Homeboy

by Seth Morgan

  Round yer badass shittalkin chin

  And so on until that sweet peter jeeter, bad womb beater Dolomite was feeding worms and the jailhouse was bailed out into dreams of hundreddollar whores and midnight scores.

  Alone, Joe listened to the snores mixed with the low moan of the Hall of Justice generators and, deeper still, the city groaning like a gutshot giant. Alone with his heart in solitary, his soul in chains—staring at the luminous freckled face on the Felony Tank ceiling, its jaw clamped comically cockeyed, the same skewed grimace Rooski aimed down pool cues and pressure bars, saying: “I’d die first …” And maybe he would have if Joe had only let him, not murdered him … No, he couldn’t even credit himself with that courage. No, for the killing he’d delivered the man who loved and trusted him to the police. At last Joe recognized, with the translucent clairvoyance of withdrawal, the one sin within his doing that was commensurate with all his life’s unfocused guilt; and knew it was as deeply and irrevocably committed as was Rooski’s corpse by now to a backhoed welfare grave. I’m sorry. Sorrysorrysorry. Though for whom he wasn’t sure.

  Then the Big Hurt pushed aside all thinking and Joe could only lie hugging his cramped middle and suffer the agony that gnawed on itself, metastasized, grew like a cold malignant fetus in him. A reeking viscous sweat like cold bacon drippings filmed him. The jailhouse stinks of toe jam and farts and nigger hair and concrete sour with piss and sweat dizzied him with nausea. Orgasm after electric hairtrigger orgasm convulsed his groin. His entire being became the shortcircuiting terminus of a billion scraped and shrieking nerves.

  And then came ripping down his intestines that glacial fecal boulder compacted by months of bowel paralysis, and through gritted teeth he cried: “Christ! The Yenshee baby.”

  He bailed out of his bunk and staggered to a rear toilet where he sat bent double for minutes or hours, he didn’t know, trying to pass this bowel monster; until sudden pain flashed the darkness, and he felt himself tearing in two. Blood vomited into the toilet. His sweatslick buttocks slipped off and he was on the floor, shrieks percussing his skull; and from a great distance heard Smoothbore shouting at the bars: “MAN DOWN!”

  The armored Mercedes maneuvered nimbly around a cable car and plunged down Leavenworth Street into the Tenderloin. Robes of misting rain swept darkened streets that reflected lights like spilled paint. Quicksilver beaded the long black hood; the tires whispered steelbelted secrets. Quick was behind the wheel, scarred brows twitching, jaw muscles rippling. Beside him Fabulous Frank’s polished nails drummed a nervous salsa on his gabardine knee. Baby Jewels filled the whole backseat, swinging side to side from the straps like King Kong from his chains. He wheezed, “I still dont get it, Quick. How could there have been a witness?”

  “The dyke got word to our guy on Vice …”

  “Villareal?”

  Quick nodded. “She told him the cunt was hiding beneath the bed. She saw it all, including the rock. She’s gonna try dealing down her charges turning state.”

  “Who we using? Not you, Quick. If she was there, she knows you.”

  “I tapped Truck Infante for one of his Teamster torpedoes. Did you know prison guards were Teamsters? That’s what this hitter is, a moonlighting prison guard. Villareal’s gonna help him from the inside.”

  “It’s gotta be fast and sure,” hissed the Fat Man in imitation of a roach bomb.

  “Truck says that’s the only way this goon knows. Says he’s the best.”

  “I want to know as soon as that problem is eliminated.”

  Quick nodded, his washedout eyes never straying from the street.

  “Which brings us to the next item on the agenda, Frraank.” It was when the doll’s voice sounded laziest that the bookmaker knew to watch out. “Run the ripoff by me one more time.”

  “Like I told you, Jules, it was over before it hardly began,” Fabulous Frank explained for the eleventh time. Geez, could he use a shooter of whiskey. That chubby little Darla with her toiletplunger mouth and Hoovermatic cunt wore him out this afternoon. Even Mister Fab had to admit he wasn’t getting any younger, while his prey yearly regressed in age; until if this perverse inverse ratio continued widening, he’d be birddogging playgrounds. Darla was just fifteen and wore braces that shred the hell out of Fabulous Frank’s pubes. And now this KGB routine. The mingled fragrances of lavender and leather clinched his gut; his nerves were unspringing faster than a tendollar whore’s mattress. He snapped his fingers. “It happened just like that … right, Quick?”

