F*ckload of Shorts Page 4

  "Ethan, I think."

  "Know where I could find him?"

  "Try the East Side."

  The East Side. Across the river, it was stripperville. He thought beaver should be the Illinois state animal. Where to check? He got a description of Ethan from Herman's bar back, but it was pretty vague. Still, a lead was a lead. He crossed the Eads Bridge, like it led to another country.

  He started at the high end with the buffets, the ESPN and their hygienically and surgically superior women, but his instinct soon led him elsewhere. By the time he'd worked his way down the class ladder to the Beaver Cleaver, it felt right. That Slaughter anthem all the radio people seemed to think was the shit the year before was blasting from a $20 boom box on the three-foot stage. There wasn't any sawdust on the floor, but there should have been.

  Three taut skinned, red boned youth sat at the front table watching one dancer, already disrobed and pointing her ass at them, doing a terrifically lude if uninspired and lazy number when he walked in. On closer inspection, he saw she was not dancing at all, but bent over at the waist, butt in the air, tits touching her knees, windexing the mirrored wall in back of the stage. She was vigorously applying the cleaner with a wad of newspaper where, in the course of her recent performance, she'd left cheek prints on the glass. A+, he thought. With the newspaper, it wouldn't streak.

  Before she'd even finished, the next beauty queen came out sporting the rheumy, empty eyed gaze of a fellow traveler, and stopped the Slaughter tape, popping her own cassette in the boom box. Fucking hell. Richard Marx. Won't give up until we're satisfied. The bartender picked up a mic and let everyone know that it was Lil' Debi on stage, giving her all. He looked at her. She was shedding her outfit too quickly, stiffly and with all the grace of C3P0 on crank. She was demonstrating why pussy is like the sun - you never want to look directly into it - when the tape suddenly changed speed and then stopped altogether, leaving her splayed bare assed to the world without any musical accompaniment. Somehow it was too sad to look at.

  In the void left by Dick Marx, Benji heard something that caused him to spin around in his seat so fast, he nearly fell out. In the brief moment before the dancer, unraveled her self from the pole, walked over to the boom box and switched to a radio station playing Firehouse, he heard the sound again.

  It was remarkably like his own name.

  Across the room, two heavies out of central casting were talking to the bartender and one of the other dancers. Benji slipped to the back of the room to watch. The foursome broke up a moment later and the two dressed like joggers left. He waited for the dancer to go back to work and hit her up for a private number.

  It took a couple dances and a lot of cash to get the information out of her. The whole time she was bumping cluelessly into his busted arm. It shot regret all through his shoulder and into his head, but the story she told was fascinating.

  He heard about some deal that went down in Texas a couple years ago. Some money had disappeared, fifty thousand dollars, and the bills were marked. There'd not been a trace of them all this time, until a few weeks back? It started showing up in the system.

  "And guess what?"

  She stopped bobbing on top of him for one second and he dared to ask "What?"

  "It was spent right here at the Cleaver."

  "No shit." He manages with a grimace as she punctuated her story by grinding against him again.

  She got back up to full speed and Benji wondered what the chances were he'd get the Windex treatment afterward. "Anyway, they said they were Treasury Agents, but my boss has got his suspicions about that." she nodded toward the bartender, who was thumbing through the cash register, inspecting bills.

  "So, who're they looking for?"

  He nearly bit through his lip when she slapped his shoulder in excitement. "That's the best part! They wanted some guy named Metcalf, but I thought they should try out this creep called Ethan, comes in a lot. Said the money was hunnert dollar bills and he always had them. He has a thing for Janis." Without stopping she nodded her head in the direction of another girl at the bar, listening, wide eyed, to the bartender, probably getting the same story.

  What she lacked in self awareness, she made up for with inhibition. She was such a committed pro, she tried to make her nodding head a part of the dance.

  Back at Carl's Bad Tavern, Benji tipped the bar back heftily to match a last name to a first, and came away with Ethan Dillon. He got an address out of the phone book and found the place.

