Hard Case Crime: The Max (5 page)

A guy in the yard was bench-pressing — he looked Mexican, Puerto Rican, Dominican, something Spanish Harlemy. And the son of a bitch was huge, looked like he could be a linebacker for the fucking Jets.

Benching what looked like at least three hundred pounds he said, “
Hola, jovensita
,” and blew Max a kiss.

The... A.X. knew his Spanish, the guy was calling him “young lady.”
Jesus H.

Max turned away and the guy said, “Hey, I finish talkin’ to you,
mi puta
?”

Max tried, “
No hablo español
.”

“Don’t worry,” the guy said, “you don’t gotta talk
español
. When you got my dick in your mouth all day I ain’t gonna hear nothin’ you sayin’ anyway.”

The guy laughed then let the weight fall onto the brackets so hard the whole bench shook.

“Look,” Max said. “
No necesito
trouble.” Then, hearing the hillbilly in
Deliverance
saying,
You in trouble now, boy
, he said desperately, “I mean, I’ve got
nada
against Puerto Ricans.”

“Puerto Rican?” The guy sounded offended. “I look
PR to you? Man, I should cut you just for saying that shit. I’m fuckin’ Panamanian.”

Jesus, weren’t Panamanians supposed to be, like, midgets? The only fucking Panamanian giant on the planet and Max had to run into him. Was that shit luck or what?

Then the guy said, “I should introduce myself properly, if you’re gonna be my little
puta
.
Me nombre es
Sino.”

Sino? What was that, fucking Chinese? The guy wasn’t fucking part Chinese, was he, some kind of ChinoManian? Max had had enough Chinamen visit his ass for one lifetime, thank you very much.

“Sino’s what they call me in the Bronx, shit’s short for
asesino
. You know why I got that name? ’Cause I like to kill people, that’s why. I killed sixteen people and you gimme your ass you won’t be number
diecisiete
. Most people in here, they don’t like to talk about people they took out, think it’s gonna fuck up their parole. But Sino got Life, No Parole hangin’ over his ass. Sino ain’t goin nowhere so Sino don’t give a shit.”

Max was about to give a shit — in his pants. But out of nowhere Rufus appeared and said, “Yo, lay off my bitch,
bitch
, ‘fore I beat yo’ ass.”

Sino stood face to face with Rufus, both mad bastards about the same height, and a crowd formed around them to watch the confrontation. Max felt like he was in high school — well, not like he
himself
had felt in high school, but like he might’ve felt if he’d
been a popular girl in high school. It was like Max was head cheerleader and the two jocks were fighting over him. Max had to admit — it felt pretty damn good.

But the good feeling passed quickly. Max was thinking maybe he should’ve taken the Ed Norton in
The 25
^th
Hour
route after all, gotten somebody to beat the crap out of him before he went away. He was just too damn pretty. A face like his, naturally guys couldn’t resist it. Maybe if he hadn’t been so interested in getting laid during his last forty-eight hours, and hadn’t wasted all his time reading books and watching movies, he could’ve thought of this practical shit.

Rufus was yelling into Sino’s face, “Mohammed Fisher’s my bitch. Stay off my bitch, know what I’m sayin’, bitch?”

And Sino was screaming back: “I don’t see no sign on his ass say he your bitch. I don’t see your dick in his ass neither.”

Rufus said, “There don’t gotta be no dick in his ass. Just ’cause there ain’t no dick in his ass don’t mean the bitch ain’t mine.”

Max was tempted to yell,
You’re both fucking morons!
but had a feeling that wouldn’t go over well. Maybe the guys would decide to share him, holy fuckin’ shit.

A guard came over and told the guys to break it up. Rufus grabbed Max by the hand and led him away.

Later on, back in their cell, Rufus said to Max, “You clean yo’ ass out good tonight, know what I’m sayin’? I don’t want no brown on my dick. My dick got enough
brown on it, don’t need no more, know what I’m sayin’?”

There was nothing for Max to do now but lie in his bunk and wait for the inevitable. He was thinking about, of all people, Elvis. Max, in those last forty-eight hours of freedom, had watched so many movies, his fucking eyes hurt and how he ended up with
Jailhouse Rock
in his DVD player was anyone’s guess. The King, singing on the tiers, had brought tears to his eyes. He’d never really given Elvis a whole lotta time. Let’s face it, The Max was a classical music kinda guy, could pronounce Tchaikovsky without a single moment of hesitation.
Fucking hum that, yah morons.

