Thirteen Confessions

by David Corbett

  “We’ll take your car,” he says.

  “Renda head off someplace?”

  “Renda,” he says, heading for the door. “This isn’t her thing.”

  Out at the car, he waits for Jimmy to unlock the doors, like he’s the boss. Or they’re on a blind date. Jimmy takes out his keys.

  “Look, no offense but, you know, would it be too much …” A little in-place shuffle, dance of doubt. A shrug. “Kinda in the dark here.”

  “It’s simple,” Edwin says. “You’ll see when we get there.”

  This is where Jimmy really needed to be smarter. Instead, he says, “And my end?”

  Edwin lifts his arms and rests them on top of the car. Easy. Breezy. “You like Renda.”

  Jimmy waits.

  “She wants you should do me this favor.”

  “How come she doesn’t ask me herself?”

  “Renda? She ain’t here.”

  “Her car’s right there.”

  “I didn’t say she went anyplace. I said she’s not here.” Edwin gestures with his finger back and forth. “As in you and me.”

  “I’d like to hear about this favor from her.”

  “Yeah, well, she asked me to pass it along.”

  “I don’t get this.”

  “I’ll explain on the way.”

  “You got her tied up in there or something?”

  “No, Jimmy. That’s your department.”

  Jimmy’s confused. It comes out like a dig, but it’s kind of a compliment, too. Like yeah, you’ve got a shot, you play it right. Still, the guy’s right, she’s not here. And she’s what he came for.

  “I’m gonna take a pass.” He slips his key into the door lock.

  “How much you want?”

  Jimmy stares across the top of the car. Unsettling, the stones on the guy, given the way he looks. Ichabod Macho.

  “How much of what?”

  Edwin stuffs his hands in his pockets, rocks on his heels. “How much,” he says, “do you want?”

  “I need to know what you’re talking about.”

  “No you don’t.” The guy’s laughing. “How much are you worth?”

  “It depends.”

  “No it doesn’t. Come on. You know. Pick a number. How much are you worth?”

  Jimmy tries to think it through, see the angle, but instead he keeps coming around to Renda with her merry cocktail tray, her spiffy tuxedo jacket and burgundy leotard, her knockout hose and come-hither freckles and exotic perfume. That smile, the eyes, the hair—young Donna Reed, vintage The Human Comedy and Faithful in My Fashion and They Were Expendable.

  He thinks of what it’ll feel like, showing up at the Peppermill, nothing to show for himself, nothing to answer if she asks: So how’d it go? That look she’ll give him. Then what are you worth?

  “Five grand,” Jimmy says, thinking a quarter of the hole the guy’s in.

  Edwin and his catbird smile. “I’ll give you two.”

  “Five or I walk.”

  Edwin waits. Thinks. “I can’t guarantee five. I can guarantee two.”

  Fucker, Jimmy thinks, unlocks his door. “Get in.”

  The place is only like five blocks away. Suburban tract house, mountains for a backdrop, quiet neighborhood, couple houses clearly empty. Lot of foreclosures that neck of the woods.

  Jimmy’s not out of the car two seconds before he smells it. The curb like an ashtray, maybe a hundred crushed butts. The faint stench of cat urine, sweetened by ether.

  Jimmy heads for the porch but Edwin points down the driveway, waves him along. “In back.”

  A dim lamp glows in one window of the house—seahorse pattern on the curtains—otherwise the place is dark.

  They turn the corner at the back and a pitbull goes nuts, crashing against the chain-link fence of its pen, all fangs and slobber, barking like a crosscut saw. Edwin acts like it’s nothing.

  “His name’s Cochise,” he says over his shoulder. Way he pronounces it, rhymes with: Coat, please.

  Garage has a window but there’s a black plastic bag tacked up across the inside.

  Edwin knuckles the glass. From inside, a grimy set of fingers appears, nudging the edge aside. Feverish eyes, rat-like and red, the face lean and stubbled. The man nods, let’s the edge of the black bag go.

  Shortly the clatter of locks, the door to the garage opens, the man steps out. Raggy clothes. Jumpy as a cricket. Drag a man two hundred yards across gravel, Jimmy thinks, he’d end up looking better than this.

