© 2009

It’s a strange time to be a writer of short mystery fiction. On the one hand, print magazine outlets have dwindled to the point where longtime stalwarts Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock are still just about the only places to get paid a decent wage. On the other hand, thanks to Akashic’s “City Noir” series and upstart small presses like Busted Flush Press and Bleak House Books, the anthology market is so glutted that I pity anyone judging the short story category for the Edgar Awards.

But if you’re a writer and your voice and style doesn’t fit EQMM or AHMM’s guidelines, if you don’t have an in with specific editors or if you’re still not known enough to be picked up by one of the themed anthologies sponsored by the major crime writing associations, where do you go?

For the last few years, the answer is online.

It took a while for that answer to gain any sort of traction. Like any new medium, the Web was greeted within publishing circles and by would-be authors with skepticism and scorn, and often for good reason: poor presentation, questionable editing, and seeming instability. Many heralded early players like Blue Murder, HandHeldCrime, and Plots with Guns no longer exist; others have severely curtailed activity or dropped fiction altogether. For those that remain, creating their own distinct presence, adopting strict editorial guidelines and producing quality fiction, what still remains a sticking point is the lack of cash-the equivalent of a couple of high-priced beers if the writer’s lucky.

So why go online?

Several reasons. First, it gives undiscovered writers a wonderful opportunity to get their unique voices heard and distributed to, potentially, a bigger audience than a tiny print magazine that goes out of print after a month. Second, because of the dwindling print markets, more publishing professionals are looking to the Web for talent and quality. I can name example after example: Scott Wolven, whose stories have almost exclusively been published online, has been included in six consecutive editions of the Best American Short Stories, published a collection of short stories with Scribner, and has a novel in the works with Otto Penzler’s imprint at Harcourt. Allan Guthrie, who went from publishing his first story online to three-book deals with Harcourt and the Scottish publisher Polygon. Ray Banks, following Guthrie’s trajectory almost note-for-note; and Dave White, moving from critical acclaim for his Jackson Donne short stories to similar acclaim for his Jackson Donne novels published by Three Rivers Press.

The Web has become a haven of experimentation and risk-of stories that don’t quite fit a particular mold. It’s inspired a new wave of noir and allowed younger writers to have their voices heard, and there’s no better example of this than Thuglit. From the moment Todd Robinson launched this online magazine in late 2005, I’ve been impressed with the caliber of stories, the quality of prose, and the gut-wrenching emotions that pulsate on the virtual page. No wonder Thuglit made the jump to print format, mixing all manner of dark doings originally published online with original stories by the brightest (or is that blackest?) stars of contemporary noir like Wolven, Guthrie, Joe R. Lansdale, Jason Starr, and Marcus Sakey.

The big guns may be the draw to entice readers to open this anthology’s pages, but the reprints-from Jónas Knútsson’s knucklebuster tale of a Budapest brawler to Justin Porter’s depiction of Mexico City at its seediest to Patricia Abbott’s sly twist on noir conventions-are the meat of Sex, Thugs, and Rock & Roll, dripping so much blood and guts and marrow that it’s impossible to read this book in more than a single sitting. Be prepared to be shattered, shell-shocked, and bruised as Thuglit’s emissaries continue to write wrongs that are very, very right.

Welcome to the second collection of the best crime fiction culled from the depths of Thuglit.com and some of the best literary purveyors of mayhem and attitude on the planet.

I needed the six horse to win the fourth race at Belmont in a big way, but as the horses went around the far turn I knew it wasn’t happening. The six made the lead but he was all out and another horse, the nine, was flying on the outside. In mid-stretch the nine hooked the six, but the six dug in-just to extend my torture a little longer-and they went neck and neck past the sixteenth pole.

“Hold him off, you cocksucker!” I yelled. “Get up, you fucking son of a bitch!”

Naturally, I was wasting my breath. Seventy yards to the wire, the six hit quicksand and the nine drew off to win by an open length.

I went back into the grandstand, cursing, ripping tickets. The six was my big play of the day. I bet my lungs on it-five hundred win and another six hundred in exactas and triples. Yeah, I hit a couple cover exactas on the nine-six, but what would that get me, a hundred and change? Big whoopy shit.

I rode the escalator to the second floor, went to the saloon, and ordered a J.D. straight up. I downed it in one gulp and asked for a refill. A guy sat next to me. He was my age, early forties, had a big gut and thinning gray hair. He was in an expensive suit and was wearing a Rolex. But he had a wannabe way about him. Maybe he was rich, maybe he wasn’t, but he wanted everybody to think he was.

He ordered a gin and tonic, then said to me, “How you doin’?”

At the racetrack when somebody asks you how you’re doing they’re not inquiring about your health.

“How do you think I’m doing?” I said, figuring I’d let the fact that I was at the bar downing J.D.’s at two in the afternoon on a bright sunny day do the talking.

“Had the six in the last, huh?” he asked.

“Tell me how he fuckin’ loses that race,” I said, getting aggravated all over again. “I mean, okay, the nine was good. But with the fractions he got, what, half in forty-seven and change? He should’ve won by open lengths.”

“Maybe he was a little green?”

“Green? Come on, give me a fuckin’ break. It was, what, his fourth time out? Mark my words, that horse’ll never win a fuckin’ race, not at this track anyway. Maybe if they ship him up to fuckin’ Finger Lakes or some shit track he’ll break his maiden.”

My heart was racing and my face was burning up. I felt the way people probably felt before they had heart attacks.

“Well, thank God there’s five more races to get ’em back, right?”

“Not for me. I came here to be the six horse.”

“And I came here to talk to you.”

During our conversation so far, I’d been looking away and at my glass mostly, but now I looked at the guy in the suit and said, “And who do you think you’re talking to?”

“Your name’s Jimmy Guarino, right?”

He got my name right, but I said, “Who the fuck’re you?”

I’d been doing PI and protection work for eleven years, three on my own. I hadn’t made a lot of friends along the way and I never knew when somebody’s life I’d fucked up would show up looking for payback.

“DiMarco,” he said, extending his hand. “Andy DiMarco.”

I didn’t shake his hand, just asked, “The fuck do you want?”

“Big Mikey said I could find you here.”

Big Mikey was a good guy, a bookie/loanshark from Staten Island. He grew up in my neighborhood-Brooklyn, Bay Ridge-and when I was a teenager I went out with his sister for a while.

“Sorry about that,” I said, feeling bad for treating him like shit. I smiled, trying to make nice, and said, “I hope you’re not looking for a hot tip, ’cause I’m telling you right now, you came to the wrong guy.”

“I’m not looking for any tips, I’m looking for a good PI, and Big Mikey said you’re one of the best.”

“I always do what I’m hired to do if that’s what you mean by good.”

“I was interested in hiring you to do a job.”

“What kind of job?”

He took a sip of his drink, swallowed hard, then said, “I think my wife’s fucking somebody.”

He sounded a little choked up, like it was hard for him to talk about it. I almost felt sorry for him.

“Take it from me,” I said, “guy’s been divorced three times. If you think she’s fucking somebody, she is.”

“Yeah, well, I want to know for sure.”

“Yeah, well, I’m telling you for sure.”

He glared at me, then said, “I want the fuckin’ evidence.”

They always wanted evidence. I guess seeing was better than believing, or at least it made it easier to walk out the door.

But I didn’t know why I was giving this guy marriage counseling. Cheating spouses were my easiest cases, how I made most of my money. I liked them because they were fast and uncomplicated. When spouses cheated, they were so lost and in-love that they got careless: writing incriminating e-mails, making long phone calls, doing public displays of affection. It was almost like they were begging to get caught, to get out of their shitty marriages. So I just took the pictures, got paid, and everybody was happy.

“If you want evidence, I’ll get you evidence,” I said.

“Thank you,” he said. “What do you take up front?”

I usually took five hundred as a retainer, but I took another glance at the well-pressed suit, the gleaming Rolex, and decided to roll the dice.

“A thousand,” I said.

“No problem,” he said.

Fuck, should’ve asked for two. Talk about nothing going my way.

He opened his wallet and took out a money clip. He peeled off ten hundreds from the wad and handed them to me.

I pocketed the money, then asked, “So why do you think she’s cheating?”

“She’s acting funny,” he said. “Been acting funny for a year, wanna know the truth.”

“Funny?” I asked. “What’s funny?”

“She doesn’t tell me where she’s been, sometimes I can’t get her on the phone, shit like that. I swear to God, I don’t know how many times she’s told me her cell phone wasn’t working or she couldn’t get service. Shit like that.”

“Who do you think the other guy is?”

“Got no fuckin’ clue, that’s why I’m hiring you.”

I asked for the usual-his address and phone numbers, his wife’s work address, the time she left for work in the morning, the time she usually came, et cetera.

“And I’ll need a picture,” I said.

He opened his briefcase, took out a photo, and handed it to me. I suddenly understood why he was so worried. Some guys came to me, worried their wives were cheating on them, and then I’d see a picture of the old cow and think, What’s your problem? You should be thanking God she’s fucking cheating on you. But Debbie DiMarco was a total knockout-wavy blond hair, dark tan, and somebody had paid good money for that rack.

“Good-looking woman,” I said.

“Don’t get any ideas,” he said seriously, like he really thought I wanted to bang his wife. I did want to bang her, but still.

“Take it easy,” I said. “It’s a compliment. You have great taste.”

I looked at the picture again, thinking, There’s no way in hell this broad ain’t cheating on this guy.

“Sorry,” he said, calming down. “I just get a little possessive sometimes, I guess. As you can see, she’s very beautiful. I was the happiest man in the world when I met her, but now she’s making me fuckin’ miserable.”

Jesus Christ, he wasn’t going to cry, was he?

Yes, he was.

He dabbed his eyes with a napkin, then blew his nose into it. People were looking over.

I downed the rest of my drink, then said, “Look, I’m gonna do everything I can to get you what you want, but just get ready because it probably won’t be pretty.”

He stood up and looked at me, eyes all bloodshot, and shook my hand, squeezing much harder than necessary.

“Thank you, Jimmy,” he said. “I’m really counting on you, man.”

He finally let go of my hand, and I walked away, letting Mr. Rich Guy pick up the tab.

…And now, the last bad thing about being so fat: my fingers can’t find the bullet holes. They’re there, because they brought me down and now there is sticky blood mixing with the sweat all over, but my clumsy hands can’t find what kind of holes just got poked into my body. Are they just little puckers in the flesh? Or is it worse than that? Are scoops of me missing?

