“You heard what I said. I’m not going to say it again.”
It was a Joker’s grin. It split my face in two. It was not pleasant to look at. I’d stared at it before, lost hours to my mirrored reflection.
He opened his mouth, but I was too fast. I reached out with my left hand and slid the stiletto into the soft tissue protecting his trachea. It went in without much effort, the blade parting flesh like butter. Blood gurgled around the wound, but no sound came out. He wore a confused expression on his meaty face, his pink tongue darting out from the gap in his teeth, as if it could search out an answer to the age-old question: Why?
“You won’t die. At least not yet,” I said as I rammed my elbow into his midsection and he reeled into the brick exterior wall. “I’ll come back and do what I said.”
He stared up at me as he slid to the ground, both hands pressed to his throat.
“And this is so you don’t disappear while I’m gone.”
I slammed the heel of my palm into his nose. Not hard enough to break it and send shards of cartilage and bone up into his brain. Just enough to knock him out.
“Don’t move,” I said, grinning again.
I stepped over him and pushed open the door.
* * *
The lake was iced over. The cold like a vise squeezing my nuts.
I was outside without proper clothing for the weather. This came from necessity. The jacket I’d been wearing was covered in blood. Not mine. I’d ditched it in the trash bin of a public restroom. I’d kept the sweater because it was made of thick black wool and didn’t show the bloodstains.
I walked quickly, the wind blowing strands of dark hair into my eyes. I didn’t push them away. Just kept moving forward, not stopping for anything or anyone.
The voice came out of nowhere. So small and feminine I almost didn’t notice it, but something about the timbre caught my ear and I turned my head.
“Do you need help?”
She was angelic. Blonde hair whipping around her head, the wind pulling at it in frantic bursts. She had intense aquamarine eyes the color of the Caribbean sea.
“You look lost.”
I stared at her mouth. The taut lips, the tiny pearl teeth. Her words were superfluous. She could’ve been speaking Swedish and I would’ve been entranced. I shook my head.
“No, ma’am. I’m fine.”
Her little forehead furrowed, the pale yellow brows drawing together in a “v.”
“You don’t look fine.”
She was wearing a white winter coat that made her seem even smaller than she was. Her snug boots were clean and unscuffed, a creamy pink clutch caught up in a fluttering hand.
She smiled at me, her skin stretching across delicate features. I smiled back. I couldn’t help myself.
“I’m Sandy,” she said and offered her hand.
I took it.
I shouldn’t have. Because I knew––even then––that we were fucked.
* * *
Monsters don’t fall in love.
Correction.
Monsters shouldn’t fall in love.
* * *
We moved to Portland. Oregon was clean and bright. A place to begin things. It was full of people with the usual human pretensions. I did my job of fixing things––I had always fixed things––and life went on.
Sandy was a dancer. Not the kind that took their clothes off for sweaty men in clubs, raking singles into their G-strings and blotting out their nights with alcohol. Sandy did higher-end work; performance art stuff that went over well in a liberal, arty place like Portland. It required talent. Which she had in spades.
I think we were happy.
I know we were happy.
And then Sandy discovered what “fixing things” actually meant.
* * *
I am a fixer. Have been for centuries. I say that and you laugh. Think it’s all hyperbole.
It’s not.
I’m old. So old that I don’t remember where I came from. So many miles of muddy earth have been caked on top of me that the crust is long forgotten. My beginnings are a sludgy mess. But when I think back, rack my brain for the few foggy memories remaining from those bygone days, I know that even then I was a fixer.
I kill with my bare hands and have no remorse. I murder and there is no glee… only the sense that a job has been completed and I can move on to the next. I work for no one… and for anyone who can reach me. I am a fixer of problems, a sorter of details. I am a wolf patrolling a world full of sheep.
* * *
Sandy ran away. She wanted no part of me and something inside me broke. I became unhinged. It was not a feeling I enjoyed.
