Mickey Finn Volume 2, page 25
To suddenly see everything, and still be blinded by revenge.
Lucy’s bottom lip trembled. Her fingers crawled up her shoulder. She felt the cold and heartless glass of a lens. The small connected box condemned her fingertips. This moment of dumb luck had been recorded for eternity by the eye of her body camera. The same one she’d forgotten to turn off.
The System doesn’t care a lick about luck…it’s black and white…a crime’s a crime.
She fell to her knees, wilting under an eye in the sky. The same one that allowed her man to kill her son and doesn’t care about the history books.
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Salvation
Michael Bracken
Stealing the Salvation Army Red Kettle outside the upscale department store at the mall was a crime of opportunity. The elderly bell-ringer was warming her hands inside the store, watching the kettle through the glass door, when Zig-Zag stopped his second-hand black SUV at the curb. I hopped out and grabbed the kettle, almost dropping it because it was far heavier than expected. I was back inside the SUV before the bell-ringer realized what was happening. As we sped away, she could do nothing more than express her displeasure with an unseasonal one-finger salute.
Later we dumped the kettle’s contents onto Zig-Zag’s kitchen table and found ourselves with too many coins and not enough green. We also discovered a folded piece of lined notebook paper buried among the change. While Zig-Zag separated the coins into stacks by denomination, I unfolded the paper.
Send help someone had written in a waxy brown script that reminded me of the notes my ex-fiancée used to write me with her eyeliner pencil when she couldn’t find a pen. Beneath that, the same hand had written an address. I showed the note to Zig-Zag.
“That ain’t our problem.” He took the note from me, crumpled it into a ball, and threw it toward the overflowing trashcan. It bounced off an empty soda bottle and fell to the floor. “So, quit messing around, and count.”
I did, and when we finished, we had two-hundred-and-sixty-two dollars and seventy-three cents, a significant portion of it in pennies and nickels.
Zig-Zag looked at the stacks of change. “That ain’t near enough.”
Later, after Zig-Zag smoked a fattie and fell asleep on the couch, I retrieved the note, flattened it on the table, and reread it.
Send help
Only a woman would write something with an eyeliner pencil. I memorized the address, stuck the note into my wallet, and grabbed my jacket.
As soon as I opened the apartment door to leave, Zig-Zag opened his eyes. “Where are you going, Wilson?”
I poked at the note. “To this address.”
“Why?”
“It’s Christmas.”
“What are you going to do when you get there?”
I shrugged.
Irritated, he said, “I’m not letting you go alone. Let me get my coat.”
After he pulled on his coat, Zig-Zag scooped up a handful of change and dumped it into his pocket. He jingled all the way to his SUV.
An hour later, following directions from my phone’s Google Maps app, we were lost in a neighborhood of McMansions, twisting streets, and cul-de-sacs on the north side of the city, only a few miles from the biker bar where my ex-fiancée waitressed.
“If we don’t get the hell out of here soon, somebody’s going to call the cops.”
“We’re not leaving until we—” Google Maps indicated that we had arrived at our destination. I pointed toward a two-story faux Tudor and said, “That’s the place.”
Zig-Zag drove past the house and we found ourselves caught in another dead end. He circled until we were pointed out of the cul-de-sac, and we rolled past the house a second time. While many of the surrounding homes were festooned with Christmas lights, the only light at the Tudor came from a second-story window where, as we passed, someone pulled back the drape and looked out. The man silhouetted in the light had the build of a refrigerator, but I couldn’t tell much more about him. He let the drape fall back into place.
“You’ve seen the house,” Zig-Zag said. “We’re leaving.”
As he accelerated away, we passed an approaching Lincoln Continental, as black as Zig-Zag’s SUV. I twisted in my seat to watch it turn into the Tudor’s circular drive and slow to a stop in front of the porch. The driver’s door opened, but I saw only the silhouette of the driver when he stepped out just before Zig-Zag swung a right at the corner.
As we exited the neighborhood a few minutes later, Zig-Zag said, “Did you see those houses? Can you imagine what’s in them?”
“There’s a woman who needs help,” I said.
“You still on that?”
“Something’s wrong with that house,” I said. “How come it doesn’t have Christmas lights?”
“Maybe the owner don’t celebrate.”
“Who doesn’t celebrate Christmas?”
Zig-Zag named three different religions that didn’t.
I thought about that awhile. “I want to go back.”
“And do what?”
“I want to see what’s inside. I want to know why it’s so dark. I want to see if there’s really a woman in there who needs help.”
“So what are you now?” Zig-Zag asked. “Santa Claus checking to see who’s naughty and who’s nice?”
“Beats nickel-and-diming the Salvation Army.”
“We did all right.”
“As if,” I protested. “I damn near broke my arm when I grabbed the kettle.”
Zig-Zag stopped at a convenience store near his apartment. After arguing about our culinary desires, we carried a two-liter bottle of soda, a large bag of barbecue-flavored potato chips, and a box of powdered-sugar doughnuts to the counter, pushing aside a stack of flyers promoting Santa’s Workshop, a Christmas decorating service, to make room for our selections.
