PROTECTION RACKET - ROBERT CRISMAN
When Michelle went ho-ing at Wong’s, she knew there’d be lots of guys winging right in. Pimps and wannabes wanting to snatch up the new star in town, the suburban princess gone wrong.
They’d want to take her all the way up on the mountain and show her the valley below...
Romero spoke of practical matters. He had a megawatt smile that showed his gold tooth with the diamond. He dressed all pimp hip-hop, a cliché for days...
Romero suggested that he and Michelle go to Phoenix.
“Really, Romero, Phoenix? Why would I want to go to Phoenix?”
“Sunshine, baby, all warm and toasty.” He laughed. “You lounge around in a bikini all day by the pool, drinkin’ your Cuervo an’ workin’ on your tan. And meanwhile, they got all these wealthy retired down there, baby. All them old men just bakin’ away in the sun. Got nothin’ to do, they used to run Intel or somethin’ up here, they cashed in their chips an’ now they got all the time in the world on their hands, an’ now they just waitin’ for you. They see you there by the pool, they send a drink over an’ take you to dinner. You ride in stretch limos to all the best shows.” He grinned. “You be the belle of the ball down in Phoenix.”
“And what would you be?”
“I be with you.”
“Uh huh. And then what?”
Romero grinned. He loved to spar. “Look, girl, you in a strange town, Phoenix. You never been there, don’t know nobody but me, and you need somebody make the way smooth. Make sure nobody come up on your blind side, all that. All them places, shit, this town, Seattle, you workin’, you out there. Always them dudes, they got the big teeth, they just wanna take it, you know what I’m sayin’?
“A girl get hurt. I make sure that don’t happen.”
“Uh huh. Well—”
“I’m tellin’ you, baby, it’s cold in this world. On Aurora right now. All over the world...”
“Well, that might be true, but we’re indoors now. It’s way nice and toasty in here.”
“Yeah, baby, now. But shit do happen, you know? A man keep shit off you and—”
“God, Romero! You make it sound like a protection racket!” She laughed.
Romero stayed deadpan. “Everybody needs a little protection, girl.”
“I have protection,” Michelle said. “Lena’s friends.”
Lena, Michelle’s buddy at Wong’s, was friends with some bikers who’d motor on by on the weekends. Pimps and the bikers stayed clear of each other.
“Them bikers come in here?” Romero laughed. “Baby, they take you and sell you right out of the trunk of some car in some fuckin’ small town. Run trains on your pretty white ass.”
Michelle blinked. “I don’t think so...”
Romero gave her a long moment’s hooded-eyed look and then got up from his chair. “You think about what I been tellin’ you, girl. I talk to you later.” He flashed her the megawatt grin. “You pretty, girl, I swear to God. Every time you come in, the fellas be thinkin’ it’s recess in heaven.” He laughed, winked, walked away.
Awhile later, Michelle left the bar, her thoughts in a tangle. Romero, his predator’s smile; she saw herself kidnapped and beaten and stuck in the trunk of a car driven south... Stereotypical drama for sure, but the fear was real in her throat.
Next night, Michelle bought a gun from this guy that she knew for $75 and some pussy. He also sold her some bullets. She hoped the thing had a firing pin.
Pimps, bikers, whatever, she needed protection.
All these guys winging...
BIO: Robert Crisman writes crime and noir fiction. He spent 15 years on streets in downtown Seattle and has some idea of what really goes on in these realms. He has stories at A Twist of Noir, Fictionaut, Yellow Mama and Darkest Before Dawn. A movie he scripted, Chasing the Dopeman, is currently in post-prod down in L.A. and, with luck, it’ll be ready to go sometime this fall. He maintains a blog, chock full of stories, at 6S.
Showing posts with label Robert Crisman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Robert Crisman. Show all posts
Friday, October 15, 2010
A Twist Of Noir 607 - Robert Crisman
A DREAM LAY IN WAIT - ROBERT CRISMAN
Roanne hungered.
Memory had ruled her forever. Shards, really, edged like machetes: daddy, whose fingers had eyes in the dark. Momma, ensconced in the shadows.
A church full of short eyes scoping the pretties...
The school playground—swoopings, formations, attacks. The girl she spit on. The boy who lit matches. A first stolen kiss. The snide little wannabe rapists who lifted her dress in a dark-cornered hallway. The nun who blamed her...
It was as if she’d been stripped and then laughed at in front of the whole third grade class...
Later, there was this movie she saw. In it, a woman, tall, muscled, proud, toting an uzi, and dressed in an outfit that flowed down her body, inseparable from her, weaving together the beauty, strength, and allure that made her The Queen.
The Queen wore a crown, a little black hat, a shell of black feathers, tipped forward to the side, with a veil that covered one eye.
The Queen! She held her gun ready and ruled. In circling attendance, a covey of young, supple gangsters. She was their rock, the dream they all dreamed of.
She stood there, inviolate, serene. She took Roanne over...
Roanne dreamed she’d be Queen. But her legs were...too short...
Wisdom has it, however, that clothes make the woman; they mold, sharpen flesh. Roanne had an eye for design; she could turn shadow to sinew. She would be Queen. The world would fall at her feet...
Women would give themselves over to her to be honed for war. She’d reshape the world: all women, men’s eyes...
Men’s eyes! Like all pretty girls, Roanne had been raised to be bait for boys. Which meant life lived in the prison of skin.
Boys tapped on her nerves—especially the bad boys who spit on the old folks’ religion. They somehow embodied a Fuck-You-All freedom denied her...a ticket away to some faraway place...
But their cruelties and callous indifference, their drumming, incessant need—what could these do in the end except sharpen her strong sense of place in the margins?
There were the yoyos, of course, yoyos who’d lick the shit off her shoes for the chance to get next. She filed these away for use later on...
Bait for boys; she’d use it, embrace it, and somehow escape it thereby...
She’d reshape men’s eyes and be free...
Roanne went downtown, age 14. Where the lights are all bright and the shadows are sleek. The Lost Paradise. Bad boys in heaven and she right there with them...
And Dope...
Roanne would be Queen. She’d learn how to game and get over, to outwit the wolves, fleece the lambs, run the maze. Then, past the maze, she’d exhume the dream and reshape the world.
She’d retire in the end to a house on a hill, where no danger or dread could ever molest her again.
She would live the American Dream, the Dream that ends in a splendor of uncaring comfort and ease, that soothes like a breeze on a raft floating down the White Nile, with the softest of suns caressing her lips and her brow and her breasts, and whispering the sweetest of nothings.
The Dream is 10,000 years old. It soothes just like chiva...
Roanne found her power.
She found it one night in the badlands. In the back of a fifth-rate hotel, in the room that holds all lost children.
She’d been dodging bandits.
She came there to rest and replenish.
She was so hungry.
A smorgasbord there on the table! She tied off and tucked in...
Roanne found her power and power reshaped her.
She hungered for more...
BIO: Robert Crisman writes crime and noir fiction. He spent 15 years on streets in downtown Seattle and has some idea of what really goes on in these realms. He has stories at A Twist of Noir, Fictionaut, Yellow Mama and Darkest Before Dawn. A movie he scripted, Chasing the Dopeman, is currently in post-prod down in L.A. and, with luck, it’ll be ready to go sometime this fall. He maintains a blog, chock full of stories, at 6S.
Roanne hungered.
Memory had ruled her forever. Shards, really, edged like machetes: daddy, whose fingers had eyes in the dark. Momma, ensconced in the shadows.
A church full of short eyes scoping the pretties...
The school playground—swoopings, formations, attacks. The girl she spit on. The boy who lit matches. A first stolen kiss. The snide little wannabe rapists who lifted her dress in a dark-cornered hallway. The nun who blamed her...
It was as if she’d been stripped and then laughed at in front of the whole third grade class...
Later, there was this movie she saw. In it, a woman, tall, muscled, proud, toting an uzi, and dressed in an outfit that flowed down her body, inseparable from her, weaving together the beauty, strength, and allure that made her The Queen.
The Queen wore a crown, a little black hat, a shell of black feathers, tipped forward to the side, with a veil that covered one eye.
The Queen! She held her gun ready and ruled. In circling attendance, a covey of young, supple gangsters. She was their rock, the dream they all dreamed of.
She stood there, inviolate, serene. She took Roanne over...
Roanne dreamed she’d be Queen. But her legs were...too short...
Wisdom has it, however, that clothes make the woman; they mold, sharpen flesh. Roanne had an eye for design; she could turn shadow to sinew. She would be Queen. The world would fall at her feet...
Women would give themselves over to her to be honed for war. She’d reshape the world: all women, men’s eyes...
Men’s eyes! Like all pretty girls, Roanne had been raised to be bait for boys. Which meant life lived in the prison of skin.
Boys tapped on her nerves—especially the bad boys who spit on the old folks’ religion. They somehow embodied a Fuck-You-All freedom denied her...a ticket away to some faraway place...
But their cruelties and callous indifference, their drumming, incessant need—what could these do in the end except sharpen her strong sense of place in the margins?
There were the yoyos, of course, yoyos who’d lick the shit off her shoes for the chance to get next. She filed these away for use later on...
Bait for boys; she’d use it, embrace it, and somehow escape it thereby...
She’d reshape men’s eyes and be free...
Roanne went downtown, age 14. Where the lights are all bright and the shadows are sleek. The Lost Paradise. Bad boys in heaven and she right there with them...
And Dope...
Roanne would be Queen. She’d learn how to game and get over, to outwit the wolves, fleece the lambs, run the maze. Then, past the maze, she’d exhume the dream and reshape the world.
She’d retire in the end to a house on a hill, where no danger or dread could ever molest her again.
She would live the American Dream, the Dream that ends in a splendor of uncaring comfort and ease, that soothes like a breeze on a raft floating down the White Nile, with the softest of suns caressing her lips and her brow and her breasts, and whispering the sweetest of nothings.
The Dream is 10,000 years old. It soothes just like chiva...
Roanne found her power.
She found it one night in the badlands. In the back of a fifth-rate hotel, in the room that holds all lost children.
She’d been dodging bandits.
She came there to rest and replenish.
She was so hungry.
A smorgasbord there on the table! She tied off and tucked in...
Roanne found her power and power reshaped her.
She hungered for more...
BIO: Robert Crisman writes crime and noir fiction. He spent 15 years on streets in downtown Seattle and has some idea of what really goes on in these realms. He has stories at A Twist of Noir, Fictionaut, Yellow Mama and Darkest Before Dawn. A movie he scripted, Chasing the Dopeman, is currently in post-prod down in L.A. and, with luck, it’ll be ready to go sometime this fall. He maintains a blog, chock full of stories, at 6S.
Friday, June 25, 2010
A Twist Of Noir 489 - Robert Crisman
DANNY’S LOWBALL EMPORIUM - ROBERT CRISMAN
Guys hustle because they don’t want to work. But Danny found out the hard way that not working’s a job.
Hard fucking job. And they don’t even have to give you a check.
He was selling stuff out of the trunk of his car that month. All sorts of stuff that people had let him take out of their basements. What he got was catch as catch can.
I guess that the good thing about this whole business was, he didn’t lose money.
He’d been working a nine-to-five job for awhile, but got sick to death of that shit, so he quit. He got his last check and, boom boom boom boom, rent, groceries, and smokes, and a bit of bud on the side and after that, he was broke as a dog. A week after payday.
Before the job he’d slung the dime bags. But he liked the shit too much himself and, so much for profits, you know. Plus, it was boring—who wants to dick around with tweakers all day?—and, all-in-all, just a fucking wretched-ass racket.
Anyway, so what now? He had to eat the last time he checked. So, rob a bank? Go visiting places where people aren’t home? Sell dime bags to dipshits again? Why not just stand on a corner, waving his dick at the cops? As far as he was concerned, that other shit was pretty much the same fucking thing.
Of course, in jail you got three hots, of a sort, and a cot...
Still, fuck jail. But, go back to work? After that last nine-to-five, he’d have rather waved his dick at the cop.
So—what?
Now it happens that he had some stuff—stereo, TV, a couple of bikes, and some other things this guy and his girlfriend left at this place he’d been staying. They’d had to book quick for some unknown reason, Danny didn’t ask why, and they weren’t coming back, so the people who owned the place told him hey, take it.
He was down to the lint in his pockets when this happened, so he shoved the stuff in his car and took it around to these meetings he’d go to whenever he’d try and stay off the dope. Mainly out at the Java Corral on Aurora. There were always people hanging around and some of them even had money.
He’d set up shop in the parking lot there and get busy.
I should explain that the meetings were 12-Step affairs, Narcotics Anonymous in this case. They’ve got 12-Steps for everybody these days, from dopers to gamblers to nosepickers, truly.
Everyone in the world it seems is strung out some kind of way...
“I’d come in crashlanding off chiva and hang for awhile,” Danny told me, “until the bones knit. I got to know people and stuff and some of them were cool but, you know, the program? I didn’t pay much attention.”
Which is why, every few weeks he’d go out and toot and wind up crashlanding again.
That’s not directly germane to the story, however. Danny wouldn’t have known a Step from a Sasquatch perhaps, but he knew about selling stuff out of the trunk of his car.
“I did good, too, at first. Had that nice stuff those guys left and it’s going alright, I’m keeping myself in groceries and smokes with a little left over, and I’m thinking, not bad. Beats the fuck out a nine-to-five gig, that’s for sure, and it ain’t gonna put me in jail.
“I sold that original stuff pretty quick, and then it was, how do I keep this thing going?
“I needed more stuff. How would I get it without pulling moves that’d land me in County?”
Danny knew a lot of the people who come to those meetings by this time, and some of those people had money and houses and stuff just like normies. He figured they might be willing to help him.
He made up a list, “sort of like Santa Claus in reverse.” People he’d call and give them his spiel, i.e., that he’d lost his job and was selling his stuff to keep eating and—here’s what he needed: “Any shit you might have that’s taking up space, you can’t use, I’ll come and clear the shit out.”
“I told my friend what I’m doing and he said, ‘You’re asking them, give it to you?’ I told him, Yeah, why the fuck not, and you know something, man? People were cool! I’d tell ’em straight up, Yeah, give me, you know? And they did. They dug it! See, here I am, a guy lost his job but still trying to make something happen. I’m not just some guy you see hanging around at those meetings, rolling over and licking his nuts because life’s hard and shit, like a lot of those guys you see coming through. You know, dudes, you see ’em around, they’re just lumps. Ain’t doing nothing but taking up space. Waiting to get loaded again, really.”
There was only one guy who gave him a hassle. “Guy’s name was Henry. He’s okay, man, but, I asked him, alright? Like what’s up with you, man? Turns out he’s bent because here I am, and I’m free, white, and thirty plus five, and here I am asking, gimme stuff free, and, like, what the fuck am I, some kind of wino or something? Dude’s really upset! I couldn’t believe it!”
What flipped his switch? “Well, see, the guy’s been working his whole fucking life, since he was six or some fucking thing, for the phone company, right? Been there since water got wet. Worked his way up from paper clips, man, never asked nobody for one fucking nickel, and here I am, begging for shit like a panhandling grandma, and—Jesus...
“I’m like, c’mon! This motherfucker. Him and his hard-working ass. Slaving away at Ma Bell for like 25 years and—bullshit. He’s been sucking away on her tit’s more the story.”
Run that one by me. “Okay, twenty-five years—and for 23 of those years he was flat ass-up loaded. All day and all night. He told me one time, he has no clue why they didn’t just fire his ass. Showed up about half of the time, on the nod, and he’s drooling away at his desk, or stuck in the can and digging away at that one last vein in his armpit or something, and then it’s lunchtime, he’s off to meet the connect. See you next week. And then, he comes back and he’s selling twenties to mutts on the switchboard. Twenty-three years of this shit! And, did they ever fire his ass? Fuck no, they sent him to rehab! Five million times! And each time he’s back, he’s good for two minutes, and then it’s the same fucking shit. Drool on the desk and squatter’s rights in the seventh floor shitter. You wonder how we ever got any phone service, man! And he’s busting my chops?
“I worked harder in two goddamn months than that fucker did in his whole fucking time with Ma Bell, just lugging that stuff around in my car to those meetings! And now here he is talking shit. I just looked at him, man, said, Okay, fuck you, and walked on away. Who needs all that silly-ass shit?
“Plus, like I said, most people were cool, so, fuck Henry, dig it?”
I asked Danny what kind of stuff did the people give up. “You wouldn’t believe it,” he said. “I got some good shit. VCRs, cameras, CDs, CD players, clothes up the ass, kitchen equipment, all kinds of shit. I got a couple of mountain bikes, and they went for $150 a pop just like that. People just, hey, I couldn’t believe it. You know, and that list, the one I made up? I did it so they’d know what stuff I could use and not just wind up with a whole lot of crap and—I did anyway, you know, but, hey, I still got a ton of good stuff.
“This one guy, he gave me like 70 porno flicks, right? All this hardcore shit, brother. I take ’em out to this wingnut AA place out on Aurora. And this dude, he bought like 20, I swear to God. And one of ’em, man, the picture they got on the box, this dude, had a dick like three fucking feet long! Randy Rides ’Em And Ropes ’Em or something, his dick’s like the noose.”
“So, stuff like that. And then, there was this broad, man, she gave me this whole bag of jewelry, alright? Costume shit, right, but good costume shit. Lotta bracelets, earrings, and pins and that stuff. She also tossed in this jewelry bag, too, and I broke that bag out at the Java Corral, and the broads just came flockin’, like pigeons on bread, practically fighting over this piece or that piece... Made something like $1500 just off of that.
“Blew me away! Broad gave me the stuff, she’s actually a pretty nice lady. She also gave me a bunch of dresses and gowns, two leather coats, and some velvets and silks and some other stuff, it’s all like designer stuff, right? And—see, she had money, or came from money, you know? And she’s piling this stuff on the bed there, and I’m like, Wow, man! and she’s telling me, what she’s actually doing is housecleaning her life. That’s how she put it. This shit that she’s giving me here, see, she had it when she was married, and meanwhile, her old man was a dickhead and she broomed his ass, and this stuff, it’s all like a bunch of bad memories now since she got off the dope and so, it’s like I’m doing her right by removing this stuff from her life. Nice guy that I am.
“So I got all these clothes and the jewelry, and the jewelry, turns out—she gave me some earrings, and I showed the things to this dude, and he says I should get ’em checked out because, the stones on those things look like emeralds! So I tell him, Dude, take a piss test. Emeralds. On costume? C’mon.
“Dude tells me, some of that costume’s expensive. Also, some emeralds, they’re actually cheap. They got flaws and, see, what they do is, they range in price. Some’re more expensive than diamonds. And then some, you could pick them up at a WalMart or something. Not really, but you’d be surprised at how cheap they can actually get.
