Rough Trade

by Todd Robinson

  The cop and the troll walked back through the tall gates. As they progressed up the lane, motion detectors flared up arc lights illuminating the gravel path. Motion detectors that must have been disabled when Bray made his way to us in the darkness. Not that that was fucking creepy or anything…

  “In for a penny, eh?” Blanc said, lighting a cigarette. The flame from his gold lighter reflected off his milky eye. He took a deep drag and blew twin streams of smoke through his nostrils. “Think we’re well past a point where this can safely be called a ‘favor,’ boyo?”

  I had to agree with him, but stayed silent. The problem with this particular act in my little drama was that it was collapsing underneath the weight of my own overactive sense of debt.

  Balance had shifted big time.

  After tonight, I was going to owe Blanc and Cade.

  And I really, really hated that I would.

  After a few minutes, the path lights blazed on again, marking the approach of Bray and R.J. As they passed under the gate, R.J.’s voice carried on the frosty air. “All I’m saying is—”

  Bray cut him off sharply. “What you’re saying it that you’re unhappy with the amount I regularly add to your paycheck?”

  “No, no. That’s not what I’m saying—”

  “So what are you saying, R.J.?”

  “I’m saying that staying out of your business is one thing. Ignoring an All Points Bulletin on a vehicle is another.” Officer R.J. stuck his thumbs in his gun belt, trying to lean Bray into his way of thinking by being all cop-like.

  “And staying out of your business is yet another,” Bray said with a smile, popping another toothpick between his wet lips.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “What I mean is, if I can ignore the fact that you’re fucking Officer Stephanie behind the Sunoco, then I think you can ignore this tidbit.”

  Silence.

  Whoops.

  Officer R.J. began thumbing the wedding ring on his left hand.

  “Good night, R.J.”

  “Night, Bray,” Officer R.J. said softly. He even tipped his hat at Blanc and me as he passed us on the way to his car, tail between his legs.

  As R.J. opened the police sedan’s door, I heard Officer Steph say, “What the hell is—”

  “Shut up, Steph,” R.J. said. The police car pulled into a three-point turn and slowly drove back the way we came.

  I let out the huge breath I didn’t even know I was holding in.

  Bray grinned and flipped the toothpick between his teeth, frayed end out. “Well, might as well pull the cars around back.”

  I followed Blanc once more up the long path to a large trailer with a sheet metal shack built onto the side. A hand-painted sign read Porter’s Pawn and Wreck.

  Miss Kitty’s headlights passed over several dilapidated cars, a few smashed in well beyond repair. Other, less identifiable hunks of garbage and twisted metal rimmed the road all the way up to the lowered trailer.

  I parked Miss Kitty and followed Blanc and Bray into the mobile home. Inside, the place smelled like someone had recently pooped in a bag of Cheetos, and I wasn’t too sure if it was the dogs or Bray. The walls were lined with smoke-browned centerfolds and tourism posters for Disneyland.

  Seeing the two side by side skeeved me out more than I’d have thought possible.

  The left half of the trailer was fenced off in chain link and Plexiglas, a short glass counter filled with jewelry, watches, and other bric-a-brac. The wall behind held a couple of guitars, an old TV, a signed Drew Bledsoe jersey, and a saxophone. Guess that was the pawnshop part of the trailer.

  I tried to stay in the background when the back of my legs hit something at thigh-level directly behind me. A loud snarl told me what it was and I almost added to the shit smell in the trailer.

  The dogs were crated to one side of the office. Both still sat with a military rigidity, but their jowls trembled with fury as they stared me down.

  They won.

  I yelped and jumped my butt off the cage.

  “Don’t lean on that unless you want to get an ass full of teeth,” Bray said.

  Yeah. Thanks, dick.

  Bray carefully moved several old copies of Swank and a number of Paris Reviews off a console and started flipping switches. The yard lit up brightly, and I could see more clearly what was in his backyard.

  Oh hell no.

  Bray said we were bringing him the Buick. Not like he was going to tell the cops that we were bringing him a body, but he was being more specific than I’d realized.

