A Twist Of Noir 694 - Chad Eagleton

SMILE - CHAD EAGLETON

The dark turned everything cold again. She’s shivering in the Plymouth, shaking through shirt layers and the puffer coat she stole from her brother before he left for Afghanistan. The heater rages like a sermon, blowing a brimstone stink that coaxes something wet and hellish up from her tummy. She gags and grips the cracked dash.

“Stomach?”

She nods, hopes the grimace looks like a smile.

It doesn’t it. “I can turn it off.”

“Better’n cold,” she says. “Gives me headache.”

“Take something.”

“Nothing to take.”

She shrugs. The nothing stays down, but now she’s hot.

“If we had just the thirty five.”

She slams the vents closed. “Your aunt shouldn’t have to go back.”

“I know.” He picks at his face. “She’s took it for years.”

“Fuck the co-pay.” She kills the heater.

The Plymouth shakes as the engine quiets. “Yeah, fuck it.”

“What you want to do?” She asks, hoping he’ll say something that’ll make it better. Something he’s known all along, but hasn’t said because he’s been waiting for her.

“There’s nothing to do.”

“Gas stations open.” She points through the fogging windshield.

His face begins to bleed. “It’s always open,” he tells her, still picking.

“Let’s go in,” she says. “I need to get out of here.”

He doesn’t answer. He just keeps scratching and watching everything fade. The sound of his fingers scrapping dry skin, the jagged nail worrying the spot on his face, the slow trickle, it’s all so loud—

“I gotta go.”

He grabs her arm.  “Stay in the car.”

All of her twists. “Why? I want to go in. Don’t feel good. I’m fucking cold—hot. I don’t feel good. My head hurts and I want a fucking candy bar. I want a Kit-Kat.”

“You don’t got any money.” He’s still staring even though the gas station is gone.

“Enough for a Kit-Kat.”

“No,” he says, letting her go.

Puffy-lipped and big-eyed, she pouts in the seat hoping it’ll work this time, hoping for the apology she’s been waiting on someone to give her since she was little. It never came before and doesn’t now.

He reaches under the seat. Cans roll. MacDonald wrappers crinkle.

“What’re you doing?”

In the darkening, she doesn’t know what he’s holding until he says, “Getting money.”

“You can’t.”

He taps the .38 against the door. “Why not?”

“They know us. Lizzie works here. We’re friends.  We’ve got math together. She tells everybody everything. The only thing she keeps shut worse than her mouth is her legs.”

“What do we do?  Huh? What? I need it…you need…just to get through.”

She watches him chew a flap of skin in the corner of his mouth. “You’ve got that interview.”

“I can’t go like this. I can’t,” he says and she touches his wrist. He looks at her from under long lashes she wishes were hers, his blue eyes vacant enough that she fills the emptiness.

“Just give me a minute, k?”

He nods.

She turns, wanting to look out the window, but can’t. Her eyes start to tear and she reaches a thin finger to the glass. Her pink nails stab twice and arc once until the window smiles.

A shiny F350 rumbles into the space next to them. Through the smile she sees a tall man step boots first from the cab. “He’ll give us thirty five dollars,” she says to the smiley face. “He likes me.”

“How much does he like you,” he asks.

“A lot—he was nice. He used to work with my dad.”

“He like you enough for fifty?”

She smiles back at the window. “If I—do that thing.”

“Yeah, he’d like that.” She hears the gun slide back under the seat. “And it’s just a thing.”

The smile is slowly disappearing. “Right, it’s just a thing,” she says before it vanishes.

“That’s right and it’s not like our thing.”

“It’s not?”

“No,” he tells her, starting the car.

She opens the door. “I’ll call you.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

She climbs out and waits by the truck as he pulls away. She waves as he rounds the pumps, but he doesn’t see. Neither does the smile.

A Twist Of Noir 611 - Chad Eagleton

THE PRICE OF COPPER - CHAD EAGLETON

They worked in the dark and in the cold, not stopping until morning lay just on the other side of the ridge. A few headlights had just begun breaking through the thin spots in the tree line to flare briefly before vanishing and reappearing farther down the highway’s snake curves.

Hank lit a menthol and offered the pack. “Nice someone’s still got a job.”

Pete refused the cigarettes. “Yeah, must be nice,” he said. “A regular paycheck.”

Hank looked at his friend. “You’re not having second thoughts, are you?”

“No,” he said. “This was my idea, remember?”

“And you know where we can unload this?”

“Yeah, I do. Unload it with no questions and a fair price.”

“Just making sure.” Hank sat the Folger’s can beside him and tapped the ash off his cigarette. “How much is a fair price?” Hank patted the tarp covering the truck bed full of copper wiring and copper pipes. “What’s the price of copper?”

“Fair,” Pete said again and then added, “but not nearly enough.”

Hank nodded. “How’s Cinda?”

Pete looked at him. “She’s fine.”

“Does she know what we’re doing?”

“Course not. Do you think she’d be fine with all this?”

Hank stared at the three vacant houses and the skeletons of two more unfinished.

“No, she’s a good woman.”

“Yeah.”

“How long before they notice?”

Pete looked up into the brightening sky. “If we get out of here before the snows come...once we turn the security lights back on...hopefully, at least a week.”

“They’ll probably blame it on meth heads.”

“That’s the idea,” Pete said, pulling his work gloves from his back pocket.

