Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Friday, December 9, 2011
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Fine Mess
The house was very big.The gentleman who’d just rung the doorbell was made to wait almost four whole minutes while the butler made the trek to the front door. The butler’s name was Neccas, he’d been with his master almost fifteen years. He opened the door without consulting the peephole, or - for that matter - any of the many complex and expensive home security elements at his disposal. The visitor was expected and, as usual, on time.
Mr. Neccas was polite. He and his caller exchanged pleasantries. The butler asked after the caller’s family. The Caller asked if Neccas had been “staying out of trouble”. The caller was a gentleman of medium height, a little shorter than the butler’s six foot - three, and dressed from head to toe in black. He was carrying a black nylon satchel over his shoulder, wearing black jeans, black loafers, and a black windbreaker over a black, long-sleeved t-shirt. He was wearing a black baseball hat with the words “A FINE MESS (enger)” embroidered on the front.
After a few seconds, Neccas asked the man in black the same question he asked every time the man visited. He used the same words and the same tone of voice. The man in black responded the way he always responded. He used the same words and the same tone of voice. Then the caller reached into his satchel and pulled from it what appeared to be a plain Manilla envelope. The caller then handed the envelope to the Butler, Neccas, saying:
Well well sir, next week then?
The butler took the envelope, and let the words hang there for a few moments before replying:
Next week. Good.
And then the man in black was gone.
2.
Neccas watched as the man walked back towards his car which - today - was an Audi TT convertible, deep huntsman’s green and clearly modified for performance. The man had left the engine on, and Neccas could hear the thing idling impatiently out there in the driveway. It sounded bored-out hollow, light and mean. Neccas watched the man get in the car and drive off until he saw the brake lights disappear into the tree-line about 100 yards from the great house. Neccas loved cars.
Then he got moving. His employer hated tardiness. He despised it, and had been known to punish - severely - in recognition of his hatred. The master asked him to bring the envelope as soon as the man in black left. Neccas found himself taking the stairs in twos and threes to make up for any time he might have lost staring after the TT.
3.
The Butler did not knock. That was part of the whole thing. He’d been instructed: “Don’t knock, don’t call, don’t announce the visitor or the package. Just come up, come in, hand me the contents of the envelope, load the movie, and leave. I mean leave. Leave the house. Leave the area. Go home. Report back tomorrow morning and resume whatever it was that you’d been doing when the package arrived. Are we clear?”
Yes
Mr. Neccas had replied.
Clear. Clear indeed.
The first time had been a long time ago, butthe procedure and the orders themselves never changed. As Neccas crested the stairs and made for the Master’s chamber, he thought himself lucky for all that. His job - especially on Mondays - was a simple thing and the compensation outsized.
He entered the room without pause, just opened the door and walked in. The Master was lying atop a his bed. The bed - as usual - was made and made well, as if the master hadn’t moved an inch the entire time he’d been lying there. The master did not speak. Neccas approached him on the bed, unfastening the envelope as he went. He reached in and came out with two pieces of fabric, handed them to the boss. The boss held each one up for inspection, as if in appraisal. Neccas had worked with the man for 13 years, and every single Monday for 13 years, the two of them danced this dance.
Necca’s had been working as a door man at the Plaza Hotel. He’d been at the Plaza for almost four years when the master and he had got to talking about the military. Neccas had been a Major, mustered out in 1997. The master had never served. He needed to hire a man, he said. “A valet” He’d said. He was talking about a number. Neccas told him he was making three times that number at the Plaza. The master started talking about another, much greater number. Then he talked of houses, cars, numbered accounts, retirement funds, and gathering interest. Neccas asked for the weekend to think things over.
4.
Neccas was finishing up. He’d poured a four-finger bolt of Jaimeson’s into a heavy crystal rocks glass at room’s wet bar. He’d put the DVD into a wall-mounted player, put the whiskey on a granite top night table. His Master did not speak. The blinds in the room flipped. The bright daylight flooding the room melted - for an instant - to full dark, and then to a comfortable sepia glow from hidden fixtures flush in the ceilings border. A wooden cabinet built into the wall opposite the bed began to open revealing a 96” plasma screen mounted atop a giant subwoofer. Six more subs, mounted under the bed three on a side, switched on and Neccas felt them humming in his ankles. He took a look around. He had - he knew - about sixty seconds left before the show started, and he needed to make sure all was perfect. The master demanded perfection in only a few select areas, and this ritual was at the top of that list. Neccas looked, thought, and looked once more, then - satisfied - he turned for the door. That’s when the Master said :
Wait
The Butler stopped. Spun on his heal. Waited.
The Plasma flicked on, the soft candle-glow in the room faded to black. It was show time. The Master said:
Sit.
And he patted the bed to the right of where he was sitting.
Neccas the Butler sat.
5.
The first frames were of the empty back seat of a car. The seat was a dark-crème leather. An enormous bench. Lincoln logos were visible on the bench top, and the rear widow was a vast expanse of glass looking out on an anonymous neighborhood. At first, Neccas thought it was dusk outside, as the houses, cars, trees, and sky in the scene were all washed out in a neutral greys and whites. Then the door opened and the view outside was a sliver or natural greens and glowing orange. The rear window was tinted, maybe even blacked out completely. The Butler felt sure they were looking at the back seat of a Lincoln town car, by far the most popular choice of model for car services all across the country. Seconds later a woman - almost middle aged, physically fit, honey brown hair that looked natural and a smart-looking pant suit - ducked into the back. She was alone. She was carrying a leather bound file wallet and a black purse that looked expensive. She sat, unweighted, smoothed her clothes against her back, and spoke to the right of the camera:
Thanks so much. I know it was late notice. I promise - I’ll leave a big tip.
