THUGLIT Issue Six Page 5

  Fuck all that, Muzz thought. Like a few hours even mattered around here. Sure, it was all right to have him around for laughs and to hold weight, and it was all right to have him around to throw the occasional beating to some stoner dodging payment on their marked up product, but taking Muzz along for titty pole spectating and casino cruising? No dice.

  Muzz’s memory flashed on a series of images…Chiqui’s glistening mouth, how she cocked her hips and sashayed her hard basketball ass, how her eyelashes looked big as black butterflies when she crushed them shut. Goddamn, why couldn’t that girl just keep quiet? Chiqui told Muzz she’d never tell Pat what happened long as Muzz kept her girlfriends stocked in the good Canadian product they’d been getting, and as long as his fumbling, fat boy advances were a one time thing.

  It was totally embarrassing. Muzz was premature and blew a big sloppy map of Hawaii all over Chiqui’s black leather skirt. At the time, Muzz was actually stunned by Chiqui’s reaction to the whole thing. Figured a girl like that and a near-rape, she’d lose it, get all weepy and then angry with that hot Latin blood. But no. No crying or screaming or anything. Weird. Chiqui just took a tissue, dabbed off Muzz’s greasy splooge of jizz and sized up her angle. To Muzz, (who always had to pay for it one way or another) Chiqui’s bartering for drugs (while unusual because she could always score off of Pat) sounded like a pretty fair trade, but what was he thinking? Jumping Pat Farrell’s girl?

  I’m such an idiot.

  A gummy knot of dread thickened in Muzz’s throat. Be cool, he told himself. It was Pat Farrell for crying out loud—there’s history here. Altar boys together, Pop Warner and high school football…they were both, like, the last white kids left in Elizabeth. Shit, he and Pat along with Luis were small time dope hustlers and thieves. Sure, they had guns, but all that was mostly for show, something to scare the college pussies now and then. None of them ever waved that firepower around with real intent. Pat was crazy, but not that crazy—not over some hoodrat skank like Chiqui.

  “Pat…”

  “You know what, Muzz? I don’t blame you.”

  “Blame me? Damn, blame me for what, yo?”

  “For Chiqui. That girl drives me crazy too.”

  “Pat…”

  “It’s that South American thing,” Pat added. “I mean, Jesus, that ass. That ass and those legs. I keep tellin’ her, if she just took better care of herself she could totally be a model. Hell, I’d take her into the city for auditions and pay for an agent if she wanted.”

  “Pat, listen...”

  Pat scowled and held out his palm. “Just shut the fuck up, Muzz, OK? Jesus, don’t make it worse.” Pat rolled his shoulders and let out a breathy rattle, his eyes wide and simmering. “Hey, do you have any idea how many national beauty pageants take place in Venezuela?”

  “Huh? Beauty pageants? In Venezuela? Hell, no.”

  Pat edged closer to the table. “Get this, there’s, like, hundreds of them, dog. Can you believe that shit? There’s even a bunch of professional beauty schools set up by the government down there to promote contestants. I swear to God, Chiqui went and told me all ‘bout it. Miss Universe and Miss World? Always some Venezuelan prime in the top three.”

  Slowly, Muzz wiped some sweat from his lip with the back of his hand as Pat studied him. Muzz’s sphincter muscle clenched as Pat unfastened two buttons on his coat, the leather creaking ominously.

  “When she was thirteen, Chiqui was, like, offered a slot in one of them schools. I was just tellin’ Luis ‘bout this the other day, but then her parents got the fuck out of Caracas to come up here to Jersey. Who knows? I mean, maybe if she stayed down there in South America she could’ve, like, made it big or somethin’.”

  “I think there’s been a misunderstanding here.”

  Pat spat fiercely on linoleum and snorted.

  “Oh, I see. A misunderstanding.”

  “Jesus, c’mon, dude.”

  “See, the thing is, Muzz, all those other guys? I know they stare and stare at Chiqui all the time and maybe, just maybe, they man up now and then and attempt a pass, but all in all I’m cool with that. Almost. I mean, dogs can whine all they want, but that don’t mean they get to eat the steak, right? When I got back from A.C. this afternoon, I just knew somethin’ was off with Chiqui so I pressed her. Didn’t take much for her to spill.”

  Muzz looked away.

