The Sin Bin (11 page)

Take it
Outside

I ain't saying I'd sooner be a bum,
but working at Delago's made me wonder. I knew as soon as I stepped off the
sidewalk and into the diner I was in for a ride. But I kept my head down.

I nodded to Allie to bring me a coffee
and my usual Danish.

'With you yesterday, handsome,' she
hollered at me.

Already I was hearing the sniggers,
blowing down from the back of the diner and smacking me upside the head. I
didn't bite, none. I tucked my nose in the newspaper, read about a gang rape in
the Lower East Side, a thirteen-year-old girl got her neck snapped ... that
whole neighbourhood's a God-damn war zone.

'Here you are, honey.' Allie placed the
plate down in front of me, two Danish with a pile of whipped cream smiling at
me like the luck of the Irish.

'You sure are some piece of work,' I
said.

Allie flicked the bar towel over her
shoulder and draped a slender arm around my neck. 'Ah, hell ... what's a girl
got to do to get noticed by you, Mickey?' She was close enough for me to smell
the scent on her neck as she bent over and showed me a sight more flesh than
I'd seen this side of the Joint.

'Hey, I'm lookin', ain't I?'

That made her smile, pushed a row of
pearly whites through those big red lips. She turned tail and left me hanging,
hanging on the sight of a fine piece of ass.

'Hey, boy, put that pecker away!'
yelled Mr Delago.

Allie just about fell on her fine ass,
shook her head in such a frenzy her blonde locks dropped some pins. Her sweet
legs quickened as she ran for cover behind the counter, when she got there she
put a cold blue eye on me, then turned fast to the wall.

'Ho-ho-ho ... breaking up already,'
roared Mr Delago. A chorus of laughter followed from his fawning little pack of
deadbeats. They pointed fingers at me; shit, I could take that. I'd had worse
things pointed at me inside, and elsewhere. This job was always gonna be a hard
time, parole officer finds always were.

'Little lady won't be getting no action
out on the trash cans tonight,' hollered Mr Delago.

Allie dropped a cup. It smashed louder
than Fourth of July firecrackers as she ran from the diner and headed out back.

I stood up, called out, 'Allie ...
Allie ...' but she was kicking dust clouds.

The deadwood thought this was
top-notch, real dime-store drama. I turned to watch them back-slapping Mr
Delago. He grinned like a piranha, and then some pencil-neck reached over and
placed a Lucky behind his ear.

Till now, I coulda kept a lid on
things. I was counting to ten, reached five when I saw the Lucky passed over.
This was goon kudos. In the Big House, a Lucky gets things done you wouldn't
wanna think about.

I put a bead on Mr Delago and took off
for the back of the diner. My heart pumped harder than Niagara Falls and
adrenaline raced all the way to the point in my head where the slow-down switch
was kept. As I walked, I saw the expressions changing. The pencil-neck with the
Lucky looked filthier than a back-alley tom.

I am not a violent man, but there is
violence in me.

The State Pen' tried to beat it out,
and for most parts it did a good job, but that kinda thing don't just go away.
Mr Delago knew it, I wasn't the only ex-con he took on so he could cream off
half their wage packet. He should've known better than to test me.

The deadbeats eyeballed me like they'd
just spotted a twister out at sea. I know I'm a big guy, 6' 4'' and 220 lbs,
but I don't carry it like a threat. I work out, still do my five hundred
push-ups a day, but hell, I never put it to use, till now.

At their table I stood for a second or
two. The air was still, save a few curls of tobacco smoke heading for cover. If
I was smart, I'd join them, get the hell outta Dodge. But I was never the
brains of the outfit, that was always someone else's job.

He sat back and grinned, slowly, drew
the Lucky from behind his ear. 'Got a light for me, boy?'

I gulped my heart all the way down into
my stomach. In my coat pockets I felt my fists tightening like deadbolts. He
was riding me again, worse than ever, but I found some strength, tapped a line
of cool.

'Mr Delago, could I talk with you,
please?'

