Doom Fox (20 page)

He speed-dresses in slacks and sports shirt, leaves the bedroom to move quietly down the hall past the bedroom of his sleeping sons. As he leaves the house, he remembers that while lying alone in his suite during a six week lecture tour, it had been erotic thoughts of Roxie, not of Tricia, his wife, that had driven him into the night to find a succession of whores that had only half satisfied his carnal hunger. Chuck tells himself he has to somehow break the expensive and risky Roxie spell as he drives the new family Pontiac towards the black ghetto.

Melvin Sternberg sits in Tessie's parked Dodge a half block from the Blue Pit Bar. He watches the parade of street people and the interracial johns on foot and cruising in cars to spot Roxie. He skin pops a load of Dilaudid into a forearm, swoons for a moment under the jolt.

He shifts his scrutiny to the Blue Pit. 'Oh, how I hate the scurvy lowlife bastards!' Melvin exclaims aloud as he stares, with a mean face, at a knot of whores and peacocking pimps high jiving on the sidewalk in front of the bar.

Twenty minutes later Chuck parks his car near the front of the bar behind Slim's new Caddie. He hits his horn. Sharlene breaks away from the knot of scufflers on the sidewalk. She comes to lean into the Pontiac from the sidewalk side with a toothy grin on her painted face.

'Hi Sharlene. You got good news?' he says with excitement shaking his voice.

'For real, Chuck sweetie!' she exclaims as she digs into her bosom and lays a matchbook cover with Roxie's phone number on the seat. 'Roxie's phone number baby. She's gonna pee on herself with you call 'cause, no jive, she's missed you like a motherfucker while you was outta town.'

He picks up, studies the matchbook.

'Ain't you gonna tip me?' she asks as she pouts her heavy lipped, sensual mouth.

He peels of a ten spot from the wad. She grins, takes it and stares at the battered car of a regular trick, an elderly black man, just pulling into the curb behind Chuck's Pontiac. She dips her head toward the Circle Motel on the corner, a few yards from the Blue Pit. She snake hips down the sidewalk toward the motel, followed by the gimpy old man togged out in a baggy ice cream suit.

A half-hour later, stable strawboss Sharlene, emerges from a motel trick room at the moment of Roxie's arrival, in a cab on the motel parking lot.

'Oh you lucky bitch! I ain't had nothing but ten buck nigguh dates humping my pussy sore to win a home and you got Chuck waiting in number five to pop off like Brer Rabbit for a "C" note' Sharlene says as Roxie steps out and the cab pulls away.

Chuck looks at them from the window of room five, his craggy face lit up with anticipation.

At the sight of Roxie, Melvin hurtles the Dodge into traffic. He narrowly escapes multiple collisions as he cuts across against fast traffic to careen into the motel lot as Roxie walks toward number five. Melvin squeals the Dodge to a stop near Roxie. She whirls, stares at his rage deformed face struggling to smile sweetly through the windshield. He swings open the car door, starts to get out.

She screams, 'Sharlene! Get Slim!'

Chuck opens the room door. 'Roxie, is that your boy friend!?' he hollers.

'Shit no! I don't even know that nut!' she shrills as she darts into the alley behind the motel.

Chuck charges from the doorway. He dashes toward the Dodge, shouts, 'Hey there! You! What the hell is going on!?'

Melvin misses him by inches as he guns the Dodge across the lot and down the alley in roaring pursuit of Roxie. She is caught in the spew of headlights as she cuts into the lot behind the Blue Pit. She stumbles in her high heels, falls as she nears the half open back door. Melvin stops the Dodge, lunges from it as she gets to her feet. He bear hugs her waist as she flees toward the blue murk of the noisy bar.

She screams, 'Slim!' as Melvin picks her up and carries her struggling and screaming back into the lot.

Slim and several of his pimp friends race into the lot and grab Melvin as he tries to force Roxie into the Dodge. They tear Roxie from Melvin's arms. Slim's full nelson holds Melvin as the others curse, punch and kick him from head to ankles.

Chuck cruises his Pontiac down the alley, stops to watch the brutal tableau vivid in the glow of full moon. Sharlene, on scene, embraces Roxie. Roxie's red organza dress is torn in several places. Sharlene hustles Roxie into Chuck's car, which he bombs away down the alley.

Slim releases Melvin, winks at his fellow assailants ringed about the victim. He draws a pistol from his waistband. He removes the bullets, dumps them into a suit coat pocket. Melvin, fallen face down, is half stunned and paralyzed with pain. And then he trembles in fear when Slim stoops beside him, presses the snout of the pistol against the back of his head.