After the pimple-faced cashier rang up our purchase, Zig-Zag stacked change on the counter.
The cashier stared at us. “You guys rob somebody’s piggy bank?”
“Yeah,” Zig-Zag told him. “Your mama’s.”
We took our purchases and left the cashier to deal with the change.
As we exited the convenience store parking lot, Zig-Zag fired up a fattie and offered me a toke. I declined, but the second-hand smoke filling the SUV made me hungry, so I opened the doughnut box.
I didn’t sleep well that night, and it wasn’t just because I’d downed most of the soda before Zig-Zag even realized I’d opened the bottle. I didn’t sleep because I kept thinking about the note.
I woke early, showered, and shaved for the first time in three days. Most of my clothes were still in the cardboard boxes my ex-fiancée had left on the front stoop of her house when she kicked me out, so I dug through them until I found the black oxfords, black chinos, and button-front white shirt from my last job. After dressing, I added a Christmas tie my grandmother had given me when I was fourteen—a red one with Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer printed on it—and pulled on my jacket.
After I left Zig-Zag’s apartment, I stopped at the convenience store for a large soda and I grabbed several of the Christmas decorating service’s flyers from the counter on my way out.
The bus ride to the neighborhood with the faux Tudor involved two transfers and took an hour longer than the drive in Zig-Zag’s SUV, so I had time to examine the price list and blank form printed on the back of each flyer before I exited the bus at the subdivision entrance. I walked another twenty minutes before I reached the house.
I rang the bell and knocked on the door. I repeated the process several times until the door opened and I found myself facing the man who had peered out the upstairs window the previous evening. He wore a tight-fitting blue Polo shirt over jeans and black cowboy boots. His graying flattop had been Butch-waxed straight up and the scar on his left cheek indicated that someone had once attempted to shave him with deadly intent. “Yeah?”
I thrust a flyer at him and said, “I noticed you haven’t decorated for the season. We can put up your lights, add some blow-up features, and—”
“We ain’t interested.”
He tried to push the door closed, so I stuck my foot in it. “Look, Mister, I don’t get paid unless someone hires—”
“The fuck I care?”
“I’m just saying,” I said. “Your house draws a lot of attention because you haven’t put up any Christmas decorations.”
He glared at me.
I added, “Especially at night.”
His eyes narrowed to slits. “How would you know?”
“We were out here the other day working on a house over on Mesquite Drive,” I said, naming one of the many cul-de-sacs Zig-Zag had blundered into the previous evening. “We didn’t finish until well past sunset, so we looked around and made note of the houses without decorations. Yours is the only one on this block that isn’t lit up at night. We thought the place might be deserted, but since you answered the door, it clearly isn’t.”
“You can put up Christmas lights?”
“Yes, sir,” I insisted. “Best service in the city.”
He released his hold on the door, snatched the flyer from my hand, and examined it carefully. Without anyone holding it, the door slowly swung open and I saw the unfurnished foyer behind him. A stairway on the right curved up and to the left. Open archways on the left and right led into other rooms, but I could not see into them.
When the man finally looked up, he asked, “How much?”
“Depends on what you need,” I said, “and whether you supply the decorations, or we need to supply them.” I flipped the flyer over to show him the price list and the form I would have to fill out. “This covers all the basic services, but if you want something special, we’ll prepare a custom quote.”
“Only house on the block, huh?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Can you do the porch and the front windows?” he said. “Upstairs, too?”
“Yes, sir. Of course, sir.”
“You’ll have to supply the lights.”
“Of course.” I dug in my pockets until I found a pen and used it to calculate the price. There was no way we could do the work and accept payment by check or credit card. I lowered my voice and leaned forward as if I were about to share a secret. “We give a twenty percent discount if you pay cash.”
“You can do this tomorrow?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll have your cash when you finish.”
“You have a name?”
“A name?”
“For my boss,” I said. “He’ll want to know who approved the work.”
“Smith,” he said. “Mister Smith.”
“Okay, Mister Smith,” I said. “We’ll be back in the morning.”
I walked away, uncertain what I’d gotten myself into.
Later, after I exited the bus near the convenience store closest to Zig-Zag’s apartment, Zig-Zag drove past, and I realized that the rear bumper, filled with political stickers from elections long-past, made his SUV easily recognizable. He must have seen me in his rearview mirror because he pulled to the curb, rolled down the passenger window, and leaned across so he could talk to me when I reached him. “Where the hell have you been all day?”
I didn’t answer directly. Instead, as I climbed into the passenger seat, I said, “We need to buy some Christmas lights.”
“Why?”
I explained what I had done and interrupted his protests by telling him how much we would be paid.
“Just to hang some lights?”
“First thing in the morning,” I told him, “so we’d better get the things we need.”
We returned to his apartment, put much of the stolen change into a canvas shopping bag, and carried it to the grocery store. There, we fed it into the change machine and turned it into spendable greenery. We purchased a dozen strings of outdoor lights and several packages of hooks with which to hang them. As we drove out of the grocery store’s parking lot, we stopped long enough to steal an extension ladder from the bed of a painter’s pick-up truck.
