EYEHEARTZOMBIES

Ray, of course, didn’t like the sound of that at all. He set Manny on it that afternoon. Manny works quick. One of the best things about that kid. He was twenty-five or so by this time, but I still thought of him as a kid. Probably always will. Manny came by the next morning. He had found out what we wanted to know.

“Yeah, I found him,” Manny said. His accent was still there, but it had thinned a lot. He rarely spoke Spanish now, but sometimes he’d forget a word. “He’s working for the slanties.”

“Say what?” I asked. I knew he meant the Chinese, but I didn’t think they’d dare to take on established operations like ours. Their organization was relatively new and weak.

“The slantines. The Chinese. They paid him to find out what he could about us — about you guys — and the money is on a hit when he does. These Chinese, they’re fucking crazy, man. One of ‘em yanked another guy’s eye out just for looking at his whore of a wife. You don’t want to mess with ‘em, new or not.” Manny didn’t really look scared, but he looked like he’d have rather not found out that fun tidbit.

“It’ll be alright, Manny,” Ray said. We were meeting in his office, he was sitting behind his mahogany desk with his fingers under his nose, in an upside-down V. He looked at me. “Feel like some work?”

“Sure,” I said, not sure what I was agreeing to do. Whatever it was, it would be the hell out of sitting around, waiting on the chinks to do something to us. “What do you want me to do?”

Ray thought for a second or two longer, then leaned forward and motioned me closer. I got up from the chair I was sitting in and walked over to his desk. He looked down at the blotter for a moment, then looked up at me. “I want you to find this Dan. Manny, you’re going to help him. I want you to find him, and give him a message for those yellow-skinned bastards. You communicate to them, as clearly as you can, how we don’t like people checking us out. We don’t like people planning hits on us. Especially in our own city. You make sure he convinces them of that.” He sat back in his chair and looked at us. Mostly at me. I knew exactly what he meant. Go rough up Dan, ruin his day, and make sure he could get back to the Chinese before his ticket ran out. Make sure they knew it was us that did it and what would happen if they got cute again. Standard job, really.

Manny, though, hadn’t been on the front of this stuff in awhile. His old man had died and Manny had taken his informer business big time. He just collected information, now. He had eyes and ears everywhere, bringing him rumors, taking pictures, tailing people. You couldn’t fart in this city without Manny finding out how it smelled and what you’d eaten that had given you gas. He was everywhere here. He opened his mouth to complain about the job, then thought better of it. He knew Ray and he knew me. He knew we weren’t going to let him bite it on something like this, and if he had to get a little closer to flying bullets than he liked, well, that was just too bad. The money would make up for it.

He got up and we walked out the door together. I tapped him on the arm, motioned for the back door and we went out into the alley behind the office front. I pulled out a pack of Lucky Strikes and lit one, flicking the match head with my thumbnail. That first draw on a cigarette; I always loved that feeling. A rush of warmth in your lungs and head.

Manny hunkered down near the door and looked up at me. “This going to go OK? I’m gonna come back, right?”

I looked down at him, saw how scared he really was. Manny was never one for being around violence. He nearly puked when I finally told him what all had happened that day with Simon. He just couldn’t handle it. “Yeah, it’ll be alright,” I answered him. It would, too. I’d make sure of it.

He looked at me for a second, then nodded and never spoke of it again. He trusted me, which I was glad for. I trusted him, too, which I was doubly glad for. You keep those you trust around you. A man you can’t trust is a man you’re better off not having anywhere near you. It just leads to trouble.

I pulled a couple more puffs off the cigarette and tossed it aside. It bounced once on the blacktop and then fell into a pile of beer bottles. “Let’s go,” I said to Manny and we went back inside. I got my coat and we left through the front door. Manny and I climbed into my car, a deep blue sedan with smoked windows, and we drove back to my second place. The place where I keep the guns and other things I might need. We went inside and I got Manny a nice, small, easy-to-handle revolver. Just in case. I picked up a couple of pistols and a baseball bat. I also grabbed a rather wicked-looking knife as a last thought. Eight inches long and serrated on the back edge. If nothing else, pull that on a guy and watch him fill his pants. I rolled out a map of the city on a table, too.

“Alright, Manny. Show me where this creep lives.”

He pointed to an intersection in Queens. “Right there, man. He and his dame, some whore he paid to live with him, I bet, have an apartment right there. No security. Well, a night watchman, but he pays more attention to the hookers walking past the front door than he does to anyone come in it. No worries.” He still looked nervous, but his voice didn’t shake and he was actually starting to look excited.

“Alright,” I said, and we left. We climbed into my car again and rolled toward Queens. It was about six in the evening, so traffic was kind of heavy. Took us almost an hour to get to Dan’s apartment. We parked two blocks away and I told Manny to stay with the car. He got out and stood next to it, watching up and down the street. He was nervous as hell, but he tried to hide it. If I hadn’t known him, I wouldn’t have seen it at all. That kid was a good actor when he needed to be.

I walked up the street the two blocks to the apartment complex. “The French Fox” it was called. What the hell kind of name is that for an apartment building? Especially one that was in as bad of shape as this one. Bricks were missing from the walls, the alleyway was piled three feet high with garbage bags, and the fire escapes looked rusted through. The front door, and most of the windows, still had all of it’s glass, though, so it wasn’t a complete roach motel. I walked past the doorman, who was checking out a fur-encrusted working girl that was strolling past the front door. Manny was always right.