  With a nightmarish rumble, the enormous car crusher turned on.

  Oh fuck no.

  “Keys,” Bray said, opening his hand toward me.

  I reached into my pocket and placed Junior’s Motörhead fob into Bray’s grease-rimmed fingers. It felt like I was signing a death warrant.

  “Gonna give it a quick strip and get it done for you before the sun comes up. Anything you need to get out of the car, do it now.”

  “Gun?” Blanc said to me, opening and closing his fingers.

  I handed him the empty pistol.

  The three of us walked back out to the yard. Blanc opened Miss Kitty’s passenger door and tossed the gun onto the seat.

  “That thing unloaded? Bray asked. “Don’t need it popping off rounds mid-crush.”

  Blanc nodded.

  Bray handed me another set of keys. “First car at the bottom of the lane on the left. Got about a half tank. Enjoy.” He said it with an amused smile that I didn’t enjoy.

  “What is it?” Blanc asked.

  “A red ’90 Dodge Omni.” Bray laughed in a manner befitting his name. I wasn’t a car guy, so I had no idea what was so funny.

  I’d never heard Blanc laugh before, either, so that Bray’s statement made him guffaw soundly filled me with dread.

  “Well, then, I’m off,” Blanc said. “I’ll drive you to your new steed.”

  “I’ll walk down,” I said, placing my hand on Miss Kitty’s sun-faded brown hood.

  “You need a moment alone with the car, boyo? Maybe say a few words?” Blanc said. I could hear a smirk in the statement.

  “Fuck off,” I said, shooting him a glare.

  He winked at me.

  With his dead eye, of course.

  “Bray,” Blanc said with a wave as he headed back toward the front.

  “Lou,” replied Bray as he turned toward the car crusher.

  I didn’t get so much as a fare-thee-well, but I was just happy that I hadn’t ended our date together by getting myself shot.

  I looked back at the condemned, remembering the times. The good times. Feeling slightly stupid at the emotions I was feeling. And as bad as I felt, this was going to destroy Junior.

  We’d spent our lives with nothing. In St. Gabe’s, we didn’t own a damn thing, or have anything we could claim as ours. Miss Kitty was the first thing Junior possessed of any significance, of any permanence, that said we were free of a system that did its damnedest to bury us as numbered casualties of a class war nobody even knew was being fought. Or if they did, they didn’t care.

  There was a reason Junior spent fifteen years repairing a car that should have seen a yard like Bray’s five years before he even bought it.

  He could have gotten himself a different car at any time.

  He didn’t.

  She was as much a part of our crew as I was, as Twitch or Ollie was.

  And there I was, putting her in her grave.

  I still felt stupid, though.

  I unscrewed her stiff antenna, collapsed it, and placed it into the pocket of my sweatshirt. “Sorry,” I said.

  A thick hand placed gently on my shoulder made me tense. I turned to look at Bray, who I was surprised to find wore an expression that matched my own.

  “For what it’s worth, I get it.”

  I nodded, feeling awkwardly grateful for his empathy.

  “You got five minutes,” he said. “Then I let the dogs out to roam
.”

  Then I had a thought. “You have all those instruments inside. You play?”

  Bray shrugged. “A little bit. Mostly a listener. You looking to buy or sell?”

  “Neither. Looking for an opinion. You know instruments?”

  “Enough to buy ’em from failed musicians. Wouldn’t be too good at running pawn if I didn’t.”

  I opened the car door and removed the trumpet case, which I’d almost forgotten was still in the car. Would’ve made a perfect ending to a perfect day, me not remembering the one piece of possible evidence I had that might keep me and mine out of jail for the rest of our fucking lives. I shuddered at my near-forgetfulness. “Would you look at this trumpet? I want to know if it’s anything special.”

  “Special like what?”

  “I don’t know. Unusually valuable or something.”

  “Bring it inside so I can look at it.” He led me back to the trailer. When we walked back in, both dogs gave a whimper. “Give it here.” He looked at the beat-up case, flipped it over, and gave it a once-over. “Case is nothing special, but let’s see what you got. Give you a good price on it, if it’s worth anything.”