“So I get them checked out. I take them to Theo, this jeweler out by the Java. He looks them over and, sure enough, the fuckers are emeralds alright. Cheap ones, but still worth maybe $500. And the earrings, there’s also these diamonds, small diamonds, one-pointers, and they’re worth like $300. And then finally, the earrings, they’re gold, 18-carat, Theo tells me they’re worth about $2000!
“He don’t have the money to buy them, so he sends me on up to Goldman’s up on 103rd. I go in and old Goldman gives ’em a look. First thing out of his mouth, of course, they ain’t worth two grand. Not even close. Theo’s senile or something.
“I knew coming in that dude was going to lowball my ass, so I’m, Alright, how much? I’m hoping he’ll give me a grand but, main thing, I’ve got to off this shit quick. Baby needs shoes and so, what can we do? Old Goldman, he’s checking them out with this jeweler’s glass, right, and taking a long goddamn time, and he’s hemming and hawing, and frowning, you know, like I’m fucking him over just bringing the things in his shop. Well, I know this movie; dude’s trying to steal it. He goes through this whole fucking act, I’m supposed to just give it up free. Or maybe even pay him.
“So I’m waiting and waiting and at last he looks up from the eyeglass. The look on his face, it’s like he just had something to eat that I gave him that tastes bad and gave him the shits. He tells me, 600 bucks. Must mean they’re worth millions. I tell him I’ve gotta have eight. Takes him two seconds, he says okay. He’da gone nine, but I didn’t have time. And still, he just raped me, and he’s acting like he’s getting fucked but, seeing I used grease or some fucking thing, he’ll duke me the favor.
“You should’ve heard this cocksucker. He’s, yabbety yabbety, market for emeralds is down, there’s a war going on or peace just broke out or, some fucking thing, and I tell him, Homes, you just bent me over and buried it, right? Gimme my money. He does and I split.
“So, $800, and the rest of her stuff, I got like two grand, and, not bad. I can go for awhile and not sweat too hard.
“This one dude, though, he asks me once, did I tell the lady who gave me the stuff what I had the earrings appraised for? Like I should’ve or something. Well, no, I didn’t, you know? And what the fuck business is it of his? The dude thought it was raw. Like I’d fucked her. I just looked at him, man. Dude used to snatch purses and rob this blind newsie on Broadway. Now he gets clean and he’s Saint Motherfucker or something. I told him, man, kiss my ass. You wanna judge? Man, judge on. I’m gonna go get me a nice, juicy steak. All of a sudden, dude’s trying to angle in on a meal. I gave him a buck, told him, here, man, for bean dip or something. Or bus fare. Kick rocks.
“I told my buddy Eddie about it, he laughs. He tells me, ‘You got $800 for nothing, my man. You’re doing better than bandits. Keep up with this, you open a store, you’ll get rich.’
“Danny’s Lowball Emporium, how does that sound? No, uh-uh. See, after awhile, the thing, I don’t know. I ran through that list, and pretty soon after, the good shit is gone, and I did okay, but shit would come up, the rent, my car got fucked up and that shit, and pretty soon, bam, it’s, where’d it all go? And then, I’m sitting around in my room one day and I’m looking around, and it’s tons of crap piled all over and shit, and no way in hell am I ever gonna get rid of this stuff.
“I got all this crap with the good stuff, alright? Women’s clothes. Tons of that shit for some fucking reason, and I’d take them around, and you never saw so many broads didn’t wanna buy clothes in your life after the good shit got snatched. So now, all the crap’s stacked in my room, and plus, I’ve two storage lockers down in the basement and they’re crammed with shit.
“I couldn’t even walk in that room! Had to dig tunnels to get to the can. Crap’s up to the ceiling. You should’ve seen it. I had these four sets of skis all stacked up in the kitchen. A bag of golf clubs, hole in the bag and a bunch of clubs missing, and who the fuck I know plays golf? So they’re there forever and, then, man, these pictures! Cute little stupid-ass pictures! Dogs cheatin’ at cards, fucking bulldogs and shit. Unicorns batting their eyelashes. Dumb shit like that. You look at them long, you get diabetes.
“And that wasn’t even the worst. Not by a longshot. Dig this: I had six whole boxes of records. LPs and singles. All the tops hits like from 1950 or some fucking thing. Mario Lanza Sings High Mass In Lapland. The Chipmunks Get Laid. Wayne Newton Don’t. Absolute shit that nobody ever bought new and now, looks like I’ve cornered the market. I’m thinking of getting a gun and telling folks, ‘Buy them or die,’ but they’d still fucking tell me to go fuck myself.
“All this shit, man! Like a yard sale for winos. I can’t even sleep in my bed!
“And those records aren’t even the worst! Worse than that, man, I swear to God, I had these damn knick-knacks, household items in boxes this one fucker gave me, from 1960 or something and I’m going to burn down his house. Yogurt makers and horseshit like that that nobody’d buy new in ten million years. A ton of that crap and there goes the rest of the floorspace.
“So I’ve got all this shit that’s going to wind up in some landfill along with the house I’m staying in, man, and I can’t get ahead. Something always came up. This bill and that bill. Car breaking down, rent coming up. I got popped driving on suspended—another tale of woe and grief, let me tell you—and that one cost millions and—it wasn’t too long, I look up, I’m tap city. All I’ve got left is ten tons of dogshit. Dogshit, Wayne Newton, and Mario Lanza.
“So that was it. It was a nice little thing for a minute but, fuck it. One of those things, it just didn’t work out.
“At least I didn’t lose money. And I did eat that steak, a ribeye, my friend, which was just as good as the waitress had said that it would be.
“And then I went out and got me a job.”
BIO: Robert Crisman writes crime and noir fiction. He spent 15 years on streets in downtown Seattle and has some idea of what really goes on in these realms. He’s had stories posted on A Twist of Noir, and on Yellow Mama and Darkest Before Dawn. A movie he scripted, Chasing the Dopeman, is currently in post-prod down in L.A. and, with luck, it’ll be ready to go sometime this fall. He maintains a blog, chock full of stories, at 6S.
Guys hustle because they don’t want to work. But Danny found out the hard way that not working’s a job.
Hard fucking job. And they don’t even have to give you a check.
He was selling stuff out of the trunk of his car that month. All sorts of stuff that people had let him take out of their basements. What he got was catch as catch can.
I guess that the good thing about this whole business was, he didn’t lose money.
He’d been working a nine-to-five job for awhile, but got sick to death of that shit, so he quit. He got his last check and, boom boom boom boom, rent, groceries, and smokes, and a bit of bud on the side and after that, he was broke as a dog. A week after payday.
Before the job he’d slung the dime bags. But he liked the shit too much himself and, so much for profits, you know. Plus, it was boring—who wants to dick around with tweakers all day?—and, all-in-all, just a fucking wretched-ass racket.
Anyway, so what now? He had to eat the last time he checked. So, rob a bank? Go visiting places where people aren’t home? Sell dime bags to dipshits again? Why not just stand on a corner, waving his dick at the cops? As far as he was concerned, that other shit was pretty much the same fucking thing.
Of course, in jail you got three hots, of a sort, and a cot...
Still, fuck jail. But, go back to work? After that last nine-to-five, he’d have rather waved his dick at the cop.
So—what?
Now it happens that he had some stuff—stereo, TV, a couple of bikes, and some other things this guy and his girlfriend left at this place he’d been staying. They’d had to book quick for some unknown reason, Danny didn’t ask why, and they weren’t coming back, so the people who owned the place told him hey, take it.
He was down to the lint in his pockets when this happened, so he shoved the stuff in his car and took it around to these meetings he’d go to whenever he’d try and stay off the dope. Mainly out at the Java Corral on Aurora. There were always people hanging around and some of them even had money.
He’d set up shop in the parking lot there and get busy.
I should explain that the meetings were 12-Step affairs, Narcotics Anonymous in this case. They’ve got 12-Steps for everybody these days, from dopers to gamblers to nosepickers, truly.
Everyone in the world it seems is strung out some kind of way...
“I’d come in crashlanding off chiva and hang for awhile,” Danny told me, “until the bones knit. I got to know people and stuff and some of them were cool but, you know, the program? I didn’t pay much attention.”
Which is why, every few weeks he’d go out and toot and wind up crashlanding again.
That’s not directly germane to the story, however. Danny wouldn’t have known a Step from a Sasquatch perhaps, but he knew about selling stuff out of the trunk of his car.
“I did good, too, at first. Had that nice stuff those guys left and it’s going alright, I’m keeping myself in groceries and smokes with a little left over, and I’m thinking, not bad. Beats the fuck out a nine-to-five gig, that’s for sure, and it ain’t gonna put me in jail.
“I sold that original stuff pretty quick, and then it was, how do I keep this thing going?
“I needed more stuff. How would I get it without pulling moves that’d land me in County?”
Danny knew a lot of the people who come to those meetings by this time, and some of those people had money and houses and stuff just like normies. He figured they might be willing to help him.
He made up a list, “sort of like Santa Claus in reverse.” People he’d call and give them his spiel, i.e., that he’d lost his job and was selling his stuff to keep eating and—here’s what he needed: “Any shit you might have that’s taking up space, you can’t use, I’ll come and clear the shit out.”
“I told my friend what I’m doing and he said, ‘You’re asking them, give it to you?’ I told him, Yeah, why the fuck not, and you know something, man? People were cool! I’d tell ’em straight up, Yeah, give me, you know? And they did. They dug it! See, here I am, a guy lost his job but still trying to make something happen. I’m not just some guy you see hanging around at those meetings, rolling over and licking his nuts because life’s hard and shit, like a lot of those guys you see coming through. You know, dudes, you see ’em around, they’re just lumps. Ain’t doing nothing but taking up space. Waiting to get loaded again, really.”
There was only one guy who gave him a hassle. “Guy’s name was Henry. He’s okay, man, but, I asked him, alright? Like what’s up with you, man? Turns out he’s bent because here I am, and I’m free, white, and thirty plus five, and here I am asking, gimme stuff free, and, like, what the fuck am I, some kind of wino or something? Dude’s really upset! I couldn’t believe it!”
What flipped his switch? “Well, see, the guy’s been working his whole fucking life, since he was six or some fucking thing, for the phone company, right? Been there since water got wet. Worked his way up from paper clips, man, never asked nobody for one fucking nickel, and here I am, begging for shit like a panhandling grandma, and—Jesus...
“I’m like, c’mon! This motherfucker. Him and his hard-working ass. Slaving away at Ma Bell for like 25 years and—bullshit. He’s been sucking away on her tit’s more the story.”
Run that one by me. “Okay, twenty-five years—and for 23 of those years he was flat ass-up loaded. All day and all night. He told me one time, he has no clue why they didn’t just fire his ass. Showed up about half of the time, on the nod, and he’s drooling away at his desk, or stuck in the can and digging away at that one last vein in his armpit or something, and then it’s lunchtime, he’s off to meet the connect. See you next week. And then, he comes back and he’s selling twenties to mutts on the switchboard. Twenty-three years of this shit! And, did they ever fire his ass? Fuck no, they sent him to rehab! Five million times! And each time he’s back, he’s good for two minutes, and then it’s the same fucking shit. Drool on the desk and squatter’s rights in the seventh floor shitter. You wonder how we ever got any phone service, man! And he’s busting my chops?
“I worked harder in two goddamn months than that fucker did in his whole fucking time with Ma Bell, just lugging that stuff around in my car to those meetings! And now here he is talking shit. I just looked at him, man, said, Okay, fuck you, and walked on away. Who needs all that silly-ass shit?
“Plus, like I said, most people were cool, so, fuck Henry, dig it?”
I asked Danny what kind of stuff did the people give up. “You wouldn’t believe it,” he said. “I got some good shit. VCRs, cameras, CDs, CD players, clothes up the ass, kitchen equipment, all kinds of shit. I got a couple of mountain bikes, and they went for $150 a pop just like that. People just, hey, I couldn’t believe it. You know, and that list, the one I made up? I did it so they’d know what stuff I could use and not just wind up with a whole lot of crap and—I did anyway, you know, but, hey, I still got a ton of good stuff.
“This one guy, he gave me like 70 porno flicks, right? All this hardcore shit, brother. I take ’em out to this wingnut AA place out on Aurora. And this dude, he bought like 20, I swear to God. And one of ’em, man, the picture they got on the box, this dude, had a dick like three fucking feet long! Randy Rides ’Em And Ropes ’Em or something, his dick’s like the noose.”
“So, stuff like that. And then, there was this broad, man, she gave me this whole bag of jewelry, alright? Costume shit, right, but good costume shit. Lotta bracelets, earrings, and pins and that stuff. She also tossed in this jewelry bag, too, and I broke that bag out at the Java Corral, and the broads just came flockin’, like pigeons on bread, practically fighting over this piece or that piece... Made something like $1500 just off of that.
“Blew me away! Broad gave me the stuff, she’s actually a pretty nice lady. She also gave me a bunch of dresses and gowns, two leather coats, and some velvets and silks and some other stuff, it’s all like designer stuff, right? And—see, she had money, or came from money, you know? And she’s piling this stuff on the bed there, and I’m like, Wow, man! and she’s telling me, what she’s actually doing is housecleaning her life. That’s how she put it. This shit that she’s giving me here, see, she had it when she was married, and meanwhile, her old man was a dickhead and she broomed his ass, and this stuff, it’s all like a bunch of bad memories now since she got off the dope and so, it’s like I’m doing her right by removing this stuff from her life. Nice guy that I am.
“So I got all these clothes and the jewelry, and the jewelry, turns out—she gave me some earrings, and I showed the things to this dude, and he says I should get ’em checked out because, the stones on those things look like emeralds! So I tell him, Dude, take a piss test. Emeralds. On costume? C’mon.
“Dude tells me, some of that costume’s expensive. Also, some emeralds, they’re actually cheap. They got flaws and, see, what they do is, they range in price. Some’re more expensive than diamonds. And then some, you could pick them up at a WalMart or something. Not really, but you’d be surprised at how cheap they can actually get.
“So I get them checked out. I take them to Theo, this jeweler out by the Java. He looks them over and, sure enough, the fuckers are emeralds alright. Cheap ones, but still worth maybe $500. And the earrings, there’s also these diamonds, small diamonds, one-pointers, and they’re worth like $300. And then finally, the earrings, they’re gold, 18-carat, Theo tells me they’re worth about $2000!
“He don’t have the money to buy them, so he sends me on up to Goldman’s up on 103rd. I go in and old Goldman gives ’em a look. First thing out of his mouth, of course, they ain’t worth two grand. Not even close. Theo’s senile or something.
“I knew coming in that dude was going to lowball my ass, so I’m, Alright, how much? I’m hoping he’ll give me a grand but, main thing, I’ve got to off this shit quick. Baby needs shoes and so, what can we do? Old Goldman, he’s checking them out with this jeweler’s glass, right, and taking a long goddamn time, and he’s hemming and hawing, and frowning, you know, like I’m fucking him over just bringing the things in his shop. Well, I know this movie; dude’s trying to steal it. He goes through this whole fucking act, I’m supposed to just give it up free. Or maybe even pay him.
“So I’m waiting and waiting and at last he looks up from the eyeglass. The look on his face, it’s like he just had something to eat that I gave him that tastes bad and gave him the shits. He tells me, 600 bucks. Must mean they’re worth millions. I tell him I’ve gotta have eight. Takes him two seconds, he says okay. He’da gone nine, but I didn’t have time. And still, he just raped me, and he’s acting like he’s getting fucked but, seeing I used grease or some fucking thing, he’ll duke me the favor.
“You should’ve heard this cocksucker. He’s, yabbety yabbety, market for emeralds is down, there’s a war going on or peace just broke out or, some fucking thing, and I tell him, Homes, you just bent me over and buried it, right? Gimme my money. He does and I split.
“So, $800, and the rest of her stuff, I got like two grand, and, not bad. I can go for awhile and not sweat too hard.
“This one dude, though, he asks me once, did I tell the lady who gave me the stuff what I had the earrings appraised for? Like I should’ve or something. Well, no, I didn’t, you know? And what the fuck business is it of his? The dude thought it was raw. Like I’d fucked her. I just looked at him, man. Dude used to snatch purses and rob this blind newsie on Broadway. Now he gets clean and he’s Saint Motherfucker or something. I told him, man, kiss my ass. You wanna judge? Man, judge on. I’m gonna go get me a nice, juicy steak. All of a sudden, dude’s trying to angle in on a meal. I gave him a buck, told him, here, man, for bean dip or something. Or bus fare. Kick rocks.
“I told my buddy Eddie about it, he laughs. He tells me, ‘You got $800 for nothing, my man. You’re doing better than bandits. Keep up with this, you open a store, you’ll get rich.’
“Danny’s Lowball Emporium, how does that sound? No, uh-uh. See, after awhile, the thing, I don’t know. I ran through that list, and pretty soon after, the good shit is gone, and I did okay, but shit would come up, the rent, my car got fucked up and that shit, and pretty soon, bam, it’s, where’d it all go? And then, I’m sitting around in my room one day and I’m looking around, and it’s tons of crap piled all over and shit, and no way in hell am I ever gonna get rid of this stuff.
“I got all this crap with the good stuff, alright? Women’s clothes. Tons of that shit for some fucking reason, and I’d take them around, and you never saw so many broads didn’t wanna buy clothes in your life after the good shit got snatched. So now, all the crap’s stacked in my room, and plus, I’ve two storage lockers down in the basement and they’re crammed with shit.
“I couldn’t even walk in that room! Had to dig tunnels to get to the can. Crap’s up to the ceiling. You should’ve seen it. I had these four sets of skis all stacked up in the kitchen. A bag of golf clubs, hole in the bag and a bunch of clubs missing, and who the fuck I know plays golf? So they’re there forever and, then, man, these pictures! Cute little stupid-ass pictures! Dogs cheatin’ at cards, fucking bulldogs and shit. Unicorns batting their eyelashes. Dumb shit like that. You look at them long, you get diabetes.
“And that wasn’t even the worst. Not by a longshot. Dig this: I had six whole boxes of records. LPs and singles. All the tops hits like from 1950 or some fucking thing. Mario Lanza Sings High Mass In Lapland. The Chipmunks Get Laid. Wayne Newton Don’t. Absolute shit that nobody ever bought new and now, looks like I’ve cornered the market. I’m thinking of getting a gun and telling folks, ‘Buy them or die,’ but they’d still fucking tell me to go fuck myself.
“All this shit, man! Like a yard sale for winos. I can’t even sleep in my bed!
“And those records aren’t even the worst! Worse than that, man, I swear to God, I had these damn knick-knacks, household items in boxes this one fucker gave me, from 1960 or something and I’m going to burn down his house. Yogurt makers and horseshit like that that nobody’d buy new in ten million years. A ton of that crap and there goes the rest of the floorspace.