  Edwin says, “Meet Wilton.”

  Jimmy’s not sure of the protocol. Nod? Shake hands?

  Guy looks at Edwin, checks out Jimmy, back at Edwin. “Wasn’t ’xpecting you.”

  “Didn’t think you were.”

  Wilton snatches a cigarette pack from his back pocket, taps out a smoke, lips it, lights up with a Bic. So bone thin he makes Edwin look husky.

  In a raspy whisper. “Got nothing for you just yet. Middle of a batch right now.”

  “I can tell.”

  Wilton draws on his cigarette, eying Jimmy. “Who’s your friend?”

  Edwin looks around, as though to make sure no neighbors can see. Not a window in sight isn’t dark. “I need to collect on my investment.”

  Wilton’s eyes narrow. He picks tobacco off his tongue. “Not sure I know what you mean.”

  “My investment,” Edwin says. “I need to collect.”

  “I didn’t ask you to shuffle the words around. I asked what you meant.”

  Edwin takes a step back, eyes to the ground, like he’s sorry. To Jimmy, he says, “Take care of it.”

  Jimmy and Wilton stare at each other like they’ve been asked the same question in different languages.

  From somewhere in Jimmy’s gear-locked mind, the words come. “Give the man what he came for.”

  “Are you both fucking deaf? I got no damn idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I think you do.” Jimmy playing tough, a part. No idea why, where it’s going.

  “I don’t know what this faggot told you.” The man points the red tip of his smoke toward Edwin. “But there ain’t no investment in nothing. Now he wants some takeaway, he’s gotta wait. Like I said, I’m in the middle—”

  “I want my money,” Edwin says, stepping closer. Bold, with Jimmy there.

  Sucking on his cigarette, hollow-cheeked, Wilton: “For the last fucking time—”

  “You’ve got it here, stop dicking me around, open the fucking safe or wherever the hell you’ve got it stashed and give me my goddamn money.”

  The guy’s eyes flicker back and forth, Jimmy, Edwin, then he seems to shrink an inch, fold in on himself. Softly, a confession: “Sure. Okay. Wait here.”

  He turns and shuffles back toward the garage and Edwin catches Jimmy’s eye, gestures for him to hurry up, follow along.

  Jimmy takes a step and sees Wilton’s spun around, trying to slam shut the door. Jimmy lunges, gets his boot in, feels it crushed as the guy uses his shoulder, the pitbull launching off again, Jimmy buckling from the pain but shouldering back on the door.

  Almost unfair, given his strength and how scrawny Wilton is. But that’s why Edwin brought him along. Fuck fair.

  Jimmy forces the door back, catches the overpowering stench of the cook, feeling it burn his eyes as he reaches around for something to grab. Wilton thrashes around, trying to get his hand on an aerosol can of Jump Start sitting on his work bench, singling it out among the clutter of paint thinner, toluene, glassware, tubing. Jimmy wraps one hand around Wilton’s wrist, the other around his throat, ducking a blast of noxious spray and lifting the man up the bare-stud wall, pinning him off the ground. He lifts a knee and lodges it deep into Wilton’s scrote.

  “Drop it. Drop the fucking can or so help me God.”

 
It’s when he hears the can hit the floor and his eye follows the sound that he spots the girl.

  She’s maybe six, peeking from behind a wood box filled with charred beakers and blistered tubing and other gunked-up trash. Ashen and thin with a junkfood pot belly, blotchy skin, eyes watery and pale. Wearing a cotton onesie, pink with seahorses. Clutching a naked Barbie.

  “Hey,” Jimmy says, can’t help himself. Still got his chokehold on Wilton.

  And for the merest instant he sees the dusty street and the crowd spreading back on all sides, taking cover in market stalls or just crouching behind tables, leaving the boy alone in the street, just one more scrawny kid in a salwar kameez and a kufi, no different than the others selling scarves and bracelets on the edge of the bazaar, except this one’s got his fist clenched, thumbing the trigger to a bomb vest.

  Jimmy’s platoon had set up a checkpoint on the market’s south side, blocked off the street with the Humvee and wire and maybe ten minutes later the boy drifts up like a ghost, something in his face bothering the unit’s terp.

