Crazy
Tommy's got that crystal stink on him, where his sweat starts to smell
like the shit he's been shoving up his nose. Twitches and shakes.
Says he's been trying to quit, but he's not fooling anybody. I
figure he's trying to get into Vito's good graces, coming out here
tonight with Fat Louie and me to the El Rey Motor Lodge off Pico
Boulevard to wait for a guy who owes Vito a couple hundred K. I
guess I'm supposed to give the kid a chance, see if he can actually do a
night's work without screwing it up. Fat Louie and me have a bet.
His money's on the kid.
We're
parked across the street in Vito's ten year old Le Baron we've been
using for business since he shot Jimmy Callendar and stuck him in the
trunk. He waited a couple days too long to ditch the body.
The car's been cleaned, but when it gets warm outside it still smells.
"Jesus,
can you crack open a window or something?" Fat Louie says.
He's sitting in the back behind the kid. He's not fat. At
least not anymore. He used to be 280. He got his stomach
stapled a couple years ago and now and all he does is drink diet shakes
and run in marathons. He's down to 160.
"Why?"
I ask. "Need some air?" Fat Louie's never minded
the Jimmy smell, but Crazy Tommy's stink must be getting to him.
We've been stuck here waiting for the better part of two hours. I
can feel Fat Louie glare at me. He's got that kind of glare.
"Fuck
you," he says and opens the door. I've pulled the bulbs out
from the interior lights so the car stays dark. Won't do to have
somebody see us sitting over here behind a dumpster. We have a
good view of the motel and we have a picture of the guy. Fat Louie
even met him once when he was dropping off a bet at Vito's place.
I'm
hoping I don't have to kill him. I don't really have anything
against him. I'd rather just beat him up a little, maybe break his
nose and have him fork over the cash. But we've got some plastic
sheeting and a couple rolls of duct tape in the trunk just in case.
Crazy
Tommy's tapping a drum roll on his thighs. It's bad enough he's
strung out, but he's nervous too. A thought occurs to me and I
turn to him. He stops the bass line the minute my eyes land on
his. "What do you do for Vito, Crazy Tommy?"
"Why
do you call me that, Frank?" he asks.
"It's
your nickname. Everybody's got a nickname."
"You
don't," he says.
"No,
I don't." This crazy Jew, Levi Goldberg, tried to give me one
once. Some bullshit thing like Rocky or something. Then one
day he shows up at the morgue with a bullet in his head. Nobody
tried to give me a nickname after that.
The
kid stares at me for a second, wondering if he should press it. He
doesn't. He gets a point. Too many more and I owe Fat Louie
a couple hundred bucks.
"I
sell some weed for him out in Hollywood."
Something
doesn't click. "Been working it long?" I ask.
He
shakes his head. "Nah. Couple of months. But Vito
says I should be doing more. I dunno man. Melissa believes
in me, but I wonder some times."
Shit.
It all falls into place now. Melissa. Vito's youngest
daughter. She's nineteen and has the hormones to match.
Vito's been trying to get her to calm down, but it hasn't taken yet.
Crazy Tommy's just the latest pearl on a long necklace of slackers.
Melissa's
eighteenth birthday Vito sits us all down at his Bel Air house.
Daddy's baby all grown up, prancing around the pool in a blue two-piece
smaller than a goddamn Kleenex. "See that?" he says.
Nobody looks. Everybody nods.
"She's
precious. Sacred. Got that? Anybody fucks with her
answers to me." He's got this habit of slapping the back of
one hand against the palm of the other to make a point. We get the
point.
Vito
gives us standing orders. He knows she's going to fuck around.
It's natural. She's young. But Vito's still her Daddy.
He has final say. These kids she sees, if they don't cut it, they
go away. "Culling the herd," he calls it. We've
culled the herd for him four times already.
Crazy
Tommy says, "What? Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Nothing.
I just wouldn't get too attached to things is all."
He
stares at me, energy buzzing off him like a high tension wire.
Hurt, not sure what to say about it. I'm about to tell him not to
worry, that I didn't mean nothing. Fat Louie's knock on the car
window stops me. "We're on," he says, opening the back
door and grabbing his leather case of knives.
I
look up. There's the guy all right. Walking up the stairs to
his room. Blonde hair, scruffy in a beach bum kind of way,
tattered Hawaiian shirt. There's a swagger to money that this
guy's just not showing. No way he's got two hundred thousand bucks
sitting on him. "Get the tape and plastic."
I
pull on a pair of latex gloves and take out the unregistered Sig-Sauer
Vito gave me for the night. The silencer screws onto the barrel.
Crazy Tommy loads up with the plastic and the tape. He's even more
jittery.
We
wait for the guy to go in and close the door before hurrying across the
street. The parking lot's pretty empty, only a couple of Econoline
vans and this beat up Cabriolet convertible our guy drove up in.
Fortunately the motel office is around the side and the vans block the
view. There's next to no cover and the streetlamps are bright
enough they look like spotlights.
