Bullets Are My Business (9781101616413) (6 page)

I Can't Keep Track at This Point

In and out of consciousness, I can hear sounds. I can see images as though they're television snippets. It's like channel surfing. And there ain't nothing on. Doorbell buzzes. Door opens. Door shuts. Becky's here.

Becky talking: “I'm a phlebotomist. I take blood out and I put blood in.”

Jacks talking: “Yeah? There's a lot of fucking blood missing from this body. Rectify it.”

“I'm not a doctor.”

“But you've seen them work?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Then you're the next best thing. Get to work.”

Becky moves to the bed. “How are you, sweetheart?”

I move my lips but nothing comes out. Becky pats my forehead. I met Becky at the bar I was working at. She was a fellow bartender and we were like siblings. She's a nice lady. I feel a needle in my arm. Over and over again. It hurts like a bastard. Maybe she's not so nice after all. I don't have the energy to react. A needle is nothing after a bullet. There's a pause and I'm rolled over onto my side. The needle is in the back of my head now. Another pause. Something is digging around in my thigh. Now the needle. I'm rolled back to face the ceiling. Becky is standing beside me.

Becky talking: “That's the best I can do with a sewing kit.”

Jacks speaking: “It's good enough.”

Becky: “You're sure this is his type?”

Jacks: “I'm just going by what his ID said.”

Megan speaks: “Is he going to be okay?”

No one responds. I hope to hell someone in the room is nodding. Becky is back at my side. A needle is in my forearm.

I've been here before, inches from death's door.

Everything goes from shades of gray to black as the void closes in.

Interlude

Five Years Ago

The first time was all because of a broad. So was the second. I guess a broad has been involved every time. Whether or not she's the one pulling the trigger, a dame is behind all of the pain and suffering in any man's life.

Her name was Eva.

Eva was a real looker. No matter where I went with her, people were always rubbernecking to catch a glimpse. Not that I could blame them. She was unbelievable. She was more Greek goddess than human. Everything about her was eye catching. She had blond hair that you wanted to feel graze across your skin, intoxicating eyes that you would drown in if you stared into them for too long, a body that looked like it was carved out of marble and draped with silk, and a set of legs that went from the pavement under her feet and came close to touching the sky. She was the type of girl that would make you wake up in the middle of the night in desperate need of a cold shower.

She wasn't a dim bulb either. She had a mind like a trap. Eva was one of the few women who could leave me absolutely speechless. She was sheer perfection and she was mine. I always told her that I would do anything for her and I meant it.

But in the end, the only thing she wanted me to do was die.

There's too much to tell about my relationship with Eva. I saw her outside of a bar one evening and I recognized her from a job I did for a bookie. She was his front-of-house girl and used to run the numbers and handle the accounting for him. That night, she was with some upper class, asshole jerk who was getting a little bit too rough. There are several things in this world that get me by the balls. One of which is men who beat on women. Another is silver spoon kids. He had two strikes against him and I let him know that. He made a move to take me down. That's a third thing I can't stand. People who try to knock my block off. I left him in an alleyway, upside down in a garbage can, with more bruises and broken bones than he could count. I took Eva home, and that was that. We were in a committed relationship by the end of the night. It went on for two and a half years.

Now, I could go on for days about our ups and downs, our fights, the way we made love, but all that jazz doesn't really matter so much. I was in love with her and I thought that the feeling was mutual. That's really what everything boils down to. I was saving up to buy her a ring, that's how committed I was. A nice little ditty with a rock in the center. In the end, none of that mattered.

In the end, it all came down to a phone call.

I was just coming home from a long, hard day. Back then, every day was long and hard. I had the bruises to prove it. I hadn't been on my own for very long at that point, after leaving Campbell's employ.

I had just stepped into my apartment when the phone started ringing. I wasn't going to answer it. I went about my business as I normally would, but the phone remained a constant blaring soundtrack in the background. After it rang for the thirteenth time, I knew that whoever was calling wasn't about to give up. I yanked the phone off the cradle and brought it to my ear, just to silence it. In retrospect, I wish I would've just let it ring all night long. Listening to the incessant noise would've been far better than the shit I ended up getting into.

“What is it?”

Eva's voice was waiting for me on the other end of the line. Normally it was sexy, sultry, and immediately soothing. Not this time. She was sobbing. In between her gasps for air, I pieced together that she was asking me to help her. She had been embezzling cash from her employer and he had found out. She told me she had gone to talk to her aunt to see if she could borrow some money, and was stranded on a train platform in Forest Heights and had no way of getting home.

My gut dropped. Forest Heights was a place that I wouldn't have wanted to find myself stranded in broad daylight, and I wasn't about to let anything happen to Eva. I was young and stupid and in love. It was my job to protect her. I calmed her down, asking her what she was doing in Forest Heights in the first place. I told her to catch a cab back to her aunt's house and I would pick her up. I asked her for directions and she told me to just start driving east and to call her from the car and she would give me further directions when I was on the road.