  Mister Personality just grunted. Frank wished like hell just this once the man he’d taught to cheat at gin would lend a little support. After all, he was as much to blame as El Fabuloso. Not that Quick would’ve supported his grandmother if she needed a boost on the streetcar. Of the many fighters Frank had known in his player’s Life, most had their brains knocked goofy; in some tank town, Quick Cicero’s heart and soul were kayoed.

  “So it was unlocked. The safe was goddam open when Ronnie came downstairs and threw down on us. So kill me already …” Quick’s furious pale glance volunteered his services for just that honor, and Frank’s knuckles whitened cupping his knees tighter. “We were playin a hand of gin, waitin for Vinnie to run up from the peninsula and Turo to make it from the East Bay. Another coupla minutes and the shleppers woulda got zilch. It was that close …” Frank measured how close between a trembling thumb and forefinger.

  “I told you guys when the safe wasnt spun, always have a man on point. Armed.”

  “But Jules—we open that thing ten, twelve times a day. We go playin cowboys each time we’re gonna shoot each other.”

  “Better you had,” slithered the doll voice.

  “Jeez, boss. It was just a coupla hundred and a lump of blue paste. I mean what are we talkin about here? Liberace’s poodle wouldnt be caught dead wearing that thing.”

  When this witticism was met with silence, Fabulous Frank began to catch on. Something big was afoot, something big enough to kill for. The hit just ordered on the hooker in the hoosegow proved that. That’s why Baby Jewels was laying all the blame on him. Killing machines like Quick Cicero were inexpendable; not so pennyante players like Frank Stutz.

  “Dont tell me,” he mumbled, “I dont want to know.” His lungs clamored for nicotine to soothe his nerves, but the Fat Man allowed no vices in his presence save French lozenges and murder.

  For several moments they drove in silence but for the breathing from the backseat, which mimicked the faint swishing of the tires down the rainslick streets. The Mercedes turned left on Market, heading past ninetyninecent movie houses and check cashing outlets and pawnshops whence switchblades and cufflinks winked from darkened windows.

  The Fat Man sucked a sudden wet sigh. “Listen close. We’re stepping up to red alert. These are the battle plans.”

  For starters, with things so hot, all bookmaking action had to be temporarily “diversified,” laid off to Johnny Formosa, Manny the Wart, or the tracks. When Frank objected that making book with those cheap hoods was something of a status drop, Baby Jewels asked maybe would he like a real drop, like into the bay where he could make book for the crabs. Frank used both hands smoothing back his ducktail and didn’t answer.

  “And make those runners hop,” said Baby Jewels. “It takes a lot of pictures to pay off attorneys and grease the boys downtown, which”—Baby Jewels turned and continued speaking to Quick as if Fabulous Frank had suddenly vaporized—“brings us to the subject of the Blue Moon. We must have it back.”

  Quick nodded. “Or be bluffing with a busted flush.”

  “Worse. Even with the singing hooker zipped, the stakes have climbed now the rock’s been ripped … If the wrong cop finds these punks with the diamond before we do, he’ll trace the ice to the shvartze, ask him what it’s doing in a pimp’s bookmaking safe, and this thing blows up in our faces. The shvartze will be ruined already and wont hesitat
e giving up our game. Blackmail’s a pretty motive. Opens us up to a One Eightyseven.”

  “Us suspects?” Quick ejaculated. “What about the other evidence. The hair and skin samples, the partials on the crack pipe? …”

  “Only proves that he was there, maybe that he assaulted her. But that was three hours before we … had our little chitchat. The Medical Examiner has her checkout time fixed pretty closely by now, I’m sure.”

  “So he went out to get a bite to eat before tying her ribbons.” Quick was only suggesting what he might do, being a man whose own appetite was whetted by violence.