  Laiq, the interpreter’s name is. It means “deserving,” but the marines call him Extra Serving. Plump, a jokester, can’t get enough of the pot roast MREs. Born and raised in Kandahar, the rest of the planet mere rumor. Bobby Steeplehorn shows him a Playboy centerfold one day and Laiq doesn’t just stare. He licks the page.

  Now he’s telling the marines to stand back, walking up all alone, arms held out—stay calm—talking to the boy like an uncle.

  Jimmy can’t understand a word but he’ll learn later from one of the merchants that Laiq just keeps telling the boy, You don’t have to do this.

  And the boy answers back: They told me I’d be safe. If the Americans fire, they cannot hit me.

  What’s your name, Laiq asks, and after the third time the boy answers: Azizullah. And how old are you, Azizullah? Ten, the boy says.

  Well, Azizullah, ten is a marvelous age, a perfect age. You’re good boy and a brave boy but this is not necessary. I promise the marines will not hurt you. Please.

  Laiq inches closer—the boy is crying, ashamed to fail, ashamed to succeed—the interpreter close enough to touch the kid finally, gently stroke his arms and let him know he’s safe, it’s okay, hand me the trigger and the boy, Azizullah, in the saddest, sorriest voice Jimmy’s ever heard, like some poor dog crushed beneath the wheel of a car, cries out Inshallah!

  Allah be willing.

  Turns out, Allah’s plenty willing.

  Light rips through the stifling air with a jarring pulse of heat. An instant later the windstorm hits, spraying dust and blood and bits of cloth and jagged little missiles of bone.

  The memory slips by in a second, trailing like an afterburn: What are you worth?

  Jimmy drops his hold on Wilton, heads over to the girl, tries to scoop her up but she shrinks away. Her face looks feral. Jimmy can barely stand to look.

  “It’s okay. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  There’s a stillness to her, not like calm. Like the silence inside a cave.

  Behind her, beyond a sheet of plastic, maybe a dozen coffeemakers bubble with reddish orange liquor, the hot plates covering two folding tables. A mad science of tubing, power cords coiling toward surge protectors. The stench overpowering here. Nothing but a sheet of plastic, he thinks. Jesus.

  “What’s your name,” he asks. “How old are you?”

  The girl just stares. Seen more depth in a windshield, Jimmy thinks.

  “You like seahorses,” he says. “You know seahorses are monogamous? They mate for life. Boy seahorse, girl seahorse, they get together and stay together. Forever.”

  “Leave her be,” Wilton says. He’s crouched on the floor where Jimmy let him drop, head buried in his arms as though fearing a deathblow. “She’s had her fill of strangers.”

  Jimmy feels it in his chest, like a tripped switch. He stumbles past Wilton, out to where the pitbull’s going crazy, lunging against the shivering wall of its pen.

  The air feels like dust, but cold.

  Edwin looks put out. “Well?”

  Jimmy grabs his face as though for a kiss, twists once hard, snapping his neck.

  Back at the house, her car’s gone, the place locked up tight, no lights. Renda, Jimmy thinks, please. You got me into this. Okay, not this exactly.

  Or maybe this exactly. Something close enough.

  Faithful in her fashion. They were expendable.

  Forty-five minutes later he sits in his usual spot at the Peppermill, feeding a sloppy thirst. Seems like every time he checks his watch, the bartender’s looking. Yeah, Jimmy thinks, I’m waiting for somebody. And if I’m guessing right, in a mere twelve hours, she’ll show up for her shift.

  Then again, I could be wrong. I’m not really all that smart.

  Are You With Me, Doctor Wu?

  Shocker Tumbrel first encountered the loving Buddha inside a padded holding cell at San Francisco County Jail.

  Twelve hours earlier, a SWAT team had dragged him out of a shooting gallery two blocks from the Bottom of the Hill, the club where his band had joined a handful of other outfits in a benefit to save the venue, one of the few left in town to offer live music, now targeted for condo gentrification at the hands of the usual cabal of City Hall sellouts and bagman developers.

  The night had ended with a beautiful mosh-pit frenzy unlike anything the locals had seen in years: multiple swan dives off the stage monitors from dervish girls and acrobat boys, not just fans but band members too. Pinball aggression. Brothers and sisters united in pain.

