This is damn perfect
I'm also just about finished my first Glaswegian story
On the street, people get out of my way. Hustlers, pimps, gutter scum. I hear them whisper as I pass.
"Dead man."
I slip into the adult bookstore on Fifth Street. They call it a bookstore, but these days its trade is mostly peep shows. DVDs too. Rows of them spread out on folding tables. Blondes on the covers with gravity defying tits, going for the academy award with fake moans.
The men rifling through the DVDs keep their eyes down. I keep mine straight ahead. I go to the back, where the peep show booths are. A guy at a cash register guards the entrance.
"Fifteen," I tell him.
"It’s closed," says the guy. I can barely hear him over the bad techno blaring through the shop’s sound system.
I say it again, this time slipping a wad of bills across his counter. "Fifteen."
The guy hands me a roll of tokens.
*
I find room fifteen and close the door behind me. There’s a big picture window along one wall, blocked by an iron curtain. I slip five tokens into a slot and the curtain slowly rises. I take a seat.
There’s a man on the other side of the glass. Not a bleach blonde bimbo ready to strip and tease, but a man in a cardigan sweater and thick glasses. Roly-poly kind of guy. Don’t know his name but they call him "the Case."
The Case lugs out his trademark Samsonite suitcase and points to a phone on the wall. There are two receivers, one on either side of the glass. He picks up his. I pick up mine.
"Hey Riley," says the Case. "I was wondering when you’d show. I guess you heard the Pulaski brothers are in town, huh?"
"I heard."
"So you want a piece?"
"No. I want you to shake your ass for me."
The Case is all smiles as he clicks open his Samsonite. Five guns are strapped inside with velcro, three automatics and two revolvers.
"What you want is stopping power," says the Case. He rips a large automatic from the velcro and holds it up to the glass. "This here’s a .357 Desert Eagle. Holds nine rounds in the mag plus one up the snoot. You like?"
The gun is big and mean and black. No flash. All business. Just what I had in mind.
We talk price. I give him a number. He gives me one back. I give him another number and he grins. I leave a roll of bills on the stool and ask for an extra clip of ammunition. He agrees, saying he’ll wrap it up for me. Like I’m buying dinner plates.
I’m just about out the door when the Case says, "The Pulaskis came to see me too."
This stops me. "What’d they buy?"
"Can’t say. Client privilege and all. But they weren’t looking at cap pistols."
"Thanks for the heads up."
"No problem," says the Case. Then he smiles again. "So in light of this new information, can I interest you in a back up piece?"
*
The Case is awful convincing. I buy an ugly hold-out Smith & Wesson to go along with the Eagle. Two guns for two brothers.
From the bookstore, I walk five blocks then turn down Roosevelt. Big department chains line the street and every few minutes I slow down to window shop. I’m not looking at the mannequins. I’m trying to scope the people around me, the reflections in the glass. That’s how I spot Roberto across the street--Carlo Pulaski’s little brother.
Roberto looks like his brother and his brother looks like his parents. Broad shoulders and a thick neck. That’s from his Polish father. Wavy black hair and caramel skin. That’s from his Puerto Rican mother. Roberto knows I’ve caught him. I can tell by the heavy dose of dead eyes he gives me. I can feel those eyes from all the way across the Avenue.
Roberto disappears into the street crowd. Around a corner and gone. And that’s what I should be--gone. Out of the city, out of the state, out of the country. But I’m not going anywhere. I know if I start running, I won’t ever get the chance to stop.
*
When I reach my flat, Theresa is waiting at the kitchen counter, drinking my beer.
"Jesus, Riley," she says. "I was so worried."
She sinks into my arms. Her body is warm and soft and her hair is like silk against my cheek. The next thing I know, I’m taking the beer bottle out of her hand, setting it on the counter.
My hands slip down to her hips. My lips press against her neck.
Not dead yet, I tell myself. And I take Theresa to the bedroom and prove it.
*
"He’ll kill you," Theresa says afterward. She’s wrapped up in the bed sheets, tan skin against white cotton.
"I know."
She stares up at the ceiling, like she hasn’t heard me. "Or his brother will do it. Shoot you down in the street. Then he’ll come after me."
"No way. Carlo loves you too much."
We both go mute. I think of Carlo Pulaski in prison, alone in his cell. He did six years. A long time for Theresa to be alone.
"Did you rat him out?" she asks.
"Would it matter?"
"I guess not," says Theresa. Then she rolls on to her side, showing me her back. "We both have it coming anyway."
*
Sometime around two am, she slips out of bed and gets dressed. I keep my eyes closed, pretending to sleep. The door slams shut and I’m alone.
I sit up in bed and gaze out the window. One thought rattles in my brain: What’s Carlo doing? It’s been six years since he’s had the street under his shoes. Plenty of time to plan his revenge.
