RANK EASED HIS CONSIDERABLE bulk down on a comfortable lounge chair in the dimly lit parlor. His interest wandered to the collection of colorful portraits that adorned the wall opposite him. From
each stared a pair of seductive eyes backed by a fabulously sexy face. As
one’s eyes wafted downward, he would behold a perfect body, clothed in
stylish, figure-enhancing garb. If the eyeballs of one who gazed at the photo
could be peeled away from the heavenly body before him, he would notice
that beneath the adorned frame hung a brass plaque. Etched in bold letters
was the pseudonym of the girl, a reference to her individual personality and
unique “charms.”
Out of earshot, two of the girls–whose photos garnished the wall–
whispered quietly to each other from around the corner. “He’s just a big dumb ox, too afraid of Vinnie to ever go through
with anything.”
“But what if he did?”
“He won’t. I’m tellin’ you, Kitty’s been playing games with him for
months. Come on–she said to tease him while she finishes.” The women flounced into the parlor, sliding themselves onto the
couch at each side of Frank, who struggled to stand. Rayna, a tall,
slender blonde with beautiful blue eyes, dark and bloodshot from the
drugs–dressed in almost nothing–fastened a hand on the man’s chest
and the other on his thigh, pressing him gently back to the chair. “You
don’t got to get up on our account, Frankie.” As if to underscore the
point, she swung a leg over Frank’s, her calf coming to rest on his lap.
“You just lie back, now.” As she spoke she tried to hide her crooked
teeth through her smile.
“Just trying to be a gentleman,” Frank squirmed.
“Gentleman or not, you ain’t nothing like Vinnie. You really cousins?” She leaned in, close to his face, studying his features. Frank smirked and nodded in proud acknowledgment. “My dad and his were brothers, ‘least ‘til his ol’ man were whacked. My ol’ man says if I pay close attention I might learn a thing or two from Vinnie. He got brains, you know; I only got muscle.”
“And plenty of it.” Rayna, knowing by experience where to turn her attentions, reached over and stroked Frank’s arms and chest. Then, motioning to the other girl, she continued, “Frankie, this is Violet. She’s going to keep you company while I go get dressed.”
“I know who she is.” Frank jerked his boxer-dog chin toward the wall. “I seen her picture before you came in.”
“You be gentle with her–she’s new here.”
“I will.” Frank placed his big hands on the couch, as if he’d been caught with them in the cookie jar. His massive chest expanded and contracted in rapid succession. “Vinnie said I can’t even touch, or he’ll do me.”
Rayna lifted the hand nearest her and rested it on his thigh, then angled her body across his broad chest and pressed her lips against those of her wild-eyed target. Frank’s arm flexed and his fingers curled up as Rayna leaned into him. Then, mustering every wile in her repertoire, she gently bit his lower lip, pulled away and breathed, “See, he don’t even know. Besides, a big strong man like you don’t need to be afraid a’ nobody.”
“I ain’t afraid!” Frank bellowed as he shot up from the chair, sending Rayna cartwheeling away. “I ain’t got no more chances. The ol’ man told me I don’t do what Vinnie says . . . he’ll whack me.” He raised his fist to strike, his eyes bulging, his jaw hardened like granite. “Frankie,” a voice echoed from the doorway. “You hit my girl, an’ she won’t be presentable.” Frank disengaged his fist and ran his palm across his short military style hair cut. His menacing glare raised to meet Kitty’s, who stood, hands on hips, in the hallway. Rayna slithered back farther out of Frank’s reach and Violet cowered from the room. “Frank, why don’t you wait in the car. They’ll be out in ten minutes.”
Frank scratched his scalp nervously and turned across toward the door. Kitty flicked her head to the side, a wordless cue to Rayna to go get herself dressed. In ten minutes Kitty was opening the door to the old limousine, parked on the curb, ushering into the back seat an elderly, well dressed gentleman, sporting a new haircut and a fresh shave. A convention badge was pinned to his slightly disheveled suit and a drink was clasped in his hand. Rayna, now dressed to kill, climbed in beside him and shot a fearful glance toward Kitty.
“You okay, Frankie?” Kitty asked, poking her head inside the car. Frank immediately became the sorry little school boy, slumped in front of the principal’s desk. “I’m sorry, Miss Kitty,” he whimpered. “I didn’t mean no harm. You don’t need to tell . . .”
“Of course not,” Kitty interrupted. “You just do your job tonight. It’s already forgotten.” She pressed a billfold into Rayna’s hand. “The MasterCard’s good for 50; run it first. American Express is unlimited. Stop after the first call for approval. The others are good for only about 25 each. I’ll call you when we’re ready to tuck him in for the night.” Frank pulled away from the curb and soon steered the vehicle into a space outside of the Tropicana. Rayna helped Mr. Glover, the imposter, from the car and headed for the cashier. Within moments–after a very sloppy signature and a quick stop at the bar–the two casually made their way toward the black-jack table with ten grand in chips and new drinks in hand.
