SCREAMING BATFISH BLUES #27

SCREAMING BATFISH BLUES #27

BATFISH

THE ADMIRAL’S HOUSE

HONOLULU

This colorful dragon, like the kind you see in those parades in Chinatown, was slowly moving in circles over my bunk. It circled and circled, until it was going so fast that it was just a blur. All of a sudden it straightened out and shot right through the wall, disappearing with a “plop.” Orange barrel acid will make you see some really weird shit.

A phone was ringing off in the distant and I was wishing that someone would answer the goddamn thing. It must have rang fifty times before I heard Zak answer it. I wonder when he got back? Poor old Captain Clint. At least he died in the saddle. Man, does Zak ever sound pissed! Wonder what the hell is going on?

“You know motherfucker, the sun doesn’t rise and set in your asshole. I don’t know how we wound being a fucking pimp for you and that old son of a bitch anyway.”

There was a pause. Quiet. I must have been dreaming.

“Dead! How could she be dead? He couldn’t stomp a mouse to death. Jesus Christ! You fucked up big this time! All right goddamn it! We’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

I was wide awake now. I had been out partying with Tom and his girlfriend. She was this hot looking nurse that he had recently met and it had been love at first sight. They had moved into this little cottage half way up in the mountains and had started up their own little dope plantation.

She was also a stone cold acid freak and I had spent the day up there with them. Eating acid, drinking beer, and catching rays. Just like the fun old days before that NIS prick had ruined everything. The highlight of the day was when she stripped off her bikini and remained in that fine state for the next five hours.

The first time I had visited them was also the first time I snorted MDA, a very powerful hallucinogenic. They had an outlandish looking orange shag rug in their living room and the MDA gave you the effect of wading through it like it was two feet tall. I had gone to use the bathroom and had wandered into the spare bedroom by mistake and was immediately lost. The room couldn’t have been more than twelve by twelve. I had a slight panic attack and crawled out the window and wound up taking my leak out in the rain forest, while I was hallucinating that a large tiger was crouched down watching me.

The night of the acid trip I had stumbled back into the barracks and had been laying on my bunk, seeing all this weird shit, and giggling up a storm. I must have finally fallen asleep.

Zak was standing over my bed, staring down at me.

“Who’s dead?” I asked. Hoping that I was still dreaming.

“Rose. Rose is dead. Something hinky happened with the Admiral. Get dressed. We got to get up there.”

I don’t know if I was still tripping or if Zak was driving that fast, but I don’t think I’ve ever been in a car that was going that fast. He was fucking flying! I didn’t even remember getting into the car.

Rose had been very receptive when I approached her about the Admiral’s offer and had been up to his house several times. Mrs. Admiral was very involved in the community and other military wife functions and the Admiral had needed a way to spend the lonely nights when she was gone.

Expensive wines, fine cigars, and high dollar hookers. He paid Rose five hundred dollars a visit. She had laughed when she was telling me about it. Said he could hardly get it up and wanted her to call him “Daddy” and had her wear this old crackerjack uniform.

What he really wanted was to do the old backdoor romp with her, but that was the one act she wouldn’t perform. Saving that for the man she would marry. She always was a romantic!

Zak had returned from his emergency leave a couple of weeks ago and just didn’t seem to be himself anymore. The funeral had not gone well.

Yolanda had been dolled up for the wake like she was still pulling  tricks at the whorehouses in the Philippines. They were the only two sober people at the event. Besides the attending priest (maybe) and Captain Clint, who had been dead for several days, but was still probably hammered. About six of his old shipmates had shown up and they were all stoned to the gills.

To top it all off, the Captain had left his entire inheritance to Yolanda and then Zak went and picked up a case of the clap. Both on the same day.

Yolanda and Zak had gone to the attorney for the reading of the will and when Zak found out that he wasn’t going to get jackshit, he went ballistic.

He had stormed out of the attorney’s office and drove straight to a bar in National City and hammered down six shots of tequila with beer chasers. He alternated shots of the booze with one hit toots of cocaine out of one of those little silver bullet like contraptions that measures out one nostril hits.

After he was good and fucked up, he went next door to a peep show and immediately fell in love with his dancer. After an exchange of cash, she flicked a switch so that the door in her booth would stay up, backed her trim up to the glory hole, and Zak “made love” to her in this fashion.

