Winter came early.
Which usually happened when he
was with Tabitha. Or Libby. Or the fat chick from the drugstore. He
tried to last longer, but just couldn’t. He told every girl it only
happened with her, and they all believed him. Just like they believed
him when he said he got the name Winter because he was such a cold
motherfucker. That sounded much better than the truth. He got it because
he was so white. Winter wasn’t an albino, but Goddamn, he was white.
His mother used to say that he made Woody Allen look like George
Hamilton.
Winter’s real name was
Freddie Smirz, but nobody called him Freddie. Except Sebastian.
Sebastian never called him Winter. Only Freddie. Or Powder.
Tabitha mumbled something about
cuddling. Fuck, he hated cuddling. Instead, Winter said he had to pee
and rolled off the futon.
Winter stood at Tabitha’s
toilet, peeing out the Bushmills he’d poured in all night. He thought
about Sebastian. Thought about what a cock Sebastian was. Thought about
how cool it was gonna be when he killed him. Winter farted as he
finished peeing, didn’t flush, and walked back into the bedroom.
“I gotta go,” he said,
looking at Tabitha’s big pink nipples, but feeling nothing stir inside
his pants.
“But it’s like, nighttime,”
she said.
“Yeah,” Winter said,
pulling a Camel from the deck and sparking it to life. “I’m, what do
you call it, nocturnal.”
Winter dressed and walked into
the night. He had to park his 1964 Buick Wildcat a block from Tabitha’s
apartment, and that made him nervous. Not because the car was anything
to look at. The vinyl top was ripped, the wheel wells rusted, and the
paint oxidized. But because inside, it carried the rare 425 “Nailhead”
motor. A large, loud, nasty piece of Detroit engineering that, if he
could ever get a little bit ahead, Winter was going to fix up, turning
the Wildcat into the meanest street racer this side of... he didn’t
know what.
The car rumbled to life and
Winter headed for the Stumble Inn, the bar he owned. Well, owned in the
sense that his name was on the deed and the liquor license, and any
other legal documents. But that’s where his ownership ended. Jean-Luc
Sebastian owned the Stumble Inn. It was where he laundered all his
money. Freddie Smirz had no criminal record and so, for a grand a week
and free food, booze, and dope, Winter allowed his real name to be used
for all legal and tax purposes. Winter thought it was cool. At least for
the first couple of years. But lately, Sebastian was bugging the crap
out him.
All Winter wanted was to get a
little bit ahead. Fix up the Wildcat, maybe get one of them plasma TV’s.
So he was always asking Sebastian about ways to make a little something
extra. Winter was good at selling dope. He'd done it before and never
been busted. He wanted to make some sales for Sebastian. But Sebastian
said no. Winter was “not allowed” to sell dope. Not allowed. Like a
freaking toddler or something. Hell, it was Winter’s place. He could do
whatever he wanted. Okay, so it was Sebastian’s place, but fuck,
Winter worked there everyday. Winter did all the heavy lifting. That
chubby French fuck just showed up whenever, sat in his office and did
God knows what. And took all the freaking profits. Fuck that. If Winter
couldn’t get a little something, then he would just take a little
something. After all, Winter was a cold motherfucker.
* * *
Jean-Luc Sebastian thought
Freddie Smirz looked like the little bald boy in that movie “Powder.”
And he knew Freddie liked to be called Winter, so Jean-Luc would never
do it. Freddie was too stupid to get what he wanted. But Jean-Luc liked
that. Never hire anyone smarter than yourself. That is what his mentor, Miami
Rose, had always said.
Jean-Luc came up through the
ranks of Montreal’s criminal organizations. He had been, how you say,
on the right time at the right place, and was hired by Gord Yost, a
criminal legend in Montreal. Then, after Yost ended up as part of the
foundation for Montreal’s first Quiznos, Jean-Luc hooked it up with
Three-Ring Willie. But Willie’s problems with the RCMP caused Jean-Luc
to leave Montreal for the sunny Florida, where he went to work for Miami
Rose. Jean-Luc did not have a problem working for a woman, after all he
loved all women, even the ugly ones. And Miami Rose was one fucking ugly
woman.