'Roll over, lard ass!' Slim commands in a vicious whisper.

Melvin rolls to face Slim on his back. His blood streaked face ashens when Slim jabs the pistol snout between his eyes.

'Please mister, don't kill me!' Melvin gasps as he sees Slim's trigger finger roll the pistol chambers.

'Niggah, you put the gorilla on my pregnant stepdaughter. I got to kill you!' Slim whispers with his face twisted in mock rage.

'Brother, don't ice the fat man. He ain't nothing but a poor ugly raper or mugger out to grease his dick on a freebie or score some grits and greens for his big gut. Maybe he's gonna 'pologize and ask forgiveness' a fake commiserant pleads.

'I'm sorry! Forgive me!' Melvin begs with wide eyes locked on the barrel of the gun between his eyes.

'That don't move me. I got to kill you niggah!' Slim intones as he again rolls the pistol cylinders. "Sides, he tore my stepdaughter's three hundred dollar dress. I got to kill this gorilla!'

One of the mob kneels beside Slim, his whippet face a con mask of anxious compassion. He cracks, 'You ain't gonna have to waste Fat Man 'bout your stepdaughter's vine.' Whippet leans into Melvin's fearful face. 'Fool, up the three bills to the man for the vine you ruint and git in the wind.'

Through puffed lips Melvin mumbles, 'Left my wallet at home ... got a ring ... take it!'

Melvin slips off the gypsy mounted diamond ring. Slim takes it, examines it for a moment. To cover the fact that he knows Melvin's identity, he first glances disdainfully at Tessie's battered Dodge, then he rolls the pistol chambers.

'Driving that junk, ain't no way this rock is real. Niggah, who are you and what kinda work you do?' he whispers harshly.

'I'm ... uh ... Franklin ... uh, Franklin Armstrong ... I'm ... uh ... a tire changer at the Greyhound garage' Melvin stammers.

'How you buy this ring on a sucker salary?' Slim asks as he and Whippet stand.

'It was my late father's ring. It's real!'

Whippet says, 'Give fat man a break brother, and take a chance on the hoop for restushun for the vine.'

Slim bends down close to Melvin, waggles the pistol in his face. 'Niggah, I'm gonna let you live 'til I see you again anywhere on this side of town. You hip!?'

Melvin nods his head furiously, starts to rise on his elbows. Slim kicks Melvin against the side of his head, stuns him. Slim leads the others to the Dodge. They search it and overlook Melvin's pistol stashed beneath the dashboard.

Slim unfastens his fly as he leads the mob back to a tight circle around Melvin, just coming to.

'Let's baptize this gorilla!' Slim stage whispers. The others undo their flies, aim their organs down on Melvin. They grunt like swine at swill to pressure tap their bladders for a long moment before they drench him from face to feet. Melvin rolls in a fetal ball under the awful rain. They hee-haw as they turn away for the Pit back door belching juke box blues.

Melvin weeps wildly, watches his attackers disappear through the steel back door that somebody closes and bars with a heavy clank of metal. Melvin hears a bell toll two a.m. as he struggles to his feet. He hobbles to the Dodge, gets in. He uses wads of Tessie's paper tissues to wipe his burning eyes and to blot his dripping hair. He sees a bamboo blind drop across a steel barred back window, and notices several pin holes of blue interior light in a corner of the blind.

Maybe I can put one through the head of that skinny bastard, he thinks as he starts the car, backing it close to the window. He leaves the engine running, gets his pistol, and gets out. He leans against the car, the stench of urine triggers vomit until his guts dry lock. He stumbles to the window, peers through a blind pin hole into the noisy blue murk. He sees a towering black bouncer usher through the front door a half dozen outsider black and white men in conservative suits. The bouncer locks the door, drops steel blinds across it and the front windows.

Melvin watches Slim blow out the fifty candles on a huge frosted cake on the bar top. He draws a bead on the back of Slim's head. His trigger finger pulls carefully. He sobs in frustration when Slim abruptly goes to join Sharlene and her stablemates in a distant front booth. The jam of street people cheer and raise their glasses to toast the guest of honor.

Melvin's face is horrible with hatred as he scans the cluster of dope snorting whores and pimps for Roxie's presence.

Rage maddened, he decides to use his semi-automatic hunting rifle to blast justice Slim's way. And with luck, to his other assailants, he thinks, as he turns away.

