Moses & Curio & The L.A. Cochon du Lait

MOSES AND CURIO AND THE L.A. COCHON DU LAIT

         



         Moses Holliday could hear his beloved Curio yelling curses in an adjoining room when he regained consciousness in a barely carpeted room.  He listened before opening his eyes, sampling the sounds, judging the distance, trying to discern as much as he could before revealing he was conscious to whomever he could hear rocking a creaky floorboard with the sway of his or her body not far from him.

         His wrists stung.  Immediately, he panicked as he realized they were bound by a thick plastic zip-tie. He discretely wriggled them, testing their strength.  The plastic was solid, a police-spec grade.  They were more than trouble, he realized.

         A fucking death sentence...for me and her...Goddamn!

         Easing his eyes open, he saw Greg Dubanks standing in a hallway across the empty room. Greg was holding a pump shotgun in his two hands, smiling lazily, facing toward the ruckus Moses was hearing.  Moses cut his eyes around his area.

There was no furniture in the room. Just dirty carpet and an assortment of moldy twin-sized mattresses spread around in various stages of disrepair, many with swamp-ass stains and the occasional roach skittering across looking for a morsel missed by its voluminous brethren. Moses reached behind him, feeling the wall and trim board slowly as he could.

Greg disappeared up the hall, yelling encouragement to his two cohorts and urging them to hurry up…so they could take their turn watching that ‘dead ass saltine motherfucker’ and he could ‘get his nut.’

         Apparently, it was Antoine's bat in the back room.  Moses heard him tell Greg there probably wouldn't be nothing much left after he got through wearing that bitch out.

         Curio did not take kindly to his insult. 

“Fuck off, you weak bitch!  You ain't done nothing!  My girlfriend got more size in her tongue than you got in that matchstick dick, you nigger faggot!”  Curio kept cursing him...in between thrusts apparently.  Moses could hear the rhythm of her grunts as a bed creaked knowingly.  He knew a body was pushing against and inside hers. 

Greg and Big Ballin' both laughed at Antoine as she cussed him.  Antoine slapped her around for the insult.

         Big Ballin's tone changed. “Hey man, don't beat that bitch's face up too bad, I can't be stickin' no bleedin’ ass face bitch, main.”

Greg offered a tip about blood. “Yeah, man.  Don’t catch that blood, dog.  She might have dat germ, nigga.”

         “You better not be havin no AIDS, ho!”  Antoine gave her a solid backhand to the cheek that Moses could easily hear. “And don’t play, bitch.  I know this dick feels good.”

         “Motherfuckers!”  Moses muttered under his breath.  “Punchin' my Curio ain't fucking allowed.”

         Gritting his teeth, Moses held his breath and began to get loose of the colossal fuckup they got themselves into.  He and his lady were joined in so many ways.  He hoped telepathically was somehow one of them. 

         I know it hurts.  I know it sucks.  But, Curio, baby, just hang tight and take it a lil longer.  Keep ‘em watchin’ the show, baby.  I know it’s fuckin tough to take.  But I'm coming, baby.  I'm coming right fucking now! 

His eyes began to see options opening around him.  Again he heard her curse him and take a slap in retort.  He was seething now.

And when I get there, you motherfuckers…



Four days before...



         “It's a tough one, baby.  Three sumbitchin' thugs holed over in Lower Third. That kinda sucks.”

         “What's Lower Third?”  Curio yawned and stretched.

         “The local ghetto.”

         “Wonderful.  Why would you wanna' leave here and go over to a hood?  Ain't you seen enough hood rats this year?”

         “They fucked up.  I get a call when that happens.”  Moses finished rolling a joint on a Rolling Stone laid across his lap in room 125 of the historic Hotel Bentley in Alexandria, Louisiana.  When he licked it to seal it, he caught his Zippo as Curio threw it eagerly from the bed.

         She was shower-fresh radiant in a plush terrycloth robe, lying on her side flipping channels and occasionally preening her wet hair with her red fingernails.  She was amazed at how much freer she felt after having cut her breast-length hair back to a face-framing bob.  Moses, for his part, missed it on his face but thought her all the more beautiful.  Her neck freed and her pert face more open for his lips to find was never a detriment.

         A Spanish tutorial textbook lay next to her.  It was Moses' latest lesson for his partner. The influx of Latino workers into the South meant that sooner or later Grizzly Fontenot and his crime syndicate, the Atchafalaya Mudbugs, would bump heads with the gangs of LA and Houston as their members fled for a land where their names and gang tats were not known.

         The suite was opulent, a rarity for her lately.  If Moses has his way they would be holed up in some Patel No-tell someplace out on Macarthur, rutting her fiercely of course, ordering a pizza now and then. Or he would have her holed up on some mosquito-laden riverbank in a tent. His home on Bayou Flechette was as of late a place he rarely stayed much.  Since he introduced her to the bosses, a steady stream of jobs was coming their way.  He wondered if they were being generous or merely tossing enough opportunities to up the risk of their getting killed.

         The suite at the Bentley was a gift for them from Grizzly Fontenot...Curio, more so than Moses, who would be happier to be back at his home in a lawn chair, drinking beer and reading something intellectual Curio would find thoroughly boring.  A bad man in Natchez was floating in the river somewhere on account of them and their handling of the situation rated a lagniappe as well as the paycheck.

         It was just a coincidence that another job requiring Moses and Curio's unique employment nomenclature happened to spring up in the very town in which they were laying back a bit, Grizzly assured them.

Curio was annoyed when the call came.  It was only their third night together in the swanky old hotel. Moses merely shrugged at her as he spoke to Pete Fontenot.

         “A lotta’ people fuck up, baby.  We gotta' set everyone who fucks up straight?”

         “It's what we do, darling.  You can sit one out and hang here if you want.”  He told her as she pouted and folded her arms across her breasts.  The robe barely concealed her wares.  As intended.

         “It ain't that I don’t wanna’ go.  I would get bored and do serious bodily harm to your favorite tight little hang-out while you were out if I didn’t.”

         “Better not.”  He winked at her.

         “But damn, baby.  They couldn't fucking give you a week off?  Indian-giving bastards.”

         “Duty calls.  It calls whenever it calls.  Could be tomorrow.  Could be next year.  But it will call as long as Grizzly still needs me.”

         “But damn...” She looked around the room’s lavish decor, frowning.  Moses lit the joint.  “...I'm comfy.  We're comfy.”

         “We can come back when we are done maybe.”

         “You always say that.  But then you get all paranoid after a job someplace and then we never see get to see that place again.”

         “And we aren't on death row or dead because of that, my dear.  Just because you’re paranoid doesn't mean you didn't leave a thumb print or an artist sketch of your pretty ass somewheres.”

         “Yes, I know all the reasons why.  It just sucks.”  She flopped on her back, the robe falling open casually and intentional.  “Ugh!”

         “Poor baby.”  Moses took a draw and French-inhaled it.  “We gonna’ have to get dressed and do some shopping in a little while.  You hungry?”

         “Nuh uh.”  She had her eyes closed purposely.

         “Thirsty?”

         “Nope.”

         “Want some pot?”

         “Not particularly.  But kinda’ fuck yeah, too.  If you know what I mean?”

         “Back rub?”  He crawled onto the bed and turned the joint in his mouth around for a shotgun.  His fingertips brushed up along the faint highway to heaven to her navel and circled it slowly.

         “Wild bear shit in the woods, baby?”  She blew him a subtle kiss.  Few things she reveled in more than the feel of his firm hands kneading on her soft back.  Hands that killed without thought yet were so delicate when stroking or kneading her skin she trembled and grew moist at the thought of them almost without ceasing when they were not available.

         “Clit licked?” He whispered in her ear as she held her smoke in.  The question made her cough and chuckle.  She bit her lip and stroked his cheek.

         “Why do you think it's laying out here like it is?”

         “Because it likes daylight.”

         “No, you cowboy fool.  Because it likes you.”  She sighed as he kissed her knee and roached the joint.  His mouth began to work in lengths of suckling kisses up her thigh.

“And I’m sooo stealing this badass robe from here.”



         Moses flexed his arms as mightily as he could, hoping for a nick in the plastic he could overpower.  He came up short.  His wrists bled from the cuts he suffered but he paid it no mind. 

Pain was part of the job. Curio was undoubtedly suffering worse. 

         And for how long? 

He had no idea how long he had been out.  Moses cursed himself for getting bested and steeled himself for the task.

         His sharp eyes hunted for a broken beer bottle, a razor blade smeared with rust, a forgotten afro pick, a straight shooter, a lighter, something...anything to start working on the tough plastic.  Aside from the mattresses and a few fast food bags of various ages here and there, zilch.

         Again, frantically, he tried to twist his wrists enough to snap the ties.  Nothing but blood and pain arose from the effort.

         “Fuck!”  Sharp pain.  “Fuck!”  The skin broke.  “Fuuuuck!”  Nothing.  He took deep breaths to blot the pain and tried yet again.  “Break, you bastard.  Breaaak...!”

         No give.  He had no leverage sitting on his ass.  There was a reason cops used the thick plastic zip ties when there were multiple suspects and only so many handcuffs.  They were effective.

         Moses was about to begin trying to sliding his hands under his feet to at least have them bound in front and somewhat usable rather than bound behind him and rendered completely useless when he spotted salvation.  At some point, someone must have tried to decorate the old house.  Probably long before the current owners turned it into a flophouse for turning out crackhead tricks at twenty bucks a toss.  He spied a long rusty nail sticking out from the far wall by the hallway.  It was bent into a near-perfect V sticking from an exposed stud nearly eye level across the room, by the doorway.  There was a hole in the wall that exposed the stud into which it was driven.

         Let’s hope the stud ain’t rotten.

         Without hesitation, Moses set to work on sliding his wrists under his feet.  Long and lanky as he was, trying to be silent but swift, it was a painful contortionist's torture for him. As he stifled reflexive tears of agony, he eventually dragged his raw wrists under the heels of his jungle boots.  The open cuts bumped across each rut of the tread of the new boots, half-inch by arduous half-inch.  It was a tough slog, but then suddenly his hands were in front of him and he had a free range of motion with his arms at least.

         Rising to his feet, he crept quickly and silently to the nail, all the while listening for Greg or Big Ballin to turn away from the show and come back to check on him.  The pair was still cheering on Antoine. 

Curio still cursed the whole lot of them and was rewarded with the sting of a slap to her face.  The report of a man’s palm again striking her skin boiled into his ears.

         The nail looked up to the task as he maneuvered the zip-tie over it. It was a ten-penny and driven deep into the stud.  Breathing quickly to try to hyperventilate through the agony he knew was about to begin, he looped the plastic around the nail. Ignoring the pressure as the taunt tie tightened that much more, he managed to gouge enough slack in the tie with his skin to get the tie to loop around the nail.  Twisting his wrists, he bent his knees, letting his full weight fall down on the plastic. 

         At first, there was nothing but sheer pain.  Grinding his teeth, tears reflexively streaming down his face, he twisted his arms that tortuous few centimeters further.  The tie popped.  He came down hard on his feet, blood streaming from his hands and wrists. Immediately, he cupped his right hand under his left, which was pouring his blood in a steady stream as the strangled veins surged.  He could hear activity pause next door, the thump of his fall easily heard, he realized in an instant.

         “Hey check that shit out back there!” Antoine yelled out.

         To his enemies' credit, Moses noted they did not just run screaming into the room.  It occurred to him when he and Curio had been captured the gear they had with them alerted them to his and Curio's not being rank amateurs.  He was frankly amazed the gangbangers had not killed them out-right as he would have done.

         Them soul brothers done watched too many movies.  They a-thinkin’ they can tie up a man and rape his bitch and get all sadistic at their leisure.  But they forgot the part where somebody gets loose and fuckin' gets some now didn’t they?

         It was Greg, still with the shotgun he heard creeping up the hallway.  He passed by the hole in the wall and Moses could see or just a split second through a crack he was holding the shotgun at the hip.

         “Got you, possum!”  All six-five of Greg Dubanks rounded the doorframe with a mischievous smile on his face.  His expression had time enough to go from a frivolous grin to a split second of shock before Moses slung a palmful of fresh blood in his eyes.

         “Oh shit!”  The shotgun roared as he pulled the trigger instinctively with one hand as his other hand went to his eyes.  The wall across the room exploded in plaster and shards of two by four.  His compadres began yelling. Moses heard Big Ballin's feet shuffling and thudding as he struggled to get his pants around his 48-inch waist and run up the hall.

         Number Two approaching...

He tried to listen for anyone else who may have shown up while he was out cold.  There were only three targets but he could not be sure that the crack house was not still open for business and serving patrons in other rooms while he was left in the bedroom.

         “Let me go, bitch!  I'ma kill you if you don't!  Let me the fuck go!”  Antoine began screaming out from down the hall. 

Curio had him wrapped around the thighs with her own legs, keeping him pinned balls-deep inside her.  Moses heard her slapping him back and swearing.

         Moses grabbed the shotgun by the barrel and jerked it from the loose one-handed grip.  Greg was thrown forward as well and Moses caught him with a sharp head-butt to the nose.  In a sweeping motion, he somersaulted the shotgun in his hands and swung the butt full force into Greg's groin.  One-handed, he racked the pump's slide, ejecting the spent cartridge.  Big Ballin came around the corner, a Glock 9mm in one hand and his unfastened FUBU's in his other. 

Moses shot him in the face from two feet away.  He drove the butt into the back of Greg's skull with a resounding crunch.  Greg fell to the floor.  Moses cracked the head open completely with five more brutal strikes of the gun's butt.  He spat on the gory mess.

         “Stupid ass.”  He was frothing now, adrenaline surging, hyper-alert, anxious to get loose and get clear of the ghetto. 

But above all, Moses was fucking pissed.  To get jumped and have Curio at their mercy was an amateur mistake and it had been a long time since he made one of those.

         And never once with her, he reminded himself.  He had gotten lax somehow.  He hoped his ineptitude did not cost them more than the price she was paying already.

         Again he pumped the slide, checking this time to make sure the chamber had another shell.  Before he slid the slide forward, he saw he not only had one now in the chamber, but at least one more in the magazine.  Jamming Big Ballin's Glock in his waistband, he ran full speed down the hall, toward the all-out war he could hear between Curio's thighs and her rapist between them.



Two days before...



         “Three thugs turned up from way out in Oakland down here.”  Moses flopped into the seat of his venerable '79 Bronco with a notepad in one arm and a white bag from Gary's Fried Chicken gripped in the other.  Curio sat in the passenger seat, swigging from a Bud Dry can, the beer foam dissolving a Vicodin in her flat tummy.

         He cranked up the motor and handed her the bag after snatching a fistful of onion rings.

