Run For the Money (8 page)

It wasn’t loud enough to wake anyone up, but it was just the thing to let the nun know someone else had entered the sanctuary. She started thrashing and kicking the wood walls of the confessional. Slick flattened himself to the bench.

The Priest turned at the commotion. His face turned confused and concerned but lightly, like a raccoon had gotten trapped in the confessional somehow, not that a person was calling for help.

He padded quickly down the aisle, bringing a candlestick with him which he held like a club, ready to swat any wild animals in his way.

Then he smelled it.

“Did you take a shit in my fucking church you little son-of-a-bitch?” he said to whatever rodent waited behind the door. Slick loved hearing a man of God curse and fart like anyone else.

The Priest opened the door, candlestick at the ready like Hank Aaron.

The brass column fell to the floor when he saw the nun, bound and gagged, inside the booth. Using the clatter of the candlestick as cover, Slick jumped up and moved quickly behind the Priest, grabbing up the club as he passed.

The Nun’s eyes widened as she saw Slick raise the weapon behind the priest.

“Sister Angela—” was cut short by a swat to the back of his head.

Streaks of red stained his white hair as the Priest fell to his knees and reached out for support. The Priest grabbed the door to the other side of the confessional and pulled the door open as he fell. The smell trapped inside from what Slick left there the night before exploded out into the sanctuary.

Slick stood over the Priest as he rolled onto his back. He looked up at Slick seeing the Devil come to life. From the floor, Slick stood ten feet tall. His face was a demon for sure. The Priest mumbled to himself some well-practiced words for just such an occasion.

“Stand up Father Farts.”

The old man rolled about, a turtle on his back. Slick reached down and pulled the man up, deposited him in a pew. Behind him, the nun kicked and screamed a muffled cry for help beneath the gag.

Disoriented and bleeding heavily from his head wound, the Priest looked around for more demons or for angles to help him fight.

“Settle down there, padre. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Slick took off his damp trucker outfit, looked at the holy man. “Strip.”

The outfit was too small. The pants were a no go, but Slick took the collar and black jacket. The old man stood in the aisle, white hair a matted blot of red in back, tight white underpants and black socks pulled up to his knees.

“Get in.” Slick pointed to the open confessional door. The old man turned, but didn’t appear to understand. Slick raised the candlestick above his head, threatening. “Get in.”

The Priest stepped up the side normally reserved for parishioners. He balked at the smell and the drying brown stains coating the seat.

“Your choice, padre. Makes no never mind to me.”

The Priest mutely turned to the side he was used to taking, but stayed outside, confused about how to fit with the nun splayed out – hands bound, mouth covered – inside.

The nun let loose with a flurry of kicking and writhing like a rabbit caught in a snare, ready to chew her own leg off to be free. Slick waited for her to settle, but the tantrum continued. He stepped up and pushed forward with the flat end of the candlestick and it crashed into her face. Blood flowed from her nose to soak the torn piece of curtain gagging her mouth. Tears followed.

“You made me do that, sister.”

Slick pushed the old man’s back, feeling his soft flesh like uncooked dough. The Priest stumbled into the booth, trying not to step on the nun. The door would not close with both of them inside. He stood awkwardly over her with his belly slouching down over the waist of his briefs. They looked like a kinky role playing couple gone wrong.

Slick had an idea. He set the candlestick down, the priest in too much shock and too weak to pose any threat, he reached out and tugged down on his tight white shorts.

A tiny cock flopped out, bouncing as it was freed from the fabric. He was completely shaved. Meticulously. Smooth as a baby.

“Holy shit.”

The old man was lost. He looked down at his own penis as if he’d never seen it before. Jesus on the wall wasn’t helping and the priest was confused.

Slick turned and left the two cramped into the confessional. Near the front door was a donation box of hand carved mahogany. Slick lifted the box off the base stand and threw it to the floor. It broke open, but there was no shower of coins. He tore the splintered wood and found three single dollar bills and a quarter. He shook his head, pocketed the bills and called back to the couple he left behind.

“You guys gotta work on your fundraising. I could teach you a thing or two about getting money when you need it. How does six hundred grand sound?”