Somebody will write about this on the Internet. I bet they call the article “Fatty and Clyde,” or something like that. Everyone will read it and chuckle. And everyone will look at me and see something else, which is what always happens. That’s how Benny got to me when I should have known better. He looked right at me.

For a few blessed hours in the early afternoon, The Palooka Bar is transmogrified into a country club of sorts, a veritable Agora of Socratic discourse where elevated exchange of ideas and sentiments becomes possible before the drudges and working stiffs pour in. By the round table, Viddi, The Cadaver, Rhino, and Hulk the bouncer nursed their Buds, all smiles but each sporting a shiner.

Into The Palooka Bar breezed Mercy Beaucoup, bringing with him spurts of the autumn sun. “What’s with Petey the pit bull family reunion?”

“We were gonna roll this guy…” jubilated Rhino.

“Just wanted to borrow a few rubles and he wasn’t too forthcoming,” Viddi hastened to add.

The remembrance brought forth a gentle smile across Hulk’s broad face. “We ran out of beer money.”

“He beat us to a pulp,” Rhino chimed in.

“That should make you happy,” Mercy Beaucoup acknowledged.

“Scuzzy’s our one-way ticket to the land of plenty,” Hulk announced with pride.

“First he lays some rubes on the canvas,” extrapolated Rhino in a reverie. “Then he lays the golden eggs, and then Scuzzy lays some bread on us and we lie back and live the good life.”

“But, Viddi, you’re not allowed within a mile of a boxing ring after-”

“Bah, Burgess Meredith can train him for all I care,” retorted Viddi. “Kid’s got the stuff. All I’m going to do is sit back, watch the show, and count the cash.”

“To Dimitri Sciatscu of Bucharest,” toasted The Cadaver.

Rhino raised his beer mug high. “Our gravy train just come in, straight from Bulgaria.”

When Dad paid for art school, they never said anything about career possibilities. Not for a fine arts degree at least. Although, if they had, I’m sure it wouldn’t have included drawing a giant Mexican force-feeding his giant cock to a drawing of a chick with giant tits.

Maybe I should explain.

I had to run away to Mexico. Drug charge, too pretty for jail, blah, blah. I’m far from my father’s hard-knocks upbringing.

“I brought myself up with these two hands. I fought tooth and fucking nail, every day, for the shit you take for granted!”

Whatever, Dad. It all amounts to having to draw cartoon rape and giant cock. For pesos no less.

It sucks.

Well, not for me directly, but for this one drawing I’m doing? Well, all I can say is I hope this girl’s colon is double-jointed.

When I got caught with some drugs-to be specific: two hundred vics, 150 percs, a shitload of reds, and a handful of whites (or at least what looked like whites), half kilo of smack, bundled and ready to go, and a half pound of weed-I got caught with a dealer friend of mine’s entire inventory. Noah’s ark for the drug addict. I know it sounds unbelievable, but it’s actually pretty simple.

“Hey, can I leave this here for a couple days?”

“Sure, man.”

Just like that, I’m fucked. Well, there might be more to it than that, but you get the picture.

So now I’m in Mexico City. Drawing giant Mexican cock. Which is great. Hey, fuck you. At least I’m making money off my artisticness, or something.

Now, I don’t know what the stereotype is for the great people of Mexico. The Irish and the Asians are supposed to be tiny. Black people are rumored to be huge-it’s part of the reason I fled to Mexico. In jail I’m sure I would have ended life as a condom.

So, what’s the common misconception? Because most of the Mexican women I’ve seen are pretty small. If all the guys down here are walking around with that shit hanging between their legs, then I just feel bad.

Inadequate, but bad.

So I got arrested, somebody was looking for the drug dealer, but they found me. It didn’t help my case that I had looked in the bag, and by looked I mean rifled through it and taken two of fucking everything. What a great weekend. I mean, I don’t remember shit, but it must have been great.

I threw a huge party. I invited everybody. I parceled out the contents of the bag.

I did not, however, invite la policia. Somebody else must have.

“No, Officer, I am not a drug ‘dealer.’ I gave all those drugs away for free! They weren’t even mine!”

Nope. Nope, I’m drawing Mexican cock and violent rape cartoons and living in Mexico City.

“You’re going to owe me big time,” Diana said.

“I already owe you,” said Detective Tillotson. “By the time you collect on all my markers, you’ll be retired. Or I will.”

He walked her down the corridor, past a series of open doors. Even blindfolded, she would have known she was in a hospital. Each room sent that disinfectant-and-dirty-diaper odor out to meet them. He stopped by the only closed door and took a photograph from his breast pocket.

“This is all he had on him. No ID. We haven’t matched his fingerprints to anything yet.”

He turned the photo around to show her. “Can you do this with your hair?”

“Sure. But the nose is a problem. Maybe I had it done, but most nose jobs go the other way. Smaller, not bigger.”

“He won’t be able to tell,” said Tillotson. “Only one eye is open, and the docs think his optic nerve is damaged. He’ll only see your coloring and your general shape. Close enough.”

She made a face. “Somebody did a job on him.”

“Get ready. It’s not pretty.”

She went back down the hall to the unisex visitors’ bathroom. Diana watched herself in the mirror as she tied her dark blond hair at the back of her neck. Her regular clients preferred her hair long and loose, but it didn’t matter. This job was still hooking-being what a man wanted her to be.

She didn’t mind this man, as cops went. He had called on her for help several times. It was tactful of Tillotson to pretend that he owed her, but when a cop asked, she didn’t consider saying no. He could make it impossible for her to work.

She found him where she had left him. “Why am I doing this?”

“He’s not talking. Maybe you can get something out of him.”

“Talking I don’t mind. Just be around in case he gets physical.”

“He won’t. Believe me, he can’t.”

He looked at his watch. “The docs say five minutes.”

She opened the door and entered the room. Tillotson swung the door closed behind her, but he left an inch of space for listening.

The man wouldn’t have passed for human anywhere but in a hospital bed. If she had seen him shrink-wrapped in a supermarket, she would have complained to the meat manager.

She knew which eye wouldn’t open. Someone had worked the entire left side of his face into a bulging purple mass. The right side looked better, but only in comparison. The eye was bruised, but it probably had some leeway to open.

He looked asleep. She hoped that he was. It would make things easier for him, and Tillotson might excuse her from her task.

Yeah, right, she thought.

She made herself take the man’s hand.

His right eye flickered. The lids parted painfully. She felt a stinging behind her own eyes.

Tears. When had she cried last? She blinked several times and told herself to concentrate on the job.

His weakness wouldn’t allow him to turn his head. She leaned over to let him see her. His swollen and shredded lips moved, and something raspy happened in his throat. Diana looked around the room. On a wheeled cart sat a water bottle. A bent plastic straw stuck out of its lid. She tried to free her right hand, but he gripped it with surprising strength. Unwilling to wrestle with him, she stretched and just reached the straw with two fingers of her left hand. She rested the bottle on the bed, changed her grip, and gently inserted the straw between his lips.

She watched to make sure that he didn’t drown himself, but he lacked the strength to take that much water. She pulled the bottle away, waited for him to swallow, and gave him the straw again.

He lay still. Diana thought she had lost him to exhaustion, but then he spoke in a thread of a voice. “I knew you would come.”

She thought about saying something vague but decided to keep quiet. Her voice might spoil the illusion.

“It was worth it. I’d do it again. Whatever it takes.”

Diana thought she understood. She fought the urge to pull her hand away. She had to make sure she was right.

“I can do anything, knowing you’ll be there,” he said. “I knew you didn’t mean those things you said. I knew you would love me sooner or later.”

This time she did jerk her hand away from him. She turned and ran for the door. It opened to meet her, and Tillotson caught her before she collided with him.

“Whoa,” he said. “What happened? Did you get anything?”

She nodded and paused to calm herself.

“I got enough,” she said.

He gave her a skeptical look.

“What I wish you would do,” she said, “is go in there and lean on his chest until he stops breathing. Save the world a lot of trouble.”

In three years this was the first time she had shocked him.

“But what I think you’ll do is go through the local restraining orders and see if anybody is missing a stalker. That woman in the picture you have is getting a breather. From him. And I have a feeling it’s not going to last. And you’re probably going to end up arresting her father, or her boyfriend, or her brother, while he walks.”

Tillotson nodded toward the room. “Sounds like you know something about this kind of thing.”

“I picked up a stalker a while back. Occupational hazard. No matter what I did, he just took it as a test that he had to pass. Pass enough of them, and we would live happily ever after. The problem was, if he saw me with anybody else, it took him about a tenth of a second to go all psycho on me.”

“Is he still a problem?”

“No,” said Diana. “Not for a couple of years.”

She met Tillotson’s eyes. “Since then I have another client who gets freebies for as long as he wants them.”

“I didn’t hear that.”

She shrugged.

“Thanks for coming out,” he said.

She left him alone with his problem.

Two days later she opened the Newark Star-Ledger. She was about to skip to the Olympic news from Barcelona, when she noticed a story about a man who had died in Morristown Memorial Hospital. The man had a name now, but it meant nothing to her. The doctors suspected a blood clot resulting from injuries that he had suffered in a severe beating. They would have to conduct an autopsy.

Police were questioning a young woman and her two brothers.

She called Tillotson at his office. He was in. He sounded as if he wanted to be somewhere else.

“They’re not talking,” he said. “At all. Not many suspects are that smart.”

In other words, she thought, I can keep hoping.

“I owe you,” he said.

“Not this time.”

I had hit the little girl pretty hard, knocking her out and maybe breaking something, messing her nose up for sure. But for me, it was worth it.

I sat at the table in the bar and smelled the sour beer and watched some drunks dance in the thin blue light from behind the bar. I was sitting with Juan and Billy, and Juan said to me, “You see our reasoning. You gonna get in with us, you got to show what you got. And fighting a guy, that shows you’re some kind of tough, but hitting a girl like that…her what? Twelve or thirteen? Way you smoked her, now that shows you don’t give a damn. That you ain’t gonna back up. If we say what needs to be done, you’ll just do it. That’s the way you get in with us, bro.”

“Yeah,” Billy said, “it makes you tough to fight a guy, brave maybe. But to hit someone like that you don’t know, just someone we pick on the street and to savage her up like that? My man, that’s where the real stones is, ’cause it goes against…What is it I’m looking for here, Juan?”

“What Mommy and Daddy taught?” Juan said.

“Shit,” Billy said, “my daddy hit me so much, I thought that was how you started and ended the day.”

“Hell,” Juan said. “I don’t know. You guys want some more beers?”

