Mike walks out of the store with the stash under his arm and Im ready to go, all hopped up on lukewarm coffee and stale donuts, sugar wiring me up hard and smooth as the night wears on. Mike, hes walking to the car, and thats when the bullet hits him right between the eyes and he plunges to the ground a headless pole no mast no rudder aimless and falling, smashes against the concrete and lies there, oozing.
Theres no more sound, complete silence, and when I look up theres just Mike lying on the ground with half his head intact, the other half pulp. Theres people in the store taking pictures with their phones. Im stuttering, trying to justify it all, this fucking mess, Mike, hes dead, hes gone, and the only thing I can think of at that moment is that couldve been me, had I not been lazy. Id asked him to take the cheese, cause my legs were aching, a war-wound from way back when. That couldve been me out there with my brain a coiling puddle on the filthy concrete, mixing with the spilled remains of someones vomit. I cry. Shits not hardcore, a man would take that shit raw and choke it down, but Im so fucking scared because my next thought is, that could still be me; what if theyre watching? So I start the car and hurry away with Mike lying dead on the ground, in the parking lot of Jimmy Bs, falling back into the distance as I drive away, hoping I can forget but knowing I cant, never will.
#
Now I spend the next few days holed up in my room doing nothing in particular. Just drink a bit, cook for myself, live on canned soup and bacon. Bacon for breakfast, soup for lunch, bacon again for dinner. I dont leave the window open so the room is filthy with the smell of frying fat, good at first but when it coats the walls, it gets slick with congealing blubber the way candlewax drips down and forms a hard coating on the surface of a table.
And when I do go outside a week has passed and Mike is just another statistic, a white dude dead in a black neighborhood, a curiosity but nothing more than that. Another drive-by, another dead junkie with a bag of cheese under his arms. It was all for the fucking cheese. They fucking killed him right in front of me and all I did was pause and stare like a little fucking bitch, they fucked over my partner, my bro, but all I did was run. Its a goddamn shame. I walk back to my car after picking up some lo-mein for dinner and along the way I fancy that everyone is staring at me, blaming me, accusing me of cowardice and so much more. There I make my goddamn decision. Im going to kill those fucks. Im no fucking coward. Ill look them in the eyes and pull the trigger and itll buck in my hands as the bullet whispers through their heads. A whisper a whimper and then a bang to leave that splatter on the wall.
#
Its not hard to track them down. Got the info from old Rivera at the Jimmy Bs, where Mike died. Hed been there when Mike had gone in to make the pick-up, and he nods when I ask if hed seen anything.
Two Jews, he says.
I know exactly who hes talking about. Theres only one Jewish duo in the neighborhood, Ibby Yakub and his twin, Slim Yakub. Slim Yakub isnt slim at all, hes fat, hes a big dude but hes slim in the sense that hes clever, hes the brains of the operation; theyre half Afrikaner, some dudes from Africa, fleeing Mandela. Theyre not exactly kosher, always chomping on BLTs like they dont give a goddamn damn. I dont know them that well, just hear the stories because theyre infamous, sort of. You gotta be infamous when youre two Jewish mobsters in a thug-driven world. Theres a story of how one poor fucker crossed them and robbed their mother, and the next day ended up with fifteen nails driven into his head, the pointy end facing outwards. Now thats gotta hurt.
Drives up in an Escalade and this guy with chops and a black hat pokes out with a hunting rifle and pops your friend in the face. You heard that, right?
Thanks, I tell Rivera.
#
But the kind of firepower Ill need to take down the Hebrew Terrors are going to be immense. They got a crew with them, I know this for a fact: met them once when Mike and I were trawling the lower Salisbury for hot chicks and cool dimes. Smoke furling into the roof of the SUV as we drove slowly along the Carlisle Boulevard as one of Dicke Van Mickeys sluts crooned at our passing car. Then bam, there they are roughing up a poor fuck who probably didnt pay up in time: a junkie looks like, hes sobbing and shaking as the Yakubs crew beats the fuck out of him and kicks him as he sobs and rolls on the ground, his knees drawn to his skinny bare chest. Arms riddled with red dots, syringe tracks, poor fucking junkie getting his ribs cracked for a fifth of Turkey, maybe, no more no less.