  “You dumb Polish fuck. You backstabbing tub of dick. You actually had the sack to pull something like that? With my Chiqui?”

  Muzz squeezed his eyes shut and snapped them open. “Pat, hey, I don’t know what Chiqui told you, but she’s lyin’, man. I mean, I didn’t do nothin’ with her. Not really.”

  “Oh, I know all about not really. Chiqui said you threw her down on the couch and tried to ball her, but you blew your wad before you could even get your pathetic little man in the show.” Pat tugged a gun from his jacket pocket and two-handed it at Muzz’s face. Turned out the gun wasn’t that fancy Sig Muzz had suspected. It was a beat up .38 with the butt wrapped up in a grimy stretch of duct tape. Muzz’s eyes locked on the gun’s dark, stubby barrel. He wasn’t sure why, maybe because he was scared shitless, but for some reason Muzz started to pick up a half of his sub sandwich from the table. And then a plan materialized in his head.

  Throw the sub in Pat’s face.

  Yeah. Half a second’s chance and then Muzz could flip the kitchen table over, slam Pat on his ass like back in the old days, back when Muzz was a nose tackle and Pat was a springy tight end. Pummel Pat with a couple of ear shots, maybe rake an eye and grab the gun. Muzz’s heart punched in his chest like a wild jackhammer. As he lifted up the sub, a paper thin tomato slice slipped out of the center of the sandwich and slapped the freshly cleaned barrel of his stripped Beretta.

  “Shit,” Muzz said looking down.

  “The fuck is that anyway?” Pat asked. “A number five?”

  Muzz paused, distracted. “What?”

  “Your sandwich, dumbass. What’s that? A number five?”

  Everybody had a favorite sandwich at the corner deli, a number associated with each type of sub to move along customers’ orders during rush and to make telephone ordering easier.

  “It’s a number three,” Muzz croaked. “You know, ‘The Italian’, without the pepperoni.”

  “Yeah,” said Pat, “I hate pepperoni too, but then again I’m a number eight man myself. The turkey club.”

  Pat pulled the trigger—CHA-POP!

  The first shot missed Muzz and plugged into the far wall, right below a calendar of holy sites, then right on top of it—CHA-POP!—the second round zipped through Muzz’s beefy shoulder, shattering his shoulder blade and causing a ragged carnation of flesh, chipped bone, and blood to sneeze out Muzz’s back. The gunshots weren’t as loud as Muzz expected, but the noise was the least of his concerns. His body lit up with hot, vibrating pain. It was unimaginably fierce. Muzz howled as Pat mumbled.

  “Tried to rape my motherfuckin’ girlfriend, man...”

  Muzz rocked in his chair, his ears ringing. “You just shot me!”

  “Gee, I guess I did.”

  “What d’fuck!? OWW! WHAT D’FUCK, PAT!?” Muzz gasped and wheezed hard, struggling to hold his leaking shoulder. “Jesus, did Chiqui tell you about her deal for free weed too, huh? Did she? Her and her pack of skanky bitches scamming free boo. C’mon, man—she’s OWW! You can’t tell me you’re in love with—will you look at this?! I’m bleeding here. I need an ambulance.”

  “Shut up, Muzz.”

  Muzz heaved, “You said it yourself, Pat, that Chiqui…she’s got that Venezuelan thing goin’ on, I mean, we was high. I didn’t know what I was doin’ and I’m sorry, all right? I’M FUCKING SORRY! Besides, dry humpin’ ain’t really rape, man, not really when you think ‘bout it.” Muzz’s vision swam and the room began to tilt and cool.

  Pat fired another round, missing Muzz completely, twanging a dull crater in the dishwasher’s door. Muzz jerked a glance behind him at the h
ole in the dishwasher, and when he turned back around the flat, glassy dimes of Pat Farrell’s eyes were the coldest and last thing he ever saw.

  Pat squeezed the trigger again—CHA-POP!—and a small divot of Muzz’s scalp flew out and up the far wall. The bullet had punched through the corner of Muzz’s left eye socket and took a funky, horseshoe exit. The combined sour stench of raw deli onions and cordite filled Pat’s nose as he watched his friend slide off his chair and hit the bloody floor with a damp, tumbling smack. Like a ventriloquist's dummy, Muzz’s jaw kept straining with dying nerve impulses and then finally, after a few seconds, Muzz went still.