Hank killed his smoke. “We really need to turn those back on?”

“If we get as much snow as they say we’re supposed to, someone’s going to at least do a drive-by. If all the lights are dark, that’s gonna raise suspicions.”

“Don’t want that.”

“We don’t want that.”

As Pete walked from the truck to the first security light, the snow had just begun to fall. He took a chilled breath and scaled the pole.

Hank waited by the truck and lit another cigarette. “Maybe, we could all go to dinner next week?” he yelled up at Pete.

“What?”

“Maybe we can all go to dinner next week? You, me and Cinda?”

“No,” he yelled down. “She’ll wonder where we got the money.”

Hank nodded. “Maybe I’ll take her to dinner,” he said quietly.

“Hey,” Pete yelled down.

Hank startled. Fuck, he heard—the security lights brightened to life. Hank relaxed.

“We’re set. Go flip the junction box. It’s the one in the blue house.”

“What?” he asked even though he had heard.

“Go flip the junction box.”

Hank tossed his cigarette in the can and gave Pete a thumbs-up.

From his perch, he watched Hank enter the house and walk past the kitchen windows. A flashlight kicked on. The security lights flared, dimmed, and then darkened.

Pete climbed down the pole. He moved around the left side of the house and opened one side of the kitchen doors. He crouched and looked through the door.

Hank lay on the floor, hands clenched in awkward claws while little wisps of smoke rose from his clothes. He made a noise. An awful, pained noise.

Pete wiped snot from his lip. “You didn’t fucking think I’d know?”

Hank didn’t answer.

“Well, I do know, you fucking motherfucker.”

Hank answered with a right hand spasm, a nail-blackened dance. He tried to open his mouth. The soldered fillings kept it closed.

“You wanted to know how much we’d get for this? Well, now you know. This is the price of copper.”

BIO: Chad Eagleton lives in Indiana. He has been published in DZ Allen's Muzzle Flash, Pulp Pusher, Bad Things, Powder Burn Flash, A Twist of Noir, Darkest Before The Dawn (in collaboration with Keith Rawson) and Beat To A Pulp.

A Twist Of Noir 397 - Chad Eagleton

THE DAY THE MUSIC DIED (FEATURING CHRISTOPHER GRANT’S THE DEAF GUY) - CHAD EAGLETON

The day the music died I didn’t walk from the flashing red and blues. I walked toward them and the sleek patrol cars filling the parking lot on the other side of the low stone wall. I passed into the crowd without a single jostle. At the front of the barricade, I scanned Braford Manor, its twisting staircases and stone towers, the historic home long ago split into separate floors and parceled off as retail space.

Everywhere I saw CLOSED signs.

I read lips and sorted fragments.

“...should’ve had breakfast...”

“...register cleaned out...”

“...she was so pissed, but I was just looking...”

“...CDs taken...”

“...it’s supposed to rain later, but...”

“...fired wildly. Multiple gunshot wounds...”

“...I’ve gotta take a piss...”

“...no signs of forced entry...”

“...what’s wrong with him—flunking math...”

“...pronounced her DOA...”

I turned and, with purpose, walked home in a silence that some would call deafening, but I called normal.

*

Annalee was always there behind the counter in the little, basement store keeping rhythm with head bobs and finger taps. I didn’t think she noticed me as I wondered through the rows of wooden bins, searching for some Rosetta Stone other than the torn pieces of cardboard marking the alphabet and the magic marker scrawl signaling the genre shift.

While flipping through the CDs and thumbing the vinyl, I wondered what this album would sound like, who would buy that record and when. Afterward, I paged through coffee-stained copies of Rolling Stone on the old leather couch. Once the couch mistakenly belonged to someone with a cat. The punctures felt like Braille, the claw marks comforting in those broken, hidden ways that only home can be. And for a moment, the silence was not so empty.

The day after visiting the cathedral, I realized she had noticed me.

She found me in the rock section, staring at the cover of an album called Trout Mask Replica. I felt her standing next to me. I ignored her until she tapped me angrily on the shoulder.

Turning, I read her lips. “...going to buy anything? Ever? Don’t mind browsing, but shit, dude, you’ve never bought anything, ever.”

I shrugged.

“What the fuck does that mean?” She shrugged back, eyes face-locked. “Are you deaf?”

I nodded.

She started to nod, too. Awareness stilled the movement, but sent her hands fluttering down against her legs. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish. I returned the album and when I looked up she fumbled her way through signing, “Why come into a record store?”

I signed back, “Look. Imagine.” Her eyes followed my fingers. “Why do you know sign language?”

Confusion. Then a ringed forefinger signaled wait. She dashed back to the register and returned with a scratch pad. I repeated in print, hovered the pen for a moment, adding with a dash, “—Always deaf. Music?”

She skimmed. “I’m a girl, I wanted to talk to friends across the classroom,” she over-enunciated.

I waited.

She read again. Twice—just to be sure. “You’ve never heard music?”

“No,” I signed.

She caught that one. “Ever?”

“No,” I said aloud.

Thick clumps of mascara clung to her damp lashes.

“I can feel bass,” I signed.

She chewed her lip. Started to speak. I lost her words in a quick turn. She retreated through the maze of bins and disappeared below counter.

I waited.

Arms loaded with CDs, she popped back up. Jewel cases cascaded across the counter like spilt treasures. She sifted through them until she came up with her gold.