The next morning he had a number nine hangover that couldn’t be cured with morphine and a bit of the hair of the dog. He also had a radioactive dose of gonorrhea that couldn’t be cured with all the penicillin in the dispensary and a red hot wire shoved up his tool.

“What the hell did Leon say? How could she be dead? I didn’t know she was going up there again. How did he find out? Did the Admiral call him?” I was babbling like a fool.

Zak stared ahead at the road. “Leon said the old fucker called him. He was bawling and sounded like he was bombed out of his socks. Kept saying she was dead, over and over, and that he needed help. Leon was calling from the Admiral’s house.”

We had to make one stop before we got there so I could puke.

Leon answered the door. He looked liked he had been shot at and missed, shit on and hit. He pointed to the Admiral’s study. I was sober the instant I walked through the study door.

The place looked like Mardi Gras had been held there. Booze bottles were everywhere and there was a picture of the Admiral and the current Pope lying on a coffee table, with what looked like about an ounce

of coke on it. They had been cutting lines with a bayonet.

Next to the picture lay a chrome Colt .45 semi automatic. Pasty faced and shaking like a leaf, the Admiral was leaning against his desk wearing only his boxer shorts. His stubby, pathetic, pink dick was sticking out of the fly. And he was staring down to the floor at Rose, who looked like the victim of a hit and run auto accident.

Beside her head was a bloody crystal ashtray. It looked like it weighed five pounds. I could see some of her teeth in the shag rug.

If I hadn’t seen her dance topless at several parties I would never have even known it was her. She had a tiny rosebud tattooed on her left tit. Her face looked like it had been beaten with a crowbar. I looked at the Admiral. “What the fuck happened?”

He looked at me through bleary red eyes and stifled an acidic belch. “Fucking bitch gets all coked up and starts giving me a ration of shit about not letting me fuck her in the ass. I’m paying her, she has no say in it. I’m an Admiral, she’s enlisted. Tells me if I want it that way to go on down to one of the ships and get a boy to fuck in the ass. She wouldn’t shut up. She obviously didn’t know who she was fucking with.”

He stopped talking and just stood there staring at her. Specks of vomit and blood were splattered in the gray hair on his scrawny chest.

“And by the way, sailor. Address me as sir or Admiral when you speak to me.”

“I think you’ve kind of lost that right, numb nuts.” I replied.

Zak was down on his knees cradling Rose’s head in his arms. He had meant to check her vitals but there was no way she could be alive. Looking up at Leon with tears in his eyes he said “Get this old drunk bastard cleaned up and get him to bed.”

“Who you calling a bastard?” the Admiral screamed. Before Leon and I could move, Zak jumped up and grabbed the Admiral by the throat, pinning him to the desk.

“After tonight it’s over. We clean up your shit tonight and I better never even see your ugly fucking face again. You understand me, shitbird?”

Zak began to straighten up then suddenly threw the Admiral’s head back on to the desk. Sounded like a cantaloupe thrown out of a window.

Zak turned and faced Leon. “That means you too, geisha boy. After tonight we’re even. You even think about snitching us off to the Feds, I’m going to blow your fucking brains out. You think I’m talking shit just try me!”

Leon just nodded and led the Admiral, who was now bleeding rather profusely from a scalp wound, to the bathroom.

I went to the kitchen and found a roll of black 50 gallon trash bags and a roll of duct tape in the utility closet. When I came back into the study, Zak was just beginning to scoop the coke back into the baggy when I noticed something. On a tripod was a 35 millimeter camera. The old sex maniac must have been taking pictures of him and Rose in action or non action as the case maybe. Over twenty shots had been taken.

I quickly told Zak to stop cleaning and placed the Admiral’s desk nameplate next to the coke and shot up the remainder of the roll. I went through the desk drawers and found another roll of 24 shots. We placed the nameplate next to Rose’s body and shot the roll up, making sure that a variety of the photos would include the overall view of the study. I pocketed the rolls and returned the camera to its original place.

We then slid Roses body into two of the garbage bags along with her clothes and purse. I had removed her identification from the purse. We then secured the bags tightly with the duct tape and moved the body into

the trunk of her car.