         “Is that against Grizzly's Law now?”  She muttered sharply, still upset about the leaving the Bentley for the anonymity of a Sikh-owned Motel 6 room with a smell of old cigarettes and a faint piss whiff included in the low price.  “No new niggers allowed in Louisiana unless they buy overpriced blow from him and him alone?”

         “It's against his law if they snatch up his main dopeman up here and take him out in the woods somewheres and then they shotgun him to death.  The boss don't rightly care much for that.  No ma’am.”

         “Holy shit.”  Curio's eyes widened.  She bought a many a packet of marching powder in her day before meeting Moses.  Getting the occasional glimpse of the behind-the-scene of how the few grams she toked up made it into her possession was an unending series of holy shits since she began to work with him.

         “They’re out here in Cenla trying to be some kinda 'we badass real gangster-kinda-gang don't fuck with us' kinda’ fellas.  It mighta’ been all worked out but they left the body where someone found it.  Now the cops are gonna' be sniffin in the dead dealer's life and all.  The bossed don't like that shit one goddamn bit.  And they got homeboys back home probably, waitin' to get a call from...” Moses looked at the pad, “...Antoine, tellin' them to come out South ‘cuz they all makin’ beaucoup dough and the cops are all dumb hicks.  Grizzly wants them out.  And out before they make them phone calls and the town gets so full of Crips that he can't keep the route open. He runs a lot of shit through here.  When they get that interstate built through here, he’s gonna’ run a lot more.”  Moses crunched down on a pair of beer-batter fried onion rings.

         “Stopping a cancer before the spread then?”

         “In a manner of speaking.  More like a no-trespassing sign.  Half the time Griz thinks he's some wop mafioso kinda’ dude.  He still thinks the world runs like a Puzo novel.  All due respect for one's business and all that honor shit.  He forgets gangbangers like these sort watch more Scarface and not The Godfather.  He gives them way more credit than they're due.  One day, I’m sure it’ll bite him.”

         “If he knows so much about them, why don't he just drop the dime on them?  It seems like such a waste to call you and me when he could send their fucking asses to Angola.  Or at least get them on the cops' radar and make them run off somewheres else.”

         “Who knows.  Who cares.  He ain't calling a cop for something like that.  He calls me.”  Moses turned up a can of Bud Dry, looked around for a witness and found none.  “Cheers.”

He put spout of the can to his mouth and jammed a pocketknife in the top of it.  The can was gone in seconds.

         “Mmm,” He burped foam and winced from the taste as he waved a studious finger at Curio.  “If he dropped the dime to the law every time some baby hood got in his craw, no one would trust him.  I would be working at a 7-11 or something mundane and you wouldn't have that little red Mazda you got for Christmas and love so much, sexy.”

         “Seems so much easier to call Crime Stoppers, though.  Fuck, how does he even know where they are and the cops don't?”

         “Pete knows all, sees all, hears all, smells all.  I don't ask.  Hell, Pete found me a few times when I thought I was invisible.  I bet Pete could find D.B. Cooper if he tried.”

         “Who's that?”

         “A wanted man.  A ghost.”

         “I guess we don't wait for them to go to sleep and give them a nighty-night needle then.”

         “Of course not, he wants it done kinda’ nasty.  It’s gotta’ send a message and all that sorta’ thing.  Three sumbitches dying nasty and in a hurry ain't easy though.  But,” he sighed and turned the key. “Fast it must be and since the pay is rather juicy for such a thing, I aim to please.” 

He pulled away from the pay phone next to the local fried chicken joint and headed up Jackson Street to Macarthur.  “I just hope it can be done.  Down in the ghetto we ain't exactly walking around unseen.  Crackers stand out pretty quick.  With the cops and with the locals.  I really hate working the ghettoes.”

         Curio sighed and tossed a few fried livers into her mouth.  She washed them down with the beer.  She started to ask more but saw he was running whatever info around in his head.  At stoplights, he jotted a few words down now and again.  There was a faraway look in his eyes she had grown to recognize and admire.  The look earned them money and saved their lives a few times.

         Moses drove down Lower Third to see the house the marks were living in.  One block over where he wanted to park, a tiny club was open and brimming with old drunks and party-people even at three in the afternoon. 

No way, he told her immediately.  He drove up and made a few turns and soon they were parked and watching the house reported to be the trio's place of business.

Together, the pair inhaled every nuance of the target house and surrounding area.  Biting his bottom lip, Moses shook his head in disgust at some sad whores they spotted.

Twitchy and worn-out looking, he judged them to not be thirty yet.  A pair left the house together.  One was so incoherent she raised her skirt up in broad daylight to wipe her pussy clean of God knew what with a wad of tissue, which she dropped casually next to a young boy as he passed by her.  The kid never noticed it and he kept tricycling down the beat-up sidewalk.  He looked far too young to be riding alone so far from a mother’s observation.

         “Oh my God.  That's so nasty.”  Curio groaned from behind her wig and sunglasses.  “I'm gonna' be sick.”  It was a scene she could recall in her youth.

         Moses shrugged.  “Fucking crack whore civvies on site.  They’re just kinks in the plan.”

         “Not really.  Just extra spent cartridges if that's what we see inside.  Nasty ass bitch.  Damn.”  Curio shuddered.  She was a product, albeit defective, of the old South notion of public decency, at least around children.  It was always hinted that such things were how life should be lived when she was young.  But that notion was never enforced.  She could easily see herself on that tricycle, making herself scarce while her mother handled some business.

         He sighed and shook his head at her disgust.  Emotional impulses were her bane.  He had no such tethers.  Of course, he had been to war and seen much more of the world and its more distasteful facets.  Some junkie forgetting she was out in the street but remembering to catch a spill before it spread beyond her crotch was just a humdrum peculiarity.

         Seeing enough of the scene and the house, Moses headed for the motel to eat and think.

         They arrived at the motel and pulled in carefully.  Moses waited until she was inside before carrying his black duffel bag from the luggage box strapped to the top of the Bronco.  Locking the door behind him, he laid the notepad down and scanned the particulars. 

Curio ate the now-cold and greasy fried livers whole and watched him.  A May thunderstorm rumbled outside, eager to get its load into the gutters before rush hour it seemed.

         From the bag, he took out a street map of Alexandria and went to work, smoking a Winston and rubbing his smooth chin.  When the livers and the dirty rice were gone, she sat in the chair beside him at the glass table and pouted woefully at her surroundings.

         “God, this place sucks, Moses.”  He did not reply.  The room was apt and discreet.  It was all he required.

         “So let's see.  They staying with some cousins here on Lower Third.”  He slid the map around for her to see.  “One of the cousins has some crack whores tricking up weekends at a flophouse on Freedale here.  Maybe the ones we saw, maybe a bunch more.  Pete couldn't say.”

         “Strike one on Big Love.”  Curio shook her head and smirked.

         “The fellas have apparently been treating the ladies to some of the West Coast flavor they brought with them all week.  It’s a crackhead's wet dream.  Three California hardasses done showed up blastin’ Straight Outta Compton with an assload of rock and probably some powder that no one knows about but a select few.  They’re probably on cloud nine when we go in there.  It makes it easier and it makes it tough as hell in a lotta’ ways.”

         “You said nothing is easy as it seems.”

         “Easier doesn't mean easy.  The house could be full of twitchy, screamin’ crackheads and a buncha ' thugs toting iron and needin’ street cred.  That ain't easy.  Us two crackers getting in and out unseen won't be easy.  We can't drive-by or snipe because of the cops.  The streets are too tough to get out of in a hurry because of where they are.  All we got are the three bridges to jump the city into Pineville to duck outta’ the city but the parish will be on us in a hurry.  To go south means running all the way through town and it ain’t an easy city to get out of heading south.” He scratched at his brow. 

“And then there’s us sticking out.  Nowhere to hole up and watch the place either.  It's a pure knock and rock. And that can get messy in a whole slough of ways.  It fucking sucks.  I ain't digging this one damn bit.”  He lit another cigarette.  “I need some dynamite.  It’d be so much easier to blast that place and be done with it.”

         “It sucks we don’t know what’s inside.”

         “It sucks in a lotta’ ways.” Moses closed his eyes to think.

         “Can I maybe knock and make a buy?  Maybe I would get to go in and see the place a little?” Curio said. “I could dress up like a respectable coke whore and get in there I bet.”

         Moses sucked the inside of his cheek.  He trusted her to pull it off.  He did not like the idea of putting her out there in such a manner, however.  Above all else, he wanted her safe.  Safe, however, meant knowing what they were getting into when they entered the house and he had no idea what that meant.  To his chagrin, he decided it was a good idea for her to scout it out.  They would be far more willing to let a sexy little lady inside than him.

         “It could work.  You go in and flirt a little. Look around and do a head count.  Come back out, shake your ass as you leave.  Then we wait it out a bit and you go back for more.  I can cut around back and we got a pincer.  A knock and rock that way might work.  I just hate not knowing what’s in there and goin’ in hot.  Shit fire, I hate a ghetto job.”

         Curio wondered what she might see inside herself.  It was a scene she thought she may never have to witness again.

“Ewww!  What if that bitch we saw wiping herself answered the door?”

         “I wouldn't shake hands.”  Moses chuckled.

         “Ew! Fuck that's just nasty...”



One day before...





         At exactly nine in the evening, Curio Phelonie walked up to the front door at 341 Freedale Street.  Her ass was shapely in black leather pants.  Her breasts were ample beneath a tight, neon-blue t-shirt tied around her waist.  She nonchalantly twirled a glass crack pipe on a string in a propeller motion in front of her.  In her tiny purse was seventy-five dollars in mixed bills, cherry-red lipstick, and a loaded .380 pistol.  Under the pants, she had her dagger lashed to her leg.  The pants had a zipper added to them to allow her to access it quickly without having to peel them off.

         Moses Holliday dropped her off a block up the street, noting with increasing trepidation the number of dark bodies milling about.  They were high school hustlers mostly.  A few church types going out to Bonanza.  It added up to dozens of eyes that would see an odd white couple pretty well in the streetlights and headlights.  The more he thought of it, the more his heartbeat pounded.  It was just too hairy, too much publicity.

         Hell, too many guns.  He frowned.  The ghettos had automatic weapons now, pistols with high-capacity magazines and knockoff AK-47s were all the rage since NWA glorified them. 

He cursed the spontaneity of the job.  It was just not enough planning and too many Indians to go to war with in what was undeniably their turf.

         Moses made a block and decided before he made the final turn back on Freedale turn to call her back and to call the hit off until he could figure something better out.  He could barely make out Curio walking up to the door and saw her pound on the door in his rearview mirror.  It was too late to go back without spooking the targets and he could not know how they would react to being spooked.  He gave the Bronco some gas and pulled up on the curb just down the sidewalk a half-block west from the target house

He had only a side angle of her in view.  With his .45 in his lap, he keyed in on the body language her silhouette offered.  She rapped again at the door. 

A neon-purple Impala rolled up the street past him, rap beats blaring.  It pulled to a stop in front of the target house and an incredibly fat thug exited the car just as the door opened for Curio.

         That’s gotta’ be a Big Ballin...  Moses cocked the .45. Shit...how many’s still inside?



         The flophouse, amazingly, had the power turned on.  Curio noticed electric light sifting through the cracks and boarded up windows as she walked toward the front stoop.  There was even a doorbell switch, long since broken by someone.  Curio knocked on the door politely.  Smacking on a stick of Big Red, she kept twirling the pipe.  After half a minute, she began to feel eyes on her.  After a reassuring glance up the street and finding the outline of the Bronco parked on the road, she pounded on the door hard.

         “Hey!  Can a bitch get her bowl filled out in this muthafucka!”  She hollered with her mouth pressed up against the termite nest that was supposedly a door.

         “Who the fuck is out there?”  A man's voice boomed inside.

         “Curio!”

         “What you want?  I don't know no Curio.”

         “Come on, baby!  I need to get right.  I heard you can get a bowl filled up in here.  I got cash.  You gots some product, my brotha?  Help a bitch out, baby.”

         A loud radio mounted to an Impala echoed up the street.  The car pulled up in front of the house and stopped.  She heard some sort of furniture moving from the door.

         A barricade! She smirked.  It made sense.  If the police kicked it in, at least they an extra minute to set the product alight.

         “Zup baby girl.”  A monstrous figure, more Silverback gorilla than man, got out of the car.  “What’s yo’ fine little ass need, yo.”

         “Shit, I’m trying to get right, baby boy.  You with this crew I heard about?”

         “Don't know about no crew.”  The thug turned around to shut the car door.  She caught a glimpse of his ill-fitting pants hanging enough to expose a gargantuan plumber's ass and winced.  Between the whore giving her nookie a public wiping of some bastard's dick snot in broad daylight and the greasy fat thug's asscrack, she was ready to dynamite the whole block.  She felt the need for an hour under a nozzle of hot bleach water just standing on the front step.  The smell of mold wafted in the post-rain air.

         “Well can you help me out then?” 

The door opened behind her and a good-looking thug looked at her with a semi-auto pistol in his hand.

         “Zup nigga.”  He nosed at the fat one.  Folding his arms with the gun cocked, he glared at her. “Who told you we was slangin here?  They fuckin’ lied.”

         “I live with a high yella over by Cabrini.  He be messin with a ho that told him about here.  I got paper, man.  We need a bump.”

         “You mess with a nigga that messes with chickenheads.  What kinda’ bitch do that?”  The fat one asked roughly.  “Or you a chickenhead, too, ho?  I got something that needs some tongue-washin’ for damn sure.”  She felt him closing in on her.  Sandwiched, she unzipped the slit in her pants, her hand hidden by the purse.

         “I’m the one he pays for, too.  Only I ain't no chicken head, Grape Ape.  I cost too much.  Dat’s why I got the cash.  You fuckers got some product or just bullshit for sell?”

         “Hey main!  A third voice rang out from deep inside the house, chuckling.  “You and Grape Ape get that ho a packet.  Be polite, muthafuckas.  She a new customer.”

         “We don't know her, dog.  Fuck her.”  Grape Ape yelled.

         “She fine?”  The voice asked from down the hall. “She sounds fine as a muthafucka.”

         “She is fine as a muthafucka.”  The thug at the door eye-fucked her up and down, nodding menacingly and biting his bottom lip. “I love these Louisiana phillies.  She tight as fuck, I bet.”

         “I’m all that but I ain't cheap!”  Curio yelled at the unseen speaker.  “I need to get right and maybe we work something out later.  But if I don’t get back with some bump it’s my ass.  Y’all tighten up with some toot, yo.”