He laughed his way out the door.

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E
very day should start off with a good fuck
, thought Emma as she stepped out into a brighter world. The rain had stopped and she still tingled between her legs. A little bit from the heavy pounding and a little bit from the anticipation of more.

The money made the rest of her body tingle.

Time to go get $642,000 and get the fuck out of town.

On the way out, though, be sure to stop off and get one more ride on detective MacKaye. That guy was the real deal. Her whole view of guys had changed. No more bikers, no more scars, no more beer guts. She deserved a guy who took care of himself. With all that money she could stop associating with criminals and meet a respectable guy. Maybe not a cop, but still . . .

“Why Emma, I dare say you’re glowing.” It was MacKaye.

Emma stopped on the sidewalk. The day seemed suddenly darker; the grey clouds of yesterday hanging around, wearing out their welcome.

“What are you doing here?” For a brief moment she thought he may have come back for seconds, which she would willingly oblige.

“Just keeping an eye on you. Where you headed?”

Emma had been pissed off before when a guy fucked her and then never came around again, but that was nothing compared to this guy who fucked her and wouldn’t leave her alone.

“You said you weren’t going to follow me anymore.”

“Did I?”

“Yes. You did.” She gave him her best woman-scorned stare.

“Did we shake on it?” A smile sat on his face, asking to be slapped off.

“We fucked on it.” Then, sarcastically, “Remember?”

“Oh yeah. That was good.”

“You cocksucker.”

“We didn’t even get that far. But as long as you’re offering . . .”

Emma held up an open palm to shut him up. “What about Bo? There were two men you arrested, remember? Why can’t you go after him? You know they’re not traveling together.”

“Oh, we will. We thought for a moment he was dead at the scene, but it turned out to be some teenager joyriding in his daddy’s car that his girlfriend wrapped around a tree. We figure one of the two of them was somehow involved. But I follow leads, not figuring, and I saw the court transcripts and the arrest records and Bo doesn’t have a girlfriend like Slick does. And I figured I had a better chance at catching me a fugitive if I hung around here.”

“Like a fly on shit.”

“You do have some colorful pillow talk, Emma.”

Emma started fast-walking back to her apartment. If she thought he was serious she would have dropped to her knees and blown him right in the street, but she didn’t want him to know that.

MacKaye called after her, “I said I’d see you around.”

The money, like another go with MacKaye, would have to wait.

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P
assing through the old neighborhood was a walking tour of Bo’s failures.

He saw the playground where he first tried meth, walked by the house of his best friend Tommy, now serving fifteen-to-thirty at Wharton, walked by the telephone pole where he wrecked Dad’s car.

It was shortly after the car – a one-month old Cadillac, Dad’s dream car – Sawyer Marcus decided to do something about his son’s drug problem.

“Sixteen years old is too early to ruin your life,” he told his son. “If you can’t stop it, I’ll stop it for you.”

Bo never knew how, but his dad tracked down his dealer, a guy named Crankhead Bob, a take-off on the Howard Stern character they all thought was funny as shit.

Mr. Marcus found Bob at his apartment. Bad idea. Bo had never even been there. There’s a place to do business and that wasn’t it. Crankhead Bob didn’t come to your place and you sure as shit don’t go to Bob’s.

The story went around the neighborhood that Bo’s dad died of a heart attack. Bo believed it too for about three months until he ran into an associate of Bob’s who told him the real deal. When Bo found out, he was pissed no one knew the real story. Made his dad seem a hell of a lot more badass than just an old dude whose ticker gave out. Kids in the neighborhood even spread the rumor he died on the can, Elvis-style. If they only knew.

Crankhead Bob went missing that night so the story had been pieced together from neighbors who heard the noise, a few tweakers who were in the room but offered a slightly less than reliable testimony, and the super of the building who saw the room before the cops came and cleaned it up.

The story is that Bo’s dad showed up, knocked on Bob’s door and wouldn’t go away when Bob told him to fuck off.

There was a lot of, “You can’t fuck with my family,” and “I’ll bring the cops down here,” but Bob didn’t open the door until Mr. Marcus said, “You don’t leave my family alone I’ll find your family and fuck them up. Your mom? My bitch!”

