I was only eighteen and I had already witnessed two murders.
This is the first one.
I’m sorry. I know that these are flag waving, George W. Bush and Billy Graham praying, ultra- conservative, Toby Keith patriotically singing with tears in his eyes, politically correct times. But there is still no way to say it but just like this - I was sitting on the stool, reading a Penthouse, and taking a cocaine rush induced shit when the first murder went down.
It was the summer of 1975. My high school days had ended just about a month previously and I had no immediate plans other than to continue on what I had been doing for the past two years which was getting stoned and dealing some weed and desperately trying to get laid for the first time.
Contrary to public opinion the two do not mix as I was soon to find out. Not the getting laid part, I meant the dealing and getting stoned part.
I was looking at this lesbian pictorial - are all lesbians that hot? - and just thinking about jerking off when I heard the front door bust open. Lynyrd Skynyrd was jamming so goddamn loud on Don't Ask Me No Questions, that at first I couldn't hear or understand what was going on. The door buzzer had gone off first and I had assumed that it was just announcing more folks, hopefully chicks, coming in to party. Man, was I fucking wrong!
The stylus on the turntable scratched across the record. The music stopped. In fact, it sounded like the turntable was knocked right onto the floor.
"Hey dude, what the hell are you doing!
Watch the fucking album. I just bought the goddamn thing. Fucking thing cost 5.99!" Mike was seriously stoned. "Hey! What are you doing here?"
“Just keep your ass in that chair and don't move a muscle you lowlife motherfucker!”
My scrotum tried to crawl up into my stomach. I knew who's voice that was. His name was Cletus la Favor. A local thug, pimp, and drug dealer. Two weeks ago I had broken into - technically the door was unlocked - his Corvette that he had left parked in his driveway. I had been riding my ten speed home down his dark street when I had seen la Favor park his car in front of his house and stagger through the front door, his tattooed, tree trunk arm wrapped around one of his ladies. I don't what the hell had gotten into me to do it, probably the nine beers that I had drank, but to my utter disbelief and joy, I had discovered a half a pound of gold Columbian and a .38 caliber snub- nose in the backseat, damn near in plain view. I had ripped off both items but hadn't told a soul about it. la Favor was bad news. He had done hard time in Stillwater and there was a local urban legend going around that said he was known to strap on a pair of personalized brass knuckles when people were either drunk, stoned, or just plain stupid enough to cross him.
To my horror I suddenly realized my mistake. Several nights ago, Mike and I had gone to a small keg party and in a lame attempt to get in the pants of a hot number who was way out of his league, Mike, without my knowledge had turned her on to a couple of joints of the Columbian. That had to have been how la Favor had found out. The backwater town we lived in got buzzed mainly on Hamm's beer, white cross speed, and Mexican ditch weed. It wouldn't have taken much for la Favor to put two and two together.
"What's the shotgun for, man? That's not cool, dude. Guns aren't cool!" Mike was going through this weird "violence isn't the answer" hippie period. I think that he thought that would help him attract more women. It didn't.
"Where's the dope at you little cocksucker?
My fucking dope and my fucking pistol? I know that you and your buddy took it!"
Mike's current girlfriend, a sweet dimwitted bimbo named Angel and who was only sixteen but easily could have passed for twenty five, (I think that Angel may have been her stage name) and who stripped on the weekends at the Aragon Bar, screamed out in either fear or pain or both.
“Shut up you cunt! You either shut your goddamn cock holster or I'll shove something in it!”
"Why are yo….” A hideous shriek of agony. “First you have the nuts to deal on my turf,
you dirty fucks! (Our pot operation was so small time I couldn't believe la Favor even knew about it) Then you rip me fucking off! Now I ain't gonna ask again, where are the fucking drugs? My fucking drugs!" la Favor screamed.
"We don't have shit, man! We haven't ripped anyone off!" Mike protested. "Just this little dab of coke is all and this quarter ounce of weed is all we have! You can take it if you want it!"
"You lying prick! Where the fuck is that little asshole friend of yours that's always hanging out here? He's the one I really need to talk to." There was a pause. "Hey! Get your hands off her tits and check this dump out!" he barked to someone.
Panicking, I realized that I was the "asshole" in questions and that I was trapped as the proverbial shithouse rat. Quickly thinking (for once), I closed the toilet lid and stood up on the stool. There was a panel in the ceiling in the bathroom leading to a ventilation shaft and I shoved the panel aside and slithered like a snake up into the overhead and pushed the tile back into place. It was pitch black inside and smelled heavily of mouse piss. I could feel their little shit pellets crunch under my hands. Someone was in the bathroom below me looking around. Jesus Christ! What's going to happen if they lift the lid and see a fresh shit in there? They'll link me to the turd and start searching for me. Probably shoot me right through the ceiling. I stifled a whimper.
"There ain't anyone in the crapper. But holy shit! You should see these dyke bitches in this magazine, boss!"
"Put the fuck book down and take the slut out to the car, tie her up and throw her ass in the trunk you goddamn moron. We'll take care of her later. I'll handle this little son of a bitch."
I could hear Angel screaming out a blue streak as she was taken down the stairs. The word "motherfuckers" was mentioned predominately. We were a mile out of town in an apartment over a waterbed warehouse. There wasn't a soul around to hear her.