So I went looking for what I’d lost. Went looking to claim what was mine.
Or to kill it. If I found my ownership null and void.
* * *
It was the kind of place you went when you wanted to impress. Dark interior, Victorian red velvet wallpaper in a fleur-de-lis pattern, banquettes of expensive black leather around dark wood tables.
I caught sight of myself in the antique-mirrored walls. Multiples of me––but all dreamy and surreal with their dark heads of curly hair, their sneering lips and rakish faces. I watched the feral movements of my body as I stalked the room. Past candlelit tables of unsuspecting patrons who’d paid a pretty penny to eat their classy meal and see a classy show.
They had no idea what I meant to do.
I had been here before. I knew where the dressing rooms were. Knew where Sandy would be sitting, lipstick in hand. Like me, she was putting on another kind of face.
* * *
She was expecting me. She might not have known when I would come, but she knew I would appear eventually. Some night I would be there waiting for her. We’d lived together for long enough by then for her to know some things about me. My single-mindedness was one of these things.
She was alone, perched on a tiny wooden stool, a pale rose-pink dressing gown hanging loosely around her shoulders. I could see the oxygen-blue veins running through the translucent skin of her chest, could see the rise and fall of her breath as she fought to remain calm. She was so beautiful that it pained me to look at her.
I closed the door behind me. Locked it. In the brighter light of the dressing room I could see the blood already on my hands. She could see the blood already on my hands.
“Just doing what you do,” she said, teeth gnashing down on the words like it disgusted her to speak to me.
“I’m a fixer.”
She nodded. As if to say she understood it all.
And then I did what I’ve always done.
GRIT
A Monk Addison Story
by
JONATHAN MABERRY
1
Her name was Betty.
All diners should have a waitress named Betty. Or Babs. Maybe Brenda. Something with a B.
This one was a Betty and she was a classic example of the type. You know what I mean. Lots of hair, combed and sprayed so that it wouldn’t get messy in a typhoon. Frosted, too, because that hair color doesn’t have a correlation in nature. Not supposed to.
Betties usually have a good rack, nice legs, but there’s a little bit of middle age in the rump and the stockings maybe hide some veins. Bra’s a pushup because, you know, gravity. Shoes are practical because she’s on her feet all goddamn day. Must have fifty extra aprons ’cause hers is always clean. Couple of pins on her uniform. Cats, dragonflies. Like that. Once in a while it’s seasonal. Christmas tree or a wreath. Wears a plastic nametag or has her name stitched across one boob. If she has glasses then she has a chain so she can dangle them, and even when she wears them it’s halfway down her nose. Lipstick and a perfume that’s not expensive but it’s nice to smell. You remember that smell, even beneath the scent of coffee, eggs, Salisbury steak, beef stew and regret.
Like I said, you know what I mean.
This Betty was at the diner at the corner of Boundary Street and Tenth. If the place has a name nobody e
ver bothered to put it up in lights. Everyone I know calls it “the diner,” as if there’s only one. There are other diners—in this part of town it’s diners, bars or pizza joints. Nothing else, not even fast food. Those other diners have names. Lucky Pete’s, Stella’s, American Dollar. But this one was just The Diner. And it had a really good Betty.
I was at the counter because I don’t like booths. Counters are where the action is. Booths are where you sit when you want to talk somebody into something. The farther back the booth the less legal the conversation. I wasn’t here for that sort of thing. I mean, sure, I do some pretty questionable stuff, but I skate on this line of the law because when you’re a skip tracer you have special dispensations from the Constitution. I can kick doors a cop can’t touch without losing a case. I can do all sorts of hinky shit, but it’s legal. Kind of. Ethical…? Yeah, not so much. Mostly I work for six or seven bail bondsmen on Boundary Street, though most of my steady gigs come from Scarebaby & Twitch. I’m serious, that’s their real names. J. Heron Scarebaby and Iver Twitch. Fucking Addams Family names, but I ran a background check on them and that is their hand-to-God birth names. I guess the fact that they found each other, became friends, and hung out a shingle is some kind of fate. Or maybe it’s one of those jokes fate plays on the world but doesn’t care whether you ever hear or understand the punch line. Whatever.