He snickered. Showed that piranha smile
again, then a full out laugh. The deadbeats followed suit. Soon they were all
laughing loudly; they thought the trouble had passed.

'Sure ... sure we can talk, Mickey boy
... go on, speak your mind.'

'In private,' I said softly, taking as
much of the threat out as I could.

'Oh, he wants to talk in private ...'
his jibe got some more laughs, 'maybe he wants me to tell him how to keep a
piece of ass in check!'

I was on the mat, taking a ten count
from these bums as they laughed me up. Then Mr Delago rose to his feet.

'Lead the way ... I'll show you how to
make her smoke!' He brought the Lucky up to his thin lips and pursed tight
round the filter, sucking it like a teat. I coulda grabbed his neck and snapped
it like a match, but I held out.

'Let's go out back,' I said.

'Sure ... sure ...' Back slaps and
high-fives encouraged Mr Delago on his way.

My blood lapped like a race car as we
walked through the diner and on to the fire escape. All the while my employer
smiled at me like Satan.

He stopped dead in the back lot, right
next to the dumpsters. 'What the hell are you playing at, asshole?' he said.
'Are you trying to make an fool outta me? Well, are you?'

I didn't answer. The time for words had
passed. I thought of Allie; she'd given me a chance, if nobody else had. Maybe
that's why I couldn't see her spoken to that way.

'Nothing to say, boy? No ... and I'll
tell you why, 'cuz you don't want to go back inside. One call, that's all it
would take.' Mr Delago laughed in my face, then threw up his arms and pushed
past me. 'Now get to those dishes and make 'em shine till you can see your ugly
mug in them.'

As he turned from me I rabbit-punched
him. It felt good, a clean connection that sent him face first into the dirt.
Where he fell, he turned over. Blood streamed from his nose like red ticker
tape. I grabbed him by the collar and threw him against the dumpster, put a
kidney punch on him. He let out a screech like tyres on a getaway car.

'Ah ... you dumb son of a bitch, you
just bought your ticket,' he said.

I hit him again, cracked a knuckle on
his bony jaw. It tore a flap of loose meat from under his chin.

'No, you bastard ... I'm not going
anywhere,' I said.

'You're busted good, boy. I'll rat you
out for this. I got witnesses, see … stacks. Me and my boys are gonna jail your
sorry ass.'

I hit him again, in the gut this time,
lifted him a good five inches clear of the asphalt.

'How's that feel ... in your gut?' I
raged now, shook him left to right. 'Well, how's it feel ... you hurtin'?' His
eyes rolled up in his head, all I saw was their whites; I thought he'd passed
out.

I shook him again, slapped him round.
'Tell me how it feels! I want to know how it feels.' He looked at me, his mouth
spilled open, but nothing came out. 'What I thought ... it don't feel nothing
like what you dished out that night to Allie.'

He raised his head, his bug-eyes stared
out into a wilderness of the unknown. The dread, the despair. The knowledge
that he'd went too far fell on him like a funeral pall.

'A man can only stomach so much.'

He stared on, looking through me now.
He wasn't with me at all. He was back in Allie's cold-water apartment in
downtown Queens. He was pressing her against the wall and saying how good he
would be for her. But she was wailing in terror, her eyes wide and wet like the
night she cried on my shoulder and said she needed the job.

I spat in his face. But he didn't move.
'You quit riding me and Allie, hear?'

He still didn't move. I shook him by
his scrawny coat-hanger shoulders. But there was no life in him.

I drew back my hand and slapped Mr
Delago's face. The force of it stung my palm and sent electricity up my arm.
This time he looked at me, but his eyes were still dead.

'You quit riding me ... leave me and
Allie in peace, d'you hear?'

He said nothing; his eyes dropped from
me fast as dimes in a pay-phone.

I grabbed his bloody jaw, forced him to
look at me; 'I said, do you hear me?'