“So I’ve got all this shit that’s going to wind up in some landfill along with the house I’m staying in, man, and I can’t get ahead. Something always came up. This bill and that bill. Car breaking down, rent coming up. I got popped driving on suspended—another tale of woe and grief, let me tell you—and that one cost millions and—it wasn’t too long, I look up, I’m tap city. All I’ve got left is ten tons of dogshit. Dogshit, Wayne Newton, and Mario Lanza.
“So that was it. It was a nice little thing for a minute but, fuck it. One of those things, it just didn’t work out.
“At least I didn’t lose money. And I did eat that steak, a ribeye, my friend, which was just as good as the waitress had said that it would be.
“And then I went out and got me a job.”
BIO: Robert Crisman writes crime and noir fiction. He spent 15 years on streets in downtown Seattle and has some idea of what really goes on in these realms. He’s had stories posted on A Twist of Noir, and on Yellow Mama and Darkest Before Dawn. A movie he scripted, Chasing the Dopeman, is currently in post-prod down in L.A. and, with luck, it’ll be ready to go sometime this fall. He maintains a blog, chock full of stories, at 6S.
Friday, June 18, 2010
A Twist Of Noir 480 - Robert Crisman
MAINTENANCE MAN - ROBERT CRISMAN
Heaven is hell for the poor schlucks who work there.
A couple of years back, I got this job at the Clifton Hotel in downtown Seattle. Maintenance Man. I lasted three months. Imagine a wino flying a jet. Three months was forever...
You know the Clifton. It opened in ’80, on Madison and First, when First was still part of skid row.
That was back then. But skid row has been spitshined, the winos got broomed, and First is a whole other world.
The Clifton was one of the first of the changes. They wanted it cute: a tiny hotel in the heart of the city. Plush in the lobby, Swedish antiques, a touch of old Europe throughout. A rug in the lobby from out of Arabian Nights. Thirty-odd rooms, each one done different, one painted lilac, the next pale yellow, the one after that a soft tangerine. Ready and waiting for Tokyo bigwigs and other upper-crust fuckers.
The Clifton was high-class, if high-class is money. Movie stars in from L.A., and sultans with harems and hookahs and stuff. And then, all those rock stars that don’t tip for shit. Lastly, the yuppies, from Boston or someplace, out scouting the landscape. They’re all going to move here, drive real estate prices toward Neptune, and screw up the traffic some more.
Dudes always would ask me, the women they got coming through, they’re fine, am I right? I tell them, yeah, if you like pussy freeze-dried. They’re climbing the ladder, my man, and have no time for you...
Some fucking place. The hotel gig’s a kiss-ass kind of a deal, you know? You’ve got all these hotshots, and some of them ought to be locked in a zoo. Trashing the rooms, abusing the help, and then they expect you to kiss all their ass, like they’re doing you a favor just breathing the same fucking air. And you better be ready to kiss their ass, too, or management jumps right up yours.
I didn’t kiss ass. They couldn’t pay me enough. Plus, we were maintenance, right? Down in the basement, or up out of sight in the rooms when nobody’s there. Fixing the leaks and screwing in lightbulbs, and stuff. But the housekeeping staff and the bellhops, they had to eat it. I heard all the stories...
Dig this one: Gayle Dunlap was staying there, right? Doing some show up on Fifth. Each time she hits town, she stays at the Clifton, Suite 308. And, whenever she comes, it’s a big fucking deal. This broad is a star, am I right?
The day she comes in, the whole goddamned place is like Bedlam. She’s coming this morning at 10, they’re scrubbing the place with toothbrushes, man, and it’s been, like, two weeks of this shit, and we’ve got to get ready. See, Gayle Dunlap, she’s not just a star, she’s one hat-trick bitch straight from hell.
She’s 60 now, or something like that, and, you see her picture, she’s still looking good. But, scrape off the makeup, and, hey—Jimmy Hoffa!
I ask the desk lady, Christine, what’s this broad’s story? She says, “Well, Ms. Dunlap’s...high maintenance.” That’s hotel code for, “We’ve got T-Rex coming in from the jungle. Get ready!”
So anyway, she gets there. She hasn’t even arrived at the desk, and she’s cussing a bellhop there in the lobby. He left a bag by the limo lugging the rest of them in. Bitch had luggage from here to St. Louis and back. A million people around, and she’s ripping him, man. Loud as a siren, waking up dead folks. Been me, I’d’ve clocked her, right then and there.
So then, it’s up to her room, and the housekeepers catch it. Wrong kind of soap in the soap dish. Phone’s on the wrong side of the bed. That kind of piddly-ass crap. Then, there’s the lights. She needs a special kind of light in the bedroom. So her skin won’t fall off like a snake’s while she’s snoring or something. And it figures, we don’t have the light that she needs. On purpose, of course, to spite her, you dig it?
We call around town. It’s Sunday, mind you. And it’s nothing and nothing and nothing some more. No place is open that’s got it. We finally send a guy to Australia or something, and he digs it up. Comes back, he’s got to come in on his knees, with the light in his mouth like a bone, and she kicks him or something. She’s hot that it took him four hours.
I never actually saw her, myself. I just kept hearing the stories. But I did have to go in her room one time when she’d gone out for lunch. I can just see her at lunch: she’s someplace, she orders, dead busboy on toast, they slowcook the body, she cusses the maitre ’d out for not bringing ketchup and barbecue sauce.
Anyway, her room. The air conditioner’s fucked, making noises—which you could just barely hear, but, of course, it was keeping her up past her bedtime. Hell wouldn’t have it. She tore Stevie the bellhop a new one about it, and I had to fix it.
She’s got this exercize stuff that she had them lug up there. They banged through the door, and the frame’s all chewed up, which means that I’ve got to come back and fix it the minute she finally checks out. Another big pain in the ass. Those doors, man—it looked like some 500-pound rat had gnawed on the fuckers. Gouges and gouges, and gouges some more, and these big fucking slivers and chunks, sticking out every which way. If you didn’t watch where you’re going, they’d skewer your ass and you’d die.
She finally checks out and I go to take care of those doors. I hit the room—and the room fucking stinks, like an Alabama roadhouse back porch. Almost gave me the dry heaves. She’d had this dog. Pekinese, something, one of those snarly, yappy, rat-fucking dogs that you just want to toss out a window on sight. The cleaning girls were telling me, man, they’d go in, the fucker’d go right for their ankles. Dunlap, she thought it was funny. Ha-ha, you nasty-ass bitch...
Also, she’d just let the fucker dump where he wanted. The whole goddamned room. You could see the stains on the rug where they’d had to clean it. Plus, there were dog hairs all over, and—it was just pitiful, man.
And it wasn’t just up in the room. There was this one time, he did it right there in the lobby. Right by that couch that they’ve got by the door. Smelly pile of nasty old dogshit right there, and it’s steaming and probably eating the rug just like acid. Something to greet the new guests.
This was Saturday, right? Late afternoon. The people around could have filled up a Safeway. And she’s there, of course, got the dog on a leash, now that the damage is done on that rug—and now, he’s yapping and lunging at people, and—you’d think she’d be fucking embarrassed or something but fuck no. She’s looking at people like they let their dog take a shit on her rug! I couldn’t believe it.
See, what happened, she’d let the prick off the leash while she’s at the desk, and he went, did his business. She probably told him go do it. Then, someone starts yelling. She goes, grabs the dog, and then, I don’t know, but she turned the whole place into a battle zone quick. All these people, the dog’s going nuts, and now, here comes Richard, our dumbfuck GM, and, oh boy.
Richard, man. Little blow-dried, three-piece-suit-wearing rim job. All the time running around like the sky’s falling down. Always stuff fucking up. All these fires and goddamn disasters, and—he’s always pulling us off one thing to put out the new thing, and we’ve got to get that one, and meanwhile, the first one is raging like shitstorms, and six more are starting in some other corner, and all of it’s absolute bullshit, and I’ll tell you why in a minute.
But, right now, it’s this broad and her dog, and here’s Richard, french-kissing her asshole, and practically saying he’s sorry her dog had to dump on the rug! Also the fact that she let him off the leash to go do it! See, he’s scared this bitch is going to go off like a bomb. Probably worried she’ll sue the hotel if the dog bites someone and gets stomped through the floor. She would, too, you know?
So, Richard’s licking up one of her legs, and the broad, man, she’s hardly even paying attention. She’s, fuck him, fuck the rug, she’s got a show to go do. And she’s tapping her foot and checking her watch, and Richard’s down kissing away, and probably got shit on his lips by this time—and here comes her ride, and bam, she is gone. Scoops up the dog, she don’t say a word, she’s just, out the door like a heat-seeking missile or something. Old Richard’s kissing thin air.
And now, she’s out on the sidewalk—and, all of a sudden, it sounds like a war just broke out. She’s cussing the doorman. Limo was three seconds late, and where’s all her bags? You can hear her all the way in from the street, broad’s drowning out jets, it sounds like a gangfight, dog’s got a hold of the poor fucker’s pants and—I’ve never seen anything like this in my life!
Man... It was two whole weeks of this kind of crap, and then, finally, she leaves. I don’t know how they ever got the stink up out of that room. You figure, how could so much shit come out of that one little dog? She must’ve had a secret rottweiler stuck in the closet or something, to take up the slack when the little dog ran out of shit. Either that, or, it was her taking dumps on the rug, which, why not? She shit on everything else in the place, so, why not the rug?
And you know what gets me? This bitch got hickies all over her ass where Richard was down there sucking away. She got royal-ass treatment the whole fucking time she was there—and, what they should’ve been doing was stuffing her ass in a cage, and sticking it out on the street where people could come and throw rocks at her ass. Sell tickets and Kool-Aid and stuff. And blowtorch the dog.
You’re asking if that’s why I quit? Well, not really, no. It was the whole fucking place. Four-star hotel, and the damn thing’s a junkpile. Seriously, man. They half-stepped the fucker. Shit’s always breaking, the pipes are plugged up, the basement floods when it rains, the goddamn ceilings fall down... It’s like they used string and old, chewed-up bread to stick it together or something.
And, here we are, maintenance, right? Supposed to keep it from falling apart. And we’re running like track stars from one fucking thing to the next, old Richard’s calling, like every 10 seconds and flying around like a methedrine bat, he sees something wrong, he hops on the box. The problem is this—a scratch in the paint the size of a pinhead, you think the roof just fell in. And then the roof does, and we’re hoofing like goats up the stairs, and then, bam, he’s back on the box. He just saw old Noah loading the rats on the boat in the basement. Fuck the damn roof! So, back down we go, and it’s all goddamn day, forever and ever amen, swear to God!
Four guys on the maintenance crew. Me, and then Fred, who got me the job, and he’s nuts. And then Pat, the resident junkie, 60 years old, selling weed to the housekeeping staff. And then Steve, who’s the chief. He’s a vicodin freak, weighs 400 pounds, and can’t move three feet.
I’m the new guy. All I can do is trail Fred around like a beagle. I don’t know shit. Fred could fix the whole planet with three feet of duct tape. He’s going to show me the ropes.
Two weeks in, I knew it was not going to work. Two minutes, really, but I needed the money, so, fuck it, I gave it a go. But, fix a toilet? I can jiggle the handle and hope it’ll stop, whatever it is, the leak, or the thing’s all clogged up, or whatever. Electrical stuff? Man, forget it. Flipping a light switch is far as I go with that shit.
Fred, he kept saying, it’s cool. There’s nothing to sweat. I’ll pick it up. But, some guys can do this and some guys cannot, and, I am a maintenance retard. Plus, man, I hate it.
The first time I had to change this fluorescent light—you got any idea how long it took me? Forty-five minutes and change. You think I’m kidding.
First thing I did, I went to the second-floor janitor’s closet. That’s where they keep all the lights. And, yup, there they are, and the room where the light is burnt out is like right down the hall—but, see, I forgot the ladder and screwdriver, man, so I had to go back to the basement to get them. All the way down, and back up, and some elevators go faster sideways than the one at the Clifton did straight up and down, and—anyway, I get back to the room where the light’s all burnt out. I check the thing out. Hard plastic cover. I can’t get it off.
Swear to God, man. There’s no handle, no deal you can pull, no printed instructions, no class time... I try bending the things, take them off by the side, and they just will not go, and I’m going right out of my mind—and the housecleaning lady comes by and says, slide them off from the end...
Boop, I do it, and it slides like you greased it. Put her on maintenance, right? Now I can get to the lights. This part’s supposed to be easy. Twisting them off’s not so hard, but, twisting the new ones back in—man, they just wouldn’t go.
First of all, man, they’re like, almost too long to fit in the fixture. You’ve got to slide them just right or they jam in all crooked. And that’s what I’m doing, jamming them in and then yanking them out, and I’m sweating and cussing, the ladder’s all shaky—and I go and drop two of the fuckers. They sounded like bombs going off when they broke.
I’ve got to go back to get more. Then Richard calls, some paint chipped or something, I gotta go down, get some paint and a brush and go fix the fucker and, three more days wasted. I finally get back, up the ladder, same shit. I’m sweating and cussing and jamming them in and yanking them out, and I’m tearing my hair—and by now, man, I’m drawing a crowd. People heard all the racket, they come up to check it all out—and cannot believe what they’re seeing.
Lunch comes and goes. I’m whaling away. People check in at the desk, drop their bags in their rooms, and come watch the show. Guys flying in from Sweden and shit, caught the Six O’clock News, I’m the lead story, they came to see for themselves.
Stevie the bellboy was there selling tickets, ten bucks a pop. “The guy’s on stage longer’n Springsteen, my man, check it out.” And they did.
Stevie retired next day and got into real estate, man, buying houses and shit, and got rich.
Meanwhile, finally, I get those pricks in there! They’re going to give me a lifetime achievement award. I start to come down—and fall off the ladder. People start clapping! They thought it was part of the floorshow!
I hated that shit. And, then, the last month I’m there, check this out. Pat, the granddaddy dopefiend, gets shit-canned. Been there six years, no warning at all. What the fuck happened?
Fred ratted him out for selling that weed is what happened. See, Fred used to geez, but he quit and got into the 12-step, alright? So, now, he figures, you use, you’re the devil or some fucking thing. Plus, Pat was slinging, so—and Fred told me he ratted him out! Man’s on a crusade, he’s Elliot Ness after dopefiends, and wants me to back him.
I told him, fuck no. Pat was a knick-knack, but, uh-uh...
So now, I get nothing but stinkeye from Fred. Also, no help with the toilets. That’s deep hell, my man...
Things are tensed up all around. The housekeeping staff, they knew it was Fred. A whole lot of brothers and vatos, and they’re not too happy.
One morning, Fred gets there, and he’s got a gun in his bag. Says, check this out. He opens the bag, it’s this .22 pistol. And he’s pacing around, and he’s mumbling and stuff, and then tells me that Billy, a housekeeping guy, was giving him shit, and now Billy’s got problems. And he’s looking at me like I’ve got some, too. Crazy eyes, man. Meanwhile, Steve’s off at the doctor’s, refill his prescription. Just me and Fred in that basement.
He stashes the bag in his locker. Goes off to stop up a leak on the roof. I’m thinking, this dude has flipped out. Maybe the best thing is, go grab the gun and flush it someplace and deal with Fred later.
But I had to go paint. So I’m up in this room, and a guy comes and tells me that Fred’s in with Richard. Awhile after that, Billy comes up, says Fred’s out the door. I’m, what’s the deal? He tells me Fred quit. He was yelling at Richard, came slamming on out of his office, went down to the basement and grabbed up his stuff, and he’s gone. Just like that.
That all sounded weird. I asked Billy, so what was the beef? He tells me, Fred went in to see Richard, get Steve’s ass fired so he could be chief. He’s telling Richard, old Steve’s a doper, he’s gone half the time, we need to shape up, and so, ship him out. Richard says no.
He doesn’t like Fred. The fucker’s a snitch. That’s not what he said, according to Billy, but that’s what it is. He’s wrinkling his nose like Fred stinks. Then Fred went ballistic, and that’s all she wrote.
Good thing he didn’t bring that gun in the office. I’m surprised he just left. But, to hell with it, man, it’s all jake with me. Just me and Steve now. I can’t fix a thing and he can’t get out of his chair.
And then, a week later, Steve quits. Turns out he got a new job, by the airport. The Ramada or something. Close to his doctor. So now, it’s just me.
Four-star hotel—and me the head of the fix-it department. You can see the ship sinking and stars falling out of the sky.
Lights winking out, the toilets backed up, and I can’t call Fred. This is not going to work. A week of this shit, and I turn in my notice, pick up my paycheck, and boogie.
Then, two weeks later, I’m driving by, and there’s Richard, out in the street in the rain looking lost and forlorn. The rain’s pouring down. He looks like he’s drowning.
Drowning in hell. Hotel hell, my man. I did my bit there. Now I’m off paper. The light turns to green and I’m gone.
BIO: Robert Crisman writes crime and noir fiction. He spent 15 years on streets in downtown Seattle and has some idea of what really goes on in these realms. He’s had stories posted on A Twist of Noir, and on Yellow Mama and Darkest Before Dawn. A movie he scripted, Chasing the Dopeman, is currently in post-prod down in L.A. and, with luck, it’ll be ready to go sometime this fall. He maintains a blog, chock full of stories, at 6S.
Heaven is hell for the poor schlucks who work there.
A couple of years back, I got this job at the Clifton Hotel in downtown Seattle. Maintenance Man. I lasted three months. Imagine a wino flying a jet. Three months was forever...
You know the Clifton. It opened in ’80, on Madison and First, when First was still part of skid row.
That was back then. But skid row has been spitshined, the winos got broomed, and First is a whole other world.
The Clifton was one of the first of the changes. They wanted it cute: a tiny hotel in the heart of the city. Plush in the lobby, Swedish antiques, a touch of old Europe throughout. A rug in the lobby from out of Arabian Nights. Thirty-odd rooms, each one done different, one painted lilac, the next pale yellow, the one after that a soft tangerine. Ready and waiting for Tokyo bigwigs and other upper-crust fuckers.
The Clifton was high-class, if high-class is money. Movie stars in from L.A., and sultans with harems and hookahs and stuff. And then, all those rock stars that don’t tip for shit. Lastly, the yuppies, from Boston or someplace, out scouting the landscape. They’re all going to move here, drive real estate prices toward Neptune, and screw up the traffic some more.
Dudes always would ask me, the women they got coming through, they’re fine, am I right? I tell them, yeah, if you like pussy freeze-dried. They’re climbing the ladder, my man, and have no time for you...
Some fucking place. The hotel gig’s a kiss-ass kind of a deal, you know? You’ve got all these hotshots, and some of them ought to be locked in a zoo. Trashing the rooms, abusing the help, and then they expect you to kiss all their ass, like they’re doing you a favor just breathing the same fucking air. And you better be ready to kiss their ass, too, or management jumps right up yours.
I didn’t kiss ass. They couldn’t pay me enough. Plus, we were maintenance, right? Down in the basement, or up out of sight in the rooms when nobody’s there. Fixing the leaks and screwing in lightbulbs, and stuff. But the housekeeping staff and the bellhops, they had to eat it. I heard all the stories...
