Dolly's Day Off

Charles could tell she was a whore right away.  Nice girls didn’t respond that quick, even if they were wild.  He’d never actually been to a real whore himself, but he’d read about them and considered himself quite the sophisticate.  It wasn’t the first time he'd managed to lure a girl into the manikin storage room at Sweeger’s department store, however.  Charles had happily discovered that sometimes the sight of a good-looking young man arranging the limbs and adjusting the clothing of the female manikins turned a gal on.  It was a sweet little extra benefit of the job.  But to get hold of a pro, for free?  This was his lucky day.

While adjusting the garters on a blonde, So Moderne II manikin in the Young Miss department, he felt someone watching him and glanced over at a sweet little brunette browsing through blouses.  She was staring at him boldly over the top of the blouse rack, and she looked like a very fun girl.  He pulled the manikin’s skirt up higher and ran his hand up the leg to smooth the stocking.  The brunette smiled like a bad child and moved over past the end of the blouse rack where he could see her and hiked up her own skirt mimicking his gesture.  He smoothed the manikin's sweater over its hard-molded breasts with a sly grin.  She gave her own breasts a cute little squeeze and winked at him.  He gave her "the eye," a look he'd perfected in the mirror at the onset of puberty and ran his fingers across the manikin’s crotch in an unmistakable gesture.  It was a risky move, but it paid off.

“You sure know your way around women’s undergarments, young man…” she said sweetly.

“Well, I get lots of practice… in my line of work, miss,” he answered, flashing his most irresistible smile.

In the back of the storage room, she was kissing him with an enthusiasm that he found very encouraging.  She undid his pants with one hand and deftly navigated.  He grinned.  “You sure know your way around men’s undergarments, young lady…” he said.  They giggled.

She glanced around at the manikins in pieces on shelves and standing in rows, naked.  They seemed to watch the couple with dull interest.  “I’ve never had such an audience.  It makes me feel like showin’ off,” she purred in his ear.

Sudden voices outside the storeroom door sent them both into an unwilling imitation of the manikins around them.  Their eyes met and laughter threatened, but the moment passed and he held her tight, whispering in her ear, “Should I go on calling you miss, or you gonna tell me your name?”

“It’s Dolly,” she whispered back.

He laughed.  “You’re joking, right?”

She laughed too, shaking her head.  “It is, I swear!”

“Well, darlin’ that is just too much… I finally got my living doll.”

"Well, what's your name?" She asked.

"It's Charles."  He grinned, "Well, I go by Charles, but my first name is John."

She collapsed against him in stifled laughter, then looked up at him shaking her head. "I do believe we were made for each other," she whispered softly.

He tried to move the lipstick smeared around her mouth back onto her lips with a playful finger.  “My shift was almost over.  I don’t think anybody would notice if I disappeared,” he whispered beneath raised eyebrows.

“You got someplace we can go, sugar?” she asked hopefully.

He frowned.  “I live in a young men’s Christian boarding house.  We got a old lady in a rocker with a Bible and a fist full o' knittin' needles on the front porch, and a old man with a Bible and a shotgun on the back porch.”  He shook his head firmly.

She bit her lip and considered a minute.  “Well, I live in a similar situation.  But today is everybody’s day off.  We might get away with it if you promise to be quiet…”

His awe at being smuggled into an honest-to-God whorehouse was considerable.  But as they'd managed to procure and consume two bottles of beer in between Sweeger’s department store and Dolly’s room at the Shy Violet, he had an immediate need.  “Where’s your little boy’s room, darlin’?  I gotta pee me a river…” he whispered.

She pointed to a door hung with a rainbow of feather boas from the dressing table, where she stood removing her dangly earrings.  He stared in mock amazement, “We do not have private baths in our rooms at the Young Men’s Christian boardinghouse.”

She smirked.  “Don’t keep me waitin’ too long, sugar.”

He stumbled over a tiny satin footstool on his way across the room and they both laughed like children.

He opened the door, still giggling, turning his face away from the cloying boas, then jumped back screaming, “Holy Jesus Christ Almighty!”

Dolly whirled around from her dressing table and crossed the room, crashing into him as he flew away from the bathroom doorway.  She whispered urgently, “Don’t scream like that, you’ll get us…” and then stopped short staring into the bathroom.