Me and Carlo had run together since high school, starting small then making our way into the serious stuff--armed robbery, trafficking, gun running. But I wasn’t there when he took his fall.
He was driving a Plymouth full of black tar heroin across the Sonoran. Made it past the border but not past the DEA. Someone tipped them off. Someone close. There’s plenty of motive to be a rat. Know the right things and you can make a lot of money.
I pull the Desert Eagle out from under the mattress. Check it’s magazine. Flip off the safety. Jack a round into the chamber.
Then I wait.
Somewhere out there, Carlo Pulaski is waiting too.
*
The phone rings just before dawn.
"We need to talk." It’s Carlo. But not the fun Carlo. Not the drinking buddy Carlo. It’s the business Carlo.
"Where are you?" I ask.
"The high school. Out on the football field."
"We doing the high noon thing?"
Carlo hangs up, letting the dial tone answer for him.
*
I’m not going. That’s what I tell myself. But then I’m in my Buick, driving towards the old high school. It’s the middle of summer, so the place is empty. I pull into a parking space then make my way to the football field.
Someone is waiting for me, sitting in the visitor’s bleachers. It looks like Carlo, but I can’t tell for sure. I march towards him, feeling the weight of the Eagle tucked into the back of my jeans. The sun is just now coming up. I hope it’s not the last time I see it.
Before I get across the field, the guy stands up and jogs down the bleacher stairs, disappearing in the thick shadows underneath the stands. My heart skips a beat.
Normally, I’d think this is a trap. But Carlo doesn’t play that way. He likes to take care of his own messes. Likes to do it personally. An ego thing.
So it’s not a trap. Right?
I draw the Desert Eagle and step beneath the bleachers. The guy is waiting for me twenty paces away. Slats of dawn sunlight cut in from above, giving my eyes something to work with.
It isn’t Carlo I’m looking at. It’s Roberto.
"Where’s your brother?" I ask.
Roberto edges a little more into the light and I see the machine pistol in his hand. "You got business with him," he says, "you got business with me."
I shake my head. "Shouldn’t be this way," I say. But it’s no use. Roberto is too far gone. He’s got the adrenaline shakes. The trembling hands. The bugged out eyes.
It’s going down.
Time drips into slow-mo. I see Roberto bring the machine pistol up. See his finger curl around its trigger. Then I’m diving to the left as I raise the Desert Eagle, moving without thought.
Roberto’s machine pistol blazes in the darkness and I hear the bullets go "ting, ting, ting" off the aluminum bleachers. I wait for the pain. Wait for the hot lead to burn my life away like butter in a frying pan. Except it doesn’t happen that way.
I don’t remember pulling the trigger that first time. But I remember the Eagle’s booming roar. Roberto stumbles backward and I pull the trigger again. And again. And again. And I keep pulling until the gun clicks dry.
And there’s Roberto Pulaski, on his knees. His shirt is a mess of jagged holes. His torso is ruined, dotted with perfect red circles, like Japanese suns.
For a few moments, I just stand there, frozen. Then there’s motion in the corner of my vision. I let the Eagle clatter to the ground and go for the ugly Smith & Wesson in its ankle holster.
"Easy Riley," says a voice from behind. I recognize it right away.
Carlo Pulaski ducks his head under the bleachers, a sawed off 12-gauge in his hands. Right then, I know he has me cold. The Smith might as well be a mile away.
But he doesn’t pull the trigger. Instead, Carlo plants a boot on his brother’s chest and tips his body over. "I knew you could take him. Roberto was mean as shit, but he didn’t have your juice."
"What’s the game, Carlo?"
Carlo shrugs sadly. "The little fuck ratted me out. Couldn’t do his time like a man. So he told the DEA about my trip to Mexico. Used his own brother as a get-out-of-jail-free card."
"What’s that got to do with me?"
"He’s my brother. I hated him for what he did, but I couldn’t bring myself to kill him. That’s where you came in amigo."
I should be mad. I should make a play for the Smith & Wesson. Lug it from the ankle holster and blow Carlo’s brains out. Yet all I feel is relief. "So there’s no beef between us?"
"No beef," says Carlo. Then he smiles. He just lost his brother, and he smiles. And he’s the fun Carlo again. The drinking-buddy Carlo.
"So you don’t care?" I ask.
"What’s there to care about? It’s over."
My heart starts beating its normal rhythm. My blood cools. "Jesus, it’s good to hear you say that. I thought you were going to kill me."
"You didn’t rat me out. Why would I kill you?"
"I thought you were mad. You know, about the Theresa thing."
Carlo turns into a statue. He isn’t moving. He isn’t blinking. He isn’t breathing. He’s just standing there, the sawed off shotgun looking so big in his hands. And at that moment, I know I’ve just made the biggest mistake in my life.
"What thing with Theresa?" Carlo asks.