I sat there and thought about what I had done. Just got out of the car when they told me, and there was this young girl on the sidewalk, a backpack on. I could still see how she looked at me. I was just going to hit her once, you know? To knock her out, a good blow behind the ear. Nothing too savage, and then I got to thinking, These guys are going to take me in, they want to see something good. I did what had to be done. I beat her up pretty good and then I took her wallet. I started to take the backpack, but I couldn’t figure on there being anything in there that I’d want. But she had a little wallet that was on a wrist strap. She ought not to have been wearing it like that, where it could be seen. Someone should have told her better.

Juan came back with some beers and a bowl of peanuts and we sat and drank some beer and ate the peanuts. I like peanuts.

I touched my shirt and felt something wet. I started to wipe it, but then realized it was sticky. The girl’s blood. I wiped it on my pants. It was dark in there and you couldn’t see much of anything.

I watched some more couples get up and start dancing to the music on the jukebox, moving around in that blue light to a Smokey Robinson tune. My dad had always liked that song, about seconding and emotion. Billy said, “You know, even being a black man myself, I don’t like it when they play that old nigger music. How about you, Tray, you like that old nigger shit?”

I did, and I didn’t lie about it. “Yeah, I like soul fine. I like it a lot.”

Billy shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s all kind of mellow and shit. I like a nigger can talk some shit, you know? Rap it out.”

“All sounds like a hammer beating on tin to me,” I said. “This stuff, it’s got some meat to it, cooked up good. Plenty of steak, not just a bunch of fucking sizzle.”

“He told you,” Juan said. “One nigger to another. He told you good.”

“Yeah, well, I guess nothing says we got to like the same stuff, but that’s all Uncle Tom jive shit to me. A little too educated, not street enough.”

I remembered what my brother Tim said to me once, “Don’t let these neighborhood losers talk you down. Education hasn’t got a color. Money, it’s all green-and education, it gets you the money. It gets you something better than a long list of stickups and stolen money. You got to have pride, brother. Real pride. Like Daddy had.”

Daddy had worked some shit-ass jobs to help us make it. Mama died when we were young, fell down some stairs drunk. Broke her neck. Daddy, he didn’t want us to end up drinking and fighting and getting ourselves in trouble the same way. He tried to raise us right, told us to get an education. That’s what Tim had done, got an education. He’d gone straight, done good. I loved Tim. He was a proud man. Well…boy, really. He wasn’t much older than me. Twenty-two when it was all over for him. When I thought of him, what I thought of as a proud man, I hated that he was gone.

Me, tonight, I wasn’t so proud. I’d beat that girl good and taken her little pink wallet from the pocket of her dress. A pink wallet that when you opened it and folded it out had some pictures, some odds and ends, and five dollars.

“So, you guys, to get in with the gang, you do something like you had me do tonight?” I said.

I knew the answer to that, but I was just making conversation.

“Yeah, well, we did one together,” Juan said. “He was Mexican and almost as dark-skinned as me, and that’s pretty damn dark.” All I could see of him really was his teeth in the blue light from behind the bar. He said, “We did a guy, me and Billy. Did him good.”

“So you do a guy, and then you have me do a girl, and you tell me that’s the way to do it? What about the rest of the gang? Any of them do like I did?”

“Sometimes, something like it,” Billy said. “We had one boy who loved dogs, we had him shoot his own dog. Pet it on the head and open its mouth and stick a gun in there and shoot him. Shot came out that dog’s ass, ain’t kidding you. Went through that dog’s ass and through a wall in the guy’s house and knocked a lamp over.”

“I think the bullet went in there and hit the end table,” Juan said. “I think the table jarred and the lamp fell off.”

“Whatever,” Billy said. “You know what? That guy, he don’t stay in the gang long. He shoots himself. Found him dead, lying over his dog’s grave. That’s no shit. Can you imagine that, getting that way with a dog? You got your gang, and your family…and everything else? That’s just everything else, and that includes dogs or the fucking kitty.”

“So I beat up a girl and this guy shot a dog, and you guys did a guy, so now we’re all equal? That the way it works?”

Juan shook his head. “Well, you got to do something to get in, but we did something big, and that made us kind of lieutenants. You, you’re just like a private. But you’re in, man. You’re in.”

“Mostly,” Billy said.

“The gang, they still got to have a look at you, and our main man, he’s got to give you the okay.”

“So what did you do?” I said. “I’ve heard around, but I was wondering I could get it from you.”

Juan sipped his beer. “Sure,” he said.

Billy said, “Way we did the guy was the thing.”

“We may be small town, baby,” Juan said, “one hundred thousand on the pop sign, but we got our turf and we got our ways, and we did that boy good.”

“He was young, maybe about your age,” Billy said. “Age we are now. He worked at a little corner grocery, was a grocery boy.”

“What grocery?” I said.

“One around the corner, just a half block from here,” Billy said. “Or was around the corner. Ain’t no more. There’s a big burn spot where it used to be.”

Billy and Juan laughed and put their fists together.

“You mean the Clement Grocery?” I said.

“That’s it,” Billy said. “Guess it was, let me see…how long we been in the gang, Juan?”

“Three years come October,” Juan said.

“I know the place,” I said. “Course, I’m pretty new here now, but I used to live here when I was younger, so I know the place. I didn’t live far from here.”

“Yeah?” Billy said. “Where?”

“I don’t remember exactly, but not far from the grocery. I used to go there. I don’t remember where I lived, though, not exactly. Not far from here, though.”

“You ain’t that old. You remember the grocery, you got to remember where you lived,” Billy said.

“I could probably find the place, just don’t remember the street number. You took me around, I could find it. But, man, I don’t give a shit. This thing you did with the grocery boy. Tell me about that.”

“We should have left that grocery and the kid alone,” Juan said. “It was a good place to get stuff quick, and now we got to go way around just to buy some Cokes. But, man, what we did, it was tough. We was gonna be in the gang, you see? And the Headmaster-which is what he calls himself-ain’t that something? Headmaster? Anyway, he says we got to do something on the witchy side, so we went and got a hammer and nails. When we got there, the kid was working in the store and the place was empty. Just goddamn perfect.”

“Perfect,” Billy said.

“So we got hold of the kid and while Billy held him under the arms, I got my knee on his foot and got a big ole nail I had brought. And with the hammer, I drove it right through his foot and nailed him to the floor.”

“He screamed so loud I thought we was caught for sure,” Billy said. “But nobody come running. They must have not heard him, or knew it was best to pretend they didn’t.”

“Fucker kicked me with his other leg, two, three times and I just hammered the shit out of his leg. Billy couldn’t hold him anymore, and he fell over. Then I kicked him a bit and he quit struggling, but he was plenty alive.”

“That’s what makes what happened next choice,” Billy said. “We put some boxes of popcorn on him and then we set fire to the place.”

“You forget I nailed his other foot to the floor.”

“That’s right,” Billy said. “You did.”

“He was so weak from the kicking we had given him, and all the blood that had filled up his shoe, was running out over the top of it, he didn’t know I was doing what I was doing until the nail went in.”

“He really screamed that time,” Billy said.

Juan nodded. “That’s when we got the popcorn, bunch of other stuff, and started the fire. We ran out of there and across the street and in the alley. We could hear that kid screaming across the street, but nobody came. A light went on in a couple windows of buildings where people lived upstairs, but nobody came.”

“Fire took quick,” Billy said. “We were so close-and if I’m lying, I’m dying-we could hear that popcorn popping and him still screaming. And then we saw the flames licking out of the open doorway. Then we saw the kid. He got his feet free, probably tore the nails right through them, and he was crawling out the door. He was all on fire, looked like that Fantastic Four guy. What’s his name, The Flame?”

“The Human Torch,” Juan said. “Don’t you know nothing?”

“Yeah, him,” Billy said. “Anyway, he didn’t crawl far before that fire got him. Then we finally did hear some sirens, and we got out of there.”

“Last look I got of that kid, he wasn’t nothing but a fucking charcoal stick,” Juan said.

“That’s what got us in the gang,” Billy said. “And the Headmaster, he said it was a righteous piece of witchiness, and we was in, big time. You sweating, man?”

I nodded. “A little. I got a cold coming on.”

“Well, don’t give it to me,” Juan said. “I can’t stand no cold right now. I hate those things, so stay back some.”

“This Headmaster, he got a name?” I asked.

“Everyone calls him Slick when they don’t call him Headmaster,” Billy said. “Shit, I don’t even know what his real name is, or even if he’s got one. He’s maybe nearly twenty-six, twenty-seven years old. It don’t matter none to you, though. You done done your thing to get in, and we’re witnesses.”

“Once you’re in,” Juan said, “no one much fucks with you. It’s like a license to do what you want. Even the cops are afraid of us. They know we find out who they are and where they live, we might give them or their little straight families a visit.”

“Gang is the only way to live around here,” Billy said. “Get what you want, feel protected, you got to have the gang, ’cause without it…man, you’re just on your own.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know what that’s like, being on my own. So I’m in. I’ve done my deed and I’m proud of it, and I want in.”

Judy had every right to be pissed. I wasn’t supposed to stop at the bar after I’d cased it; especially not while the owner was there. But I just had to get a look at the loser we were gonna rip off. The other guy she was sleeping with.

She tapped her fingers on the bar, her arms spread out on either side of the beer, eyes narrowed, exaggerating the wrinkles that had started spreading from their corners since the last time I’d seen her-nearly seven years before the call out of nowhere.

“Five bucks,” she said.

I knew she’d be mad at me, but I hadn’t expected her to actually charge me for a goddamned beer. It was a business expense as far as I was concerned.

A quick glance in both directions showed no patrons within hearing distance, besides my partner, Dell. Tipping the glass towards her, I said, “I didn’t get a chance to pick up any cash on the way down.”

“Don’t look at me, I’m on the dole,” Dell said when Judy switched her attention from me to him.

“There’s an ATM right behind you.” She chin-nodded towards it. “You two idiots forget about it already?”

“Come on, hon, can’t you spring for a round?” I said.

“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” she said, picking up a bar rag from a sink under the cheap Formica bar top. “Maybe we should call it off.” She wiped the ring formed by my beer mug.

“Jesus Christ,” I said. “I’ll pay for the drinks.”

Pushing away from the bar, I nearly collided with a guy maneuvering a hand truck behind me. His close-cropped hair was a mix of dark brown and silver. Freshly touched-up tattoos covered the parts of his thick arms exposed by his light-colored T-shirt. One of the tattoos was a Black Flag symbol. Old pop marks could still be seen poking through the fresh coat of ink. Hard to believe punk rock kids were pushing fifty nowadays.

