would be all the fucking humiliation tomorrow, all the guys knowing that Rufus had done the deed. He just hoped that Rufus didn’t make him walk around the prison wearing lipstick and fucking skirts, like that queen in Animal Factory .
But then something weird happened.
He was waiting for the brute to climb down and deliver the meat, but the bunk was still. Maybe Rufus was just playing head games with him, making him think he wasn’t gonna get fucked tonight, then… kaboom.
But another ten, fifteen minutes went by and still no Rufus. And what was that noise? Was he actually snoring? The fuck was going on?
Max wanted to feel happy, but he didn’t dare let himself. It had to be part of some plan or something. A guard would unlock a bunch of inmates’ cells and let them into Max’s and the goddamn gangbang would begin.
He waited. At some point, he fell asleep.
In the morning, he woke up and wriggled his ass around a little. No pain. Was it possible he’d slept through being anally raped? It wouldn’t have been the first time but, nope, his ass was its good ol’ self.
Then another surprise: Rufus hung down from the top bunk, smiled, asked, “Yo, what up? Sleep good, Mohammed?”
What the fuck? Was this some kinda fuckin’ joke? Was this how the guy turned himself on, let his victims think they were off the hook, then, when their guard was fully down…
“Yes,” Max said hesitantly.
“That’s good,” Rufus said. “If there’s anythin’ you want me to do today, yo, you just let me know, hear, and I get that shit done for you fast, know what I’m sayin’?”
Max had no idea what to make of Rufus’s sudden turnaround, but he wasn’t complaining. His ass wasn’t complaining either.
Then the biggest surprise of all: At breakfast, there was no whistling, no catcalls, no nothing. Shit, people wouldn’t even make eye contact with him. The fuck was going on? Yeah, he was glad he hadn’t gotten raped, but the insecure Max Fisher was coming out, asking, Have I, like, lost my appeal? Other guys in the room were getting the old come-hither looks, guys younger than Max, and he found himself actually feeling jealous.
In the yard, Max went up to one of the guards, Malis, and asked, “The fuck’s going on? How come nobody’ll fuckin’ look at me anymore?”
Malis, chomping on gum, didn’t look at Max, said, “The fuck do I know?”