She smiled a confused smile. A voice, clear and deep and recognizable, came back at her from off camera.
No problem Miss, happy to be of service. Just sit back, we’ll be there in no time.
Neccas felt a weird twinge, maybe the first inkling that something here was somehow amiss. He knew the voice. Had spent years of time with it, more than enough to be fuckin‘-a positive: The voice from off camera was the man in black’s voice.
6.
Suddenly, the Butler wanted - with every fiber of his deepest self - to be somewhere else, and not watching the woman. By now she’d begun needling through her leather file and checking back with her blackberry, confident that she’d be making her appointment, no longer worried about inconveniencing the man in black. She sat there, head nodding back and forth from file to phone like she was watching a tiny tennis match in her lap, the world unfolding in tinted black and white behind her. The drive went on and on. At one point she’d dialed the phone, and listened in for a while. There was apparently no answer though, because after a while she’d held the phone away from her ear with a disappointed look. Then she pressed a few buttons on the touch screen and went back to her tennis.
Neccas was stealing glances over at the all-unit DVD player. Ten minutes…Fifteen. Silence in the car. Then finally something happened: the car began to slow . The car was stopping. Neccas began to feel the first pangs of relief shudder through him. The woman had made it to her appointment after all, and soon she’d be away from the man in black and safe. All this: The weird package, A Fine Mess (enger), his Master’s unusual request…All of it seemed somehow suddenly benign, a trick of the light, maybe even on purpose. His master - he knew - had a weird sense of humor. He watched intently now, his relief a palpable thing. He saw the woman’s face brighten as the car stopped, she clicked something on the phone and put it back in her purse, closed the file, got ready to gather herself and leave the car.
Then she stopped, and her smile turned into a confused grimace. She opened her mouth to speak, but the man in black had already begun:
Sorry Maam, we’re almost there. Ms. Ryan here was already on the books, heading to the same area. Dispatch called and I said “yes“ without giving it much thought. I hope you don’t mind. Last minute and all that…
The woman was watching outside now, checking out something outside of the car and the camera-eye. She was - Neccas felt sure - watching the approach of “Ms. Ryan”. She replied a hesitant
Uh…oh kay-ee. Yeah…
…and then picked her bag up off the bench as a courtesy to the new passenger. A moment later Ms. Ryan entered the car. She was a shade younger than the woman on the right, bottle-blonde, gym toned, wearing a light grey skirt suit with a hem maybe a centimeter above office/professional. She was holding an expensive looking bag. She apologized to her back-seat mate, then towards the front, speaking to the same area that the first woman had, using the astringent professional voice that middle management folks love to use for service-people.
So sorry sir, so sorry. Thanks for the last minute we so appreciate it.
Then she turned back to the first woman.
At least we can share the costs…
And then man in black intoned, in a voice that made Neccas stomach seize
That, you may, miss. That you certainly may…
And he laughed a creepy fucking laugh. It filled the room, radiating from hidden speakers, and vibrating from the subwoofers under the gigantic bed. He added:
Always better for everybody when two can share the costs.
7.
Neccas had been the oldest of for boys. He and his brothers were created from a fairly typical Irish Catholic upbringing, which - in the 1970’s - had meant lots of children, born as close in age as was physically possible, a stressed out, vile-tongued mother, and a father who worked constantly. The difference in the Neccas house was that the absentee father, Charles Neccas the fourth (!), was a a criminal lawyer, one of the best (and most expensive) in the whole commonwealth of Massachusetts. So the Neccas family - bred and raised in the minivan-less 70’s - had to car that could fit all the children one two three four across the rear bench.
They were good boys, these Neccas. The helped out at church on Sunday, played in the little leagues, stayed out of trouble. They were however, boys, and that meant that a certain amount of trouble was a matter of course. Their mother - a fiery, profane woman with a shock of red hair - usually chose to deal with trouble by selective ignorance. Unless there was blood or a potential law suit, she let the boys police themselves. That is, of course, unless she was driving.
Ramona Neccas loved driving. She loved nice cars. Big, American expanses of steel and leather. Ramona’s dad had been a successful lawyer as well, so she was used to a certain comfort level. Nothing on earth allowed Mrs. Neccas more comfort than burning miles riding the elegant wave-form motion of a gigantic American luxury car. The boys got away with whatever they wanted in most areas, but in the car they knew they’d better damn well keep still. If they didn’t mom might stop the car. If mom stopped the car, well that was about the worst thing that could happen. “Like fighting a wolverine in a phone booth” his brother had once said, and Neccas the Butler thought that was about as good of an assessment as any. A wolverine with long red hair. A wolverine that cursed like a sailor while ripping you apart, and then grounded you. It hadn’t happened many times, but the butler Neccas remembered all of them. The thing he remembered most was the car stopping. There was a feeling there, distinctive and terrible. A feeling that said:
“the ride, so promising and well conceived at the outset, has taken a turn. Now, we will all be sorry”.
In his younger years, Neccas remembered simply bursting into tears after it became clear his mom was pulling over. As he grew, he learned to accept his fate with more grace, sitting - almost placid - as the car rolled into a soft shoulder or rest area, with a look on his face that betrayed nothing.