Those are some hardcore fucks and Im one man. Just one man, wouldve been two but they took out Mike. I was his brother, we were brothers, yet I let him die and ran away with my dick tucked between my legs.
#
In the backyard my grampa once buried his box of tools. He was no carpenter or lumberjack, no plumber, no electrician. He made holes but they werent the kind of holes an engineer would make, although he was an engineer of sorts: he was a technician in the art of killing, a deathmatician, doctor fucking doom.
I dig it up. It had been buried three score years ago on a wintry day, or so the story went. I dig it up and find a small wooden box, and when I open it up, inside is a cowboy gun. One of those guns where one loads in six bullets and shoots six times before reloading six more bullets. The triple six of doom. I take the cowboy gun and its weight is heavy, reassuring, cold steel still gleaming, fresh and eager to take life. A deathmaticians gun.
#
Hey, I tell the Latino dude guarding the lower entrance to Slim Yakubs mansion, I dont wanna kill you. Can you move?
Then I dont really give him the time to answer because Im fucking scared. I whip out the cowboy gun and cap him right between the eyes. The alarm goes off and the whole place becomes a warzone. I got five more shots before I need to reload. Two men leap out and I lead a little and bam, bam, two shots and two holes open up on their chests, red blossoming on their filthy wife-beaters, hairy armpits flashing as their arms go akimbo as they fall, fall, fall to the ground just like how Mike died. I dash inside and its dark, someones cut the power; someone takes a shot, he misses, I dont miss, Im all juiced up and Im fucking Billy the goddamn Kid taking out Captain Kidd, if they ever fought. I pop him in the head, two shots left. Theres a chick trying to get dressed on the couch, old Sailor Jerry bottles littering the dirty carpet, with the TV in the corner of the room playing ESPN on mute. I ignore her and move on. Nothing in the room adjacent to it. I walk down the hall. Another door; nothing, just a bedroom, and I try the room opposite to that one. I try to kick the door down but it holds strong so I just use the doorknob and open it slowly. Its a bathroom. A fat guy sits naked in the bathtub with a little ducky floating in the greying pool. Slim Yakub.
I had a speech all planned out but all I can say is, Fuck you, before he opens his mouth to either scream or beg and I fit in a nice bullet right into that not-so-kosher mouth. He slumps back and the ruin of his jaw falls in trailing pieces down his hairy chest.
#
I look for Ibby Yakub but hes not there. In the laundry room I find a junkie pissing in his pants, hes so fucking scared as I stride in like the motherfucking ghost of Abe Lincoln.
I point my cowboy gun at him. He yelps. I ask him where Ibbys gone.
His mother, the junkie says.
I beat him around a bit but I leave him alive, albeit with a few less teeth.
#
Violence is addictive. I can feel it coiling down my arms. The gun is responsive and the smell of gunpowder is intoxicating. Smoke everywhere. Hazy, fuzzy. Perhaps this is what my grampa felt. I can empathize.
Its a short drive to his mothers house. I wonder if anyones called the cops. Ibby probably doesnt suspect a thing. I get to the second floor with the blood of other men still coating my jeans. My shoes squelch and squeak on the floor, and leave faint red tracks. On the second floor, its room 315. The corridor smells of boiled cabbages. In front of the door I pull the cowboy gun out from where Id tucked it in on the hem of my jeans, the barrel sitting warm against my crotch.
I knock. Gotta keep my manners. An elderly woman opens it, smiles, and I feel bad as I shove her aside and theres Ibby Yakub starting to rise, shocked, sluggish, much too sluggish. His hands reach for the pistol tucked into a shoulder holster. I have time to aim. One to the chest. He falls back, and down, to the carpet where he leaks and screams. His mother is screaming. I ignore her. I move forward. One step at a time. One foot forward then the other, one after another, and when Im in front of him I kneel before his dying body and pull out a hunk of cheese. Its the same cheese that Mike had gone in to pick up. Id cut a slice out of it with my S9 blade. I tuck it into his mouth like its a harmonica and he realizes it, he knows, before he slumps back and stares at nothing in particular. Dead.
Rest in goddamn peace, Mike.