“Can you let me in, hon?” he said, scurrying past me to the part of the bar that swung upward to let people behind it. He had to be Steve, the owner.

Judy worked her way down the end of the bar and lifted the top up to let Steve in with the beer-case-laden hand truck. She was making too much of an effort to ignore me as I went over to the ATM and stuck my card in. I hoped Steve-O didn’t pick up on it.

I watched them out of the corner of my eye as I waited for the machine to process my transaction. He effortlessly picked up cases two at a time and set them on the bar, then transferred the bottles one by one into the cooler, rotating the older ones to the top. His arms looked like they were outgrowing the tattoos. I guessed he’d traded in heroin for weight training as his addiction of choice. He certainly wasn’t the pushover Judy had made him out to be.

“Something wrong, Judy?” he asked, pausing, looking at her as she brushed past him to service another customer at the other end of the bar.

“We need more Jameson,” she said, annoyed.

“What’d I do?” he said, catching a sympathetic look from Dell as she grabbed a near-empty whiskey bottle and poured.

Smiling, I hit my code, authorizing the machine to deduct a dollar fifty for the privilege of taking my money out of it. I guess Stevie boy wasn’t used to Judy’s moods yet. It’d taken me a while to get used to them myself, when we were together full-time.

A small screen popped up on the ATM, telling me the price for taking money had gone up another fifty cents. Two dollars to take out twenty. Seemed like usury to me, especially since I’d only have thirty-eight dollars left in the account after the transaction.

I guess I shouldn’t complain. I’d be getting my money back from the machine tomorrow night, right after Dell and I rolled it out into my pickup truck after the bar closed.

I stared out the window of the restaurant into the grayness of a Chicago January morning. The streets were clear of snow, but the sidewalks were dusted white and the curbs caked with black slush. I finished my coffee and motioned the waitress. “This is my last job.” She didn’t look at either of us as she refilled my cup. We waited for her to leave.

Frank took a bite of toast. “You told me that already.”

“Well, I’m making sure you heard me.” I creamed my coffee. “Eighteen years of this job is enough.”

“I understand. Most people burn out after five.” Frank took his cigarette from the table edge and took a drag, blowing the bluish cloud towards the ceiling.

“This job eats at your soul.” I took another drink. “It’s nothing but negativity day in and day out.”

“Billy, I said I understand, quit preachin’.”

“Sorry, Frank. I’ve just hit the point where I can’t take it anymore. So, who is it this time?”

“Right.” The cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth as he spoke. I’ve always wondered how smokers could do that without losing the cigarette. Frank slid a manila envelope across the table. “We’d like you to get it done this afternoon.”

I put the envelope next to me. “You sure he’s going to be home?”

“Yeah. Larry Spanos is sitting on him.”

“Right. You sure Lar isn’t banging that little broad of his in the backseat again?”

“Jonny Moon is with him.”

“That’s comforting. He’s probably jerking off in the front seat.” I shook my head. “Jonny Moon. Did that sick fuck ever tell you what he used to do when he worked in a sandwich joint?”

“I can’t say that he did,” Frank said, mildly interested.

“Well, he’s someone I won’t miss.” I took a bite of bagel. “Fuckin’ guy.”

“So, this afternoon, right?” Frank pinched his cigarette between his fingers and dropped the carcass to the floor.

“No problem, Frank. It’s a done deal.”

“I can’t say we’re not going to miss you.” Frank lit another cigarette and took a drag. “You’re one of the most reliable guys I have.”

“Oh, let’s not get sentimental,” I said, popping the last piece of bagel into my mouth. “I tell you what, I’ll let you pick up the tab this time.”

“I always pick up the tab.” He smiled. “It’s my job.”

I finished my coffee and stood up. “Take it easy, Frank.” We shook hands and I left.

The room wasn’t what Banjo expected. He was thinking fancy rugs, a lot of red and orange, candles and incense, hippy shit. But the walls were bare except for a black-and-white poster of a staircase. It was just another cell.

Banjo shrugged, nodded to the other inmates, stood in the back corner. Laid out in a grid on the floor were about a dozen blue cushions. Nothing fancy; plain.

The door opened. A huge bald man walked in, wearing a gray track suit with a picture of a poodle on it. Every part of him was big, almost like he’d never stopped growing. He nodded, looked around the room, eyes twinkling. “We’ll wait a couple more minutes.” He busied himself by rearranging cushions.

The others filed in, took a cushion each, crossed their legs, and sat. Banjo stayed put.

“Okay,” the bald man said, “Remember the Stairway To Heaven?”

A couple of the inmates laughed. One piped up. “How’s that go, Sam?”

“You forgot? Don’t know about you.” Sam chuckled. “It’s easy. Just think of the song. Imagine all the people you ever knew are up in heaven, and there’s a stairway leading up to them, like the one on the poster. At the top, it’s all white light. Imagine taking a step at a time, one with each breath.” He clapped his hands and closed his eyes.

“All right, I’ll bite. Why won’t you take a cushion?”

Banjo took a moment to figure out who Sam was speaking to. “’Cause this is a load of shit.”

Sam laughed in a gentle way that washed over Banjo like rain. “Maybe. But what I told the boys last week was this: you can handle most situations in two ways-one bad, one good.”

Banjo said, “Pile it on.”

“Your legs might get sore, maybe your back too. There’s nothing stopping you sitting on a cushion and taking it easy.” Sam opened his eyes. “See? Two ways.”

Banjo noticed an empty spot in front of Sam. He picked up a cushion and took it over, sat down, stared at Sam for a few seconds, then nodded.

“That’ll do,” Sam said. “Now we’ll try another exercise, one we haven’t done before. To make it easier, get in whatever position you like.”

Everyone shifted. Banjo kept his legs crossed, matching Sam.

“Up till now, I’ve told you all exactly what to do. This time, I want you to get creative. Close your eyes and breathe slow. While you’re doing that, keep your mind on something else. That something else is up to you. A beach at sunset, a big old tree on top of a hill…” He looked around. “Just don’t make it tits and arse.”

They all laughed.

“The point is to remind you of a time when your life was at peace. Five minutes, no talking, just breathing. I’ll tell you when it’s over. Has everyone thought of something?”

There were a few grunts around the room.

“Okay, start.”

Everyone except Banjo closed their eyes. Some of them looked like they’d swallowed a lemon. Others were smiling.

“This is bullshit.” Banjo stood up, walked to the wall by the door.

Sam said, “It’s open.”

Banjo reached out and tried the door handle. It worked. He went out, let himself fall back against the wall.

Outside in the corridor, there were three inmates on cleaning duty. One of them was a burly Maori that everyone called Kong.

“Big man Banjo’s gone to see the sky pilot,” Kong said.

The inmates on cleaning laughed like a pack of wild animals.

One with a bandana tied too tight around his skull let his mop go. The mop fell against the wall of the bucket, sloshing the dirty water around. He stepped forward, laughing at Banjo.

Banjo stared until the inmate backed away, knocked into the mop, and tipped the bucket over, spilling dirty brown suds all over the floor. The water came up to Banjo’s feet. Kong wasn’t so lucky.

Kong glared at Banjo. “Now look what you done, robe fucker, you messed up my boots.”

Banjo had had enough.

He leapt at Kong with a speed that startled the others, who scurried back to the wall, staying out of the way of the fight.

Kong was taller than Banjo and built strong, but Banjo grabbed Kong’s dark, curly hair, letting all of his weight rest on it. The speed of the attack and the pain of having his hair ripped brought Kong to the floor.

It was on.

Banjo didn’t waste any time. He balled up his right fist and held Kong’s head down on the concrete with the other hand. Banjo’s fist came down hard. Once, twice, again. He pummeled Kong’s face, cheek, nose. The third strike drew blood, but by then, Kong had twisted his larger frame around, kicking Banjo in the back.

A dozen shoes came pounding down the corridor. The screws had their nightsticks raised, brought them down on the two fighters. Outnumbered and further bloodied, Kong and Banjo backed down.

On the way back to his cell, Banjo thought about the class. That thing about the stairway to heaven might have worked, might have given him some peace-if he knew what peace was. But Banjo couldn’t see himself setting even a foot on that stairway. No fucking way.

He was stuck in hell.

She calls sometimes. Late at night, drunk or worse. She calls to say she hates me.

One time she said a guy offered her money to blow him in a bar bathroom. Then, defiant, told me she’d done it. Fifty dollars, she said. That’s what she’s worth.

My Jessica. My baby girl.

The last call, three months ago, all she did was cry. Not heaves and jags. Gentle sobs like rain that falls all day. She never even said who it was. I held the phone and whispered, over and over, that it would be okay. That she should come home. That I loved her and would take of her.

When she finally spoke, just before she hung up, she said that it was all my fault.

She’s right.

I got the E. coli really bad the morning of the heist from hot dogs earlier in the week, but I didn’t see the other three sweating and cramping and squeezing back their bowels like me, suffering in the backseat of Winona’s Saturn coupe. It was me, Winona driving, Lewis back with me trying to keep his distance, and Abe riding shotgun. Abe and Winona had a thing. I’d wanted her first. He’d acted first. I don’t know, maybe I still had a chance. We really had good talks. I hated listening to them fuck at night.

Only two more hours south, the Indiana/Michigan state line. Our first destination, State Line Steve’s Adult RelaXXXation Den.

My roommate Abe thought up the heist on the way home from his aunt’s funeral in Ohio. He noticed the state line porn shops and imagined they’d be loaded with cash since pervs wouldn’t want the shit on their credit cards. Not a bad idea. I’d never robbed anything before, but my options sucked after I was kicked out of school on a “sexual assault” charge. One of Winona’s friends-she said the charges were nothing personal, but the bitch got a sweet settlement from the school. All I’d done was try to show her that a back massage from me would melt her tension like butter. Instead she kneed me and called security.

Winona was still my friend, though. She trusted me, probably because touching her would result in Abe touching me badly. I didn’t want that, remembered two purple fingers and a makeshift cast. One still won’t bend right.

Lewis was melting into the door, telling them to turn on the air.

“No,” I said. “Freezing.”

“It’s fucking May.”

“But he’s sick,” Winona said. “Chills. Come on. Poor guy.”

Lewis said, “If he’s got food poisoning, aren’t we gonna get it too?”

“Could’ve been a bad frank. Just one that didn’t get cooked enough. Or maybe it’ll take longer for one of you to get sick. You’re more muscular.”

“What if it’s the flu? Or worse?”