  “Maybe.” Wouldn’t that be a kick in the ass? Sell the freaking thing and make some chicken salad out of the chicken shit I was up to my eyebrows in. “What would a valuable one go for?”

  “Well, that depends. Dizzy Gillespie’s trumpet sold at an auction twenty years ago for sixty grand.” He popped the latches and I held my breath.

  Sixty grand. That would be the right number of zeroes for somebody to take another’s life over.

  Bray turned on a pair of bright work lamps over the drafting table. “If there’s some kinda historical significance to it, I won’t know until I look at it. See the maker and whatnot. You think it’s something like that?”

  “I really have no idea.” And yet, it seemed ridiculous. How would Byron, playing in a Boston club-level jazz band, acquire himself a trumpet worth that kind of scratch? It didn’t make sense.

  Bray clicked open the hasps on the case and reached in. The trumpet looked stuck. The whole case lifted when he tried to pull it out. “The hell?” he said. He pulled a flathead screwdriver off the wall.

  I didn’t like this. Not one bit.

  Suddenly having the Irish mob associate with the cops in his pocket and murder dogs in his home didn’t seem like my best choice to have appraise the potentially head-stoving-worthy valuable I’d been carrying around.

  What could I say? Seemed like a good idea at the time.

  Something inside the case made a click. Bray’s eyebrow shot up, but quickly went back to its at-ease position as he quickly—but not too quickly—closed it again.

  The energy of the room changed. Real fucking fast. The dogs knew it too. They immediately started whimpering. The gray mottled pit let out a sharp woof.

  Bray had seen something in that goddamn trumpet case. Something he didn’t want me to see. His fingertips never once left the top of the trumpet case. With complete insincerity, he said, “It’s not a bad instrument. I’ll give you two hundred for it.” He wouldn’t look me in the eyes, but kept glancing around me. I took a quick look over to see what he was looking at.

  His nightstand.

  Want to bet that nightstand wasn’t where he kept his ice cream?

  And he didn’t put the screwdriver back either. If anything, his grip tightened on it.

  “Two hundred?” I said, trying to keep the suspicion out of my tone. “That what you think it’s worth?”

  “Give or take.”

  “Give or take?”

  “Give or take.” His eyes flicked from the nightstand and finally connected with mine. I didn’t like what I saw in them. I saw me in the trunk of a fucking Buick.

  I rolled my neck. “Why don’t we try a different give or take?”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking you give me that screwdriver, or I take it from you and shove it somewhere you’re not going to enjoy.”

  That stopped him. He looked me dead in the eye, mulling his options so hard it nearly made a sound.

  “So why don’t we do this. I take my trumpet, I don’t talk to Blanc and Cade, and we part our ways. You keep on—”

  Then he whipped the screwdriver at my head.

  It was a hard throw, meant to stick in my brainpan, but it wasn’t a good one. It sailed slightly to my left, clunking harmlessly off the wall. But as I predicted, he had a plan if he missed. That plan was in the nightstand. I zigged, making the assumption he would zag.

  The dogs went berserk as he charged.

  Right at me.

  That I was not expecting.

  With his thick, oversize skull, he drove himself like an enraged rhino right into my stomach.

  He rammed his forehead so deeply into my gut, all the wind violently rushed out of my lungs.

  I dropped, wheezing like a balloon with a slow leak.

  Bray jumped right back up and went for the nightstand.

  I couldn’t breathe or stand. He hunched over, opening the drawer. I rolled onto my back and kicked him hard as I could square on the ass. He launched forward and smashed his head into the aluminum trailer wall with a loud gong.

  While he was stunned, he was far from out. I pulled myself up and worked real hard to get some oxygen back into me.

  In the open drawer sat an electrical-taped snubnose.

  That fucker was trying to kill me.

  Over a motherfucking trumpet.

  Despite my innate and burning hatred for the implements themselves, I took the snubby from the drawer and pressed it to his swelling forehead, the gun butt burning in my grip.