That’s exactly the look he saw in the faces of the women in the back seat, as the tinted background slowed to a stop in high definition behind them.
8.
They looked out of their respective windows, smiling through pursed lips, as they car ground to a halt. In the rear window there were trees visible, and not much else. Pine trees and tall oaks, and Neccas thought he could make out a birch or two, swaying in the distance. As the car was slowing he thought he heard the sounds of gravel crinkling under the wheels. He allowed himself a quick glance at his Master, who’s face remained impassive but alert, as if he were watching the most fascinating television show he’d ever seen, and didn’t want to make any extra noise or motion that might distract him from that purpose. Neccas looked back at the screen.
The woman on the left, the new woman, just looked on, silent. The woman on the right, the original passenger, began to speak, but then stopped right away. She managed to get out:
What eh….
Just as the car was coming to a complete stop. She stopped though, and a jostling noise, fabric on leather, filled the bedroom. The women’s eyes were now both focused on the same point just to the camera’s right. They were watching - the Butler realized - as the man in black turned around to face them. The woman on the right began again. She’d brightened a bit, looking a little more determined than last time:
Hi. Uh…So, I just
And then two things happened. First, an ominous noise echoed forth from the screen, cracking like salutes from the awesome home theater system. It was a familiar sound, unmistakable and awful: the raking slide of an automatic pistol. Then that very same pistol burst into view from off screen, driven hard through the perfect teeth of the woman on the right by a hand gloved in black.
The rear bench of the Lincoln came alive, and so did the home theater. The woman on the left began to scream. No words, she just tilted back against the seat and began wailing as loud as she could. A high breathless keening that sounded almost supernatural blasting through the expensive fidelity. The woman on the right was in a worse place. Her face, so lovely and well put together at the beginning of the ride, was transformed instantly to a hideous mask of dread, and raw throbbing fear. Blood was dripping and globbing from her savaged mouth, and Neccas could see teeth-parts and saliva in hi-def, staining the giant gun and everything below it. She was whimpering and trembling, and her tears were streaming down, mixing with the liquid ruin around her mouth. The sound from the speakers was otherworldy, like somebody chewing shards of broken glass, amplified ten million times. Within seconds, the right hand woman was screaming as well. Necca’s heard the awful notes join with the crunching sounds, saw the women’s hands join in an absurd silent union. He thought he might be sick.
Then the man in black squeezed the trigger.
The woman on the right must have known, because just before the report her eyes focused absurdly on the barrel and her scream started climbing the registers. The shot was loud and dry - no echo in the back bench of the town car. After it there was silence, for a while.
Neccas had seen a few people shot in his time, and a few of those had been head-shots. Never, though, had he seen anything like what he witnessed on the big screen in the Master’s bedroom. The woman’s head exploded, burst out like it had been wired by demolition experts. One moment there had been a face, a head, a mouth, the next, nothing. Only a black, smoking barrell hovering over a scorched neck. The rear bench - so pristine at the beginning of the ride - was instantly painted over with what looked like ten coats of blood, brain, shattered bone, and honey brown hair. Neccas saw an eye ball hanging absurdly from the ceiling of the car, and the lady’s torso began to fountain dark-purple blood. It spattered against the ceiling and dripped on the twitching body’s torso and lap.
The other woman, the second woman, took the full brunt of the explosion. Her face was so coated with gore that for a second, Neccas thought that she’d been shot as well. Then the woman’s eyes opened and rolled back in her head, and she started bashing her head against the seat. She’d gone “off the chain” - as Neccas’s old XO used to say - and he knew there’d be no getting her back. He watched with fascination as she bobbed and babbled. A few seconds later another black gloved hand reached from off screen. This time it held a syringe instead of the handgun. It plunged the spike into her gore-soaked top just below her collar bone. Within seconds she stopped moving all together, and as the shot faded to black, her breathing, regular and strong, filled the room in perfect amplification. Neccas breathed out hard. The Master said nothing.
Sunday, December 4, 2011
dogshitland - Rock Shows
We're very lucky to have some great friends who are kind enough to get us into a lot of really amazing shows in NYC. They are also nice enough to give us special access, and for this we are very appreciative. We want to thank those friends,(we love you guys!), and share some pics that we've taken over the past few months.
My Morning Jacket, Mann Music Center 8/23/11
Florence and The Machine, Central Park Summerstage 6/24/11
My Morning Jacket, Mann Music Center 8/23/11
Wilco, Central Park Summerstage 9/22-23/11
Jane's Addiction, Irving Plaza 10/18/11
Apefight, Crobar 11/11/11
Foo Fighters, Madison Square Garden 11/13/11
Dave Grohl and Kei$ha
Apefight, Crobar 11/11/11
Foo Fighters, Madison Square Garden 11/13/11
Dave Grohl and Kei$ha
Deer Tick, Webster Hall 11/20/11
David Fricke of Rolling Stone fame. Huge moe.ron, who knew?
moe., Terminal 5 11/25-26/11
David Fricke of Rolling Stone fame. Huge moe.ron, who knew?
Friday, December 2, 2011
Thursday Story / Cort in Vegas.