         “Bitch,” the voice walked up the hall toward her.  She could barely make out the man behind Greg. She could only see his white Girbaud tag on his black denim pants and a wife-beater t-shirt.  “You really think I'ma pay for your white ass pussy after you done been run through for the rock?  Bitch, you trippin’ like a motherfucka.  Hell, you must be high.  But you want some rock?  We got some quality ass rock.  Real Nino Brown kinda shit.  White and pure as a Mormon’s cherry.  But me and my niggas get a free train for it.  Otherwise you get that bunk shit we give all these cheap ass bitches out here and then you go carry yo ass elsewhere and forget you ever came down here.”

         “Fuck dat. Fuck y'all.  You come out here and think this pussy is free...”  Curio turned to leave, a look of anger on her face to hide her growing fear.  The big one was blocking her path.  Her hand went into her purse as she took a step.  Suddenly, she heard a loud snapping sound, felt her body tense completely and seem to catch fire.  Then she blacked out.

         Moses saw Big Ballin step forward and extend his hand to Curio as she reached into her purse and tried to leave.  When he saw her jump impulsively and fall in a heap the ground, he panicked.  From the distance, it looked as if she had been stabbed professionally.  His heart exploded in fury.

         Laughing, Big Ballin scooped up the tiny white girl and flipped her on his shoulder.  Moses watched as he patted her on the ass smartly and gave it a squeeze.

         “Fuck, they just knocked her out.”  He said aloud, suddenly aware he was holding his pistol in one hand and his Mark One knife in the other.  He did not remember grasping either.  He watched in horror as they disappeared into the door. 

It was her task to try to get a layout of the place.  Now feeling whiter than ever before in his life, he got out of the Bronco and jammed the knife into the sheath strapped to his thigh.  He put on his black balaclava to match his clothes and hugged the sidewalk.  In a crouch with the big Colt snug in his hand, Moses hustled up to the side of the house.

         He could hear motion inside but it was maddeningly nondescript.  The house was crumbling in numerous places.  Large holes exposed the interior where the old particle board siding had long lost its battle with rain and humidity.  Some of those coincided with holes in the sheetrock inside and offered a futile peek into an empty room.  He walked around slowly, finding a portal here and there. 

         Finally, he came to the rear of the house and found nearly a quarter of the upper wall had been knocked away by a fallen tree limb at some point.  There was a decent looking five-gallon pickle bucket lying on its side.  He flipped it over by the destroyed wall and hopped up on it silently.  Standing up slowly with the .45 in his hand, he peered into another seemingly empty room.

         Moses never saw the black baton extend slowly from a hole to his right.  He only felt it touch the side of his neck for an instant.  Nor did he feel himself tumble from the bucket and fall unceremoniously on an overgrown backyard littered with a beer cans, archaic rubbers, rain-melted sheetrock and broken furniture.

Antoine Dyer walked out from the back door and looked down at the man in black lying unconscious in the muddy yard.  Big Ballin came from the next room, his fat hands jammed into a big bag of BBQ pork rinds.  Together they looked with wonder at Moses Holliday.

         “Bitch ass cracker don't look no high yella to me.”  Antoine Dyer chuckled aloud and spat on the back of Moses' neck.  “Take his ass inside, Ballin’.  I’ma go tap me some of that fine ass in there and then we’ll see what the fuck this white motherfuckin’ ass ninja-lookin’ muthafucka is all about.”



         Curio awoke with blood in her mouth and every muscle in her body afire.  She was lying across an old canopy bed that at one time was probably ornate, a woman's proud sanctuary where she and her beloved made love and babies.  Now it had mold on every piece of wood and the mattress reeked of old beer, squatter piss and perm activator.  To her horror, she realized she was nude and bound by the ankles and wrists with zip ties.  She began trying to work her wrists free but the plastic was much too tight and zipped excruciatingly tight.

         Blurting a panicky, “What the fuck?” she looked around, stunned.  Her body was tingling oddly.  She hurt all over.  Her body was a giant menstrual cramp.

         Spitting blood, she rolled her tongue inside her mouth to discern what was bleeding.  It turned out she had bitten her tongue.

         “What the fuck?”  She heard Boys 2 Men blaring from a jambox in another room.  Conversing voices traveled from a distance.  She looked around at the room.

         Training from Moses took hold.  Waking up sore all over and tied up was, oddly enough, a situation she had been in before.  That was way back before she met Moses.  A guy who ended up being a perv seemed so nice outside the Blue Crystal.  Yet later he worked her over with a riding crop and beat off on her while she was passed out.  He used some sissy ass scarves to tie her up and she managed to get loose fairly and book it out of his pad.  A few weeks later, some crackheads got a tip that his house had a mother lode of fresh powder.  The ensuing breaking and entering rendered the man an invalid.

         She heard Moses in her head  “Sit-rep.  Where are you?  How are you?  How do you get free?” Curio closed her eyes and tried to relax a moment.

         One night at his home, she watched and practiced over and over picking handcuff locks.  He made her do it blindfolded.  Much of her time under his calm tutelage, before he even considered letting her ride with him “on the dime,” as he called it, he kept her blindfolded while she practiced doing tasks he insisted she learn.

         “Hear everything,” he constantly said.  “Distance, activities, feet, voices.  Whether the crickets stop chirping thirty feet to your right and behind you but not anywhere else means something may be moving by them.  It could be a barefoot guy with a knife and an attitude.”

         She heard distant cars riding slowly at low speed.  The radio blared.  There were three men’s voices.

         Their three voices.

         Thuds landed with the punctuation of a laugh in an adjacent room.  Someone was kicking a body.  She marveled that she knew it was a body just by the sound. 

One of the men was snapping the action on a pistol.

         My pistol.  She knew the distinct sound of her .380's slide snapping forward.  She could clean it blindfolded.  Then she heard the solid snap of a 1911 Colt sliding home.

         Oh shit!  She nearly cried out in anguish.  The only way Moses Holliday would part with his precious .45 was after he died.  Tears welled up in her eyes. 

There was no hope of his rescue.  That, she could handle.  Confidence in her own ability to escape, she had by the ton. The fact that they left her alive after finding a knife and an exotic pistol on her made them run of the mill idiots.  Of course she may have to take a fucking before she had an opportunity to get loose.  Not a palatable idea in the slightest but she knew how quickly a man let his guard down before, during and after sex.  That was a flaw in a man that she could exploit easily enough.  Especially after he was spent on her.

         She was shrewd and they had no idea who they had tied up and what she was capable of doing.  Assuming they did not just fuck her and shoot her in the head, she would eventually be freed, if only to wipe her ass to get ready for the next man up.

         But a dead Moses...there was not a plan for that.

She could do nothing for herself in her bound state.  So she listened and seethed as she heard the thumps of their kicks and a strangely electric snapping sound.

         Kicking my man, while he's down.  After we dropped our vacation plans to handle your business...you fucks are so dead.

         It made no sense to lay still and listen tearfully to whatever the hell was going on.  If she was to suffer whatever deviance the thugs had in mind, better to get it on.  If nothing else, the Bronco was empty and the notion of it being broke into or worse, stolen or discovered by some lawdog was not helpful.

         What time is it, anyway? 

She had no idea how long she was knocked out.  How long before Moses came to try to rescue her?  For that matter, was she in the target house still?  She assumed so, but Moses loved to break down the word assume for her. 

Sneering as she heard the .45's slide worked and a round chambered as the trio mumbled to each other, Curio scooted up the bed as close to the decrepit headboard as she could.

         “What the fuck you motherfuckers got me tied up for?!”  Curio Phelonie screamed.  “Fuck y’all!  Let me go or there's gonna’ be more than just hell for you bastards to burn in!”

         At least she hoped.

         She yelled until they came for her.



         Antoine racked the slide on the Colt pistol and aimed at the prone man's head.  Greg Dubanks, aka Get Rite back home in South Central, waved him away.

         “Hold up, nigga.  We don't know who he is and why they strapped coming around here.  They might be five-o.”

         “Ain't no five-o!” Big Ballin gurgled through his neck fat.  “Them muthafuckas come to gank our shit.  Crazy ass shitheads.  You shoot that cracker muthafucka and that bitch and burn this bitch down, 'Toine.  We can work outta’ a hotel til we get another place set up.”

Antoine laid the pistol in his lap.  The girl in the next room woke up and started cussing them.

         “Tie him up.”  He stood up and stuck the .45 in his waistband.  “I say we catch that nut and light it all up.”

         Greg nodded as the girl kept screaming epithets from the other room.  Big Ballin glared at the motionless man on the floor as Greg zip-tied his arms behind him.  When they were satisfied they would not be interrupted, Antoine motioned for his homies to come get some.  He took the taser baton with him.  Seeing a perplexed look on Big Ballin's face, he shrugged.

         “In case that bitch don't act right.”  He clicked the button a few times to make it crackle.  “This here’s my act-right stick, dog.” He winked and led Big Ballin down the hall.  “Hang back, Greg.  I’ma leave you some.”



         Curio saw Antoine enter the room first.  She guessed the fat one was Big Ballin.  Antoine was supposed to be the alpha of the group and when she saw the look of smirking expectation on his face as he unzipped his fly she knew it was he.

         She sized him up.  Five-eight, one-fifty.  Crip tats visible on both arms.  Khaki Duckheads and a LA Lakers jersey.  Gold teeth across the uppers, silver on the bottom.  A plug was missing from an upper ear lobe and he had a circular scar on his forearm.

         Bullet wounds, she figured.  A true gang banger.

         He was holding a long black baton, wider and less sturdy looking than a cop's normal attitude-adjuster.

         “What the hell is going on here?”  She spat at him.  “I came here to get some rock and you better fucking believe me. My man is gonna kill me for not getting back home.  What...”

         “Shut the fuck up.”  Antoine barked.  “We don't wanna hear it, ho.  You come here to gank us.  Question is, and I'm asking once, how you know we was here and who the fuck are y'all?”

         “I done told you...”

         Quick as lightning Antoine touched the sole of her foot with the baton and it crackled loudly.  She felt a jolt as a surge of electricity went up her spine.  She screamed.

         “You ain't told me shit, ho.”  He snickered as she recoiled her feet onto the bed.  “But you 'bout to.” 

Big Ballin stood at the doorway, salivating at the sight of her nakedness.

         “She fine as hell.  Hurry up and get dat, 'Toine.  She needs her some of dis Big Ballin dick, Sho nuff you gonna get some too, bitch.”

         “Hold up, nigga.  She gonna’ tell me what the fuck goin on.”  He shocked her again.  “And why her and some old peckerwood is creeping in the hood at night all strapped up with a knife and army guns and shit.  How they be knowing what we doin up in here doing what we do?”

         “Fuck you!  I'm tryin to get a piece of hard candy cane and get back before my old man finds out I'm gone.  But now y'all done fucked that up.  Thanks for that, you pieces of shit.”  Curio saw Antoine's dick flip out as he walked over.  She also saw Moses' .45 stuck in his pants.  She wilted inside at the sight of his favorite and most trusted weapon nestled in a thug's sweaty pubes in some crackhouse.

         He has to be dead… 

         She never missed a beat with Antoine, still trying to buy time to figure how to get clear of the clusterfuck she was in.

         She watched him getting aroused as he looked at her breasts and bare skin.  “Of course, you just gotta’ rape a bitch.  Sorry motherfuckers.  Fuck y'all.”

         “Tell me.  Now!”  He clicked a button on the stick and it made the snapping sound.  He slapped the bed with it and laughed as she jerked away instinctively.  The pain of the electric charge was immense.

         “Ain't nothing to tell, Goddammit!  You can put Grape Ape's asshole tickler away.  All the shocking a bitch in the world don't change what I'm telling you!”  She screamed as he lightly tapped her big toe with the stick.

         “Hey fuck you, bitch!”  Big Ballin caught on that he was being called queer.

         “Don't you fucking touch me!” Curio screamed.  “You try what you’re thinkin’ and I swear to God it’ll be the last time that dick ever works again when I’m done with it.  Antoine ignored her, working himself hard.

         “Woohoo!  She got that snappin’ fi-yah pussy, ‘Toine!” Greg heard her and laughed from down the hall.

         “Be that way, ho.”  Antoine wiggled out of his jeans and laid them and the pistol on a rolling chair far from her possible grasp. “It don't matter.  Me and my niggas gonna catch some pussy offa’ yo fine ass and we gonna’ be gone.  It don't matter what you and that cracker in there thought y'all was gonna’ do.  It ain't ending that way.” 

         He tried for a moment to corral her and find a way to get inside her but with her ankles tied she could lock her knees together forever.  He asked for a lighter and Big Ballin threw him one from his pocket.  He melted the plastic until she snapped the weakened band.  Part of the melted plastic burned her ankle as it stuck.  She kicked it away with her other foot.

         He fondled himself to his fullest and forced her thighs apart after a vicious struggle.

         Curio Phelonie flared her nostrils as he mounted her and slid himself in despite her thrashing.  He dared to suck her tit for a moment before she lunged at his ear with her mouth.  He dodged it as he and Big Ballin laughed.

         Glaring at him with a sincere desire to make her gaze strike him dead, she spat in his face.  “I dare you to try making me suck it, you bitchass nigger.  It wouldn’t be the first dick I bit off.”

         “Who you callin’ nigger, bitch!”  With that, the slaps and the thrusts began. 

With his pair of cronies cheering him on, he actually enjoyed it until Big Ballin mentioned AIDS and he realized he was bare-backing a professed crackhead hooker.

         Through clenched teeth and bared teeth, Curio took it from him, cussing him, belittling him, fighting him as best she could, each thrust inside her sickened her but meant more time alive.  Time was her only ally, bought at a humiliating price but every second was savored and put to use mentally.  She nearly had a plan in her mind when their attention turned in an instant.

         A loud thump from the front room where the white man was tied up froze him in place.  Looking over his shoulder, he was startled to see Big Ballin massaging his own dick while he was watching his boy get it on with her.  Greg stood behind him, only the top of his head and voyeur eyes visible behind the large man as he bounced up and down on his arches for a view of the action.

         “What the fuck, nigga!”  He pointed at Big Ballin's hands fumbling on his dick, unseen beneath the fat roll.  “Go see what the fuck?  Taser that motherfucker again or sumpin.”  Greg picked up the pump twelve -gauge leaning against the wall and walked cautiously up the hall.

         “He a faggot like you.”  Curio mumbled.  “Bitch ass nigga.  You kinky like that?  I bet you want Fatty to hit that ass while you act all straight by raping a white bitch?  Faggoty ass faggot!  You think you really doing somethin' with that lil peewee tee-tee?  Feels like a pencil that's been sharpened till it ain't but the point and the eraser left, you bitch faggot.” 