I approached, sat the pad on the counter. Turning, she stood on tiptoes to reach the player mounted high on the brick wall. The drawer slid out and she fumbled above her head until she felt the disc catch. She pushed it closed.

I watched her pick up her stool and carry it to the far side of the counter, close to the large speaker sitting on the floor. She patted it and I sat.

Up close, I could see that she was older than either her clothes or her exuberance made her seem. The lines on her face hid behind make-up, a mass of dyed bangs and razored hair. She smelled cleaner than anyone as young as she still wanted to be.

Her black Chuck Taylor’s heel-kicked as she scooted herself backwards onto the counter. “We’re going to start with Buddy Holly—‘Rave On’,” she said, tugging on the necklaces draped around her Kula Shaker t-shirt. “It was covered by Mellencamp for that shitty Tom Cruise movie, but he’s nothing really, just a poor man’s Springsteen. God, I wish you could hear this! He starts off with this six syllable ‘Well’...”

*

There was something I needed before I could head across town to a different old house, split not into businesses, but sectioned into apartments. I had been there before. That time I didn’t have a weapon.

This time I did.

In life, in my life, there are few moments of genuine kindness. Rare moments when someone does something without any other motivation. Void of sense of self. No unspoken, but expected return.

She was like that. It killed her.

In my home there is only one gun. For that I have a permit. I like my life and were someone to come uninvited into my home, they would die under the full force of the law.

Across town, in secure storage, I had access to a wide variety of firearms. But, I didn’t go across town. I went into the kitchen. From the utensil drawer, I picked the largest knife I could find. I boiled it, wiped it down and secured it in my coat. I planned to leave it buried in the shared sink, lost in a mound of furry dishes.

This wasn’t a freebie. Not like the ugly girl in the diner. This was a debt. I debt I repaid with blood. She tried to give me music. Because it meant something to her. Because she recognized it as something everyone should know. I owed her because she tried the best she could. It wasn’t always perfect. But it was more than most.

*

“This part right here?” she said cranking the volume. “Do you feel that?”

I did.

“Robert Plant is basically just saying, ‘Ahh.’” She paced on the other side of the counter. “But he’s not; it’s more like he’s, uh...coming, okay? And it just keeps building and hanging there right? Meanwhile Jimmy Page is just...” she gestured with the remote, conjuring words.

When words didn’t appear, she fell back to air guitar. “And you’re waiting and you’re waiting and it just keeps going and you can feel it in your chest, right? And there’s this anticipation, you know, like when you think you might get kissed, and then just when you can’t take it anymore, they make you take more and finally—” She slapped her hands together hard and kicked the counter.

*

That day, I smelled him before I was even down the stairs and around the corner. Old sweat. Soured body odor. Something rotted. A thick chemical scent.

Peeking around the corner, I saw them arguing. Her mouth wide. Neck muscles strained. Forearms tense. Him twitching. Itching. Eyes racing.

Mine strained to read.

“...work here anymore...”

“...sick...”

“...fucked up. You’re fucked up now...”

“...shit going on. That’s all...”

“...missing from the register...”

“...need the money...”

“...not while working here...”

“...maybe a loan...”

The register dinged open. She handed him bills. I retreated backward into the short hallway. In the poor basement lighting his shadow rounded the corner first. I fled into the restroom at the bottom of the stairs.

Ten wooden steps lead to the entrance door. I counted to 15, and chanced an opening. Above me the door swung close. I debated, chose, and then followed.

If I had known what the next week would bring, I would have killed him then.

*

The thing I’ve always wanted desperately from music, the thing I could never have, was a soundtrack to my life. You have it. You may not know it, but you do.

Songs tie themselves to memories. Both before and after the fact, they invoke the past with a surety unmatched. For me there are only lonely memories, quiet visuals, soundless smells and silent touches.

With a fury like the grinding of icy metal and a brutality like a snowy plane crash, a junky killed the closest I would ever come. His score robbed me of my orchestration.

But I had my own instrument.

Later at her grave, Buddy Holly CD I reclaimed from his apartment floor in my hand, I described it to her like this:

His death opens with the faintest of creaks. A door closes. Light footsteps across the room. Uneven rhythm. A jewel case squeaks. A tossed sheet. Breathing drugged and dreaming. Skin splits slowly. A bone nicked reverb with a gasping underlay. Splat and gurgle. Rising pitch. Then only gentle drip.

I don’t know if that was right—the sound. But it was the best I could do.

BIO: Chad Eagleton lives in Indiana. He has been published in DZ Allen's Muzzle Flash, Pulp Pusher, Bad Things, Powder Burn Flash, A Twist of Noir, Darkest Before The Dawn (in collaboration with Keith Rawson) and Beat To A Pulp.

A Twist Of Noir 268 - Chad Eagleton

Máscara Contra Máscara - Chad Eagleton

The moon is high and the river is low. Through the chain-link fence and across the shallow waters of the Rio Bravo, I can see the lights of El Paso and think of my father.

I remember sitting in his pickup. The windows were down. The cab smelt of sweet, tobacco, and tepache. He turned Marty Robbins off and took another sip of his pineapple beer. “A name is all a man’s got,” he said.

Now, I shake my head.

I am not here in Juárez to remember anything. I am here in Juárez for my name. In my life, I’ve had two: the first I was born with, the second I claimed for myself. My birth name was a ditch-digger’s name. The name I made for myself, it was a hero’s name.