Shit, he realized he’d been talking aloud again.

“Well, fucking excuse me!” he shouted. “I’m under a little goddamn pressure here!”

Inmates in the other cells starting laughing and Max blocked it out, thinking about Elvis again. The El was one good looking
hombre
and Max wondered if that’s what he should do later when Rufus was, er, visiting him — pretend he was getting screwed by The King. Yeah, he’d pretend to be Priscilla. Max pledged that if he ever got out of this hole, he’d go straight to Graceland, give his thanks for help in a tight spot. Maybe hang with Priscilla. The babe had mileage but serious bucks — he could use some of that.

He was weeping now, and he knew, dammit, only a real man could allow himself that freedom.

After the slop they called dinner it was lights out. Jesus Christ, Max was sobbing again, begging for his
mommy. He wished he’d read more of that fucking Genet book so at least he’d know what to expect. He would’ve paid a fortune for some Vaseline so at least it wouldn’t hurt. But he knew, worse than the pain would be all the fucking humiliation tomorrow, all the guys knowing that Rufus had done the deed. He just hoped that Rufus didn’t make him walk around the prison wearing lipstick and fucking skirts, like that queen in
Animal Factory
.

But then something weird happened.

He was waiting for the brute to climb down and deliver the meat, but the bunk was still. Maybe Rufus was just playing head games with him, making him think he wasn’t gonna get fucked tonight, then... kaboom.

But another ten, fifteen minutes went by and still no Rufus. And what was that noise? Was he actually
snoring
? The fuck was going on?

Max wanted to feel happy, but he didn’t dare let himself. It had to be part of some plan or something. A guard would unlock a bunch of inmates’ cells and let them into Max’s and the goddamn gangbang would begin.

He waited. At some point, he fell asleep.

In the morning, he woke up and wriggled his ass around a little. No pain. Was it possible he’d slept through being anally raped? It wouldn’t have been the first time but, nope, his ass was its good ol’ self.

Then another surprise: Rufus hung down from the
top bunk, smiled, asked, “Yo, what up? Sleep good, Mohammed?”

What the fuck? Was this some kinda fuckin’ joke? Was this how the guy turned himself on, let his victims think they were off the hook, then, when their guard was fully down...

“Yes,” Max said hesitantly.

“That’s good,” Rufus said. “If there’s anythin’ you want me to do today, yo, you just let me know, hear, and I get that shit done for you fast, know what I’m sayin’?”

Max had no idea what to make of Rufus’s sudden turnaround, but he wasn’t complaining. His ass wasn’t complaining either.

Then the biggest surprise of all: At breakfast, there was no whistling, no catcalls, no nothing. Shit, people wouldn’t even make eye contact with him. The fuck was going on? Yeah, he was glad he hadn’t gotten raped, but the insecure Max Fisher was coming out, asking,
Have I, like, lost my appeal?
Other guys in the room were getting the old come-hither looks, guys younger than Max, and he found himself actually feeling jealous.

In the yard, Max went up to one of the guards, Malis, and asked, “The fuck’s going on? How come nobody’ll fuckin’ look at me anymore?”

Malis, chomping on gum, didn’t look at Max, said, “The fuck do I know?”

“Come on, give me a fuckin’ break,” Max whined.
“If this silent treatment is just a set-up, if I’m gonna get ambushed tonight, the least you could do is let me know about it. I’m a well-connected guy, if you get my drift.”

Yeah, let the asshole think he was in store for a hefty bribe. Like that was gonna happen.

“You’re not gonna get ambushed,” Malis said.

“Yeah? How the fuck do you know that?”

Malis continued looking away, chewing his gum, then shook his head as if, thinking,
I give up
, and said, “Look, your story got around, all right?”

“Story? What story?”

“The story about what you got sent away for.”

Max was confused, said, “I’m confused.”

“All the guys,” Malis said, “they know what you did.”

“You talking about the drug dealing charges?”

“No, I’m talking about how you cut off that guy’s dick down in the city.”

The severed dick was a, well, issue that had come up in Max’s trial. Max had had nothing to do with it, but apparently the prisoners thought he had. Actually, Angela’s latest psycho boyfriend had cut off the dick, delivered it to Max in a shoebox.

“You mean they think I—”

“Everybody’s scared shitless,” Malis said. “They don’t want to come near you. Hey, and just in case you get any ideas, you come anywhere near my dick, I even see you looking at my dick, I’m gonna fuckin’ shoot you. Got that?”