Abe turned his head. “Would you shut up? It’s a fucking stomachache, that’s all.”

“Actually, it’s bacteria,” Winona said. “Most things that make us sick are bacteria.”

Lewis glanced at me like I had plague. “You sure? How do you know that?”

Her eyes rear viewed him, rolled. “Duh, I was taking classes, remember? To be a med lab tech?”

“You get far enough to know a cure?” I said. Every word strained, couldn’t risk releasing.

She shrugged. “That would’ve been the next semester. It was just too hard for me.”

I didn’t buy it. I knew how smart she was. Her problem was, she’d rather drown herself in lemon drops and Jell-O shooters than study Immunology. Her new major at Grand Rapids Community College was Social Work, her fourth in two years.

“I need a restroom,” I said.

Abe turned farther, couldn’t get his face around that far. “Really?”

“Urgently.”

The rising sun tries to lift the heavy blanket of smog off the sleeping city, but it is only partially successful. Nothing too beautiful can ever fully come out in a place like this.

I look down from where the sun should be and inhale on my cigarette. “Would you roll the damn dice?”

“You’re holding them,” Billy Strap says.

I look in my hand and I’ll be damned if they aren’t in my palm right next to the knife scar. “Right,” I say, and hand him the dice.

Some nose-to-the-ceiling dame with curves like a violin tramps right through the middle of our game. She’s expensive looking: tailored business suit, leather briefcase, and one of those classy Dutch boy haircuts.

“Hot, hot, hot,” Billy Strap says. “I’d like her in my stable.”

She doesn’t look back. Her kind never looks back. Looking back would be admitting someone like me exists. In a world like hers I don’t exist until something goes wrong.

Billy’s dog, Cordoba, starts to bark and pull against its choker. This breed is something designed in the deepest pits of hell by demons with too much time on their hands.

“Shut that beast up and roll the dice.”

Billy studies the dice, rolls them back and forth in his palm, talks to them, cajoles them, and all but fucks them until I’m pretty sure I’m going to strangle the little bastard.

“Roll!”

He rolls the dice. They bounce off the brick wall and land on an oily piece of cardboard in the alley.

Billy jumps up. “Eleven!”

The one die seemed to me to roll real funny, as if it were somehow off center, as if Billy Strap were a dirty low-down cheater. I hate cheaters.

“What the hell is going on with that die?”

Billy tucks his Afro under his purple fedora. “There ain’t nothin’ wrong with that die.”

I look for a weapon and spy a loose brick. I pick it up over my head and come down hard.

“Oh, no you didn’t,” Billy says.

“If didn’t means did, then yes, I didn’t. You low-down cheater.”

I lift the brick. We look. There’s nothing there but pieces of broken-up dice.

“It looks like you owe me some motherfuckin’ dice,” Billy says.

I toss him a balled-up ten spot. “Here, take it. Buy yourself some real dice and not the fuzzy kind either. The fleas on that leopard-print coat of yours would send all their young ones into a pair like that, and then when you’d roll them they’d dance around all funnylike. Wait, your regular dice do that already.”

“You’re crazy, Ludlow.”

“Yeah, well, at least I know it. I don’t go around pretending to be something I’m not.”

I stand and my knees creak like the doors of a rusted-out Impala. My body isn’t so much a temple as it is a lean-to. Hard living, I suppose.

Billy Strap stands using his gold cane for support. “If I were a younger man I’d whup your ass, Ludlow.”

We stare each other down until a fruit fly from the Dumpster hits my left eye and I’m forced to blink. Billy smiles triumphantly as if he’s just won something and struts off down the sidewalk holding his gold cane in the air like some sort of deranged high school bandleader. Cordoba follows reluctantly glancing back at me every few steps. He wants a piece of me.

Heading for the driveway on a Sunday morning, Denny noticed that the eight or ten cars outside his neighbor’s house the night before still lined the street. Did grown men routinely host sleepovers or should he risk embarrassment and check things out? He settled on removing Matt and Ralph’s Sunday Times from the yew where the direct hit of the irrigation system had already saturated it. Denny liked to be regarded well as long as the cost was low. The house was preternaturally quiet for nearly noon, the stillness broken only by the sprinkler’s hum.

He managed to beat Dad to the store by a full fifteen minutes and sat nervously eyeing the display of garden sculptures. More than once lately, he had stumbled over an emancipated troll idling near the rear exit or guarding the bins of screws and nuts. They had taken on the dusty, glazed look of objects that had sat too long in stockrooms. For some reason, Dad found them comical and never failed to chuckle when he came on one unexpectedly. Once or twice, Denny had smuggled one home, burying it in the backyard since he wasn’t sure of its recycling requirements. Thankfully, the decline in the store’s troll population had so far gone unnoticed.

His father arrived with the usual query, tossing his sweat-stained hat on the counter. “Have you heard from your brother? How’s the new project going?” This was strictly a rhetorical question since, as Patrick’s backer, Dad knew everything about his business. “Listen, Den,” Dad continued, not even waiting for an answer, “I have a small errand for you boys.”

Denny fixed his eyes on the dark computer screen. A small errand could mean anything from a trip to the bank to deposit funds to strong-arming one of Dad’s recalcitrant clients for payment. Besides the hardware store, a flower shop, a small restaurant in Allen Park, and the financial backing of his son’s aquarium business, Dad was an attorney with a practice in a section of the city populated by Eastern European, Latin American, and Arab émigrés. More than once, Denny and Patrick had been dispatched to collect fees from a Turk or Serbian immigrant who wanted his child support burden lowered. Or, on one rather frightening occasion, to calm a Colombian drug czar, requesting that his ex-wife be deported or disposed of (“Whatever,” Quatro Velasquez told them obligingly, fingering the square-cut sapphire on his pinky). There had been other errands too, of course-tasks Denny would prefer to forget. “All part of the show,” Dad had said to his sons more than once. “Get used to adult life.”

Michael Patterson had built an empire of sorts in just one generation, coming from a family of auto workers who never thought to do more than side their house in vinyl, drink a beer on Saturday night, and camp in July in the UP. Consequently, complaints from clients regarding his prices drew little sympathy. “You should see the fucking rates I pay in personal insurance,” he told anyone who questioned his prices or practices. “You want me to take risks, you gotta pay for it.” Despite his ever-decreasing height and the flabby girth that eating at his own restaurant had added, Dad remained formidable. He had a strong and jutting chin, a persuasive left hook, and the mental acuity to back both up.

While Denny considered the possible nature of the small errand, Dad walked over to the wall and raised the setting on the thermostat. “You don’t need to cool the whole fucking place when you’re in here alone, Den. Turn on a fan, for Christ’s sake. Open a door.” His father grabbed a stool from under the counter where the wallpaper sample books rested and sat down. “I’m talking about Tuesday night. She arrives at six forty-five p.m. Air Beirut.”

“Who arrives?”

Dad cleared his throat. “Some woman, what else? From the old country.”

“What old country?” Dad had been born and raised in Detroit.

“I met her at a wedding. Remember that client of mine-Mr. Shalaby-the one who bumped into his wife a couple years ago?”

Denny remembered. The bump had been with Shalaby’s Caddy, and following an altercation that broke two of the woman’s teeth, a cheekbone, and blackened both eyes. She was in Henry Ford Hospital for weeks. “I got him community service when he pled and he invited me to his nephew’s wedding,” Dad continued. “We got to talking-this lady and me-and anyway she lands at Metro Tuesday night. She could use a little help.”

“Language problems?”

“Sure. Sure. Language problems. That-and other things. Just get her. You and Patrick. You know what I mean, Denny. Remember how you helped me with Olga-what’s her name? This one’s even more…” His father jabbed the air in front of him and Denny, involuntarily, stepped back. “What? What? You think I’d hit you, Den?” His father seemed pleased by this thought and jabbed the air a few more times. “When did I ever hit you?”

“Does Patrick have to come along?”

“You’re in this together. He’s like an ox from carting those tanks up and down the stairs. Never can tell when muscle could come in handy.”

Denny nodded. “So where do we take her?”

“The Apollo Hotel in Greektown. Make sure those nitwits give her a nice room. Order some flowers maybe-to throw her off. Put it on the store card.” The old man grabbed his Tigers cap from the counter and headed for the door. “Anyway, take care of her just like you did with Olga. You guys did great with Olga.”

“You didn’t give me her name?”

“Right. Her name’s Nahla Khalil. She’s on Lufthansa, I think.” Michael Patterson turned back from the door. “Oh, and get her some orchids. Nahla likes orchids. She says they look like a tunnel of love.” Stepping forward a bit, he almost whispered. “When I used that line on your mother once, she said, ‘Stop talking dirty.’ Does it sound dirty to you?”

Denny shrugged. “Hey, I thought you told me Air Beirut?” But his father was gone, the heavy metal door to the back alley slamming on Denny’s last words. The troll by the door seemed to blink in the light.

It had been a long time since either Denny or his brother harbored any illusions about their parents’ marriage, but participating in the demise of women who became inconvenient to their father was unsettling. How many women must die before the old man let his prescription for Viagra lapse? Of course, Dad didn’t knock most of them off. There had just been that Olga until now. But one day soon, Michael Patterson would go too far with something and it would be time for Denny to take over-ending the pretense that his father was still the big cheese. And he would never allow a mere sexual conquest to compromise his position.

When Denny got home, a fleet of emergency vehicles were backed clear out onto Mack Avenue. Monica was glued to the window. She wore a white dress with a halter top that looked as skimpy as a handkerchief and was holding a festive glass of white wine in her hand.

“What’s going on?” he asked, easing in beside her. “It’s Matt and Ralph’s house, right?” He remembered the line of cars he’d ignored earlier.

“The EMS guys carted three bodies out,” she said breathlessly. “Now, don’t jump on me, Denny, but I wonder if we should invite the Blakes over?”

“Why would you want to invite them over now?”

“We have the better view. And we still owe them from their Halloween party. A little wine, a little brie-”

“Oh, look,” he said, interrupting her intentionally. “They’re bringing someone out through the side door.”

When it was over, two bodies and half a dozen, semiasphyxiated men had been evacuated, the survivors attached to oxygen. “It must have been some sort of poisonous gas,” Denny surmised.

Monica, now on the phone with a neighbor, shouted, “Somebody turned on the air without turning off the furnace. Every time the air came on and cooled the house, the heat came on to warm it up. And vice versa.”

“Our unit wouldn’t do that.”

“Yeah, but that house has probably never been updated. Remember Matt’s dad?”