Someone has taken the hero’s name from me. I will not be left with the other. I will have my name back. It means more to me than all my possessions, than the stacks of bills filling the briefcase beside me, and even my sons. The most important thing I have to give them, the thing that will last longer than any other inheritance, is that name.

Headlights fill my rearview mirror. For a moment, I am blinded by the glare. When I step out of the car and into the night, my vision clears and I see the faces of my enemies.

Though they are four in number, I know no fear.

The first is young, a teenager cultivating a thin sprouting of hairs on a weak chin as desperately as a peasant trying to coach vegetables from rocky soil. He wears Levi’s and an Indios de Ciudad Juárez jersey.

The second is a fat man in dirty khakis and a blue Guayabera faded to a thin white that reveals the heavy swirls of chest hair curling around his large breasts. At his belt, a machete dangles.

Of the third, I can focus on nothing but the pits in his thin face. Not even the gun in his hand.

It is the fourth who matters—the Thief. He wears a red Western shirt with pearl clasps. His jeans are tight and dark. The cowboy boots are polished to a deep black. On his thin fingers are several bands ringed with diamonds. A thick gold bracelet around his wrist clinks against the metal case in his hand.

Rumors say he is from Tijuana, where his mother was a careless whore and his father an experienced burro. Some say he is not Mexican at all, but came up farther south in the urban hell of Sao Paolo where he was raised by rats in the scrap ghetto mazes. Others say he comes from the jungle, a descendant of priests who raised bloody sacrifices to old gods. There, death squads butchered his family. He only survived by hiding in his mother’s rotting corpse and praying to Mictlantecuhtli.

I say bullshit.

A ditch-digger’s son knows a ditch-digger’s son.

“Are you —, old man?” he asks.

It is strange to hear my birth name spoken, it has been so long. It sounds foreign and alien, a jumble of letters as vacant as a dash on the page. Coming from his lips, it clenches my stomach and threatens to bring me to my knees. For a moment, I can say nothing and pray my speechlessness appears as only senility.

The Thief snaps his fingers.

“Yes,” I tell him.

He nods. “You got the money? Thornhill said you’d have the money.”

“I do.” I open the briefcase, show it to him, and throw him a stack of fifties. “You do not see the rest until I see your product and if your product is quality, I will purchase more.”

He licks his lips and runs his fingers across his intricate goatee. “Inside,” he says and unlocks the gate.

We cross into an old warehouse formerly owned by an aircraft manufacturer. The buildings are blackened windows and padlocked doors. I try not to think about what has gone on inside and what dark stains and wet meat might remain.

The Thief opens a door into a squat aluminum building with rounded room. The office space inside is empty now except for a table, several chairs and a safe.

“I must go to the toilet.”

“Go ahead, old man,” the Thief says.

Behind me, I can hear their jackal laughs. The jokes about my age and the possibilities of my incontinence. A muffled remark about Viagra is lost to the close of the door.

I sit the briefcase on the sink. The clasps pop. My breath catches. It felt so loud, but there is only my heart reverberating in the hollows of my chest and not a single knock on the door.

I move the briefcase to the toilet and turn on the sink. The water spurts out brown as runny shit. I wait, but it never runs clear. Nor do my thoughts.

I switch the facet off. My knuckles crackle and I hold tight onto the cold metal until I find my nerve and let my thoughts fade to a low din, a soft rumble. I open the briefcase and lift the insert out, revealing my máscara.

It is made of red nylon. Thin gold stitching catches the light and gives the appearance of moving flame. The antifaz, the trim, around the eye, nose, and mouth holes is midnight black.

I pull it over my head and open the door.

For a moment, I am lit from behind with a florescent glow that casts my shadow across the dim interior. Rolling my neck, the flames crackle the way they did during my entrance in The Jungle Of Blood.

Now, I am no longer old. My spine straightens and the muscles in my forearms coil like steel cables threatening to burst the worn fabric of my black suit. I am no longer the ditch-digger’s son.

I am El Chingón.

They are not impressed.

“What the fuck?” The Thief says and the others can not contain their laughter.

“I am El Chingón and I am here for my name.”

“Holy fuck, old man,” the Thief says, “this is the best laugh I’ve had in a long time. Thornhill’s a crazy bastard.”

“You’re looking at El Chingón,” the Fat One says. “The Badass. The Badass of Juárez.”

I run.

My ankles crack with every stride, threatening to buckle, but I won’t let them. I leap onto the table and I fly one last time, hook my legs around the Thief‘s neck and torque my waist, driving his head into the concrete. Despite the fire shooting through my knees, I return to my feet quickly, confident they can not see the stumble as I spin, driving my elbow into the young one‘s nose and crushing it before snaking my arm around his head, pulling him down into a choke that I crank hard before flinging him into the Fat One fumbling with the machete.

Pitted Face rushes me and draws his weapon, a .45. It is the exact same model I used in El Chingón vs. Los Enemigos del Amor. Surging toward him, I duck under the sweep of his gun and ram my shoulder into his gut. I grab his legs in both my hands and snatch him off his feet. The back of his head bounces off the floor.

I roll across his body, snatching the automatic off the ground as the Young One and the Fat One struggle to their feet. I shoot them both quickly and fire one into Pitted Face‘s chest. The Thief raises himself up onto his elbows and watches with bloodstained eyes, the jagged furrow across his forehead continues its gush.