Later, we carried the ladder into Zig-Zag’s apartment so it wouldn’t be stolen from his SUV overnight and, while Zig-Zag lit up a fattie, I returned to his SUV for the lights and hooks. I had just loaded up with all the bags when I heard, “How big is your tree?”
I recognized the accusing tone and turned to see my ex standing on the sidewalk, arms folded beneath her breasts. Though I would have if I had been paying attention, I had not recognized her car, which was parked only three spaces away from Zig-Zag’s SUV.
“We have a job,” I said, “putting up Christmas decorations.”
She snorted with disbelief.
“What do you want, Charlene?”
“I want the pawn ticket.”
“I told you I would get the ring back.”
“You’ve had a week, Wilson,” she said. “I’m not waiting a month.”
“Fine.”
I put all the bags on the sidewalk and dug into my pocket for my wallet. I didn’t have it.
“Well?”
I stopped patting my pockets and looked up at her. “I lost my wallet.”
“How convenient.”
“No, seriously,” I protested. I didn’t carry much in my wallet—driver’s license, rolling papers, condom, a couple of singles, the note I found with the Salvation Army money, and the pawn ticket Charlene wanted. I had no idea why she wanted the ring back—after all, she’d called off the engagement—but before she threw me out I had promised to get it out of hock for her.
“Find that pawn ticket,” she said. “Get me the ring or the pawn ticket before dinner tomorrow or I’ll send my brother to collect it.”
Charlene’s brother Mick worked security at the Iron Horse, the biker bar north of the city along the old state highway where she waitressed, and he made the man who answered the door at the Tudor appear malnourished. I had no desire to be crossways with Mick, so I promised my ex-fiancée I’d have something to her the next afternoon.
“You’d better.” She glared at me. “If you don’t, I’ll tell my brother and he’ll get it for me.”
When I returned to Zig-Zag’s apartment with the lights and hooks, I realized he’d been watching through the window. He asked, “What’d your old lady want?”
After I told him and told him why I couldn’t give it to her, he said, “Where’d you lose your wallet?”
I didn’t know, so I shrugged.
The next morning, I showered, dressed, and drank a large bottle of soda before I woke Zig-Zag.
“Why are you bothering me?” he groaned. “The sun isn’t even up.”
“We have a job.”
“We really going to put up Christmas lights?”
“I’ll do it by myself if you won’t help, but I’ll need your keys.”
“You ain’t driving my car, not after what you did to your girlfriend’s.”
I’d drained my bank account and hocked Charlene’s engagement ring to pay for the repairs. Wrecking her car had not been the straw that broke the camel’s back of our relationship, but hocking her engagement ring certainly had been. I kicked the couch and said, “Then get your ass up.”
After Zig-Zag had pulled on clean clothes, we loaded his SUV with all the things we’d removed from it the previous evening, grabbed the toolbox he kept under the kitchen sink, and drove to the faux Tudor. By then, the sun had risen far enough above the horizon that we had light to work by. I tore open the boxes containing the Christmas lights and unraveled the strands. After that, I climbed the stolen ladder and began affixing the lights around the second-story windows, trying as I worked to sneak peeks through gaps in the heavy curtains. Four of the five upstairs windows belonged to bedrooms while the center window, the one directly over the porch and the one I could most clearly see through, was for the upstairs landing. The bedrooms were nothing special and could have just as easily been hotel rooms for all the personality they displayed.
While I worked the upstairs windows, Zig-Zag worked the downstairs. When I finished and climbed down from the ladder for the last time, I asked, “Anything?”
He shook his head. “There’s no woman here needs help,” he said. “I think we did all this for nothing.”
“Not for nothing,” I said. “At least we’ll get paid.”
“Go collect,” Zig-Zag said. “I’ll clean up the trash.”
Mr. Smith must have been waiting for me. When I knocked on the door, he jerked it open and shoved the flyer in my face. “You ain’t from Santa’s Workshop. Who the fuck are you?”
“Just a couple of guys trying to earn some extra cash.”
He grabbed my shirt collar, choking me with the wadded-up cloth as he dragged me into the house.
Zig-Zag saw what was happening. He ran from the yard and followed us inside. Before he could reach us, a second man I hadn’t noticed before grabbed him from behind.
Mr. Smith pulled my lost wallet from his pocket, opened it up, and withdrew the note I’d found in the Salvation Army Red Kettle. As he dropped my wallet to the floor, he shoved the note in my face. “Where did you get this?”
I shook my head, but after some physical persuasion that left my lips swollen and at least two teeth loose, I told them about stealing the Salvation Army Red Kettle.
“Son of a bitch!” He spun around and told the other man, “Bring Jessica down here.”
“What about—?”
Mr. Smith pushed me to the floor and drew a revolver from the small of his back. I grabbed my wallet and stuck it in my pocket as he told the other man, “They won’t be a problem, Tony.”
Tony pushed Zig-Zag to the floor with me and climbed the stairs two-at-a-time. He returned, dragging a slender brunette behind him. She wore a hot pink tube top, matching hot pants, and platform shoes that caused her to stumble down the stairs.