Within 20 short minutes, a span filled with myriad hushed whispers from Rayna, the fake Mr. Glover had dropped $1,500 and change on the table. The two then stopped at the bar for another drink, cashed in the chips and took their winnings to the car. The next stop was the MGM Grand.
By early morning the vagrant, Mr. Glover, was back on the street with a hundred bucks in the pocket of his new suit, snoring loudly, on his way to a terrible hang-over, while the real Mr. Glover snuggled in a hotel bed, dreaming about the sensual evening with one of Kitty’s other girls.
It was before dawn when Mitch eased the gold GTO out from the garage. His early schedule allowed him the hours he needed to build his hotrods. More money was brought in building muscle cars than he ever could dream of making working a part-time job. The only disadvantages were the long stretches between pay checks. Grandpa’s wrecking yard still had 20 or 30 restorable big-dollar vehicles. Problem was, each seemed to need more and more work as the better cars were finished and sold off. The parts his grandpa didn’t have in the lot seemed like a snap for Bino to get his hands on. The decrepit, middle aged fellow never seemed to run out of sources.
Bino made friends faster than blue lightning. Mitch had become a loyal customer after his first fillup, the day two years earlier when he’d driven a ‘56 Chevy two-door hard-top in for a few dollars’ worth of gas. Bino had noticed the hood chrome was missing and asked if Mitch had been looking for it. Two days–and fifty bucks–later, Mitch had put the final touch on the black street rod. And a few months after that, Bino had helped him sell the car for $24,000, four thousand more than Mitch had thought he’d get. And Bino’s “fee” had come to only twelve hundred bucks.
Mitch always parked in the automotive storage area of the college. He hadn’t paid for a parking sticker since his first semester. The instructors constantly threatened the students that their cars would be towed, but no one ever followed through. Anyway, everyone would want to give this polished beauty the once-over. The car would easily bring $28,000–most of which would go toward credit card payments. Figuring in the tires from the day before, Mitch was in debt more than $20,000. He figured that his system worked alright: he’d pay cash to make most of the initial repairs, then finish up by using the cards. The interest was a little higher than at a bank, but the upside was that he didn’t need to deal with any loan officers. With the Camaro and the Firebird at his grandpa’s place, he had another $25,000 in inventory. The Firebird still needed four or five thousand more to finish off its interior and to buy some nice tires.
The half hour before class allowed enough time to get ready for his psychology final. Mitch quickly reviewed his notes, but didn’t see anything he hadn’t already committed to memory. His perfect grade-point average just might propel his dream of medical school back on track. Mitch planned on attending the University Nevada, Las Vegas, and after that hoped to get into Harvard. Proving himself a good student after his high school disaster was turning out to be ten times harder than if he’d just done it right in the first place.
Mitch didn’t know exactly which field he wanted to go into. He was going to take a wait-and-see approach. His grandpa always spoke poorly of the psychiatric field of medicine. Somehow the old man blamed the death of his wife on the therapist who had been treating her at the time.
Stephanie, turning sideways then once more to the front, posed in front of the full-length mirror, appraising her changing figure. The waistband of her underwear stretched markedly downward, dipping below her bulging tummy. She’d spent the last several weeks trying to convince herself it was hardly noticeable. Now, in light of the expectant twins, her stomach was the first thing she saw–and had convinced herself that it was the only thing others saw. Mitch jokingly–or not?–claimed her nose, too, was elongating ever so slightly.
The selection of clothing that still fit seemed to be rapidly diminishing. The night before she and Mitch had discussed using her paycheck to buy a few maternity outfits. They both agreed that she should, deciding that if the car didn’t sell they could use the new credit application for a fifth card and float the payments a bit longer.
Though they were both ecstatic, the happy couple had chosen to keep the news of their babies a secret to avoid the constant bombardment of ‘How soon are you due?’ questions that would surely follow. Four months was long enough. Work began at 9:30, and Stephanie could hardly wait to tell her best friend Maggie about the twins and show off the images. Maggie, intuitive soul that she was, had guessed that her coworker was pregnant the first month, but had reluctantly agreed to keep it hush-hush.
After trying on several outfits, seeking the right combination of clothes that didn’t accentuate her bulging tummy, Stephanie meandered into the kitchen and choked down a small pastry from the fridge. Hopefully the terrible bouts with morning sickness were almost over.
Before leaving for work, she lifted the trash bag from the receptacle near the kitchen table and drew the yellow draw strings into a bow before carrying it out the back door to deposit it in the bin. Trash day, she remembered. As usual, Al Kostecki, their next-door neighbor, was standing out on his porch in his boxer shorts with a beer in one hand, the other busily engaged in reaching around his enormous, furry gut to vigorously scratch his crotch. When Stephanie rounded the corner of the garage and saw him, she turned away, directing her gaze instead out to the street, hoping to avoid eye contact until she could climb into her car.