Cort turned into the pitch dark at the top of the alley. He’d made the tail and walked about five blocks with him, all of it occurring in about five minutes. That five minutes was important. During the five minutes Cort had learned that his pursuit was a male, about 35 years old, maybe a tick over six feet tall. He learned that the guy was armed. Every so often he would fiddle with his sport jacket, and Cort could see a leather strap across his chest, and the holster under his left arm. He learned that the guy was probably not a pro, because pros blend in, and this guy wasn’t blending at all. He was wearing a suit. He was obviously sober, without a companion on a street full of intoxicated people walking in groups of intoxicated people. Most importantly, he learned that the guy was wearing black loafers, and that they gave an odd muted tap sound on the concrete.
So Cort had learned. And now came the test. Stepping into the dark, he could see, about 100 feet away from him, a pool of orange sodium light. It came - he knew - from a tiny bulb lighting what was once the rear entry of an old Vegas girly-show theater. That place was long gone but the doorway, and the dirty orange light, remained. In it’s glow Cort could just make out the brick face on both sides of the alley. Beyond that he could see only inky blackness, but he knew from experience there was a wall there, just a few more steps toward the rear. It was brickwork like the other walls, and it went all the way up ten stories. Cort was walking into a dead end.
He took two steps into the alley and slowed his pace to a near-standstill. There was something coming, something important, but Cort couldn’t risk turning in the dark to face it. Any ambient light shining into the alley would immediately highlight his light complexion and give away his position. He was wearing dark blue jeans and black shoes and a long-sleeved black windbreaker, so to remain invisible all he had to do was avoid the light. He would be to anybody out there until he reached the end about twenty paces ahead. So he slowed down, and listened - very carefully - to everything happening in the world behind him.
Twelve seconds:
1: Cars on the strip, chatter on both sides, a fountain, possibly more than one. 2,3,4: Cars again. Both sides, and the fountains, and the chatter. Also two odd, muted tap sounds from the far side followed by break-screech and a shout “THE FUCK!!”. 5,6: chatter, fountains (definitely more than one), Cars, and now car horns. More muted tap sounds, a bit quicker now. Closer. 7,8: More slammed breaks, more horns. Loud now. A voice - male - yelling insults in Farsi at somebody fifteen feet behind him. 9,10: Cort begins to walk again, trying to hear…11: Odd, muted, taps. Ten feet behind. There was a beat there, a rythym. Cort matched it with his own steps. 12: odd muted taps, doubling his own steps, ten feet behind him. His right foot came down, and he was ready…
***
Ten years before, just after his first tour of command in Iraq, Cort’s wife had given him the last meaningful present of their entire 14 year relationship. He looked back fondly on it, even now after all the hell and pain. He remembered the way she wrapped it in a big television box to fool him, make him think it was something else. He could see himself, drowsy from Christmas eve drinking and totally fooled by the wrapping. He remembered sifting through the tissue paper, finding the tiny case in all that packing material. He’d not known - just for an instant - what the fuck it was. It was tiny. It weighed nothing. He’d been turning it in his fingers for minutes when, finally, she’d let him off the hook. Snatching it from him, she held it up in his face. I was made of webbing, looked like a Velcro “sports” wallet from when he was a kid. At a closer look, he could see a black border on the right. Plastic, or maybe carbon. His wife grabbed that little stripe of polished black, and Cort heard a almost silent “click” sound. The webbing fell away, his ex closed her fist, and Cort understood.
***
The other guy was elated. He’d tracked the guy for blocks without being detected, and now the dumb fuck was ducking into a dark alley where the report of a suppressed Walther PPK would hardly be noticed amidst all the drama and noise of the Vegas Strip. His people had told him to be careful. His people had told him the guy was good. By tomorrow he would be the man who beat the man, and in this game - he knew - that kind of reputation meant everything. He could hardly contain his excitement as he saw his quarry turn into the shadows, almost got himself killed crossing the busy strip. He calmed himself though, forced himself to walk, not sprint, through the traffic towards the alley. There were more honks, brakes squealed, a guy yelled at him in a language he didn’t understand. But by the time he reached the other side, he’d tuned all of it out. He couldn’t see his mark back there, but he knew he hadn’t been spotted, and any second the guy would be in relief against the dim orange glow. The other guy thought he was stalking, wading in for the kill silently, undetected. Instead, his situation was the exact opposite: He was the prey being stalked. He was the rabbit, the hunted. He was the prey, being muscled and baited to the killing ground with such skill and subtlety , that he didn’t realize it was happening until it was far too late. He reached under his jacket, thumbed the safety on the Walther, and let the shadows swallowed him up.
***
Cort had matched the guy five steps. So for those five steps, they advanced at the same rate,
one on front of the other into the void. He was counting in his head, marking the steps. He heard fabric ruffled, metal on leather. In his minds eye he saw the guy, right hand in his jacket, trying to be silent.
Instead of taking the next step, Cort planted his right foot, still being cat-quiet. He put all his weight on it, loading up the knee like a DH thinking yard. He bent with the forward motion and dipped his right arm almost to the pavement, twisting slightly to his blind side to gather more torque. For a split second he froze like that, his fist cocked and skimming the ground, all 225 pounds of his weight balanced perfectly on his right leg, bent at the knee. He drew his wife’s Christmas present from all those years ago, palmed it in his left hand. Then he listened, counting down the last three footsteps of the guy‘s life.
***
The guy had drawn his weapon, was raising up against the mark. Still walking forward in the dark, he could here his man still doing the same mere feet ahead of him. They were almost at the lighted section of the alley, and now he leveled the pistol and aimed at the slightest outline of a shadow moving against dim light. His mind sent the signal to his finger to squeeze and the message traveled from his eyes to his brain to his arm and then his trigger finger almost instantly. It wasn’t fast enough. He had pulled the trigger. He was sure of it. But instead of the soft spit of a suppressed .22, he heard a yell. More than a yell, a war cry. His gun hand was rising up, being knocked to the side, violently. Then, something that felt like a hammer crashed into his face.