He gets into the Dodge and punches it away, decides not to go to Beverly Hills to get his rifle. Instead, he goes to park in the earlier stake-out spot up the street. He shoots a heavy load of Dilaudid to quiet his shrieking nerve ends. He rests his stinking head against the seat back, and stares malevolently at the darkened facade of the 'Blue Pit.' Go home, clean up and stay there, forget those maggots over there, reason dares to whisper in the boiling bedlam of madness. But his lynched manhood overrules, rants for revenge, murder. Mass.

He starts the Dodge, U-turns on the nearly deserted street. Two miles away he finds an open station. He parks the Dodge a half block away, walks to the station. He pawns his wristwatch to the attendant for gas and a red five gallon can. He grins oddly as he watches the unsuspecting attendant fill the can with gasoline. His face is a Halloween fright mask as he drives back to park on a side street facing the bar fifty odd yards away.

He violently sings snatches of an old time hit ghetto ditty, 'I'll Be Glad When You're Dead You Rascal You' as he wicks the fire bomb with six inch long wadded strips of tissues jammed into its uncapped top.

He grunts and sweats his way to the glass front door of the Pit with his lethal burden. He stands stock still for a moment in the blast of raucous whore gaiety and profane ribaldry from the other side of the door reflecting his hellish, piss steeped image of death. He casually strikes a match, lights the wadded fuse to the drum. He lifts it above his head. He hears the gurgle of the bomb. He grits his bared teeth and crashes it through the glass door. The steel blinds stop its flight short on the shock silenced other side of the door.

Melvin scrambles away across the sidewalk, halts, stares at Roxie kissing Chuck goodbye before she leaves his car, which is pulled in behind Slim's Caddie parked yards away. Roxie freezes, stares saucer-eyed at Melvin for a long moment before she whirls and leaps into the Pontiac through the open front seat passenger window. The fire bomb explodes, blows out the front window plate glass behind Melvin as he draws his pistol and scuttles down the sidewalk toward the Pontiac. Chuck desperately maneuvers the machine from the tight spot and starts to U-turn down the street when Melvin reaches the car.

Melvin thrusts the pistol through the open window into Roxie's face and screams, 'Stop, Peckerwood! I'll blow this double-crossing bitch's brains out!'

Chuck lurches the car into the U-turn, knocking Melvin off balance for an instant. Melvin recovers rapidly, fires five shots into the Pontiac. Two of them plow into the back of Chuck's head. His dead foot slams down on the accelerator. Another bullet pierces Roxie's throat. The Pontiac rears across the sidewalk on the other side of the street and crashes, like a Howitzer shell, into a closed greasy spoon.

Melvin stares at the Pontiac, winces as it explodes in flames. He glances back at the bar front bursting flame and smoke. Screeching pandemonium in the bar trembles the air as Melvin hurries to the Dodge. He speeds away for his Beverly Hills mansion at the instant that the elderly white owner of the 'Blue Pit' arrives to check the evening's receipts. He sits in his Caddie De Ville double parked in front of the bar. He wrings his hands as he stares at Slim and his stable cindered by Melvin's fire bomb that rolled to within several feet of their booth and exploded. They, the only dead casualties, are fused together in a blackened mass engulfed by flames. The bar owner sticks his head out of the car window and vomits.

A last trampled trio of mack men survivors crawl retching from the stench of burned flesh and billows of black smoke through the back door, unlocked at the blast by the bar porter to set out garbage. Squealing sirens chorus as the street's residents pour out to witness the holocaust.

12

A ghetto mile away, sleepless Reba burns with jealous suspicion of Felix. He is two days overdue back from a two week conclave of ministers in Chicago. A young new church member, ravishing Ruta Jones, went with Felix as secretary Reba's substitute. Oh you ugly, jealous bastard, Reba exclaims to herself remembering how Joe foamed at the mouth when she hinted that she should be taking the trip with Felix. She glares at snoring Joe beside her, too pooped to awaken soon from his bumpkin after-the-movie sex calisthenics she decides as she eases from the bed to the living room phone to call Chicago.

Upstairs, several minutes later, Junior is frightened awake by nightmare visions of Hayward's realistic portrayal of death in the gas chamber. He awakens Joe as he groggily climbs across him into Reba's vacant spot in the bed. Joe takes him into his arms, rocks him to sleep. Joe eases himself free to go to the bathroom, stops in the hallway at the strident sound of Reba's voice chastising someone that Joe is certain must be Felix. He goes to the head of the stairs, sees Reba slam down the receiver and look at him with a flabbergasted face.