"Okay,"
I say to Crazy Tommy. "This one's easy. We go in and
rough him up. Get the money and bail."
"What
if he doesn't have the money?"
I
just look at him.
Crazy
Tommy turns a little green. I think he might be coming down from
his high. I just hope he doesn't puke on his shoes like the last
of Melissa's boys we had out with us. I have him and Fat Louie
hang back while I check the door. It's one of those hollow deals
with a crappy Schlage lock on it. No reason to pick it. I'm
a big guy. One kick and the lock snaps right out.
Our
guy comes wide eyed out of the bathroom with his pants around his
ankles, waddling like a penguin, toilet paper stuck to his shoes.
Fat Louie comes in behind me, sees this and laughs his ass off.
It's pretty funny. So funny, in fact, that neither one of us
notices the Saturday Night Special he's got in his hand.
It's
a dinky little .22, good for popping cans and pissing off squirrels, but
he gets lucky. The shot tags Fat Louie square through the left
eye. Those short barrels are louder than fuck and I can't even
hear myself yelling. I squeeze off a couple of rounds from the Sig
and tear two ragged holes in the guy's chest. He drops like
someone's cut the strings on a puppet.
The
kid stands in the doorway, mouth hanging wide, plastic sheets dangling
in limp fingers. I grab him, pull him in, shut the door.
"Turn off the lights," I tell him, smacking him in the right
direction to get him moving.
The
lock on the door's too far gone so I shove one of the two particle board
chairs up against it. It won't stop a cop, but if we're lucky,
there won't be one. This neighborhood has more gunshots than cars
on the 405 freeway at rush hour. "I said turn off the goddamn
lights." He slaps at the switches, frantic.
The
streetlamps outside cast dim shadows through the curtains making the
room gray and yellow. The only sound is the radio tuned to some
classic rock station. Crazy Tommy's crying in the corner, knees
hitched up under his chin, rocking on his heels. I wait ten
minutes ducked under the window, listening. Nothing.
Fat
Louie and his killer are draining on the carpet. In this light
blood's like oil, black and glistening. The puddles are turning
into shallow pools. There's no way we're keeping this one clean.
I grab some of the plastic sheets, flap them out next to Fat Louie.
"Gimme
a hand here," I say. The kid just stares at me. I walk
over to where he's huddled whimpering and give him a kick to the shin.
"I said gimme a hand. Are you deaf?"
"They're
dead," he says.
"Help
me load 'em up." We drag the bodies onto the tarps. I
pull the edges up and over, roll them around and tape them tight.
There's blood all over them.
The
kid's starting to calm down. Quicker than I expected. Point
in his favor. He gives me a hand pulling the bodies near the back
window without me having to tell him. I'm planning on tossing them
out the window down into the alley below. I can pull the car up
and stick them into the trunk. I can get at least four bodies in
it if I have to. Eight if I get creative.
The
kid's gotten almost efficient, but he's still shaking. He's rinsed
his hands and grabbed a towel. He's wiping stuff he might have
left prints on. More points. He misses the doorknob of the
bathroom. That'll cost him. He drops the towel a couple of
times. Getting sloppy.
And
then he does it. He's bending down to pick shell casings up off
the floor, doesn't notice the one that slips out of his hand and rolls
under the bed. I'm betting the cops can lift a nice, fat
thumbprint off the brass.
"This
happen a lot?" he asks. This whole time he hasn't said a
word, just hunkered down and done his job. I prefer quiet.
"Not
usually. Guys like this they usually skip town. A couple
times a year somebody gets brave." He nods like he expected
this answer.
"You
didn't answer me back in the car," he says. "Why you
call me Crazy Tommy."
"Vito
told me that was your name."
"But
why? I thought he only gave people he trusted nicknames. I'm
not sure he even likes me."
"Of
course he doesn't like you," I say. "You're fucking his
baby daughter." I give him a second to let this sink in.
Watch the question form in his eyes.
"Vito
gives everybody a chance," I say. "You, me, Fat Louie
over there. Everybody gets a chance. If you work out, you're
in."
"And
if I don't?" He's eyeing the Sig like it's a rattlesnake.
"I
shoot you in the head and dump your body like I did the other four
boyfriends."
Crazy
Tommy gets real still. He stops breathing. I bet if it
weren't so dim I could see the color drain from his face. I
chuckle and smile. Big joke. Ha ha.
He
finally lets out his breath. "Shit man, you had me going
there," he says. "For a second I thought you were
ser-" Two shots from the Sig cut him off with a sound like a
baseball bat hitting a car seat.
"Sorry,
kid. Just culling the herd."
Copyright 2006 by
Stephen Blackmoore
Stephen Blackmoore lives in Los
Angeles with his wife and two immense dogs, writing about his city more
than is probably healthy. He is currently working on a novel.
He can be reached at his website http://lanoir.blogspot.com.