***
Cort had a ten foot lead on the guy, so after he stopped, coiled himself, and waited, tuned everything out but the guys footsteps 1...2...3...and then Cort went. He exploded up and back to his left, swinging his left hand - and with it, his ex wife’s last Christmas present - out before him in a wide arc from left to right, and using the twisting motion to carry his right elbow through a similar, slightly higher arc a moment later, aimed directly at the space where he knew the guy’s head would be. Cort’s two hundred plus pounds were flying through the air, frictionless and full of adrenaline-propelled inertia, and pure, red rage. His elbow, whipsawed by the centrifugal force and momentum, might as well have been a crowbar. He was going to knock the guy back out in the street. He was going to blow the guy’s head right off his shoulders. And then, he wasn’t.
***
At the last second, the guy knew. Weather it was a shadow moving in his field of vision, or just blind luck, the guy fucking knew and the knowing saved him. He heard a gasp well from in front of him, close and at ground level. He stopped walking and leaned his weight onto his back foot. His head drifted back almost four inches with the movement, and so the part of his face that Cort’s elbow was going to destroy was instantly downsized. Instead of the entire left side of the man’s head, the Elbow only caught the tiniest sliver of the man’s chin, and it wasn’t near enough. Cort’s whole body whipped behind the elbow. He let his momentum pull him. As he found his feet he tried to complete the spin and end up crouching at the base of the wall, but he misjudged his available space. The wall took him by surprise. He plowed into it with a mighty “thud”. The guy - gun still in hand thanks to the glancing blow - found himself an array of good options, and Cort very very few. There was three feet of distance between them and - thanks to his impact against the wall the guy knew exactly where Cort was.
***
Mr James Bond, doesn’t know the tools of his trade?
Well to be fair, a Velcro wallet isn’t - strictly speaking - a tool of my trade.
She squeezed in the center of the webbing, and he saw the tiny strip of plastic pop free. His ex wife grabbed it, tucked it into her fist, and yanked. Now she held her fist out and pointing up, and Cort saw a three inch blade - black, non-metallic - sticking up from it. Something about that blade too. It Didn’t look like the rest. It was glass or plexi…
It’s a diamond blade, never needs sharpening. The rest is graphite. About the same size and weight as a credit card, but indestructible and sharp enough to shave with. It’s illegal in…
…Every state but Alaska, I know.
He took it back from her without asking and turned it in his hands. The blade was flat carbon black, but he could see little glints of light sparkling off the edge. He was spellbound.
My boss used to have one. I didn’t know they still even made them.
They don’t. Thank Ebay and my natural patience. Every time you cut somebody you can think of me.
And he still did. Every time.
***
Cort felt in the dark around the flat part of his tiny gift’s blade. It was wet. Soaked even, Cort could feel hot, sticky fluid covering his hand and soaking him past his wrist. He’d scored with the first blow, deep. The missed elbow wouldn’t matter, and the guy was probably just realizing that now. Just as the thought was coursing through his mind, Cort heard the dry click of a suppressed .22 caliber pistol hitting the ground directly in front of him, almost as his feet. He struck out with his hands, grabbing forward, trying to catch the guy before he went down. He did, but only just barely. The guy slumped in his grip, his breath was already coming in wet gasps and sputters. Cort picked him up from the back of the head, lifted his feet off the ground, ran him back against the bricks. Hard, but not enough to shut him down. He needed more time. He was thinking of a question. The guy’s head bounced with a hollow sounding “thunk”. His whole body went slack. Then Cort moved him two feet to the right, into the hazy orange glow of the sodium lamp. He saw his face, and his world started doing flips. He asked his question. A low growl. One word:
“why?”
The fucker smiled. Spit blood into Cort’s face. Laughed.
Cort felt down the guys stomach, found the gash, shoved his left hand, still death-gripping the blade, into the guy up to the elbow. He went under the ribs, through tissue and between bones, blasting through organs and tissue, moving the blade around. He felt things moving in the guy, shocked and beaten and turning off for good. The guy’s eyes went wide, he breathed out, wet and raspy, and died against the wall. Cort let him slide down, sloughed him off of his arm. Spit on the body and walked out of the alley. He stopped at the front - just before the shadow gave way to the neon bursts and dioxide scents of the strip - and just looked all around for a few seconds. Then he scuttled back into the shadows, felt around for the pistol and found it, separated the suppressor, checked the magazine and thumbed the safety. He pocketed all of it, and walked back out into Las Vegas.
So Cort had learned. And now came the test. Stepping into the dark, he could see, about 100 feet away from him, a pool of orange sodium light. It came - he knew - from a tiny bulb lighting what was once the rear entry of an old Vegas girly-show theater. That place was long gone but the doorway, and the dirty orange light, remained. In it’s glow Cort could just make out the brick face on both sides of the alley. Beyond that he could see only inky blackness, but he knew from experience there was a wall there, just a few more steps toward the rear. It was brickwork like the other walls, and it went all the way up ten stories. Cort was walking into a dead end.