That didn’t sit too well with Bob. Momma’s boy doesn’t begin to describe it. Is it possible to be pussy-whipped by your own mom? If so, he was.

The door opened and Bob led with the gun, used his other hand to grab Bo’s dad by the wrist and pull him inside.

Mr. Marcus had been holding a wooden chair leg, a remnant of a project he had going out in the garage for over a year. It was finally going to get some use. He thrust out like a fencer with the club hitting Bob in the right eye. The soft circle of the eyeball popped under the pressure of the chair leg which almost touched the back of his eye socket. Thing didn’t need to be sanded and stained to make a guy blind in one eye.

Bob screamed and went down. The three other tweakers in the room stared. Bob shot a round into Mr. Marcus’ foot.

No one knows exactly what was said in there. Whatever happened, Mr. Marcus was relieved of his chair leg, tied to a chrome chair of Bob’s and beaten to hell. Bob told the tweakers to mix up a shot of meth. A big one. Sniff it, smoke it, shoot it – shooting it gets it there faster.

Word is it took him a while to find the vein with that one bad eye. When he did he pushed in enough crank to kill a horse.

Trouble is, the lethal dose didn’t settle in until after it surged through Mr. Marcus and gave him something like superhuman strength. Here’s where the tweakers can’t be taken at face value, but they say he tore off the straps holding him to the chair like the Incredible Hulk, smashed the place up and down. Piles of dope waiting for delivery went up in clouds of white, stacks of money flew like spring leaves. Somehow Mr. Marcus got the gun away from Bob and shot him five times before his heart stopped and he collapsed. Word is, most of those shots were to the face.

So, heart attack? Technically, yes. What brought it on is the part no one ever talked about.

Either way Bo held a secret pride that his dad took down Crankhead Bob, even though a new dealer took his place within twenty-four hours.

Bo turned down the familiar street, stopped at a familiar door and knocked. The door opened.

“Hello, Mom.”

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F
eels like Halloween
, thought Slick as he strode down the street in the priest collar.

First stop – breakfast. Scratch that. First thing was to call Emma. No doubt she’d heard about it on the news by now. At the far end of a mini mall parking lot he saw a pay phone, a species as rare as a snow leopard these days. Slick walked to the silver box bolted to a telephone pole like a lamprey on a shark. No phone. Just a silver shell, an archeological artifact of a world before cell phones.

In the strip mall, a donut shop caught his eye. Slick headed there.

“Two glazed and a coffee,” Slick said to the skinny kid working the counter. He held a wire mesh bin of newly opened donuts, made two states over and shipped there wrapped in plastic and still offered as “fresh.” There were no other customers. Slick drew the gun, “And whatever you got in the register.”

The skinny kid dropped the donuts. He froze. Fuzzy images of a long forgotten training manual flashed in his head.

“Today fucko.” Slick gestured to the cash register with the gun. The kid stepped forward. “Wait.” Like a kindergarten game of red light / green light the kid stopped on command. “Don’t forget the glazed. And new ones please. Lord fucking knows what’s on the floor back there.”

The skinny kid obeyed orders and did so in silence. His eyes were so fixed on the gun Slick doubted he noticed the vestments yet. “Hey, can I use your phone?”

Slick wasn’t quite sure why he asked. Habit. Criminals can have manners too. The kid nodded, “I guess so.”

Slick reached across the counter and dialed Emma’s number. He watched the skinny kid reach in to get two donuts from the front of the case. He brought the two glazed over to the register, stacked them one on top of the other, sugars blending, looking like a nature film on the mating ritual of donuts.

No answer. Slick hung up, a tiny voice in the back of his brain asking if Emma had found the money and split. Silly idea.
Not my Emma,
he thought.

“You want a bag?” the kid asked.

“Yeah.”

The kid put the donuts in a wax paper bag then opened the register.

“You want a bag for this too?”

“Yeah. Please. You got any other questions?”

The kid thought about it. “Are you gonna shoot me?”

“If you don’t hurry the fuck up I might.”