When I hung up the phone, I could feel my stomach drop even further. I would realize, much later, that it wasn't stress, as I originally believed, but instinct kicking in even then, when I was still pretty moist behind the ears. I pushed the feeling aside, grabbed my keys, and made my way to the Lincoln.

The night was heavy and black. I could feel summer moving in fast, and even with the windows rolled down, the air in the car was stagnant. The CD playing was some bluesy jazz mix that I can't remember buying, but it seemed to fit the mood. Dark. Foreboding. The cars passed like silhouettes on the highway. I only had two thoughts floating through my mind, the first being Eva. The second, cops. My vehicle wasn't registered and I had no insurance. Besides that I was carrying. Packing heat in an illegal car. If I got tagged, I was toast.

I'd been on the road for twenty minutes when the phone rang. It was Eva. I told her I was coming into some wealthy town and she told me to turn down the next street. I didn't even question how she knew where I was. My heart was calling the shots. I didn't have it in me to argue.

I don't know why I thought like that. It was almost as if I were under the impression that, if I picked her up, if I came through and saved the day, then she would never leave. Needless to say, that was a joke. Dames can do a funny thing to a guy. That story's been told a thousand different times in a multitude of languages, but, to make it short and sweet, dames make a guy batty. A guy will go to war to prove himself to a woman. He'll blow his paycheck on useless items, he'll change his looks, his clothes, his personality, right down to his very soul. Guys are stupid over women. I was no different when it came to Eva.

Forty-five minutes later, after passing over a river and through the woods, with Eva calling to tell me where to turn every five minutes, I pulled my car to the curb and killed the engine. Glancing in the rearview mirror, I felt a chill run down the length of my spine. I've always fucking hated these kinds of places. Give me a smoky bar filled with degenerates and serial rapists, I feel safe and comfortable. I can deal with the people in those establishments easy. Drop me in suburbia hell, and I'm a step and a half from putting a bullet in my skull. The part of town where Eva's aunt lived, the cookie cutter house, the perfectly manicured lawns, the nice but not too nice cars in the driveways, was dangerous territory. Suburbia was far safer than the ghetto, but it was still dangerous in its own respect. One call from a law-abiding citizen about the shady looking Lincoln parked on the street was enough to put a guy like me away for half a decade.

I called Eva and asked her where she was, wanting to get her in the car and get the hell out of here as soon as possible. She told me that she was inside the house and that she would flick the lights. I stood beside the car and watched as the walkway lights of a nearby house went on and off in rapid succession, almost in tune with Morse code. I was supposed to go to the door, she just needed to grab her stuff. I hung up the phone.

I've replayed the scene a thousand or more times in my head and every single time it always winds up with the same outcome. I walked to the door and raised my fist to knock, just as the door sprung open. The first thing I saw was Eva, standing down the hallway a piece. I remember wondering how Eva had opened the door and moved back down the hall so fast. Then some shadowy fuck grabbed my wrist and pulled me inside. A couple of thumps in the jaw and I was on the floor bleeding from the mouth, attempting to look around the hall in order to get my bearings back in action. I couldn't hear anything but the blood pounding in my head. Eva's lips were moving, but I had no idea what she was saying. It looked like she was saying, “I'm sorry, Levi,” but it could've just as easily been, “Fuck you, chump.” I was picked up by the scruff of the neck and forced forward into the wall. This day could just not have gotten any better.

Somebody grabbed me by the back of the hair, just about pulling my scalp off, and the cold steel barrel of a gun was pressed against the nape of my neck. I couldn't help but tell myself it was over, it was all over. I had no idea what this was all boiling down to, why I was being attacked, what the hell had happened.

Then Campbell stepped into my line of vision. He didn't even cast a glance in my direction. He walked calmly up to Eva and placed an envelope in her hand. Eva never took her eyes off me. She just stared at me with those emotionless green pools, took the envelope, and put it in her purse without a single word. She didn't have to say anything. I knew what was in that envelope. She had sold me up the river for a pile of greenbacks.

In my line of work, that's what's called blood money. The payoff at the end of the rainbow. To this day, I'm curious as to how much dough was in that envelope. How much did it take for Eva to sell me out? What was my net worth in her eyes? Was it enough to pay off the bookie? That is, considering she had even been stealing from the bookie in the first place. In a way, I don't even want to know, but whatever the amount, I'm fairly certain that Eva thought he overpaid.