He took two steps into the alley and slowed his pace to a near-standstill. There was something coming, something important, but Cort couldn’t risk turning in the dark to face it. Any ambient light shining into the alley would immediately highlight his light complexion and give away his position. He was wearing dark blue jeans and black shoes and a long-sleeved black windbreaker, so to remain invisible all he had to do was avoid the light. He would be to anybody out there until he reached the end about twenty paces ahead. So he slowed down, and listened - very carefully - to everything happening in the world behind him.
Twelve seconds:
1: Cars on the strip, chatter on both sides, a fountain, possibly more than one. 2,3,4: Cars again. Both sides, and the fountains, and the chatter. Also two odd, muted tap sounds from the far side followed by break-screech and a shout “THE FUCK!!”. 5,6: chatter, fountains (definitely more than one), Cars, and now car horns. More muted tap sounds, a bit quicker now. Closer. 7,8: More slammed breaks, more horns. Loud now. A voice - male - yelling insults in Farsi at somebody fifteen feet behind him. 9,10: Cort begins to walk again, trying to hear…11: Odd, muted, taps. Ten feet behind. There was a beat there, a rythym. Cort matched it with his own steps. 12: odd muted taps, doubling his own steps, ten feet behind him. His right foot came down, and he was ready…
***
Ten years before, just after his first tour of command in Iraq, Cort’s wife had given him the last meaningful present of their entire 14 year relationship. He looked back fondly on it, even now after all the hell and pain. He remembered the way she wrapped it in a big television box to fool him, make him think it was something else. He could see himself, drowsy from Christmas eve drinking and totally fooled by the wrapping. He remembered sifting through the tissue paper, finding the tiny case in all that packing material. He’d not known - just for an instant - what the fuck it was. It was tiny. It weighed nothing. He’d been turning it in his fingers for minutes when, finally, she’d let him off the hook. Snatching it from him, she held it up in his face. I was made of webbing, looked like a Velcro “sports” wallet from when he was a kid. At a closer look, he could see a black border on the right. Plastic, or maybe carbon. His wife grabbed that little stripe of polished black, and Cort heard a almost silent “click” sound. The webbing fell away, his ex closed her fist, and Cort understood.
***
The other guy was elated. He’d tracked the guy for blocks without being detected, and now the dumb fuck was ducking into a dark alley where the report of a suppressed Walther PPK would hardly be noticed amidst all the drama and noise of the Vegas Strip. His people had told him to be careful. His people had told him the guy was good. By tomorrow he would be the man who beat the man, and in this game - he knew - that kind of reputation meant everything. He could hardly contain his excitement as he saw his quarry turn into the shadows, almost got himself killed crossing the busy strip. He calmed himself though, forced himself to walk, not sprint, through the traffic towards the alley. There were more honks, brakes squealed, a guy yelled at him in a language he didn’t understand. But by the time he reached the other side, he’d tuned all of it out. He couldn’t see his mark back there, but he knew he hadn’t been spotted, and any second the guy would be in relief against the dim orange glow. The other guy thought he was stalking, wading in for the kill silently, undetected. Instead, his situation was the exact opposite: He was the prey being stalked. He was the rabbit, the hunted. He was the prey, being muscled and baited to the killing ground with such skill and subtlety , that he didn’t realize it was happening until it was far too late. He reached under his jacket, thumbed the safety on the Walther, and let the shadows swallowed him up.
***
Cort had matched the guy five steps. So for those five steps, they advanced at the same rate,
one on front of the other into the void. He was counting in his head, marking the steps. He heard fabric ruffled, metal on leather. In his minds eye he saw the guy, right hand in his jacket, trying to be silent.
Instead of taking the next step, Cort planted his right foot, still being cat-quiet. He put all his weight on it, loading up the knee like a DH thinking yard. He bent with the forward motion and dipped his right arm almost to the pavement, twisting slightly to his blind side to gather more torque. For a split second he froze like that, his fist cocked and skimming the ground, all 225 pounds of his weight balanced perfectly on his right leg, bent at the knee. He drew his wife’s Christmas present from all those years ago, palmed it in his left hand. Then he listened, counting down the last three footsteps of the guy‘s life.
***
The guy had drawn his weapon, was raising up against the mark. Still walking forward in the dark, he could here his man still doing the same mere feet ahead of him. They were almost at the lighted section of the alley, and now he leveled the pistol and aimed at the slightest outline of a shadow moving against dim light. His mind sent the signal to his finger to squeeze and the message traveled from his eyes to his brain to his arm and then his trigger finger almost instantly. It wasn’t fast enough. He had pulled the trigger. He was sure of it. But instead of the soft spit of a suppressed .22, he heard a yell. More than a yell, a war cry. His gun hand was rising up, being knocked to the side, violently. Then, something that felt like a hammer crashed into his face.
***
Cort had a ten foot lead on the guy, so after he stopped, coiled himself, and waited, tuned everything out but the guys footsteps 1...2...3...and then Cort went. He exploded up and back to his left, swinging his left hand - and with it, his ex wife’s last Christmas present - out before him in a wide arc from left to right, and using the twisting motion to carry his right elbow through a similar, slightly higher arc a moment later, aimed directly at the space where he knew the guy’s head would be. Cort’s two hundred plus pounds were flying through the air, frictionless and full of adrenaline-propelled inertia, and pure, red rage. His elbow, whipsawed by the centrifugal force and momentum, might as well have been a crowbar. He was going to knock the guy back out in the street. He was going to blow the guy’s head right off his shoulders. And then, he wasn’t.
