Sex, Thugs, and Rock & Roll

by Todd Robinson

  Headmaster yelled at me again, told me to stop. I shifted the AK-47 to my left hand and pulled out the automatic and turned and looked at him and Billy, and then I fired. I was a good shot, and I was proud of that, because my first shot caught Headmaster between the eyes. He went down so fast, it was impossible to believe it. Billy—blood and brains from Headmaster splattered across his cheek—tried to pull up the rifle he had in his hand, but I shot him through the heart before he got it lifted. Then I was in the room with Hummy by the time Billy hit the floor.

  Juan had already gone through and was at the far door. He had turned, drawn the automatic he had. Now there were guns coming out from under coats, and out of pockets, and from behind the desk. Juan fired twice and the shots slammed into the door frame. I shot at him once, but missed. Then I stuck the pistol in my belt, almost casual-like, switched the AK-47 to my right hand and lifted it firing, bullets going all over the place, crazy-like.

  I hit a couple of the guys and one of the girls, and they did a kind of hop and a twist, like they were grooving at a party. There was blood everywhere and people were going down. I felt something hot in my side and I shot Hummy a bunch of times. Then I was walking, just straight out, not thinking about anything but killing, feeling the fire in my side, but not thinking much of it. I walked right through, whipping the weapon left and right, mowing flesh.

  As I reached the far open door, I saw they were coming for me—maybe twenty guys, couple of the girls, but there were some holding back. The ones coming had weapons, all handguns, and when they opened up the world went crazy and my ears went deaf, then began to ring. And I don’t remember it all, but the bullets cut all around me. One went through my left arm and it hurt like hell. The next thing I knew, it was hanging at my side and I got the AK-47 lifted, pushed up against my hip, and I was rockin’ and rollin’ and bodies were jumping. I was having a better day than they were. Probably because they couldn’t hit an elephant in the ass at ten paces with a tossed bar stool, even spraying. Luckiest motherfucker ever squatted to take a dump over a pair of shoes, ’cause except for that one hit, I was doing good. It was like I was fucking charmed.

  I saw my bullets jerk B.G. and Rhino around and take them apart; a lot of the others, they went down too.

  I started walking sideways, along the wall, and came to the counter where the shoes used to be given out, slid behind that. I kept firing and their shots kept coming. The wood on the counter jumped and splintered. The shoe racks behind me came apart, and I wasn’t hit again. I just kept pushing the AK-47 up against me, firing.

  I was almost to the door and could see that the bodies were heaped. And there was that damn Juan, still alive. I pulled the trigger on the AK-47 again, but it was empty. Then I remembered that I had picked up another clip, but couldn’t load it with only one hand working. So I dropped the AK-47, pulled the pistol, and fired one shot that didn’t hit anyone. I heard the lead bounce off a bowling ball, and then I was at the door. I ran out of there, my arm dangling at my side like a puppet that had lost a string.

  It was cool outside for a change and there was a thin rain blowing in my face as I ran. I felt a little dizzy, but for the most part, things were all right. The colors of the night, lit up by distant lights, were mostly shades of black and gray. I was glad there were no streetlights, because I got behind a parked car, dropped behind it, and lay on my belly. I looked under it and down the street at the bowling alley. As I was lying there, I felt the AK-47 clip sticking in my stomach. I lifted up, pulled it out of my belt, and left it on the concrete. I touched my pocket; the extra load for the automatic was gone. It must have fallen out of my pocket. I looked around under the car for it, and then I saw that it was lying in the street between the car and the bowling alley. I hadn’t stuck it in good, and it had gotten bumped out. I felt like an idiot.

  After a while the door opened a crack, and a head poked out—and then another, and then one other. They looked my direction first, then the other direction. I wondered how many were still in there. I had pretty much wiped out the crop of the gang, scared the shit out of the others. Only thing I hadn’t done was blow up their meth lab, which was in a little house down the street from the bowling alley. Some of the gang were there, but, way I felt, they were going to get away. Maybe I’d come back and get them too, just for the hell of it. Kill them all and blow the place up and piss in the ashes.

