Pimp’s Revenge
The house I was staying in didn’t have a phone in it, so I called Ray from a diner that evening. I told him how it had gone with Marcus and he told me that the pimp had been sent to Houston to plead guilty to a double murder. He’d go to jail for twenty years, but the Mob would protect him on the inside and wouldn’t trouble him for the $50,000 he had skimmed off the top. Like I said, sex is a market that always returns a profit.
Ray had news about the DA, too. “We know who dropped him off. It was some local punk, working for someone in Vegas. We don’t know who yet. The guy here was a real amateur, though. His plan was to get you fingered for the DA’s murder, of course. He should have just dumped the body on the front porch and called the police. Damn hard to explain a dead body on your front step. Instead he snuck the body in and we got to control all the eyes. We didn’t catch him, but we will.”
I thanked him for the information, then drove back to my house. I must have missed any cars tailing me, though. They showed up later, and I don’t know how else they would have known where I lived. Anyway, I drove home and went inside to cook some dinner and relax on the porch again.
I scrambled a couple of eggs and fried some sausage for dinner. I wrapped it all up in some white bread and took a pot of coffee up on the deck to relax. I had turned out all the lights in the house and dusk was just starting to fall. The stars twinkled on in the bits of sky I could see between railing and roof and the lights of the city started to come on around me. I love a city at that time of night, no matter what city it is. The whole place feels special and…I dunno, magical. Makes me feel like a kid again, without all the black eyes and home-alone nights.
I finished my dinner of breakfast and sat sipping black coffee until the moon rose. It was full tonight, or near-enough so I couldn’t tell any difference, and the backyard was full of shadows and pools of light. I finished the coffee and just sat in the Adirondacks until I started feeling sleepy. I stood up to go back inside and then I saw him.
There was someone climbing over my back fence. I couldn’t tell much about him from here, but he was just coming down the inside of the fence, dressed all in black. I didn’t see any flashes of skin, so he was either painted black or was black to begin with. I slid the sliding glass door open as quietly as I could and slipped back inside. I ran down the stairs and to the back door in the living room.
Looking out, I could just seem him approaching the house. It was a black guy, alright, and he had a pistol in his hand. He was nervous, glancing around with every step he took. I jumped over to the kitchen and slipped out the backdoor there. He was so caught up in sneaking up to the house that he didn’t see me walking up behind him. I caught him with an arm around the throat. His gurk of surprise, and no little part choking, was the only noise he made. I took the gun from his hand, threw it into the bushes, and then drug him back to the shed. I didn’t want any noise that close to the street.
I opened the door to the shed and pulled him inside after me. I pulled the chain to turn on the light and sat him down in a corner. I stood over him and I could see the fear in his eyes. Why do people hire such green kids to do their dirty work for them? That’s what I want to know.
“Who are you? Why are you here?” I said, gruff and loud as I could. I wanted him to piss his pants with fear, or at least want to. He sputtered a few consonants so I yelled at him again. “Who the fuck are you!? Answer me or I’ll cut off a fucking toe.” I picked up a saw and waved it in front of his face.
“J — Joe!” he said. “Joe Williams! Jesus Christ! Don’t kill me! Mar — Marcus sent me! He said you owed him money, roughed up one of the girls. Jesus, man, don’t kill me!”
Marcus! Hadn’t he gotten himself in enough trouble? What is it with these punk kids thinking they can get themselves into all this shit and then pull themselves back out? I was sick of this Marcus guy. He skimmed, stealing money from the bosses. He lied to me. And now he’d sent some sixteen-year-old boy to take me out, instead of coming to deal with me like a man. I couldn’t take it anymore.
I turned out, not saying anything to the kid, the would-be assassin. I could hear him fidgeting behind me. I stood there, head down, trying to decide what to do. A minute passed, then two. There was a clock mounted on one of the walls of the shed and I could hear it ticking away the seconds. I started counting them, a habit I’ve had for years, and when I got to three hundred and sixty, I cleared my throat. “Do you know where Marcus is,” I asked. I looked back over my shoulder when I didn’t hear an answer and Joe was nodding. “Good. You’re taking me to him.” His eyes went wide and he started sputtering, but I picked him up by the front of his sweatshirt and he started nodding again. I grabbed a hammer off of the workbench and we left the shed.