“I knew you was a cop.”
“Already told you – not a cop. Don’t have to be a cop to know you’re heading for a major jolt in the joint.”
His fat lips quivered. “Already done that.”
He lifted the shotgun and Jack ducked to his right, his finger tightening on the Semmerling’s trigger. But the sawed-off barrel kept on rising till the bore was snug against the underside of Fatso’s chin.
Jack cringed, waiting for the boom and brain splatter.
It never came. A sob burst through Fatso’s lips as he dropped the weapon back to his side and slumped to the floor again.
“I can’t do it!” he screeched through clenched teeth.
Jack, speechless before this utterly miserable creature, said nothing.
“Can’t hack the joint again, man,” Fatso moaned. “I can’t!”
“What’d you go in for?”
“Got a dime for dealin’. Out early.”
“What’s your name?”
“Henry. Henry Thompson. They call me Fat Henry.”
Can’t imagine why,” Jack thought
“The joint – is that where you met Khambatta?”
Fat Henry nodded again. “He on the back end of three-to-five when I got in. We became… friends.”
“You two don’t seem to be each other’s type.”
“He protected me.”
Jack nodded. He got the picture.
“I see.”
“No, man. You don’t see,” Fat Henry said, his voice rising. “You don’t see shit! You don’t know what it was like in there! I was tail meat! Guys’d be lined up in the shower to get at me! I wanted to die!”
“And Khambatta saved you.”
Fat Henry let out a tremulous sigh. “Yeah. Sort of. He took me in. Protected me.”
“Made you his property so he could have you all to himself.”
“I ain’t like that, man! I just did what I hadda to get through it! Don’t you dump on me if you ain’t been there!”
Jack only shook his head. He didn’t know how many things were worth dying over, but he was pretty sure that was one of them. And he didn’t know what to make of Fat Henry. He was one pathetic son of a bitch, but he wasn’t a killer. He was going to be treated as one, though – a cop killer.
“So how come you’re still with Khambatta?”
“I ain’t. He ain’t like that, either – least not outside. We got out about the same time and he call me last week ‘bout picking up some quick cheese.”
“Swell. What you picked up instead was another trip to Attica.”
“No way I’m goin’ back inside! I’m getting outta here.”
“How?”
“Gettin’ a car from the cops.”
“You sure about that? What’ve you told them about their dead pal?”
“Nothin’. Told ‘em he’s safe and sound but I’ll shoot him dead they make a move on me.”
“You really think they’re going to let you have a car without talking to their man, without making sure he’s all right?”
“Yeah. Sure.” Fat Henry’s voice faltered. “They gotta. Don’t they?”
Jack shook his head, slowly, deliberately. “Switch places: Would you let you have a car?”
“I ain’t goin’ back.” Tears began to stream down his face. “I’ll off myself first!”
“You already tried that.”
Fat Henry glared at him. Again he lifted the shotgun. Jack thought he was going to put it under his jaw again; instead he offered it to Jack.
“Here. You do it.”
Jack took the weapon and sniffed the bore. It hadn’t been fired tonight. He was almost tempted to aim it at Fat Henry’s face to see how serious he was about this, but decided against it. Instead, he worked the pump, sending red-and-brass cylinders tumbling through the gloom one after another until they lay scattered on the floor like party favors. He tossed the empty shotgun back to Fat Henry. Hard.
“Do your own dirty work.”
“You fucker!”
Thoroughly fed up, Jack stepped over him toward the airshaft opening.
“And I’m not hanging around listening to you blubber.”
“I need help, dog.” He was whining now.
“No argument there. But there’s only one person here who can help you and he’s sitting on the floor whining.”
“Fuck you!”
Jack had one leg through the opening. He turned and jabbed a finger at Fat Henry.
“You’re the one who’s fucked, Fatso. Look at your life! What’ve you ever done with it? You got busted dealing – crack, right? You let yourself be the shower-room bimbo until some tough guy came along and made you his private tool. You went along on this armed robbery bullshit, and now somebody’s dead and you’re bawling because it’s time to pay the piper. You make me sick.”