Dig this one: Gayle Dunlap was staying there, right? Doing some show up on Fifth. Each time she hits town, she stays at the Clifton, Suite 308. And, whenever she comes, it’s a big fucking deal. This broad is a star, am I right?
The day she comes in, the whole goddamned place is like Bedlam. She’s coming this morning at 10, they’re scrubbing the place with toothbrushes, man, and it’s been, like, two weeks of this shit, and we’ve got to get ready. See, Gayle Dunlap, she’s not just a star, she’s one hat-trick bitch straight from hell.
She’s 60 now, or something like that, and, you see her picture, she’s still looking good. But, scrape off the makeup, and, hey—Jimmy Hoffa!
I ask the desk lady, Christine, what’s this broad’s story? She says, “Well, Ms. Dunlap’s...high maintenance.” That’s hotel code for, “We’ve got T-Rex coming in from the jungle. Get ready!”
So anyway, she gets there. She hasn’t even arrived at the desk, and she’s cussing a bellhop there in the lobby. He left a bag by the limo lugging the rest of them in. Bitch had luggage from here to St. Louis and back. A million people around, and she’s ripping him, man. Loud as a siren, waking up dead folks. Been me, I’d’ve clocked her, right then and there.
So then, it’s up to her room, and the housekeepers catch it. Wrong kind of soap in the soap dish. Phone’s on the wrong side of the bed. That kind of piddly-ass crap. Then, there’s the lights. She needs a special kind of light in the bedroom. So her skin won’t fall off like a snake’s while she’s snoring or something. And it figures, we don’t have the light that she needs. On purpose, of course, to spite her, you dig it?
We call around town. It’s Sunday, mind you. And it’s nothing and nothing and nothing some more. No place is open that’s got it. We finally send a guy to Australia or something, and he digs it up. Comes back, he’s got to come in on his knees, with the light in his mouth like a bone, and she kicks him or something. She’s hot that it took him four hours.
I never actually saw her, myself. I just kept hearing the stories. But I did have to go in her room one time when she’d gone out for lunch. I can just see her at lunch: she’s someplace, she orders, dead busboy on toast, they slowcook the body, she cusses the maitre ’d out for not bringing ketchup and barbecue sauce.
Anyway, her room. The air conditioner’s fucked, making noises—which you could just barely hear, but, of course, it was keeping her up past her bedtime. Hell wouldn’t have it. She tore Stevie the bellhop a new one about it, and I had to fix it.
She’s got this exercize stuff that she had them lug up there. They banged through the door, and the frame’s all chewed up, which means that I’ve got to come back and fix it the minute she finally checks out. Another big pain in the ass. Those doors, man—it looked like some 500-pound rat had gnawed on the fuckers. Gouges and gouges, and gouges some more, and these big fucking slivers and chunks, sticking out every which way. If you didn’t watch where you’re going, they’d skewer your ass and you’d die.
She finally checks out and I go to take care of those doors. I hit the room—and the room fucking stinks, like an Alabama roadhouse back porch. Almost gave me the dry heaves. She’d had this dog. Pekinese, something, one of those snarly, yappy, rat-fucking dogs that you just want to toss out a window on sight. The cleaning girls were telling me, man, they’d go in, the fucker’d go right for their ankles. Dunlap, she thought it was funny. Ha-ha, you nasty-ass bitch...
Also, she’d just let the fucker dump where he wanted. The whole goddamned room. You could see the stains on the rug where they’d had to clean it. Plus, there were dog hairs all over, and—it was just pitiful, man.
And it wasn’t just up in the room. There was this one time, he did it right there in the lobby. Right by that couch that they’ve got by the door. Smelly pile of nasty old dogshit right there, and it’s steaming and probably eating the rug just like acid. Something to greet the new guests.
This was Saturday, right? Late afternoon. The people around could have filled up a Safeway. And she’s there, of course, got the dog on a leash, now that the damage is done on that rug—and now, he’s yapping and lunging at people, and—you’d think she’d be fucking embarrassed or something but fuck no. She’s looking at people like they let their dog take a shit on her rug! I couldn’t believe it.
See, what happened, she’d let the prick off the leash while she’s at the desk, and he went, did his business. She probably told him go do it. Then, someone starts yelling. She goes, grabs the dog, and then, I don’t know, but she turned the whole place into a battle zone quick. All these people, the dog’s going nuts, and now, here comes Richard, our dumbfuck GM, and, oh boy.
Richard, man. Little blow-dried, three-piece-suit-wearing rim job. All the time running around like the sky’s falling down. Always stuff fucking up. All these fires and goddamn disasters, and—he’s always pulling us off one thing to put out the new thing, and we’ve got to get that one, and meanwhile, the first one is raging like shitstorms, and six more are starting in some other corner, and all of it’s absolute bullshit, and I’ll tell you why in a minute.
But, right now, it’s this broad and her dog, and here’s Richard, french-kissing her asshole, and practically saying he’s sorry her dog had to dump on the rug! Also the fact that she let him off the leash to go do it! See, he’s scared this bitch is going to go off like a bomb. Probably worried she’ll sue the hotel if the dog bites someone and gets stomped through the floor. She would, too, you know?
So, Richard’s licking up one of her legs, and the broad, man, she’s hardly even paying attention. She’s, fuck him, fuck the rug, she’s got a show to go do. And she’s tapping her foot and checking her watch, and Richard’s down kissing away, and probably got shit on his lips by this time—and here comes her ride, and bam, she is gone. Scoops up the dog, she don’t say a word, she’s just, out the door like a heat-seeking missile or something. Old Richard’s kissing thin air.
And now, she’s out on the sidewalk—and, all of a sudden, it sounds like a war just broke out. She’s cussing the doorman. Limo was three seconds late, and where’s all her bags? You can hear her all the way in from the street, broad’s drowning out jets, it sounds like a gangfight, dog’s got a hold of the poor fucker’s pants and—I’ve never seen anything like this in my life!
Man... It was two whole weeks of this kind of crap, and then, finally, she leaves. I don’t know how they ever got the stink up out of that room. You figure, how could so much shit come out of that one little dog? She must’ve had a secret rottweiler stuck in the closet or something, to take up the slack when the little dog ran out of shit. Either that, or, it was her taking dumps on the rug, which, why not? She shit on everything else in the place, so, why not the rug?
And you know what gets me? This bitch got hickies all over her ass where Richard was down there sucking away. She got royal-ass treatment the whole fucking time she was there—and, what they should’ve been doing was stuffing her ass in a cage, and sticking it out on the street where people could come and throw rocks at her ass. Sell tickets and Kool-Aid and stuff. And blowtorch the dog.
You’re asking if that’s why I quit? Well, not really, no. It was the whole fucking place. Four-star hotel, and the damn thing’s a junkpile. Seriously, man. They half-stepped the fucker. Shit’s always breaking, the pipes are plugged up, the basement floods when it rains, the goddamn ceilings fall down... It’s like they used string and old, chewed-up bread to stick it together or something.
And, here we are, maintenance, right? Supposed to keep it from falling apart. And we’re running like track stars from one fucking thing to the next, old Richard’s calling, like every 10 seconds and flying around like a methedrine bat, he sees something wrong, he hops on the box. The problem is this—a scratch in the paint the size of a pinhead, you think the roof just fell in. And then the roof does, and we’re hoofing like goats up the stairs, and then, bam, he’s back on the box. He just saw old Noah loading the rats on the boat in the basement. Fuck the damn roof! So, back down we go, and it’s all goddamn day, forever and ever amen, swear to God!
Four guys on the maintenance crew. Me, and then Fred, who got me the job, and he’s nuts. And then Pat, the resident junkie, 60 years old, selling weed to the housekeeping staff. And then Steve, who’s the chief. He’s a vicodin freak, weighs 400 pounds, and can’t move three feet.
I’m the new guy. All I can do is trail Fred around like a beagle. I don’t know shit. Fred could fix the whole planet with three feet of duct tape. He’s going to show me the ropes.
Two weeks in, I knew it was not going to work. Two minutes, really, but I needed the money, so, fuck it, I gave it a go. But, fix a toilet? I can jiggle the handle and hope it’ll stop, whatever it is, the leak, or the thing’s all clogged up, or whatever. Electrical stuff? Man, forget it. Flipping a light switch is far as I go with that shit.
Fred, he kept saying, it’s cool. There’s nothing to sweat. I’ll pick it up. But, some guys can do this and some guys cannot, and, I am a maintenance retard. Plus, man, I hate it.
The first time I had to change this fluorescent light—you got any idea how long it took me? Forty-five minutes and change. You think I’m kidding.
First thing I did, I went to the second-floor janitor’s closet. That’s where they keep all the lights. And, yup, there they are, and the room where the light is burnt out is like right down the hall—but, see, I forgot the ladder and screwdriver, man, so I had to go back to the basement to get them. All the way down, and back up, and some elevators go faster sideways than the one at the Clifton did straight up and down, and—anyway, I get back to the room where the light’s all burnt out. I check the thing out. Hard plastic cover. I can’t get it off.
Swear to God, man. There’s no handle, no deal you can pull, no printed instructions, no class time... I try bending the things, take them off by the side, and they just will not go, and I’m going right out of my mind—and the housecleaning lady comes by and says, slide them off from the end...
Boop, I do it, and it slides like you greased it. Put her on maintenance, right? Now I can get to the lights. This part’s supposed to be easy. Twisting them off’s not so hard, but, twisting the new ones back in—man, they just wouldn’t go.
First of all, man, they’re like, almost too long to fit in the fixture. You’ve got to slide them just right or they jam in all crooked. And that’s what I’m doing, jamming them in and then yanking them out, and I’m sweating and cussing, the ladder’s all shaky—and I go and drop two of the fuckers. They sounded like bombs going off when they broke.
I’ve got to go back to get more. Then Richard calls, some paint chipped or something, I gotta go down, get some paint and a brush and go fix the fucker and, three more days wasted. I finally get back, up the ladder, same shit. I’m sweating and cussing and jamming them in and yanking them out, and I’m tearing my hair—and by now, man, I’m drawing a crowd. People heard all the racket, they come up to check it all out—and cannot believe what they’re seeing.
Lunch comes and goes. I’m whaling away. People check in at the desk, drop their bags in their rooms, and come watch the show. Guys flying in from Sweden and shit, caught the Six O’clock News, I’m the lead story, they came to see for themselves.
Stevie the bellboy was there selling tickets, ten bucks a pop. “The guy’s on stage longer’n Springsteen, my man, check it out.” And they did.
Stevie retired next day and got into real estate, man, buying houses and shit, and got rich.
Meanwhile, finally, I get those pricks in there! They’re going to give me a lifetime achievement award. I start to come down—and fall off the ladder. People start clapping! They thought it was part of the floorshow!
I hated that shit. And, then, the last month I’m there, check this out. Pat, the granddaddy dopefiend, gets shit-canned. Been there six years, no warning at all. What the fuck happened?
Fred ratted him out for selling that weed is what happened. See, Fred used to geez, but he quit and got into the 12-step, alright? So, now, he figures, you use, you’re the devil or some fucking thing. Plus, Pat was slinging, so—and Fred told me he ratted him out! Man’s on a crusade, he’s Elliot Ness after dopefiends, and wants me to back him.
I told him, fuck no. Pat was a knick-knack, but, uh-uh...
So now, I get nothing but stinkeye from Fred. Also, no help with the toilets. That’s deep hell, my man...
Things are tensed up all around. The housekeeping staff, they knew it was Fred. A whole lot of brothers and vatos, and they’re not too happy.
One morning, Fred gets there, and he’s got a gun in his bag. Says, check this out. He opens the bag, it’s this .22 pistol. And he’s pacing around, and he’s mumbling and stuff, and then tells me that Billy, a housekeeping guy, was giving him shit, and now Billy’s got problems. And he’s looking at me like I’ve got some, too. Crazy eyes, man. Meanwhile, Steve’s off at the doctor’s, refill his prescription. Just me and Fred in that basement.
He stashes the bag in his locker. Goes off to stop up a leak on the roof. I’m thinking, this dude has flipped out. Maybe the best thing is, go grab the gun and flush it someplace and deal with Fred later.
But I had to go paint. So I’m up in this room, and a guy comes and tells me that Fred’s in with Richard. Awhile after that, Billy comes up, says Fred’s out the door. I’m, what’s the deal? He tells me Fred quit. He was yelling at Richard, came slamming on out of his office, went down to the basement and grabbed up his stuff, and he’s gone. Just like that.
That all sounded weird. I asked Billy, so what was the beef? He tells me, Fred went in to see Richard, get Steve’s ass fired so he could be chief. He’s telling Richard, old Steve’s a doper, he’s gone half the time, we need to shape up, and so, ship him out. Richard says no.
He doesn’t like Fred. The fucker’s a snitch. That’s not what he said, according to Billy, but that’s what it is. He’s wrinkling his nose like Fred stinks. Then Fred went ballistic, and that’s all she wrote.
Good thing he didn’t bring that gun in the office. I’m surprised he just left. But, to hell with it, man, it’s all jake with me. Just me and Steve now. I can’t fix a thing and he can’t get out of his chair.
And then, a week later, Steve quits. Turns out he got a new job, by the airport. The Ramada or something. Close to his doctor. So now, it’s just me.
Four-star hotel—and me the head of the fix-it department. You can see the ship sinking and stars falling out of the sky.
Lights winking out, the toilets backed up, and I can’t call Fred. This is not going to work. A week of this shit, and I turn in my notice, pick up my paycheck, and boogie.
Then, two weeks later, I’m driving by, and there’s Richard, out in the street in the rain looking lost and forlorn. The rain’s pouring down. He looks like he’s drowning.
Drowning in hell. Hotel hell, my man. I did my bit there. Now I’m off paper. The light turns to green and I’m gone.
BIO: Robert Crisman writes crime and noir fiction. He spent 15 years on streets in downtown Seattle and has some idea of what really goes on in these realms. He’s had stories posted on A Twist of Noir, and on Yellow Mama and Darkest Before Dawn. A movie he scripted, Chasing the Dopeman, is currently in post-prod down in L.A. and, with luck, it’ll be ready to go sometime this fall. He maintains a blog, chock full of stories, at 6S.
Friday, April 23, 2010
A Twist Of Noir 435 - Robert Crisman
A DATE WITH MR. JENKINS - ROBERT CRISMAN
The nighttime’s the right time to be with the one who will pay...
They pulled into the Ramada at 10 minutes till. Roanne paid the driver and tipped him five bucks. He smiled and said thank you. They exited then and the taxi drove off.
In the light of the doorway Michelle started patting and brushing and futzing herself into shape for the rigors ahead.
First-timer’s stage fright...
Roanne finished her own quick toilette far more calmly, then laughed. She took Michelle’s arm and steered her inside the hotel.
Michelle in that lobby, afraid to look right or left. Roanne strode. Michelle, 22, was a tall, lithe trick’s dream in black jeans, with wide bright-blue eyes, bee-stung lips, and brown hair a thick mane that flowed to her shoulders. Roanne, 29, an olive-skinned beauty with black pools for eyes who left echoes...
Second-floor hallway, Roanne checking numbers. Michelle lagged behind, her whole body clenched, her neck all pulled in. Her legs had no flex and her arms were hugging her body. Her face was a hard-set emotionless mask.
She walked as if blind, eyes straight ahead, except for the glances she’d dart at her lifeline Roanne.
Roanne pointed ahead. Two-forty-two up there on the left.
She quickened her pace then looked back and slowed just a little. She beckoned Michelle, all but whispering, “C’mon, girl!”
Michelle caught up. Roanne took her arm gently, an encouraging gesture. Roanne grinned, leaned in close and laughed softly.
Michelle flinched a little when Roanne licked her ear.
Roanne kissed Michelle’s cheek, a quick, breath-soft peck. “This’ll be easy, baby. Just go with the flow. I’ll show you. You’ll be okay.
Michelle nodded, quick tics in succession. She tried on a grin you might find on a corpse.
Roanne knocked on the door. A couple of beats and then the door opened. Standing there was a short, fat, bald man, 50ish, owl-eyed. He wore gray slacks and a long-sleeved white shirt.
Roanne in her hat with the veil, the Lady of Shanghai. She smiled her professional’s smile, the one that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Hi. Mr. Jenkins?”
A beat, then Jenkins nodded as if not quite sure what this was. “Yes?”
“Hi. I’m Alexis. And this is Marina.”
“Oh, hello. I, uh—“ He darted a reflexive look down the hall. “Come in, come in.”
He stood aside and the women entered the room. Roanne threw another of those smiles as she passed. He fixed on her veil and then looked away.
The room—like those in every Ramada from Seattle to Sao Paolo to Simla, except for maybe the dark green wall-to-wall carpet, which could be construed as a stab at a Northwest motif. For the rest, the low ceiling, the cream-colored walls, king-size bed, the forgettable abstracts, the wet bar, etc.—exactly like all the nine million others. Every detail forgotten the moment you leave, though the bland faceless essence somehow sinks in. You know in your bones that sterile corporate death is leeching our world away.
Roanne told Jenkins she had to call in to the service to let them know they’d arrived. “To let them know that we’re safe here, you know? We are safe, aren’t we?” She laughed, a sexy, flirtatious ha ha. He nodded and pointed the phone out there by the bed. She sashayed over, called in. She hung up and looked back at Jenkins. He and Michelle still stood by the door, a bit like wax dummies, their eyes fixed on her. She came to them smiling.
“Okay now,” she said, “let’s... I’m Alexis and she’s Marina, but we can’t keep calling you just Mr. Jenkins, now can we? Are you a Willie, or Bob, or a Joe, or...?”
Jenkins managed, “Oh, I’m, uh, George.”
“George!” She gave him a smiling appraisal. “It fits you. Very no-nonsense, get-it-done kind of man. George. Yes...”
George looked apprehensive, almost as if this complement would cost him a bundle.
“Yes. George. I like it.” Roanne reached her hands out to George and Michelle. “Well, let’s not just stand here. We might as well come in and get comfy.”
That soft, sexy laugh...
She backed up a couple of steps, turned, and walked to the center of the room. George and Michelle followed, chastely, like lambs. When the three had more or less gathered, Roanne shucked her coat, looked around, and then looked at George.
“Oh, here, I’m sorry,” he said. “Let me get your coat and...” He took the coat and waited for Michelle’s, then went to the closet and hung them. Roanne looked at Michelle, grinned, rolled her eyes.
She said, “Thank you, George.” She looked at Michelle and mouthed, “Mouse.” Michelle rolled her eyes and looked grim.
George rejoined them, actually rubbing his hands. Then he blanked, apparently stuck for something to say. A beat, then, “Ah...can I get you something to drink? There’s wine...or bourbon?” He turned toward the bar.