  “Tch. Thursday evening, while we were in the apartment, he was attending a reception for some African dignitary at the Pacific Press Club. It was in the papers … So you see, Quick, it isnt even just our respect we gotta save, it’s our asses.” Baby Jewels paused, allowing his impassioned wheezing to subside, then continued: “Everything depends on the shvartze believing he killed her and believing we have the diamond to prove it … So get to Rasmussen on Narcotics, Solstein on the Pawnshop detail—we have to keep an eye on the hock sheets, it isnt reported stolen—and our special pal on Vice, Villareal. I want all their arrestees tumbled. Then I want you to start the drums beating on the streets, dangle a reward maybe. I want every character of flipside Frisco watching for the Blue Jager Moon. Sooner or later they have to try downing it and I want that ice hotter than a meteor, harder to move than the Rock of Gibraltar.” He paused, then added: “At least they werent pros. At first I thought maybe the shvartze sent them to get back the rock. But pros would never have fooled with the patrons or blown holes in the screen.”

  “The cops think the stuff out back belonged to the Chinks who did the restaurant party,” Quick said.

  “I know,” said Baby Jewels. “And the zipperheads had alibis. It smells like a switch. Find those ricepropelled punks, Quick. If they wont give up the creeps they gave the masks to, turn them one by one into yellow bars of soap.”

  Meanwhile Mister Fab, who may have been a fool, but not a big enough one to want to know about any blue moon not over Kentucky, remembered what his mama always told him, that trouble never travels alone; and secretly rejoiced in the Fat Man’s multiplying dilemmas. Each new knot in the web entangling Baby Jewels broke another bond tying Fabulous Frank to his whipping post. He’d celebrate with Darla, that’s it. Tongueflicking a bead of sweat from his lip, he could almost taste her toddler trim. To distract himself, he concentrated on translating a fresh bebop rhythm from his bookie bean to twitchy knee, including just for Baby Jewels the timeless player’s refrain—the worm turns.

  “Tch. When I get my hands on them …” The doll’s voice coiled tightly, like a snake about to strike.

  IRON BUTTERFLY

  It was a cool crisp colorless smell, one addicts relish: fresh bandages, alcohol, astringent medicines—chemicals. Voices burred soothingly in his ears. He cracked one puffy lid; everything indistinct, trimmed with foggy white; happy fungus growing everywhere. Ah, surfacing from anesthesia in Sick Bay, lying on an oldfashioned hospital bed, chained to it by the ankle. A barred window overlooked the ruins of the Hunter’s Point Naval Yard: sagging warehouses, fragile silhouettes of rustfrozen cranes, hollow ironribbed drydocks littering the mudflats like carcasses of beached sea monsters.

  A face swam into focus, smiling slyly; a saffron face above starched white. “How you doin, Joe?”

  Joe could only go pfft pfft. The mouth of a glass widened upward; a glass straw clattered against his teeth. He sucked the cool apple juice, wet his lips and managed, “Fuh-fine. What happened?”

  “C-sectioned your Yenshee baby,” the Chinese medic chuckled, going on to explain Joe had been rushed to Sick Bay where a fecal boulder big as a toilet float was surgically removed. His anus required sixteen stitches; he’d lost much blood. He’d remain on Sick Bay until a regimen of antibiotics was completed.

  “It was nearly impossible finding a vein for the IV,” the medic continued. Finally they drove a twoinch catheter into the artery beneath his collarbone. “That makes it easy to administer this little present. The brothers said it was a down payment, you’d understand.”

  From beneath his tunic the medic withdrew an antique syringe with a curlicued metal plunger. The glass barrel filled with molten gold.

  “An oldtime iron butterfly,” Joe breathed as reverentially as any train buff hearing the Erie-Lackawanna hoot behind faroff hills.

  Already the Chinese medic had fitted the long shiny needle into a feeder clip on Joe’s IV line. It looked so sexy, the graceful gleaming stinger piercing the translucent virgin vein …

  “No,” Joe blurted. It was a decision he’d made without thinking, one sponsored by an inchoate notion of atoning for Rooski by transforming himself. “If I dont get anything else out of all this,” he said, “I’m going to get clean.”

  The medic withdrew the iron butterfly from the clip. “Power to you, homeboy. You have Darvon prescribed for your pain in the ass. It’ll coast you off your jones … You mind if? …” He held the syringe aloft.

  “Knock yourself out. Only dose me first.”

  The medic lifted Joe’s head and fed him a handful of brightly colored pills. He fitted the glass straw in his mouth to swallow them. Joe lay back feeling his belly chuckle straining the painkillers into his veteran blood. From far away he heard the painful grunt as the butterfly struck, then that familiar whoosh of wondrous rapture, followed by the medic’s whisperly rendition of “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.” Smiling, Joe watched the windowbar shadows build stairways to somewhere warm and bright and still. Then the whiteness closed in from the sides, turning slowly, then gyring faster and faster, sucking Joe down the flossy vortex of a carnival cottoncandy machine.