“Shut up, ho!”  He started punching on her, hard now.  He heard Big Ballin saying something about not in the face.

         “Fuck you, Ballin!  Go help Greg!”

         Suddenly, Greg screamed as if startled and his streetsweeper boomed from the room. 

“Oh shit!” Big Ballin gathered up his sagging pants and ran from the room.

         “What the fuck?  No shooting, you stupid ass niggas!”  Antoine heard a second shot and the unmistakable sound of a nearly four hundred-pound body falling hard to the floor.

         “Fuck, he's loose!” Antoine mumbled in a panic.  He suddenly felt her legs clamp around his back.  Her bound hands went for his throat and he caught them.  She laughed at him.  Suddenly, he saw a look of sheer yet maniacal pleasure ovetake her previously angry face.

         Curio's sudden chuckle, a verbal titter that matched a look of sudden satisfaction on her face that he found extremely disturbing, caught him off guard.  No woman being fucked against her will and slapped around should laugh about it.  She spat a mouthful of blood in his face and smirked with face swelling as the beating’s toll began to be seen. 

Then she whispered.          “You have no idea how fucked you are, bitch!”  Only when her thighs wrapped like a vise around his ass did he panic.  He was locked inside her.  Her glaring eyes bore into his.  He somehow knew as he heard doors being kicked open methodically, she was probably right.

         

         Curio heard the thump and saw the reaction on Antoine's face go from dominance to shock.  Greg ran back to check things out and suddenly the shotgun boomed.  Greg screamed and she heard him hit the floor.

         Holy shit!  He's alive! 

She suddenly knew she at least could run if she could get Antoine away from her.  The second shot roared.  Big Ballin fell to the floor, the body’s impact was loud and distinct.

         He got a gun!  God, I love you Moses! 

She could hear someone getting beaten and a wet, crunching sound. 

“Fuck, he’s loose!”  She felt Antoine try to back out of her.  Their eyes both fell on the .45 lying on his pants several feet away.  She locked her legs around him and held her ankles together hard enough to hurt him.  He was pinned inside her, flailing and punching, cussing.  And trapped.

         “Where you going, baby?”  Curio laughed at his terror and gritted her teeth as she tried to fend off blows with her bound wrists.  “This is the part where I get my nut!”

         She felt herself actually getting wet.  The instant she realized her man was back in the fight and he never lost one, she tingled all over with glee.

         Try as Antoine might, he could not get free of his captor.  Panicking, he reached over and managed to deflect her claws long enough to get his hands on the baton. He clicked the trigger and slapped it against her bare belly.  She screamed and jerked like an epileptic. 

He forgot electricity travels through moisture.  His dick was still deep inside her and wet.  The current ran between the pair of them and he got a harsh dose of the power himself.  Her muscles spasmed and urine flowed out all over them.  The jolt acted as a prod to his prostate and he orgasmed reflexively inside her as he screamed in pain. 

Numbed for an instant, he dropped the baton and grabbed himself in agony as he finally retracted from her.  The conductivity was strongest in the wettest connection.  He grabbed his cock and tried to roll off the bed toward the pistol.

         Her bound wrists wrapped over his head and her forearms tightened around his neck.

         “What about my needs, you faggot?”  She slurred at him, her mouth swelling up from his pummeling.  He flipped her arms from over his head and jumped up.  Tumbling from the bed, flinging pearls of himself all over as got some separation finally from her, he finally got his footing.  Flipping a setting on the baton, he jammed the tip into thigh and she jolted into unconsciousness.



         Moses cleared two doors quickly as he rushed toward the sound of Curio’s struggle. 

One door led to an empty bedroom.  The other went into a bathroom stained with bodily-fluid horrors that spanned decades.  He heard an all-out war in the rear of the house and flew into the threshold with the shotgun ready.

         What he saw made him retch.  A black man was obviously getting more than he bargained for trying to rape Curio.  She held him into her with her thighs, trying to beat him and claw his eyes out as he slapped her across the face repeatedly.  Moses could see her left eye already swelling up from the bruised cheek.  He finally grabbed a black billy club and slapped it against her.  Moses was surprised to see it was electrified, jolting the pair.  He held the shotgun on them, not anxious to fire a spray of indiscriminate pellets. 

         Curio screamed and went limp; the rapist was jolted as well but not as badly.  He used the lull in her onslaught to separate himself.  Moses tensed on the trigger, about to drop the bastard where he stood.  Suddenly, Curio threw her arms around his neck in a last-ditch effort to keep him from getting away.

         “What about my needs, you faggot!”  She sounded drugged or suffering from the jolt.

         Moses dropped the shotgun to his side and pulled the Glock pistol as the thug got loose again and slammed the stick with malice against her tanned thigh.  She lurched and was suddenly immobile on the bed. 

The thug stumbled backward, reaching from memory for his pants wadded on the floor.  Moses took aim at his right knee and fired.  The knee shattered.

         Antoine screamed as his leg exploded and went limp under him.  His weight landed awkwardly and what was left of the joint and bone snapped further.  The baton went flying at Moses.  It landed short but rolled on the floor by his feet.  Desperate and blind from pain, he reached for the Colt pistol lying atop his pants.  His hand exploded as another shot erupted.  He looked at the bloody nub, stupefied from the shock of the sight.  Then he felt a blinding jolt to the head and Antoine knew no more.



         Bright white sunshine streamed in through a window with the curtains tossed open and pinned back.  When the light found her, Curio moaned and stirred slowly, stretching her sore body in increments of difficult millimeters. 

Her face was wrapped in cloth soaked in freezing water.  She winced as her hands touched her face and found it hurt to touch.  She could feel the swelling around her eyes.  Her bottom lip was numb and swollen.  Trying to move her torso was ill-advised. Everywhere on her seemed to hurt.

As she sucked it up and nudged the cloth aside, Curio could finally see the room around her.  Obviously, she was in a hotel.  Not a dump, either.  She wondered immediately where Moses was.  Trying to speak hurt her throat.

         “Moses?”  She slurped spit unexpectedly when she talked. 

What the hell?  Her mouth did not work as she wished it.  Immediately, she knew she had a mouth shot full of some sort of numbing agent.  She could feel saliva dribbling down her chin, soaking unnoticed into the damp cloth wrapped tightly around her face and chin

         Someone’s feet shuffled and he or she gave a quick yank of a toilet paper roll behind a closed bathroom door to her left.  Curio let her head loll in that direction.  She could tell by the sound that it was a woman.  A man would unwind a lot more.

         Confusion overwhelmed her.  She had no idea what was going on but she knew no other woman in Moses' world to whom he would entrust her personal safety.  Her eyes darted around for a weapon. 

Whoever was in the john washed her hands and coughed.  The door opened and black woman in pastel blue hospital scrubs came from behind the door.  Curio sized her up.  Mid-to-late forties, very dark skin, her sculpted hair was an obvious weave.  There were a few kids behind the belly and jiggly arms.

I’ll wager she ain’t an assassin-type at least...

         “I'm so sorry, sweetie.  Durn coffee goes through me so fast these days.”  She hurried to Curio's side and looked her face over as she unwrapped the compress.

         “Who are you?”  Slurring, Curio was astonished her voice was so uneven.  “Where's Moses?” 

She regretted using his real name immediately.  It was a no-no.  If the room was bugged, someone was scribbling a name down now.

         “My name's Betty, Miss Curio.”  Betty laid a palm on Curio’s stomach.  Her touch was well-schooled in being insistent upon calmness. “I work for Mister Fontenot.  Well, me and my husband do.  He's a doctor.  I'm a LPN.”

         “What you doing here?  Shit, where is here?”

         “Here is Pineville.  You had to get some stitches on your lip and a few in your  tongue.  That's why you are all numbed up in the mouth.  Your face got worked over good, baby.  But Theo and Betty’s gonna' get you all fixed up.  They ain't done you nothing you need surgery for, at least.  You ain't even no cuts to scar up or nothing.  Just a fat lip and some black eyes.  You gonna' feel bad from that shocky-thing you got hit with.  Are you cramping?”

“I’ll live.  Where's Moses?” She kept her guard up.  For all she knew Betty was undercover.

And why do you know those things? 

She figured she was being set up.  For all she knew, Moses was dead or in jail, the cops came and got her out of Dodge, and they were trying to trick her into giving out information before they let her in on the ruse.

         Maybe Moses got away and they using me for bait! 

         “Mister Holliday is out taking care of a few things as he put it.  He said he probably won't be back around for a couple of days and told me to take extra special care of you.”

         “He left me with a stranger?”  She frowned, her swollen lip exaggerating the sadness.          

         What the hell, asshole?

         “He ain’t no stranger to us, baby.  We know him and surely you know him well enough to know there's things that need to be done, Miss Phelonie.” 

Betty looked at her sternly.  Curio knew right then and there, Betty and the phantom doctor probably suspected much, knew little and were paid enough to be silent and keep things that way.  That name was privileged information shared between herself, Moses, and the Fontenot brothers.

         “He'll be back soon enough.  Now I am to understand you got some taser shocks until you lost consciousness, got beaten in the face and a man raped you, is that right?”  Hearing it listed like a cashier reading back a take-out order was unsettling.

         “Yeah.  I've had worse Saturday nights after a LSU home game though.  You sure my face ain't fucked up?”

         Betty chuckled and shook her head.  “No, honey.  You'll be pretty as a peach soon enough.  But you go foolin' around with that Moses Holliday, you bound and determined to end up busted up every now and again.  He is bad news.  Course, all them Atchafalaya Mudbugs are bad news in one way or another.  At least he's polite and he seems to care a lot about you.  He left me a list of things you would ask for.”

         “Moses saved me from dying.” 

A few times...

         Betty slid a pair of bifocals on the end of her flat nose and peered at Curio as if she was a school marm lecturing an errant pupil.  “Yes, I'm sure he got y'all out of the jam y'all was in.  But, and I'm saying this from the don't know and don't wanna know seat, mind you.  Whatever scrape you two was in was at the behest of Mister Fontenot and last I checked he ain't no saint sending haloed angels out to bless the needy and heal the sick.  You do his bidding and you can expect to see me and Theo ever now and again, I promise.  At least you hope to.”

         “It pays well, what you do?”

         “We got one boy at Vanderbilt and a daughter at Rice.  We done well and don't work that much.  It’s kinda’ rare we get an actual live patient these days.  Mostly when something goes wrong we read about it in the paper.”

         “How does one get a job fixing up casualties from the underworld?”  Curio smiled.  It was so like Grizzly to have a medic on call.  Practical.

         “Theo met Bertrand in Vietnam.  He was one of his doctors when he got wounded and sent back down to Danang.  They got to talking after a while and found out they were both from down south.  Theo is from down in Hammond.  They met up after the war, same as Moses Holliday did later.  Bertrand got Theo to drop his practice and work for him.”

         “Where you from?”

         “Opelousas.”

         “So how long you two been married?”  Curio was intrigued.  She wondered how many, if any, of the scars Moses bore were the work of the couple.

         “Twenty-four years next month.”

         “Would he leave you to wake up with a stranger in a strange place like this?”

         “He wouldn't be in such a line of work that would make that possible, Miss Curio.  Mr. Holliday and his ilk don't exactly keep office hours, if you catch my drift.  Right honey?”

         “I'm deaf, dumb and blind myself.”

         “Uh huh.  Girl like you, gets beat on, raped, God knows what else.  Ain't cried the first tear.  Pretty cold for a cute little white girl like you.  Most girls be bawlin' and screaming when they go through something like that.  I expect you hear, say, and seen a lot.  But, those things again, are on the don't know and don't wanna know list.”

         “I came up rough, Betty.  I ain't saying getting dicked down like that is something you get used to by no means, but taking some unwanted dick is something I bet a lot of women do after a night out on the town drinking Cuervo shots.  It ain't like I am some housewife that ain't even fucked her old man in a month and got woke up in bed by some slobbering pervert that done sneaked in through a window with a ski mask on and done got a steak knife to my throat.  I got myself in a bad jam doing some dumb shit and I wound up having to take a fuckin’ or get killed.”

“That’s terrible.  I’m so sorry.” Betty shook her head. “So much violence in the world now, I swear.  Times used to be so much more quiet.”

“Yeah, well, not for me.  It sucked, but I'll live.  Moses got the guy off of me at least.  At least  I guess he did.  He comes in handy for that kinda’ thing.”

         “I saw how he was when I got here.  Damn near as close to crying as I expect I'll ever see of him.  His wrists were tore up all to shreds but he just wrapped them up in a t-shirt and told me to make sure you okay.  Of course, there wasn’t all that much to do for you really so after we made sure you was okay, I tended to him.”

         “Is he okay?”  Curio asked.

         “He's okay.  I cleaned his arms up but he just got out some Super Glue and sealed up the cuts.  He’s so stubborn about being tended to sometimes.  I ain’t seen him in a few years but I see he ain’t mellowed on being pissy about being fussed over.”

         “He does that all the time.  You oughta’ see him when he has a cold and I try to do for him.”

         “Y’all are a couple then?” Betty winced slightly. “I guess I should have noticed that.  I never knew he had a lady.”  She looked Curio over curiously.  “My, the surprises keep coming with this bunch as I get older, I swear.  Honey, why ain’t you at home?  His business don’t involve you, does it?”

         “I’m balls deep in it, Miss Betty.  You betcha.”

         “Lord,” Betty shook her head and rewrapped the compress around Curio’s face.  She left her eyes uncovered. “I hope not after this little lesson.”

         “The lesson is be smarter when we’re at work.  And a lesson I’m going to tell his stubborn ass to learn is to tell Grizzly Fontenot we’ll go to work when we damn well think we can go to work without me gettin’ raped and beat all to hell and him damn near dying.”

         “You’re so young, Curio.  You don’t gotta’ throw yourself in with that crowd so deep.  Girl, I’ve seen their people laying shot up and stabbed on beds and cots and couchs and ditches for almost twenty years.  We was doing it for them when there wasn’t no high-falutin’ Mudbugs and all that bullshit they like to call themselves.  It don’t end up good.  I ain’t seen many women in my time with them.  Certainly I ain’t seen no one who works like Moses Holliday does.  I’ll tell you one time and I’ll shut up about it.  It don’t end well for none of them.  I ain’t seen nor heard of one of them that’s sittin’ in a rocking chair somewhere with a pile of money and some grandkids running around.”

         “Maybe that’s because none of them give a shit about rocking chairs and kids.  It sure as hell doesn’t interest me.”

         “Well then, one thing I guess I can be glad for is that me and Theo will always have a paycheck then.”

         “College tuition ain’t cheap.”