Denny did indeed, an old policeman who lived in the house when the area was still known as Cops’ Corner. He’d been a racist and the reigning neighborhood skinflint who turned out his light on Halloween and didn’t belong to any of the neighborhood associations. When he had died three years ago, some assumed his son’s sexual preference contributed to his demise.

“Anyway,” Monica continued, “the vent outside was shut and the negative pressure caused carbon monoxide fumes to back-draft into the utility closet. The detector was disabled, who knows why, and over the course of the party, they were asphyxiated.”

“What about Ralph and Matt?”

“Oh, I forgot to ask!” She stood up, her breasts straining mightily against the fabric of her blouse.

“Dad’s got a little job for me on Tuesday night. That’s why he called this morning.” He stood right in front of her, so she would have to look at him. “Years ago, he’d have handled it himself but recently he’s begun to depend on me. I’ll be taking over in a matter of months. Oh, sure, Patrick might have to be dealt with in some fashion, but he’s got that fish business. It’ll be my empire and I’m already planning on a few changes. Those trolls in the store for instance-”

She looked at him with what seemed like great understanding, then said, “There’s some cold chicken in the fridge. I promised Mother I’d be over by two.”

They say that prostitution is the world’s oldest profession. Pimping, then, is the second oldest. You are a pimp. I know that because you said you were a pimp and being a pimp is just like being an actor-once you say you are one, you are. You’ve made your choice and now you want the knowledge that will make you an elevated pimp, the kind that makes money.

In order to pimp hard and pimp right you have to understand that you are part of something larger than yourself-something that has gone on long before you and will continue long after. You also have to learn a little about the theory and concepts behind pimping. Most of the would-be players out there are long on practice but short on theory. You must understand that like the prostitute, the pimp provides a service. Today, I’m going to tell you how you can provide that service, but you have to keep this to yourself until it’s time to pass it on to the right person. That’s part of showing respect for the game.

One of the country’s most famous pimps, Fillmore Slim, once said, “You pimp with your mind and not with your hands.” He said this because people often confuse pimping with extortion and strong-arm robbery. Beating women and robbing them of their money is not pimping. If you want to make it by being an intimidator, then go ahead on. It’s easy. You just find somebody weaker than you and rob them. Just remember to victimize people that are outside the protection of the law. Don’t just focus on prostitutes. Beat on weak drug dealers, dishonest store owners or dope fiends or anyone else that the police won’t protect.

But being a pimp is harder-it requires a different mind-set and a different skill set. If you pimp right, you won’t ever have to raise your hand to a woman and you’ll always let her know that she is free to leave at any time. You will start to provide a service instead of standing around saying that you’re a pimp, waiting to get paid-and things will go better for you. That’s why we’re here today.

I know you have a working knowledge of pimping practice; you’ve got game and Mack-ability, that’s why you’re here. You’ve got your pimp clothes, your pimp rap, and you’re working on a pimp car but you don’t really need that until after you get started. You’re familiar with terms like “turnout,” “catch,” and “knock,” which describe the ways you might break into the game. You’ve looked at yourself in the mirror for a long time and you know that you can do this. You’ve practiced standing the right way, talking the right way, and feigning disinterest. That’s good. You’ll need all that stuff, and you’ll need that kind of confidence to make it once you get your first working girl. Those things are essential to the practice of pimping.

Now let’s talk about theory.

What most young players don’t know is that the quickest way to make money as a pimp is to fall in love with a prostitute.

You think I’m crazy, but remember…the pimp provides a service. His service is to meet the needs of the prostitute. In return, the prostitute provides the pimp with all her money. This is the pimp equation.

To really be successful pimping you have to understand Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Need-players call it The Pyramid.

See, the pyramid is a triangle; you know what a triangle is, right? To categorize human need you divide the triangle into five different parts, each of which represents a basic need that all human beings have, including prostitutes. The largest area of the pyramid-the part at the bottom-shows the most pressing of human needs: food, air, and water, called “physiological needs.”

Everyone needs these things to survive and everybody that is alive is getting them. You probably won’t be able to find a prostitute that is not getting her needs met in this respect, at least not in America. However, at every other level of the pyramid, there exists an opportunity for you to be a pimp. Because the pimp assesses prostitute need and then finds a way for the prostitute to get her needs met.

At the second level of the pyramid is the need for safety and security. You might be able to find a way in here. The prostitute may not feel safe. She plays a dangerous game. She is unsafe from crazy tricks, from unscrupulous police, and from intimidators masquerading as “pimps” (not like you), who might beat her or smear her makeup. To get in at this level you will say something along the lines of “I want to protect you,” but that is usually not enough. You need to combine this need with a need from one of the other levels of the pyramid.

At the third level of the pyramid are the human needs for Love and Belongingness, such as the love of family and friends. Usually, the prostitute is not getting these needs met. That’s why the easiest way to get started pimping is to fall in love with a woman who is turning tricks. She probably has a need for love that is not getting met. The average guy on the street does not see her as a logical prospect for a love relationship and her family doesn’t love her-they probably sexually abused her when she was a little girl and then lied about it. Her only friends are other prostitutes, who by and large are dishonest, confused, and needy themselves.

This is where a good pimp can make a living-if he’s got the right stuff to be a pimp. All of these women need love. A lot of them are good-looking, resourceful, and funny. If you can find a way to “have feelings” for them you will be rewarded financially. The problem is, once you fall in love, you have to watch the woman you love go out and have sex with different men each night and that is not easy. This is what separates elevated pimps from wannabes. It takes a man’s man, a true player, a Mack, a pimp, to really love a woman who is having sex with other men every night.

If you think you can do this, you are ready to become an elevated pimp. If you could never love a working girl, then you’re better off calling yourself a pimp and looking for a puddle of water inside Walgreens so you can fall down, injure yourself, and then mount a lawsuit.

Of course, if you have good theatrical skills and knowledge of the Pyramid, you might be able to provide an illusion of love-that is, to make her think that you love her. But these women, through their work, become astute judges of human nature and they can spot a lie from down the street. They’ve heard pimp lines before, and although they may appreciate the attention, in the end they are going to support the man-pimp who they believe is in their corner.

As you get near the top of the pyramid, the area of need is less, but it still exists and may provide a way for you to be a pimp. At the fourth level, right underneath the top, is the need for “ego-self-esteem.” Everybody wants to feel good about themselves and that is a hard thing for prostitutes to do. They need to feel respected-it’s not as pressing a need as the need for food and water, warmth, or love, but it is the kind of thing that can ruin a person’s life if they don’t get it. That is why so many working girls are addicted to drugs. They feel bad about themselves, so they shoot heroin every day to forget about it. A lot of them were abused as children, most of them, in fact, and they have been feeling bad for a long time. You, as a pimp, will understand the pathway that brought her to be a prostitute and you’ll show some understanding and sympathy. You’ll respect her and show her that she should respect herself.

At the top of the Pyramid is the need for self-actualization-the need to be all that you can be. It’s hard to find a way in at this level, but it is possible if you provide a dream for the future-a way out. You explain that what she is doing now represents something temporary; that you know she is better than this so she is just doing it until you “get your insurance settlement,” inherit some money, or make it as a rapper or a rock star.

If you meet the prostitute’s needs at different levels of the Pyramid, simultaneously, you will make money. You’ve got to meet needs at the third and second levels while you are trying to find a way in at the fifth level. Then you will have a devoted woman pulling for you. You will call her your “baby girl” or “hope-to-die woman.” Once you have that, you will enjoy the benefits of being an elevated pimp and know that it is time to expand your empire. Your hope-to-die-woman will help you to recruit new women. She will think she is your business partner.

The only other way to become a pimp fast is to provide a business opportunity for a prostitute-to show her she can make more money in an easier way than what she is doing right now. See, it’s all about relationships. If you have a relationship with someone who sets up dates for girls, a massage parlor, acupuncture studio, or the tricks themselves, you can go up to a girl who already has a pimp and offer her something better. A bigger cut of the money, a safer work environment, or maybe even a fun group of people to hang out with between dates. If you can connect with a pimp who is running a business-a house of prostitution or an out-call service-and then see what their needs are, you might be able to be a liaison between working prostitutes who might take advantage of good business opportunities and the people offering those opportunities.

It’s important to behave like a businessman. Go to a massage parlor and ask if they need help. Make it clear that you have a “girlfriend” who is looking for work and that she does the kind of work that this business offers. Be friendly and ask them if there is some kind of bonus that you might receive if you bring them good earners. In these arrangements the house gets half and the girl gets half plus tips. It doesn’t leave much for you.

You make these choices and then you have to live with them. The time will come when you want security and the Life will not have as much appeal for you as it does now. After you’ve learned that pimping is a job, you’ll want a vacation. You can’t put yourself on Front Street after you reach a certain point in your career.

You won’t want to be “high-siding.” Showing your car and your women around the track won’t have any appeal because you will realize that the people out there are really crumbbums and the only thing that separates you from them is your respect for the game. By that time you will want to move in different circles and get respect from a different kind of person. You will have become accustomed to a certain quality of life and may be unwilling to compromise that lifestyle. Your business may flounder and you will start to run Murphy schemes or blackmail or you may look at opportunities outside of pimping, like selling dope or doing robberies. Then you will make mistakes, you’ll take chances you wouldn’t otherwise take, and you may wind up in the penitentiary. When you get out it’s harder to come up. Maybe your hope-to-die lady will send you some money for the prison commissary at first, but in time, she’ll find someone new. You may end up walking around the Tenderloin asking people for beer money and eating at St. Anthony’s like so many retired pimps do. But you will have your memories. These are the choices we make.

So, that’s what you need to know. You’ve got all the Mack-ability now. You are the real thing, baby. Remember your responsibility to all the players that came before you. Work on having a name that people will remember. Pair-a-dice is already taken. So is Iceberg Slim. Don’t put yourself on Front Street and always show respect for the game that puts food in your mouth, gas in your engine, and respect into the eyes of the young players looking to come up. Skip the light fandango for me, Fast Ricky. You are my piece of the rock.

Maria is upset. Her chubby fingers, trembling, can’t cover her mouth sufficiently to smother the sobs. Wakes you up. Judging by the light coming through the gaps in the tin roof, it’s near nine. The atmosphere is like an amniotic sac.

“What is it, for fuck’s sake?”

Her reply is lost on you. She sounds like a Pentecostal Rosie Perez, frothing and speaking a hundred miles an hour. Four months here and you haven’t grasped the language. Haven’t even tried. You aren’t planning on sticking around.

“English. Speak English por favor.”

Hysterical shrieks.