  Pat dropped the warm gun in his overcoat pocket and plucked a can of Bud from the three left in the six-pack on the table. He snapped open the can and chugged it all down in seven consecutive swallows. So cold.

  Pat thought of Mrs. Mukowski. His plan was to shoot Muzz’s mother in the head to spare Mrs. Mukowski the anguish of seeing her backstabbing son all fucked up in her kitchen. It was stupid idea and he should’ve just gotten the hell out of there, but Pat thought he owed Mrs. Mukowski the consideration.

  Muzz’s mom was a nice lady. She was one of the last of the Polish holdouts in Elizabeth who made great airy cakes that Muzz and Pat devoured after football practice, always with tall glasses of cold, whole milk. After he killed Mrs. Mukowski, Pat planned on ditching the piece and then he and Luis were going to roll out of town and lay low for a while. After all, Luis Diaz was the one who goaded Pat into shooting Muzz and his mom in the first place. Luis said that lines with women should never be crossed and maybe they could hang down in Philly with Luis’s cousin for a while. After chilling out for a day or two the both of them could keep going and head on down to Florida for a long break or even a fresh start. Yeah, sure, right after he took care of Chiqui. Keep that bitch quiet but good.

  Pat took out his cell and dialed Luis’s number. Eight rings. No answer. Dialed again. Eight rings. No answer.

  What the fuck?

  And that’s when Pat Farrell’s whole world twirled red and blue through Mrs. Mukowski’s front windows.

  *****

  Two hours later at the Holland Tunnel toll, Chiqui Otálvora’s tongue swirled hot and wet in Luis Diaz’s ear.

  “Pinche cabrones,” Luis snarled. His right hand hung loose on the steering wheel of his black Maxima, and his left hand held up a twenty-dollar bill ready for the weary toll attendant three cars ahead.

  Chiqui dragged her pointy, scarlet fingernails up and down the length of Luis’s thigh. First up, then down, then up again, slow and applying deliberate and sensuous pressure. She saw Luis’s cock thicken through his baggy jeans, and she tucked her head under his arm and sighed.

  Luis continued, “I’m soooo set. Soooo, soooo, so set.”

  Chiqui acknowledged this observation with a giggle, and then she pinched the top of the fly on Luis’s jeans.

  “Them fuckin’ Kings, Chiqui,” Luis went on, “they see me workin’ a play like this on them two? Them gonna respect the shit out of that for real, baby. No doubt.”

  Chiqui unfastened the button on the top of Luis’s jeans and drew down the brass zipper. Pulling back his briefs, she fished out his hard flesh and lowered her head.

  Rolling up to the tollbooth, Luis thought it was funny that the attendant had his hands sealed in purple latex gloves. The attendant took the twenty-dollar bill and gave Luis his change, dead-eyeing the top of Chiqui’s bobbing head.

  Luis grinned up at the man and gave him a wink. The toll attendant, who had seen just about everything in his time, glared back and waved the next car on.

  Soul Collection

  By T. Fox Dunham

  “I know this dude,” Louie whispered, spitting in my ear. I grabbed the sleeve of his green Eagles sweatshirt and pushed him off me. His eyes flared, but he kept his cool, rolling the ball bearings in his pocket.

  “You’re paranoid, asshole,” I said. “You’re going to blow this deal.”

  Pete sat at a folding card table by the window of the slum apartment. He’d dumped the small plastic drum of percs and counted through them with a pair of tweezers, meticulously checked for breaks in the pills, fractures that would lower the milligram dosage. He’d already selected four and set them to the side then made a note on a pad. We watched as he set two more aside.

  “Thirty percent discount on these,” he said.

  “You’re fucking blind,” Louie said. “They look fine.”

  Pete lifted one of the pills to the light oozing from the hanging light bulb. “Clearly, there’s a chip here. It won’t be as powerful. I have clients in the north who expect quality, not like you douchebags in Philly who would get high from licking a bloody toad’s ass.” Hints of a proper accent exposed when he spoke, reminding me of those old Monty Python reruns—comedy I never understood.

  Louie tensed his shoulders and gripped the ball bearings tightly, ready to use them. I grabbed his arm. “Cool it,” I said. “We need this asshole. This nickel-and-dime stuff is killing me.” He calmed. I could count on his greed to override his rage, most of the time.