"What? What do you want? I'll do anything!
I'll give you anything! Just bring Angel back up here and I'll..." Mike's voice was suddenly cut off like someone had him around the throat.
"Too late, asshole. You had your chance."
All I heard after that was this weird, wet sound like someone hitting a ripe pumpkin or melon with a stick. Then the racket of la Favor, all three hundred pounds of him lumber down the stairs. I could hear him bitching at his flunky through the attic vent.
"Hey dipshit! Quit feeling up the fucking bimbo, we got work to do. Dump her off at the farm and get back here with a can of gas. We're gonna torch this fucking place. And leave the fucking beer." A high horsepower engine revved up and gravel sprayed the side of the warehouse as a car raced out of the parking lot. Then total silence. But I knew la Favor was still out there. I could hear him belching and farting.
I laid up there in the dark with the mice and their shit for what seemed like hours but was probably just a couple of minutes before I could muster up the courage and make myself crawl back down in the bathroom. I had to do something or I was going to get roasted like a hot dog along with Mike and his apartment. I walked gingerly around the corner into the living room. Mike was sitting straight up in his easy chair with his back to me.
"Mike! Mike!" I stage whispered. "We gotta get the hell out of here! They're going to burn the fucking place down!
He didn't answer so I slowly walked around the chair. His eyes were open but he was obviously dead. He was the only person I had seen dead except for my grandmother and that had been at her funeral. I remembered that she had looked like she had been cast in wax, like a candle minus the wick in her head, and real peaceful. But Mike didn't look like that at all. Punched into the middle of his forehead, like his skull had been made out of the cheap sheet metal we used to use for projects in high school shop class, were the initials "ClF."
"Brass knuckles," I mouthed to myself. The legend was true!
Suddenly the stairs started creaking as la Favor began to make his ascent up the stairs. Mike had a Louisville Slugger that he had gotten a bunch of the Minnesota Twins to sign years ago at a father and son banquet with his local Cub Scout troop. It was sitting in a place of honor on a shelf above the stereo. I grabbed it and flattened myself against the wall next to the open stairwell door. When la Favor stepped into the apartment, I stepped into my swing like Tony Olivia going for the fence.
"What in the fu.." The bat caught la Favor right on the forehead. Dead center. His eyes rolled back in his head then snapped back to look dead straight at me. He stood motionless for at least three seconds glaring at me as I got ready to wind up again. And then he suddenly dropped like he had been shot. There wasn't much damage. Just a nick in the middle of his forehead that was dripping a single stream of blood down the side of his head.
The son of a bitch wasn't dead. I could see that he was breathing, but goddamn I really popped him! The prick must have had a head as thick as a coconut.
Dropping the bat, I ran over to the closet to grab the two hundred dollars in dope money that I knew that la Favor had missed. Mike always kept his money stash in the inside pocket of his Levi jacket. I then went to his bedroom to retrieve Angel's tip jar that she kept hidden under their bed. I don't think she would miss it - no one would ever heard from Angel again I thought at the time. On my way out the door I stopped and pulled the trucker's wallet out of la Favor's back pocket with the chain that was hooked to it. I jumped down the stairs five at a time.
I was fucking flying on my ten speed down the county road and I thought I had it made in the shade until I saw the oncoming headlights and I could hear the familiar throaty roar of the engine. Without giving it a thought I shot straight down into the ditch and racked my nuts seriously on the crossbar when I hit the bottom and I flew over the handlebars into a pool of stagnant and shitty smelling water. The car roared past without seeing me.
Doubled over on the bike with a serious case of swollen nuts I barely made it home. Per usual, the old man was watching an old late night episode of Dragnet. The drunk old coot was going deaf and I could it hear it two doors down as I came up the street. Stepping into through the screen door, I peeked around the corner of the living room. My father was passed out on the couch which was a nightly occurrence since my mother had run off with a trucker and the old man had been laid off at the packing plant because of carpal tunnel syndrome. There was at least ten spent bottles of Grain Belt beer and one full bottle on the coffee table in front of him. I grabbed the full one and sat down on the recliner to try to figure out just what in the hell I was going to do to get out of this mess. I didn't have a lot of time to dwell on it.
Angel’s tip jar had almost a hundred bucks. la Favor’s wallet contained four and a half and some change. Along with Mike’s two hundred I had some decent cash to give me a running start. Then it popped in my head as I looked up at the commercial that always signified the half way point of the Dragnet shows. That’s what was going to be my way out! It was a Navy recruiting commercial. It was like I had just noticed it for the very first time even though I had seen the goddamn thing at least a hundred times before. It's more than an job! It's an adventure! Just what I was looking for since I need to put some serious distance between myself and this redneck shithole. Well, fucking A! Now I was thinking! The local Navy recruiter was twenty miles away over in Austin. I looked up at the clock. It was close to three AM. The recruiter must open around eight or so. I went into my dad’s room and opened the top drawer of dresser and grabbed the envelope where all my personal shit - birth certificate, social security card, high school diploma - was kept in an manila envelope. I grabbed that and the keys to the piece of shit Chevy Vega that my mom had left - along with the payments - when she ran off on us.
I stuffed a change of clothes and the envelope into a gym bag and walked back into the living room. The old man hadn’t moved a muscle. I thought about leaving a note but didn’t. It was better this way.