“No, forget I said anything. I need a smoke.” You fish through your clothes beside the bed mat, till you see the cigarettes on her table. Clothed only in sweat, you stand and strike a match. She still sounds like a maniac, running in circles around the room. You grab her by the shoulders to slow her down, and speak very deliberately.

“What…is…your…problem?”

She slaps you hard across the face and chest and you slap her back. She grabs your clothes, tosses them outside the hut, and pushes you after them. Fine with you. You haven’t paid yet.

The dust clings to your damp parts. In this heat, that’s pretty much an entire outfit. You collect your clothes and carry them under your arm as you start toward the cantina.

You’ve been to Mexico once before, but this time had fuckall to do with Sammy Hagar and margaritas. This was all dust and rocks and heat stroke, skin turning to leather and sunshine so intense, your balls disappear when you squint. The Sierra Madres hemming you in sounds good for a movie, but actually makes you feel like a fish in a bowl.

You make your way barefoot towards the only road around, trying like hell to extract some nutrients from your cigarette. The dog carcass from the day before has disappeared from the roadside and you make a mental note not to chance Ramon’s stew today.

A debris cloud still hangs in the air, which means an automobile instead of a mule cart has come by recently. That could mean a couple of things: extra shipment this week or trouble in paradise.

A half dozen tin shacks like Maria’s pock the desert in no particular pattern. Thrown up without a thought to symmetry or community. A crowd gathers outside the farthest, next to the cantina. The cloud settles behind a black Cadillac, which means the answer is in fact B. Polito sent some of his muscle to settle something.

The crowd is comprised entirely of women, the whores who live here at the whim of Harlan Polito-who is decreeing judgment from on high back in the States. Also here by his will is a small group of gringos: roughnecks, punks, and psychos who do dirty deeds for money and pleasure. You belong to this group. You stay here till the man sends for you to return to the bosom of society and contribute again.

No one seems to notice your nakedness as you approach, not even Metcalf, who comes out to meet you.

“Dude.” Metcalf, the near retard you’re reduced to socializing with these days, is trying to relay gravity with his tone.

“S’up?” you offer in his native tongue.

“Dude.”

“Yeah, I got that part, what’s-”

“No, dude. Dick…”

Dirty Dick, the oldest, most senior of the gringos. A stone-cold killer. You all look up to him. He’s a legend back home. Killed five men, bad motherfuckers all, in one hit. Disappeared after that one, years ago. No one knew if he was dead or relocated. No one but you. Nearly plotzed when you’d met him here. Retired. Kicking back in old Mexico, getting stoned, getting pussy, getting fat.

“Where’s Dick?”

As you speak, the crowd parts and two beefy guys in black suits-the uniform of a Polito dipshit henchman-haul a dead man by his arms, his heels dragging in the dust, from the cantina to the back of the car. As they drop him into the trunk, you recognize the corpse as Conrad, one of the other gringos living here. His front is blackened with blood. His own, judging by the color of his face and the gash in his throat.

“Fuck me,” you whisper.

“Dude,” agrees Metcalf.

“Where’s Dick?” you repeat. Metcalf is rooted there; breathing through his open mouth, glad to have another civilized white man to stand next to. He doesn’t answer.

You start to pull your pants on. The sight of your dead friend, scumbag that he was, seems to require a gesture of dignity, even one as feeble as this. The two men had disappeared back inside the cantina and reappear now dragging another body, this one female and local. It’s a Maria, one of the prostitutes. All the women here are prostitutes the gringos call Maria, but this is Dick’s Maria, plain as day.

Dick is the third body hauled out. Though beaten and bloody, he’s definitely breathing as they drop him on top of the other two and slam the trunk. The henchmen get in either side of the Cadillac’s front seat.

Ramon, the barkeep, catches your eye as the car backs up and drives away. The crowd turns to watch it go, but you study Ramon grinning after the hearse. It’s always bad news when Ramon is happy. He wipes his face with his right hand and you notice his knuckles. Broken. Swollen. Bloody.

No wonder he’s smiling.

The following story is inspired by graffiti inscribed on the walls of the prehistoric chambered cairn in Orkney, Scotland, known as Maeshowe or Orkahaugr. The inscriptions, circa 1150, are thought to have been written by Viking crusaders. More info here: http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/maeshowe/maeshrunes.htm

Hours had passed since we crawled into the gut of this Orcadian burial tomb. The tunnel opened into a high-ceilinged central chamber where Tholfir Kolbeinsson, Einar Orkisson, and Ofram Sigurdsson now lay sleeping. In the lightflicker, Arnfithr Steinsson carved letters in the stone.

Inside the mound of Orkahaugr, we sheltered, warm inside its flint-raked walls. While outside, snow fell thick as flour shaken from a thousand sacks.

I listened to the scratch of Arnfithr’s words until sleep stole my soul.

The wind moaned. It howled.

Flames swathed my thigh. Fiery droplets skittered down my calf. Neck-split, Erlingr lay death-still where he fell. The Damascene arose, a hole punched in his chest, and kissed my bleeding lips.

I cried aloud and woke, shivering. Cold sweat pooled above my buttocks.

I stretched my leg. The lazy clink of sword and axe, the scrape of hide on bald clay, stirred no one. Piecemeal, the snuffle and snort of my band of sleeping Jerusalem-farers soothed the dream-lashed weals of my mind.

My tongue flicked over ever-foul lips.

Arnfithr still wrote. He glanced my way yet did not speak.

“Are you telling of our deeds?” I asked.

His smooth-skinned arm dropped to his side. “I am the man most skilled in runes in the Western Ocean. Yet I have no stomach for those tidings.”

“What are you writing?”

“My name. That I was here.”

“Carve something for me.”

“What shall I say, Hardaxe?”

I thought for a moment, my fingers probing the hollow chambers of my axe. Sockets pocked the shaft where once gleamed jewels. I gripped the handle and squeezed. I smiled. “Say: Ingigerth is the most beautiful of all women.”

Arnfithr roared. His laughter brought Tholfir scrambling to his feet.

Nervous Tholfir. A good soldier. He hid his fear.

I spoke to him now as I spoke to him in the dusty heat when our skins burned and blistered and burned again. “It’s okay,” I told him. In some ways, despite his thirteen years, he was still a child.

He lay down, nestled against me, and was asleep again before Arnfithr had stilled his shaking shoulders.

“Be serious, my friend,” Arnfithr said. “These ancient walls want to know what Haermund Hardaxe has to say.”

I am surfing the edge of a Friday night drunk as Angelo arrives. He comes to the end of the bar, hooks the rail with a steeled toe.

He whispers, “You want to play some paintball tomorrow?”

“That sounds good to me.”

My stare slides away. You never look directly at Angelo because he’ll take it the wrong way, even with me.

He gets a beer, takes a swig. When he says nothing else, I add the rest of it.

“You want to bring Benny too? He’ll get pissed if we don’t call him.”

A smile crawls up one side of Angelo’s face. The cobra tattoo on his neck uncoils in rhythm.

“We can call him, if you insist. He loves his paintball. But he’s not you. You taught me everything I know, brother.”

We tap fists. Angelo takes a backseat to few men, but he defers to me on paintball issues. It’s funny how that works. I am not big or strong. I don’t shave my head or have angry tattoos scrolling across my back that speak of white power. I don’t wear black boots with red laces. But I can move through the woods and pick my targets. I am a calm shot with a paintball gun. I can plan strategy. I see things happening ahead of me.

Angelo thinks this makes me some kind of warrior. He thinks I’ll come out and shoot jigaboos with him when the United States breaks out in a race war. Except I don’t call them jigaboos, I don’t hang out with his comrades, and I don’t give a flying fuck about his race war. I just like nailing people sometimes. Yeah, I pretend it’s killing, and I talk about it when the beers start going down-about how I could really kill people. But it’s just talk. Angelo and I became friends in grade school and we’ve woofed on shit since then. The thread of our friendship has stretched thin through these strange and empty years.

He asks, “What is it you study again?”

“I’ve told you a hundred times. You don’t need to bust me about it.”

“I’m not busting you. Do you like it?”

“It’s interesting.”

Angelo laughs. “It could some in handy sometime, that’s all I’m saying.”

“Handy how?”

He claps me on the shoulder, throws down a five. “You call Benny, and then call me. We all go up together.”

He leaves without another word. The conversation rewinds in my head. Something sinks in my gut and leaves a terrible hole.

Two months ago, I enrolled in Carbon County Community College to study mortuary science.

I want to be a funeral director.

Why would that come in handy?

I wake up behind a desk. Some banal article about some equally inane fact is splashed across the monitor of the latest Intel-enhanced box wedged beneath my desk. Coffee rings make java Olympic symbols on the blotter. It’s one of those green leather-trimmed calendar blotters that all mahogany slabs have. Each day lined up like soldiers. Their blocks crammed with thin green lines so I can write down all the mundane crap that I have to do during the week. By the looks of things, I have my share, as there is more ink than blotter. The funny thing is-I’m really not quite sure this is my desk. I’m assuming it is since I’m sitting behind it.

The desk is mahogany, sultry swirled mahogany, like the eyes of a lovely South Sea islander whose mother slept with one too many Frenchmen. The chair, however, is vinyl; the same stick-to-my-thighs vinyl that covered the chairs of my mother’s small, dingy, eat-in kitchen; the kind of vinyl that groans like flatulence if you move to stand up. Mom’s name was Betty, like Betty Crocker. Obviously, I’m midmanagement, as the seat is not leather. Nor is it some form of poly-blend stretched over the plastic frames that adorn the offices of the invisible mean-nothings. Flatulent chairs are reserved for the higher-paid peons. Leather is only attainable by those who do the pissing.

I look at my watch and see that it’s ten o’clock. A woman by a long row of filing cabinets sits there staring blankly at me. Before I know why, I flip her the bird and she smiles back and blows me a kiss. I think I hate her, though I don’t know why. I don’t know much of anything at this moment. I feel hungry. Then someone throws the switch.

I wake up and again and I’m behind a desk, or is it a table? It doesn’t matter because my wrists are cuffed and my ass squeaks on vinyl. I get the strange sensation of home. Some sweating greasy little prick tries to tower over me. His coffee cup leaves hidden marks in the workaday jungle of stains. I think that maybe he is compensating for his stature. He flips open a folder, shoves it at me. A horror show spills out across the table and an auburn-haired woman whom I didn’t even notice makes a retching sound beside me. Her cherry-red lips kiss the back of her hand. I touch the photos. The traitor between my legs twitches and I start to speak about Betty. She grabs my arm and advises me to stop talking. The silk of her blouse bulges right where it should, straining the middle button. I pray for a wardrobe failure. I close my mouth and think of her tits. She says something about a plea. Death penalty off the table. Waiting for that fucking button to pop may as well be waiting for death. Greasy Prick lobs a yellow legal pad at me with its blue confessional lines, little priests lined up down the page. A pen slides up to greet it. Button slides it toward my hand. Betty Button. I push the pen away and blow her a kiss and give Greasy the finger. I start planning my last meal. Then someone throws the switch.