         Betty shrugged and shook her head. “You and him,” Betty motioned with her two index fingers, “Y'all thick as thieves.  Wherever he done went, it's to make sure whoever done it to you don't do it to no one else.  I seen some hate on him something fierce before he left.  Flat out meanness.  Cold as a dead fish, but mean.  It made me shiver, girl.  I reckon most folks don’t ever see pure anger like I done seen in that man when he left from here.  He more mad at himself for you getting taken like that, I reckon.  Men get jealous about those things the most.  I’ve seen a many a man took down on account of a woman.”

“You wouldn’t stab a bitch in the eye if she messed with your man?”

“I would, but you know what I mean.  We give ourselves to them and for that blessed few, we’re enough.  For a lot of them we ain’t and we ain’t never gonna’.  But men?  They got all that big-nut ego working on them, too.  It’s all a pecker thing.”

“Ain’t that the truth.  But you know, Moses ain’t like that.  He gives me latitude.  Not that I take him up on it.  We have a good thing going.  Neither of us want to mess it up by saying no to the wants of another.”

“He tell you no when you said you wanted to work with him?”

“A lot.”

“No isn’t always what we want to hear, but sometimes it’s for the best.  Don’t you think?”

“I guess.”

“You’re young and in love.  He may not want to tell you no because he wants you happy and he knows an unhappy woman like you always has options.  He goes to tellin’ you no, you might find someone who’ll say yes.  It happens all the time.”

“I made a promise to him that I would not.  Grizzly and Pete keep thinkin’ I’m a threat because of that very reason you just said.  But I ain’t leaving Moses except to join him in heaven or hell.”

“Oh, leave heaven out of this, girl.  After what I’ve seen come from him and sitting here looking at you, ain’t no heaven to be found between y’all.  Except between the sheets.”

“It’s a nice heaven.”

“Well, you’re heaven got plundered, baby.  And looking at your man’s face when he left, I reckon and someone gonna’ pay for that.”

         “I wouldn't know.  At least I know he's alive.”

         “Oh he's alive, girl.  Alive and kicking.  Mad, though.  He made sure you was okay, stepped into the shower a minute to get the blood off him and off he went in a huff.  Me and Theo been around this crowd a long time.  We seen a many a broken man and the occasional woman come our way.  Women's kinda odd actually.  Most times it's some stripper or working girl done got beat up or done too much dope.  We get to see one of those girls, we know she one of Mr. Fontenot's favorites.  I don’t gotta tell you them working girls don’t amount to much.  They replaceable every time one drops out of school.”

         “Well, I ain't really a favorite.  I ain't no stripper whore, either.”

         “We seen a lot of men go by us.  Some made it, some didn’t.  We don’t ask how things happened.  We just treat and street.”

“The stories they could tell, I bet.” 

I got a few for you already!

Betty pulled up Curio’s shirt and looked at a bruise on her belly. “Sometimes, we figure out what really happened from the news or maybe we hear a bit we ain't supposed to hear.  Men dying in front of us have unburdened themselves a time or two.  But it ain't our business and me and Theo done decided long time ago the less we know the better.  But I know who I work for and what goes on.  Believe you me, I don't even care to imagine what Moses Holliday got on his mind when he left to go take care of a few things, as he put it.” 

She reached by the bed and pulled a Bud Dry longneck from a travel cooler.  From her purse, Betty pulled out a pill bottle and dumped a pill into her pink palm.

         “He may never say what he did.  I might not ask him, either.”  Curio Phelonie shrugged and accepted the pill and the beer Betty offered her.  “I never had a nurse give me a beer and a pill.”

         “He said you needed one.  It ain't never hurt noone to have a beer and a pill every once in a while.  It ain't like we over at Cabrini Hospital, honey.  You ain't dying and from the looks of you, a happy pill and a cold beer could be breakfast on a lot of your days.  Today, it will be for sure.”

         Curio pulled the tab on the beer and tossed the pill back. “It beats the shit outta’ toast and bacon.  Breakfast makes you so damn fat…”



The night before.



         Depressing the trigger, Moses swung the taser baton hard against Antoine's head.  The blow without the added punch of fifty thousand volts would have sufficed to knock him senseless.  Dyer’s head lurched to one side and he fell to the ground.

Hurriedly, Moses wiped his prints from the Glock and tossed it down the hall by Big Ballin's headless body.  He grabbed up his Colt and stuck it into a cargo pocket of his black BDU bottoms as he lifted Curio's limp, nude body and slung her over his shoulder, smearing her body with blood from his wrists.

         He rushed toward the back door in the laundry room, laying her across a washer and dryer sitting together, unused for years. Quickly he ran through the house, listening for the screech of tires or a distant siren that would doom them both, searching for her pistol and their two knives.

         Evidence was everywhere.  He was flustered, angry, not in control.  Worst of all he wanted to make Antoine pay dearly for making him a fool at Curio's expense. 

He found the .380 jammed down Greg's back and their knives laying on a table in the kitchen. Sliding the weapons in his cargo pockets, he scooped up Curio again and walked out of the back door carefully.  He dropped her to the ground slowly and crept around the front of the house, slinking into the shadows when a sudden car came up Freedale and passed by.  He walked to the front yard and strained to look in the dark night. The Bronco was still there.

         Immediately Moses ran, disregarding the safety of skulking in the inky night.  The keys were still in the left rear wheel well.  He cranked it and drove in reverse back up to the house and deftly cut the wheel and backed the Bronco between the edge of the yard and the rear bumper of the neon purple Impala.  He lined up and kept backing, remembering from his creeping around there was only a lot of maple roots to roll over until the junky backyard.

         He left it idling, jumped out and got Curio laid across the back seat and covered with a woolen Army blanket.  A quick pause to catch his breath and a piss cleared his head.  It was amazing two shotgun blasts, screaming and two pistol shots could go off in the middle of a night and either no one dared or cared to call a cop.  There were few lights on in any of the homes around.  A lot of them were abandoned.

         Just as well.  He sighed as he pissed.  That means I have time.

         He glanced at Curio's face, the drying blood black in the near-moonless night.  He had no idea what she went through before he came around and got loose. 

There were nights he did not care to remember when the tables got turned on him.  She understood there was always a possibility of a situation breaking very badly.

         “Well, baby.  It sure fucking did that.”  Moses mumbled and reached in the Bronco for a Winston.  Stroking her hair softly for a moment, his teeth clenched and he marched into the house, Colt in hand.

         “And it's gonna' be way worse for this piece of shit in here.”  He walked up the steps and back into the house.



         Around the time Curio Phelonie was coming to in a Pineville hotel room, Antoine Dyer screamed in agony as he regained consciousness as well.  His head was being pissed on.

“Wake up, shitbird.” A man’s voice spoke.

Antoine’s arms and legs were tied up; he was hanging from a thick horizontal spar of an immense gum tree.  To his horror, he tried to stand and found his shattered leg would not support him.  Clenching his eyes shut to stifle the pain as best he could, he became aware of his inability to move the fingers on the gunshot hand.  He vomited reflexively when his eyes saw the mess at the end of a stump that had been that hand.

         Staring at the wrist, he gasped aloud when he saw one of his own zip ties was acting as a tourniquet on the arm and the leg.

         “What the fuck!”  He smelled smoke.  His ears heard rapid crackling of a fresh campfire behind him.  For the first time, he realized he was in a forest and trussed up like a scarecrow, naked.  Loops of rope created a seat of sorts under his ass.  His limbs were cinched in such a manner that he looked crucified. 

Most ominously, he felt the fibrous scratching of a noose tied around his neck and pulled taunt.

         The rope burns under his crotch and buttocks told him he had been that way a long while.  Dyer squirmed and yelled out wildly.

         “About time the meds wore off.” The voice spoke again.  “I thought I might have give ya’ too much by accident and you checked out on me.” 

Antoine strained his neck around and could see a tent set up and a tiny campfire burning smokeless a short distance from it.  An old Ford Bronco was parked close by.  “Be a shame if you woulda’ had an allergy to it and died before you and I got to meet one another properly.”

         “Who the fuck is that?  This shit ain't funny, man!”  He barked at the voice. Mentally, he was full of agony from his wounds and beyond pissed off for not killing the two white folks when they first caught them.  Since he woke up alive, he assumed someone wanted him alive for a reason.  Tied up where and how he was, he knew the reason was not good.

The voice chuckled behind him again. He strained left and right, unable to see who it was...but knowing exactly who it was.

         “I got money, man.  You want money, I gots a ton of it.”

         “I'm aware of what you have, Antoine Dyer.  Right now, you ain't holding much.”

         “Who the hell are you, man?  Why you fucking with me?”  Spit flew from his mouth and he screamed again as a boot kicked his shattered knee.  He tried to grasp and console the leg, his balance gave way and the leg flopped uncontrollably.  Only the rope cradling his ass crack kept him upright.  The rope was savage in and of itself.

         He swung and screamed in the rope harness for a solid minute, cursing between sobs as the searing pain refused to ebb.  The white man from the crackhouse walked around in front of him and suddenly his face was being duct-taped.

         “I thank you for keeping that head good and shaved.”  Moses spoke in an even tone.  “Helps the duct tape stick real good.  I won't mind making you scream for the next few days, but I do mind having to listen to it.  I may get hungry and I didn't bring a whole lot to eat.  But, there's plenty to shoot and eat around here as long as you ain't screaming bloody murder and scaring everything off.” 

Antoine tried to breathe away the pain.  Moses stuck the butt of his lit Winston into the gunshot hand and Dyer screamed, muffled now, once again and thrashed his hand.

         “You probably don't recognize the lay of the land around here.  A city fella like you ain’t much good knowing the woods and all.  But not four miles from here you and those other two wastes of life killed a dope man name of Nugget about a week and a half ago.”  Dyer shook his head no.

           “Yes you did, idiot.  If you was arrested, then you could say no.  You ain’t arrested.  You’re already convicted, asshole.  The sentence was supposed to be carried out last night.  You shot that boy out here.  My boss found out it was y’all and he didn't like that so much.  You and those LA motherfuckers thought y'all could just watch New Jack City and go Nino Brown out here.  It don't work that way.  It works our way.”

Dyer repeatedly shook his head.  He mumbled his innocence continuously in between crying from the pain.  The man pulled out a notebook and read from it.

“You can save all that…Antoine Dyer...born Ten April, Nineteen Seventy from Forty-five Oh One, South Crenshaw, Apartment Five-G.  Driver of a Ninety model Bonneville.  Nice ride, by the way.” Moses nodded to him and smiled. “Mother Pam, father listed as a Dwight Gillray but who knows if that's true in your part of the world, right?”  He watched as Dyer's eyes widened and smirked.

         “Yes, I know a lot about you, podnah.  I could go into the facts as they were handed to me.  But,” Moses pulled out his K-Bar knife and dragged the blade down Antoine's sternum, drawing blood, “to me, you’re just a paycheck.  See, the boss wants an example made so half of you big-city hoodrats don't start coming out here to Cenla every time some cousin stationed at Fort Polk calls back home and tells his boys to get outta’ South Central and come make a mint.  It don't work that way.”  He smiled as the knife went parallel to the sternum cut and left a second bleeding, but harmless tear in Antoine's chest.

         “That's my business.  I negate threats but I also put on a spectacle if he asks for one.  Now normally, I would never risk dragging a fuck like you out in the beautiful woods with me.  For a whole host of reasons, mind you, but mostly because I like my woods quiet and lonely when I come out in them.  But, dipshit, I gotta’ tell you,” Moses carved two perpendicular slashes across the first two vertical cuts to make a tic-tac-toe board on Antoine's flat chest.  “When I saw you balls deep in my lady, slapping the holy shit out of her, I gotta’ say, it kinda' riled me.  So here we are...”  Moses spun around, long and lanky in the rising sun as it trickled through the fresh green growth in the trees, the large knife twirling in his grip, “…in my realm as it were.  And man, I gotta’ tell ya,” Moses sneered at Dyer and remembered he needed a few rope adjustments.  He eyeballed some surrounding hardwoods.

“It's gonna be fun stuff for a while anyway.  For me, of course.” 

         Antoine screamed as the tape was suddenly ripped away from him head and mouth as Moses walked by him to the Ford.  He sobbed as he looked at the tiny twin rivulets of blood now running his flat stomach.  His eyes turned to the sky.  He could hear Moses rummaging through the Bronco and whistling. 

Never before had the certainty of his impending death struck him so fully.  He was no stranger to gangland shootouts.  Like so many others, the loss of homeboys and familt around him to errant bullets had hardened him to the notion of potential death.  That he would not be leaving whatever desolate stretch of woods alive terrified him suddenly.  That point was brought home when he saw Moses walking with another length of rope and a shovel.  He gave the brave front as best he could.  It seemed futile even as he pumped up the bass in his voice.

         “This is bullshit, man!  You can' do this shit.  Them pigs out  here are gonna’ find you.  Even a dead nigga’ gonna’ get some justice down here.  And when my boys find out what happened to me and my boys?  Shit…getting my dick in her pussy gonna’ be the least that happen to yo’ bitch.  And to you, muthafucka.  They gonna fuck you up for fucking with me.  You best let me go if you know what’s good for you.”

         “Yo boys ain't coming nowhere near here.” Moses laughed at him. “Not after what they learn about what happened here, Antoine.  And they will find out.  The cops, however, will not.  At least, not what happens out here in the next few days.  I'm sure the news is all over the fire that burned up the crackhouse...”  Moses dropped the rope next to Antoine and nonchalantly pulled the taser baton from behind his back and touched the gunshot knee with it.  More screams echoed through the forest.

“...with them two fellers of yours all crispy crittered up inside.  They may be identified at some point when someone tells the cops who they are.  Not by prints or dental records though.”

         “You can't burn teeth, dumbass.”

         “But you can knock them out with a pistol butt or pull them out with a pair of pliers.”  Moses made a show of pulling a ziplock bag from a cargo pocket and shaking it close enough for Dyer to see gold falsies and real teeth smearing the inside of the bag with blood.  “I hadn't noticed til I pulled 'em that the gold ones had fat boy's name stenciled in 'em.  You guys really take your dental bullshit seriously.”

         “You fucked up in the head, man.”

         “Depends on the perspective, I guess.  I call it an abundance of caution.  Now, you and I know people knew who you three were.  And where you were from and what you were doing.  The fact is, you'll be a suspect because you won't be found.  Ever.”  He jammed the shovel into the ground.  “And whatever is left to find of you, if they ever find this place, won't be known to be you without a shitload of forensic bullshit.  That shit takes months.” 

He walked back toward the Bronco.  Noticing the fire was getting cold and a log starting to smoke, he diverted and tended to it, stoking it from a large stack of split wood and deadfall limbs.  When he had the flames overwhelming the smoke, he finished his trip to the Bronco. 