On a sudden impulse, just before I had started to wrap up the plastic covered body with tape, I had taken a silver framed snapshot of the Admiral and his wife that was sitting on his desk and put it in the garage

bags with Rose. Zak found several shovels in the backyard tool shed and put those next to the body in the trunk.

“We’ll take her out to the north shore and bury her. Then we’ll leave her car down in a parking lot at one of the beaches. They’ll think she drowned. Hopefully.” Zak said as I followed him back into the house. He stopped and looked at me. “We should put a bullet in both of those assholes right now!”

“Jesus Christ! Zak, if we killed both an Admiral and a NIS agent we’d have the FBI hunting us down for the rest of our shitty lives.

Leon was standing over the Admiral who was already snoring loudly. “I gave him a couple of reds, he passed right out.”

"I hope the old fucker overdoses," I said looking down at him.

Zak walked over to Leon and jammed his finger into his chest.

“It’s over, fucker. Remember that. You and your little dog fucking friend even think about coming around. You’re fucking dead meat. You don’t believe it, just try me.”

Leon didn’t say a word. He looked like a battle fatigue victim.

Her final resting patch was in a banana patch at the end of an old service road down by the Dole pineapple farms. The black Triumph Spitfire that she loved so much we had left in the parking lot of one of the north shore beaches after we wiped it down for prints with a beach towel. Bad rip tides there. Drowning there would not be out of the question.

Atlanta Rhythm Section's Imaginary Lover was playing on the car radio. Every time I hear that song I remember that night and what I said to Zak. We hadn’t spoken a thing to each other since we left Rose’s car at the beach. Just driving in silence. Alone with horrible thoughts.

“I’m taking off. Soon as we get back to the barracks. I’m going to pack some shit, grab my money stash and take off. Catch the first flight out of here. There is no way that Leon is going to stay quiet about this, man. We’re going to take a fall for it. You got to come with me. There’s no other way.”

Zak had the Colt out and was looking at it. “No. I’m not going to run. They want me, they can come get me. I’ll fill those motherfuckers full of holes.”

“Zak, I think you have truly lost your mind.” I laughed maniacally.

He laughed along with me. “Maybe. But there comes a time in life when you have to make a final stand. This might be it for me. I’m not going to be on the run for the rest of my life.”

“There is absolutely no fucking way this is going to come out good. You and me are going to do that old bastard’s time. While he’s schmoozing with the Chief of Naval Operations at a cocktail party, we’re going to be busting rocks and getting fucked in the ass.”

I didn’t waste any time. I got my backpack and threw in some clothes, all my cash, files, and the rolls of film along with Rose’s identification. I was officially going AWOL and then probably a deserter.

Zak dropped me off at the airport.

“Please Zak. Come with me. Just to see if it blows over. If it does we can come back. Big fucking deal we’re AWOL for a couple weeks. Better than prison. Do you think you could handle Portsmouth or Leavenworth?”

He grinned at me and shook my hand. “Take care, Bro, it’s been fun while it lasted. I’ll see you in hell.”

And with those poetic words he dropped the clutch and left about twenty feet of rubber on the asphalt in front of Honolulu International.

SCREAMING BATFISH BLUES #26

SCREAMING BATFISH BLUES #26

JUICE

NEVADA

“I can’t have you running around the country like you’re Genghis fucking Khan,” yelled Banks as he ran into Derek’s bedroom.

Derek was curled up against Jasmine’s naked backside.

“What the hell are you talking about, Jerry?” Derek groaned.

You know very goddamn well what I’m talking about. Jasmine, get your ass dressed and hit the bricks. I’ve got business to discuss here with lover boy.”

The gorgeous hooker rolled over and kissed Derek. “See you tonight, babe.”

She got out of the bed, gathered up her clothes, and walked stark naked out of the room while smiling sweetly at Banks.

Banks closed the door. “First of all, you smoked that recruiter in an adult book store of all places. Jesus Christ, Derek, why not a gay bath house? It took some slick maneuvering from our media department to get that covered up. You were supposed to make it look like a street crime.”

“Jerry, I had that guy under surveillance the whole time I was in Omaha. He went straight to work in the morning and straight home at night. The only place he diverted from in his routine was when he went to the bookstore. I had no choice. I sure as shit wasn’t going to do him at home. He had a wife and kid there.”