For two years Jean-Luc worked
under Miami Rose, listening, learning, obeying, and eventually, fucking.
Yes, so she had a face like, how you say, a bucket of hands, but she had
decent jubblies, and Jean-Luc figured she had not been fucked in years.
And never by a Frenchman. Miami Rose knew everything about the business,
and taught it all to Jean-Luc. And she always had a very clear view of
the future.
Miami Rose would tell told
Jean-Luc that in life, there was an order to all things in life. And
there were unseen, unwritten laws that govern the order. Laws we have no
control over. She used to say that someday someone younger and smarter
would come and kill her, just as she had killed someone older and dumber
to start her career. “The law and the order” is what she called it.
Three months later, Jean-Luc
killed Miami Rose and took over her operation.
* * *
Winter pulled up outside the
Stumble Inn. It was closing time. Winter figured that’s why there were
only three cars in the parking lot: an El Camino owned by a local
barfly, Luther Dane’s Matador... and Sebastian’s Jaguar.
Fuck.
Winter took the Taurus .38
Special from the glove box and stuffed it into his coat pocket. If
Sebastian said one more time that Winter couldn’t get a little
something for himself, that would be it. Stick that gun in his
motherfucking French face and pull the trigger.
Winter nodded to Dane, the
bartender, and made his way to the office in back.
“You keeping bankers’ hours
now?” the lone remaining customer slurred.
“Go home, Kelso,” Winter
said, and pushed open the door marked PRIVATE.
The first thing he saw was the
massive figure of Proudstar, Sebastian’s personal thug. A full-blooded
Crow Indian, Proudstar was a fly’s ass under six-four, and a pair of
them over three hundred pounds. He stared blankly at Winter, like he
always did, and Winter wished he hadn’t brought the gun.
“Where you been, Freddie?”
Sebastian asked in that lame French accent that Winter just knew was fake.
“Had to go out for a while,”
Winter answered, his vision still full of Crow Indian. “It was cool,
Luther had everything covered.”
“Luther Dane is zee fucking
criminal.”
“We’re all criminals,
Sebastian. Luther’s on parole. He needed a gig and this place needed a
bartender.”
Winter managed to squeeze
around Proudstar to see Sebastian sitting behind the desk, feet up, a
pile of money in front of him.
“Jesus, where’d all that
come from?” Winter couldn’t help but asked.
“Never mind for you, Freddie,”
Sebastian said. “Your only concern is the legal running of this establishment. You are here to make sure
the police never have a reason
to even glance in the direction of the Stumble Inn.”
“Everything’s cool, man,”
Winter said, nervously fingering the Taurus, kicking himself for
thinking he could actually kill Sebastian.
“Everything is not cool like
you say, you stupid hooker.”
“You mean Hoosier,” Winter
said.
“Shut the fuck up,”
Sebastian said. “You don’t have the clue to the puzzle. You always
say, ‘Oh, please, Mr. Sebastian, please, let me be the mule for you.
The one who carries the dope.’ Shit, you don’t have a fucking clue
to the puzzle about anything.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to
be a mule, I said I wanted—“
“Shut the fuck up, Powder. I
need you clean. You want to help me, then you be the fucking honest Joe
running this place. Do you know if you get, how you say, pinched, then
the whole world goes down the shitter. See how much I trust you, Powder?
If you go down, we all go down zee Hershey Road.”
“Highway,” Winter mumbled,
but Sebastian didn’t hear him. “Look, man, I appreciate that you
trust me and all, but that’s what I’m talking about, man. Trust is
cool, you know? So how about extending that trust some? I’m just
looking to get a little something for myself, you know? Get a little bit
ahead. And the grand a week thing isn’t really cutting it.”
“That’s fifty-two fucking G’s
a fucking year for sitting on your fucking white ass. What the fuck? Do
you believe this guy, Proudstar?”
Proudstar said nothing.
