Old School (5 page)

My own quietus make with bare bodkin, a worthy doggerel, and I have a place for it in my latest work, tragedies now, though it is comedies so many want, but they will sit, stirred by the sweet rending of imagined hearts, and tears will well in their eyes and they will my genius proclaim beyond that so far earned as a clown with some wit to him, and my purse will swell, and I may yet find in plumbing these darker hearts some trick of reason that I can believe long enough to make of myself something other than what I know myself to be and thus live in the comfort of that delusion at least in this life, forestalling that torment I now suffer until such day as I shuffle off this mortal coil and there am reacquainted with my true bride who, with dead eyes, will joyfully lead be to her befouled mattress and introduce me to new and eternal travails that I no longer can hope to escape.

Shuffle off this mortal coil. I must make a note of that.

Exit Interview

“Sure, Mike, I’ll be right up.”

Jesus, quarter to five on a Friday? Just like that little fuck Warren. One of the stupid games Dave Martz had put up with ever since corporate passed him over for the district slot and brought the little shit in from New York. First week, Warren calls all the managers in for one-on-ones, blows smoke up their asses about how they’re all a team, how he’s there to learn, how he wants to know their ideas. Then he cherry-picks all the best shit, takes it out to New York alone and comes back as the new Senior VP. His teammates? Had to throw them under the bus before anybody got to talking about which ideas came from where.

Except for Martz. The sales engine that ramped the numbers up twenty percent in the middle of a shit-ass economy? All of that ran off the lead-tracking system Martz had built from the ground up. Demand generation tied directly to client e-mails, real-time response to automated lead scoring. Data mining coming out of better than 50 field offices, half a dozen internal legacy systems, vendors, logistics, a fucking technical ballet. Warren might have the shiny Ivy League MBA, and he sure as hell had his tongue all the way the right asses, but this baby? It was a goddamn sales Ferrari – it ran like hell, but it was a temperamental little bitch. Without Martz, the wheels would come off inside a quarter.

***

After the promotion, Warren had moved his office up to the power corner on fifteen. SVPs got a decorating allowance, and Warren went with his Shogun theme, little water fountains and the dumb-ass table with his sand garden in it. Corporate saying no raises this year on account of the economy, changing the cut line on Martz’s bonus so he got chump change, and Warren gets to drop almost twenty G’s on his sandbox and the Kill Bill swords on the credenza. Cheryl in accounting had told him. She’d cut the checks.

Martz cell rang as he headed for the elevator lobby. He checked the screen – his daughter.

“Hey Daddy. You going to make the show tonight?” Sally was in her sophomore year up at Northwestern. Drama major, playing the lead in Les Miserables this weekend. Tuition at Northwestern was a killer, but a man provides, and after his wife ran off with the orthodontist, Sally was all he had left to provide for. All he had left, really. He’d never focused on friends – his wife always made those, and she’d got all of them in the divorce.

“Front row, kid, you know that. Just gotta run up to Olympus and see Zeus first.”

“Don’t let him make you late, Dad. “

“Don’t worry, Warren’s just tugging my leash. It’s not like he ever stays late.”

“OK Dad. And hey?”

“Yeah?”

“Love you.”

“Love you too, Kiddo.”

***

Warren was behind his desk, coat on, tie all the way up. Whole damn world had gone business casual, the little fuck didn’t even take his jacket off to sit at his desk. Tailor-made suits – he’d told Martz all about it during his review, explaining how Martz’s demeanor – the khaki pants look, the careless hair, his “overly familiar” ways with some of the staff – were areas where Warren would like to see some improvement. Basically, if Martz wanted to get a head, he was supposed to spend more on clothes and be meaner to people.

When Martz rapped on the door frame, Warren was looking down at some papers, his hands steepled under his chin, Warren held up an index finger to stop Martz in the doorway, not even looking up, his face staying on the papers. It was a good ten seconds before Warren folded the file shut and looked up with his usual, thin smile, like in the five minutes between calling Martz on the phone and Martz rapping on the door, Warren had been clasped to the bosom of capitalism’s muse and Martz had endangered the moment by his mere presence. A couple months back, Warren had pulled the same stunt. But he’d had to step out for a moment during their meeting, so Martz took a peek at the file Warren left on the desk. Shit from Expedia on some ski place in Gstaad.