The girl was hanging; knees hooked over the shower curtain rod, trussed up like a pig in a slaughterhouse.  Her throat had been gashed to drain her blood.  Her lower belly had been sliced open and the slack bloody folds of flesh looked disarranged.  Her face was purple.  The bathroom was awash in red.

Dolly’s voice could only come out on exhale, gasping gibberish until she managed to say the girl’s name.  “Hillary… that’s my… that’s Hillary!”

Charles sat down on the floor involuntarily and began scrambling backwards like a crab toward the door.  Dolly ran over him and grabbed for the air in front of the doorknob.  “I gotta get Violet, she’ll know what to do, Vie!  Mama Vie!  Help!” she wailed and grabbed hold of the knob.

The door flew open forcefully, throwing her back on the floor next to Charles.  Six foot, six inches, 280 pounds of coiffed, bejeweled, and silk-clad madam filled the doorway.

Mama Violet took one look through the bathroom doorway, one look at Dolly, one look at Charles.  Without a word she pulled a small pearl-handled revolver out of the folds of her gown and expertly shot first Charles, then Dolly clean in the middle of their foreheads.

“Son of a fucking bitch!” she hissed, as she crossed the room and stepped out into the hall to a phone.  She dialed a number, seething while it rang.

The number answered.  She did not say hello.  She growled into the receiver, “Never, never, are they to be done in my house!  He is out of control and I will not have it!”

She paced, listening to half a sentence.  “There are seven girls due back in the next three hours from their day off.  You get someone here to help me clean up this mess right now!  I’ve got three... problems to dispose of and that carny cock waste cost me one of my top earners, in addition to the green girl!”  Sweat ran down the sides of her cheeks, leaving white streaks through her rouge as she listened to a response that didn’t placate her nearly enough.

“You’re damn right you’ll pay for her too, and much more besides!”  She slammed down the phone and stepped back into the room, blowing out her breath in bursts like a steam engine while she stomped around furiously.

Dolly and Charles lay tangled on the floor together, staring up with the same dull interest as the manikins had, and just as dead.

Eat Crow

Jake and Skad were drunk, but not so drunk they'd let Arnie get away without paying up, and the cards in his hand were garbage, just like they had been all night.  He hadn't even wanted to play to begin with, but Jake had noticed that queer pack of cards sitting on the edge of the bar, the ones with the laughing crows on the backs, and the three of them had found themselves playing hand after hand like there was no end to the night.  There was an end to Arnie's money all right, and he had come to that end real quick.  The two of them were having a high old time, yucking it up every time Arnie had to push his chips their way, and the sound of their barking laughter, like a couple of hyenas in heat drove him to want to break a chair on their heads.  He rubbed the sweat off of his forehead, looked down and saw a card on the floor, just laying there, bird side up.  He thought just then that he'd really like to have the last laugh –– a real big laugh just like the bird –– and as his hand went for his gun, he thought hey, maybe that's what the bird on the back of the cards had been telling him all along... maybe the bird was saying, "Arnie, sometimes you gotta laugh it up big and let the bullets fly!"

No Such Thing As A Sweet Easy Deal

I couldn't figure how or why at the time, but I sure could see that things had taken a turn for the fucked. One day I was a guy climbing the ladder like a pro.  A sweet, easy deal came along from Mr. G, and I grabbed it. How hard could it be to drive a few guys from New York to Los Angeles and keep an eye on them? Then next thing I knew, there I was, in some fleabag hotel in downtown LA, with one guy tied to the bed, one guy off on the lam, and one guy doing a pretty good job of squeezing off my air supply.

I was starting to see those little flittery lights, like minuscule fireflies swarming right in front of my eyes.  I knew if I didn't get Cheddar to let up soon, I'd be in the soup without a ladle.  But Cheddar's hands were strong as hell, once a guy went snowman on you, it was trouble with a capital T, unless you could get enough dope into him, and fast.

I could hear Milky shouting something from the bed where I'd tied him down, but my ears might as well have been filled with jello, all I could make out clearly was my own banging heart.  That Milky, he'd been shouting ever since he woke me up, first pounding on my door, then pleading with me to help him. "Something's wrong, Marty, I took double my dose, but I'm still fading, I think something's wrong with the pills!"