Antoine tested the slack in his ropes, desperate to try to sit down and take the weight off of his good leg that was quivering from supporting him.  The rope between his groin would not allow it.

         Moses watched from inside the Bronco, knowing his rope trusses around the crotch were driving the man crazy.  He was getting hungry.  For the hell of it, he pulled the Colt .45 from its holster and languidly shot Antoine through the good knee from twenty yards away and shut the door.

         “Glad he didn't jerk.”  He mumbled as the screaming began anew, muffled somewhat by the glass of the Bronco. “I hate to waste ammo.”

         He threw a few items in his pockets and grabbed a Pop Tart as he got out.

         “Smarts a might, don't it?  He called out.

         Moses strolled casually to Antoine and looped a zip tie around the freshly shot leg.  Ignoring the thrashes and screamed insults, he cinched the plastic tight and tourniqueted the leg.  Admiring the damage the heavy .45 bullet made as contrasted to the high-velocity 9mm's damage in the other knee, he nodded in approval.

         “Can't beat a .45 for taking a plug out of someone.”  Moses inhaled deeply and sucked his teeth as he looked over at the campfire. 

“I reckon that skillet may be done heatin' up.” He muttered more to himself than his audience.  Propping on the shovel, he studied the exit wound in the knee.

         “You probably don't know why is it that the Army and Marines used a .45 for so long.  Probably don't know they ever did for that matter, hoodrat.”  He smiled at the glare of indignation the minor insult raised.

“I forget what they were called, but in the Spanish American war Americans were fighting some really badass Fillipino guerrillas.  If memory serves me, they were actually Muslims that made it to the islands some kinda’ way.  How the Popes let that happen under their noses, I don’t know.  Those crazy bastards, though, they would ambush our guys at close range with swords or machetes or whatever.  Back then, the army mostly carried .38's.  What they found was the bastards could take a few hits from a .38 and still keep coming.  Yeah sure, they would die later, but not before taking a swing with a sword at someone up close and personal.  So the army went to the .45 to knock a plug out of a motherfucker and knock his ass down.”

         “Fuck you!  I don't care!”  Antoine mumbled through grit teeth and tears.

         “Well come on...”  Moses folded his arms and pointed with a finger at the legs.  “...you can't rightly tell me that bigass hole don't hurt any less than that one the stupid Glock made.  You know the military is going to a nine millimeter now?  Personally, I can't believe it.  Makes no sense.  But, the faggot Europeans use it and we NATO allies all gotta’ carry the same bullets to piss off that big, bad Russkie bear if he decides to take a shot at strolling down the Champ Elysse one day.  It’s bullshit if you ask me.  I mean, hell,” he held him arms out and spun around seeking a mock audience's acquiescence, his mouth full of frosted strawberry goodness, “Look,” he pointed, “at that knee.  Barely holding on by a thread.  That's a .45 for ya.”

         “You a psycho ma'fucka.”

         “Kinda.”  Moses looked back at Antoine as he shoved the last bit of Pop Tart into his mouth.  He chewed and swallowed, holding up a finger to hold Antoine's tongue silent.  “But you kinda have to have a screw loose kinda’ to do what I do to pay the light bill.  But, you see, dipshit, normally you would never had this many words with me.  I'm not normally so chatty and slow when I’m taking out trash like you.  I'm not paid by the hour, ya’ know what I mean?”

         “What makes me so goddamn special then?”  Dyer's head drooped.  He sniffled in a vain attempt to stifle his runny nose.  His legs were sheer torment.

“My lover, Antoine.  You just had to go and stick it to the beautiful love of my life.  Couldn't help yourself...you just had to do it.  A man like me, we don't make friends very easy.  And ain't too many women folk take kindly to running around all lovey-dovey like with a fella’ that shoots sumbitches in the knees.” He pulled out his knife. “Or cuts off the dicks and balls of rapin’ ass men like you.”

         Dyer shuddered noticeably. “Please.” He croaked.

         “But my little Curio, she’s a very special lady to me.  You’ve learned that shit by now, right?  Here you were just raping away, dick-stickin it to some strange, huh?  Bet it felt good, didn’t it?  And then boom!  My girl turned the tables on you.  You thought she would go all to pieces on ya, huh?  It ain’t happened and it won’t.  She harder than a slant-eyed drill sergeant, you sorry bastard.”

“She ain’t feel that hard with my dick in her.” Antoine sneered through his pain.

“What? That dick?” Moses snatched out and pulled Dyer’s dick to him.  With one swipe of the razor-sharp knife, he severed it midway down the shaft.

He ignored the fresh screams and walked over to the fire as he spoke calmly.  He tossed the head into the flames. 

“She’s fine as hell, too.  What you shoulda’ done was think with your head not your dick. That of course, won’t be no problem no more, I reckon.”

He raked a pile of coals aside and covered the blade of the knife with it.

“Your dumb head ain’t ever dreamed it would be roastin’ over an open fire.  It’s only fitting since the other head is a-headin’ that way after a while.  But I’ll get to that later when I got some help out here.” 

Antoine kept screaming incoherently.

When he was certain the blade was good and hot, he put on a glove and walked with it quickly over to his prisoner.  Before Dyer could react, Moses pressed the blade to the bleeding stump of the man’s pecker.  The screaming man flailed.

“Hold still!  If it ain’t sealed up, you’ll bleed out.” With a strong arm, Moses pressed Dyer firmly against the trunk.  He finished burning the wound and nodded with satisfaction when he was done.

“You’ll forgive me if I don’t give you too much to drink.  You can’t piss no more.  You get some water because you did lose a lot of blood and I ain’t ready for you to drop out on me just yet but too much and you’ll be hurtin’ like hell when you’re bladder and kidneys ain’t got nowhere to go with it.”

“My God!  What the fuck is wrong with you!  Let me go, Sir!  Please!” Antoine screamed endlessly.  Moses only gave both knees a kick.

“You really though you were stickin’ some poor innocent young thing, didn’t you?  Boy, that girl was raised on a New Orleans street all her life.  Hell, she had a crackie for a mama and more unwanted dick thrown at her than a laying hen locked in a hatbox with ten banty roosters.  She seen a hundred of your kind.”  Moses sighed affectionately, slapping the taser against Dyer’s foot idly.  “Your randiness ain’t impressed her at all, rest assured.” 

Dyer jumped again.  When he did, Moses swung the big K-bar knife downward and the tendrils of tendon and ligament holding the knee together were severed.  The leg fell to the ground.

         “I love the girl and she loves me, you know?  Can't explain it in such a way that a waste of life like you could ever hope to understand.  But she is fearless, wild about me, not the least bit squeamish about getting done the way you done her if it gets us out of a jam.  She is a one of a kind.” 

Moses gave Dyer a jolt in his bloody chest with the baton.  “And for touching one fucking hair on her head, you get some special treatment with me out here in the woods.”  He picked up the leg and gave it a heave into the woods.  Quickly, he used a large zip-tie to staunch the spurts from the stump. 

         “Fuck you and your bitch!”  Antoine gurgled.  “Don't mean shit!  We all die.  You and your bitch gonna die, too!”

         “All true, Antonia.” 

         He put on a heavy glove and retrieved the 8-inch cast iron skillet from the campfire.  Running and whispering, “Hot!  Hot! Hot!” under his breath, he clumsily held the man’s gyrating body still and stuck the pan to the end of the stump.

         “There.  All better, ain’t it?”  Moses spoke when the screams had subsided to merely a raucous bawling.  “Can’t have you bleeding out if I go somewhere and the tie slips off, huh?  Ya know?”

         Moses picked up the coil of rope lying beside Dyer.  He chuckled at the puzzled look.  “You did eight months in L.A. County for burglary a while back.  How was the shower scene?  Still got your cherry?”  He tossed an end of rope over a thick limb that ran more or less parallel to the limb Antoine dangled from.

         “Yeah, bitch.  No one fuck with a Crip in county.  We don't roll with no faggot shit in county.  We hard out there, nigga.  My boys are gonna’ find this shit out and you ain’t never gonna’ see the end of the pain they gonna’ make you two muthafuckas suffer.”

         “Goody, goody.”

Moses tied up two bowline loops in the rope and, with much screaming on Dyer's part, fed the loose legs through the loops all the way to the bare thighs and pulled them taunt.  He took a few steps back and pulled the loop running around the tree’s trunk free.  Antoine fell free but was then pulled into the air.  The leg shot with the 9mm dangled ninety degrees the wrong way as he hung freely suspended parallel with the ground.

         “Way I see it,” Moses lit a Winston.  “You cost me some pussy for a while.  You reckon the ass cherry of a man who raped your girl is a fair swap?”

         “Faggot!  I knew it!  Ahhh! Ahhh!”  Dyer shook in his ropes, agony running through every pore as the raw areas were further exacerbated.  He thrashed wildly as his legs were pulled open.  He hung helpless in the ropes, grunting from the pain and the knowledge of the indignity of his future.

         “You got me all wrong.”  Moses thumped a hot ash on Dyer's butt cheek, not noticing the flinch from the burn.  “I ain't gay in the least.  I loves the ladies.  Especially my Curio.”  He noticed a green pinecone on the ground by his boot and pushed Antoine's legs apart.  With a chuckle, he jammed the cone between the cheeks and slammed the legs together.  Quickly, he took a loose length of the rope and trussed the thighs together to keep the dozens of stickers embedded deeply.  With the taser baton, he pushed at the exposed top of the green cone, giving the sobbing Antoine Dyer a push than sent him swinging.  Each return arc sent the cone's stickers deeper into the skin as Moses pushed him to and from, snapping the electricity on for effect every once in a while.

         “But I be willing to bet Curio ain't the first girl been raped by you.  Mongrels like yourself just run wild.  You been taking what ain't yours since you could crawl I'm bettin'.  You may have gotten away with that shit in your hood with your ilk.  But you see, out here...bitch!” Moses ripped his belt from the loops loudly and unzipped his zipper slowly for effect, “Your ass is all mine.”  He spat in his palm.  “Just hope I’m horny so it’s over quick.”



         Legs spread, Curio sipped from a Dixie cup of water, swallowing a massive dose of antibiotics intended to head off any STD she may have been exposed to during her forced sex with Antoine.  Doctor Theopolis DeLandry, with his wife Betty watching his face for a hint of illicit admiration more than she watched Curio's exposed groin, swabbed a number of times at her vagina with long Q-tips, wiping them on a number of Petri dishes intending to see if any sprouted a bug that he could identify and treat specifically.

         “I'll know within a few days if there is a bacterial infection I can treat.  Herpes and HIV unfortunately are viral in nature and won't show up on the cultures.”  Theo squirted a betadine solution around her crotch and swabbed it with a thick swab of gauze head firm in a hemostat.  “I'm sorry to tell you that.  Blood tests for herpes are available but the HIV tests are hit and miss.  Besides, it takes a long while before any infection should take hold, if there is one.”

         “That shit's cold, Doc.”  Curio flinched.

         “I apologize.  Almost done and you can take a proper shower.  Betty wiped you down when she first got here but I'm betting you want a proper shower.”  He swabbed the excess with gauze and tossed the used gauze into a waiting trashcan.  “K. I'm done.”

         “I got you some clothes Mr. Holliday left when I got here.  He said they was yours.”  Betty took the empty cup and tossed it in the trash.  Her husband stripped his gloves off and scratched his chin stubble.

         “It would be better if I could get a sample from the perp to check and be sure.”  He murmured to himself as he looked over Curio's bruises.  “Baby, ask the bossman if he can get a specimen when you check in.”

         “I will.  You think he will?”

         “If it's possible.  He kinda’ took a shine to Miss Curio when I talked to him about her.  Who knows though?  It may not be possible.” 

Doctor Delandry took a face cloth out of its ice bath and folded it into a compress.  He frowned behind a pair of coke bottle glasses that hung on a chain.  Curio thought he looked very much like a college professor.  He had a refined demeanor and white-walls sliced down each side of his head.  Gently, he laid the icy towel across her eyes.

         “Those shiners will take a while to go away, I'm afraid.”

         “I've had them before.  Sucked but I lived.  You tell Grizzly fucking Fontenot he owes me a super duper vacation for this shit when you talk to him.”

         “He'll be here tomorrow, ma'am.  Best you take that up with him.”

         “Why is the boss coming up here?”          

         “Honey, we don't ask and he don't tell.”  Betty laughed and pulled the trash liner from the wastebasket.  “Him and Theo and Moses Holliday been friends a long time.  Could be they playin’ boure rummy for the next week and drinking whiskey.  But I expects not his time.”

         “He probably thinks we fucked things up.”

         “Whatever you have been involved in, it ain't our business.”  The doctor probed her swollen lip carefully, his voice calm still but abrupt.  “Bertrand and Moses and me got a lot of catching up to do but when we catch up, it's usually retelling the past, laughing as best we can about the war and cussing the Saints.  What he does to pay me is above my pay grade.”

         “What was he like back in the war?”  Curio felt the pills kicking in again.  Betty was not stingy with the happy tabs.

         “Moses or Grizzly?”

         “Either.  Moses.”

         “Well, you gotta' remember times was different back then.  Moses was on his second tour when I met him and I was on my third.”

         “Damn.  You went back three times?”

         “I did.”

         “Why the hell you do that?  Once wasn’t enough?”

         “I guess not.  I went back because there was nothing to do back home when I came back.  I got back from Nam and jumped right back into the same racist southern state I left behind.  There were no jobs.  No prospects.  At least that was the first time I went back.  The third time, my third tour, it was because I was a Marine and they needed good medics.  The war was drawing down for us but that meant the guys still in-country were mostly raw draftees that had done seen the good days of the Sixties come and go and a lot of them had a hell-no attitude when they got in-country.  The gooks didn’t give a shit about their attitude.  They just shot at us.”

         “I don't blame them.  War is stupid.”

         “Amen.”  Betty spoke.

         “That it may be.”  Delandry leaned back in the rolling chair.  “But about every coupla' decades we get one.  I was a mud Marine and my brother Marines were dying because a lot of medics did a tour and went home just when they were getting good at doing their jobs.  As a result, men died that didn't need to.  The only reason Bertrand made it home is because I got him patched up like I did.  He would have bled out otherwise.  Under the circumstances, it was amazing any of us made it back alive in that particular battle.  A few did not.  And even a few who did make it out ended up not making it through later.  Bad wounds killed a lot of men months after they got hit.”

         “What was Moses like?”

         “Moses Holliday was the most efficient killer of the enemy I had ever seen.  The man was fearless.  He was a crack shot, too.  He had that Texas swagger.  He was thin as a rail.  I noticed he put on some muscle when I saw him today.  But he was always strong, just like he is now.  He loved Hendrix and all them rock-n-rollers.  But of course he was a cowboy and he listened to all that hillbilly stuff, too.”

