Frank Sinatra in a Blender Read online

“Hear me in there?” No Nuts screamed. “You will talk to us.”

  Telly whimpered and cowered down as low as he could.

  “Where’s the money?” Sid demanded. “Don’t fucking lie to me, cocksucker.”

  No Nuts opened his toolbox.

  “C’mon Telly. Forget where you hid it already?”

  Telly’s expression turned blank. He searched for words to save him but his mouth was paralyzed by cold and fear.

  “Remember?” Sid asked him.

  No Nuts shrugged. “I don’t think he remembers.”

  “Well, he’ll remember being tortured,” Sid said.

  Telly thrashed about.

  “Go head, yell if you want too. Ain’t nobody gonna hear ya.”

  When No Nuts set the toolbox next to his feet, Telly really began to fidget.

  “You look uncomfortable,” No Nuts said indifferently as he removed a hammer. But it wasn’t just any hammer. It was an eight-pound stainless steel industrial hammer. The kind you’d use for driving stakes into the ground to pitch a circus tent. It was brand new; No Nuts pulled the price tag off the handle with his teeth.

  Sid had to admit it was an awe-inspiring tool. “Where’d ya get that bastard, Johnny?”

  Johnny No Nuts smiled like a son who just tied his shoe right for the first time. His round face beamed with self-importance. The wrinkles around his eyes expanded when he spoke.

  “Lowe’s,” he said with pride. “Got it from the Bargain Bin for $12.99.”

  “Son of a bitch that’s cheap.” Sid nodded quickly, raised an eyebrow in genuine approval for such a first-rate deal. He knew where he’d be getting his next hammer.

  Telly shook uncontrollably now. His feet were frozen chunks of ice. He was slouching and trying not to cry. Sid grabbed him under his arms to raise him up. He tugged hard and some of Telly’s ass skin ripped off and stuck to the frigid metal chair. The sound the skin made when it tore loose was clean and quick, like paper tearing.

  Telly didn’t like that, started screaming.

  “Sorry,” Sid told him, and he meant it.

  Then No Nuts shattered Telly’s right foot with the hammer and crushed his frozen toes.

  The twelve-dollar hammer connected with tremendous force and Sid felt shock waves reverberate from the concrete up into his boots. Telly went crazy. His lurching caused more of his ass skin to bond with the chair and rip free. He expelled high-pitched, soaring notes that gave voice to his unbearable pain.

  Then No Nuts raised the hammer.

  Sid could see Telly’s deformed pinkie toe stuck to the end of the hammer. They both laughed, and Sid told No Nuts to feed it to him.

  No Nuts arched his eyebrows sharply and said it was a hell of an idea.

  The look on Telly’s face was one of genuine terror.

  On impulse, Johnny pitched the toe into Telly’s mouth as he howled and it went right in, triggering new laughter.

  “Lucky shot,” Sid told him.

  Johnny said he knew it.

  Telly spit the toe out with a force greater than a guy in his situation should’ve been capable of and it hit No Nuts in the chin. Another round of laughter followed. They were having fun. For a moment they forget how cold it was down in the basement, forgot about being hungry. Torture was a lot like quail hunting or bass fishing. While most would hesitate to call it a sport, there was just something about torturing a man that brought out the competitive nature in the two of them.

  Sid took a step back from the situation, pulled a bottle of DeKuyper Blackberry brandy from the pocket of his coat and let the thick syrup run down his gullet. He embraced the slight heat it gave then offered a shot to No Nuts.

  Telly started cussing and yelling. He was pissed off about his toe but what he wanted more than another toe was another foily. His goal: live long enough to do more crank. He screamed at Sid and No Nuts. Told No Nuts to go fuck his mother.

  Sid chuckled and Telly told him to go fuck his father.

  Sid didn’t like that; he was tired of Telly’s mouth. He wanted to enjoy the precise second the brandy buzz found him and it was hard to fully appreciate the moment with Telly going on like he was. Sid grabbed the back of Telly’s chair and pulled it across the floor until it set perfectly over the drain. He removed the handgun from its holster.

  Telly’s eyes flared abruptly. He did what everybody did in his situation. He started to beg. Wanted to make a deal. He said he had the money after all.