I pulled him in the room and shut the door quick.  I tried to get him to shut the hell up, but he was frantic. He grabbed me by the shoulders with hands that were stronger than they had any right to be and squeezed."You gotta help me, Marty. Don't cut off my head, Marty, I'm not gonna eat you, just don't cut off my head!"

Jesus H., I thought, I sure named this one right, milk toast little coward.  Then I turned on the light.  He looked pale all right, but it was the eyes that told me he wasn't kidding.  Cloudy white film spreading out from the pupils, just like Mr. G's instruction pamphlet said.  He was in stage one withdrawal.

He looked around the room wildly, grabbed one of my ties off the back of a chair and laid down on the bed with his arms up over his head like it was standard procedure, and grabbed the iron bed frame. "Tie me down and give me a shot, I won't try nothing, I promise, just get me a shot, quick!"

I tried to talk him out of being tied up, told him I could see he was still in control and it was good he came to me for help before it got too bad, but he was set on the idea, so I tied his hands and got busy making him an emergency dose out of the watcher case.  Snowflake wasn't meant to be mainlined, it was supposed to be taken in pill form, but every watcher was given a small doctor's kit with syringes and concentrated serum to be used in emergency situations.

He kept on babbling while I got his dose ready, said he'd gone to Ray's room to see if he was having trouble too, but Ray had cleared out.  "Cleared out?" I said, setting the full syringe down and picking up the rubber strap to tie off his arm with.  "What do you mean, cleared out?"

"I mean he's gone, him and his stuff too," he said.

"What about Cheddar?" I said, but I needn't have asked, because that's when Cheddar busted in the door and wrapped his hands around my throat.  He was worse off than Milky, he was stage two.

I'd managed to get two fingers up between my sweaty neck and Cheddar's hands, and I pulled out with all my might making it possible to breath just a little and try to talk the guy down.

"Cheddar, stop it, listen to me!  I got what you need over there on the table!  If you take it outta me raw, it won't do you any good!  Let me help you!" I managed to choke the words out, but I couldn't figure if the guy understood, Cheddar's eyes had gone chalk white, the pupils tiny black dots with no sign of human emotions in them.

The little bit of blood that made it back to my brain allowed me to make out what Milky was yelling, "Move him over here, get him down on the bed!"

It didn't make no sense, him being tied up and all, but I did it anyway, heaving my body sideways and catching Cheddar off balance enough that he went down with me.  He was still squeezing my neck though, and now he was on top of me.  I was fucked.

Next thing I knew, Milky had his legs around Cheddar's head in a scissor lock and I felt the grip on my neck come loose.  Cheddar thrashed and I got out from under him and over to the syringe, weasel fast.  Milky was using the bed frame for leverage and had Cheddar fixed tight.  I don't know how I got that needle in a vein, but I did, and drove the shot home.

The effect wasn't immediate, but Milky held on while I fixed another syringe for him.  As soon as Cheddar's body started to relax, I took care of Milky.  "High school wrestling team," he said, with a dreamy, wistful expression as I untied his hands, "I don't get to use those moves enough anymore..." Then his eyes rolled back and he crashed.

I left the two of them to sleep it off and did some investigating, still coughing from Cheddar's choke hold.  Ray was gone all right, and my car with him, but what was worse was that he'd emptied out Cheddar and Milky's Snowflake capsules and filled them with powdered sugar.  It didn't make no sense, he was fully sponsored, he didn't have to steal.

When I realized how bad it was, the sweat started pouring out of me like rain. Something had gone awful wrong with Ray, he was out on the loose and even with the extra Snowflake from the guys, he'd run out at some point and become a dangerous monster.

I had no choice.  I was gonna have to call Mr. G.

Not According to Plan

The house didn’t aim to impress.  Little more than a shack, its bleached slat wood walls slumped in the middle of a dusty plot of land, surrounded by scrub brush and broken fences.  A rusty pickup truck with a fresh scrape along the driver’s side was parked like a passed out drunk in the front yard.

A big black Packard pulled up next to the truck and sat, engine idling.  The two men inside observed the windows, watching for movement.  The house was dead still in the afternoon heat.  The windows remained blank, the faded curtains, lank.