“I understand it’s decent
money for what I do, but I just need to get a little bit ahead. Besides,
it’s my name that’s—“
Sebastian gave some sort of nod
to Proudstar and before Winter could finish his sentence, the giant
Indian punched Winter in the face. The blow felt like a sledgehammer and
Winter’s ass followed his head over a file cabinet.
Winter’s world was suddenly
fuzzy and his face burning. He reached out to find the floor to push up
with, but instead felt the Taurus, which must have fallen from his
pocket.
“Gun,” he heard Proudstar
say in that slow, deep voice.
“Gun? What gun?” said
Sebastian.
Winter looked up in time to see
a hazy Proudstar stepping toward him. A huge hand came down at him and
Winter pulled the trigger. There was a cracking sound and Winter’s
nostrils filled with cordite.
“What the fuck?” yelled
Sebastian.
“He shot my hand,”
Proudstar said, matter-of-factly.
Winter’s vision cleared some
more and he saw Proudstar towering over him, a bloody hole in his hand.
“Jeezus fucking Christ,”
yelled Sebastian. “Kill the fucker.”
Proudstar leaned down again and
Winter fired two more times, hitting Proudstar in the shoulder and the
mouth. Blood, flesh and teeth rained down on Winter.
His heart was beating a hundred
miles an hour, and for a moment he thought he might vomit, then he saw
Sebastian running for the office door. Winter blindly pulled the trigger
again, and heard Sebastian squeal, then go down, blood pumping out of a
new hole in his ass.
Winter got to his feet. He
looked around, taking in what had happened. Proudstar was trying to get
to his feet. His lower jaw dangling where his mouth had been. Sebastian
was writhing on the floor, wailing, and bleeding.
“All I wanted was to get a
little bit ahead,” Winter said more to himself than anyone in the
room.
Proudstar grabbed Winter’s
ankle and Winter fired again, aiming for the top of Proudstar’s head,
but hitting the Indian in the shoulder, the same one that already had a
bullet in it.
The office door opened and
Luther Dane burst in.
“Holy fucking shit,” Dane
said.
Winter spun toward Dane, gun
out. Dane raised his hands.
“Whoa, buddy, it’s
me. It’s Luther,” he said.
Winter kept trying to blink
away the pain in his face, and get his breathing under control.
“Are you shot?” Dane asked
him.
“Huh? No. I shot them.”
“Yeah, no shit. But your
face. What happened?”
Winter touched his cheek and
nearly blacked out from the pain. “He hit me,” Winter said,
indicating Proudstar, who was now on his hands and knees trying to talk.
But no sound came out of where his mouth used to be. Just something that
looked like red curdled milk.
“Kill him, Dane. Kill that fucking Powder,” Sebastian screamed.
Dane looked at Winter and
Winter pulled the trigger, hitting Dane square in the stomach. Dane
collapsed right where he stood.
“Fuck,” Winter screamed. He
looked around again. Sebastian was crying now, his entire ass covered in
blood. Proudstar had four bullets in him and was still trying to get to
Winter. But he wasn’t making much progress. And there was Dane. Maybe Winter’s only
friend, lying in a heap, eyes wide, hands clutching his
wounded gut.
Winter watched Dane lose control
of his bowels and then die. He started hyperventilating.
“Freddie,” Sebastian said.
“Help me. Get me out of this place and we forget the whole thing.
Please, Freddie.”
Winter stared at Sebastian,
trying to remember what the rest of his plan had been. Kill Sebastian
and then what? Winter couldn’t remember. But he knew kill him was the
first part of the plan to get a little bit ahead. Only now it seemed
like a really fucked up plan. He pulled the trigger.
Empty.
Winter didn’t feel like going
out to the Wildcat for more bullets. He looked around the office and
decided the fax machine was the heaviest thing. He unplugged it, carried
it over and dropped it on Sebastian’s head. Sebastian yelped and a big
gash opened up on the Frenchman’s head. But he didn’t die. Winter
dropped the fax machine onto him again. This time it smashed into
pieces, but Sebastian was still very alive.
“Fuck,” Winter said.
He thought about checking
Proudstar for a gun, but figured if he had one, he would have used it by
now.