  “Oh, now you have the money. If you had the money we wouldn’t be here, ya wanker.”

  Sid pointed the gun at Telly, pushed the steel barrel against his cold flesh. Telly started farting. Profound, commanding flatulence that ricocheted off the metal chair in thunderous rounds. He said he was gonna shit himself.

  “Okay,” Telly screamed. “Okay, okay. I got it!” Spit jumped from his mouth. “Okay, I swear, I got it. I’m sorry, Sid. Don’t fucking shoot me, I’ll give it to you. We can split it three ways.”

  Sid shook his head from side to side. He told Telly no with his eyes.

  Telly started crying. “Look at my toes, you cocksuckers!”

  Sid took a step back and blasted a hot round into Telly’s forehead. His body rocked back and forth, the chair balanced on two legs momentarily then fell on its side. Sid tried to keep the blood off his suit, but despite his slapdash precautions he still took considerable blood splatter.

  Sid looked down at his suit jacket as he put the gun away. “Bloody hell.”

  Johnny laughed and said he wanted a taco, which was fine by Sid. It was getting late; he could eat. They’d just let Telly bleed out. They could always cut the body up after lunch.

  •••••

  We waited at Crestwood Bowl until just after dark. There was no sign of Telly or the money. We listened to the scanner and the radio. As far as we knew he was still on the run.

  With partial interest, I followed the Lincoln Town Car back to Cowboy Roy’s. We needed to talk things over. Had to stay on this if we wanted to get paid.

  I’d used a pay phone outside the bowling alley to call Chief Caraway. I asked him what he knew.

  He said, “Them boys was either damn lucky or damn good.” He asked me again what I knew about Norm Russo but I kept what I’d learned to myself. I still had a few angles of my own to work. I left out my involvement with Big Tony and Doyle.

  The Chief told me, “Try a little harder. Do what you gotta do.” He said it was important. Maybe if I broke this case he could pull a few strings. Said he’d like to see me back on the force.

  When he asked about my drinking I told him it was under control, I was sober as a judge. And for a couple of hours every day, I was.

  “I want you to work with one of my guys on this.”

  I was surprised to hear that. Usually if I did anything for the Chief it was in an unofficial capacity. And I always worked alone. I did things my way and got results. I wasn’t bound by the usual constraints. Words like due process and Miranda rights had no place in my vocabulary. My old man played by the rules and I saw where that got him.

  “Who you have in mind?” I asked.

  “Ron Beachy.”

  Surprised, I asked, “Amish Ron?”

  “The very same,” Chief Caraway replied.

  I told him that was fine. Said I was happy to help but working this case with Detective Beachy was going to fuck everything up for me. Amish Ron was a legend in police work. He’d grown up Amish, but somewhere along the way he’d converted, became one of us. I supposed a man could only raise so many barns without growing jaded.

  The parking lot was jam-packed tight when we arrived at Cowboy Roy’s. It looked like a hundred people standing around, eating and drinking in the cold.

  Big Tony and Doyle had plans; they’d do whatever it took to get the money. The word on the street was somebody got paid. Not enough to finance a revolution, but more than enough to kill for. If Telly was as dumb as he sounded, he was dead already.

  I parked the Vic
and enjoyed the beginnings of what was sure to be another outstanding drunk as I stood next to the Lincoln and waited for Big Tony to do another line of coke. He offered one to Doyle but Doyle never touched that shit. He didn’t waste his time with drinking either, because it cut into too much of his time for stealing. When Doyle wasn’t stealing, he was thinking about stealing. Or planning to steal something. He was the kind of guy who dreamed of stealing every night. And when Doyle couldn’t sleep, he wouldn’t count sheep—he stole them.

  Even the watch on his wrist belonged to someone else, an established thief named Chuck Porter. He and Doyle went back to the days when Moses wore short pants and they had a rivalry of one-upmanship that was unmatched. They tried to out-steal the other in a friendly competition that Doyle eventually won when Chuck accidently got locked in a safe and ran out of air.

