Joe's Black T-Shirt (20 page)

“In an unprecedented action Christian, Jewish, and Muslim leaders have asked that peace be observed amongst their various factions. The whole world grieves in stunned and saddened silence at the atrocity committed here in St. Louis and the various cities around the world.”

Berry’s face disappears and is replaced by his voice alone. It narrates over stock footage that has rolled non-stop as filler in-between the live feeds. The dumb luck to have gotten stuck at Lambert Airport when the story broke was now pure gold. If he hadn’t missed his connecting flight while he gambled at the Casino Queen, he would have been in the air and shit out of luck. All things considered, it had to be the best three grand he ever lost.

###

Family Business

Mark stood admiring himself in the mirror. The fog from the shower still outlined the glass, providing a frame to his self-portrait. His hair was still thick and luxurious, black as it had been when he was a young man. A belly, large as a mature pumpkin, stuck out from his mid-section. Despite smoking two packs of menthol cigarettes a day, his teeth were still a phosphorus white.

He dressed in his normal uniform. A filthy white t-shirt, long-sleeved plaid shirt with a pack of cigarettes in the left-hand pocket, and blue jeans seized tight by an unseen belt. The exposed bottom flesh of his stomach, bulbous and hairy, stuck out like a fat lip. Equally, his blue jeans could not fully cover his ass crack.

Rosarita called from downstairs, “Mark, you’re going to be late for work.”

He ignored her as he huffed and puffed to put on his socks. He caught his breath from the effort in between drags of a cigarette. The black Nikes he wore were kept laced and tied to avoid further strain. Finished with his third cigarette since his shower, he slipped into them like house shoes.

In the full length-dressing mirror, he approved his appearance. As he drew a small, plastic comb through his thick mane, he could still see the young man. The cocky, twenty-something fellow that feared nothing and who had been reckless for the thrill. That young man still lived somewhere deep inside him, protecting him from old age.

A cell phone, not much bigger than his Zippo, vibrated and scooted across the dresser. He knew who it was without having to look at the caller ID.

“I’ll be right down,” Mark said. There was no need to waste time with pleasantries. Besides, the person on the other end probably wasn’t listening anyway.

From his underwear drawer, Mark removed a banded stack of one hundred-dollar bills. He split the cash in half and placed the folded money equally into his front jean pockets. On the off chance Rose might call he decided to take the cell phone.

The truck waited faithfully at the curb. Mark could see Kevin impatient behind the wheel. He consciously slowed. In their work, eagerness was a hazard that could be discerned as nervousness. The people they were going to visit interpreted such ticks as highly suspicious.

The hinges on the truck’s metal door groaned desperate for grease. Mark closed the door with a slam and adjusted the springs until they felt comfortable under his ass cheeks.

He lit a cigarette, slightly out of breath, as he changed the radio station from alternative to classic rock. He always did that. Made any environment his. Whether he had permission to or not.

Relaxed, his arm resting on the sill of the open window, Mark was now ready.

Kevin looked at him. He often had to remind himself why in the hell he was doing this. Then he remembered Mark’s beautiful daughter. The more excuses he could make to be close to the father, the closer he could be to the daughter. He was ashamed he had masturbated so often to her image and gone as far as to steal her soiled panties to charge his fantasies. The lust he felt was overwhelming, all consuming, debilitating, and wonderful.

“You’re early,” Mark said.

“Always,” Kevin said.

The automatic transmission clunked into drive and the truck lurched forward. Kevin intentionally goosed the accelerator to hear the tires screech. The futility of having to stop fifty feet later never discouraged him. They connected with the highway and drove ten miles-an-hour above the speed limit. Kevin’s truck, by no means a sleek racing vehicle, smoothly passed the lunchtime commuters with the immunity afforded to people unaccountable to a company time clock.

Neither man had been legally employed for several years. To them, the idea was preposterous. Legitimate work was for suckers who didn’t know any better.