  When he got there the sun was up. So was Ethan. He wasn't at home anyway. Benji let himself in and began to turn it inside out, looking for the cash. After a couple of hours the dregs of his last speed hit turn to sick in the hollow of his gut. Afraid of collapsing right there, he stumbled home.

  When he woke it was dark outside again and it was dark in Ethan's apartment. Shit. He wondered if he'd slept through his opportunity to surprise him. If Ethan had come home and found the mess in his place, he might never come back. He sat in the booth at the diner across the street from Ethan's for an eternity, shoveling coffee on top of nothing. The tacky quality of his mouth encouraged him toward water, but he didn't pay it any attention. His kidneys felt like rocks.

  The third time in an hour he noticed someone lighting a cigarette in the car parked outside, it dawned on him, the Treasury joggers must have found Ethan's place too. The focus of his stake out switched.

  To say his arm itched underneath the tape would undersell it. It was, he felt, just going to be another loss in the continuing struggle for his sanity. He picked and tore at the edges a bit with the gnawed off fingernails of his left hand, but all that did was make it more raggedy than it already was. At first his arm had been securely fastened in there, but as he'd begun to sweat it had shifted around a bit. It gave off an alarming pulse of pain every time it moved, but he couldn't afford to sacrifice any alertness to pain killers.

  He decided to go in for a closer look and ambled down the street with a cigarette in his left hand. As he approached the car with the windows down, he tried to look pitiful. It was not hard. He indicated his handicap as he opened a dialogue.

  "Got a light?"

  He named them in his mind. The Ranger looked out the window, bored. He was wearing a Mavericks tee shirt and a gold chain around his neck. "Fuck off" he said with a hint of the southern hostility in there.

  "C'mon, dude, I'm not left handed."

  Tonto leaned out the window with a lighter. He flicked it open and produced a flame. There was something familiar about it. When he snapped it shut, Benji caught the initials USMC across the top. The cocksucker had the same lighter as Chuck.

  Oh shit.

  Against his will, Benji started to think. There was a time and a place for it and he'd known neither. This sort of thing, the more you knew, the more you could maybe fuck it up. He had to keep it simple. Get this Ethan. Get his money back and forget revenging. Chuck was not worth it. The piece of shit had betrayed him, right? But he kept thinking.

  The bills were marked. That figured. It meant Mr. Kent had fucked him before he hired him. The Ranger and Tonto must work for him. No way they were Treasury, but they must've had some ties. Kent must have some connection with the feds who would let him know when those bills hit the banks. But how had they known his name? He'd not settled on Metcalf till he arrived in Dogtown, a year and a half after Dallas.

  Chuck.

  It was the only way that made any sense. It had to be. He hoped Chuck hadn't put up a fight. He had to stop thinking.

  A light came on in Ethan's apartment. He watched them get out of their car and head in to the building. He waited a few before following.

  Halfway up the stairs, he heard cursing. Ethan's door was open and the light spilled out with the sound of frustrated Texans. Ethan must've given them the slip when he saw the state of the place. The Ranger was out the back and halfway down the fire escape when Benji got to the door. Tonto was having a look see.

  Before he could make a
plan, Tonto was headed back to the front door. Benji ducked behind a wall, and waited for him to place himself near the stairs before hitting him. One armed, he had to take any advantage he could, but he felt a little sick and guilty when Tonto went over the railing and not just down the short flight. He heard the sound of bone negotiating with marble and the subsequent bounce to another short flight of stairs, three stories down.

  He came around the first bend and saw the spot where the original smack had come from. It was slick and unlike anything you'd want to touch. Tonto had left a souvenir. Benji walked around it and resisted the impulse to reach out and let the bits of hair tickle his fingers.

  There was a faint struggling sound, a sort of shuffling noise coming from the next landing and rather than look over the rail, he decided to descend the stairs one at a tie to give himself another moment to brace for it.

