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I got a tip. When you’re connected, you hear things. So, before dawn, I showered, shaved, dressed—suit and tie—and stood on my front porch waiting as the caravan of patrol cars and police vans barreled into the cul-de-sac to my front door. I raised my hands and called out for the guy in charge.
A detective stepped out of the lead car as guys in combat gear piled out of the vans and trotted toward me, rifles raised. “I’m not going to resist,” I said, “but I want a negotiator. When he gets here, I’ll let him in.” “No can do.” “Your way or the highway?” “That’s it.” “I don’t think so.” I backed into the house and shut the door. A half hour later, I opened the door for the negotiator. I stepped aside, out of the line of fire. “Slow and easy,” I said. “Hands on head.” I shut and locked the door and showed him my Colt 1911. “Face the wall.” I kicked the inside of his ankles, forcing his legs wide and frisked him. He was clean. “Let’s discuss this like gentlemen,” I said motioning toward two chairs in a windowless corner of my living room, against a solid wall. We faced each other, a small round table between us. I removed the magazine from my piece and ejected the bullet I had chambered. Setting the piece on the table I said, “I’ve made coffee.” I stood, walked to the kitchen, and came back with the French press, sugar, cream and cups. I poured coffee for us both. I drank first. “What can you do for me?” I asked. “I can help you end this so we both walk out of here healthy.” “After that?” “You know the score,” he said. I shrugged. He nodded. “When I was a kid,” I started, “my old man would look down on me and say, ‘It’s my way or the highway. You don’t like things here you can hit the road.’ At eight or nine, living upstate New York barely outside Canada, the highway led nowhere. So, it was his way until my eighteenth birthday when I pushed the old man down our well. My mother gave me half the old man’s accident insurance. Next day I joined the Army where they told me, ‘It’s our way or the highway—and that road could take you to Leavenworth.’” “Where’s this going?” “Eventually—here. Now. You see, the Army’s way became my way. Could’ve had any job. But they taught me to fight. I liked it—using weapons—of all kinds. I became a weapon. A killer. A good one. Got medals, praise. So, when I got out, my only marketable skill was killing.” “As a civilian, it’s called murder.” “Potato? Tomato? As a civilian, it’s a road less taken, a road with consequences, but a road to travel, nonetheless. I started slow—called it practice, learning not to get caught. I made connections and that’s when it paid off. Paid well.” “Where’d it get you?” “I had an eighteen-year run. Lived low-key but comfortable. Look around.” “Nice house. But—” “No buts. No regrets—well, hardly. Just this last job. Still figuring out how I slipped up.” “They’ve been building a case against you for a long time.” “Building shit. Bastards couldn’t prove anything. Never knew my name.” “They know it now. So, what’re we gonna do?” “You’re saying it’s your way or the highway?” “You’ve got two roads—one long—if we both walk out. The other short….” “I’d like to walk out. I’ll need a minute, though—maybe ten. Go—let ‘em know.” “Don’t mess with them.” “A sign of good faith…” I picked up the .45, clip and bullet and handed them to the negotiator. He walked out. I washed the coffee pot and cups. I laughed. Arsenic—colorless, odorless, and tasteless. We’d both drunk. Another ten minutes or so…. I tucked another Colt into my waistband. Opening the door a crack I called out, “I’m coming out, okay?” On my porch, I reached to my waistband and told myself— “My highway. My way….” About the author: Nick Di Carlo has taught writing and literature in such non-traditional settings as maximum-security correctional facilities. Lawrence R. Reis, author of Wolf Masks: Violence in Contemporary Poetry has written: “The men in Di Carlo's classes recognized many similarities between their experiences and his. Those experiences, often dark and sometimes violent, inform and power Di Carlo’s own writing.”
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“This gon’ be a good one,” says Deon, shoving french fries into his mouth. He likes to talk with his mouth full. Or at least it doesn't stop him.