Kevin drove the streets with care after they exited the highway. This was middle-class country. The over-vigilant county police, unlike the city brothers in blue, needed little encouragement. Despite his arrogant attitude toward all authority, Kevin made certain to make full and complete stops, use his turn signals, and never exceed the posted speed limits that changed with every street.

The house was identical to all the others in the subdivision. Perfect square lawns without as much a dandelion to mar the landscape. Every home a mini-tribute to the new wealth spurred by the Internet dot com boom.

Kevin drove the truck slowly into the stain-free driveway. Mark lifted his arm in what might have been viewed as warm salutation to a man on the porch. The man, a sentry, returned the salute and pressed a remote control to open the garage door.

Another man stood inside, a virtual twin of the porch soldier, directing them to advance with hand signals. They sternly obeyed his crisp arm movements, reminiscent of a military police officer, and stopped when ordered by his double closed fists. Kevin and Mark waited until the door shut behind them before stepping out.

The garage’s new darkness was strange from the all-engulfing sunshine outside. They both needed a moment to adapt to the nocturnal conditions. Brief as it was, the man who spoke only with his hands, seemed impatient for them to follow.

Inside the house, country music played softly through invisible speakers. It wasn’t the upbeat new stuff that was, save the singing style, modern pop music. This was the stuff of whiskey-bottle fueled regret that begged the listener to share the singer’s pain.

Buzz sat behind a great oak desk, answering e-mail, looking like a work-from-home yuppie. If not for his stark bald cranium, his sleeveless undershirt deliberately worn to display his tattoos, and the Nazi flag on the wall, he was as suburban as his neighbor’s Volvo.

“Que pasa, amigo?” Kevin asked making use of the first-year high school Spanish.

“Nothing much, Holmes,” Buzz said looking up from his computer. The litany of people who had stood in front of his desk no longer surprised him. These two, who looked as if they couldn’t afford to pay the rent, were no different from those who wore suits or leather jackets. He treated everyone with an unmitigated fairness. As long as they had the cash, he had the time. Buzz would suffer no fools.

“How’s business?” Mark asked only making conversation. He sat in the one other chair the office supplied and lit a cigarette. The idea of poisoning by second-hand smoke was not taken seriously within these walls. Ashtrays lay everywhere. Mark placed a multi-faceted glass one on his lap to ash in. It specifically reminded him of one his mother had used until the day she died.

Buzz sucked white smoke through an arm-length water bong. Courteously, he extended the pipe toward Kevin.

“No thanks, bro. I got a long drive ahead of me,” Kevin said

With a casual shrug of his shoulders, Buzz took his hit for him. Barely able to see the two visitors through the cloud of carcinogens, “Business is good. It’s always good. What can I do you for?”

Mark set the ashtray down, but kept his cigarette between his lips. In a struggle with his body mass, he removed the thick folds of cash.

Buzz let out a low whistle and fanned out the repetitive bills across his desk.

Kevin licked his lips then wiped the saliva from his mouth. He was never sure how much his partner would be carrying, such details were irrelevant, but this much was a surprise. Even to him.

Buzz carefully separated each bill. When he had finished, the shiny glass countertop of his desk was hidden underneath the green rectangles. A coy smile belied the skinhead’s satisfaction with the great amount.

“You getting ready for a war or something?” Buzz asked.

“Something like that,” Mark said.

“None of my business. Sorry I asked.”

Kevin and Mark followed Buzz downstairs.

***

The subterranean coolness seemed even more so in the darkness. Buzz slid his hand over the unfinished drywall and flipped on the lights. The overhead fluorescent tubes tinked and popped from the low temperature inside the frosted glass. As the bulbs warmed the room grew brighter.

Buzz walked ahead not needing the light. When the strobe effect ceased and the dull hum of the lights harmonized, Buzz stood cross-armed in the middle of the basement. Like a proud father, surrounded by the multitude that is his family, he was confident in what he had to offer.

Guns of every fashion filled the room. Rows of shotguns stood in every size and in a variety of colors from camouflage to pink. Rifles were stacked like cords of wood, separated by caliber, their muzzles sticking out as if gasping for air. Handguns of every species, from six shooters to automatic sprayguns, covered and bowed the folding tables where they laid. The smell of gun oil and gunpowder was as intoxicating as a bouquet of fresh cut flowers.