  In a bold display of audacity, Doyle slipped the watch off Chuck’s wrist at his funeral, while he was lying in the casket in front of everyone. Doyle’d been wearing it ever since.

  I slammed the last of my Corona and threw the bottle in the dumpster. We passed people braving the cold. Drinking beer and eating chili.

  Big Tony led the way through the doorway that not four hours earlier I’d stumbled out of. The same doorway where I’d passed that tweaker shit fuck Telly. Goddammit. If I’d only known. He probably had the money with him. Some detective I was.

  Big Tony headed for his table and Doyle blazed a path to the shitter. Said it was the chili he ate earlier, the stuff they served in the parking lot.

  I asked him about that.

  “Every night in November,” he said. “Gotta love Chili Month.”

  Indeed. As a man with a lifelong appreciation of strippers and chili, I found something extraordinary about the idea of combining them both under one roof. It was almost as if Cowboy Roy himself had created a Utopian Paradise to ensnare men for hours, separating them from their hard-earned dollars while giving them two of the greatest things life had to offer at the same time.

  I waited for Flames to serve me up but a baby doll took my order instead. She was topless and wore a different-colored barbell through each pert nipple.

  I asked her if that hurt.

  “I didn’t think about it.” She turned away quickly. She thought herself too good for me and maybe she was. I watched the light reflect off her jewelry. Her face radiated nausea and revulsion. Without looking up, she asked me what I wanted.

  “A shot of Patron. A shot of Jim Beam. A Corona. And a Captain n’ Coke.”

  That finally got her attention. She wanted to complain but didn’t. “Okay,” she said.

  She came back with the first two shots and I finished them both before she brought my beer. When she set the bottle on the bar, I grabbed the Captain from her hand and killed it too.

  I held up a finger. Told her I wasn’t done.

  “More?”

  “When it comes to drinking I don’t fuck around.” I threw a twenty on the counter, which wasn’t nearly enough, and told her to set me up one more time.

  I made an impressive dent in that Corona; I downed the Captain. Baby girl still hadn’t come back with my next round.

  To my right, a man wearing a polo shirt at least one size too small looked over at me and licked the foam off his tremendous mustache. It was a serious mustache to be sure, a very powerful-looking Fu Manchu, grown with diligence and trimmed with precision. I could only begin to imagine the pride of ownership and the awesome responsibility associated with a mustache of that magnitude.

  I wished baby doll would hurry up. Doyle and Big Tony were sitting at the table making plans without me. I had to get back there. They’d try and cut me out if I gave them the chance.

  At the other end of the bar I could see her flirting with a younger guy who was much better-looking than me. He was also taller and wore an expensive suit. She worked that stud like a pro, pushing her plastic tits and aluminum hardware in his face.

  I was ready for another drink but she dawdled, pursuing her own interests with little regard to my drinking schedule.

  “Hurry the fuck up, babe,” I snapped. Not loud enough to be heard over the music, but loud enough to get the attention of Captain Mustache. He asked me if I had a problem.

  “Of course I have a problem, cockbreath! I wish this girl was on roller skates!”

  He stood quick with a force that made his bar stool wobble. Then he gave me the silent treatment and let his mustache do the talking.

  I didn’t like the direction our conversation was taking. I knew I’d better act fast.

  I handed him my beer suddenly and without warning.

  “Here, hold this,” I said as I shoved my beer into his palm, my voice brimming with authority.

  His fingers close around the bottle automatically. Then he looked down at his hand for a moment, taking his eyes off of me as he wondered why the hell he was holding my Corona.

  That’s when I hit him in the throat with an open hand. I followed it with a quick right hook to the eye socket, then drove my knee into his nut bag for the takedown. Oddly enough he never dropped the bottle and I was able to grab it from his hand before he hit the floor.

  Baby girl finally came back. This time she was yelling. She asked me what the fuck just happened?

  “Call 911,” I said. “This man just had a heart attack.”

  I finished my beer and downed the Patron. Then I gulped down the Beam and the Captain. I thanked her for the drinks and said her nipples were magnificent. Using the madness that ensued as cover I was able to retrieve my twenty from the bar without anyone noticing.