George, a gentleman, see? Roanne smiled. “A soft drink, George, if you have it.” She looked at Michelle. Michelle nodded and said, “A coke would be fine.”
George said, “Is 7-up okay?”
Michelle stared out the window. “That’s fine.”
George brought the drinks from the bar and handed them over.
Roanne said, “Thank you, George.” And now she took him in hand. Smiling that smile, she laid out the game plan, as if it was his to begin with, which it more or less was; girl and girl and then take it from there. She didn’t say it that way. She told him how great and exciting it was that he’d asked for her and Marina. It was all, well, exciting, you know? Making love to a woman and a man and, you know...
She had the appropriate facial expressions and noises—her breathing, etc.—down cold. A little cartoony; this guy read Penthouse, dreamed dreams, spanked the monkey...
Roanne pulled Michelle to her and gave her a kiss. Michelle did her best; she was still a bit stiff. Roanne smiled at George with a hint of dreamy abandon.
Roanne said to George, Don’t go away now, we’ll be right back. She took Michelle’s hand and led her into the bathroom.
She brought her purse with her, of course. She put the purse on top of the tank. Then she took off her clothes, all but her panties and bra. She laid her hat gently next to the purse on the tank.
She’d’ve left the thing on, but she’d decided that George didn’t rate a full-blown production; Lady Shanghai and all that. Besides, her main focus tonight: bring Michelle into the movie. Lady Shanghai would scare the shit out of Michelle. Maybe George, too...
Roanne, undressed. She said, “You too, girl.” Michelle did as told.
Roanne went in her purse and fished out two rigs, both chock-to-the-brim with good, pre-cooked dope. She gave Michelle hers and they banged, Michelle in her arm, Roanne in her inner right thigh.
Yeah, man, much better! Roanne looked at Michelle. “Okay, girl, how are you doing?” Michelle nodded and actually managed a tepid half-smile. She was...ready...
“Okay, girl, showtime.” Roanne kissed Michelle, hugged her, then squeezed her hand and led her on out of the bathroom.
George waiting with—what the fuck else?—baited breath. He was naked as jaybirds. He had a dick like a hose.
Oh well, the show must go on. Roanne tightened her grip on Michelle’s hand to keep her from pulling up short at the sight of the hose. Then she vamped her way, sort of, to George by the bed and stopped just a little way off. She looked down at his cock, half-standing now. “My my,” she said and dredged up a smile. She gave the hose a lingering tweak, then turned with her eyes on him still, and wrapped Michelle in her arms.
She enveloped Michelle, stroking her, kissing, entwining their bodies with all the appropriate noises. George had a tuning-fork woody like that.
Roanne pushed Michelle gently onto the bed.
She kissed and caressed her. Shoulders, breasts, ribcage, and thighs...
Michelle on her back, Roanne kneeling over her now. They’d left George standing to make his own move. With luck he’d jack off and be done with it quick.
Roanne stroked Michelle’s hair. Michelle’s face, her eyes wide, with silent prayers in them, her lips slightly parted... Roanne kissed her lips, eyes, and neck. She slipped Michelle’s bra down over her breasts. She slid her lips slowly down, to the left breast, the nipple... She felt Michelle’s hand begin softly stroking her back. Roanne reached back, unsnapped and shucked off her own bra, and lowered her body onto Michelle...
All in the script. And, right on time, she felt George’s hand on her ass.
Roanne moaned; it was a good one; that’s why she got paid. She tracked her way down, to Michelle’s belly now. She kissed it and licked it, continued on down. To the promised land now, moaning and moaning, hoping Michelle got the message: Let’s hear some noises from you, girl!
On cue Michelle popped one out. Not bad as moans go. Squeaky, a little but, not too shabby... Roanne nibbled the top of her panties, which showed a soft tuft of hair peeking over. She slid Michelle’s panties down past her hips, then pulled her own panties down. She spread Michelle’s legs, nudging gently. She nibbled and teased, brushing her lips back and forth, round and round. Michelle put her hands in Roanne’s hair. She spread her legs wider and lifted her hips.
They felt George’s weight on the bed. Roanne felt his hand on her back, and then on her ass. Then his cock, hard as rocks. He rubbed it now, on her thighs, on her ribs, with insistence. Then he took Michelle’s hand and placed the thing there, started stroking.
Okay... Roanne would make this quick as she could and, hopefully, painless as well. She’d brought a Trojan out of the bathroom wrapped in her left hand. She grabbed George’s dick with her right hand and stroked it. She slipped the Trojan into her mouth. She stroked George another moment or two, then brought her head over and down, and pulled the rubber over the head of his cock with her lips. Then up, down, up, down, up, down... He had her head in a vise-grip.
It took like two minutes. She’d had him pegged. Two fucking minutes, then, oh! oh! oh! oh!
That was it. Of course he collapsed on the both of them then and just kind of lay there, shivering, shaking and, oh! oh! oh! oh! for two long but—hell, it could have been worse.
He finally heaved himself off. The girls untangled. Roanne told George, Wow, that was something!
Not even a word for how something it was...
Hard to see how he’d think she was sincere. But, she felt it was all for the best if she said it. He might even come up with a bonus.
After a minute or so of half-baked snatches of small-talk, the girls headed back to the can. They washed off and got dressed. Roanne slapped her hat on her head and then laughed and gave it a delicate push to the side. Then they topped off their groove. Before they went out, Roanne hugged Michelle, told her, Good work, cheri, and gave her a kiss and a wink. Michelle just said, Whew! She smiled a bit in relief.
George was already dressed. The only part of him still in that room was the part that stayed always on guard. As per tradition, he’d put the $500 there on the dresser. No bonus. Cheap-fuck cocksucker.
They’d been in the room 20 minutes. Forty long ones to go. George, rocks popped and all out of small talk, chewed on his lips. His eyes darted this way and that. He was anxious to get to his post-coital depression, along with a stiff shot or three of the booze, by himself.
Roanne smiled that smile and gathered her purse. Michelle, stonefaced, did likewise. Roanne said, “Guess it’s that time.” George came up with a hesitant nod. “It was nice,” Roanne said.
Maybe we’ll see you again...
George’s nod now: yes, yes, please go away.
No need to coax. The girls checked out.
On the ride back, Michelle rested her head on Roanne’s shoulder. Roanne told her, See? That wasn’t the end of the world. They made veiled jokes: Old shorty back there with his waste of a hose.
All to the good, Michelle joking. It showed she could hang.
Roanne stroked her hair and looked out at the silent bip-bip of the oncoming headlights, the unending neon, the absolute blackness that rules up above. She saw herself veiled, a carved bas-relief, her face like Queen Nefertiti’s, haloed by neon as night stretched forever.
Michelle, chewing the evening, stared out at nothing.
Nothing: black night that stared back and rang changes.
BIO: Robert Crisman writes crime and noir fiction. He spent 15 years on streets in downtown Seattle and has some idea of what really goes on in these realms. He’s had stories posted on A Twist of Noir, and on Yellow Mama and Darkest Before Dawn. A movie he scripted, Chasing the Dopeman, is currently in post-prod down in L.A. and, with luck, it’ll be ready to go sometime this fall. He maintains a blog, chock full of stories, at 6S.
The nighttime’s the right time to be with the one who will pay...
They pulled into the Ramada at 10 minutes till. Roanne paid the driver and tipped him five bucks. He smiled and said thank you. They exited then and the taxi drove off.
In the light of the doorway Michelle started patting and brushing and futzing herself into shape for the rigors ahead.
First-timer’s stage fright...
Roanne finished her own quick toilette far more calmly, then laughed. She took Michelle’s arm and steered her inside the hotel.
Michelle in that lobby, afraid to look right or left. Roanne strode. Michelle, 22, was a tall, lithe trick’s dream in black jeans, with wide bright-blue eyes, bee-stung lips, and brown hair a thick mane that flowed to her shoulders. Roanne, 29, an olive-skinned beauty with black pools for eyes who left echoes...
Second-floor hallway, Roanne checking numbers. Michelle lagged behind, her whole body clenched, her neck all pulled in. Her legs had no flex and her arms were hugging her body. Her face was a hard-set emotionless mask.
She walked as if blind, eyes straight ahead, except for the glances she’d dart at her lifeline Roanne.
Roanne pointed ahead. Two-forty-two up there on the left.
She quickened her pace then looked back and slowed just a little. She beckoned Michelle, all but whispering, “C’mon, girl!”
Michelle caught up. Roanne took her arm gently, an encouraging gesture. Roanne grinned, leaned in close and laughed softly.
Michelle flinched a little when Roanne licked her ear.
Roanne kissed Michelle’s cheek, a quick, breath-soft peck. “This’ll be easy, baby. Just go with the flow. I’ll show you. You’ll be okay.
Michelle nodded, quick tics in succession. She tried on a grin you might find on a corpse.
Roanne knocked on the door. A couple of beats and then the door opened. Standing there was a short, fat, bald man, 50ish, owl-eyed. He wore gray slacks and a long-sleeved white shirt.
Roanne in her hat with the veil, the Lady of Shanghai. She smiled her professional’s smile, the one that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Hi. Mr. Jenkins?”
A beat, then Jenkins nodded as if not quite sure what this was. “Yes?”
“Hi. I’m Alexis. And this is Marina.”
“Oh, hello. I, uh—“ He darted a reflexive look down the hall. “Come in, come in.”
He stood aside and the women entered the room. Roanne threw another of those smiles as she passed. He fixed on her veil and then looked away.
The room—like those in every Ramada from Seattle to Sao Paolo to Simla, except for maybe the dark green wall-to-wall carpet, which could be construed as a stab at a Northwest motif. For the rest, the low ceiling, the cream-colored walls, king-size bed, the forgettable abstracts, the wet bar, etc.—exactly like all the nine million others. Every detail forgotten the moment you leave, though the bland faceless essence somehow sinks in. You know in your bones that sterile corporate death is leeching our world away.
Roanne told Jenkins she had to call in to the service to let them know they’d arrived. “To let them know that we’re safe here, you know? We are safe, aren’t we?” She laughed, a sexy, flirtatious ha ha. He nodded and pointed the phone out there by the bed. She sashayed over, called in. She hung up and looked back at Jenkins. He and Michelle still stood by the door, a bit like wax dummies, their eyes fixed on her. She came to them smiling.
“Okay now,” she said, “let’s... I’m Alexis and she’s Marina, but we can’t keep calling you just Mr. Jenkins, now can we? Are you a Willie, or Bob, or a Joe, or...?”
Jenkins managed, “Oh, I’m, uh, George.”
“George!” She gave him a smiling appraisal. “It fits you. Very no-nonsense, get-it-done kind of man. George. Yes...”
George looked apprehensive, almost as if this complement would cost him a bundle.
“Yes. George. I like it.” Roanne reached her hands out to George and Michelle. “Well, let’s not just stand here. We might as well come in and get comfy.”
That soft, sexy laugh...
She backed up a couple of steps, turned, and walked to the center of the room. George and Michelle followed, chastely, like lambs. When the three had more or less gathered, Roanne shucked her coat, looked around, and then looked at George.
“Oh, here, I’m sorry,” he said. “Let me get your coat and...” He took the coat and waited for Michelle’s, then went to the closet and hung them. Roanne looked at Michelle, grinned, rolled her eyes.
She said, “Thank you, George.” She looked at Michelle and mouthed, “Mouse.” Michelle rolled her eyes and looked grim.
George rejoined them, actually rubbing his hands. Then he blanked, apparently stuck for something to say. A beat, then, “Ah...can I get you something to drink? There’s wine...or bourbon?” He turned toward the bar.
George, a gentleman, see? Roanne smiled. “A soft drink, George, if you have it.” She looked at Michelle. Michelle nodded and said, “A coke would be fine.”
George said, “Is 7-up okay?”
Michelle stared out the window. “That’s fine.”
George brought the drinks from the bar and handed them over.
Roanne said, “Thank you, George.” And now she took him in hand. Smiling that smile, she laid out the game plan, as if it was his to begin with, which it more or less was; girl and girl and then take it from there. She didn’t say it that way. She told him how great and exciting it was that he’d asked for her and Marina. It was all, well, exciting, you know? Making love to a woman and a man and, you know...
She had the appropriate facial expressions and noises—her breathing, etc.—down cold. A little cartoony; this guy read Penthouse, dreamed dreams, spanked the monkey...
Roanne pulled Michelle to her and gave her a kiss. Michelle did her best; she was still a bit stiff. Roanne smiled at George with a hint of dreamy abandon.
Roanne said to George, Don’t go away now, we’ll be right back. She took Michelle’s hand and led her into the bathroom.
She brought her purse with her, of course. She put the purse on top of the tank. Then she took off her clothes, all but her panties and bra. She laid her hat gently next to the purse on the tank.
She’d’ve left the thing on, but she’d decided that George didn’t rate a full-blown production; Lady Shanghai and all that. Besides, her main focus tonight: bring Michelle into the movie. Lady Shanghai would scare the shit out of Michelle. Maybe George, too...
Roanne, undressed. She said, “You too, girl.” Michelle did as told.
Roanne went in her purse and fished out two rigs, both chock-to-the-brim with good, pre-cooked dope. She gave Michelle hers and they banged, Michelle in her arm, Roanne in her inner right thigh.
Yeah, man, much better! Roanne looked at Michelle. “Okay, girl, how are you doing?” Michelle nodded and actually managed a tepid half-smile. She was...ready...
“Okay, girl, showtime.” Roanne kissed Michelle, hugged her, then squeezed her hand and led her on out of the bathroom.
George waiting with—what the fuck else?—baited breath. He was naked as jaybirds. He had a dick like a hose.
Oh well, the show must go on. Roanne tightened her grip on Michelle’s hand to keep her from pulling up short at the sight of the hose. Then she vamped her way, sort of, to George by the bed and stopped just a little way off. She looked down at his cock, half-standing now. “My my,” she said and dredged up a smile. She gave the hose a lingering tweak, then turned with her eyes on him still, and wrapped Michelle in her arms.
She enveloped Michelle, stroking her, kissing, entwining their bodies with all the appropriate noises. George had a tuning-fork woody like that.
Roanne pushed Michelle gently onto the bed.
She kissed and caressed her. Shoulders, breasts, ribcage, and thighs...
Michelle on her back, Roanne kneeling over her now. They’d left George standing to make his own move. With luck he’d jack off and be done with it quick.
Roanne stroked Michelle’s hair. Michelle’s face, her eyes wide, with silent prayers in them, her lips slightly parted... Roanne kissed her lips, eyes, and neck. She slipped Michelle’s bra down over her breasts. She slid her lips slowly down, to the left breast, the nipple... She felt Michelle’s hand begin softly stroking her back. Roanne reached back, unsnapped and shucked off her own bra, and lowered her body onto Michelle...
All in the script. And, right on time, she felt George’s hand on her ass.
Roanne moaned; it was a good one; that’s why she got paid. She tracked her way down, to Michelle’s belly now. She kissed it and licked it, continued on down. To the promised land now, moaning and moaning, hoping Michelle got the message: Let’s hear some noises from you, girl!
On cue Michelle popped one out. Not bad as moans go. Squeaky, a little but, not too shabby... Roanne nibbled the top of her panties, which showed a soft tuft of hair peeking over. She slid Michelle’s panties down past her hips, then pulled her own panties down. She spread Michelle’s legs, nudging gently. She nibbled and teased, brushing her lips back and forth, round and round. Michelle put her hands in Roanne’s hair. She spread her legs wider and lifted her hips.
They felt George’s weight on the bed. Roanne felt his hand on her back, and then on her ass. Then his cock, hard as rocks. He rubbed it now, on her thighs, on her ribs, with insistence. Then he took Michelle’s hand and placed the thing there, started stroking.
Okay... Roanne would make this quick as she could and, hopefully, painless as well. She’d brought a Trojan out of the bathroom wrapped in her left hand. She grabbed George’s dick with her right hand and stroked it. She slipped the Trojan into her mouth. She stroked George another moment or two, then brought her head over and down, and pulled the rubber over the head of his cock with her lips. Then up, down, up, down, up, down... He had her head in a vise-grip.
It took like two minutes. She’d had him pegged. Two fucking minutes, then, oh! oh! oh! oh!
That was it. Of course he collapsed on the both of them then and just kind of lay there, shivering, shaking and, oh! oh! oh! oh! for two long but—hell, it could have been worse.
He finally heaved himself off. The girls untangled. Roanne told George, Wow, that was something!
Not even a word for how something it was...
Hard to see how he’d think she was sincere. But, she felt it was all for the best if she said it. He might even come up with a bonus.
After a minute or so of half-baked snatches of small-talk, the girls headed back to the can. They washed off and got dressed. Roanne slapped her hat on her head and then laughed and gave it a delicate push to the side. Then they topped off their groove. Before they went out, Roanne hugged Michelle, told her, Good work, cheri, and gave her a kiss and a wink. Michelle just said, Whew! She smiled a bit in relief.
George was already dressed. The only part of him still in that room was the part that stayed always on guard. As per tradition, he’d put the $500 there on the dresser. No bonus. Cheap-fuck cocksucker.
They’d been in the room 20 minutes. Forty long ones to go. George, rocks popped and all out of small talk, chewed on his lips. His eyes darted this way and that. He was anxious to get to his post-coital depression, along with a stiff shot or three of the booze, by himself.
Roanne smiled that smile and gathered her purse. Michelle, stonefaced, did likewise. Roanne said, “Guess it’s that time.” George came up with a hesitant nod. “It was nice,” Roanne said.
Maybe we’ll see you again...
George’s nod now: yes, yes, please go away.
No need to coax. The girls checked out.
On the ride back, Michelle rested her head on Roanne’s shoulder. Roanne told her, See? That wasn’t the end of the world. They made veiled jokes: Old shorty back there with his waste of a hose.
All to the good, Michelle joking. It showed she could hang.
Roanne stroked her hair and looked out at the silent bip-bip of the oncoming headlights, the unending neon, the absolute blackness that rules up above. She saw herself veiled, a carved bas-relief, her face like Queen Nefertiti’s, haloed by neon as night stretched forever.
Michelle, chewing the evening, stared out at nothing.
Nothing: black night that stared back and rang changes.
BIO: Robert Crisman writes crime and noir fiction. He spent 15 years on streets in downtown Seattle and has some idea of what really goes on in these realms. He’s had stories posted on A Twist of Noir, and on Yellow Mama and Darkest Before Dawn. A movie he scripted, Chasing the Dopeman, is currently in post-prod down in L.A. and, with luck, it’ll be ready to go sometime this fall. He maintains a blog, chock full of stories, at 6S.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
A Twist Of Noir 401 - Robert Crisman
HARD KNOCKS - ROBERT CRISMAN
Some guys have it so rough you beg God to throw them a solid.
Like two guys I knew back in ’72, a ’60s hangover year that saw the world at low ebb. The Cuyahoga River kept catching on fire. Junkies came out of the woodwork. Nixon was top dog. Four More Fucking Years loomed like interminable stretches of sheer sawtoothed hell.