Mark opened his wallet and handed a carefully folded paper to Buzz.

He read the handwritten note silently to himself then called for his helper. Like a ghost, the man seemed to suddenly appear. The helper stood straight as a nail as Buzz read aloud from the sheet.

The servant moved efficiently among the guns with a makeshift shopping cart constructed from a furniture dolly and a oversized crate. He presented the full load for Buzz’s inspection.

“Muy bueno, senor. El camion de carga, por favor.”

An hour later Kevin and the helper secured a tarp over the truck’s bed. The guns and ammunition weighted it down until the axle almost touched the ground. Mark and Buzz placed magnetic signs on either side of the truck, tossed a few shovels and wooden handled rakes atop with several bags of cheap grass seed, and the disguise was complete. Why should the police have any suspicion of a couple of landscapers, slowly plodding along to their next job?

Inside the cab, Kevin turned over the truck’s heavy-duty V8 motor. The roar was deafening inside the two-car garage.

As they backed out to the street, Buzz wished them well. “Vaya con Dios, mis amigos.” Before they left the subdivision, Buzz counted the cash one more time and locked it in his office floor safe.

***

They plodded along slowly, west to east, deliberately using the inter-connecting streets. The respectable forty-five minute trip to Buzz’s place would be a snail’s pace two-hour return drive. The main mitigating factors: stop signs and traffic.

St. Louis, per capita, had the most stop signs of any city in America. Kevin dutifully, yet begrudgingly, stopped at every damned one. The last thing he needed was to aggravate some piggy’s snout, be pulled over, and find what lay beneath that tarp. If making full and complete stops, painfully resisting the urge to slow and go, could keep him from seeing the inside of a jail, he would do it.

They drove parallel to the highway, through the ruins of old St. Louis. Large homes of all brick, once beautiful were now shells that crumbled from neglect. Enormous factories that had employed thousands were now idle without a solid window left. It was a wasteland that had abandoned all hope. The trade for cheap overseas labor ironically lost more than it had saved.

Mark almost spit his cigarette out when his phone buzzed against his chest. He fumbled with the tiny device dropping and catching the phone in mid-air.

“Hello? Hello? Who is this?” Mark asked.

“Daddy, it’s me. Can you hear me, Daddy?” Rose asked.

“Yes, pumpkin,” Mark said.

Mark saw Kevin in his peripheral vision pretending not to eavesdrop. It delighted him that Rose would have nothing to do with him. She was seventeen, still a girl consumed with make-up and clothes. In two more months’ time, Kevin would become a thirty-year-old man ancient as the dinosaurs, pyramids, and record players to her modern world of MP3s, IMs, and BFFs.

Mark spoke in intimate, hushed tones, deliberately not letting Kevin hear as much as one word of his conversation. He told his daughter he loved her before he closed the phone and replaced it in his shirt pocket.

“Was that Rose?” Kevin asked.

Curiosity killed the cat. The poor bastard’s got it bad, Mark thought.

He remembered how he suffered his wife’s father. Every Saturday, he listened to the same stories, week after week, nursing his one beer to the old man’s dozens. Rosarita, as desperate as Mark was to escape to the darkness of his car, to the secret places youth keeps for virgin lovers, she brought her father beer after beer. Some nights, the old timer went down without a fight, anesthetized by the alcohol. Others, he would find no peace. He would punch walls, break pictures, and push Mark around and sometimes hit him. Out of respect, he never hit back. The man was drunk and should not be held accountable under his own roof.

When Rosarita eventually became pregnant, he did the honorable thing, and asked her father’s blessing. After the old man hit him hard across the jaw, almost knocking him unconscious, he embraced him. They drank together all that night, Rosarita served Mark exclusively, sitting on his lap, waiting only for his next command.

This Kevin, he thought, would have no such luck.

“You like Rose, don’t you?” Mark asked.

The guilt turned Kevin’s face red.

“I thought as much.”