“What were you like?” Curio asked.

Theo looked out of the window as he spoke.  There was a forgetfulness to him as he somewhat smiled and spoke.  “I was kinda’ militant back then.  Again, you got to remember the times.  I was most comfortable in the Marines because bullets weren't racist.  Mother Green didn't have time for Jim Crow like Louisiana did.  Me and some of the white boys would get into it sometimes.  Moses and me actually got into a fistfight one night when we was drunk because he thought Ali was a traitor for being a conscientious objector.  But I realized after a while he wasn’t no racist.  He was just a cowboy that hadn't been around many black folks.  I actually figured after a while that my attitude would probably end up making him a racist if I didn't let up.”  Delandry chuckled.

         “Moses ain't racist.  Not like in a KKK kinda way.  He does hate a thug motherfucker though.”  Curio found herself wondering what he was doing to Antoine, if he even still had Antoine alive.  “He's down with brown.  Me too...for the record.”

         “Let me guess, some of your best friends are black.”  The doctor parodied the standard whitey defense.

         “Well, you two are my new best friends so I can say a rousing hell yes to that.”

         “Ain't that sweet!”  Betty giggled.  “We like you too, baby.  You got a black girl spirit in you somewhere.  I suspect it’s the coonass in you.”

         “I lost my virginity to a black boy.  That down enough for you, Doc?”

         Unspoken in her mind was that she had spoken a lie aloud.  Her hymen was broken by a drunken finger of one of the white men her mother kept around for crack supplies.  When she was ten.

         But, the first boy she had actually, willingly, dropped her panties for, when she was thirteen, was indeed a black kid.

         “Down enough.  Those things don't matter now like they used to.  Like I said, times have changed.  But you asked about Moses Holliday back then and I'll say this.  He was then and I'm about a hundred percent still is to this day without ever being officially told, the most efficient killer of the enemy I ever met.  What surprises me is that he felt the need to bring in a partner.”

         “He didn't need to.  I made him.”

         The couple both chuckled in jest.  “Moses Holliday was never made to do anything he wasn't ordered to do.”  Theo smirked casually.

         “Like you said, times ain't like that no more.  Besides, when I give him an order, he salutes with more than a hand for me.”

         “You definitely got some black woman in you then to get him to do that.”  Betty chuckled.



         “Time to get a bite to eat, Antoine.”  Moses toweled himself dry after a refreshing few minutes under a solar-heated shower.  “The boss is on his way and he's buying.  What you in the mood for?  Anything sound good?  A bratwurst perhaps?  Maybe a chicken on a stick?”

         Antoine lifted his head up, tears streaming down his face.  He was famished but his appetite was whetted from the fresh sodomizing.  He was still swinging in the rope harness front-side down and had been all night while Moses stretched out and snored in the Bronco.  All night, agony and the sounds of creatures rustling in the night kept him awake.  He could have sworn he caught a glimpse of something running off with his severed leg in the woods.

His eyes watered as he watched Moses’ dick flap from side-to-side as he shimmied the towel across his back.  There had been a great many women, willing and not so willing in Antoine's life.  Never before had he considered what it must have felt like on the receiving end of anal sex.  It would not be recalled kindly.

         “Whatever I say, you probably won't bring and piss in it anyway.  Fuck you, I'll starve.”          

         “Well, put it to you this way.  You may as well eat.  You won't live long enough to starve to death.”  Moses shrugged as he jumped up and down into his pants a bit.  “The only reason you ain't dead yet is the boss wants to say hello personally.”  He nodded at the man’s violated waist. “It ain’t like anything you eat will have nearly as big a problem moving on out as anything you drink now will it?”

         “Fuck you, man.” Blood was all sprinkled all over the ground beneath him as the daylight made the area visible.  While he chuckled and bounced into Antoine’s anus, Moses carved the word Curio down the man’s back with his knife.

         “Why you ask, would the boss like to see you?”

         “I don’t care.” 

         “Because.  A, you killed a moneymaker of his.  B, the cops will be looking into the death of that moneymaker which eventually will make them look at him and cost him more money in lost revenues like paying off both the cops and the reporters.  And D, you and the boys tried to have your fun with Curio.”  Moses rolled up the towel and snapped Dyer's bare ass loudly with it.  “For shame, asshole.  Tapping the help is also a no-no of his.” 

He walked toward the Ford.  “You know, had you just killed us defending yourselves, he would have understood.  Still woulda’ killt y’all, mind you,” Moses put on a Longhorns t-shirt, “But businesslike, ya’ know?”  He jumped on the Bronco's hood and slipped on socks and Justin boots as he nonchalantly spoke.  “He may be a crook but in a perverse way he's old fashioned about violating women. A girl tells him no, he just starts counting out hundreds until he’s reached a deal with her and then he has his fun.  She’s happy, he’s happy.  But, if she tells him no way, no how, he turns to the next one in line.  ‘Uninvited dicks are a thing to be avoided,’ he likes to say sometimes.  You agree now, dontcha?”  He cackled as Dyer's eyes aimed at the ground.

         “You a faggot, man.  You better be glad we didn't punk you out first before we dropped it to that bitch of yours.”

           “Always the need to be the alpha dick.  I’m no faggot.  But really bro, you shoulda’ just shot us in the head and lit the place up and moved elsewhere.  I gotta’ admit, I fumbled the punt a-lettin' y'all get the drop on me.  Getting lax in my old age, I guess.  It was a good play.  But, you didn't follow up.  What the hell did you think when you see us armed as we were and trying to get in on you in the dark?  Did you think, oh shit, kill ‘em and go?  Nope.  You think, hey!  Lookee here!  Pussy wrapped in a bow like a birthday gift!  Ignorance got you killed, Antoine.  It shoulda’ got me killed, but call me lucky.  I found three dumb niggers dumber than my dumb white ass.”

           Dyer said nothing.  The truth stung him as bad as the gunshots.

           “Well, I'm hitting BJ's for pizza.  Be back in a while.  Just hang loose til we get back okay?”  Moses winked at him and in a minute, Antoine Dyer was hanging naked, raped, shot twice, tased and beaten from a rope truss in the middle of nowhere, awaiting even worse. 

           The mosquitoes and deer flies hounded him until Moses returned.  As bad as those bites were, it was the yellow jackets that constantly lighted upon his open wounds to have dinner that bothered him the most.



         Bertrand Fontenot and his brother Pete pulled his Cadillac STS in front of room 145 of the Downtown Inn Dubois in Pineville, just before noon, three days after the botched hit.

         The pair favored each other in the face but only there.  Pete got out from the driver's seat first.  Easily upwards of three-twenty, he was a massive presence as soon as he shut the door and surveyed the scene for anyone who may have managed to follow them from Lake Charles to the hotel.  He was raely without a three-piece suit and sunglasses.  Today he wore a navy blue pinstripe with a .357 Desert Eagle snugly holstered under a flabby arm.  He leaned against the car door and lit a Parliament, nodding abruptly at the momentary parting of the curtain in room 145.

           Satisfied after a few minutes that there were no unmarked work vans or sedans with a pair of shadowy figures trying to slouch behind the dash, he tapped on the window and Grizzly Fontenot hobbled from his seat.

           Bertrand slowly stood, helped up by a long pull of a cane he used until he got to his feet.  He was a war amputee. Walking was a thing he accomplished with a noticeably stiff limp fairly well.  Getting out of cars was another thing entirely.

           Grizzly wore a white LSU polo shirt and matching purple LSU parachute pants.  He laid a tweed fedora with a purple and gold band to his balding scalp and tossed the cane back into the car as he got his weight settled on the artificial leg strapped to his right knee.  He was fit for his age with sharp eyes sitting on a thin nose that anchored a neatly trimmed beard that was more pepper than salt even as he sailed toward fifty.  He dyed his hair to maintain the stark back locks that flowed behind him as the wind swirled around the horseshoe bend of the motel.

           “Alrighty brother Pete, let's pay our respects to the missus.”

           Pete lumbered around the front of the car to flank his brother as they walked up to the door, eyes steadily sweeping the other windows and parked cars. 

Betty opened the door with a warm, “Hey Sugar!” and a kiss on his cheek before they knocked.  The Fontenots walked in and the door closed.

         “My, you looking good, Grizzly!”  Betty hugged his neck as she pulled the door shut.  “Hey, Teddy Bear!”  She hugged Pete as well.  Theo stood up from the mini-couch and tossed the NY Times crossword puzzle he nearly had licked aside.  He shook Grizzly's hand and slapped him softly on the back.

           “Good to see you, Bertie.  Pete.”  He shook Pete's mitt.

         Curio felt her heart jump into her throat unexpectedly.  Actually being in a room with the Fontenots was not a very common occurrence.  And never without Moses beside her to calm her nerves.  Sitting up half-clothed in a bed with four veritable strangers was disarming enough under the best of circumstances.  She rarely had a moment where she did not feel she could control a room, on the clock or otherwise.  Thus, it was all that much more frightening when she considered these were people who made other people like her disappear. 

Even Theo and Betty being Grizzly's medics was not much of a comfort.  For two days, she wondered what happened to those whom Theo had not been able to save.

Curio suddenly felt like a child again.  A child who spilled the milk and stood there blubbering and awaiting a scolding by someone who wasn’t family.

         “So here's my lil cheri that done got hersef all worked over.”  Grizzly walked over to her on his stiff leg.  She watched him, hoping her fear did not show through her black and watering eyes.  He winced as he got a look at her swollen face.

         “Gat'dammit!  Sorry fuckin' muddafuckas!”  He bit the back of his hand like Sonny Corleone when he saw what Carlo had done to his sister.  Pete walked over and smirked at the damage.  She was sure she saw disgust on his face but could not read it as empathetic to her.

           “Sorry, boss.  They got the drop on us...”  Grizzly shushed her with a pump of his palm.

           “We already done heard it all.  It's done and you don't worry no mo bout it, mon cheri.  It's handled.  You hurtin?  Dat gator snout dat used to be yo cute lil fart-smella’ sho nuff lookin’ like it hurt like da dickens.”

           “Oh my God!  Is my nose that bad!”  Vanity overwrought paranoia.  Her hands snapped to her face.

         “It's got Jimmy Durante beat by a horse pecker at least.”  Grizzly giggled and the others chuckled as well.

           “Dat ain't funny!”  Curio threw her best pout at them but with her face swollen, its luster waned.  “I got it in the line of duty.  Theo told me it's getting better.”

         “I'm sure it is.  I hate to-a seen worse.  But damn, you sho got a workout.  Moses tell me you had one ticklin’ yo guts a while before he got loose and got y'all out of the jam.  Dat true?  You get stuck?”

           It occurred to Curio that rape-shield laws were as passé in the Atchafalaya Mudbugs as most other laws.

           “Yeah.  Him and his boys thought a pussy train was on the menu.  I only got the engine though, not all the cars.  I locked up my legs around his waist when I heard Moses got free and dat's about when he started to beat on me tryin to git loose.”  Curio saw shock on Betty’s face but ignored it.  “I know my stuff’s good, but damn I didn’t know it was so good it could cost a man his life.”

           “Dat's good thinkin’, cheri.  Hell, it probably saved you two from what I heard.  You kept yo head.  Maybe Moses knows you bettah den I give him credit fo.”

           “I ain't chickenshit, boss.  When I heard him get loose, I was just tryin’ to keep at least one less fucker from gettin’ in the fight.  He was in me, so I kept him there best I could.  I’m just sorry we got in that jam, Mister Fontenot.  It won’t happen again, by God.  It hurts like hell but knowing Moses coulda bought it hurts worse.”

           “Griz, mon cheri.  Call me Griz.”  Pete cut his eyes over to the Delandry's.  They both just smiled at Griz's embrace of the girl.

           “You always Boss to me, Griz.”

           “Fair enough, then, whatever.  Now, Theo.  This lil girl not gonna keel over and die if da four of us go out for lunch, now is she?”

         “I don't think she would keel over if a tank hit her, Bertie.  She's tougher than VC drill instructors.  Ain't no fist gonna' break her down.”

         “I'm ok, really.”  Curio blurted.  “They got a few beers and a few pills to keep me occupied.  I think there's a Magnum P.I. Chest-fest coming on the TV, too.” She locked her fingers in front of her and stretched.  “It makes me feel all pretty in my bad places to see Tom Selleck's bare chest in his red Ferrari for an hour.  Give me four hours of that and I may do myself worse than what I got the other day.  Y'all go eat!”

         Even Pete laughed at the spunk of Curio Phelonie.

           “Okay then, baby.  We heading out over to Janohn's.  You want me to call you before we leave and bring you some take-out or is Theo and Betty’s hospital food okay in here?”

Grizzly Fontenot cocked his head in admiration at his young employee.  He could see in her eyes what Moses must have noticed when his crazy Texas ass met her and took her under his wing and under his sheets.  Even beaten and raped, she was defiant and “to the task.”  Radiant even.  He wondered if she would get his friend killed one day and sighed inside.

           Maybe...but then again, maybe he get her killed just as easily.

         “Fuck yeah.  But you don't have to call me.  I want a bigass plate of chicken livers.  And a joint.”

         Grizzly reached in his pocket and pulled out a cigarette case.  He flipped a rolled joint to her.

           “Halfway home, mon cheri.  I'll git you dem livahs soon.  You take care and no bustin all dem cooter stitches just because you watchin some hairy no-shirt bastard drivin’ his boss's Ferrari out in Hawaii, okay?”

           “Thanks, boss!”  She cradled the joint and nodded in sincere appreciation.  The quartet turned to leave, filing out the door behind Pete's watchful lead.

           “Hey Griz!”

         He turned to face her.  She was leaning over toward him.  Her breasts nearly hanging free from the pajama top caught him unawares.  His gape was inadvertent and she laughed at his maleness.

           “Last request.  I want my goddamned boyfriend back in the Bentley as soon as he is done playing patty-cake wherever the fuck he is.”

           “Done.”  Bertrand Fontenot gave her a solemn salute and left the room.



           Moses sat in a booth at the BJ's pizza house off MacArthur Drive in Alexandria, polishing off his third beer and the last slice of a medium Sweep the Kitchen pizza.  When he was well into a forth, he lit a Winston and let the lunch settle.  He was famished when he left the woods for town.  A few tap brews and a good sloppy pizza after a shower did wonders for his demeanor. 

Glancing at his watch, he frowned at the time he was wasting.  Grizzly was scheduled to meet him in a few hours after taking care of Theo and Betty's bill and checking on Curio.  Moses eyeballed the large coffin-like metal box in the rear of the Bronco and downed the last beer.  There was work to be done.  He checked his watch again and downed the mug.