Scarebaby is a lawyer and Twitch is his investigator. They do criminal law, and talk about truth in advertising. I’m pretty sure all of their clients, even the ones they got acquitted, are actually criminals. Guilty as sin, and either too desperate or too stupid to get better representation. If Scarebaby gets you acquitted you will owe him a lot of whatever you make for the rest of your life. He owns you. I know for a fact that a lot of his clients do more crimes after being let out of jail because they need to pay off those legal fees. When someone’s either crazy or sane enough to want to try and run farther than they can grab, I get a call. The job blows, but the pay isn’t bad, they give me really good bottles of bourbon for Christmas, and they don’t need me to like them. The real perk of the job is the certain knowledge that no one I chase down for them is an innocent schnook being unfairly charged. So, I can do what I need to do to close the assignment out.
Today, though, I was off the clock. I wasn’t here to meet them or to get a tip on a bail skip. I was here for coffee, the sports section of the paper, a grease-burger with cheese and chili, and my own thoughts. Didn’t mind at all looking at Betty. She didn’t mind being looked at, but I knew that was as far as it went. Little bit of banter that was on the PG-13 side of flirty and never, ever went any further.
It was a Tuesday night in that gap between Thanksgiving and Christmas. People who gave a shit were out shopping. The whole city was full of them. Walking over here from my office was like a salmon swimming upstream, except I wasn’t going to get laid or, hopefully, eaten by a bear. I let the shoppers flow around me, and I guess I’m about as big, solid, ugly and conversational as a rock, so they swirled past and let me be. Which was fine. Every once in a while one of them would take a closer look. I’m bigger and wider than most and no one’s called me handsome since a hooker in Shanghai and she pretty much had to. I don’t look evil but I do look mean. People get that and they don’t stop to engage, and only the complete maniacs wish me a “Happy” anything.
The Diner was a refuge for anyone who wanted a quiet night. Sure, people sometimes found me there, but never for idle chatter. Betty could even tell when I wanted to shoot the shit and when I didn’t. She always smiled, though, and even on a cold night on a dark street like this one, that smile was usually the warmest part of the day.
Except today.
I was tired and didn’t catch it right away, but when she refilled my cup and turned away I saw her smile change. It slipped, like a mask that wasn’t tied in place very tightly. In the act of turning away to return the coffee carafe to the heater her smile changed from Betty’s normal no-problems red lips and white teeth, to something unhappy and even a little unhealthy. And she was quick, because she saw me see the change and instantly upped the wattage. She could fake it the way a lot of lonely women looking close at the fine print of middle age could fake it. And maybe if I wasn’t used to studying people and getting a read on them I might have bought the con.
When I continued to look at her for a few seconds too long, she realized that I wasn’t going to pretend I hadn’t seen something. I mean, sure, I didn’t know what I’d seen, but it was something. There’d been some pain there. Some sadness, too. And something else. Shame? No. Fear. Sometimes they look the same. It’s a wince, a flinching away from a thought.
I picked up my paper and my coffee cup and walked over to a booth. Halfway back, on the quiet side of the diner. And waited.
2
In a couple of minutes Betty showed up at my table and set the plate down. New burger and a side of fries. I’d left half my burger on the plate at the counter. She had a tuna melt with chips on a plate for herself.
“Join you?” she asked, as if that was a question.
Sometimes the formalities matter. I folded my paper and dropped it on the bench seat next to me and watched as she slid in. She didn’t launch immediately into an unburdening of her soul. Some people will, but most have to work up to it, even when they come to me. This was me kind of letting her know that I knew something was up. Betty knew me, knew what I did for a living. Not just the gigs I did for Scarebaby and Twitch, but the other stuff. Some people know about that. They see the tattoos I have inked onto my skin and they hear stories around this part of town. This is the part of town where stories like that get told.