“I can buy that one. But I can’t buy what happened in Missouri. That was total unprofessional bullshit.”

“What the hell are you talking about, man? That jarhead got blown to hell and back. They’ll probably find pieces of him in St. Louis two years from now.”

“You shot the propane tank to set off the explosion. What the hell happened to the C-4 you were supposed to use?”

“He showed up unexpectedly with some dependent bimbo. I had to bust ass out the backdoor. As soon as he saw someone had been inside, he grabbed the phone and was going to call someone. I didn’t want him to have a chance to bring in reinforcements.”

“What happened to the C-4?”

“I left it inside the trailer when I bailed out, it went up in the blast.” Bullshit number one. He had given it to Pitre.

“You didn’t find any dope in the trailer?”

“None.”

“Guns?

“Zilch.”

Banks paused. “Cash?”

“I didn’t have enough time to shake the place down real good before he rolled up, Jerry. But the place seemed clean.”

Bullshit number two. The box had held 36,000 dollars in twenties and fifties, with some hundreds thrown in. He and Pitre had split the booty right down the middle.

Banks blew out a breath and sat down on the side of the bed. “I guess there’s been no real harm done. The Marine’s whore is currently in the women’s unit of the mental ward at some hospital in St. Louis, babbling and drooling like an idiot. No one is going to believe shit from her even if she did see anything. The Marines at the base are in mourning for the dirt bag so it looks like we’ll get away clean.”

He stood up and stared down at Derek. “But that cowboy shit you pulled in Springfield. What the fuck was that all about? You kill two street punks in a Chinese restaurant over a stick up? The waitress gave a better description to the local law of you two dumb shits than your mothers could have given them. I just thank the good lord

above that you were smart enough to head for Tulsa instead the Springfield flight facility. The cops would have nailed your asses there as sure as there

is shit in a goat.”

“Jerry, our hands were tied. Christ, one of the guys actually tried to stick us up. If we had let it go on I think they would have killed everyone in the place, including us. The simple fact is that those two fucksticks wrote a check that their ass couldn’t cash. I’m sure as shit not going to sit there and let some punk take me out just because some government bullshit might be found out.”

Banks had his hands in is back pockets and was staring down at the floor. He stood there for a good minute before he spoke.

“Just don’t make a habit of it. Remember your sorry ass gets busted pulling some stupid shit and my ass is in the frying pan along with yours. OK? Now, I'm going to give you a week or so for some R and R before you take off for the job in Orlando. You’ve done good so far, Derek. I’m planning on flying you in and out on a commercial flight to Orlando. You’ve earned the trust and using our military flights to often for this shit can sometimes stir up some suspicion, usually with officer types. I have to rework the schedule anyway. We’ve had a change in plans. And I have some personal issues to take care of.”

“What’s that?”

“The personal shit is my business. But the subject in the security prison in Minnesota broke out two nights ago. Used a can of hair spray or deodorant to melt a hole through the security glass. We’ve lost total contact on him. Soon as we locate his whereabouts we’ll probably sic you on his butt, but for now plan on Orlando, the pervert in San Diego, and then wrap it up with the hit in Oak Park prison. Then it’ll be home free for you if we can’t trace the escapee.”

“Can I leave the base? Maybe go into Vegas?”

Banks shook his head. “Not yet. Sorry. It’s just too hot right now. You and your army buddy are out on the wire right now. Local cops could have a description, I don’t know. You’ll just have to party down here. It doesn’t seem like that bothers you too much. You and Jasmine seem to hit it off pretty well. I’ll make sure we get some party favors brought over. Coast Guard has had some major Colombian busts recently. Should be some quality smoke and blow over in the party closet.”

Derek sighed. “All right, Jerry. But I could use some time out of here. I think I’ve earned it.”

Banks headed out the door. “I’ll work on it. Oh, by the way,” Banks turned around. “Watch any pillow talk you have with Jasmine. Remember she’s a pro, not your lover. Do not discuss anything remotely related to the missions. She is not involved in our operation in any way, shape, or from. She’s just a hooker. Got that?”