***
At the last second, the guy knew. Weather it was a shadow moving in his field of vision, or just blind luck, the guy fucking knew and the knowing saved him. He heard a gasp well from in front of him, close and at ground level. He stopped walking and leaned his weight onto his back foot. His head drifted back almost four inches with the movement, and so the part of his face that Cort’s elbow was going to destroy was instantly downsized. Instead of the entire left side of the man’s head, the Elbow only caught the tiniest sliver of the man’s chin, and it wasn’t near enough. Cort’s whole body whipped behind the elbow. He let his momentum pull him. As he found his feet he tried to complete the spin and end up crouching at the base of the wall, but he misjudged his available space. The wall took him by surprise. He plowed into it with a mighty “thud”. The guy - gun still in hand thanks to the glancing blow - found himself an array of good options, and Cort very very few. There was three feet of distance between them and - thanks to his impact against the wall the guy knew exactly where Cort was.
***
Mr James Bond, doesn’t know the tools of his trade?
Well to be fair, a Velcro wallet isn’t - strictly speaking - a tool of my trade.
She squeezed in the center of the webbing, and he saw the tiny strip of plastic pop free. His ex wife grabbed it, tucked it into her fist, and yanked. Now she held her fist out and pointing up, and Cort saw a three inch blade - black, non-metallic - sticking up from it. Something about that blade too. It Didn’t look like the rest. It was glass or plexi…
It’s a diamond blade, never needs sharpening. The rest is graphite. About the same size and weight as a credit card, but indestructible and sharp enough to shave with. It’s illegal in…
…Every state but Alaska, I know.
He took it back from her without asking and turned it in his hands. The blade was flat carbon black, but he could see little glints of light sparkling off the edge. He was spellbound.
My boss used to have one. I didn’t know they still even made them.
They don’t. Thank Ebay and my natural patience. Every time you cut somebody you can think of me.
And he still did. Every time.
***
Cort felt in the dark around the flat part of his tiny gift’s blade. It was wet. Soaked even, Cort could feel hot, sticky fluid covering his hand and soaking him past his wrist. He’d scored with the first blow, deep. The missed elbow wouldn’t matter, and the guy was probably just realizing that now. Just as the thought was coursing through his mind, Cort heard the dry click of a suppressed .22 caliber pistol hitting the ground directly in front of him, almost as his feet. He struck out with his hands, grabbing forward, trying to catch the guy before he went down. He did, but only just barely. The guy slumped in his grip, his breath was already coming in wet gasps and sputters. Cort picked him up from the back of the head, lifted his feet off the ground, ran him back against the bricks. Hard, but not enough to shut him down. He needed more time. He was thinking of a question. The guy’s head bounced with a hollow sounding “thunk”. His whole body went slack. Then Cort moved him two feet to the right, into the hazy orange glow of the sodium lamp. He saw his face, and his world started doing flips. He asked his question. A low growl. One word:
“why?”
The fucker smiled. Spit blood into Cort’s face. Laughed.
Cort felt down the guys stomach, found the gash, shoved his left hand, still death-gripping the blade, into the guy up to the elbow. He went under the ribs, through tissue and between bones, blasting through organs and tissue, moving the blade around. He felt things moving in the guy, shocked and beaten and turning off for good. The guy’s eyes went wide, he breathed out, wet and raspy, and died against the wall. Cort let him slide down, sloughed him off of his arm. Spit on the body and walked out of the alley. He stopped at the front - just before the shadow gave way to the neon bursts and dioxide scents of the strip - and just looked all around for a few seconds. Then he scuttled back into the shadows, felt around for the pistol and found it, separated the suppressor, checked the magazine and thumbed the safety. He pocketed all of it, and walked back out into Las Vegas.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Monday Story #4: Thistle
He woke up, leveraged a leg off the bed to gain a sitting position. He sat, sweating in the dark rooms in the back of the club until there two minutes left. It was bright, sauna-hot and slow-motion humid, but when he got out there they all screamed and went berzerk, shouting songs. His name. The guys…
Pierce you fuckeehhhhhaaaahh
Thisssaaahhhh….ther
Pierce Fuck You!
And the place seemed much much smaller than the last time. Six months ago and some days; he hadn’t remembered any of it until right then, plugging in. He stepped into his mic and spoke:
Yes. Everybody…
Berzerk again, only louder. The room seemed smaller still. He turned left with a barely perceptible wave to the guy at the board: a finger pointing up. The system came up with a short buzz, and he felt the subs, distant, seismic, pulsing up his legs, through the stage. He hadn’t eaten in 33 hours and 25 minutes and he’d been awake three and one half hours in the last 24. Last night he’d been 504 miles away from where he stood now. The first song he thought of issued soon after from the sunburst Telecaster hanging around his neck. “Impressive”. He wrote it when he turned 15, doing drugs with his friends.
It’s basically “Sympathy for the devil”…
That’s what he told P, the first time they’d played together, years before.
“A lot of songs are”
P had said it like picking up a cue, like he’d prepared. P had been a stroke of luck.
The song began in near silence. Single, deep bass notes stretched for sustain over a chopped-up 4/4.
If there’s mountains….up in heaven
Mountains…up in heaven
They’d need to be high, up
They’d need to be so high up…
The 4/4 shade gained, became substantial, nano-seconds behind the bass notes, still booming and sustaining. Moving air. He heard a general crowd swoon followed by a thousand rebel-yelling twenty-somethings. Everyone on the place switched gears with the band and suddenly a perfect-feeling agreement settled over the room. Escape velocity. He sang louder.