“No easy way to say this, Dave. I’m still under pressure from New York on headcount. We’re going to have to let you go . . . .”

There was more, some conciliatory crap about what an asset Martz had been to the organization, something about severance and outplacement counseling, but Martz wasn’t tracking it. His mind was racing – the hit his 401(k) had just taken when the market tanked, the COBRA premium, the odds of finding a job at 52, the interns Warren had been stacking in his department, learning his system so Warren could fill his slot with some twenty-something puke at half his salary. And Sally. Jesus. No way he could keep her at Northwestern.

Martz felt as if he were dissipating, actually ceasing to exist, likes he had become so inconsequential that his molecules were drifting apart into a cloud. Warren was still talking, but Martz couldn’t stay, couldn’t listen, had to get up, move, see if he still even controlled his own body. He turned toward the door, lost his balance, caught himself on Warren’s credenza, Warren snapping at him from behind, something about how he wasn’t through, something about being unprofessional. Martz saw the Kill Bill swords on the rack in front of him. He grabbed the top sword, the longer one, and in one motion pulled it from its scabbard, turned, and swung it down into Warren like an ax. The blade sliced into Warren at an angle, where his neck connected to his left shoulder and down, through the collar bone, through the sternum, lodging down in the rib cage, Warren flopping forward on the desk, blood sheeting across the closed file, the expensive wood, raining off the front of the desk onto the silk rug. Martz couldn’t decide whether he meant to do it or not, but it was done.

Then he remembered the life insurance. He’d always maxed out on that during benefit elections, even buying up the extra coverage because it was so cheap. He’d had that policy better than twenty years – way past any suicide exclusion. It was some multiple-of-salary deal. At what he made now, more than enough. Sally could get through school, could focus on the acting, and not have to wait tables for dicks like Warren. Martz pulled the shorter sword, placed the tip against his stomach. He’d heard about the Japs doing this on the History Channel – you ram the blade in and pull it across. How bad could it be?

Martz took a deep breath and drove the blade home, the pain following the blade across his gut like a line of liquid fire.

Bad enough, he decided.

Two-Phones

Smart-ass in front of Slim in the security queue at Midway couldn’t keep his mouth shut, guy dumping his shit in the plastic box, two fucking cell phones and a PDA coming off his belt like he was Batman or something. Cole-Haan slip-ons, money clip with a Franklin on the outside, maybe a grand there unless it was a flash roll. Slim would have dipped that, but he was on a job.

“Take off your belt, take off your shoes, like being in the joint or something,” Two-Phones said, looking back at Slim for the smile and nod that would tell him he’s one of the big swinging dicks. But Slim figured if some hack hadn’t made you bend over and spread your cheeks, then it was nothing like the joint. Slim gave Two-Phones his shower face.

Slim did his first jolt in Joliet back in 1977 when he was 18. Being fresh young white meat in that hole made him the blue-plate special on the shower menu, so he learned early not to give it up easy, and he gave it up so hard that pretty soon he didn’t have to give it up at all. Life got hard. Slim got harder. One look at the shower face and Two-Phones decided to give his act a rest.

The Old Men wanted Fish Garbanzo clipped. Had a couple guys take a run at him last week, but Fish had that mutant nephew of his, Beans, with him – size of a single family home, fists like knuckled cinderblocks, and some kind of handgun savant, like the only part of his brain that worked right was the part about shooting people. Couple hot shit trigger jockeys out of Detroit made the try outside a strip joint on Halstead and Beans left ‘em in the street sporting 9mm bindis.

So the Old Men called Slim. Fish was heading out of town – word was maybe a meet with the Feds. Airport suited Slim. Airport was the one place where Beans wouldn’t be strapped, and Slim didn’t want to get all OK Corral with Beans.

Fish and Beans were maybe a dozen people ahead of Slim, taking a left over to the Food Court. Slim cleared security and watched them from the bookstore at the mouth of A concourse.