Winter looked at his watch.
Looked at the sobbing Sebastian and then at Proudstar. Fuck, the big
Indian looked like some creature from a horror movie, still trying to
crawl after Winter. He decided he had to get more bullets.
Winter ran through the bar, out
to the parking lot, unlocked the Wildcat, opened the glove box, took six
more shells out of the box and loaded the Taurus.
He ran back into the bar,
locking the door behind him, and flipping the CLOSED sign around.
Back inside the office Sebastian
had gotten to his feet. He made a weak charge at Winter with a letter
opener, and Winter shot him in the face. Sebastian fell on top of Dane.
Winter looked at Proudstar. The
big Indian wasn’t moving toward him anymore, just lying there, staring
at Winter, red soap oozing from where the other half of his face had
been. Winter shot Proudstar three more times.
* * *
Winter turned on the light
inside the Stumble Inn men’s room and stared at himself in the mirror.
“Fuck,” he said.
The entire right side of his
porcelain-white face was dark purple, almost black, where Proudstar had
hit him. He looked like one of them harlequin clowns his mother used to
collect. And suddenly that searing pain returned to his cheek, the
adrenaline finally subsiding enough for the pain to come through. Winter
screamed, feeling like he could literally feel the pieces of cheekbone
rolling around inside his skin.
He staggered to the bar and
grabbed the Bushmills bottle and drank as much as he could.
“That’s gonna leave a mark.”
Winter spit up the Bushmills,
and turned to see Kelso, sitting at the end of the bar, right where he’d
been all night.
Winter pointed the Taurus at
him.
“Can I get a refill before you
shoot me?” Kelso asked. “I already paid Dane for it, but he went
running back there before he refilled my glass.”
Winter blinked. He thought about
the last ten minutes of his life. Three dead bodies and a crime scene he
could never clean up. He slid the bottle of Bushmills to Kelso.
As he watched Kelso down the
whiskey, Winter tried to decide if he should kill him. Is there much of
a difference between a triple homicide and a quadruple?
As if reading his thoughts,
Kelso set the bottle down and slurred, “If you kill three it’s a
triple homicide. If you kill four, you’re a fucking serial killer.
Least that’s the way it is in my book.”
Winter thought about that.
“Why should I let you live?”
Winter asked.
The drunk tried to focus on
Winter’s image in the bar mirror. He said, “Because you never want
to go through it alone. Not the first time, anyway. Especially not the
first time. It’ll just fester and grow down inside you, like some kind
of mutant festering thing, until it eventually eats you up from the
inside out.”
Winter puked into the trashcan
behind the bar.
“You help me with this, and
you got free booze the rest of your life,” Winter said, wiping his
mouth with a bar rag.
Kelso said, “I won’t live
long enough for that to be a good deal. How about I get what Sebastian
was giving you. A grand a week, and free eats.”
“How do you know about that?”
“I might be a drunk, but I ain’t
stupid.”
Winter squeezed his eyes shut.
God, he wished he was with the fat chick right now, over at her place on
Manchester, watching that show she likes to watch, the one where they
rebuild people’s houses.
“Hey, Johnny Dangerously. Kill
me or not, but don’t just stand there with your dork in your hands.”
Winter came to, nodded and led
Kelso to the office.
Two hours later, the bodies had
been stuffed into the Wildcat’s trunk, the bone and brain matter
scooped up with a dustpan, and the office floor cleaned with bleach.
Winter stood there in his underwear, the drunk having suggested Winter
burn his blood-soaked clothing.
“What the fuck you looking at?”
Winter said, seeing Kelso glancing down at his package.
“You’re almost as white as
your freaking underwear. Is that why they call you Winter?”
“Hell, no. They call me that
cuz I’m a cold motherfucker. Ask the three in the trunk.”
“Right,” Kelso belched. “What
about the money?”
“Fuck, I forgot about it,”
Winter said, looking at the pile of bills still sitting on the desk. “Gotta
be ten grand, maybe more.”