  I kept watching. I saw the heads move, and then the guys were out in the street. Another guy showed, and then a girl. She had long black hair, and I even noted she had a good figure. I thought that was funny; here I am, lying on the ground, people wanting to kill me, one of them that girl, and I’m taking note of her tits and ass.

  They all had guns. Handguns. I could see them moving them around in the dark. Altogether, there were five of them. Three of them broke off and went the opposite way, and then the other two—Juan, limping a little, and the girl—started my way. They saw the clip I had dropped, and Juan stopped, bent down, and picked it up.

  They looked back for the others, but they had long gone. At least it was just these two who knew which direction I had gone.

  It was all I could do to make myself move. The concrete felt good and cool. I lifted up on my hands and knees. When I did, I could hear the sticky blood that had run out of me make a Velcro sound; it had dried enough to stick me to the cement. I realized then that I hadn’t been as charmed as I thought. I had been hit a couple of times, but not anywhere too bad, or so I hoped. I did feel a little light-headed.

  I backed up on hands and knees a few paces, then backed into an alley and hoped it wasn’t a dead end. It wasn’t. I went along it and tried not to breathe too heavy or too loud. I looked up. The sky was just a kind of slick glow. There were no lights where I was, but the city lights licked the sky like that and gave it this gauzy look. I thought of where I had lived when Dad and me moved away from here. There you could see the sky and at night you could hear crickets and frogs and there were tall trees.

  I went over a grating. When I did, steam came out of it like devil’s breath, and I jumped a little. I went on and around a corner, then started feeling as if someone had opened up a spigot in my heel and the soul of me was running out of it.

  I stopped and leaned against the alley wall, moved my shirt back and looked at where I had been hit in the side. I realized it was a bad hit, worse than I thought. The other wounds weren’t so bad, but they were all bleeding, and I felt as if there was something tunneling around inside me.

  I could hear Juan and that girl coming. I thought about running, but my body wasn’t up for it. They knew I was here, and it was a matter of time before they caught up with me. I looked around, saw some garbage cans by some metal stairs. I made my way there and got behind the cans and eased over behind the stairs, watching between the garbage cans as Juan turned the corner, and then the girl.

  They spread out, maybe trying to act like movies they’d seen, where the cops search rooms. But this was a big-ass room, this wide spot in the alley. When she went left, Juan came along the wall, then stopped as his arm brushed the bricks. He put out his hand and rubbed the wall. I knew he had found my blood there.

  He turned and looked toward the trash cans, and when he did, he saw me between those cans. I knew it. I could tell. I lifted the gun and fired. It hit him and he went down, his pistol skittering across the alley.

  Bullets banged around the cans and along the stairs. A light went on somewhere above me, and the girl, panicking, fired at the lit window. I heard glass crash and then someone smartly turned out the light. I stood up and kicked the trash cans over and came out blazing. I fired twice and both shots missed. She fired and hit me in the shoulder—and this one was solid, not just passing through. It knocked me down and I felt as if all the wind was out of me. I couldn’t believe how hard I had been hit.

  I lay on my back and she came toward me. She was smiling. She had a revolver. She pointed it at me. She straddled me and pulled the trigger. And it clicked
empty. She had shot at me in the bowling alley. Maybe one of her shots had hit me, but now she was all used up.

  I grinned and lifted the pistol and shot her in between the legs.

  She seemed to jump backward, then hit the ground on her back and made a noise like someone trying to squeeze out a silent fart.

  I could hardly get up, but I did. I staggered over and looked down at her. She looked young. Not a whole lot older than the girl I had punched.

  “Shit,” I said.

  She quit moving, except for one leg that wiggled a moment, then quit.

  I went over to Juan. He was breathing heavy. He had his hands on his belly. I got down on my knees by him.

  I said, “That boy, whose feet you nailed to the floor. That was my brother. My father committed suicide over it. I don’t like you or any of your gang. I’m glad you hurt bad.”

  He tried to say something, but he couldn’t. All of his air was being used to stay alive.