Campbell leaned in and whispered something in Eva's ear. The look on her face didn't alter in the least. She just nodded. Like a fucking robot. He probably told her to leave town, told her that she never knew a Levi Maurice, told her that she never knew a Campbell, and that she never saw any of this happen. She just nodded to it all. She had her money, what the hell did she care? Campbell stood up straight beside her and Eva turned her head away from me. She walked past me, without even throwing a secondary glance in my direction, straight out the front door, and she disappeared from my life forever.

It didn't dawn on me until then that my exit from Campbell's services had been far too easy. The only reason that son of a bitch had let me go in the first place was because he had already put a tag on my head. Fuck. I should've plugged him when I had the chance. I may have been in a pine box if I had, but at least that kind of death would've been quick and painless. I would've gone out with a bang, and I would've taken that jag-off with me. I wouldn't have been sabotaged. I wouldn't have been sold out. I wouldn't have been here. Waiting.

I cast my eyes around the silent room. I could do the math and I could see that I really had no chance of fighting my way out. Campbell had come prepared. There were at least thirteen guys standing around in the minuscule foyer, all of them packing heat and ready to blow. I knew, then and there, that I was about to die.

I was oddly at peace with it. Granted, I could feel the pent-up rage and frustration at what Eva, beautiful, backstabbing bitch that she was, had done to me. But I wasn't afraid. I was just sick of waiting. I spat some blood on the floor.

“If you're going to kill me,” I said, “let's get this show on the road. I don't have all night.”

Campbell didn't say anything for a good five minutes, which, kneeling on the floor in the midst of thirteen armed men with a thirst for blood, felt like a hell of a lot longer. He stood, almost motionless, aside from the occasional movement as he brought his cigarette to his lips and then back down to his side. He stood there in silence and stared at me, as though he were thinking of what should be done next. As if he didn't already have this whole night mapped out in his head. He looked calm, cool, collected, as he always did, but I could see the fiery anger raging in his eyes as they tore through me. Finally, he finished his cigarette and tossed it aside. He moved past me and toward the front door. As he neared the doorway, he nodded back toward me over his shoulder.

“Take care of him.”

A sharp thunk on the back of my head and I fell forward, back into darkness.

When I opened my eyes, I thought I was in a coffin.

Then I realized that coffins don't come equipped with brake lights or spare tires. Even though the space was confining and the air was far too tight, I hadn't been buried alive. It took me a few seconds to adjust and I realized I was in the trunk of a car. A coffin would've been better. I pulled at my wrists, finding them tied behind my back. That's never a good sign. I didn't know where we were headed and I didn't know how long I had been out for, but I knew right away that time was of the essence. Campbell and his men had been one up on me. Now it was my turn to ambush them. I was flying by the seat of my pants, but I knew I had to be ready for them when they opened the trunk. However, in order to be ready, I knew that I had to free my hands.

I brought my legs up to my chest and silently maneuvered my bound hands around my ass. It was a tricky job and I was trying to be silent so as not to alert the passengers in the car. It was a lot harder than one might have anticipated. My stomach muscles were burning and my legs felt like they were on fire, but after some trying, I was able to move my arms around my legs. I was out of breath, but my hands were in front of me. I checked my shoulder holster. Empty. I patted down all of my pockets. Bupkis. Even my knife was gone. I was going to have to make do with what I had. Nothing.

I reached up and pulled the tape off of my mouth, stifling a yelp as I did. I closed my eyes and attempted to come up with some sort of a game plan. The trunk of the car went red as the brake lights flared to life. My breath caught in my throat as I awaited the sounds of the car doors slamming and people moving toward the trunk, but the sound never came. The brake lights faded and I felt the car move forward. Obviously we had come to a stoplight. I started breathing again. I looked up at the interior of the trunk and a smile crossed my raw lips. A small piece of metal was jutting out just a few inches above me. It was jagged. Just what I needed. Thank God for imperfections.

I placed my hands on either side of the metal and began rubbing the rope back and forth. Every saw motion I made sounded deafening in the confining quarters of the trunk. I hoped no one in the car could hear me. Not that I really had any other options even if they could. I just had to be as fast as possible. I stopped worrying about the noise when the car veered to the left and we clearly headed off the beaten path. Whatever road we were on now was no longer paved. The car jostled from side to side and up and down as we headed forward to our destination. The only problem was, now I had to concentrate harder on keeping my hands where they were supposed to be. Back and forth. Back and forth. After what felt like an eternity, the frayed rope slid away from my arms. I rubbed my wrists and looked around the trunk. The problem I faced now was that I had no arsenal to defend myself with. Had we been on a level playing field, this wouldn't have been an issue. I might have enjoyed a bare-knuckle boxing match. My grandfather had been a boxer. He taught me a thing or two and I could've held my own. From my vantage point, however, I couldn't use my fists. They had guns. All I had was the element of surprise. Even a surprise punch wouldn't be enough, depending on how many people were in the car. I assumed there was more than one.