“I will have my name back now.”

He laughs.

For a moment, I am fearful and feel very old. The pin in my shoulder burns. My knees flare and throb. The knuckle on my trigger finger pulses with arthritis. My mask feels like it’s tightening, trying to swallow my skull like a snake or expel my from its warm interior, leaving only the ditch-digger’s son.

“Fuck you,—,” he says.

At the sound of that name, I pull the trigger.

That is not enough. There are rules to Máscara Contra Máscara, mask versus mask, and the rules say the pretender’s mask is mine. I will take it and hang it on my wall beside the others.

I pick up the machete.

BIO: Chad Eagleton lives in Indiana. He has been published in DZ Allen's Muzzle Flash, Pulp Pusher, Bad Things, Powder Burn Flash, A Twist of Noir, Darkest Before The Dawn (in collaboration with Keith Rawson) and Beat To A Pulp.

A Twist Of Noir 231 - Chad Eagleton

NOT A SINGLE PENNY FOR YOUR EYES - CHAD EAGLETON

An Entry In Eric Beetner's FIST Contest

This was back in the ’80s, long after the farmland produced only sprouts of ticky-tacky boxes, when the construction of the Garden State Parkway made way for the opening of the Monmouth Mall, leaving this stretch of shoreline empty and broke. Back then, if you didn’t live in Jersey, the only thing you knew about Asbury Park came from the cover of Springsteen’s first album. But no one ever bought that record anyway. They all started with Born To Run.

Even Detective E.B. Brewer.

The night of his first homicide investigation, he parked next to the abandoned casino with its rows of empty windows, blank and glossy, like a morgue room line-up. He headed down the boardwalk to the second pier, the one with the hotdog joint his father took him to that day in mid-July, the day he realized his mother wasn’t ever coming home and the man she’d left with wasn’t an uncle he had never met. He nodded to the two patrolmen, blazed his flashlight down into the darkness below and climbed under the pier.

The old man lay on the edge of the water. His head, clotted blood at the temple, rested against one of the wooden posts while his lower half, from the knees down, bobbed in the greasy ebb and flow.

Detective Brewer shined his flashlight on the bruised narrow face, sunken chin and bloodshot eyes. His lower dentures had come loose and hung over his thin, bottom lip, like a crab stuck crawling from its shell in search of a better home. The man’s work-shirt was faded and wrinkled, cinched beneath a cracked leather belt that bunched the fabric of the high-water pants tight around bony hips. He wore only one shoe.

Brewer swept the flashlight across the sand, the spare change and bottle shards, the cigarette butts and candy bar wrappers, finding only footprints for his trouble. Strange patterns as incomprehensible as the dance-step matt his father had spread across their bowed, wooden floor when he was fifteen and he had asked Wendy Joselow to homecoming and more surprising she had said yes.

He remembered that Footprints in the Sand card his mother had kept framed in the bathroom. He sighed and shook his head. God says he’s carrying you, but you can’t fucking miss the villains walking by your side.

Topside and the other patrolman, the same who responded to that liquor store robbery three months ago before he made detective, waited at the far end of the pier with the two kids who had found the body.

Brewer took their names and addresses. He took their answers, too, for all the good they’d do, and then sent them back to shore. He stood at the edge of the pier and looked out at the dark expanse and spotted the old man’s other shoe way out there on the water, heading to New York, where everyone thought things were better, but never were.

That was as far as Brewer ever made it on that first case and it bothered him.

Not out of pride. By retirement, his solution rate was respectable, but not even close to a hundred percent. And certainly not out of any sense of failure in his duty. He worked each case as best he could and challenged anyone to find errors in his judgment. Unlike television, Brewer never suffered any delusions that he could somehow make the world a better place. He knew there would always be villains, regardless of home life, poverty rate, and number of cops on the street.

It bothered him, because he felt like there was something he missed. Every couple of years he returned to the file with fresh eyes. He knew it wasn’t a clue. No, there was something else. Something...he learned six years after retirement.

Age had finally crept into his son’s hair and he wanted to make up for all those lost years when his father had been nothing but a bank. Both of them were long gone from Asbury Park. Brewer in a new city and his son in a new state. So, his son flew in from back west and they had beers well into the late night hours and listened, finally, to The Boss’ first album.

During the day, they drove to all the old places. Sometimes questions filled the car. Other times silence. Brewer knew his son just wanted new memories to replace those ones stained by childhood fit-throwing and the upturned nose of teenage conceit and that was okay.

Brewer’s day ended on the boardwalk and the second pier. The hotdog joint was long gone, replaced by some chain store that offered only an over-priced carbonated fruit-drink named The Jersey Devil in way of local color.

While his son waited in line, Brewer walked the pier. The stroll seemed longer than he remembered and took his breath. He fiddled with the loose change in his pocket, hoping for focus as he walked and tried to catch his breath, but couldn’t. He drove himself to the pier’s edge, hoping that the last, long rail would give him the time he needed.

It didn’t. His left arm turned numb as he reached out for the railing. He saw only water stretching out before him. Shimmery, blurry water.

His right hand touched the splintery wood and then even that was falling away as the change from his pocket clattered and scattered. Christ, he thought, don’t let me fall in and drift off to fucking New York.