This time, he nodded. Slowly I stepped
away. At the edge of the lot I pulled down the ladder to the fire escape. When
I turned back to Mr Delago he was curled up on the asphalt, legs tucked to his
chest like a sleeping child.

I climbed from the lot, and called out
to Allie.

We'd some talking to do.

Too Cool for School

So, I had the old addiction thing
again. It's not like the smokes, or the sauce. Or the horse, or the pills.
The
addiction. Mother of them all. Daddy, too. It's what Mad Macke calls 'The
big time addictiano …'
 
He
talks that way, even when he's not slamming meth at the meatpackers.

'What
you get
?'
I'd clocked out ten or fifteen minutes ago and was back at our trailer sitting
on a mattress, just surfing some sites. We had another shift hanging hog-ass
inside an hour; needed a lift before that, but Macke
was
on the case.

'Some cold remedy,' he says.

'What the hell …? I need a slam to get
me up for some carcass-beating tonight. Jesus, you know that!'

I grab the pipe anyway. I've just got
to, just getting so tired that I need the juice. You can't live this life
another way, no one I know can, the meatpackers is the only gig in town and
this whole place lives like this.

'What you at anyway?' says Macke,
getting twitchy now. He's been getting real twitchy and real bug-eyed lately;
been living this life too long.

'Internet, man.'

Mad Macke curls up his lip, sniggers.
'I get you; porno, huh?'

I set him straight. 'No. Just surfin',
y'
kn
ow …'

He starts to fire up. He cooks this
shit like a gourmet. But always this dude is way too high on his own supply.

'Not porno?'

'Shit, no … I turn round the laptop.
'Check it out.'

My Dicko screen-saver's jumped into
action, one with the little devil horns and the cold, dead eyes of a shark.
He's toting an M-16 and riding an Exocet like that Harry Potter asswipe on a
broom or some such shit.

'What you got that shit for brains on
there for?' says Macke.

'Dicko? He's the key, man.'

'The Key Man?' Macke scrunches brows.
'Like a jailer or something?'

'Yeah, I mean no.' I'm flipping out now
on the cold remedy. 'I mean yes, kinda.'

'Which is it?'

My reply comes on the back of a sigh,
like I'm talking to a five-year-old. 'He's the …
key, man
.'

Macke's eyes are wide and glazed, he's
got the whole moon-monkey deal going on. There's a bit of drool sitting on the
side of his mouth that says I'm making him think and Macke doesn't like to
think. Me neither, come to think of it. No one who works the meatpackers, up to
their nuts in pig guts, wants to think about a frickin' thing except getting
out.

I give him five, ten more seconds, then
I slap him across the grille. Not hard. Just like a tap. Like a cat playing
with a ball of wool or a mouse or something.

It does the trick.

A little bubble pops from the saliva in
the corner of his mouth …

'What's that for?'

'You need an education, man … you need
to wise-up to the key man's ways.'

'
What
?'

I trip down my favourites, get the
conspiracy theory sites up; only it's no conspiracy. Dicko's the man at the
helm, running the show, the shooting match. He's a lizard … yeah, you heard
right. I seen the pictures. Read the depositions; folks who swear to it they
seen him working that shape-shifting lizard magic with the Queen of England.
Some dude in Wisconsin says he's seen him drinking blood, no bullshit, says he
had it on film but Dicko sent round the Men in Black and they wiped his hard
drive.

I yell it at Mad Macke. Fill him in.
Re-educate the sorry asshole. We're both baked on the meth; damned if this
ain't as close to a slam as I've had. Macke might not be the brightest, like
mentally, but he can cook.

'Great stuff, Macke! Shit-yeah!'

He sits through the YouTube reels I dig
out, pulls his hair. He has that, I-dunno-what-to-make-of-these-apples look,
like he's just found out some piece of shit's been pimping out his sister. In
the back of his car. Parked in his drive. And not changing the shocks. Not even
once.

'This sucks,' he says.

'Hey, buddy, I told you this sucks the
big one.'

'Dicko's a roach, man. He's raking in
billions.'
Macke
'
s up on his feet, pacing,
raving, flagging arms like a drowning man.