  “No,” was all he said, a trickle of blood gumming his filthy moustache from a sliver cut just under his cheek.

  “No?” I screamed in a higher pitch than I thought would come out of me. “NO?” A lot of people had spent the better part of the last year trying to kill me. I had fucking had enough.

  Through my eyes, the room was bright, bright red.

  The dogs bayed and screeched, no doubt smelling the violence pouring off me.

  I popped open the chamber and dumped the bullets onto the floor. Bray relaxed, comfortable with the idea that I was no longer going to seam his forehead with one of the bullets. Instead, I flipped the short barrel in my grip, and with the taped handle, pistol-whipped him to the temple.

  He fell to his knees, clutching his head. Blood streamed from between his fingers and he curled fetally on the floor. He still wasn’t out. Christ, that guy had a thick forehead. He pushed himself onto all fours and crawled a couple of feet before falling back over.

  Slowly, but with purpose, I walked to the trumpet case and threw it open. Inside was…

  STILL ONLY A FUCKING TRUMPET.

  What the hell had Bray seen in there? I had every intention of happily beating that information out of the bridge troll.

  Except while I was making another unsuccessful attempt at figuring out what was so special about a trumpet, Bray was busy crawling.

  To the dog cages.

  Oh.

  Fuck.

  Blood covered his face, ran into his mouth. “Fuck you,” he said through a tight gore-red smile.

  Then he popped the latch.

  And screamed the command.

  “Throat.”

  And for my next impression: Jessie Owens.

  The dogs exploded from their crates at the exact same moment I ran through—

  —yes, through—

  —Bray’s screen door, my panic and mass tearing it right off the hinges.

  Lucky for me, Bray had installed an iron-gated door on the front of his trailer. I slammed shut the heavy door behind me a half second before the first pit’s jaws of death clamped down onto an iron bar an inch from my fingers.

  You’re going to think I’m crazy, but I swear to God, I thought the iron bent under the impact from Fido’s skull. The gray pit hit the door behind the second one, and the w
hole trailer shuddered.

  I was so concerned with the dogs that I hadn’t noticed the woozy Bray had crawled over to the bullets and gun I’d idiotically thrown to the floor. The first bullet spaaannng-ed off the bar next to my face, showering me with sparks. I dropped to the ground and rolled away from the door. The latch held against the pit bulls’ assault, but I couldn’t be sure for how long.

  However, I did know how long it would take for a slug to catch me.

  I vaulted over the rail, dropped three feet, tucked the trumpet case under my arm, and ran, ran, ran like two hundred and forty pounds of shit through a goose.

  I made it twenty feet before I heard the gated door screeching open. I didn’t know if it was the dogs or the hairy beardo with a reloaded gun. I didn’t like either option.

  The second bullet whizzed past my ear and smacked into the tree directly to my left.

  I had the first part of that question answered.

  I turned my head away from the shards of bark that flew off the tree and saw the dogs bearing down on me.

  I could serpentine through the trees as I worked down the hill, lessening the chances of my skull getting split with a bullet, but increasing those of my getting caught by the dogs and becoming man-flavored Alpo.

  Fuck it. I might be able to hold off the dogs. There was no way I could fight a bullet.

  I cut to the right sharply, ducking below a dead pine as the second shot shredded the dry wood by my neck. The gray-mottled dog overestimated its charge and ran past me, but not before snapping at my wrist as momentum carried it too far. I zigged back to the left and ran for the line of cars.

  Thank God only one of the shitboxes was red, so I bolted toward it and hoped that it was the Omni.

  The brown dog came at me from the other side, right out of my blind spot. I shifted my hips at the last possible microsecond and avoided the dog enjoying a full serving of my ass cheek. In doing so, my feet slid out from under me on the icy ground.

  Deciding to let my fat ass do the work, I transitioned my inelegant topple into a Macho Man Randy Savage Atomic Elbow onto the dog’s thick skull. Half WWE—half Loony Toones, but fuck it. Whatever worked,

  The dog yelped and backed off for a moment, my elbow exploded in pain, and I wanted to apologize.