The guys were Joey and Danny, the dumbest two crooks who ever drew breath.
Joey, a thinker as well as a doer, kept mapping these stone nitwit capers. Lazy-ass Danny’d just shrug and say sure.
Joey had zeal for an army. Thirty years old, he lived with his mother, the Battleship Bismarck. She wanted him gone like last year. Okay by Joey: he wanted to move in with his squeeze the Lovely Danielle and be homeless at her place, with luck for the rest of his life.
But first he had to rustle up scratch. He kept telling his mom he was pounding the bricks and looking for work like a dog. He told Danielle the same thing.
Danielle was a milk-and-cookies kind of a girl and wouldn’t put up with that crook shit.
But—cop a 9-5 slave? Joey’d rather cut off his nuts! Which meant he had to do crook shit...
Trouble was, he kept getting busted. Sometimes even worse stuff would happen.
Before we get started, lets get descriptions out of the way. Joey looked just like my man Steve Buscemi in Reservoir Dogs. Danny? Steve Baldwin, the short, stocky blond guy in The Usual Suspects.
Joey’s mom, like I said, was the Battleship Bismarck. Danielle? Nicole Kidman, To Die For—but finer! And seeing as Joey looked like spina bifida on good days, doesn’t that piss you right off?
Anyway, Joey was hot to break his bad luck, and he and Danny burgled this house out in Ballard in northend Seattle one night. They’re rifling the house and Joey goes into the kitchen. There’s some EX-LAX there on the counter. Joey thinks it’s a Hershey Bar, man, and powers it right the fuck down. A little bit later his bowels start belting out rap tunes—in 1972!—just as the folks who live in the place come home from Love Story or something.
Little Jenny, the daughter, screams like a banshee jacked on cocaine! Three houses are leveled! NORAD gets ready for war! FEMA can’t find its butt with its hands! Hell just won’t have it!
Joey and Danny scoop up their stuff and break for the weeds! They hit the back yard! Joey falls down! He loses his sack! Danny keeps going! The guy in the house calls the cops!
Joey shoots up a tree, bowels drumming away like a ’60s rock solo! They blow blow blow blow! Ka-FLOOOOM on the lawn and the bushes! Toxic brown onrush of death and destruction! New mutant species arise! Earth is now theirs for the taking!
What happened next—long fucking story. Suffice it to say that things got so weird that aliens came sniffing around to see what the deal was.
Cops and the Toxic Waste Crew came. They torched the place and left quick. Joey slunk down the alley, a miasmic green haze in his wake that left cats for dead.
*
Danny stayed at the Old Goat Hotel, a downtown flopola for drifters and grifters, Room 307. Joey, his ass finally wiped with a blast hose, sat slumped in a chair.
“You didn’t get nothin’? Not even the toaster?” Danny, sprawled on the bed, looked ready to cry.
“Not after the Toxic Waste Crew showed up.”
“Jesus Christ!”
“Hey, man, they’re torchin’ the place! What do I tell ’em? ‘Hold on a sec, guys, till I get my shit out of your way’?”
“Well...” Danny said.
“And what about you?” Joey said. “Your fucking bags broke?”
“I told you, man, yeah! All over the sidewalk! An’ don’t come at me! That shit was heavy! It’d been nice if you’d been there or somethin’, help out with the load. I mean, your shit’s where you dropped it an’ your hands’re free, am I right? Fuck yeah, I’m right—but. I look around, you ain’t there! You’re up in a tree takin’ dumps on the cops! EX-LAX, for Christ fuckin’ sake! You dumb—”
“Hey, man, how’d I know—”
“If you’da waited till I got back down I coulda told you! You an’ your greedy pig ass, man, I swear!”
Joey, abashed, said, “Okay, okay. I didn’t know. I’m a pig. I was hungry! I’ll never do it again, man, I swear.”
Danny was tired. “Yeah, man, alright… So what now?”
“Well, the thing at the house, I think we oughta look at it as sort of a dry run.”
“Dry run.” Danny snorted. “Rivers of liquid shit rainin’ down on the whole fuckin’ world an’ you’re talkin’ dry run.”
“C’mon, man. You know what I mean. Dry run! Like a practice! We did this thing and it didn’t work out, but the game, man, is yet to be played!”
“Oh, for Chrissake,” Danny said. “You sound like the coach of the retards. Dry run… We went in that house to get shit an’ came out with nothin’. An’ meanwhile they had to evacuate Ballard! What’s next? We go in a place an’ Qaeda takes over the world?”
“Jesus, Danny! Qaeda? That’s thirty years off! Are you loaded?”
“The guy who’s writin’ this stuff is for damn sure. He sniffed that shit you let loose in the yard an’ now he’s in orbit.”
“And he’ll be there as long as it takes to finish this story! And so, time’s a-wasting! He wants to come back to Earth, I want to get into Danielle’s, and you’d like to meet a girl sometime that don’t throw up when you’re squeezing her tit and—“
“Hey, man!”
“Alright, alright, I’m sorry, man, really. I’ll leave that alone.” Danny was seeing a speedfreak chippie named Lulu who did have the habit of ralphing inopportunely. She did it once on his dick. Danny had issues on this one.
“Danny, look,” Joey said. “Next house, no EX-LAX, I promise.”
“Man, I dunno.”
“Danny, Danny! You got anything else?”
“No.”
*
They hit a place on Alki the next night, a bungalow right on the beach.
They drove away in this beater they’d rented, from Jimmy, a guy who had tons of them piled in his yard, hoping to sell them to fools. This one was a ’58 Lincoln all beat to shit. The previous owner, a speedfreak with palsy, had plowed the thing into storefronts and houses and pilings and light poles and guard rails. His sex life consisted of slamming the car into ditches at high rates of speed. This over 14 long years. The Lincoln sounded like Panzers chewing through Poland. It veered ultra-left like Maoist contingents. It sputtered and died at green lights, again like Maoist contingents.
Jimmy had wanted to sell it to Joey. Joey had actually wanted to buy it—a Lincoln, hot damn!—but broke as he was he just couldn’t. A half a lid, though, bought use of the thing for a couple of days. The bud was way weak, but Jimmy’d been loaded so long his brain was like mulch. You could have given him ear wax to smoke and had any car in the yard.
Him being king of the dead beater business, you might have figured that, right? He hadn’t sold one of those fuckers in six goddamn years. His yard looked like Dresden after the war. His neighbors wanted him gone gone gone gone. They’d finally decided that only a death squad could get the job done.
The car was burnt toast and a bust in the making. For one thing, Joey had gotten his license suspended last June. He’d run a Chevy onto a lawn and plowed through a garden of beautiful roses, then sideswiped the house that the lawn and the roses belonged to. He’d been loaded like dump trucks and mislaid a cross street.
The house belonged to a judge whose views on criminal justice would soon be compared to Khomeini’s. The judge’s wife had won prizes growing those roses.
The cop ate Joey’s license.
But so far so good on this night. They’d cracked a house and actually gotten away with the goods! The Lincoln chugged down the road.
“See?” Joey said. “No EX-LAX, no problem!”
“Oh, hell no,” Danny said. “Crime of the Century we just pulled off. Eight thousand steaks, an old cuckoo clock, an’ a five-dollar roll of fuckin’ goddamned dimes. What a haul. Jesus.”
Eight thousand steaks. The guy’d had a freezer full of the things. The rest of the pickings were sparse and so, steaks it was. The question was, where did the guy come up with the fuckers? Were there cows out in back?
“I can’ just see us tryin’ to rope cows,” Danny said as they stared at the steaks in the freezer. “We couldn’t rope tree stumps. Let’s just do this.”
It took them an hour to shag the steaks out to the car.
But they’d scored, man, goddamn! Didn’t Danny see what that meant?
“Those steaks,” Joey said, “we can sell ’em, the clock’s an antique, and five bucks is five bucks. The point is, man, we broke luck! It’s a start!”
“Start of what?” Danny said. “A career in house-to-house sales? Like Avon Ladies or somethin’? Bing-bong, Sirloins R Us? An’ also, them steaks’re frozen right now, but give ’em a coupla days, they’ll turn green an’ stink like that yard out in Ballard. We’re gonna have to bust ass to get rid of them things, an’ after all that, whadda we got, maybe two hundred bucks? The clock, what, a bill? An’ the dimes—hey, that makes it! Another house, maybe two, we can retire!”
“Danny—”
“Danny nothin’. Burglary sucks. I ain’t gonna do it no more. Somethin’ else maybe, but this shit, uh-uh.”
Joey sighed, for the moment defeated. “Alright.”
They drove awhile. “Okay, man,” Danny said, “I’ll flip you.” He dug in his pocket. “Who gets the steaks an’ who gets the clock. Heads, tails, you call it.”
“Okay,” Joey said, “and we split the dimes down the middle. Steaks, I call heads.”
Joey wound up with the clock.
*
That weekend the Lincoln pulled slowly into an alley. Two-thirty A.M. A deserted stretch in the south end of town. Warehouses and weeds all the way.
Danny was not happy. “It’s still a burglary, man.”
“Jesus, Danny, this is a warehouse! No EX-LAX, no steaks, no old fucking clocks. No toasters! Just nine fucking tons of black leather coats! Waiting for us! We can dump ’em up at the pool hall in six fucking minutes! We’ll be rich!”
Slowly the Lincoln tooled down the alley.
Danny ripped a huge belch. Then he shrugged. “Guess it beats shaggin’ steaks. How much further?”
“Right up there on the left. Let me pull in by this dumpster.”
“We’re kinda close to the place, don’t you think?”
“I know. But there’s ten million coats in that place, and the point of this thing’s not to drop dead while we’re schlooping the coats to the car.”
“I can dig that,” Danny said.
Joey pulled up in back of the dumpster and they got out of the car.
They stood and looked at the warehouse. Two stories of windows, and off to their left was a porch with stairs that led to a door. “Fuck the door,” Joey said. “Six locks on the fucker, I bet.”
Another dumpster stood at the right of the warehouse, immediately below the first-story windows. “We’ll climb up on that thing,” Joey said, “and go in the window.”
He went to the dumpster. “Give me a boost.”
Danny gave him a boost. Joey straightened and surveyed the window a moment.
He looked down at Danny. “Give me a rock.”
“Tape the window first, man.”
“Why, for Chrissake? Nobody around for 6,000 miles.”
“The alarm, man. What about that?”
“Billy fixed it.”
“Billy?”
“Cabrero. He works here, remember?”
“Oh, yeah. Say, what’s he gettin’ outta the deal?”
“Danny, what are you, loaded? I told you, a third.”
“A third? Jesus Christ! I musta been loaded! That’s steep, man, don’t you think?”
“That’s what I had to agree to, man. Little too late to be worrying about that now. Hand me the rock.”
“All we got’s bricks.”
“Let’s pretend it’s a rock, man, c’mon!”
Danny passed Joey the brick. Joey busted the window. He reached in, unlocked it and raised it on up. It went up two feet like somebody’d greased it, then stuck.
Joey crawled through, got halfway—and the window slammed down! It was a big, heavy fucker. Joey was stuck like a pig in a meat packing plant.
He kicked and he flailed and he screamed. “Oh shit! Danny, help me!”
Danny stared awestruck, open-mouthed, helpless.
A car pulled up by the dumpster. A cop car, unmarked.
Plainclothes detectives Edwards and Kleinfelt stepped out.
Edwards and Kleinfelt, scutbusters supreme. They’d busted Joey and Danny some eight million times. Mostly for pud-whacking offenses.
Descriptions. Edwards: Harvey Keitel to the dime. Bad Lieutenant, remember that flick? Cold fucking flick! You ever see it? It’s this coke-sucking cop. He’s a killer, a gambler, he cheats on his taxes and kicks ass for fun—and this one time, he rousts these two teeny-bops, right? They’re maybe 16 and he’s got them boxed in their car, and fucking Keitel—this is no shit—he turns them around on the front fucking seat, has them flip up their skirts, drop their drawers and show ass—right where they’re parked on the street in mid-town Manhattan!—and he spanks the monkey right there!
The guy was a junkyard dog’s dick!
Edwards was cooler than that but, Jesus Christ!
Kleinfelt, his partner, was tall, stolid, gray, with paper-thin lips and a chin like a shovel. Sort of like any cop partner, so pick one. Except Harry Morgan in Dragnet. Harry’s alright, you know, M.A.S.H. and all that. My mother loved him. But cop he is not. So, someone else. How about Ben Alexander, Joe Friday’s partner from back in the ‘50s? Kleinfelt down to the brogans, except Alexander was fat.
So anyway, Edwards and Kleinfelt got out of their car—and both fell down laughing.
They got up and walked over to Danny, who looked like that Edward Munch painting, The Scream. They looked up at Joey and fell down laughing all over again.
Klienfelt had never laughed in his life.
They finally got up. Edwards wiped the tears from his eyes. “This isn’t a job, it’s a Looney Tunes special! In front of us now we have Cluck Number One! And, up in the window, Cluck Number Two-o-oo!”
Danny kept swallowing the flies that buzzed by the dumpster.
“Uh-huh,” Edwards said. He nodded his head as if some final truth had revealed itself to the world. He scanned the warehouse as if he were searching for clues. His eyes stopped at the door. He climbed the steps to give it a closer look.
He got to the door and saw it was open a sliver. A note stuck under the door read, “Joey! In here! Don’t bust the window!” A childish scrawl. Signed, “Billy C.”
Cluck Number Three.
Edwards turned, grinning like toothpaste commercials. He pulled the door open and laughed. “Hey, fellas, we’re in!”
Down below, Danny closed his eyes slowly.
Edwards went into the warehouse. A dark, gloomy room, enormous, and empty as George Bush’s suit.
Nothing but coat racks and hangers for miles.
And dust motes and cobwebs and rat shit.
Edwards fell on the floor.
And there on the floor, a ratshit-splotched note: “Thanks, Billy! Your buddy, Ben.”
The prize went to Cluck Number Four! Edwards went into spasms.
He got up and walked over to Joey. He couldn’t stop laughing. Joey was gasping and purple as grapes.
Edwards took hold of himself. He bent level with Joey and whispered, “Bad news, my man. You got here too late. Ben’s been and gone.”
Joey wheezed curses and pleas.
Edwards put his hand to his ear. “What’s that, my friend? Get you loose? Why, of course!” He called down to Kleinfelt. “The dumpster, man. Lift the lid, would you?”
He straightened and yanked on the window. Joey slid out and dropped like a stone. He screamed all the way and splooshed into six tons of nasty, wet garbage. His screams turned to burbles. He sank three feet.
Kleinfelt flipped the lid shut.
*
There was this one time that Joey’d been busted, out in the streets of downtown Seattle, Saturday noon. He’d been up for five days, jacked on speed playing pool. He lost all his money, went back to the can, fell asleep standing straight up—and the manager, Slim, came in, wrote “FOOL” on his forehead in big block letters with chalk, and sent him outside chasing dopefiends who, Slim informed him, had just made off with his hat.
Joey went, Huh, what the fuck? He’s feeling around on the top of his head. Where the fuck is his hat? His hat’s gone! Those knick-knacks took off with his hat!
Joey’d never once had a hat in his life!
He went tearing on out to the sidewalk, to catch the cocksuckers who’d ripped off his hat. Millions of people out shopping, all the grandmas and teenybops, right? And here is this wild man out on the sidewalk, hopping around like a zoo full of monkeys, white shit slathered all over his lips, shock treatment hair, eyes like he came from a psych ward on Neptune, and “FOOL” on his forehead big as a billboard.
They scooped Joey up with a net. What happened next was straight out of the circus. They figured that he came from space, so they charged him with starting a War of the Worlds. Orson Welles showed at the trial. So did Rod Serling. He made the covers of Newsweek and Omni, and Foreign Affairs devoted three issues to “What It All Means” and “Why Now?”
He got marriage proposals from Zsa Zsa Gabor and Salvador Dali. Halloween Night was refigured forever. Stephen King owes him.
And all this was nothing, mere blips on the way to finis.
You should have been there the day Joey’s mom, The Battleship Bismarck, showed up at the jail to bail his ass out. He heard she was coming and begged them to send him to prison. He said he’d sold secrets to Russia. He confessed to axe-murders. He told them he’d spanked it in church.
They probably believed that he’d whacked off in church—he looked like the type—but, Mom was out there, right in the lobby and ready to blow like St. Helens.
They told him, if they had their way, they’d shovel him under the jail, but, “Sorry, son, you’ve got to go.”
They weren’t going to fuck with the Battleship Bismarck.
They turned him over.
She howitzed his ass through downtown. More World War headlines.
An ordeal for sure. Welts make for bad memories, man...
This time again they refused to ship Joey off to the joint. “But I financed Osama bin Laden!” he wailed. The jailers just laughed.
“You couldn’t finance a mouse to a meal,” they rejoined, and chucked his ass out.
Into the arms of his mom.
The first stoplight they came to walking through town it was bombs away with her cane.
“Just like your father!” Ka-whack! “I bailed him out of jail so often they started in giving me discounts!” Ka-whack! “I’m like a frequent flier down there!” Ka-whack-whack-ka-whack!
“At least your father he was a drunk! And now here you are—” She brought the cane down— “a felonious retard who breaks into places with nothing to steal!” She broke the cane over his head.
“I can see headlines!” she bellowed. “Burglars make off with 3,000 coathangers, eight tons of dust, a spider named Fred with a thing for young flies, and a roach who boogied on into the place by mistake!” She kicked him! He squealed!
“And then you go rolling in garbage! Is that your signature, Junior? Like those assholes who shit on the rug before they make off with the silver? And what pray tell was your take? Three rats and a roach and that spider named Fred, and all the dust in the world! No wonder you couldn’t make bail!” She kicked him three blocks!
They reached the house, Joey by now on all fours. “Well, mister,” Mom said. “You can hose yourself off in the back yard, and then you can sleep there tonight! And in the morning, we’re going to have a long-needed heart-to-heart talk!”
Words that signaled the end of the world. Perhaps not a bad thing...
She fetched him a good one upside his ear and stalked into the house.
Meanwhile, back at the jail, the question of questions was, “Who in the fuck is Osama bin Laden?”
*
Shivering and shaking, Joey lay swaddled under a tree in the tiny, fenced-in back yard. He’d thought the tree would give him some shelter. Until the rains came.
The leaves all dripped down...
Two cats on the fence, either fighting or fucking, provided the soundtrack to this, the latest installment of Joey’s Scythian Hell.
Joey muttered, “Why not? It’s perfect. The winner gets to shit on my head. Thanks a lot, Mom. Dad got drunk for a reason, you know.” And so on like that for two solid hours.
At long last the cat fight broke off. Or maybe one of them just dropped his load. Now, ominous sounds, something big, beastlike, shuffling around on the other side of the fence.