'That's what the war's about. The
towers, man, Dicko blew the towers … it was an inside job!'

'All those Americans, man.'

'All those little Iraqi kids, man.'

'Dying, man.'

'Dead as dead gets, man.'

'For what?'

'For bucks, man … for Dicko's billfold.
Man's a snake, a frickin' lizard …'

Macke's full-on motivated, carving the
air with some slow-mo Ninja moves. I've seen this shit before, the man's a
weapon. Guys in the joint twice his size were scared to go near him; he carried
a threat … well, maybe was more than a threat. Like I say, the man's a weapon.
Has to be, it's not paranoia. It's this town, this world. You don't need to be
called Mad Macke to know that's the truth.

'Hey, hey …' I yell as Macke's kicks
start to fly. 'Watch my Buffy DVDs.'

'Screw Buffy.'

'What the hell you mean saying that?'

'This Dicko dude has got me lapping
here, I've got a real beef for this bastard now.'

He's grounded for, like, a second or
two, then he's roaring again. Macke goes back to the cold remedy, starts
cooking up.

'Well, get in line, buddy,' I tell him.

He smiles … or is that what you call a
sneer? Crunches a fist, shoots it into his open palm. He drops his works and
sets off out the door at a clip. He leaves the hinges screeching and a stack of
dust goes flying off the ledge. The trailer, I swear, rocks on its blocks.

It's the last I see of the freaked-out
Macke for a while, except when I catch him hanging at the web café, just
surfing all this conspiracy shit.

I don't know, he's a funny guy, Macke.
All those chemicals, all that time inside, must have messed him up, I guess.
Yeah, must have fried some cells. Had to, really.

****

I don't watch Fox News much. I don't
go near television since I started at the meatpackers and got on the addiction,
but when you get a call like this, you take it serious.

'Oh my actual God … turn on Fox!' It's
Amelia, chick from the record store up on Trinity, we were in rehab together.
First rehab, way back in the day.

'
Amelia
?'

She doesn't call too much these days.
Mad Macke had a thing with her a bit back that lasted a few weeks, month maybe,
then she blew him out. Said he had issues. Serious issues. Creeped her out with
his mad ways.

'It's frickin' Macke, man!' She's
yelling now. 'He's on Fox. He's got some hold-up on at the zoo … and he's … you
got the station, yet?'

I found it.

'Holy Jesus.' I can't even take this
shit in.

'Exactly!' yells Amelia.

My cell goes, too. I don't pick up, but
I see it's Ben Castillo from the meatpackers, he's been dealing to me since
Macke dropped off the dial. I wait till he hangs up and the call goes to
voicemail.

'What's he playing at? Is that the
reptile house or whatever?' I say.

Amelia wails at me, that shrill,
shrieky girl's voice. 'Oh yeah, oh yeah … he's been ranting about a lizard
apocalypse and shaking about that Slugster pump!'

'A frickin' 12-gauge, man!'

A text comes in from Ben Castillo:
'Macke's gone ape at the city zoo with an automatic. Turn on TV.'

I throw down the cell. It's like the
world knows now. And so like that dick Castillo to exaggerate. 'It's a pump,
asshole!'

I see the sign Macke's carrying – it
says DEATH TO THE LIZARD KING. It's written in red, blood red, and hangs around
his neck like a noose. He doesn't need a noose, though, not where he's at. Not
with that Slugster in his paw and that big-old target round his chops.

This is out the park, even for Mad
Macke. This is a whole other world of shit for even this town. I've never seen
a thing like it. My gut takes a leap. I think I'll hurl, throw chunks here and
now.

A jolt goes through me. I sit up.
There's shots from the roof.

Not gunshots – film – like camera
shots. Shows the view. There's cops there, sharp-shooters too. All round the
zoo on the little grassy knoll there's dudes with repeater rifles and
scope-guns, and man, this is intense. 