Another whine. “But what can I do?”
“First of all, you can get off your ass and onto your feet.”
Fat Henry rolled over and struggled to his feet.
“Good,” Jack said. “That’s a start. Now you’ve got to go upstairs and face the music.”
He stepped back, a caged animal look in his eyes. “Uh-uh.”
“Either they take you up there, or they come down those stairs, step over the body of their buddy, and take you here.”
“Told you! I can’t go back to the joint!”
“You’ve got to stand up, Henry Thompson. For once in your life you’ve got to stand up.”
“But I can’t!”
Jack stared him down in the silence that followed.
“Then sit here all night and play with yourself until somebody else makes the choice for you. That seems to be the story of your life, Henry.”
Fat Henry looked toward the steps up to the first floor. He stood like a statue, staring.
“I can choose,” he said in a soft, far-away voice. “I can choose. I’ll show you I can choose.”
“Sure you can, Henry.”
Jack left him like that.
4
A little while later Jack stood in the street, on the fringe of the crowd around Costin’s. He wanted to tell the vultures to go home, that it was going to be a long night. He was about to leave for home himself when Fat Henry came out.
Costin’s front door slammed open and there he was, all three-hundred pounds of him, brandishing his shotgun and screaming like a wild man. He got off one blast that looked like it was aimed at the moon. All around Jack the crowd screamed and dove for cover, leaving him standing alone as the two-dozen cops out front opened up.
The fusillade slammed Fat Henry back against the doorframe, his sawed-off went spinning, and then he was turning and falling and rolling down the steps. It was over in seconds. No Peckinpah slo-mo. No ballet-like turns. Quick, graceless, ugly, and red. He hit the sidewalk face first and never moved again.
Fat Henry Thompson had finally stood up. And he’d got his wish: He wouldn’t be going back to Attica.
Jack turned and walked away, stepping over the prone onlookers as they peeked between their fingers and made horrified noises. As he headed home he tried to put his finger on the feelings massed in his chest like a softball-sized lump of putty – cold putty. Not sadness, certainly not glee or satisfaction. More a bleakness. A dark despair for all the hardcore losers in this city, the ones it created and the others it attracted.
He passed a corner litter basket and gave it a hard kick, adding an especially deep dent to its already bruised flanks.
A waste. A damn stupid fruitless futile ass-brained waste.
When he got to his door he realized he didn’t have his beer. The six-pack he’d gone out for earlier in the evening was long gone from where he’d left it sitting on the curb. He could really have used a Rock about now. And he could probably find an all-night deli to where he could buy some.
Nah.
Jack stepped inside and locked the door behind him.
He couldn’t risk it. The way thing
s were going tonight, he might not make it home again.
introduction to “The Wringer”
In August of 1991, Ed Gorman called requesting a story for the third Stalkers anthology. I don’t know where I came up with “The Wringer” or its sick villain. The anthology was titled Night Screams and wasn’t published until 1996(!) The story was never reprinted and I loved its cat-and-mouse dynamic too much to let it molder forever in an out-of-print paperback, so in 2010 I included it in Fatal Error.
The Wringer
1
Munir stood on the curb, unzipped his fly, and tugged his penis free. He felt it shrivel in his hand at the cool caress of the breeze, as if shrinking from the sight of all these passing strangers.
At least he hoped they were strangers.
Please let no one who knows me pass by. Or, Allah forbid, a policeman.
He stretched his flabby, reluctant member and urged his bladder to empty. He’d drunk two quarts of Gatorade in the past two hours to be sure that it would be full to bursting, but he couldn’t go. His sphincters were clamped as tightly shut as his jaw.