We ate.
The short order cook had on a station that was playing Christmas songs. I don’t do Christmas and I don’t pay much attention to Christmas songs. But there was one song they kept playing at least once an hour, so now I did know it. Enough to be really fucking tired of Mommy kissing Santa and instilling in her child the belief that his mom was cheating on his dad with some fat fuck from the North Pole. There’s a therapy bill waiting to happen.
I caught Betty’s eyes flicking over to the tats visible on my forearms. I usually wear a leather jacket, but it was warm inside the diner, and I even had my sleeves rolled up. I watched her eyes move from one face to another. That’s what they are. Faces. All over my body. Not every inch, though. Not yet. I knew that there would be more faces I’d need to add. It’s like that, and Betty knew it. That was obvious.
“How many?” she asked. First thing she’d said in five minutes.
“I don’t count them.”
“A lot?”
I shrugged.
“Does it…” she began, faltered, took a breath and tried again. “Does it hurt?”
Another shrug. What’s the point of going into that part of it? The tats hurt when the ink’s being drilled into me. But that wasn’t what she was asking. That kind of pain doesn’t mean shit. People get tattoos for fun. No, she was asking about whether having those particular tats hurt me. Because of what they are.
She looked away out the window. Even down here on Boundary the streets swirled with people. Stores had colored lights up, stoplights and cop car lights kept it all moving. Big Smalls was across the street dressed in a Salvation Army coat, ringing a bell. You had to be legally blind to believe he was anything but what he looked like, which was a crackhead trying to work the rubes for small change. There were real people down here, but most of them had stopped being rubes after they’d already been conned. If you lived or worked on Boundary Street you understood the game. Even so, a few of the locals tossed coins into his bucket. After all, Big Smalls was one of us.
Without turning to look at me, Betty said, “I wasn’t going to bother you with it. I suppose this really isn’t your kind of thing.”
“I do a lot of things,” I said.
“No… I mean, the kind of special things you do.”
Special. Interesting word for it. I know people talk
about me, and a few of them even know the deal. Or some of the deal. Nobody knows all of it except my tattoo artist, Patty Cakes, who has a little skin art place just off Boundary, right between a glam bar called Pornstash and a deli called Open All Night, which, to my knowledge, has never been open. Apart from Patty, the other people who know only have a bit of the story. They know I have the faces of certain clients inked onto my skin. I do that when I’m looking for a killer, and a little bit of the victim’s blood is mixed in with the ink. It does something, creates a bond. I can’t see everything but I see enough. Sherlock Holmes would call them clues, but it feels more like I’m actually there with the vic, feeling the bullets or blades or beatings. Feeling and seeing the last few seconds of their lives. Dying with them. If they saw—or in some cases, knew, their killers—then that would give me a starting place. If they didn’t know who killed them and never saw the perp’s face, then I’d have to start from scratch. So far I only have a few cases of that kind in my ‘open’ file.
Some of the perps I’m able to track go to trial. Not with me on the witness stand, let’s be real. But, remember, I’m a bounty hunter and I know how to get the goods on people. I don’t play by any rules but my own. And, sure, I’ve had to sometimes drop anonymous dimes on the bad guys, or blind-mail evidence, or even spook them into confessions once or twice.
Not all of the bad guys go to trial. Not even half. Sometimes there’s no way the system is going to be able to touch them. I can touch them. So to speak.
But, like I said, those are special cases, and it’s usually the victim who reaches out to me. Read that any way you want and you’ll get close to how it works. Not nice, not pleasant, not fun. And once the case is over those vics are with me for the long haul. Their blood’s in my skin. People talk about being haunted, but they don’t know what that really means. No fucking way.
I said nothing. Ate a few fries. Waited for Betty.
“People say you know stuff. They say that you understand what people are going through.”
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