“Twenty-two thousand, five
hundred,” Kelso said. “Same amount Sebastian’s been bringing in
here every week for a year.”
“I suppose you want something
for helping me tonight,” Winter said. “That’s cool. How much?”
“Fifty-fifty split?”
“Fuck you, Kelso. I took the
risk here tonight. And I didn’t need your help. All you did was save
me some time.”
“No argument on that,” said
Kelso. “How about you take the cash to my place and wait. Have a
drink, and a fucking shower. I take your car and go dump the bodies and
your clothes. That should be worth at least, maybe five grand?”
Winter thought about it. He
could just take off with the cash, but Kelso would have the Wildcat, and
now Winter had enough to fix her up. Besides, Winter was liking the idea
of not going through this whole thing alone. His friend Dane was dead.
Maybe Kelso would become his friend.
“Deal,” said Winter. “But
be careful driving it. Don’t try and see how fast she moves.”
“Hokay,” said Kelso.
Winter watched him drive away in
the Wildcat before starting up the El Camino.
* * *
Kelso’s apartment was a crummy
place that reminded Winter of Libby’s. Except Kelso’s smelled like
burning beans. He opened a Moosehead he found in the fridge, took a long
drink, then sat down and started counting the money. He got bored after
about three thousand and decided to wander.
He looked at some photos Kelso
had tacked to the wall. Looked like vacation pictures or something.
Kelso, in Hawaiian shirts. On boats or the beach. They all showed him
with his arm around one of the ugliest women Winter had ever seen. Last
time he’d seen a head that bad was on... Winter didn’t know what.
Winter thought a woman like that could ruin a vacation, but Kelso looked
happy.
“That’s my sister, Rose,”
Kelso said.
Winter jumped and spun around.
Kelso was standing there with a Beretta nine millimeter pointed at
Winter.
“Fuck.”
“Sit down,” said Kelso,
sounding much more sober than at the bar. Winter sat. Kelso sat across
from him, the money piled on the coffee table between them.
“Just take it, Kelso,” said
Winter. “Take the fucking money. I was just looking to get a little
bit ahead. I wasn’t looking for no trouble.”
“The money’s yours,” Kelso
said. “All of it.”
“What do I gotta do?”
“You already did it. You
killed the man that killed my sister.”
Winter ran through his string of
murders. “Proudstar? Or Dane? Or--”
“Sebastian. Jean-Luc Sebastian
worked for my sister in Florida, and after pretending to care about her,
he killed her and took everything.”
“That’s why you were in the
bar.”
“That’s why I’ve been
coming into that bar for a year. I tracked every move Sebastian made
since killing Rose. I planned on taking him out sometime in the next
week, but you took care of that.”
“I was just trying to get a
little something for myself,” said Winter, almost apologetically.
“Well, you did. Twenty-two
thousand, five hundred. You might want to buy a new ride.”
“No, I’m fixing the Wildcat
up. She’s got a four twenty-five Nailhead under the hood.”
“Whatever,” said Kelso,
sipping some Gatorade. “Here’s the square. The Stumble Inn? It was
bought with my sister’s money after Sebastian killed her and ran away
to St. Louis. So, technically, it’s hers. Which means it’s mine now.
I’m taking over Sebastian’s op.”
“What, uh, what does that mean
for me?” Winter asked, trying not to look at the gun still being
pointed at him.
“Means you get to keep on
keeping on as the proud owner of a small business. And you get to keep
banking a grand a week, plus free booze and eats.”
“Aren’t you afraid that
Sebastian’s people might come after you?” Winter asked.
“I’m sure they will,” said
Kelso. “It’s the law and the order.”
Copyright 2006 by
Paul Guyot
Paul Guyot is a recovering television writer. His
credits include several failed pilots as well as Judging Amy and
that mother of all crime shows, Felicity.
His short fiction can be found in GREATEST HITS
(Carroll & Graf, 2005), HOLLYWOOD AND CRIME (Pegasus Books, 2007),
and his story What a Wonderful World was chosen for
inclusion in the MWA anthology BURDEN OF THE BADGE (Little, Brown,
2007).