“Ah fuck, what now?” Joey moaned. “Lions? Son of Sam maybe?”
The shuffling receded.
Joey lay back with a sigh and looked up at the leaves dripping, dripping. Water got in his nose. The wind had picked up. Weather like this down in Hell would prompt sit-ins, revolts. The Devil would flee back to Utah.
“This is not gonna work,” Joey muttered. “I can’t even die, this story’s not over! That fucking Crisman. So I sold him some bunk that one time. What’s 12 bucks? The fucker was trying to short me!”
Just for the record, what I want to say is, 12 bucks is 12 bucks, motherfucker!
In the morning, Joey busted a move.
He crawled out from under his blanket and shook himself off like a dog. Water sprayed. He stayed sopped.
His hair hung like moss in a toxic rain forest. He smelled like an aardvark who’d died in coitus. His clothes? Suffice it to say, they were not bonaroos...
He’d slept in his socks and his shoes. His shoes had shrunk. As he splorched toward the house, he teetered and tottered like drag queens on quaaludes. His feet were in agony, man! The way things stood now, he’d need a blowtorch to get those shoes off.
His gameplan was, try and get Mom on his side for once. Somehow, some way. His hopes relied on the clock he had clutched in his arms as he lurched toward the house. The old cuckoo clock he’d burgled that night and—
Oops! I think I fucked up!
You’re asking, where’d the clock come from? He didn’t have it up at the jail. And he sure didn’t make any stops coming home, not while Mom was kicking his ass through his shirt. So where did he get it? Was the fucking thing stashed? In the tree? The bushes? A gopher hole maybe? Three feet up his ass?
A plot hole! Disaster disaster disaster!
...!
Ah, fuck it, who cares? Let’s just move on and—what’s that you’re saying? Publishers hate plot holes? You’ve got to be kidding! Look at Dan Brown! Besides, I’ll put in some tits and ass later, along with a soul-baring contest or two. Publishers love that kind of shit.
We’ve got to keep moving! We stop and they’ll bust us! If I were to freak over something like this, the next thing you know, some smart-ass like you, a New York Times critic or some fucking thing, would smell all the blood and start taking potshots.
I can just hear it:
“Hey, Bozo, I thought this was supposed to be real! So, what, the clock came by spaceship or reappeared, poof, like things do in cartoons, out of nowhere? God sent it Fed-Ex? I mean, how did it get here, alright? The question of questions—and you blow it off!
“And you want to get this thing published! Good luck, you hack motherfucker!”
Then I go off: “Are you done, you coke-sniffing warlock? I hope to Christ! And who signed your press pass? Who are you? Hemingway? Mickey Spillane? How about Alice B. Toklas, you snatch-bumping mud pig! I’ll have you shot like a dog in a kennel!”
See? One of us winds up in jail. So, fuck Sturm und Drang. I’ve got a prostate the size of a boa constrictor, like I’m 90 years old or some goddamned thing. I don’t have time for this shit.
Joey hit the back porch. The porch for some reason refused to hit back. Joey crept in the door.
He sucked in a breath and slithered on into the kitchen.
He squeaked out, “Mom?” No response.
He tipped toward the livingroom, slow as a bucket of scared-ass molasses. Sheer desperation prodded him forward.
He reached the livingroom entry and peered cautiously into the room. Mom sat on the couch reading a piece in Soldier of Fortune and gnawing on bon-bons. The article, “Torture: Refining Techniques,” held her spellbound.
The piece was authored by Dan Mitrione, an American cop and intelligence agent who’d taught the Brazilian police how to do it. The basic idea in this line of work, he propounded, was practice—on winos and dopefiends you dragged off the street. Practice makes perfect and nobody’d miss them, capiche? The Brazilian police saw the wisdom, of course—American leadership covers all fields, or did in those days—and they threw themselves into the work with a gusto. They snatched up the winos and dopefiends. Booze sales nosedived in Rio. You couldn’t give smack away...
That’s not really true. Dopefiends don’t care. They’ve got a monkey that’s bending them over and making them bleed out the butthole. All those thumbscrews and shit? Glass tubes up your dick that they break with a hammer? Like that’s some big deal!
Dopesick is now and that stuff is nothing but some other time.
Mitrione moved on to Uruguay later and promptly got scragged by some rebels. The Brazilians kept going and branched out from hobos to rude teenage kids and guys who laid pipe with cops’ wives. They got famous, and death squads all over picked up their techniques.
Dan Mitrione! They gave him a sendoff up in Ohio. Sinatra belted out show tunes and ballads as gravediggers shoveled him under.
Joey’s mom loved it! She’d often thought of boxing up Joey and shipping him down to Brazil.
Now here he was. She looked up and smiled, a smile with all the warmth of an icepick. It was time for that heart-to-heart talk.
He plastered a shit-eating grin on his face. “Hi, Mom,” he said.
She gave him stinkeye.
“I—I brought you something.”
She noticed the package tucked under his arm. “What’s that you’ve got there?”
He brought out the clock.
She stared at the thing. “Where’d you get that?”
“Huh?”
Why these tough questions?
“You did it again, you little cocksucker!”
“Huh? Wha—Mom! No! I—”
“You’re not out of jail one goddamned day and you’re off stealing clocks!”
“Mom, no, I swear to God, I—”
“No? Then where did you get it? An estate sale or something? You were just driving by in your new Coupe de Ville and the thing caught your eye?”
“No! No! I...”
“C’mon, son, make it a good one.”
“I—I found it.”
Mom rolled her eyes. “I said a good one. Christ on a crutch! My son the clock thief. And certified hat-trick moron to boot! How in the hell can—”
“Mom Mom Mom Mom! I—I—I—Mom! You gotta listen!”
He tried to say more but he couldn’t. He gasped for air, eyes wide as saucers.
Mom cupped her hand to her ear and trilled, “Ye-e-es?”
Joey took a deep breath. “Mom, I know I’ve let you down—”
“Since you were three, you little cocksucker!”
“I—uh, yeah, Mom, I know. I’ve been rotten. And it bothers me, really, and—”
“Son, cut to the chase. I can sing the whole jingle. I read the damn thing word for word in the last cheesy novel I cracked. The son was just out of prison and trying to weasel back into the will. You aren’t getting a dime. So what do you want?”
Joey stared, shocked. How could his very own Mom be so cold? And so smart?
“I—I—I just wanted to give you this clock.”
He held the thing out like a supplicant begging forgiveness from some pope or other. Any one of the cold-blooded fuckers would do.
Mom stood there a moment laying the stinkeye on thick, then took one more look at the clock. Her gaze softened. “It’s oak...”
Joey’s eyes turned to heaven and silently offered up prayers to a whole raft of gods. Most of the gods were more noted for blowoffs than help in hard times.
“Yeah, Mom, it’s oak.”
With a bit of reluctance Mom took the clock in her arms.
She looked at Joey. “You found it, huh?”
“Honest to God, Mom.”
“Don’t blaspheme, son.” She cradled the clock. “It’s beautiful,” she cooed.
She loved the clock!
Joey drew breath for the first time in possibly years.
Mom studied the fireplace mantel. “That would be perfect.”
She placed the clock on the mantel. “Yes, perfect.”
“Oh yeah, Mom, perfect!”
“Joey?” Mom said. She didn’t take her eyes off the clock.
“What, Mom?”
“It’s gorgeous.” Mom looked at the clock a long moment more. “You have a week to come up with a job or your ass is gone.”
A reprieve! Thank God! Joey trundled off to his room. He spent that night in his room planning capers.
Stone nitwit capers! He and Danny kept getting busted and falling down manholes. Their take in all this? Split lips and nerf balls.
After awhile the cops wouldn’t take them to jail. Like Edwards told Kleinfelt, “These guys are for laughs, so let’s let ’em run! We can take pictures or something. Sell ’em, make millions.”
And that’s what they did. One time they caught Joey up in a tree, naked as jaybirds and stoned to the tits on bad acid. Don’t ask. They sold the pix to some tabloid, then dumped their wives and hooked up with bimbos who spent all their money in seconds.
Joey and Danny kept going.
*
Up on Cloud Nine, St. Peter just shook his head. These guys Joey and Danny below. The fuckers were dumber than plywood.
St. Pete turned to God and said, “Boss, these guys, I don’t know. Can you help them or something?”
God said to St. Pete, “Let me give it some thought. They might be beyond me. I’ll let you know.”
In the end, God came through. He does that every Pleistocene Era or so. He let Joey boil in oil for awhile, then scooped him out, and then, via abra-cadabra-like hijinks and stuff, got him hitched to Danielle, the Lovely Danielle, who took Joey in hand and shaped him right up.
They had four kids and moved to the country and lived happy as clams in a Walt Disney movie.
And Danny? He married Lulu the speedfreak, thinking for some unfathomable reason she’d straighten up and fly right. Once again, his dick steered him wrong. She puked in his hair about 5,000 times and he had to broom her at last. As of this writing, Danny’s still looking for love.
But all that’s a story for later. This one is done.
BIO: Robert Crisman writes crime and noir fiction. He spent 15 years on streets in downtown Seattle and has some idea of what really goes on in these realms. He’s had stories posted on A Twist of Noir, and on Yellow Mama and Darkest Before Dawn. A movie he scripted, Chasing the Dopeman, is currently in post-prod down in L.A. and, with luck, it’ll be ready to go sometime this fall. He maintains a blog, chock full of stories, at 6S.
Some guys have it so rough you beg God to throw them a solid.
Like two guys I knew back in ’72, a ’60s hangover year that saw the world at low ebb. The Cuyahoga River kept catching on fire. Junkies came out of the woodwork. Nixon was top dog. Four More Fucking Years loomed like interminable stretches of sheer sawtoothed hell.
The guys were Joey and Danny, the dumbest two crooks who ever drew breath.
Joey, a thinker as well as a doer, kept mapping these stone nitwit capers. Lazy-ass Danny’d just shrug and say sure.
Joey had zeal for an army. Thirty years old, he lived with his mother, the Battleship Bismarck. She wanted him gone like last year. Okay by Joey: he wanted to move in with his squeeze the Lovely Danielle and be homeless at her place, with luck for the rest of his life.
But first he had to rustle up scratch. He kept telling his mom he was pounding the bricks and looking for work like a dog. He told Danielle the same thing.
Danielle was a milk-and-cookies kind of a girl and wouldn’t put up with that crook shit.
But—cop a 9-5 slave? Joey’d rather cut off his nuts! Which meant he had to do crook shit...
Trouble was, he kept getting busted. Sometimes even worse stuff would happen.
Before we get started, lets get descriptions out of the way. Joey looked just like my man Steve Buscemi in Reservoir Dogs. Danny? Steve Baldwin, the short, stocky blond guy in The Usual Suspects.
Joey’s mom, like I said, was the Battleship Bismarck. Danielle? Nicole Kidman, To Die For—but finer! And seeing as Joey looked like spina bifida on good days, doesn’t that piss you right off?
Anyway, Joey was hot to break his bad luck, and he and Danny burgled this house out in Ballard in northend Seattle one night. They’re rifling the house and Joey goes into the kitchen. There’s some EX-LAX there on the counter. Joey thinks it’s a Hershey Bar, man, and powers it right the fuck down. A little bit later his bowels start belting out rap tunes—in 1972!—just as the folks who live in the place come home from Love Story or something.
Little Jenny, the daughter, screams like a banshee jacked on cocaine! Three houses are leveled! NORAD gets ready for war! FEMA can’t find its butt with its hands! Hell just won’t have it!
Joey and Danny scoop up their stuff and break for the weeds! They hit the back yard! Joey falls down! He loses his sack! Danny keeps going! The guy in the house calls the cops!
Joey shoots up a tree, bowels drumming away like a ’60s rock solo! They blow blow blow blow! Ka-FLOOOOM on the lawn and the bushes! Toxic brown onrush of death and destruction! New mutant species arise! Earth is now theirs for the taking!
What happened next—long fucking story. Suffice it to say that things got so weird that aliens came sniffing around to see what the deal was.
Cops and the Toxic Waste Crew came. They torched the place and left quick. Joey slunk down the alley, a miasmic green haze in his wake that left cats for dead.
*
Danny stayed at the Old Goat Hotel, a downtown flopola for drifters and grifters, Room 307. Joey, his ass finally wiped with a blast hose, sat slumped in a chair.
“You didn’t get nothin’? Not even the toaster?” Danny, sprawled on the bed, looked ready to cry.
“Not after the Toxic Waste Crew showed up.”
“Jesus Christ!”
“Hey, man, they’re torchin’ the place! What do I tell ’em? ‘Hold on a sec, guys, till I get my shit out of your way’?”
“Well...” Danny said.
“And what about you?” Joey said. “Your fucking bags broke?”
“I told you, man, yeah! All over the sidewalk! An’ don’t come at me! That shit was heavy! It’d been nice if you’d been there or somethin’, help out with the load. I mean, your shit’s where you dropped it an’ your hands’re free, am I right? Fuck yeah, I’m right—but. I look around, you ain’t there! You’re up in a tree takin’ dumps on the cops! EX-LAX, for Christ fuckin’ sake! You dumb—”
“Hey, man, how’d I know—”
“If you’da waited till I got back down I coulda told you! You an’ your greedy pig ass, man, I swear!”
Joey, abashed, said, “Okay, okay. I didn’t know. I’m a pig. I was hungry! I’ll never do it again, man, I swear.”
Danny was tired. “Yeah, man, alright… So what now?”
“Well, the thing at the house, I think we oughta look at it as sort of a dry run.”
“Dry run.” Danny snorted. “Rivers of liquid shit rainin’ down on the whole fuckin’ world an’ you’re talkin’ dry run.”
“C’mon, man. You know what I mean. Dry run! Like a practice! We did this thing and it didn’t work out, but the game, man, is yet to be played!”
“Oh, for Chrissake,” Danny said. “You sound like the coach of the retards. Dry run… We went in that house to get shit an’ came out with nothin’. An’ meanwhile they had to evacuate Ballard! What’s next? We go in a place an’ Qaeda takes over the world?”
“Jesus, Danny! Qaeda? That’s thirty years off! Are you loaded?”
“The guy who’s writin’ this stuff is for damn sure. He sniffed that shit you let loose in the yard an’ now he’s in orbit.”
“And he’ll be there as long as it takes to finish this story! And so, time’s a-wasting! He wants to come back to Earth, I want to get into Danielle’s, and you’d like to meet a girl sometime that don’t throw up when you’re squeezing her tit and—“
“Hey, man!”
“Alright, alright, I’m sorry, man, really. I’ll leave that alone.” Danny was seeing a speedfreak chippie named Lulu who did have the habit of ralphing inopportunely. She did it once on his dick. Danny had issues on this one.
“Danny, look,” Joey said. “Next house, no EX-LAX, I promise.”
“Man, I dunno.”
“Danny, Danny! You got anything else?”
“No.”
*
They hit a place on Alki the next night, a bungalow right on the beach.
They drove away in this beater they’d rented, from Jimmy, a guy who had tons of them piled in his yard, hoping to sell them to fools. This one was a ’58 Lincoln all beat to shit. The previous owner, a speedfreak with palsy, had plowed the thing into storefronts and houses and pilings and light poles and guard rails. His sex life consisted of slamming the car into ditches at high rates of speed. This over 14 long years. The Lincoln sounded like Panzers chewing through Poland. It veered ultra-left like Maoist contingents. It sputtered and died at green lights, again like Maoist contingents.
Jimmy had wanted to sell it to Joey. Joey had actually wanted to buy it—a Lincoln, hot damn!—but broke as he was he just couldn’t. A half a lid, though, bought use of the thing for a couple of days. The bud was way weak, but Jimmy’d been loaded so long his brain was like mulch. You could have given him ear wax to smoke and had any car in the yard.
Him being king of the dead beater business, you might have figured that, right? He hadn’t sold one of those fuckers in six goddamn years. His yard looked like Dresden after the war. His neighbors wanted him gone gone gone gone. They’d finally decided that only a death squad could get the job done.
The car was burnt toast and a bust in the making. For one thing, Joey had gotten his license suspended last June. He’d run a Chevy onto a lawn and plowed through a garden of beautiful roses, then sideswiped the house that the lawn and the roses belonged to. He’d been loaded like dump trucks and mislaid a cross street.
The house belonged to a judge whose views on criminal justice would soon be compared to Khomeini’s. The judge’s wife had won prizes growing those roses.
The cop ate Joey’s license.
But so far so good on this night. They’d cracked a house and actually gotten away with the goods! The Lincoln chugged down the road.
“See?” Joey said. “No EX-LAX, no problem!”
“Oh, hell no,” Danny said. “Crime of the Century we just pulled off. Eight thousand steaks, an old cuckoo clock, an’ a five-dollar roll of fuckin’ goddamned dimes. What a haul. Jesus.”
Eight thousand steaks. The guy’d had a freezer full of the things. The rest of the pickings were sparse and so, steaks it was. The question was, where did the guy come up with the fuckers? Were there cows out in back?
“I can’ just see us tryin’ to rope cows,” Danny said as they stared at the steaks in the freezer. “We couldn’t rope tree stumps. Let’s just do this.”
It took them an hour to shag the steaks out to the car.
But they’d scored, man, goddamn! Didn’t Danny see what that meant?
“Those steaks,” Joey said, “we can sell ’em, the clock’s an antique, and five bucks is five bucks. The point is, man, we broke luck! It’s a start!”
“Start of what?” Danny said. “A career in house-to-house sales? Like Avon Ladies or somethin’? Bing-bong, Sirloins R Us? An’ also, them steaks’re frozen right now, but give ’em a coupla days, they’ll turn green an’ stink like that yard out in Ballard. We’re gonna have to bust ass to get rid of them things, an’ after all that, whadda we got, maybe two hundred bucks? The clock, what, a bill? An’ the dimes—hey, that makes it! Another house, maybe two, we can retire!”
“Danny—”
“Danny nothin’. Burglary sucks. I ain’t gonna do it no more. Somethin’ else maybe, but this shit, uh-uh.”
Joey sighed, for the moment defeated. “Alright.”
They drove awhile. “Okay, man,” Danny said, “I’ll flip you.” He dug in his pocket. “Who gets the steaks an’ who gets the clock. Heads, tails, you call it.”
“Okay,” Joey said, “and we split the dimes down the middle. Steaks, I call heads.”
Joey wound up with the clock.
*
That weekend the Lincoln pulled slowly into an alley. Two-thirty A.M. A deserted stretch in the south end of town. Warehouses and weeds all the way.
Danny was not happy. “It’s still a burglary, man.”
“Jesus, Danny, this is a warehouse! No EX-LAX, no steaks, no old fucking clocks. No toasters! Just nine fucking tons of black leather coats! Waiting for us! We can dump ’em up at the pool hall in six fucking minutes! We’ll be rich!”
Slowly the Lincoln tooled down the alley.