Off to his left the light at the corner where 45th Street met Broadway turned red and the traffic slowed to a stop. A woman in a cab glanced at him through her window and started when she saw how he was exposing himself to her. Her lips tightened and she shook her head in disgust as she turned away. He could almost read her mind: A guy in a suit exposing himself on a Sunday afternoon in the theater district – New York’s going to Hell even faster than they say it is.
But it has become hell for me, Munir thought.
He closed his eyes to shut out the bright marquees and the line of cars idling before him, tried to block out the tapping, scuffing footsteps of the pedestrians on the sidewalk behind him as they hurried to the matinees, but a child’s voice broke through. “Look, Mommy. What’s that man–?”
“Don’t look, honey,” said a woman’s voice. “It’s just someone who’s sick.”
Tears were a pressure behind Munir’s sealed eyelids. He bit back a sob of humiliation and tried to imagine himself in a private place, in his own bathroom, standing over the toilet. He forced himself to relax, and soon it came. As the warm liquid streamed out of him, the waiting sob burst free, propelled equally by shame and relief.
He did not have to shut off the flow. When he opened his eyes and saw the glistening puddle before him on the asphalt, saw the drivers and passengers and passers by staring, the stream dried up on its own.
I hope that is enough, he thought. Please let that be enough.
Averting his eyes, Munir zipped up and fled down the sidewalk, all but tripping over his own feet as they ran.
2
The phone was ringing when Munir got to his apartment. He hit the RECORD button on his answering machine as he snatched up the receiver and jammed it against his ear.
“Yes!”
Pretty disappointing, Mooo neeer,” said the now familiar electronically distorted voice. “Are all you Ay rabs such mosquito dicks?”
“I did as you asked! Just as you asked!”
“That wasn’t much of a pee, Mooo neeer.”
“It was all I could do! Please let them go now.”
He glanced down at the caller ID. A number had formed in the LCD window. A 212 area code, just like all the previous calls. But the seven digits following were a new combination, unlike any of the others. And when Munir called it back, he was sure it would be a public phone. Just like all the others.
“Are they all right? Let me speak to my wife.”
Munir didn’t know why he said that. He knew the caller couldn’t drag Barbara and Robby to a pay phone.
“She can’t come to the phone right now. She’s, uh… all tied up at the moment.”
Munir ground his teeth as the horse laugh brayed through the phone.
“Please. I must know if she’s all right.”
“You’ll have to take my word for it, Mooo neeer.”
“She may be dead.” Allah forbid! “You may have killed her and Robby already.”
“Hey. Ain’t I been sendin’ you pichers? Don’t you like my pretty pichers?”
“No!” Munir cried, fighting a wave of nausea. Those pictures – those horrible, sickening photos. “They aren’t enough. You could have taken all of them at once and then killed them.”
The voice on the other end lowered to a sinister, nasty, growling tone.
“You callin’ me a liar, you lousy, greasy, two bit Ay rab? Don’t you ever doubt a word I tell you. Don’t even think about doubtin’ me. Or I’ll show you who’s alive. I’ll prove your white bitch and mongrel brat are alive by sending you a new piece of them every so often. A little bit of each, every day, by Express Mail, so it’s nice and fresh. You keep on doubtin’ me, Mooo neeer, and pretty soon you’ll get your wife and kid back, all of them. But you’ll have to figure out which part goes where. Like the model kits say: Some assembly required.”
Munir bit back a scream as the caller brayed again.
“No no. Please don’t hurt them anymore. I’ll do anything you want. What do you want me to do?”
“There. That’s more like it. I’ll let your little faux pas pass this time. A lot more generous than you’d ever be – ain’t that right, Mooo neeer. And sure as shit more generous than your Ay rab buddies were when they killed my brother over there in Baghdad.”
“Yes. Yes, whatever you say. What else do you want me to do? Just tell me.”
“I ain’t decided yet, Mooo neeer. I’m gonna have to think on that one. But in the meantime, I’m gonna look kindly on you and bestow your request. Yessir, I’m gonna send you proof positive that your wife and kid are still alive.”