Banks shut the door. Derek lay back down and stared up the ceiling. Three to go and he’d be out of this. Not totally free, but relatively close. He could be rotting in the joint. He was getting more freedom on the job though. They were starting to trust him. The opportunity would be there for him to spit the bit and run if he so desired. But then what? These government assholes obviously had the resources to track him down and without a doubt they would kill him if that happened. He still had to worry about Dawn and Billy. What the Feds might do to them if he took off?

Might be better just to do the three hits and take the offer and be done with it. Cut his losses. And there was something else he had to admit. When he was on the job.

Stalking.

Tracking.

The hit.

He loved the feeling it gave him.

The rush.

The juice.

Ed “Cool Breeze” Byrd had come to believe that he was a major player in the street scene of downtown Orlando. Although he didn’t have a string of whores like some pimps, he did have one at least that was a start.

Even if she wasn’t the smartest bitch to ever walk down the street. He had a good side business going on selling quarters, halves, and ounces of weed to the tourists who were in town to see Walt and the Mouse, and the college kids who were here to get laid and to get fucked up. Ed had even pimped himself out a few times to some white college bitches from some backwater town up north who had wanted to see what a black stud like himself was like in the sack. He hadn’t disappointed. He thought anyway.

He had struck gold though with the blackmail scheme. Orlando was not only a tourist town but it was also a Navy town. There was a boot camp here and Florida was full of bases. It brought in sailors and officers alike. And white boys are no different than white bitches. Them white boys want to see what that black trim is all about. That’s where Cool Breeze came in.

Breeze had his whore, Belinda, dumb as a stump but still a damn fine looking girl, pick up unsuspecting sailors and take them to the Pink Fox motel, which is where Cool Breeze had greased the hand of the manager with a three hundred dollar monthly payment and a weekly blow job from Belinda, to allow Breeze to install a two way mirror in one of the rooms. Once the john was brought into the room and started getting in on with Belinda, Breeze would either photograph or videotape the session, which he would sell to the underground porno trade.

Depending on the john, Breeze would then quite often bust into the room with his .45 drawn and blackmail the john right out of his wallet and any expensive jewelry he might have.

Twice it had gone wrong. One white boy, a weight lifter type, had actually jumped up and charged the Breeze Man. Breeze, while backpedaling in fright, had fired off an accidental round which caught the lifter square in the chest.

The second time the boy had like a religious fit or something when Breeze had busted in and started screaming about what his momma would do if she ever found out he had been tapping a black woman. Breeze had to stick him with his blade to shut him up. He couldn’t shoot him. Otto, the motel manager, had almost kicked Breeze out after the time he had shot the cracker with his piece.

Breeze also had to rent one of

those cleaning vacuums you get at the grocery store to clean the carpet in the room after that one.

He had dumped both bodies in a dumpster. Once behind a Shoneys, because they were racist bastards. And the other one behind a McDonalds, because once he had gone into one to use their can and the manager had forced him to buy something first. Plus, he hated their fucking fries.

He never knew if the bodies were ever found. Breeze wasn’t big on the news or reading papers. But with two other marks he had hit the jackpot.

Breeze was behind the mirror one slow Thursday night when Belinda brought in a john and Breeze almost passed out in excitement when he saw who it was. It was the goddamn XO of the naval training facility, the same prick that had signed off on Cool Breeze’s very own bad conduct discharge.

Breeze had enlisted in Detroit and hadn’t done well enough on the entrance exam to get a school guaranteed to him. So after boot camp, which took him thirteen weeks, instead of the normal nine, Breeze had to stay in Orlando for on the job training before he was to be assigned a ship. Where most likely his assignments would be the chipping and sanding of paint and the cleaning of shitters.

While in this rigorous training phase of his career, Breeze had taken it upon himself to expose his crank to a female recruit and had invited her to feast upon it.

He had been arrested, given a court martial, and discharged within a week. He remained in Orlando because he enjoyed the climate much more than Detroit. And in Detroit there were about two hundred people who wanted Breeze either dead or very hurt.

The man who was now humping Belinda wildly was the same asshole who had had Breeze drummed out of the service, calling Breeze a “disgusting piece of crap’” and a “disgrace to the uniform.”

Breeze now had in his possession the around the world event of the officer and Belinda, and he received a six hundred dollar a month retainer to make sure that no one ever would see the tape.