Danny ripped a huge belch. Then he shrugged. “Guess it beats shaggin’ steaks. How much further?”
“Right up there on the left. Let me pull in by this dumpster.”
“We’re kinda close to the place, don’t you think?”
“I know. But there’s ten million coats in that place, and the point of this thing’s not to drop dead while we’re schlooping the coats to the car.”
“I can dig that,” Danny said.
Joey pulled up in back of the dumpster and they got out of the car.
They stood and looked at the warehouse. Two stories of windows, and off to their left was a porch with stairs that led to a door. “Fuck the door,” Joey said. “Six locks on the fucker, I bet.”
Another dumpster stood at the right of the warehouse, immediately below the first-story windows. “We’ll climb up on that thing,” Joey said, “and go in the window.”
He went to the dumpster. “Give me a boost.”
Danny gave him a boost. Joey straightened and surveyed the window a moment.
He looked down at Danny. “Give me a rock.”
“Tape the window first, man.”
“Why, for Chrissake? Nobody around for 6,000 miles.”
“The alarm, man. What about that?”
“Billy fixed it.”
“Billy?”
“Cabrero. He works here, remember?”
“Oh, yeah. Say, what’s he gettin’ outta the deal?”
“Danny, what are you, loaded? I told you, a third.”
“A third? Jesus Christ! I musta been loaded! That’s steep, man, don’t you think?”
“That’s what I had to agree to, man. Little too late to be worrying about that now. Hand me the rock.”
“All we got’s bricks.”
“Let’s pretend it’s a rock, man, c’mon!”
Danny passed Joey the brick. Joey busted the window. He reached in, unlocked it and raised it on up. It went up two feet like somebody’d greased it, then stuck.
Joey crawled through, got halfway—and the window slammed down! It was a big, heavy fucker. Joey was stuck like a pig in a meat packing plant.
He kicked and he flailed and he screamed. “Oh shit! Danny, help me!”
Danny stared awestruck, open-mouthed, helpless.
A car pulled up by the dumpster. A cop car, unmarked.
Plainclothes detectives Edwards and Kleinfelt stepped out.
Edwards and Kleinfelt, scutbusters supreme. They’d busted Joey and Danny some eight million times. Mostly for pud-whacking offenses.
Descriptions. Edwards: Harvey Keitel to the dime. Bad Lieutenant, remember that flick? Cold fucking flick! You ever see it? It’s this coke-sucking cop. He’s a killer, a gambler, he cheats on his taxes and kicks ass for fun—and this one time, he rousts these two teeny-bops, right? They’re maybe 16 and he’s got them boxed in their car, and fucking Keitel—this is no shit—he turns them around on the front fucking seat, has them flip up their skirts, drop their drawers and show ass—right where they’re parked on the street in mid-town Manhattan!—and he spanks the monkey right there!
The guy was a junkyard dog’s dick!
Edwards was cooler than that but, Jesus Christ!
Kleinfelt, his partner, was tall, stolid, gray, with paper-thin lips and a chin like a shovel. Sort of like any cop partner, so pick one. Except Harry Morgan in Dragnet. Harry’s alright, you know, M.A.S.H. and all that. My mother loved him. But cop he is not. So, someone else. How about Ben Alexander, Joe Friday’s partner from back in the ‘50s? Kleinfelt down to the brogans, except Alexander was fat.
So anyway, Edwards and Kleinfelt got out of their car—and both fell down laughing.
They got up and walked over to Danny, who looked like that Edward Munch painting, The Scream. They looked up at Joey and fell down laughing all over again.
Klienfelt had never laughed in his life.
They finally got up. Edwards wiped the tears from his eyes. “This isn’t a job, it’s a Looney Tunes special! In front of us now we have Cluck Number One! And, up in the window, Cluck Number Two-o-oo!”
Danny kept swallowing the flies that buzzed by the dumpster.
“Uh-huh,” Edwards said. He nodded his head as if some final truth had revealed itself to the world. He scanned the warehouse as if he were searching for clues. His eyes stopped at the door. He climbed the steps to give it a closer look.
He got to the door and saw it was open a sliver. A note stuck under the door read, “Joey! In here! Don’t bust the window!” A childish scrawl. Signed, “Billy C.”
Cluck Number Three.
Edwards turned, grinning like toothpaste commercials. He pulled the door open and laughed. “Hey, fellas, we’re in!”
Down below, Danny closed his eyes slowly.
Edwards went into the warehouse. A dark, gloomy room, enormous, and empty as George Bush’s suit.
Nothing but coat racks and hangers for miles.
And dust motes and cobwebs and rat shit.
Edwards fell on the floor.
And there on the floor, a ratshit-splotched note: “Thanks, Billy! Your buddy, Ben.”
The prize went to Cluck Number Four! Edwards went into spasms.
He got up and walked over to Joey. He couldn’t stop laughing. Joey was gasping and purple as grapes.
Edwards took hold of himself. He bent level with Joey and whispered, “Bad news, my man. You got here too late. Ben’s been and gone.”
Joey wheezed curses and pleas.
Edwards put his hand to his ear. “What’s that, my friend? Get you loose? Why, of course!” He called down to Kleinfelt. “The dumpster, man. Lift the lid, would you?”
He straightened and yanked on the window. Joey slid out and dropped like a stone. He screamed all the way and splooshed into six tons of nasty, wet garbage. His screams turned to burbles. He sank three feet.
Kleinfelt flipped the lid shut.
*
There was this one time that Joey’d been busted, out in the streets of downtown Seattle, Saturday noon. He’d been up for five days, jacked on speed playing pool. He lost all his money, went back to the can, fell asleep standing straight up—and the manager, Slim, came in, wrote “FOOL” on his forehead in big block letters with chalk, and sent him outside chasing dopefiends who, Slim informed him, had just made off with his hat.
Joey went, Huh, what the fuck? He’s feeling around on the top of his head. Where the fuck is his hat? His hat’s gone! Those knick-knacks took off with his hat!
Joey’d never once had a hat in his life!
He went tearing on out to the sidewalk, to catch the cocksuckers who’d ripped off his hat. Millions of people out shopping, all the grandmas and teenybops, right? And here is this wild man out on the sidewalk, hopping around like a zoo full of monkeys, white shit slathered all over his lips, shock treatment hair, eyes like he came from a psych ward on Neptune, and “FOOL” on his forehead big as a billboard.
They scooped Joey up with a net. What happened next was straight out of the circus. They figured that he came from space, so they charged him with starting a War of the Worlds. Orson Welles showed at the trial. So did Rod Serling. He made the covers of Newsweek and Omni, and Foreign Affairs devoted three issues to “What It All Means” and “Why Now?”
He got marriage proposals from Zsa Zsa Gabor and Salvador Dali. Halloween Night was refigured forever. Stephen King owes him.
And all this was nothing, mere blips on the way to finis.
You should have been there the day Joey’s mom, The Battleship Bismarck, showed up at the jail to bail his ass out. He heard she was coming and begged them to send him to prison. He said he’d sold secrets to Russia. He confessed to axe-murders. He told them he’d spanked it in church.
They probably believed that he’d whacked off in church—he looked like the type—but, Mom was out there, right in the lobby and ready to blow like St. Helens.
They told him, if they had their way, they’d shovel him under the jail, but, “Sorry, son, you’ve got to go.”
They weren’t going to fuck with the Battleship Bismarck.
They turned him over.
She howitzed his ass through downtown. More World War headlines.
An ordeal for sure. Welts make for bad memories, man...
This time again they refused to ship Joey off to the joint. “But I financed Osama bin Laden!” he wailed. The jailers just laughed.
“You couldn’t finance a mouse to a meal,” they rejoined, and chucked his ass out.
Into the arms of his mom.
The first stoplight they came to walking through town it was bombs away with her cane.
“Just like your father!” Ka-whack! “I bailed him out of jail so often they started in giving me discounts!” Ka-whack! “I’m like a frequent flier down there!” Ka-whack-whack-ka-whack!
“At least your father he was a drunk! And now here you are—” She brought the cane down— “a felonious retard who breaks into places with nothing to steal!” She broke the cane over his head.
“I can see headlines!” she bellowed. “Burglars make off with 3,000 coathangers, eight tons of dust, a spider named Fred with a thing for young flies, and a roach who boogied on into the place by mistake!” She kicked him! He squealed!
“And then you go rolling in garbage! Is that your signature, Junior? Like those assholes who shit on the rug before they make off with the silver? And what pray tell was your take? Three rats and a roach and that spider named Fred, and all the dust in the world! No wonder you couldn’t make bail!” She kicked him three blocks!
They reached the house, Joey by now on all fours. “Well, mister,” Mom said. “You can hose yourself off in the back yard, and then you can sleep there tonight! And in the morning, we’re going to have a long-needed heart-to-heart talk!”
Words that signaled the end of the world. Perhaps not a bad thing...
She fetched him a good one upside his ear and stalked into the house.
Meanwhile, back at the jail, the question of questions was, “Who in the fuck is Osama bin Laden?”
*
Shivering and shaking, Joey lay swaddled under a tree in the tiny, fenced-in back yard. He’d thought the tree would give him some shelter. Until the rains came.
The leaves all dripped down...
Two cats on the fence, either fighting or fucking, provided the soundtrack to this, the latest installment of Joey’s Scythian Hell.
Joey muttered, “Why not? It’s perfect. The winner gets to shit on my head. Thanks a lot, Mom. Dad got drunk for a reason, you know.” And so on like that for two solid hours.
At long last the cat fight broke off. Or maybe one of them just dropped his load. Now, ominous sounds, something big, beastlike, shuffling around on the other side of the fence.
“Ah fuck, what now?” Joey moaned. “Lions? Son of Sam maybe?”
The shuffling receded.
Joey lay back with a sigh and looked up at the leaves dripping, dripping. Water got in his nose. The wind had picked up. Weather like this down in Hell would prompt sit-ins, revolts. The Devil would flee back to Utah.
“This is not gonna work,” Joey muttered. “I can’t even die, this story’s not over! That fucking Crisman. So I sold him some bunk that one time. What’s 12 bucks? The fucker was trying to short me!”
Just for the record, what I want to say is, 12 bucks is 12 bucks, motherfucker!
In the morning, Joey busted a move.
He crawled out from under his blanket and shook himself off like a dog. Water sprayed. He stayed sopped.
His hair hung like moss in a toxic rain forest. He smelled like an aardvark who’d died in coitus. His clothes? Suffice it to say, they were not bonaroos...
He’d slept in his socks and his shoes. His shoes had shrunk. As he splorched toward the house, he teetered and tottered like drag queens on quaaludes. His feet were in agony, man! The way things stood now, he’d need a blowtorch to get those shoes off.
His gameplan was, try and get Mom on his side for once. Somehow, some way. His hopes relied on the clock he had clutched in his arms as he lurched toward the house. The old cuckoo clock he’d burgled that night and—
Oops! I think I fucked up!
You’re asking, where’d the clock come from? He didn’t have it up at the jail. And he sure didn’t make any stops coming home, not while Mom was kicking his ass through his shirt. So where did he get it? Was the fucking thing stashed? In the tree? The bushes? A gopher hole maybe? Three feet up his ass?
A plot hole! Disaster disaster disaster!
...!
Ah, fuck it, who cares? Let’s just move on and—what’s that you’re saying? Publishers hate plot holes? You’ve got to be kidding! Look at Dan Brown! Besides, I’ll put in some tits and ass later, along with a soul-baring contest or two. Publishers love that kind of shit.
We’ve got to keep moving! We stop and they’ll bust us! If I were to freak over something like this, the next thing you know, some smart-ass like you, a New York Times critic or some fucking thing, would smell all the blood and start taking potshots.
I can just hear it:
“Hey, Bozo, I thought this was supposed to be real! So, what, the clock came by spaceship or reappeared, poof, like things do in cartoons, out of nowhere? God sent it Fed-Ex? I mean, how did it get here, alright? The question of questions—and you blow it off!
“And you want to get this thing published! Good luck, you hack motherfucker!”
Then I go off: “Are you done, you coke-sniffing warlock? I hope to Christ! And who signed your press pass? Who are you? Hemingway? Mickey Spillane? How about Alice B. Toklas, you snatch-bumping mud pig! I’ll have you shot like a dog in a kennel!”
See? One of us winds up in jail. So, fuck Sturm und Drang. I’ve got a prostate the size of a boa constrictor, like I’m 90 years old or some goddamned thing. I don’t have time for this shit.
Joey hit the back porch. The porch for some reason refused to hit back. Joey crept in the door.
He sucked in a breath and slithered on into the kitchen.
He squeaked out, “Mom?” No response.
He tipped toward the livingroom, slow as a bucket of scared-ass molasses. Sheer desperation prodded him forward.
He reached the livingroom entry and peered cautiously into the room. Mom sat on the couch reading a piece in Soldier of Fortune and gnawing on bon-bons. The article, “Torture: Refining Techniques,” held her spellbound.
The piece was authored by Dan Mitrione, an American cop and intelligence agent who’d taught the Brazilian police how to do it. The basic idea in this line of work, he propounded, was practice—on winos and dopefiends you dragged off the street. Practice makes perfect and nobody’d miss them, capiche? The Brazilian police saw the wisdom, of course—American leadership covers all fields, or did in those days—and they threw themselves into the work with a gusto. They snatched up the winos and dopefiends. Booze sales nosedived in Rio. You couldn’t give smack away...
That’s not really true. Dopefiends don’t care. They’ve got a monkey that’s bending them over and making them bleed out the butthole. All those thumbscrews and shit? Glass tubes up your dick that they break with a hammer? Like that’s some big deal!
Dopesick is now and that stuff is nothing but some other time.
Mitrione moved on to Uruguay later and promptly got scragged by some rebels. The Brazilians kept going and branched out from hobos to rude teenage kids and guys who laid pipe with cops’ wives. They got famous, and death squads all over picked up their techniques.
Dan Mitrione! They gave him a sendoff up in Ohio. Sinatra belted out show tunes and ballads as gravediggers shoveled him under.
Joey’s mom loved it! She’d often thought of boxing up Joey and shipping him down to Brazil.
Now here he was. She looked up and smiled, a smile with all the warmth of an icepick. It was time for that heart-to-heart talk.
He plastered a shit-eating grin on his face. “Hi, Mom,” he said.
She gave him stinkeye.
“I—I brought you something.”
She noticed the package tucked under his arm. “What’s that you’ve got there?”
He brought out the clock.
She stared at the thing. “Where’d you get that?”
“Huh?”
Why these tough questions?
“You did it again, you little cocksucker!”
“Huh? Wha—Mom! No! I—”
“You’re not out of jail one goddamned day and you’re off stealing clocks!”
“Mom, no, I swear to God, I—”
“No? Then where did you get it? An estate sale or something? You were just driving by in your new Coupe de Ville and the thing caught your eye?”
“No! No! I...”
“C’mon, son, make it a good one.”
“I—I found it.”
Mom rolled her eyes. “I said a good one. Christ on a crutch! My son the clock thief. And certified hat-trick moron to boot! How in the hell can—”
“Mom Mom Mom Mom! I—I—I—Mom! You gotta listen!”
He tried to say more but he couldn’t. He gasped for air, eyes wide as saucers.
Mom cupped her hand to her ear and trilled, “Ye-e-es?”
Joey took a deep breath. “Mom, I know I’ve let you down—”
“Since you were three, you little cocksucker!”
“I—uh, yeah, Mom, I know. I’ve been rotten. And it bothers me, really, and—”
“Son, cut to the chase. I can sing the whole jingle. I read the damn thing word for word in the last cheesy novel I cracked. The son was just out of prison and trying to weasel back into the will. You aren’t getting a dime. So what do you want?”
Joey stared, shocked. How could his very own Mom be so cold? And so smart?
“I—I—I just wanted to give you this clock.”
He held the thing out like a supplicant begging forgiveness from some pope or other. Any one of the cold-blooded fuckers would do.
Mom stood there a moment laying the stinkeye on thick, then took one more look at the clock. Her gaze softened. “It’s oak...”
Joey’s eyes turned to heaven and silently offered up prayers to a whole raft of gods. Most of the gods were more noted for blowoffs than help in hard times.
“Yeah, Mom, it’s oak.”
With a bit of reluctance Mom took the clock in her arms.
She looked at Joey. “You found it, huh?”
“Honest to God, Mom.”
“Don’t blaspheme, son.” She cradled the clock. “It’s beautiful,” she cooed.
She loved the clock!
Joey drew breath for the first time in possibly years.
Mom studied the fireplace mantel. “That would be perfect.”
She placed the clock on the mantel. “Yes, perfect.”
“Oh yeah, Mom, perfect!”
“Joey?” Mom said. She didn’t take her eyes off the clock.
“What, Mom?”
“It’s gorgeous.” Mom looked at the clock a long moment more. “You have a week to come up with a job or your ass is gone.”
A reprieve! Thank God! Joey trundled off to his room. He spent that night in his room planning capers.
Stone nitwit capers! He and Danny kept getting busted and falling down manholes. Their take in all this? Split lips and nerf balls.
After awhile the cops wouldn’t take them to jail. Like Edwards told Kleinfelt, “These guys are for laughs, so let’s let ’em run! We can take pictures or something. Sell ’em, make millions.”
And that’s what they did. One time they caught Joey up in a tree, naked as jaybirds and stoned to the tits on bad acid. Don’t ask. They sold the pix to some tabloid, then dumped their wives and hooked up with bimbos who spent all their money in seconds.
Joey and Danny kept going.
*
Up on Cloud Nine, St. Peter just shook his head. These guys Joey and Danny below. The fuckers were dumber than plywood.
St. Pete turned to God and said, “Boss, these guys, I don’t know. Can you help them or something?”
God said to St. Pete, “Let me give it some thought. They might be beyond me. I’ll let you know.”
In the end, God came through. He does that every Pleistocene Era or so. He let Joey boil in oil for awhile, then scooped him out, and then, via abra-cadabra-like hijinks and stuff, got him hitched to Danielle, the Lovely Danielle, who took Joey in hand and shaped him right up.
They had four kids and moved to the country and lived happy as clams in a Walt Disney movie.
And Danny? He married Lulu the speedfreak, thinking for some unfathomable reason she’d straighten up and fly right. Once again, his dick steered him wrong. She puked in his hair about 5,000 times and he had to broom her at last. As of this writing, Danny’s still looking for love.
But all that’s a story for later. This one is done.
BIO: Robert Crisman writes crime and noir fiction. He spent 15 years on streets in downtown Seattle and has some idea of what really goes on in these realms. He’s had stories posted on A Twist of Noir, and on Yellow Mama and Darkest Before Dawn. A movie he scripted, Chasing the Dopeman, is currently in post-prod down in L.A. and, with luck, it’ll be ready to go sometime this fall. He maintains a blog, chock full of stories, at 6S.
Friday, March 5, 2010
A Twist Of Noir 377 - Robert Crisman
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