THUGLIT Issue One (9 page)

He’d ordered someone to steal Carmine’s car from in front of Lady M’s dive and brought to him. Then he stuck Joe’s body in the trunk and drove the
Plymouth
back to where he’d found it—right in front of Lady M’s.

The result? Joey was dead. Carmine was going to jail for his murder and Mimi was put on notice. And Doyle gets his money back. Hell, Doyle had even gotten Howard Rothmann to sign off on the whole thing. Why not? It gave Chief Carmichael a chance to show the city he was a crime fighter after all. Score one for the good guys.

But Quinn had learned long ago that there were no good guys and bad guys in The Life. Just guys out to make a buck and guys who died trying.

Guys like Archie Doyle and men like Terry Quinn who worked for them.

He drained his coffee and paid his tab. He’d just gotten outside the coffee shop when he heard the sirens of the squad cars racing along
14th Street
. He walked to the corner and saw the cops had already opened the trunk of Carmine Rizzo’s
Plymouth
. He saw Joey’s body was inside, just like Quinn had left it.

He watched another group of cops drag Mimi and Carmine into the street in handcuffs. The Van Dorn brat wobbled out last.

Mimi was wailing, this time for real. It took three cops to push Carmine into the back of the squad car. The Van Dorn punk just looked woozy and ridiculous. Handcuffs and tuxes went together just about as well as cops and dead men in trunks.

A couple of uniforms recognized Quinn and waved. Why not? He was on Doyle’s payroll, too. Just a friend, standing on the corner in the middle of the night. With a suitcase in his hand.

Quinn smiled and waved back. Then hailed a cab going the other way.

by Matthew C. Funk

Big Dan got the bad news from
Eric
Delacey, his Service Manager, just as a knock hammered his front door. He lowered the cell—Delacey still booming on about the spill site—and shot a look across his living room. Rain hit hard enough to almost dent the windows. He hoped it would wash away whoever was knocking.

“So how bad is bad,
Eric
?”

“About as bad as it gets. Storm’s taken the waste right over our levees. Twenty years of dumping is pouring right for the lot.”

'For the lot' meant for Big Dan’s house, right next door. He blew air through his broke-veined nose to clear the pinch in his chest. It didn’t help. Neither did the knocking.

Big Dan considered switching his den light off. The knocker might get the message.

“EPA going to get involved in this?”

“You kidding me? We’ll be lucky if the showroom isn’t a swimming pool of ethylene glycol and sulfuric acid.”

Turning off the lamp turned the knocking into a slamming.

“So how do we contain this,
Eric
?”

Silence. For the hundredth time this year, Big Dan wondered why he bothered paying apes like Delacey. If he could run the Chevy dealership himself, they’d all be out on their dumb asses.

“Call me back when you have a fucking answer.” Big Dan hung up. He lumbered to the door, worked both deadbolts and yanked open the oversized knob.

The roar of the storm barged in, bringing water by the bucket to spatter his slippers. It hazed the figure into a ghost. For a moment, Big Dan could have sworn he was looking at his daughter, Andrea, from decades back.

But Andrea knew better than to visit.

“Who’re you?” His tone left no question that the answer would only piss him off more.

“Papa,” the girl said, forcing a smile while the rest of her shivered in a soaked-through hoodie, water pouring up from inside her Vans. “It’s Darlene.”

“Darly?” Big Dan was surprised to feel the brick in his chest soften. The sensation was like a wish he’d long forgotten being answered. He nearly smiled. “What the hell are you doing out in this weather?”

“I’m on my own now,” she said, tucking hands embedded in her sweatshirt pockets tighter about her middle. “Mama and I had a parting of the ways.”

Big Dan grunted. The kid was probably looking for charity, ducking out on her welfare mother for a taste of her grandpa the dealership owner’s wealth.

Still, Darly could be a welcome distraction. Ten years parted left a lot of catching up to do. Besides, anything that would rile Andrea suited him fine.

“Come on in, then,” Big Dan said, waving her on. He considered wrapping an arm around her willow-branch body, something to soothe that shivering, but thought better. It would only soak them both. “Kick your shoes off, though.”

She did. Big Dan scowled to see a dark rainbow of chemical
s
fringing their soles. The rogue’s gallery of toxic waste Delacey had listed echoed: Carburetor cleaner, transmission fluid, battery acid, antifreeze, oil.