His second monthly payment came from another officer. This one was an ensign but a female. She had paid Belinda a hundred dollars to eat her pussy and had gotten so worked up that she had returned the favor. She paid Breeze five hundred a month to keep the video out of sight, but he had also sold the video to his underground buddies. No one was the wiser.

So all in all, the Breeze should have been a happy camper but wasn’t. He was in fact, a nervous wreck. He was standing on the street, about a half a block from his digs, a fifth floor walkup, in front of his favorite bar and grill, The Bearded Clam, with Belinda, and Breeze felt like he could shit cream corn at any minute.

What had happened last night had fucking freaked him. Scared the absolute shit out of him.

He had been behind the mirror when the door to the adjoining room had opened and Brenda came in with this big, football playing, weightlifting type. He had a military haircut but it almost looked like he was trying to grown one of those Mohawk looking things that those Sid Vicious guys use to wear around Detroit. More like that wrestler, the one in The Road Warriors, he used to watch them on Ted Turner’s superstation, it looked more like that.

But the guy was fucking big, he was almost scary looking, and he had freaky fucking eyes.

Breeze decided to let this one pass. He was trouble.

Brenda had given the dude a half and half and after the Warrior had gotten done with the second half, the guy had gotten up, ripped off his rubber and thrown it at Breeze’s mirror. It had stuck right in front of Breeze’s face, and then the freak had grinned right at the mirror and did one of those finger/gun cocking things.

He paid Belinda, had gotten dressed, and then walked out. Breeze was freaked beyond belief.

Belinda had to have told the guy. How the hell else would he have known? He was standing in front of the Clam, holding onto Belinda by both arms, and screaming so loud at her that her face was speckled with Breeze’s spit. He didn’t give a shit if anyone heard. HOW THE HELL DID THAT GUY KNOW?

Derek was grinning as he watched the couple through his binoculars. He was sitting on a chair in front of a window in Ed “Cool Breeze” Byrd’s apartment. The apartment had a cheap dead bolt purchased at WalMart. It had been a cinch to pick. The door was such a piece of shit he could have kicked it off the hinges if he had wanted to but he was afraid of waking up the neighbors. The apartment was one of those ancient old dumps that had been built in the 1950s, had a grace period of a decade or so, then went straight down the crapper, until a few years ago when it became trendy to fix up old crack and whorehouses and then rent them out at upscale prices.

Byrd was the only black that Derek had seen in the building. Probably made the yuppies feel good living among the common folk. The neighborhood hadn’t quite caught up. It was still littered with hookers, tattoo parlors, adult book stores, and pawn shops, but it too was becoming a trendy place to go slumming in for an evening.

Looking up and down the street you could see a Mercedes Benz parked in front of a strip club, or a BMW in the parking lot of a skinflick theater.

Derek gazed around the apartment. It was decorated in a 70s kind of decor, like a cross between Shaft and All in the Family. He looked back down onto the street, Breeze was still reaming out his hooker.

It didn’t take much to shake the place down, it was really just a big studio apartment with a separate bathroom. It even had one of those old Murphy style beds.

Breeze had one of those huge, ancient stereo systems set up on a big book case. When Derek opened the cabinet he immediately found what he was looking for. A stack of videotapes and they were even labeled. The still photos that he had taken were wrapped with rubber bands and had the date and time when they were taken. Holy shit, was this guy anal or just plain stupid?

Derek slipped them into the gym bag he always carried on his gigs.

This job had really been a vacation, it would have been fun to have brought along Jasmine. The driver assigned to him had picked him up at the airport and had stayed out of Derek’s way. He did what Derek told him and didn’t seem to want to get involved in any needless conversations, more importantly, he didn’t seem too anxious to know what Derek was doing or was involved in.

After Derek located Breeze, who had extreme nocturnal habits due to his occupation as a pimp, Derek spent his days on the beach and nights tailing Breeze.

The man disgusted Derek. He was a bottom feeder of the worst sort. The third night he had done something really stupid. He had snorted up a few lines of Peruvian flake and had picked up Breeze’s whore, took her back to the room and laid the coals to her, all the while hoping Breeze would jump him so that he could beat him to death with his bare hands. The chick was hot but that had been really fucking stupid. Gotta be more professional.