E.B. Brewer didn’t fall in. He fell down as the coins plinked into the water. Slack-jawed on the pier. His left eye looking between the bowed slats, down, down below to the murky sliver of beach. The beach where he found the old man.

He realized then what the man had been trying to tell him, what they all had been trying to tell him during those long nights when sleep would not come and the bodies filled the hallway outside his bedroom like cords of wood. They had been trying to tell him about the fist.

The tiny fist you beat against your chest when you first slid free of the womb and found the world not at all to your liking. The fist your father gave you when you talked back. The fist with the gun that demanded your paycheck or your open mouth. The fist that raised another bottle to your lips even though the last one wetted your shirt more than your tongue. The fist you put through the wall that day your wife pushed you too far and left a hole no amount of spackle could ever fill. And this fist...this fist that closed over your heart and never let go. The fist that left you with your false teeth forever perched on your chin and not a single penny for your eyes.

BIO: Chad Eagleton lives in Indiana. He has been published in DZ Allen's Muzzle Flash, Pulp Pusher, Bad Things, Powder Burn Flash, A Twist of Noir, Darkest Before The Dawn (in collaboration with Keith Rawson) and Beat To A Pulp.

A Twist Of Noir 062 - Chad Eagleton

LORD KNOWS - CHAD EAGLETON

“I wonder if the Lord will forgive me or bury me a G
I couldn't let my adversaries worry me
And every single day it's a test, wear a bulletproof vest
And still a nigga stressin’ over death”
—2Pac, Lord Knows

“About time, motherfucker,” Shawty Dub said as he opened the door. “Gotta get a shithole room and wait on yo ass.”

“I wanted to keep this deal between us,” I said, stepping past him into the cramped, motel room and pushing the door closed. He didn’t back up and we stood there for a moment as close as lovers or enemies.

He moved first, hiding his concession with a smile, a laugh, and a thump on my back. “Why I gotta rent way the fuck out here ‘stead of staying on the Strip?”

“Vegas has more cameras per square inch than any place in the world,” I explained. “And my business? Is my business.”

“A’ight,” he said.

“Now, who the fuck is she?” I pointed at the young, black girl lounging on the bed.

“Who? Oh, HO?” He rubbed his bald head and laughed. “This my girl, dude. She’s my big discovery—The Habitual Offender. The HO—get it?”

“Yeah, I get it. What the fuck’s she doing here?”

“She’s with me,” he said. “She’s cool. You can trust her—like I trust her.”

“Maybe, I don’t trust you.”

He laughed, not getting it.

But she did. “Who the fuck is this motherfucker, Shawty?” she asked, tossing the remote aside and crossing her arms under her breasts.

“This is—”

“No names,” I said.

He nodded. “He’s the man, baby. He’s like a…concierge. He gets people things.”

“So, he a fuckin’ gopher. We rented this piss-smelling shithole ‘cause a errand boy said so?”

“Fuck you,” I told her.

Though I hadn’t moved, Shawty put his hands on my chest as if to stop me. His tattooed biceps flexed. “Hey, hey, hey, hey,” he said, flashing me his grilled grin. After patting my chest, he faced her and said, “He’s not a fucking gopher, baby.”

“Sound like a gopher to me. You said he gets people shit. That’s what a gopher do.”

“No, no, not like that. This man has skills.” He sat next to her on the bed. “He gets you…like weird shit. Shit you wouldn’t know how to get on your own. You know that baseball bat I got?”

“Yeah,” she said.

He reached for her cheek and the hair-extension ponytail draped over her shoulder. “The one that belonged to Al Capone?”

She turned her head away from his touch, picked the remote back up, and punched buttons with a sparkled talon. “I thought you was bullshittin’,” she said.

“No bullshit—it belonged to Scarface Al. And this is the man who got it for me.” He arched his thumb over his shoulder at me.

But she didn’t pull over, just shrugged and craned her neck to keep watching the television. Standing, he gave me a look that said—bitches, whattaya gonna do?

I ignored him and sat at the table by door. I pulled the edge of the thin, green curtains aside and glanced out the window. “Let’s see it,” I said.

“Just like that? Don’t want no drink? No smoke?”

The curtain fell back into place. I looked at him blankly.

He chewed his lip until he tasted words. “Oh,” he said, rushing over to his suitcase. “Listen to this track. It’s her follow-up single. It’s gonna bust the chart like it got pulled over for DWB—driving while black.”

“The merchandise,” I said. “I want to see the merchandise. You were bitching about me keeping you waiting; so, I’m not going to keep you waiting any longer.”

“S’cool.” Shawty zippered the case closed and looked at HO.

She rolled her eyes and pursed her glossy lips, before climbing over the bed and opening the closet doors. A single, metal briefcase sat alone among the empty hangers. She plopped the case down on the bed, entered the combination and popped it open. “There ya go, Massa,” she said, moving past us in a hip-shaking strut.

“Ha ha, yeah.” Shawty removed the bulletproof vest and handed it to me. “Makaveli, rest in peace.” He thumped his chest twice and flashed two fingers at the sky.

Behind me, I heard the flick of a lighter and The HO’s snicker. Bitch needs to get punched, I thought as I examined the vest. Shawty didn’t seem to notice or didn’t seem to care. He watched me intently, trying to read a final total in the movements of my eyes.

“Where’d you get it?” I said, handing it back to him.