Cause the smallest mountains down here,
The mountains down here are big enough…
Downshift, four beats, and back up five. Everything modulating and rising. Before the big part, the crowd-pop flood tide collides with the electric shore. The place feels much, much smaller than last time.
You heartless bastard….
You made it all so impressive!
Heartless bastard,
it’s all so impressive
He remembered, not to long after they started up, almost 14 years ago, there was guy who wrote for the Ithacan. He was the music guy, and his name was Larry Biggs. Larry was the first fan of the band thistle. Larry knew it. He wore it like the badge of honor it was, and he told everyone he met (and Larry met a lot of people) that his friend Douglas Pierce was going to save rock and roll. He was evangelically committed to the music, and instrumental in getting the gigs and the crowds during those frst delicate years when they were all so young. The first time LB wrote them up, he used words that Pierce had never forgotten. He loved them so much he’d quoted his friend Biggs in the liners to Big Automatic: “They say that a good Thistle show would make you two inches taller and irresistible to the opposite sex.” he’d written, “This is music for intensity. Music to fuck to. Music to commit a murder to. Music that sounds like some awesome and indefinite THING riding you down and scouring your soul”.
The smallest mountains down here are big enough. Big enough.
He’d never really believe the words, not exactly, but when everything was clicking, sometimes Pierce understood what his buddy was getting at so long ago. But then, always by the end of the song, ( or show, or tour, or year) rolled around, he found he always forgot again.
They played four hours, and after that he slept until thanksgiving in New Hope PA. When it was all over he ran off, ducked through the dusty back offices, almost-jogging back to the dark place at the back of the bus. They came for him later. First the guys, horsing around and banging at the door. Then later it was a girls voice. Her voice?
He nestled deep under the covers in the tiny rolling bedroom. He’d be 300 miles away tomorrow night, and probably sicker than he felt even now. He stared up in the dark, half awake and half asleep for the entire six hour ride.
Pierce you fuckeehhhhhaaaahh
Thisssaaahhhh….ther
Pierce Fuck You!
And the place seemed much much smaller than the last time. Six months ago and some days; he hadn’t remembered any of it until right then, plugging in. He stepped into his mic and spoke:
Yes. Everybody…
Berzerk again, only louder. The room seemed smaller still. He turned left with a barely perceptible wave to the guy at the board: a finger pointing up. The system came up with a short buzz, and he felt the subs, distant, seismic, pulsing up his legs, through the stage. He hadn’t eaten in 33 hours and 25 minutes and he’d been awake three and one half hours in the last 24. Last night he’d been 504 miles away from where he stood now. The first song he thought of issued soon after from the sunburst Telecaster hanging around his neck. “Impressive”. He wrote it when he turned 15, doing drugs with his friends.
It’s basically “Sympathy for the devil”…
That’s what he told P, the first time they’d played together, years before.
“A lot of songs are”
P had said it like picking up a cue, like he’d prepared. P had been a stroke of luck.
The song began in near silence. Single, deep bass notes stretched for sustain over a chopped-up 4/4.
If there’s mountains….up in heaven
Mountains…up in heaven
They’d need to be high, up
They’d need to be so high up…
The 4/4 shade gained, became substantial, nano-seconds behind the bass notes, still booming and sustaining. Moving air. He heard a general crowd swoon followed by a thousand rebel-yelling twenty-somethings. Everyone on the place switched gears with the band and suddenly a perfect-feeling agreement settled over the room. Escape velocity. He sang louder.
Cause the smallest mountains down here,
The mountains down here are big enough…
Downshift, four beats, and back up five. Everything modulating and rising. Before the big part, the crowd-pop flood tide collides with the electric shore. The place feels much, much smaller than last time.
You heartless bastard….
You made it all so impressive!
Heartless bastard,
it’s all so impressive
He remembered, not to long after they started up, almost 14 years ago, there was guy who wrote for the Ithacan. He was the music guy, and his name was Larry Biggs. Larry was the first fan of the band thistle. Larry knew it. He wore it like the badge of honor it was, and he told everyone he met (and Larry met a lot of people) that his friend Douglas Pierce was going to save rock and roll. He was evangelically committed to the music, and instrumental in getting the gigs and the crowds during those frst delicate years when they were all so young. The first time LB wrote them up, he used words that Pierce had never forgotten. He loved them so much he’d quoted his friend Biggs in the liners to Big Automatic: “They say that a good Thistle show would make you two inches taller and irresistible to the opposite sex.” he’d written, “This is music for intensity. Music to fuck to. Music to commit a murder to. Music that sounds like some awesome and indefinite THING riding you down and scouring your soul”.
The smallest mountains down here are big enough. Big enough.
He’d never really believe the words, not exactly, but when everything was clicking, sometimes Pierce understood what his buddy was getting at so long ago. But then, always by the end of the song, ( or show, or tour, or year) rolled around, he found he always forgot again.
They played four hours, and after that he slept until thanksgiving in New Hope PA. When it was all over he ran off, ducked through the dusty back offices, almost-jogging back to the dark place at the back of the bus. They came for him later. First the guys, horsing around and banging at the door. Then later it was a girls voice. Her voice?
He nestled deep under the covers in the tiny rolling bedroom. He’d be 300 miles away tomorrow night, and probably sicker than he felt even now. He stared up in the dark, half awake and half asleep for the entire six hour ride.
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