  SPACE

  “Matron!” Rings hollered waving the slip through the bars. “Hey, matron! This aint no love note, it’s a fuckin court order for a phone call. Judge gave it to me at sentencing.”

  “You tell her, girlfriend,” chimed Darcie at her elbow.

  The matron dogeyed the tattooed termagant. “No calls until after the lunch wagons roll. Undersheriff’s orders.”

  “You mean Chester?” Rings shouted over the jailhouse din.

  The bulky matron stepped to the bars, slitted eyes to Rings’s laughing ones. “Undersheriff C.C. Collins to you, bitch. Unless you want to book yourself a rubber cell on the disciplinary block.”

  “That’s him!” Rings cried in triumph. “You know what C.C. stands for? Ole Change Clothes Collins. He was one of my regulars and that’s what we’d do. I’d put on his uniform and he’d wriggle into my kinkiest lingerie. Then we’d play My Hammy Vice. You know, like in the pig and the prostitute. Oink Oink.”

  “No shit,” the matron guffawed, hefting her keys off her belt. She shook so with laughter the keys rattled in the big lock. “And here we all thought he was such a hard case.”

  “Oh he can get hard all right,” Rings assured her, passing out of the tank into the corridor’s blear fluorescence, “but only in lace bikinis.”

  Prisoners normally had to place calls from the phone atop the booking desk. But in gratitude for the useful departmental smut, the matron let Rings use the private booth by the mugshot room. It smelled of winy puke and dank desperation; its floor was thick with crushed pills and shredded reefer unloaded by suspects lucky enough to get their phone call before their stripsearch. Rings felt funny dialing 911 from inside jail.

  “Lemme have Homicide … Homicide? I need to speak to whoever’s handling Gloria Monday’s murder. Fur shur I’ll hold …” She looked up to see a black trusty licking the booth glass, leaving a slimy trail like a giant slug. She kicked the door, banging his head, and smiled to hear him howl.

  “Hello? Who’s this? Well, me Jane. Just kiddin! My name is Rosemary Hooten and I’m in County Two, Female, and I know who offed Glorioski. What? Yeah. It was Baby Jewels, he killed her for h
er sugardaddy’s radical diamond. How do I know? I watched. Only he didnt know. Will I testify? Fur shur! Like kasj! But only if I get it in writing you’ll get my sentence commuted to time served … It’s okay you’ll need some time. I got a little to spare … Okeydoke, kasj … Just swing by my tank, ape man.”

  Opening the booth, Rings saw the chow wagons rolling back from the tanks to the kitchens. “Hey!” she shouted to no one of the milling deputies in particular. “Rack me up, I dont want to miss chow. This health food’s gettin good to a bitch.”

  Back into the tank Rings swaggered, grinning foxily, bursting to tell her newfound love it was a green light for the bodyfender shop. She didn’t see Darcie eating with others in the dayroom. Probably so sick with worry about me she lost her appetite, Rings figured, heading down the line of cells to the one they shared. But at its gate she froze, and her grin sagged into a mask of grief. Darcie’s roll was gone, her bunk empty, its indentation trembling with abandonment.

  “They rolled her out,” Rings heard over her shoulder. “They found a halfway house willing to take a broad who killed her own baby.”

  In a daze Rings turned, facing the grungy grin of Big Lurleen.

  “Jailhouse romances,” said Big Lurleen, “stay in the jailhouse. Dont break yer heart over Darcie cuz the only thing that could break hers is a dick long enough to reach it up her ass … Here, I saved you a tray.”

  Rings plumped down at the steel table, staring at a stew that would have lost any taste contest with Alpo. This time I’ve put my life on the line for love, was all she could think. Slowly she spooned up the greasy sludge. Her mouth tasted so much of ashes that she didn’t notice the acerbic powder lacing the stew until her stomach cramped so violently she jackknifed to the floor, yowling, spinning in a puddle of her own puke, scrabbling at her belly and seeing through scalding tears Big Lurleen the Sex Machine standing over her, grinning like a sink full of broken dishes, shaking the upended and empty can of Ajax.