  Water dripped from a brown wound staining the moldy ceiling, pooling on the warped hardwood floors of the crackhouse—an abandoned row home where we met our customers. I walked over and grabbed a bucket, snapping a syringe beneath my boot and grinding the glass. I dropped the bucket to catch the rain. Wrinkled condoms, coffee cups and other human detritus littered the floor and filled the stone fireplace. Smoke stained the walls black from when junkies had tried lighting a fire, not realizing the chimney had collapsed.

  Pete’s greasy bangs hung over his forehead as he examined each pill. He shivered and pulled his water-stained leather jacket over his shoulders, hanging it off his brittle bones and thin frame. I figured him for another junkie, which was probably how he got into the business, to pay for his habit. Long blue veins bulged on his neck—but unlike most of the users so far gone, he still exercised a precision in motor function and concentration. His hands didn’t shake, and cold sweat didn’t pour down his neck. It didn’t match up. Something was off about this guy.

  He finished counting then dumped the pills back into the plastic drum we’d gotten from Louie’s Uncle Frankie, a pharmacist paying off his debt by falsifying narcotic orders—our candy man.

  I drove my knuckles into the card table and leaned down over him. The chain piercing my eyebrow and lip dangled over my vision, and I brushed it clear. “It meets your approval?” I asked.

  He nodded then took out an envelope from his pocket and handed it to me. I opened it and counted each fresh hundred-dollar bill.

  “I’m giving you a break on those broken pills,” he said. “Next time, I expect a perfect shipment, or I’m going to another supplier.”

  “Bullshit,” Louie said, rolling the bearings in his pocket. “You don’t have a supplier that can move the bulk we can.”

  He took out a silver flask from his jacket pocket, turned the cap and pulled from the liquor. He offered us a slug, but we both didn’t move, playing it cool. Louie and I had been partners since Catholic school, and we showed a united front to those nuns. It trained us for a life of low-level crime. He shrugged and put away the flask.

  “That brings me to my next point,” he said. He eased back into the folding chair and crossed his legs. He wore perfect Nike Trainers, and I wondered how long it would take for a local junkie to jump him and pull them off His Majesty’s feet. You didn’t wear that nice shit in this Philly hell pit, and sooner or later someone was going to rip them off his warm body or corpse. How the hell did a fuck up like this survive in our trade? I watched him with more diligence. The little details continued to confuse me, and I felt my evolved sense of fight-or-flight peaking. “If we are going to ratify and cement our business relationship, there are some details I need to know if I’m to trust you. The more I trust you, the more I can sell.”

  I envisioned him as a devil with a contract, but not red-skinned and wearing a bifurcated tail.
When the devil comes, he’ll be clean and natty, dressed in a three-piece suit and wearing a diamond ring on his cock.

  Father Gabe, my guardian growing up when my mother abandoned me for months at a time, warned me about choices and deals. True. We wanted to get the hell out of Philly. I was tired of living in shit and poverty, among the junkies, the proles, the homeless who made the stormy skies their roof. But I didn’t want to get in too deep. That involved sacrifices of the spirit, usually murder at some point, and I’d promised Father Gabe, promised myself I’d keep my soul. We had a nice little business and didn’t really hurt anyone. Our customers made their choices and it wasn’t our job to moralize. But if we grew any more as a business, we’d start stepping on some dicks.

  Dominic, the local skipper, sanctioned our territory: Ferry Street and the University of Penn, selling percs to the rich kids who grew up stealing narcotics out of their parents’ medicine cabinets. If we wanted to expand, we’d have to plow the land with guns and irrigate with blood.

  “Why do you want to know our source?” Louie asked. “So you can steal him? Fuck that.” Louie slammed the table with his palms. Pete rolled his eyes.

  “Will you put your rabid dog on a leash so we can talk like civilized people?”

  Louie lunged for him, knocking over the card table, and Pete reacted, reaching for the side of his belt, grabbing at air. The table hit the wall, and Louie grabbed Pete’s coat, the ball bearings clutched tightly.

  I grabbed his arm then pulled him off of Pete, and in his blind rage, he went for me, slamming me with his fist. I threw him off balance, and he socked my shoulder. It numbed and throbbed down my arm muscle, and I grabbed my Luger snug in the cuff of my jeans and stuck it in his stomach.

  “Calm the fuck down,” I said. He considered hitting me again but then calmed and dropped the ball bearings back into his sweatshirt pocket.