Fox switches from Macke at the reptile
house – he's screaming and waving his pump about like Arnie in some action
movie – and then it goes back to the dudes on the grass. Dudes with the
high-calibres getting pissed. There's folks running wild, far and wide. Fat
little kids dropping ice-cream and moms and dads looking like they've shit
their pants. It's Elm Street, I tell you, I've never, never seen a thing like
it.

But I do see where this is going. I
sense it. For, like, a whole second I kinda become aware of my heart beating,
of my breathing, it slows right down and I'm thinking of when people say your
heart is in your mouth and I'm waiting, waiting for it to jump up there, and
then my eyes go wide, real wide, like the dude with the winning ticket in the lotto
ads, and then ... then I'm frozen. I'm cold all over as Mad Macke starts
dancing in a hail of bullets.

'Macke!' I look away, just can't face
it.

Ben Castillo's calling again. I know
what he wants but I switch off the cell and take out the battery. Thanks be to
God I don't need to score today.

****

Bastards going through my drawers,
tipping up my mattress. They're taking away my laptop. I'm seriously pissed
now. They better not wipe my favourites. I got sites of importance marked.

'Hey, hey ... that's mine!'

'We're taking it,' says Suit Dude.

'Why? I mean, why would you ever?'

This suit dude's playing wise-ass with
me. He has that doughnut-munching lard-assed grin of his cocked to one side as
he floats around the trailer like he owns the place now.

'Sir, I'm not at liberty to disclose
that information.'

'This is about Macke, don't shit me …
We all saw him on Fox.'

'We understand you were a known
associate of Mr Macke.'

'Known associate … What the …? We
worked the meatpackers together, if he wants to go blow the hell out of horny
toad skinks on national television, it's not my concern …' I try to hold onto
the laptop. 'Look, leave this, huh? Leave it with me, huh? I need it, dude.'

He watches me place hands on the
computer and quickly jerks it away.

'No can do, son.' He smiles, a creepy
one. 'You won't be needing it where you're going, anyway.'

'What? Where's that?' I'm thinking the
joint, or worse.

He doesn't answer. Stamps on my pipe;
the glass breaks underfoot. I see that grin of his again and I'm thinking,
you
bastard
. I wait to see if there's a look, a giveaway, a flash of lizard
skin, but this dude's too cool for school. Smiles a full-on smirk and tips me a
wink. But he's way too fast with that wink.

'Come on, son, time to go.'

I raise myself up. Wish I'd changed my
screensaver, formatted my hard drive. Wish I'd never gotten the addiction in
the first place.

His hand feels cold, real cold, on my
shoulder as he directs me into the black Dodge. The glass in the window is
thick, I'm thinking bullet-proof as Suit Dude watches me for a moment from the
sidewalk. His eyes are big and round, dark and cold and ugly. I feel sucked
into those eyes; as the driver starts up, I can't pull my gaze away.

That's when it happens.

In just one second, one brief moment like
no other in my entire life, a black forked-tongue flicks out from his mouth.

In an instant – it's gone – replaced by
another grin.

'Let me out of here!' I'm sweating, my
mind's telling me it's just a flashback – bad acid, maybe – man, that's all it
is. The addiction. But my heart's telling me Dicko's got me. Holy shit, Dicko
has got me.

The wheels spin, tyres screech. There's
a lot of smoke coming up from the street as we get going.

'Let me out, let me out!'

They're smiling, laughing. All the way
to the Interstate they're laughing. I cover my ears, but I can still hear them.
I close my eyes, but I can still see that lizard tongue flashing at me. That
reptile skin, soon to be revealed. I see them writhing in the sun, slithering.
I try to shut it out, but they're there, they're in my mind. Locked in there
like Mad Macke in that cold-store box at the city morgue. Like the big old
wide-assed hogs hanging at the meatpackers, their mouths spewing and laughing
on their last chuckle, frozen fast as the bolt gun clapped shut and blew out
their brains.

I've seen them now, lizards. I know
they drink blood, they do. They do, I know.