  “I just wanted you to know how much I hate you. You fucked up my life, and this sure fucks up yours. And I got Billy too. And the Headmaster. And a bunch of you fucks. You had a plastic Jesus in your pocket, I’d snap it in half. That’s how much I hate you. How you feeling, Juan?”

  Juan looked at me, and his mouth came open, like a fish on a dock, hoping for water.

  “I could kill you,” I said. “Make it stop hurting. But I don’t want to.”

  I stayed there on my knees until blood came out of his mouth and the stink in his pants became too strong for me to take. Then I stood up and looked at him. It was all I could do to stand up. I should have moved on, maybe found a doctor. But I didn’t want to miss a second of it.

  I watched until he was dead and his eyes were as flat and lifeless as a teddy bear’s.

  I went away then, moving slow, but moving. I dropped the automatic somewhere. I walked until I came to some lights. Down the way I could hear traffic and see people. People who weren’t in gangs. People with lives. People, many of which would live long and die of old age and have families. Stuff I wouldn’t know about.

  I leaned against a brick wall, under a streetlight. The first I had come to since leaving the bowling alley. I looked up and watched bugs swarm around the light. They didn’t know they had short lives and didn’t care. They just did what they did and had no thoughts about it.

  I grinned at them.

  I took the little girl’s wallet out of my back pocket and opened it. It had five dollars in it. I looked through it and found her picture, and a picture of her with a man, woman, and little boy. Her family, I figured. I found a little card behind a plastic window that had her address on it. It said: RETURN TO, and then there was the address. I knew that address, the general locale. It wasn’t far from where I had lived as a kid, back when Dad owned the store and he and my brother worked there, and I hung out there from time to time. On that day my brother was murdered, set on fire, I had been at a theater down the street, watching a movie. It was a good movie, and now, because of my brother’s death, I couldn’t think of that movie without feeling a little sick. I couldn’t think of it now. I thought about the girl again, and that was almost as bad as thinking about my brother or my father.

  I thought about her nose. I hoped she could fix it, or maybe it wasn’t broken too badly and would heal all right. I thought about the guy whose knee I had taken out for the lack of payment to the Headmaster. I didn’t really care about him. He was in bed with the skunks, so he got stink all over himself before I did anything to him. He had it coming. Maybe he didn’t have it coming from me, not really, but he had it coming, and I didn’t feel all that bad about him. I didn’t feel bad about any of the gang. I just wished I had killed them all.

  I read the address in the wallet again. I knew where that was. I started walking.

  I went along the backstreets as much as possible. When I got on a main street, people began to pull back from me, seeing all the blood, way my face looked. I saw it myself, reflected in a store window. I looked like a ghost who had seen a ghost. The shock was wearing off. I was really starting to hurt.

  I probably didn’t have long before the police got me, before people on the street called about this blood-covered guy.

  I took a turn at the corner and started walking as fast as I could. I felt as if most of what was left of me was turning to heat and going out the top of my head. I went along until I got to the back alleys; then I darted in and went through them. I remembered these alleys like I had been here yesterday, though it had been a few years. I remembered them well because I had played here. I went down them and along them, and somewhere back behind me I heard sirens, wondered if they were for me.

  I finally went down an alley so narrow I had to turn sideways to get through it. It opened up into a fairly well-lit street. I got the girl’s wallet out again and looked at the address. I was on the right street. I memorized the number, put the wallet away, and walked along the street until I found the number that fit the one on her little card in the wallet.

  A series of stone steps went up to a landing, and there was a door there, above it the number. I climbed up to the top step, and that was about it. I sat down suddenly and leaned back so that my ass was on the stoop and my legs were hanging off on the top step. I could hardly feel that step. My legs seemed to be coming loose of me and sinking into something like quicksand. I had to take a look at them to make sure they were still attached. When I saw that they were, I sort of laughed, because I couldn’t feel them. I pulled myself up more with my hands and put my back at an angle against one of the concrete rails that lined the steps on both sides.