  Tonto was in shock. He was lying on his back with his right arm and left leg pinned underneath him. If you didn't know better, you'd think he only had the one arm. Benji could see the spot, high on his forehead where the scalp had been torn away just a bit. It was too dark to know for sure, but Benji guessed, if he cleaned all the blood out of it, he'd be looking at bone. He leaned over the rail and wretched a thin line of mucous into the void. Tonto was looking directly at him, but not really seeing. The shuffling sound - he was trying to stand up. His right foot, like a bald tire spinning on wet concrete, was not finding purchase. It was on automatic, sliding uselessly over the dirty tile floor, again and again.

  A black pool was behind his head, which brought out the white in his eyes. Benji got close enough to whisper to him. "You kill Chuck?"

  Tonto's lips moved, but there was no sound. His pupils were expanding rapidly. Benj tried again. "You killed Chuck, right? You overdosed him, you and your friend?" Tonto stared straight ahead, his lips moving, but not saying anything. "You made him give me up and then you killed him, you son of a bitch. Fuck you."

  He knew he wouldn't get an answer. Instead of waiting, he went through his clothes and relieved him of his car keys. He put his left index finger on Tonto's chin. He pushed down, making his mouth hang open and appear he was trying to raise his head. Benji leaned in and whispered. "I hope you hang in there a long time, asshole. Soak up all the pain, you got comin."

  Out on the street, he teared up immediately. He had to swipe ineffectively at his watering eyes and running nose with the sleeve of his shirt. He hadn't really meant it. Benji hoped he was dead already. His vengeful notions had disintegrated as soon as the poor bastard went over the rail, but he had felt an obligation to see it through. Finish it the way it'd started.

  The faces of his victims from the kid in Texas to the fags he'd rolled in parks and alleyways, they started appearing to him transposed onto Tonto's body, lying in an unnatural way on top of him self. They stared at him as if at the end of a long tunnel. He was glad they couldn't see him crying now.

  It was a trick starting the car with his left hand, but thankfully the transmission was automatic.

  His arm healed wrong. When he finally got the tape off after giving it a couple weeks, it hung at a funny angle. At the elbow it bent and dangled palm out. Looked like he was always about to shake your hand or thumb a ride. That's what Trish said, anyhow.

  She was a dancer he'd come to know a little bit. In the past several months, he'd more or less given up finding Ethan and the money, but kept going through the motions of staking out Carl's and the Cleaver. He'd stayed straight most of the time too. He found out that Ethan's favorite girl, Janis hadn't been seen since Ethan had disappeared. Recovering that cash was not a realistic goal, but nobody ever accused Benji Metcalf of being grounded that way.

  He kept the mustache shaved. Chuck was right, he looked better that way and he confirmed his sexuality every chance he got with Trish, which was more often than you might've guessed. He went to the Courtesy and got his job back, and got a new apartment that had hard wood floors. Looked good that way and trapped less dirt, he thought.

  Took nothing with him. Not even a bed. He had a blanket he slept on top of in the warm weather and underneath when it was cold. Mornings the sun would pour in through his curtain less windows and he'd toss the blanket in the closet, then sit there in his clean, empty space and try hard at enjoying the nothing.

  He'd been sitting just like that one morning when there was a knock at his door. Nobody ever came over except Trish once. She'd laughed when she'd seen the place empty, and said they should go back to her's after all. Sure enough it was Trish, looking rougher than usual after a night's work. Her face is puffy and red more from crying, he thought, than blow.

  When he opened the door for her, she hugged him and said "If you'd get a phone I wouldn't have to come over like this." He took her in and set her down at a sun spot on the floor. He rinsed out his cup in the sink and brought her some English tea he'd already brewed. It was part of the new him, not as reliable as a fix, but becoming just about as ritualistic.

  He didn't ask her what was wrong. Figured she'd say when she was ready, or maybe never which would be fine by him too. But she didn't wait that long, said "Janis is dead." then started to cry again, her nose leaking onto her shirt. "Police came by the club last night. Said they'd identified her body. She died a while back. Drowned. In Florida. Said it looked suspicious."