Munir’s stomach plummeted. “No! Please! I believe you! I believe!”
“I reckon you do, Mooo neeer. But believin’ just ain’t enough sometimes, is it? I mean, you believe in Allah, don’t you? Don’t you?”
“Yes. Yes, of course I believe in Allah.”
“And look at what you did on Friday. Just think back and meditate on what you did.”
Munir hung his head in shame and said nothing.
“So you can see where I’m comin’ from when I say believin’ ain’t enough. Cause if you believe, you can also have doubt. And I don’t want you havin’ no doubts, Mooo neeer. I don’t want you havin’ the slightest twinge of doubt about how important it is for you to do exactly what I tell you to. ‘Cause if you start thinking it really doesn’t matter to your bitch and little rat faced kid, that they’re probably dead already and you can tell me to shove it, that’s not gonna be good for them. So I’ve gonna have to prove to you just how alive and well they are.”
“No!” He was going to be sick. “Please don’t!”
“Just remember. You asked for proof.”
Munir’s voice edged toward a scream. “PLEASE!”
The line clicked and went dead.
Munir dropped the phone and buried his face in his hands. The caller was mad, crazy, brutally insane, and for some reason he hated Munir with a depth and breadth Munir found incomprehensible and profoundly horrifying. Whoever he was, he seemed capable of anything, and he had Munir’s wife and child hidden away somewhere in the city.
The helplessness overwhelmed Munir and he began to sob. He had allowed only a few to escape when he heard a pounding on his door.
“Hey. What’s going on in there? Munir, you okay?”
Munir stiffened as he recognized his neighbor’s voice. He straightened in his chair but said nothing. Charlie lived in the apartment next door. A retired city worker who had taken a shine to Barbara and Robby. A harmless busybody, Barbara called him. He couldn’t let Charlie know anything was wrong.
“Hey!” Charlie said, banging on the door again. “I know someone’s in there. You don’t open up I’m gonna assume something’s wrong and call the emergency squad. Don’t make a fool out of me.”
The last thing Munir needed was a bunch of EMTs swarming around his apartment.
The police would be with them and who knew what the crazy man who held Barbara and Robby would do if he saw them. He cleared his throat.
“I’m all right, Charlie.”
“The hell you are,” Charlie said, rattling the doorknob. “You didn’t sound all right a moment ago when you screamed and you don’t sound all right now. Just open up so I can–”
The door swung open, revealing Charlie Akers – fat, balding, a cigar butt in his mouth, the Sunday comics in his hand, dressed in wrinkled blue pants, a T shirt, and suspenders – looking as shocked as Munir felt.
In his haste to answer the phone, Munir had forgotten to latch the door behind him. Quickly, he wiped his eyes and rose to close it.
“Jesus, Munir,” Charlie said. “You look like hell. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing, Charlie.”
“Hey, don’t shit me. I heard you. Sounded like someone was stepping on your soul. Anything I can do?”
“I’m okay. Really.”
“Yeah, right. You in trouble? You need money? Maybe I can help.”
Munir was touched by the offer. He hardly knew Charlie. If only he could help. But no one could help him.
“No. Nothing like that.”
“Is it Barbara and the kid? I ain’t seen them around for a few days. Something happen to–?” Munir realized it must have shown on his face. Charlie stepped inside and closed the door behind him. “Hey, what’s going on? Are they all right?”
“Please, Charlie. I can’t talk about it. And you mustn’t talk about it either. Just let it be. I’m handling it.”
“Is it a police thing? I got friends down the precinct house–”
“No! Not the police! Please don’t say anything to the police. I was warned” – in sickeningly graphic detail–”about going to the police.”
Charlie leaned back against the door and stared at him.
“Jesus… is this as bad as I think it is?”
Munir could do no more than nod.
Charlie jabbed a finger at him. “Wait here.”
He ducked out the door and was back in less than two minutes with a slip of paper in his hand.