It took a while — okay, less than a minute — for it to sink in. He wasn’t a target anymore. He was — get this — a feared man.

He took a little spin around the yard, a
victory lap
, soaking it up, letting all the suckers know who the new King was. Wasn’t there a movie like that already?
The Fisher King?

Yeah, he could learn to like this joint.

“I knew I’d never get enough of her. She was straight out of hell.”

G
IL
B
REWER
,
The Vengeful Virgin

When Angela and Sebastian got back to the villa, he was seriously spooked. This was a crazy woman and, lordy, if he ever got the hell away from her, he might well write her as a character in his book. The book he’d never written a line of but he would, he was literary, like Amis and Borroughs. He’d just sit down one day and
voila
, masterpiece. You either had it or you didn’t and he bloody well had it.

One literary effort that he actually did produce was a poem in the technical college entitled:

Lenin and Your Letter

He just flat out loved that title. It had politics, love and, to be totally honest, true resonance. And, okay, he’d been a little wiped when he wrote it, but excuse me, look at all the greats — Scott Fitz, Hem, Behan, Bukowski, Berryman, Jerry Rodriguez. Hadn’t they all been a little, well, spiffed when they wrote their finest work? You wanted pain, compassion, suffering, Sebastian knew you had to fucking live it.

He just wished he could remember the bloody poem. Only one line had remained with him:

Lenin, you Jewish hack

Ah, the thrill. Did he actually write that? He did. Oh, Booker Prize be praised. And God bless Salman Rushdie. Sebastian had his very brief moment of fame as the student union, all five of them, had accused him of anti-Zionism. Lordy, it was what every real literary lion endured.

Whoops, the deranged bitch was shaking him, not with the cleaver, least not yet, saying, “Hello, shite-face, time to like, you know, clean up?”

And he did, but her language! Was that really necessary? She should go to the U.K. where they mightn’t like you but, by golly, they always had manners.

They scrubbed the place down, every last drop of blood, etcetera, gone. Would they bring in forensics of the Greek variety? Hello, let’s be honest. The Greek variety of forensics was probably one greasy inspector with his hand out, dropping cigar ash all over the crime scene and trampling on bloodstains. They were clear, and if he could now just get clear of the mad cow he could get his show on the road.

She gave him the golden opportunity, snapped, “Where are my fookin cigs?”

And he jumped on it, said, “Hon, I’ll jump on the scooter, get you a fresh pack.”

Then, distracted, she said, “And buy some booze, too. Jesus wept.”

There was a ferry to Athens — he checked his fake Rolex — in two hours. He put the pedal to the metal and he was out of there. He had a tiny villa rented as close to the port as he could find. He’d learned the hard way, always have your getaway planned. All he needed was his passport, his Cambridge tie, borrowed (so to speak) from a chap — damn tie opened more doors than his wonderful polished BBC accent — his trusty Gladstone bag, one of the few genuine items he owned — and one of those Moleskine diaries, nicely weathered and one of these days, he might actually jot something down in it. He believed he looked suitably battered, had that
climbed the Himalayas and crossed the damn Ganges
look. Made him seem like a Bruce Chatwin traveler type. He hadn’t actually read Chatwin, but that hardly mattered. Most of all, he had his stash, the vital element,
the get-out-of-town-and-fucking-fast-old-bean
dosh.

He wouldn’t have time to get the deposit back on his little scooter, but as he’d paid with a bum credit card, it was kind of poetic justice; and if he did take the time the psycho bitch would be starting to wonder was he making the bloody cigarettes and come looking.

He shivered, seeing her with that cleaver. God he was sweaty, from fear and stress, the golly goshed heat. He liked to be always, in every sense, cool, but a cleaver can change a lot of habits. He’d had to forego taking a shower in his haste to get out, and he promised himself now that he’d book into the King
Kronos in Athens, get the penthouse, use his Platinum Visa, only ever taken out for real occasions and Jolly Hockey Sticks, this was one of those times.

He threw his Jermyn Street bespoke shirts, his beloved linen suit and Panama hat (his nod to Somerset Maugham — and, truly, he must read the crusty old bugger someday), and splashed some cologne on. Not too much, a hint darlings, not like the mad Paddy he’d met who seemed to climb into the bottle, not only of Jameson but cologne. He sighed, thinking, The Irish. They had not one ounce of restraint.