  I took out the wallet, put both my hands over it, and put the wallet up against my stomach. I tried to put it someplace where blood wouldn’t get on it, but there wasn’t any place. I realized now that the warm wetness I was feeling in the seat of my pants was blood running down from my wounds and into my underwear. I hated that they would find me like that.

  I sat there and thought about my dad and my brother and I thought about what my sensei had said about you can’t correct what’s done, and if you try, you won’t feel any better. He was right. You can’t correct what’s been done. But I did feel better. I felt bad about the girl, but I felt good about all those dead fucks being dead. I felt real good.

  I felt around in my shirt, and my hand was like a catcher’s mitt trying to pick up a needle. I finally found my ballpoint and I opened the girl’s wallet, which was bloody. I pinched out the little card with her address on it, and wrote the best I could:

  I’M SORRY. REALLY, I AM.

  I laid the wallet on my knee, got out my own wallet. I had twenty-five dollars in there. I put the money from my wallet in her wallet, along with her five. I turned and looked at the door. I didn’t know if I could make it. There was a mailbox by the door, a black metal thing, and I wanted to get up and put the wallet in that, but I didn’t know if I could.

  I thought about it awhile. Finally, I got some kind of strength and pulled myself up along the concrete railing. When I got up, it was like my legs and feet came back. I made it to the mailbox, opened it, and put her wallet in there with the card I had written on.

  Then that was it. I fell down along the wall and lay on my face. I thought about all manner of things. I thought of my brother and my father. But the funny thing was, I began to think about my sensei. I was on the mat and I was moving along the mat. I was practicing in the air. Not traditional kata, because we didn’t do that. But I was practicing—punching, kicking, swinging my elbows, jerking up my knees. It felt good, and I could see my sensei out of the corner of my eye. I couldn’t make out if he was pleased or angry, but I was glad he was there.

  The sirens grew louder.

  I thought of bullets and fire, and a deep pit full of darkness. I wished I could see the stars.

  Judy’s Big Score

  Patrick J. Lambe

  Judy had every right to be pissed. I wasn’t supposed to stop at the bar after I’d cased it; especial
ly not while the owner was there. But I just had to get a look at the loser we were gonna rip off. The other guy she was sleeping with.

  She tapped her fingers on the bar, her arms spread out on either side of the beer, eyes narrowed, exaggerating the wrinkles that had started spreading from their corners since the last time I’d seen her—nearly seven years before the call out of nowhere.

  “Five bucks,” she said.

  I knew she’d be mad at me, but I hadn’t expected her to actually charge me for a goddamned beer. It was a business expense as far as I was concerned.

  A quick glance in both directions showed no patrons within hearing distance, besides my partner, Dell. Tipping the glass towards her, I said, “I didn’t get a chance to pick up any cash on the way down.”

  “Don’t look at me, I’m on the dole,” Dell said when Judy switched her attention from me to him.

  “There’s an ATM right behind you.” She chin-nodded towards it. “You two idiots forget about it already?”

  “Come on, hon, can’t you spring for a round?” I said.

  “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” she said, picking up a bar rag from a sink under the cheap Formica bar top. “Maybe we should call it off.” She wiped the ring formed by my beer mug.

  “Jesus Christ,” I said. “I’ll pay for the drinks.”

  Pushing away from the bar, I nearly collided with a guy maneuvering a hand truck behind me. His close-cropped hair was a mix of dark brown and silver. Freshly touched-up tattoos covered the parts of his thick arms exposed by his light-colored T-shirt. One of the tattoos was a Black Flag symbol. Old pop marks could still be seen poking through the fresh coat of ink. Hard to believe punk rock kids were pushing fifty nowadays.

  “Can you let me in, hon?” he said, scurrying past me to the part of the bar that swung upward to let people behind it. He had to be Steve, the owner.

  Judy worked her way down the end of the bar and lifted the top up to let Steve in with the beer-case-laden hand truck. She was making too much of an effort to ignore me as I went over to the ATM and stuck my card in. I hoped Steve-O didn’t pick up on it.