All headed out of the
Mississippi
mire to swamp his business. His house. Him.

Big Dan gave a wistful look across the street to where the dealership sign should have glowed. The storm had stolen the power, but he imagined it, lit and looming bigger than one of those faggy euro coupes. Potter Chevrolet of Wiggins—a declaration of dominance over his plot of land.

He slammed the door rather than look at the flood swallowing that land a moment longer.

Darly was pivoting, taking in Big Dan’s den with baby-doll eyes wide under the seaweed fringe of her black-dyed hair. He ate up her awe—her wonder at the garfish with its prehistoric snarl jutting over the mantle, the out-sized furniture of imported leather and antique wood, the clusters of photos, fleur-de-lis and American flags.

He’d enjoy his castle as long as he could. To hell with the doubters—his dead wife, his pastor, the Sheriff. It was fucking great to be the king.

“So, Darly,” he said, clasping her shoulder and steering her shocked face around for his stare to savor. “Tell me how your bitch of a mother is.”

*****

The photo albums were all organized, but Big Dan yanked them from the cupboards and stacked them on his teak coffee table. They tiered in towers, forty years of family memories and booming business. It reminded him of the Norman fortresses he used to model out of hub cabs behind his old man’s scrapyard.

“We don’t really have to do this, Papa,” Darly said, “if you need to sleep, I mean.”

He turned to her and sipped Dewar’s through his smile. It felt odd to smile without bitterness on the backs of his teeth. The whole sensation—genuine happiness—felt odd, a warm softness running from his neck to his bulging belly, like the filling of a birthday cake.

“I’m a night owl and an early bird both, Darly, don’t you worry.” He put a canny bend in his grin. The girl mirrored it. Big Dan figured this apple fell right onto the roots of the tree.

“Okay, then.” She perked her plucked eyebrows. “Think I could have a scotch, though?”

He chuckled in time with a wagging finger. The girl had his guts, too.

Her hair was dark, but Big Dan bet there’d be his rye-colored roots under the dye. Her jaw was slender, but her chin had the same die-cut square. Her sharp eyes, her hard brow, her high cheeks—all pieces of his mirror turned into something beautiful.

“You’ll settle with that coffee, kiddo.”

Darly shrugged and rubbed her arm. She’d insisted on keeping the hoodie on. Big Dan insisted she at least change into dry jeans, for the sake of his couch if nothing else. He wondered if she’d kept her damp panties on or went bare.

Was that wrong to wonder about his granddaughter? Big Dan smirked to himself as he sorted out an album. As if he gave a tin shit about “wrong.”

“Here we go,” he said, raising up from popping knees and ambling over to Darly with the album. “2002. Your last visit, right?”

“I was six, so, yeah, I guess so.” She fixed a hopeful look on him. “Is Grandma in this one?”

He nodded. They paged through it. Image after image of his wife, his pairs of sons and daughters, his four grandkids. They huddled together on picnic tables at the park ground on the 4
th
of July, stood before the Christmas tree’s glister, crammed around the Thanksgiving spread. Every picture gleamed with tight smiles and flashbulb happiness.

Dan didn’t look at the smiles. He studied the eyes. He wanted to run his fingertip over their hard pebbles; rub them like Braille to feel if a hidden story could be read.

“Everybody looks so happy,” Darly said, sober and slouched. “When did things go bad?”

“When they grew up and quit listening,” Big Dan said. He flipped pages faster. “And when your grandmother died.”

The truth was that things were always kind of bad. Big Dan and his wife, Allie, had tried to set the kids right. He’d spared no expense and no punishment.

The slightest show of weakness in these kids—bad grades, poor performance on the field, teenage romance—and he’d get the whole family to make fun of them. The tape recorders in their bedrooms and the late-night spying discovered their secrets and gave him grounds to correct them with beatings. And every time he got back talk, he’d lock them in the basement. Hell, he’d forgotten Andrea down there for a day and a half one time.

All that discipline, and still they’d broken bad. Turned sneaky. Gone bitter. Given up.

Big Dan shut the album and grabbed another at random off the stack. He flipped through, not exchanging a word with Darly.

“Everything looks so pretty,” Darly said, hands clasped in her jacket pockets again. “Guess that’s what money gets you: A lot of pretty.”