“Let’s talk about it in the car,” I say. We’re in a gyro shop on Halsted Street at 9:00 pm, closing time, and the two guys behind the couple of inches of security glass bolted to the front of the counter are anxious for us to leave. They’ve already locked the front door to keep out other customers. They’re anxious, but they’re not asking. They know better than to do that. Deon finishes off his fries as I crumple my food wrappers, condiment packets, and used napkins into a ball and shove them into a garbage can by the door. Deon carefully wipes his hands and follows me, leaving his trash on the table. In the car he tells me that the girl we’re going to see is named Teeny. Deon knows her from our boss’s club, but I don’t. He says, “Her brother got picked up by the cops on some shit that happened down on the Low End. “Real?” “Yep. Been in lockup for a couple of weeks. Some gang shit. The opposition is making life in jail hard for him. Had his ass beat twice already. Family’s been trying to get the money up for bail, but they’re short. Teeny works at the club so she went to Brent to talk to him about it.” “What he say?” “Told her she didn’t have enough under her dress to cover that kind of loan.” “Now he’s worried about her talking?” “Brent’s got somebody in the prosecutor’s office and word is that Teeny wants to give them something on some dirt Brent did. And in exchange, they’ll work out something for Martell’s fat ass.” “The brother.” “Right.” “What’s she got?” Deon shrugs. “She a damn waitress. Still, she sees who comes and who goes. Might have heard something she shouldn’t. Maybe fucking somebody on one of Brent’s crews that told her something. Whatever. Can’t have her giving up anything at all.” “So we talk to her?” “Yeah. And if we find out she’s been running her mouth, we convince her to shut up. She’ll tell them she was only pretending that she knew something so they’d help her brother.” “What if it turns out she ain’t been talking?” “Either way,” he say, “we gon’ see what’s under that dress,” We both laugh at that. We have some time to kill and we use some of it trying to decide how to get our hands on Teeny. We settle on following her home after her shift at the club. We spend the rest of the time talking about the things we’re going to do to Teeny once we have her. Her shift finally ends at 1:00 a.m. and she gets a ride home. We watch her go in as the car drives away. We park at the corner where we have a decent view of the place. Teeny barely has any neighbors. Most of the houses on the block have been condemned or torn down over the years. It’s mostly vacant lots full of trash and weeds flanking the little house that Teeny rents. The house is backed up against elevated train tracks that run above a fifteen-foot concrete wall. We sit there for two hours, figuring we’ll give her a chance to go to bed and make sure she isn’t having any company that we might have to deal with. But she seems to be having a hard time settling down. She has the lights on and we can see her moving around in the house, cheap curtains showing her silhouette. Finally, the lights go out. After another thirty minutes of anticipation, we start the short drive up the block. We walk right up to the front door, real easy, like everything is fine. We decide to make a grand entrance that matches our eager mood after so much damn waiting. Deon snatches open the flimsy screen door as I put a boot to the cheap wooden one. It damn near flies off of the hinges and we charge in, the dim light of the street lamp revealing a wide-awake Teeny. She comes out of the kitchen like a shadow, fully-dressed and armed with what appears to be a little piece of shit Hi-Point pistol. She starts shooting at us. It’s a bad gun and she has bad aim. But it’s a small house so it’s enough. I put up a hand to block the bullets and she shoots me in it, then two more bullets find my belly. Deon is standing behind me and one of the shots hits him in the side of the head before he can get to the Glock on his hip. We hadn’t considered this. Maybe she’d lie about what she had been saying. Or wouldn’t want to talk. Maybe she’d even try to run. All of those things would have been okay. Hell, we’d been up all night thinking about what we’d do to her for those things. But this? That she might have a gun? That she’d shoot without warning? Did we ever think about what she might do to us? No. We hadn’t. So now I’m on the floor trying to hold in my guts. She looks down at me, the gun still smoking and aimed at my head. I’m on my side, curled into the fetal position and dimly aware of Deon repeatedly kicking me in my ass. It’s not his fault, really. He’s dying. I close my eyes. She walks around me and starts pulling on Deon, going through his pockets. Thirty seconds later, I hear the screen door bang shut and the distinctive growl of Deon’s V8 engine as she races off down the street. Shit. I guess she’d been up all night thinking too. About the author: Chris L. Robinson is a writer born and raised on the South Side of Chicago. He has been published in Shotgun Honey and Pulp Modern Flash. He has a beautiful wife and a son that is gradually winning all of their wrestling matches--please send help. He can be found on Twitter as @ChrisLRobinson3. |
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