  I rejoined the fellas at the table and wiped my bloody knuckles on the back of a fat guy I rubbed up against.

  When I took my seat at the table, the conversation stopped abruptly. Big Tony’s mouth was hanging open like the hinge on his jaw was broken and the weight of his teeth made it impossible to close.

  “What the fuck was that?” He appeared stunned.

  I took a drink and shrugged. I didn’t know what he was talking about.

  Doyle shook his head. “Get it together, man.”

  I assured both Doyle and Big Tony I was fine. I explained to them I was a highly functional alcoholic. I wasn’t afraid to admit it. I’d come to terms with my curse long ago. I accepted it. Nobody had high expectations of a drunk and I used that to my advantage.

  I finished the last of my Corona and set the bottle on the table a little too hard. “Let’s talk,” I said.

  Big Tony had his box out and tapped it with his finger. He looked around and I read his mind; he wanted another line but he was too lazy to go to the car. He’d have to wait for the right moment then break out his equipment.

  Doyle leaned into the table and cracked his knuckles, ready to get down to business.

  “Here’s what we gotta do,” he said. “We gotta follow his crew around, see what turns up.”

  “Parker’s crew?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “We can do this,” Big Tony chipped in.

  Doyle was shaking his head in agreement. “It can’t be that hard. Long as we stay on ‘em, we’ll find it. If they got it, that is.” He sounded doubtful.

  “What about the tweaker?” I asked. “We think he’s dead?”

  They both said that he must be dead, or would be soon. They had to be right. Even if Telly managed to still be alive, it was a safe bet he no longer had the cash. The fact that he failed to show up for his drug deal with Big Tony only confirmed our suspicions. Not that Big Tony came through on his end. He still never found any crank.

  We talked for a while about Joe Parker and his crew.

  Big Tony dumped a small mound of blow on his mirror as casually as anyone I’d ever seen. The fact we were surrounded by guys eating chili in a strip club didn’t seem to bother him.

  Doyle didn’t like it, but as far as he could see Big Tony was getting away with it. “Hurry up and put that shit away,” he said.

  I took a bottle of Oxy
contin from my pocket and looked for the closest waitress within shouting distance. I noticed that fuck with the handlebar mustache was gone but two of his buddies were giving me the stink eye. That was fine with me. But after a few more drinks I’d have something to say about it.

  As I unscrewed the pill bottle, I looked up to find Doyle and Big Tony staring me down, both beaming out a gaze of disapproval.

  “What?”

  “Geez, Valentine,” Big Tony said. “You’re poppin’ pills, too?”

  I informed the degenerate thieves that I was going through a difficult period in my life and the medication was prescribed by my physician. I took two a day. And not because I was suffering from an injury of some kind, I just liked the way they made me feel. The temporary euphoria, short-lived though it may be, proved to be a fine companion to the liquor and coke.

  Doyle sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. He played the role of caregiver and he shot me a look of strong paternal disappointment.

  Big Tony told me maybe I should slow down.

  As much as I appreciated their concern, I found it absurd to get unsolicited counseling on substance abuse from a man about to snort cocaine. And I refused to be judged by anyone wearing the stolen watch of a dead man named Charlie.

  Doyle stood up and walked to the bar. Told me he’d get me a beer.

  “Thanks.” I told him. “Grab me a Seven ‘n’ Seven while yer at it.”

  Big Tony sniffed a line of cocaine with a stealth that surprised me, then slid the mirror across the table. There wasn’t enough there to get excited about, but I licked my finger and cleaned up what was left. I rubbed the inside of my mouth vigorously, then waited for the numbness to take hold.

  I didn’t have to wait long. That overwhelming lack of sensation washed over my gums like a Novocaine dream as rap music blasted a ferocious assault. Vibrations from the mammoth speakers suspended from the ceiling caused my empty Corona to foxtrot across the table.

  For a second everything felt right. Like the world was my slave and I had everything I needed.

  Big Tony stopped a tall, thin dancer with long blonde pigtails who stood on enormous pink platform heels at least eight inches tall. Her body was tight and shaved clean. I watched her abdominal muscles flex and release under the cruel light of the single bulb that burned dimly above our beer-stained table.