  At night’s end, stoked from adrenaline, Shocker stowed his gear in the van and headed off to mellow the edges with his best friend and band mate, Mousy Tongue.

  The two had met through sheer dumb luck in middle school, all but inseparable since: skateboarding, tagging, paint sniffing, runaway odysseys to Portland and Vegas and Burning Man, multiple stints in juvie detention, moving up the buzz ladder to reefer and meth and smack as they formed and dissolved a slew of bands—Molotov Snot, Flaming Citadel, Deathwagon Ponies—culminating finally in the latest, the truest, the fiercest, the best: Acid Prancer.

  Shocker writing the songs and playing bass, Mousy up front on guitar and vocals, Clint Barber on drums—they remained true to the poverty-fueled rage, the misfit love, the howling anarchy of punk. They promised themselves they’d never succumb to the soul-sucking über-capitalist fame machine, never cave to money. They started their sets screaming, “This ain’t no fucking White Stripes,” then kicked into their signature cut, “Shopping Mall Shootout.”

  Seriously, when 5 Seconds of Summer, an Aussie boy-band rehash of One Direction pop schmaltz bullshit gets crowned as the latest messiahs of hardcore, what could you do but drop trou, moon the power, and hit the spike?

  Which was exactly what he and Mousy did after the gig, trundling over to a long-familiar nod pad, scoring from an obese albino named Jelly Stone and heading upstairs to the playroom. The shit Jelly sold them was powdery and fine, a fresh batch of china white, he said, new to the street. Mousy fired up first, passed the gear, and Shocker tied himself off, slapped up a vein. He eased back on his first hit, figuring he could bump it up if need be. Hearing a deep, chesty sigh beside him, he figured Mousy had slipped into the haze, and settled in to do likewise.

  By the time it dawned on him Mousy hadn’t spoken or even stirred in far too long, no amount of shouting or shaking could bring him back. Neither one of them had brought along naloxone, the thinking man’s OD antidote, because, well, they hadn’t been thinking. Jelly hadn’t offered any, either—I’m your connection, he’d say, not your mother. The Free Clinic and the needle exchanges handed out injectable vials to any dope fiend who bothered to ask—Christ, they practically forced it on you.

  But that argument was over. Mousy had wandered across that invisible line where your lungs forget to breathe. All things cons
idered, a gentle death.

  Born Robert Sean McFadden, Hayward, California. Twenty-three years old.

  Shocker didn’t exactly remember stacking the moldy couch and two broken chairs in front of the door, or screaming at anyone standing outside that he had a gun and would shoot to kill any motherfucker dumb enough to try to force his way in.

  The clearest thing he recalled was dragging Mousy into the corner, sitting there curled up with him, the lifeless head in his lap, that handsome, waxy face staring emptily up into his own as the SFPD busted their way in—battering ram, follow-up kicks, a final shoulder or two—suited and booted in storm-trooper black, aiming their AR-15s in his face and screaming like Warg riders: “On the floor! Show your hands, asshole! Do it! Now!”

  Time swirled in and out—he sat cocooned in a straitjacket, entombed in his quilted cell—until finally the lock clattered open, the door swung back.

  Even if given a thousand lifetimes of lovely dreams, he could never have imagined the person who entered, sat beside him, and said gently, “Would you rather I call you Shocker, or Lonnie?”

  It wasn’t how she looked that made her sitting there astonishing—just another tall, slender, California blonde: center part on the pulled-back hair, fat brown eyes but prim lips, a dusting of mustard-brown freckles. Her voice had a clipped warm twang—Midwestern vowels wrapped in tortilla consonants­—but that too seemed irrelevant. She wore an ID card on a lanyard that read simply “Visitor.” Given his savage state of mind, though, where the edge of the universe felt intimately close, he misread the word as “Visitation.” And that seemed perfectly right. She wasn’t just someone from beyond the locked door. She’d been transported here from a totally different plain of existence.

  “How did you know that name?”

  “You mean Lonnie?”

  He nodded, thinking: I probably look like a missile went off inside my head. Nerve endings were crackling back to life. His blood had started to itch.

  “It’s on your booking sheet. They printed you on intake, remember?”