Dan and his lady lived on the fourth floor. Apartment 4D. I buzzed the call and heard a woman’s voice say “It’s open.” I got in the elevator and pressed the four button. I regretted it almost immediately. The doors clanged shut with a grinding noise and the car began to lurch upwards, a half-floor at a time. Just when I was starting to feel sick, it reached the fourth floor and I stumbled out. Definitely taking the stairs down.

I looked left and right, found apartment 4A on my left and 4M on my right, so I went left. Third door on my right was 4D and I knocked three times. No one answered the door, so I turned the knob and walked right in. Bad fucking idea to just leave the door open. Dan wasn’t a smart guy, though, in case you hadn’t noticed earlier.

It was dark inside, all of the lights were turned off. I could hear a hum coming from a room further in the apartment. I was in a small entrance hallway with a closet door on one side. The end seemed to open into a kitchen and through the kitchen I could just make out a couch and houseplants. Must be the living room. I pulled one of the pistols out of its holster and held it down to my side. I walked down the hall and peeked around the kitchen. Formica everywhere. Yellows and greens, made murky by the darkness of the apartment. I could hear the humming a bit louder now, from the living room. They must be listening to the radio. I walked through the empty kitchen and stood in the opening in the wall that led into the living room. It was one of those one-big-room jobs, so there wasn’t really a door from the hall to the kitchen to the living room. I could see another hall, to my right, that must have lead back to bedrooms and the bathroom. That hallway was dark, too, so I didn’t see anything down there.

I coughed, once, and didn’t see any movement in the living room. I could see the radio, though, it’s dial glowing slightly in the dim room. It didn’t shed enough light for me to see anything else about the room, but my eyes had adjusted by now and I could just make out a shape on the couch. “Hey,” I said, louder than the cough. “Hey. On the couch.” Nothing. No movement, no noise. I took a couple more steps toward the couch. Standing on the other side of the coffee table from the couch, I could see it was a mouse. She was laying on the couch, bare-ass naked, with a long pipe laying on the floor beside her. Passed out from opium. No wonder Dan was involved with the Chinese.

She had to have been the one to answer the intercom, though. Must have caught her just before she passed out. Lucky me. I hoped Dan wasn’t in the same shape. It’s hard to impress a message on a poppyhead.

I turned toward the second hallway and started walking down it. There were two doors, one on each side, and one at the end. I opened the one on my left first, holding my gun higher in case Dan had any firepower of his own, and some crazy ideas of what to do with it. The first room was a bedroom, empty and dark. I left the door open and went to the room across the hall. Same story there, too. Another empty bedroom. I could see booze bottles all over the floor and bed, though. They were drunks and junkies. Great.

Leaving that door open, too, I went to the door at the end of the hallway. I could see a light on under the door. Somehow I didn’t notice that before. Oh well, better to have an open door at your back than a closed one. Especially if the closed one might have an opium-crazed “detective” behind it. Those private eye types are dangerous, I tell you. They get a gun and get their nose in places it don’t belong, and then they try and shoot their way out. You make a lot of enemies with a nose and a gun.

I opened the door and had to turn away. The light was so bright after being in the dark apartment. A second or two later, when I didn’t feel I was being blinded by the sun, I looked back. Dan was in there, passed out on the shitter. I put my gun back and took out the baseball bat. I had rigged up a bit of a holster for it inside my trenchcoat. Held it inside the coat without me having to use my hands. Useful little invention, that.

Raising the bat, I tapped Dan with my foot. I kicked him in the shin. Nothing. Didn’t move at all. I tapped him on the head with the bat and he jolted up. “Wh — What?” His eyes were glazed and he looked around, bleary. He finally settled on me and came to a bit more. I heard his piss let go when he saw the bat in my hand. “What the fuck are you doing here?” He spoke more clearly than I would have thought possible. Opium isn’t good for motor skills.

“Teaching you who to spy on. You tell your chink friends to keep their rice-loving asses in Chinatown.” I smacked him hard across the mouth with the bad. The wood thwunked on his cheek and he spun around a quarter-turn and his head hit the wall. I smacked him in the arm and he shook. I whacked him again the arm and heard the bone snap. A black welt appeared almost instantly where the bone had broken and I smacked him again in the ribs. He fell forward off of the toilet and a horrendous smell rose after him. He apparently had fallen asleep while taking a dump. Drugs really foul up your shits. The smell was horrible and I held an handkerchief over my face with one hand. I whaled on him a time or two with the bat, a shot to the groin, another to the head. I stuck my head out in the hall, took a deep breath, then used both hands to beat the ever-loving crap out of his knees. When both were bloody and bruised, I quit and ran back into the hall.

I hurried back to the living room, hoping the smell wouldn’t catch up to me. I didn’t do anything to the naked woman, she was fucked enough as it was. I left the apartment, closing the door behind me. I hurried down the stairs and out the front door, where the doorman was now talking to some other dime-girl. This one dressed in a velvet dress and six-inch high heels. He didn’t even notice me.

I trotted down the street to the car where Manny was still watching both ways at once. He saw me coming and climbed in to the car. I popped open the trunk, threw in the bloody bat, and then I got in the car, too. We drove away and never saw or heard from Dan again.