           He drove back to Camp Livingston quickly, stopping at a gas station in Bentley and getting the last meal Antoine Dyer would ever eat.  A six-hour-old foil-wrapped sausage biscuit and a few cold potato logs.

         Antoine ceased his hoarse screaming for help when he saw the Bronco return.  Moses freed his good hand and allowed him to feed himself, chuckling every now and again as Dyer snaked his arm down to the ground to pick up a tater log before the carpenter ants found them.  The long arm swinging in the swaying harness looked like an elephant trunk.

           Chatty as always, Moses set to work digging the near-final resting place of one Antoine Dyer.  He made use of a sandy patch of Little Creek.  The sand and gravel was much easier to clear than the root-tangled loam closer to the thicket.  After a few hours of digging, he maneuvered the big aluminum box onto a four-wheeled furniture dolly and after much readjusting and cursing, got the box rolled to the pit he dug. 

Dyer's calls for an explanation of his efforts and then the eventual desperate screams for help mixed with pleas for mercy went unacknowledged as Moses toweled away beer sweat when he was done. 

When he began dragging up large quantities of deadfall and axing them into usable logs, he finally spoke.

           “Not being from around here, Antoine, you probably aren't too familiar with the local fare.  They are a very food-centered lot round here.  Back in the old days, Cajuns were as poor as anybody.  And they ain’t too big on leavin’ the manseed on top of the mound, if you catch my drift.  So they all got tons of kids to feed.  So they got to where they made these big boiling pots of stuff with whatever they had running around the house to cook up.  Big dishes to feed big families and all.  A lot of things in big pots, ya know?  You gotcha’ gumbo.  You gotcha’ crawfish boils and whatnot.  But I been up here a lotta’ times hog huntin’.  You really should be glad I didn't just leave you tied up and all a-screamin with your tripe hanging out in a pile of coals under your feet.  There's a shitload of wild hogs running around out here and a pack of them ain't scared a shit.  They woulda’ smellt your last dinner laying all bloodied up and smokin’ in your lap and believe me, they woulda come for you.”

           “You a psycho motherfucker, you know that?”  Dyer used his free arm to massage the areas more rope-burned than others.

           “Takes a lot more than mere craziness sumtimes, son.  It takes a gnarly gifted mind to think of the worser ways to take care of a body.  You see, it ain't the killin that gets you caught most times.  It's that damn body.  The corpse, you know?  You gotta’ get that body taken care of if you don't wanna’ get caught.  That's where you fucked up shotgunnin ole Stevie Lee CokeNuggets out here.  You just pulled off the road out of sight of the main road and shot him and it warnt long he got found.  Them cops only gotta’ wave a few twenties on Lower Third and you find yourself busted, dumbass.  But I guess doing twenty years in hell don't scare you none, right?”

           “We all do our time.  I seen your tats.  You done yours, too.  That where you went all faggotass?”

           “It's where I learned to be more cautious and not to drink so damned much.  And you're wrong about me being a fruit.  I didn't enjoy that little bit of personal business one bit.  But before one dies, I believe they are entitled to a few cathartic moments.  Believe me, if you had gotten as old as I, you woulda’ figured out moments of catharsis, wanted or not, just kinda’ happen with age.”

           “Fuck you.  I don't even know what that word means.”

           “And you won't.”  Moses wandered off and came back with more boughs soon.

           “I lost my train of thought a bit.  About the hogs.  You prolly never heard of a coonass microwave, huh?”

           “That like a nigger barbecue?  You saltine muthafuckas got new ways of calling us coons down here?”

           Moses laughed.  “Cajuns are called coonasses down here.  Their gene pools are kinda’ muddied up around here.  They got thirty-one flavors in their bloodlines and all.  You would be surprised to know I ain’t a bigot.  I know out west and up north, we are all just whitebread shitpokin’, KKK rallyin’ rednecks to y’all and all.  But we don't really got time for burnin’ crosses and trying to stop black men from whistling, ‘suck it dixie’ at…”  His voice imitated Foghorn Leghorn’s, “our esteemed and pure as driven snow white women.”  Moses heard a distant car motor and paused.  With a smile, he continued.  “We got other shit to do.”  He broke a sapling across an oak trunk and pointed toward the creek.

           “But a coonass microwave is that bigass box you saw me a-cussing and a-rollin’ down there to the creek and sink in that hole.  See how it works is typically they prep up a pig and slow roast him in that thing.”  Antoine’s eyes got big.  The box was easily large enough for a man.

“They like all that spicy shit, so they shoot him up with spices and all with a big needle.  Take the hog, lay the hog in there, close the lid, cover it with charcoal and light it up.  Then start drinking beer for about six or seven hours and voila!  Pig roast time.  They call it a cochon du lait down here.  It’s French for pig or white meat or frog legs or something, I dunno.  I was told something about it’s pork being a white meat but I don't speak that gay Frenchy shit.  My girl you gave the pork to might coulda’ explained it to you, but her mouth is kinda’ beat all to shit right now.”

           “What the fuck?  You even crazier than I thought!  Let me go, man.  Don't fucking eat me, main!  Please Mister!  It ain't Christian.  You a Christian right?”

           “Kinda’ on the fence about ole Jehovah, amigo.  But you can rest assured I ain't a-gonna’ eat you.  Shit, I just had some damned good pizza.  I ain’t hungry.”

         “Then what you talking about, man?  What you cooking then?”

         “You!  You dumb fuckin’ waste of life!  You rapin’ ass, dope-sellin’, murderin’ piece of shit.  I'm waiting on the boss and his bigass brother to get here.  Then we are gonna drag your shot-up ass over to that box, lock you in it, cover it in wood and kerosene and listen to you bake like a greasy fucking meatloaf in there.  It's gonna’ take a while but you may not want to know that though…”  Moses stared with dead eyes and chuckled. “Oops, guess I let the cat out early, huh?”

Panic sent the naked man attacking his bindings with his teeth, screaming through the pain of his wounds.

           “And when you are good and cooked, we're gonna crush up your skull with the maw I got in the back of the truck and we’re a-gonna’ toss it into the river right down the road from here.  And probably not too long after we cut outta here, the hogs and the vermin around here are gonna’ eat all the rest of you.”

           “You ain't doin’ shit!  You lyin’!  You full of shit!  Hey!”  Antoine screamed aloud as two men came walking up the muddy road.  One was fat.  The other was average-sized but had a pronounced limp.

         “This motherfucker's crazy!  Run and get help!  He gotta’ gun, man!  Run, fool!”  They never broke stride despite his warnings.  When the pair got close enough for him to make out their faces, Dyer realized the Boss had arrived.

         “Look here, Misters.  That man is crazy.  He said he gonna’ kill us all and burn us up and rob you!  He done turned on you!”  The fat one chuckled aloud at the charge of treason.  The smaller one folded his arms and smiled at his supposed turncoat.

         “That a fact, Moses?  You a-gonna rob me and ole Pete here?”

         “Why of course, Griz.  I’ve been waitin' here with this loudass bag of bones two days just pickin and a-grinnin ‘til I get you close enough for y’all to shoot back at me.  But goddamned if y’all forgot to be weighed down with ten dozen sacks of gold for me to steal and retire with so I guess I’ll have to keep my nefarious intentions silent just a little while longer.”

         Grizzly Fontenot nodded at the stack of wood Moses had stacked.  “How in the hell did you think you had enough wood out here to burn Pete’s big ass up?  Dat ain’t enough to smoke a coon, let alone a coonass.”

         “Figured I did, but damn.  Forgot my chainsaw, I guess.”

           “I ain't lying, man.  He’s gonna’ kill us all!” Dyer noted the lack of attention to him.

         Grizzly backhanded him across the face.  “Shut up, shitbird.  I'm tired of you already and I jess met you.”  Grizzly knelt down by the black man swinging and tussling in the ropes.  “My name is Grizzly Fontenot, asshole.  You, Antoine Dyer, have caused me a great deal-a grief and for dat, you find yo'self in your current sorry way.”

         “Sir, I'm beggin’ you.  Don't kill me.  I'll leave town and I ain't never coming back around here no mo.  You all crazy down here.  I'm fucking gone!”

           “Pinky swear?”  Grizzly wiggled his pinkie in his face.  Moses suddenly had Antoine’s hand in his fists.  Pete pulled out the .357 and fired a shot through Antoine’s palm.

Grizzly slapped him playfully on the bare ass and limped over to Moses, laughing.  Pete just stood in front of the man in the rope swing, never moving a muscle while staring at him behind his dark sunglasses and three-piece suit.

           “On my mama's grave, man.  I'm scared, man.  Please, please...” He started bawling as he looked at his disintegrated hands.  “Sir!”  He snorted as snot pored from his nose.  “Please don't!”

         “A man begging to live ain’t nothing I ain't seen before, shitbird.  Have some dignity and I might only shoot you in da head before we roast you.”

         It was a long while before Antoine Dyer made a sound approaching a human voice as he yelled for help once more.  By the time he began wailing apologies and offering again and again to disappear, Moses and Grizzly were leaning against the Bronco as Pete, stripped of his coat and tie, made off to find some more wood.

         “Your girl is doing okay.”  The pair smoked cigarettes and murmured.  “She a lil beat up, Mo.  You got sloppy.  I warned you bout taking dat wildcat huntin wit you.”

         Moses only shrugged but Grizzly could see he was happy to get an update.  “It was a bad spot to be in.  Hitting a crackhouse at night was a dumb-shit move.  Next time I won't be so eager to please you.”  Moses smirked.  “But, all in all, she learned a hard lesson.  Maybe she won't be so fucking eager to go next time.”

           “Not dat one, no sir.  She wild as wild can be.  Got stitches all over her mouth.  And her ass probably.  But you tell her tomorrow, you say, 'Hey baby, me and you, we gotta’ go down der to da Ninth Ward wit jus a knife and a broke beer bottle to kill fifty crackies.'  And dat girl, she jess gone and ask if she get da knife or da bottle.  Ain't seen one like her.  Theo and Betty says hey, by the way.”

           “I saw them.  I had to get her squared away so I could come out here and decide how to mend fences with that ghetto bastard appropriately.”

         “A cochon du lait?  Really?  I mean, Moses.  I admire your ingenuity sometimes, but dammit boy.”  He sucked his teeth.   

         “That's quite a lot of doing just to make a point.  After the ruckus getting outta’ der, you coulda’...”  Dyer’s screams finally got to Grizzly.

“Hey!  Shuddup ovah der, dead man!”  Pete pummeled the back of Antoine’s head with a huge fist as Grizzly shook his head in disgust.  “You coulda just popped him and been gone.”

           “But just think how happy the free-range locals will be when all that stringy meat just falls off the bone for them.  He stuck it to my lady, Griz.  He gonna’ know that shit don't fly before he dies.”

           “Yeah.  I reckon so.” Grizzly shook his head and chuckled.  He folded his arms and sighed.  “Right about the time that box door starts getting too hot to slap against and the air cooks out of it.”

           “It's got air holes.  I thought ahead.”

           “Damn.  Remind me not to piss you off.”

           “Just make sure the check always clears.”

           Grizzly chuckled.  Moses Holliday bent backwards, stretching and popping his old back and then swayed at the hips to pop it further.

         “Let’s do this.  I’m tired of this fucker and I gotta’ go see my girl.” He lit a cigarette. “It’s gonna’ be a bitch hiding this camp before I leave.”  They walked toward the swinging man.

“You bring your apron, Pete?”  Griz asked as he and Bertrand ambled toward Antoine Dyer.  The big man heard him and smiled at Dyer.

“Dammit, Mo.  You supposed to feed his ass corn for a while fo’ you cook 'im.”  Grizzly chuckled.  “He gonna’ be all gamey.”

“What?”  Dyer looked at his captors in panic.  The end game was now, he realized to his horror.  Despite the agony, he suddenly feared the cessation of the pain that much more.

“I kinda’ did.”  Moses sneered.  “Straight off the cob.”

         Grizzly Fontenot only shook his head in glib amusement as he grappled with the man's kicking feet while Moses and Pete hogtied him for transport before untying the suspension ropes.  “I ain't even asking.”



         “Hey you!” Curio smiled as Moses let himself into her room.

         “Howdy, ma’am.” He took off his hat and flipped everything he had in his hand onto the table. “How you feeling?”  He walked to her, shaking his head and he saw her bruising and swelling.

         “I feel no pain.” She smiled. “If you get an itemized bill, find out what that was they gave me.  It’s hannndy.”

         “We’re all done up here.  You ready to head out?”

         “I told Grizzly I wanted us to go back to the Bentley.”

         “We can’t go there with you busted up like that.  It’ll be suspicious.”

         “Well shit.”

         “Sorry, but I promise we can come back after you heal up.”

         Assuming we aren’t wanted for murdering three men up here… They each thought the same though simultaneously. 

         “Can we go back to your house?  I don’t wanna’ go to mine first.”

         “Of course.  We’ll head straight there.”

         “Moses?” She looked at him and took a deep breath.

         “Yeah, baby.” He sat down beside her.

         “I looked in the mirror after I took a shower.  I’m a fucking mess.”

         “He beat you up pretty good.  When I woke up and heard them having at you, I went a little crazy.” He looked at her face and touched it delicately.

         “Kiss my bo-bo.” She threw out her lip.  He pecked her softly.

         “Kiss some salt in it.  Like you told me that one time.”

         “I think you had enough salt in it.  We got sloppy, baby.  That can’t happen ever again, okay?”

         “Grizzly came by.”

         “He told me.”

         “I was scared.  Pete was just looking at me with those sunglasses on the whole time.  I swear they still don’t trust me and you working together.”

         “I can’t disagree with them.  It was tough.  Tougher on you, but tough on me to know it almost got us both killt and got you…” He turned away.

         “Fucked, baby.  Fucked.  Don’t think I was raped.  I let that fucker have at it.  I thought you was dead when I hearad one of ‘em with your gun.  I figured the only way I was gonna’ get loose was if they had a turn and got all sleepy or whatever afterward.  When I heard you was alive, baby!  You got no idea how happy I was to know that.  Yeah, we fucked up.  But I know if you’re around or I’m around, we both got a fightin’ chance because neither one of us is gonna’ take that shit for long.”

         “Some things are beyond our control though, baby.  For either of us.  It’s hard for me to not think about that.”

         “Kiss me and think about that then, Moses.  Because I’m laying here and it’s all I wanna’ think about right now.  You took care of that asshole, right?”

         “He’s handled.  Very much so.”

         “Then the revenge is done so just kiss me and let’s go home.”



 

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