Carefully, he sat it back in the case. “Bought it off an LVPD officer,” he said. “One of the first motherfuckers that arrived on the scene.”

I nodded. “Bet they walked off with anything that fit in their pockets.”

“Fuck yeah, they did. If they had time pro’lly woulda cut his dick off and tried sellin’ that.”

“Nobody would sell another man’s dick,” I assured him.

“Motherfuckers do anything for a dollah.”

I ignored him and stared at the vest, though I already knew my answer. He pressed his knuckles against his lips in anticipation. When I closed the case, he said, “Whatchu thinking, man? How much we get for that? It’s Tupac’s vest, dog. Tupac’s vest.”

“Why you selling it?”

“Why anybody sell anything? Need the fuckin’ money.”

I didn’t ask him why he needed the money. I knew: three paternity cases, two copyright infringement suits, a weapons charge and he’d gotten burned in that Ponzi scheme.

“So, whatchu think? Huh? How much? You still workin’ for that crazy, rich mother that’s got Bugsy eyeball?”

“Sometimes,” I told him.

“Think he’d want it?”

I shrugged and lit a cigarette. “I checked your story out.” I sat down back by the window and pulled the ashtray across the table. The HO sighed and moved it closer. “It matches my information.” I scratched my chin and considered the burning tip of my smoke. “It looks like the vest.” I picked a stray bit of tobacco from my lips. “Like the one he wore to the last award show.”

“Fuck yeah,” Shawty said, slapping his fist into his palm, “it looks like the one he wore to the award show, ‘cuz he wore it to the fuckin’ award show.”

“But—”

“But what?”

I shrugged and took a long drag, holding the smoke tight in my lungs, before blowing it and the words out, “I can’t be sure.”

The HO laughed.

“Can’t be sure a what, motherfucker?” He stalked around the room, doing circles on the crusty, brown carpet. The HO laughed again, sending him over the edge until he beat the dresser with his fist, his rings clanking and scratching the surface.

Next door, someone beat the wall in response.

Shawty threatened it with his fist, but the wall wasn’t intimidated.

He found his cool with three, deep breaths. “Ain’t no way to be mo’ sure, less you ask Pac hisself. And you don’t look like Jesus or no magic man, so yo shit outta,” he said.

He didn’t understand the look I gave him back. But The HO did. She laughed harder and the moled cheek beneath Shawty’s left eye twitched.

“They say he’s still alive,” I told him.

He chuckled, trying to drown out The HO’s continued laughter. “They say lotta shit about lotta shit—that don’t make it true.”

He tensed when I stood and crossed the room.

“So what’s the fuckin’ problem?” He tugged at the dark, wiry hairs of his goatee. He retreated to the same wall he had threatened. It held him up as he said, “What we gotta do? Huh? To make this work? What we gotta do?”

I sat down on the bed. “I gotta be sure.”

“Uh what?”

“That it’s a bulletproof vest.”

He bounded to the bed, flung the case open, grabbed the vest and rapped it with his knuckles. “Listen—bullet stoppage.” He shook the vest in front of me before rapping it again. “Bullet stoppage. Rat-a-tat-tat and it ain’t no thing.”

“I need to test it.”

He rolled his eyes, his nostrils flaring, before tossing it back on the bed. He walked to The HO, but she turned her face to watch her cigarette die in the ashtray.

“Can’t fuckin’ shoot it here,” he said, his back to me. “And I ain’t lettin’ you walk off with it.”

The jingle of my keys turned him around. “Then come with me.”

“What?”

“We’ll drive out into the desert and we’ll test it.”

“Yeah, fuck you, motherfucker.” He fell into his white voice, “Yes, uh, drive out into the desert with me and my gun, please. Oh, and be sure to bring the merchandise I was thinking of purchasing from you.”

“You don’t have a gun?”

“Fuck yeah, I got a gun.” He reached behind me. I didn’t move as his hand snaked under the pillow and pulled out flashy, chrome automatic. “I’m always strapped, motherfucker.”

“Then there’s no problem. Bring your gun.”

He flexed his hand around the grip.

“Bring the whore—The HO.”

He smirked. “A’ight. Let’s go, baby.”

She walked over to him. I could see his disappointment as she brushed against his shoulder and kept walking. “You a fuckin’ fool,” she said.

*

I killed the engine, but left the lights on.

“Damn, dog, that was a rough ride,” Shawty said, opening his car door.

“It’s the desert,” I told him. “Not the beach. Nothing smooth out here.”

“’Cept for me,” he said, grinning and climbing out of the car. He sat the case on the hood and removed the vest. When I stepped out, he looked at me and said, “Am I just sitting it on the dirt or what?”

I shook my head. “Someone’s gotta wear it.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

I smiled. “You’re tellin’ me you don’t want to be shot in Pac’s vest?”

The sound of the last car door opening pressed his decision. “Yeah,” he said looking at The HO, “but won’t that fuck up the value? He weren’t never shot while wearing it.”

“Says you. Google Pac’s vest,” I told him. “You’ll get a thousand hits all with people saying different shit. He didn’t wear it that regular. He wore it all the time. He didn’t take it with him to Vegas. He did take it with him to Vegas. He wasn’t wearing it that night. He was wearing it that night until Suge told him to take it off. I tell my fucking buyer he was shot in it, they’ll fucking believe he was shot in it.”

He licked his thick lips.

I pointed at him. “Google it. Google that shit.”