That’s all she said. And that was fine by Big Dan. It was enough to know she understood—knew what was necessary in life and what his family had given up.

Andrea gave up on everything but an endless course of scumbag baby daddies. Chrissie, she was a sour old maid at 35 with love only for cats and self-cutting. Dan Junior and Dick, they were in and out of t
he pen, the church and the poor
house.

How he’d fought for tho
se kids. Fought without compromise or remorse.

All they did was fight back.

He slapped the album closed midway and tossed it back on the table. A belt of scotch only made the cramped burn in him worse.

All that fighting, and now the only thing he had left—his Chevy store, his sign and his castle by the lake—would be lost to him.

The storm slammed the windows like the laughter of the mob. The chemicals had slipped their stink through his window seals. The burn in him just sank deeper no matter how long he drank.

Darly lifted it with a touch of his hand.

He set down the glass and found her eyes waiting. They were carved wise like his, but wanton. Interest glowed through their weary cores.

“Can we look at another?”

“I got a better idea,” Big Dan said, before he even really knew what it was.

“What’s that?”

“Let’s get out of here.”

“Where?” The eagerness snuck into her lips and stretched them wide.

“
New Orleans
.”

“Really?” She giggled. Big Dan felt like giggling too. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d felt like that. Probably some time before his old man began to use the buckle of the belt to whip him with, and that was his first memory—stretched onto the stove, his nose against burner soot, as the iron gouged his bare ass.

“Yeah, let’s get out there and settle in.”

“But this place is so nice.”

Big Dan waved that away. “We’ll find another nice place. This place is done for.”

She didn’t take a moment to think—just nodded. Enthusiasm lunged Big Dan to his feet without even feeling his knees ache. He didn’t leave Darly’s eyes.

There was hope and youth enough there for the both of them—the bright breed of youth that still believed in flight and fresh starts.

“I’ll pack my things,” he said, tipping her chin with a finger. She lifted her grin, crooked little teeth showing. “You get drinks and snacks for the road.”

He wouldn’t bring much. Enough to live on until
New Orleans
.

Living was what this was about—getting out from the toxic flood, the tonnage of the business, the wreck of his family.

Darly skipped to the kitchen as if the pounding of the storm were less than just a nightmare.

*****

Big Dan studied his razor before tossing it into the sink.

He’d give up shaving awhile. Go bearded on a fishing boat, reeling in catfish and gar and perch with Darly reading a romance novel by the beer cooler.

Besides, it was his old man’s razor.

He’d bring the toothpaste but leave the cologne. Bring the dog tags but leave the cufflinks. Bring the watch he’d bought with his first paycheck but ditch the engagement bracelet from Allie.

He dropped Allie’s perfume into his Dopp kit for Darly, though.

She reminded him more of his late wife with every heartbeat: Her spirit, her wit, her girlish manner. Allie had been two years younger than Darly when they married, but the teen had a bounce to her that the burden of growing up under Andrea’s tyranny hadn’t crushed. It had only gone clever.

Big Dan appreciated that cleverness as he looked himself over in the mirror, popping the collar of his Polo shirt. He was plenty clever, too. Always had been. Having to get around his fucker of a father gave him the smarts and drive to seize what he wanted no matter what.

He left the dealership keys on his bedside table. Potter Chevy had been won hard: Cutthroat deals. Backstabbing marketing. Backroom nights passing cash into the hands of the fat bastards on the zoning boards, the town council and the inspection office.

It was all worthless now. The flood of the spill sites saw to that.

Time to liquidate.

He crammed the Dopp into a satchel bloated with his safe’s six-figure cash supply, slid into his work boots and turned out the light on ten pairs of Italian loafers.

It made him want to whistle
Dixie
as he sauntered for the kitchen to meet Darly.

He spotted Chrissie instead.

Big Dan frowned. It was impossible not to when one saw Chrissie—the woman’s worry lines had taken a washboard to her face. Anything that might’ve been pretty about her was sagged like a saddlebag.

Her scowl was turned to Darly. She gave her dad a flick of her eyes. They were fixed on the
.357 in
Darly’s hand.

“Chris?” Big Dan said. The frosting feeling in his chest soured and sank heavy. It made him aware of the air choked by stinging chemical from the spill. “What’s going on?”