Al was a squat, no-neck sort, the kind of guy who envisions himself with the chiseled physique of an Arnold Schwartzenegger. A wide gap separated his front teeth and a long, grotesque scar intersected his left eyebrow. In a menacing and accented growl, he often bragged of his body-building days in Europe. He’d defected from the Soviet Union during the ‘64 Olympic games in Tokyo and petitioned the U.S. Embassy for asylum. Amid the hoopla and political rhetoric, he became a short-lived hero in America.
At the close of his allotted 15 minutes of fame, Al had gone on to coach young Olympic gymnastic and weightlifting hopefuls–until, that is, a few of the young gymnasts accused him of sexual misconduct. Al claimed that the charges had ruined his life–just another plot to send him back to face similar charges in Kazakhstan. According to him, the Russians had been furious that he’d skipped the country, and so had trumped up charges so they could extradite him. He would be punished as a traitor, used as an example . . . or so he claimed.
Al had ended up in Vegas a few years later, working as a bouncer in a topless bar, the Silver Nugget. It was there he’d met his wife Joan, a waitress at the time, and now the sole breadwinner for the family. A tough old broad with a deep, raspy smoker’s voice and a blonde wig that curled under her round, pink-painted face and swooped upward to graze her eyebrows, Joan worked the evening shift. Like her lewd husband, she was real a piece of work. A skimpy outfit betrayed a pair of wrinkly, sun-worn legs and a bottomless ravine of cleavage between sagging breasts, the result of age, gravity, and three baby boys, progeny who over the years had ripened into rotten and lazy adults, living at home, still sucking their mother dry.
“Goods mornink, gurl,” Al grunted. His thick, guttural inflection sent air whistling through his teeth as he spoke. He lumbered down the steps to match Stephanie’s quickened pace.
She wanted nothing to do with the creep. Once, after he’d wandered over to talk to Mitch–busy tuning up a carburetor at the time– he’d brushed up against her with his shirtless torso and remarked on her shapely, tan legs. Mitch’s sulphurous glare went unheeded. A smarter man would have been stopped in his tracks by such a blatant warning flare. Problem was, Al was not a smart man. The degenerate continued to leer at her every chance he got. Since that incident, Stephanie only hung around Mitch when he was working in the garage, with the door closed. Even so, the men in the neighborhood were always coming over to borrow a tool or to ask how to fix one gizmo or another.
“Jou look veautiful today.” Al shuffled ponderously behind Stephanie and deposited his hefty forearms on the driver’s door to her Escort. Stephanie turned toward him and stepped back a few feet, out of his reach. “That Mitch is lucky man to own such veauty.” His ogling eyes descended to take in her stomach. “Sometink different, I see.”
Stephanie, a good five inches taller than Al, waited for him to step aside. “I need to go. I’m going to be late for work,” she stammered, folding her arms impatiently, shielding against her bosom the doubledover images of her babies.
Al reached down and scratched again, took another sip from his beer, and leisurely turned away. “Don’t vant dat,” he muttered sarcastically. Then he pivoted once more, sucked his gut back up to his chest where it had been 25 years earlier, gripped the empty can between the palms of his hands and crushed the empty cylinder, top to bottom.
Stephanie had seen him do it before, from a distance, laughing at the pathetic sight of the 55-year-old behemoth desperately straining to prove his masculinity and cling to his long-lost youth. Today, however, up close and personal, she didn’t think his antics were the least bit funny, and shuddered as she punched the automatic door lock and started the engine.
Backing from the driveway, the shaken woman cranked the steering wheel and turned tail from the cul-de-sac. Once the Escort was out of sight, Al let his gut fall back into place and sauntered around back to the garbage bin to deposit his flattened aluminum relic. Lifting the lid, he glanced nervously about. Not a soul in sight. Tugging at the plastic ties of the recently deposited trash bag, he pawed through its contents. The deed took all of 15 seconds, whereupon he dropped the lid, having retrieved an unopened envelope from the top of the bag. This was his second such find in the neighbors’ trash–a credit application that could bring $200 by the afternoon, easy beer money for the weekend to come.
Mitch strolled from the testing center, confident he’d aced his last exam. After the other body shop students had finished gawking over the GTO, he gathered up his tools and loaded them in the trunk. Half an hour later, he parked in front of Mike’s Body Shop and went inside.