Derek fanned through some still photos in the gym bag. There he was getting reamed, steamed, and dry cleaned in bright Kodak color. He stuck the packet in his pocket and continued searching the apartment. In a wooden cigar box on top of the television was an ounce of some pot that smelled like it came right out of the personal stash of the King of Thailand.

That also went into his pocket, but he took the single joint that was in the box and fired it up as he continued his search.

He wandered into the bathroom as he puffed away. Boy was this some sweet tasting bud. The buzz was coming on fast and strong. Derek grabbed the top of the toilet tank and lifted it up. Bingo! Floating inside the tank was a bank of cash inside a couple of zip lock bags.

He pulled the cash out of the bags, in typical Byrd style it was broken up in twenties, fifties, and hundreds. The hundreds he popped into his pocket and the rest went into the gym bag.

Derek finished the joint and dropped it sizzling into the bowl. A quick check of the window showed Mr. Breeze still in front of the bar. Derek gave a thought about burning another joint while he waited for the pimp to come home but decided against it, remembering his boneheaded move from the night before.

He opened up a kitchen closet door and saw a long object wrapped in a cloth stuck behind some brooms and mops.

Son of a bitch! It was the most awesome rifle Derek had ever seen.

The fucking thing looked just looked deadly. Derek pulled back the bolt. It was loaded. Holy shit! This was an AK-47, a Russian made assault rifle.

Where had a total shitbag like Cool Breeze Byrd gotten his hands on a piece like this?

The “shitbag” had stolen it out of the Jeep of a retired Green Beret, drunk on his ass, while he had been screwing Belinda.

Breeze had shelled out a couple of hundred bucks to a gunsmith to strip the weapon down completely and give it a total overhaul and cleaning. The weapon looked like it had just rolled off the factory floor in Stalingrad.

Derek started to giggle. Wouldn’t it be a kick in the ass to pop Cool Breeze at long range with his own weapon? Right in downtown Orlando? He slid the chair back over in front of the window and sighted the rifle in on Cool Breeze’s head. He was still bitching and raising hell with Belinda.

The neon lights of the bar lit up the couple like it was daylight.

Here I am in the book depository, thought Derek. Dallas. Here comes Kennedy. I’m Oswald. Lee mother Harvey fucking Oswald.

Just playing around here, he said to himself. It would be totally crazy to waste him from here. Just goofing around. Stick to the plan. I’ll take him out when gets back to the apartment.

“Bitch, you had to have known! That cracker motherfucker threw his scumbag right against my mirror after he be done fucking you! Then he smiled right at me! How the fuck else would have known less you told him,

bitch? Huh?”

“Breeze, why would I tell him, huh? He just be another trick.That’s all. He was just crazy. Just acting crazy. All coked up and acting up. He didn’t know you was there. Dude was probably on them steroids or

something. He scared me.”

Belinda was close to tears.

“Maybe he a fucking cop, bitch. You ever think of that? Maybe you want to get out the business and ready to punk out the Breeze.”

He slapped Belinda across mouth. A man walking past the two stopped. “Hey! Knock that shit off.” He took a step towards Cool Breeze.

Byrd reached into his jacket and snapped out his switchblade.

“You want to be a man, asshole? Get in my affairs?” The man put his hands up in the air and backed down the street. “That’s what I fucking thought,” Breeze screamed down the street.

He turned back to Belinda who was wiping the blood from her mouth with a handkerchief.

“I’m going to the crib and to get me a beer and something to smoke. Clean your ass up and get to work.” Breeze began his practiced pimp roll down the sidewalk. He stopped suddenly as he glanced up at his apartment window which was easily visible from the street.

“What the in the fu....” The top of Cool Breeze’s head vaporized in a Bloody Mary mist. He fell straight back against a parking meter and sat there like he had just had one too many to drink.

Belinda put both hands to her mouth and screamed and screamed and screamed until she collapsed to her hands and knees and vomited her Popeye’s Fried Chicken onto the sidewalk.

Derek jumped back from the window. “Yes,” he yelled, “what a shot, what a fucking shot!”

Derek gave it a quick rub down with a dish towel and threw the rifle onto the couch, grabbed his bag, and busted ass out the door. He went down the stairs five at a time and came out in the back alley, where his trusted driver sat waiting.