  She looked up at him. "Did you hear me? My friend Janis is dead." He felt he should show some sign of remorse, but just couldn't fake it. "You know what? I bet it was that Ethan creep who killed her." It had poured out without consideration first. Just a gut reaction, he could tell. She sat there thinking it through and a few moments later, looked back up, but not at him. Certainty in her voice this time. "It was. I'm sure of it."

  He tried not to think about it. Fuck. It was hard not to. His experience was, the more he knew... He was bound to fuck up. He felt something in the pit of his stomach at work that night and tried to imagine it was his recovering soul experiencing growing pains, but that didn't stick. This was darker. Uglier. Shit, it was vengeance again.

  He was able to hold those feelings at bay by telling a few regulars at Carl's and the Cleaver to keep their eyes open for this Ethan guy. He gave them as good a description as he could and a beeper number and took to carrying it with him, though he intended never to use it. Its silence in his pocket was a lullaby that he went to sleep to every night. He took that much action and then stayed the hell away. He kept his head down, and told himself he'd done all he was going to. Then one day, it chirped.

  It was a long hard walk up the street to the pay phone and he wasn't sure he would use it until it was already ringing.

  "Hello, Benji?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Saw somebody, might be your guy at Carl's, just now."

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah, except, he was dressed real nice, with a haircut and all. Had money,

  bought drinks, too."

  "He still there?"

  "No. Just bought the drinks and left."

  "Say anything?"

  "Nope."

  "Thanks."

  It was nothing. Less than nothing. Didn't sound like the guy at all. Ethan Dillon was a low rent motherfucker, just like himself. He knew that much.

  He was getting ready for work. He'd drawn the day shift some time back and was enjoying the hours. He knew he'd come a long way from the edge of suicide and insanity, and he knew it was suicide and insanity to go any further with revenge, but he told himself that was not what he was doing as he let the bus pass his stop at Hampton, where his job waited for him, and kept heading east. Toward the river. Toward the abyss.

  Trish was off that night. Thank god. He wouldn't be able to control her, if she knew what he was doing there. She'd blow it, most likely. He sat at the bar with his back to the stage, watching the door, sipping Cokes and trying to shut out the shitty tunes for a couple hours before a Queensryche riff woke him up. He picked up his head just in time to see a well dressed version of Ethan Dillon turn on his
heels, just inside the door and leave again.

  Benji followed him outside. Well dressed Ethan walked a few blocks up to a higher class of shit hole and went inside. Benji entered and located him immediately. He had gone to the bar for change. He got a couple of drinks and then took up a solicitation for a private dance. Benji found a sentry position near the front door and waited.

  Didn't take long. Cleaned up Ethan looked a bit shaken walking briskly out of the back and through the front door not two minutes later. Benji followed him humming Sweet Child O'Mine to himself into the night.

  Ethan strolled along the river front looking like he might throw up for the first couple hundred yards, but eventually he recovered and found a taxi. Following suit, Benji trailed him west back down town all the way to his hotel and gave him a few minutes in

  his room before he knocked.

  The few minutes were really for him. He found the stairwell because he was going to need a couple lines to do it right. When he was ready he kept the knife in his left hand and knocked with his funny right.

  Ethan Dillon didn't even see his face. Benji slashed him right through the neck near his shoulder. He stumbled a few steps and fell onto his back, a rich red fountain bubbling out of him. Benji shut the door and went through the room. He didn't really think he'd find anything, but while he was there...

  There was no money, or I.D. or satisfaction. He came back to watch Ethan expire. He stood above, staring down, getting used to the view. That look on his face was familiar now. He'd seen it before and resigned himself to seeing it again in all likelihood.

  There was a lurching sensation for a brief moment, when he cut the tether to his hopes and dreams of normality, but as any sailor would, he bore down, lowering his center of gravity and rode the wave. It felt like he was drifting slowly out to sea, away from his final port. He could still see land. He could still see solid ground and remember the sensation of standing and walking around on it, but he was never going back. It felt like he was looking into the horizon and seeing only a vast ocean, the void of space or a great black hole and he could only keep going. On and on. He didn't even have to take steps. He was drifting.