Mike Hutchings was perched on a battered old stool in the cozy four-bay shop, working on the rear quarter-panel of a red Ferrari. A small, stooped man in his mid-thirties, Mike sported a grotesque, oversized nose that flattened out at the tip as if the cartilage were missing. Pockmarks documented a severe case of acne suffered in his youth. Together with his long, greasy hair parted just above his right ear and combed up and over his otherwise shiny pate, the mechanic could well have been mistaken for the original Hunchback of Notre Dame. He’d been married once, but his wife soon grew tired of his relentless addiction to hunting. He kept three stuffed deer mounts on his tiny office wall together with dozens of photos as proof of his hunting prowess. Having recently moved from Utah, Mike had been in business two months in the new shop. His living quarters still consisted of a camping trailer out back. He had to relocate because his father owned the only body shop in their small town and there wasn’t enough work to support them both. He figured that maybe it was for the best. Perhaps he could make something big of himself in Vegas.
Business was booming the first few weeks after Mike opened his doors. Offering big bucks, he’d hired away the lead painter from one of his competitors. The man, Jimmy, was little more than a talented drunk and meth dealer with a big mouth, who brought lots of work to Mike’s shop from his previous employer. But–wouldn’t you know it–two weeks later he’d disappeared and the work dried up. Then two weeks after that, someone on a four-wheeler had stumbled across what was left of Jimmy, a bullet through the back of his skull, body parts scattered across the desert by the vultures and coyotes. The local papers had reported no apparent motive to the execution-style, hit-type murder.
One day soon after Jimmy’s demise, Bino had lined Mike and Mitch up when they both happened by the station. He had introduced Mitch as the best auto body man in the state. Mike was understandably a bit hesitant to have another kid work for him, but decided to let him start on a trial basis. On the first job, Mitch had proved himself a better hand than Mike. He always seemed to finish the work Mike would start so it would be done right. They both knew it was Mitch’s talent, not Mike’s, that brought in the work.
Mitch approached from behind, keeping his distance as Mike’s powerful arms, holding a grinder, stripped the paint from the metal fender around two holes in the side of the exotic auto. Sparks flew everywhere, dancing and pirouetting on the floor, then burning out as they skidded to a stop on the grimy concrete.
“Hey, Mike!” Mitch yelled out in an attempt to penetrate the grinder’s high-pitched whine and Mike’s heavy face shield and ear plugs. Finally he resorted to tapping him on the shoulder.
Mike jumped as he released the trigger to the grinder and spun around to see who was there. “Crud! You scared me half to death,” he shouted, the grinding wheel slowly winding down to a stop. “I didn’t think you’d be in ‘til afternoon.”
“Finished sooner than I expected. Thought I’d fix a few more things on the goat before I show it this afternoon.”
“Actually, I was hoping you could help me finish this job. The owner’s a friend of Bino’s–needs his ride back by two. No questions. Could be a great account.”
Mitch squinted down at the partially-ground panel. It looked as if two bullet holes had penetrated the side. Plus, a chunk of metal was missing from the fancy wheel. “What happened to it?”
“Like I said, no questions. The guy gave me enough cash to pay rent. I ain’t gonna kick a gift horse in the mouth.”
Mitch couldn’t help but grin in amusement; Mike was always botching cliches, or mingling two of them together. It was quite endearing, actually–just part of who the man was. Mitch’s easy expression quickly turned to one of concern. “Can’t you get in trouble?”
“Look, I was trying to get most of it done so when you came you didn’t have to see what I was doing,” Mike half apologized. “If you’re uncomfortable with it, I’ll finish . . .”
“No way. If you’re lucky you might have it done by two tomorrow. I’ll take care of it. You go pick up the paint.”
Mike set out for the supply store in his light brown Chevy 4x4 pickup, leaving Mitch to his work. Mitch quickly changed his clothes and slid into the low bucket seat of the expensive late-model import. He’d never owned anything but old rebuilts, and only dreamed of such a stylish ride. Strange–the seat had a lump that was poking him in the small of the back. He wiggled side to side, then climbed out and tried to press the seat’s padding back in place under the black leather. No luck.
Mitch’s drive for perfection compelled him to tip the high bucket seat forward and see if he could find access into the upholstery. Locating an open seam and reaching inside, he encountered a hard lump, which he pulled at until it tore loose. Dropping the object in his shirt pocket, a few more minutes’ work of smoothing the padding produced the desired effect. After refastening the base of the upholstery, he settled back in the seat to assure its comfort. It fit his body like a well-worn pair of faded jeans.
Mitch extracted the offending object from his pocket and began picking the melted foam padding off from its smooth surface. Suddenly he realized what it was he was holding: a bullet.
He climbed out again and examined the interior to see how it could have lodged in the seat, soon pinpointing a small hole that corresponded with one in the exterior. Then, leaning across the bucket seat, he found another point of penetration near the back corner, where it had entered through the leather. He dropped the bullet in his pants pocket as a novelty, deciding maybe he should have left things alone, minded his own business.