Fish was a delicate old fuck, liver-spotted head, sipping on something. Beans sat down with a plate of slop he’d grabbed and started shoveling it in. Beans had been in the joint too, and still ate like it, but Slim figured there were some habits you oughta leave inside.

Then Fish and Beans got up, headed around the corner of the pretend Irish bar for the can, little two-stall job most people didn’t know was back there. Showtime.

TSA pukes will take away your nail clippers, but Slim loved the shit they let you bring through. He had the computer power cord, the one with the half-pound brick of transformer, knotted up into a perfect sap, and he’d used the bench grinder on a toothbrush, filing that down to a point like an ice pick.

Beans was standing by the sinks when Slim pushed into the john. Slim had the sap in his right hand, behind the laptop bag, and the toothbrush tucked up inside his left forearm. He dropped the bag and snapped the transformer down hard right on top of Beans’ head. Not like that was gonna put Beans all the way down, though. Slim slipped under a massive right, let the force of the punch turn Beans, then drove the tooth brush up under the base of Bean’s skull all the way in to the bristles. He could see Bean’s face in the mirror, all Mongoloid looking now, eyes drooping, mouth hanging open. He caught Beans under the arms, backed him into the empty stall and plopped him down on the crapper. Five seconds since Slim hit the door.

“Fuck’s goin’ on?” Fish muttering in the handicap stall. Slim kicked the door in, the old man on the can, pants around his ankles, knees sticking out of his stringy legs like knots on tree branches. Slim waved his left hand up over Fish’s head, got his chin up, then drove the fingers of his right hand into the old man’s throat. Felt the trachea go. All over.

Slim locked the door to the stall then slid out underneath, did the same for Beans. Heard the old man’s bowels let go, dumping a load in the can. Last dump, last meal, whatever. Be a while before anyone forced the stalls open, plenty of time to get gone.

Slim was about to zip the power cord back in his bag when Two-Phones walked in the door. Took one look at Slim, snapped his trap shut and took a hard left to the urinals. Slim washed his hands, watching in the mirror. Fuck just leaves, he’s still good.

But Beans’ head was leaking and he must’ve slumped against the wall closest to the pissers. Two-Phones saw the blood oozing out under the stall – Slim could see him tense up. Fuck.

Slim bull-rushed Two-Phones, putting a forearm up against the back of his head, bouncing his face hard off the tile, then got his right hand around to the far shoulder, left hand cupping the chin, snapped Two-Phone’s neck. Before he dropped him, he plucked the money clip out of the right front pants pocket. Franklins all the way through.

The Golden Years

Knockin’ on heaven’s door. Or kicking it in.

Absalom

The M-1911 was in the shoebox on top of the leather case that held the medal – the five-pointed star on the baby blue ribbon. Harris cleaned and oiled the .45 once a year, but now he was doing something he hadn’t done since Chosin – stacking rounds in the magazine. Seven in the box, pull the slide to get one in the chamber, thumb the release, one more in the magazine, good to go. He never went with just seven in Korea – too damn many Chinese – and eight seemed like a good idea now, too.

The kid had really screwed the pooch this time. The kid was soft, the kid was spoiled, the kid had no spine. Put the kid in the system and it was going to grind him into sausage. And the way the kid was? Harris knew some of that was on him. The kid was his grandson, but Harris was all the father the kid had.

***

The parish took two extra collections that morning, so they had some cash. Your basic Sunday donation nowadays, half the parish did it electronically, and the rest dropped checks. But they’d had a Maryknoll priest in, and they’d passed the plate for whatever shithole he was trying to pull souls out of, and then they’d had the annual deal for the local Catholic schools, so the baskets had made two extra rounds and people had to break out their wallets. Decent crowd in the pews, figure maybe a grand in cash.

Harris had dumped the take from each collection into its own bag so the dough would get to the right places and headed out the side door for the rectory. Just made it down the stairs when somebody came around the wall hit, him on the back of the head with something, Harris face down on the walk, stunned, but not out, couple sets of feet, hands snatching up the bags, legs beating it down the walk. Two guys running, both with their jeans halfway down their asses, their drawers hanging out. Had ski masks pulled down over their heads, but the scrawny punk on the right, the one running toward the Impala like a six-year-old girl with palsy. That was his grandson.