Jake Anager shifted in the passenger seat impatiently, but knew better than to ask what they were waiting for.  He was a hulking, muscular young man, burdened with a heavy brow and a long jaw.  He glanced over at the man behind the wheel who watched the front of the house like it was a movie screen.  Mr. Bureau ran a finger over his pencil thin mustache and nodded to himself.  His cunning black eyes took in details Jake couldn’t hope to ascertain.  Always calculating, this one was.  Always figuring how best to go about his next treacherous trick.

Jake preferred a more direct approach.  Just beat ‘em till they give in or pass out or die and then get on with your day.  But Jake wasn’t in charge.  Mr. Bureau was in charge.  So they would sit in the driveway with the engine running long enough to make Cain good and nervous before they knocked on his door.  Mr. Bureau wasn't concerned about stealth.  He wanted Cain to know he was coming.  He wanted Cain to be thinking about how much he owed, how much trouble he'd caused and how much Mr. Bureau had a right to take out of his hide.

In Jake’s experience though, there wasn’t much of anything likely to make Cain nervous.

Growing up in Ozona, Jake had seen and heard tales of Cain Carter's exploits his whole life.  Cain was a drunk, sure.  He preferred to spend his time and money out on the flats drinking in that abandoned adobe mission the mexicans had taken over and turned into some kind of a saloon for their kind.  It wasn't a proper place for white men.  It was a way station for mexican criminals, which was why Sheriff Cobb liked to go out there and bust heads, clear the place out every so often.  And that crazy mescal drink the mexicans made out of cactus and who knew what all–– Jake had tried it once on a dare and damned if it didn't taste like vomit on fire––  was known to induce brain rot.

But Cain wasn't just some drunk.  He wasn't even just crazy.  He was deep down cunning and driven by a whole different set of wants and needs from your average man.  You hadn't seen single minded stubbornness until you came up at cross purposes to Cain.

Jake had learned well that Mr. Bureau didn't employ him to give unasked for advice, however, so he kept his mouth shut and waited.  If anybody else had of asked him to go take on Cain, he would have spit in the dirt and said, "No thanks."  But what Cain had pulled on Mr. Bureau was an inexcusable offense, a betrayal and an insult as far as Mr. Bureau was concerned.  And he had every intention of pulling the trigger himself, after he'd cut Cain down to size.

Jake figured the only reason he'd been brought along was to bear witness to Cain's humiliation at Mr. Bureau's hands.  He'd served that purpose before.  Mr. Bureau liked to have another pair of eyes to admire his handy work.  Jake had no doubt that Cain had written the ticket to his own execution earlier that day.

Mr. Bureau turned off the engine.  “Something’s not right here,” he said, as he opened his car door and stepped out.  Jake wondered briefly if that pretty girl was in there, and hoped she wasn't as he followed him up the brittle front porch steps. They both stood to the side as he knocked on the door curtly.  Nothing moved, inside or out.  Mr. Bureau knocked again, listening intently.

“Don’t feel like anybody’s here,” Jake started to say, but he was shushed as Mr. Bureau took hold of the doorknob and slowly opened the door.

They stood in the doorway looking inside with two different kinds of surprise on their faces.  Jake peered to make sure what he saw was correctly registering, and then recoiled from the stench that hit him in the face.  Mr. Bureau disregarded the smell and stepped inside far enough to get a good look at the blood stained bible splayed open on the floor.

He took in the details of the scene with amused shock, the splay legged body half sitting, half lying at the kitchen table, the broken fragments of something, maybe dishes or glass, and the copious amount of blood and muck spread out all over the table and oozing over its edges, still plenty wet, but not fresh.  He turned away abruptly and headed back out with the air of a man who'd been cheated out of some highly anticipated satisfaction.

He shut the door, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and thoroughly wiped the doorknob free of fingerprints.  They got back in the car and drove off, Jake doing his best to continue keeping his mouth shut.  Two things he didn’t think were possible had happened that day.

Cain Carter had dared to double cross Mr. Bureau.  And someone else had managed to beat Cain Carter's brains right out.

Slug

 

Finally, here you are, I been waiting for you for hours.  I only had one or two, though, I know how you feel about me being messy out in public.  When other guys tried to buy me one, or talk me up with those lines of crap, I told them to dry up.  It ain't right to leave a girl sitting in a bar alone for so long, people get wrong ideas.  But you're here now, and it's all over with, so let's just be glad together, okay?  Here baby, have a drink, it'll remind you to love me.