“Gimme your phone,” he told The HO.

She slid it out of her front pocket and handed it to him. He stepped into the headlights glare, and began searching the internet.

When he was satisfied, he said, “I see what you’re saying.”

“I told you,” I said.

He ignored me and said, “Help me with this, baby.”

She grabbed her phone out of his hands. “You gotta be kiddin’?”

He snatched it back, sat it on the hood and handed her the vest. “Just help me with the damn straps.”

After he slid the vest over his head, she pulled the straps tight and then velcroed them closed. “See if you can’t find yo brain in there,” she told him as he examined and adjusted the vest.

“Shut the fuck up! Seriously! Just shut the fuck up!”

She pouted.

“Listen, baby, he ain’t gonna do nothin’. I trust ‘im.” He grinned, his teeth gleaming ivory in the dark, desert night. “And how many people can say they been shot in ‘Pac’s vest?”

“No one.”

“That’s right. But Shawty Dub can say he been shot in ‘Pac's vest.”

I drew the Glock and jacked a round in the chamber. “You ready?”

Shawty fiddled with the vest one last time before stalking between the headlight beams, standing with his hands on his hips, and taking a deep breath. Pleased with his superhero pose, he said, “Let’s do this.”

I fired.

The round slammed him in the chest and he stuttered backwards. “Ah, fuck, that shit hurt,” he gasped and then doubled over, hands on his thighs.

“You alright?” I asked him.

He nodded, taking several more breaths before straightening with a wince and a smile. “Ha ha, what’d I tell you? What’d I fuckin’ tell you? Bullet stoppage, motherfucker!”

Walking over to him, I smiled back.

“So, how much?” he asked through gritted teeth.

“For the vest? Nothing. For you? Four,” I said, shooting him in the thigh and shoving him. He fell hard onto the rocky, desert floor. I pumped another one into his leg. He twitched. My thumb squeezed and a third round screamed toward his face. It clipped the side of his neck and I thundered one more into the top of his skull.

“Dumb motherfucker,” The HO yelled as she ran to his corpse. “Tupac’s vest?” She laughed and kicked him.

“They’ll be time for that later,” I told her, returning the Glock back to my coat. “Look for my brass. Should be five spent shells.”

While she went to work, I snapped latex gloves around my hands and wiped the briefcase down. From the glove box, I removed five, crisp, hundred dollar bills. Three I stuck in the briefcase. Two I scattered on the ground.

“Found ‘em,” she yelled.

I pitched the briefcase out into the night, and the desert soundlessly swallowed it whole.
The HO handed me the brass casings. I sealed them in a baggy and shoved them into my right pants pocket.

I popped a switchblade open and walked to the body of Shawty Dub. My knees popped when I bent down. “Damn, I ain’t watchin’ that shit,” she said as I dug around for one of the bullets. The tip of the blade pinged against metal. I worked the bullet to the surface of his thigh and plucked it out. It popped like a sucker from a kid’s mouth.

“That’s gross,” The HO said.

With two fingers, I held the bullet in the spotlight of the high beams. “No,” I said, “that’s money.”

“And fame.”

I dropped the bullet in my shirt pocket, closed the blade, returned it to my left pocket and looked up at Habitual Offender.

“Ya know,” she said, “it’s bullshit I gotta do somethin’ like this. I’m good. I’m real good. No body can touch my flow. I hear some of these new boys on the radio and motherfuckers can’t match the flow to the bass beats. That’s the whole goddamn point.”

“Fame has a price.”

“I know that. Everything got its price.”

I nodded. “You ready?”

She faced me and puffed her chest out. “Fuck yeah, I’m ready.”

I flexed my hands in the gloves. She looked at her dusty, red tennis shoes. “Go for the nose,” she said.

I grabbed her bicep. “You sure?”

“Wanted a new one anyway. And it’ll just feed the rumor mill if I gotsta have face work done after surviving an attack.”

“Okay.” I punched her hard in the nose.

“Motherfuck!” She yelled, twisting out of my grasp. “Sonofabitch!” I grabbed her again and punched her twice more in the face.

When I let her go, she started to fall. She tried to stumble her way back to standing, but her legs weren’t cooperating. I drew the gun again and grabbed her forearm, doing the job her legs botched, returning her upright.

Her puffy eyes were full of tears and pain. Her nose sat crooked on her face. Her lips were swelling, but she smiled. “I got me some Angelina lips now. Didn’t even need to go see that creepy motherfucker in Beverly Hills neither.” She laughed.

I stuck the gun against the edge of her abdomen. “Do it,” she said and smiled bigger. Blood and lipstick stained her ivory teeth. Somehow a thumbprint-sized swathe of lip gloss was still poppin’.

I fired and let her fall.

When I hit the Boulder Highway, I made a call. “It’s me,” I said. “I might have something for you. How much for one of the bullets that killed Shawty Dub?”

“Who is Shorty—Shawty Dub?” The voice on the other end asked.

“A rapper.”

“Is he famous?”

“He will be when the news hits tomorrow.”

“You never cease to amaze and impress me,” the voice said. “How do you work so quickly?”

“Lord knows,” I said. “Lord knows.”

BIO: Chad Eagleton has been published in D.Z. Allen's Muzzle Flash, Powder Burn Flash, The Pulp Pusher, and Bad Things, where you can find Double D, starring the same narrator as above.