I came through the front door and found Cujo and Angel snuggled in the kiddie pool. Nude and hairy. Tattooed legs intertwined. His beard flowing over her head like a kinky black wig, her arms around him, water beading atop his body fur. The television flashing raw footage of a white toy poodle trying to mount a morbidly obese opossum.

“Hey, dude, check it out. Animal Kingdom Humpathon, Volume Eight. Some little poodle’s getting it on.”

I stood over them. “Cujo, you promised.”

He laughed at the screen, sighed happily, and glanced up at me. “So?”

“And so you’re here.”

Cujo lidded his eyes and grinned. “I am.”

“You promised.”

He cocked his head and gazed at the water, raising an eyebrow. “I did.”

I tried to be stern. “I’m really disappointed, Cujo.”

He looked at me for a moment, bit his lip, and broke into a prolonged cackle.

Bill Gurevich’s first parolee of the day was a tier-one mope named Sheldon. Sheldon was fifty-seven, a weepy ex-middle school band teacher and statutory rapist.

Gurevich was forty-nine, a retired Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputy. He ran the sex offender detail at the California Board of Pardon and Parole’s Van Nuys office, where he presided over eighty or ninety of these court-mandated interviews every week.

The ex-felons he supervised had been locked down for offenses ranging in severity from weenie wagging in the park to tossing a ten-month-old infant out of the window of a municipal bus.

Gurevich checked Sheldon’s pay stubs to make sure he was showing up regularly for his new job at the car wash.

Sheldon was afraid of the other parolees, so Gurevich walked him out through a waiting room full of fidgeting excons, and down the hall to the elevators.

On the way back, he stopped at the check-in counter and rapped his knuckles on the bulletproof partition. Tasha the receptionist looked up from her magazine.

“I’ve got a citizen coming to see me today, a Mrs. Sheila Halpert,” Gurevich said. “Be extra nice to her and call me the second she gets here, okay?”

Tasha shrugged, disengaging the electronic security door. Gurevich returned to his cubicle, got his electric razor out of his desk, and gave himself a quick once-over. He wasn’t looking forward to sitting across a desk from Sheila Halpert. One of his new parolees had abducted and raped her daughter.

Gurevich accessed the Department of Corrections database, calling up Richard Lencheski’s prison records and psychiatric reports.

Lencheski was a tier-two offender, released after doing a dime, first at Camarillo, then at San Luis Obispo.

He was six weeks out of the halfway house, still under full electronic surveillance. A vocational training course behind the walls had earned Lencheski his current, real world job as a baker’s helper. The parolee had been fully compliant since his release date, at least on paper.

Ten years ago, Lencheski had accosted the Halpert girl at a Panorama City playground, feeding her a crushed ice drink laced with codeine cough syrup before he abducted her in his camper truck. Several hours later, when he dropped her off at a bus stop, his nine-year-old victim was catatonic, with deep fingernail scratches and bite marks.

Gurevich looked at Lencheski’s prison ID photo. The guy was one of the rare sex offenders who looked the part, with fish-belly white jailhouse skin and scraggly, untrimmed eyebrows that reminded Gurevich of ticking oozing out of a flophouse mattress.

Gurevich glanced up from his computer monitor, startled, as the security lock buzzed someone through.

Thanks a bunch for the heads-up, Tasha, he thought.

He slipped on his jacket and stepped out into the corridor. Sheila Halpert strode towards him, hand extended.

Her pleasant expression caught him off guard.

Mrs. Halpert had been a fixture on the evening news since Lencheski’s release. When she agitated to abolish the parole system on the state house steps, or picketed Lencheski’s home with her supporters, all four local news stations ran with it.

On the tube she wore a boonie hat covered with campaign buttons and a trademark T-shirt-a yellow one-with an iron-on picture of her daughter on the front. Today, though, she was going low-key and professional in a designer suit.

Lauren Halpert would be a young adult by now. As Gurevich shook hands with her mother, he wondered how Lauren was getting along these days. He decided not to ask.

He ushered Mrs. Halpert into his cubicle. She sidestepped the stacks of file folders surrounding his desk and took a seat, checking out the wanted fliers for parole absconders covering his walls.

Gurevich offered coffee and she shook her head.

He said, “You look different in person.”

“That’s because I’m wearing my work clothes,” she said. “If you want any media coverage in this town you have to turn yourself into a cartoon character. When the camera crews show up, I pop into a phone booth and change into in my Vigilante Mom outfit.”

Gurevich was still trying to think of a tactful way to say what he needed to when she beat him to the punch.

“I know why you asked me to come in,” she said.

“You do?”

“Sure,” she said, “you want me to lay off Lencheski. That’s not going to happen.”

Well, there it was.

Gurevich made his voice flat and official.

“Mrs. Halpert, let me caution you. If you and your supporters get somebody worked up enough to take Lencheski off the count, you’ll be subject to prosecution.”

“Call me Sheila,” she said. “I’m a paralegal, Mr. Gurevich. If I need any legal advice I’ll ask one of the lawyers I work with.”

“How about meeting me halfway?”

“What did you have in mind?”

“You want to raise public awareness or campaign for new legislation? Great, I’ll sign your petition. But stop surrounding the man’s house. And call off those shock-jock buddies of yours.”

“Shortstack and Poppa Pete?” Sheila said, looking amused. “I don’t control those wild men.”

“C’mon, Sheila. They’re practically offering a bounty on Lencheski’s scalp. Somebody’s liable to take them seriously and kill him.”

“What a tragic loss to humanity that would be, huh?”

Gurevich shook his head. “I’m a parent too. I don’t condone or excuse anything Lencheski has done,” he said. “But the man’s under the protection and supervision of this office. So I’m asking you…I’m begging you, disband the lynch mob before everything spins out of control.”

“The system’s out of control, not me,” she said.

She picked up the framed photograph of Gurevich’s wife and daughter on his desk and examined it.

He had taken the photograph last spring, in the front yard of his heavily mortgaged ranch house in Mar Vista.

It showed Kay and Annie, his two redheads, side by side in golden late afternoon light, planting a rosebush. They wore matching straw sun hats. Annie, his little girl, looked like a solemn porcelain miniature of her mom.

“Precious,” Sheila said. “How old is she?”

“She just turned nine.”

“And you keep her picture right out here on your desk, where your parolees can see it?”

“It hasn’t been a problem,” Gurevich said.

He was lying. During Lencheski’s first visit to the office Gurevich had noticed the parolee’s gaze keep returning to his wife and daughter’s image. It had taken every scrap of his professionalism not to bat Lencheski out of the chair with a telephone book.

“Tell me something. God forbid, but what would you do if it was your little girl that animal assaulted?”

“I’m not going to answer that,” Gurevich said.

The telephone rings as I’m loading my gun. I jam the clip home, slap the pistol into my shoulder holster, take two short steps to the faux-mahogany end table, and glower down at the ancient, rotary phone.

There’s no reason for this thing to be ringing. For starters, it’s quarter to two on a Tuesday morning, well outside the acceptable hours for calling anyone. Furthermore, the phone’s number is known only to the Client, and he’s been instructed to never contact me again. I’ll do the job, he’ll learn of it later today, and our business will be concluded.

That’s the plan anyway.

I arrived by plane yesterday morning, encumbered only by a change of clothes, some toiletries, and a paperback biography of Alexander Hamilton. My first stop was at the home of an associate, who gave me the Smith & Wesson he’d procured on my behalf. Then I drove to Seattle and checked into a small and shabby motel, just within the city limits. The clerk-a truant middle-school student, surely-assigned me to this first-floor room on the front of the building. With shag carpeting, a fraying floral comforter, a television that predates the remote control, and a single faded seascape painting adorning the otherwise barren walls, it’s as if I’ve taken up lodgings at a thrift store. Still, they accept cash and it suits my modest needs, so what do I care?

I could have completed the job hours ago, but felt no sense of urgency. Drive to the Target’s home, fulfill the contract, arrange things to look like a burglary-by my reckoning, the entire operation would take little more than an hour. So I frittered away the evening, first reading my book, then alternating between the television’s two stations. Procrastination is a bad habit of mine, and one of the many reasons I am self-employed.

Finally, five minutes ago, I decided to get on with it. I slipped on my shoes and jacket, started preparing the weapon. It looked to be a straightforward assignment, and I anticipated no difficulty.

But now the phone is ringing, and that can’t be good.

I settle on the edge of the bed and study the telephone warily. It rings a fifth time, and a sixth. If someone has dialed a wrong number, they are in it for the long haul.

That, of course, is the likely explanation: a drunk in a bar, somewhere out there in the city, has accidentally punched a 7 instead of a 6 while calling a cab, and is too soused to even consider hanging up. But I know otherwise. Professionals in my field can sense impending complications like sailors smell rain.

I sigh on the eighth ring and pick up on the ninth.

“What?” I say without inflection.

At first I hear nothing but an intermittent hiss, the hallmark of a cell phone. Then a voice I immediately recognize as the Client’s. “Is…is this the, the person…?” He trails off, bewildered.

It’s strange, though not unpleasant, to hear him at a loss for words. Whenever I’ve seen the Client on television-and when I briefly met him in person yesterday afternoon-he’s been self-confident to the point of arrogance. Understandably, I guess, as one of the few dot-com billionaires to survive the crash in the late ’90s. His Web site, Opulence Online, sells luxury items to the obscenely wealthy-art, yachts, jewelry, even low-orbit space flights-and he currently presides over the company as CEO. While not the richest man in the country, he is rumored to be in the top twenty.

So I let a couple seconds tick by before answering. Let him sweat, for once in his life.

“This is Xerxes,” I say at last. “Did you forget our arrangement? No more contact, ever. Those were the terms to which you agreed.”

“The…? Ah yes! That’s why I am calling!” He instantly reverts to his typical, businesslike manner. “It’s off. I’m canceling the job.”

I shrug. “Okay, fine. It’s off.”

“Excellent.” The Client’s voice is fraught with relief. “I’m glad I caught you in time.”

“Just. I was walking out the door.”

“My lucky day.”

He hesitates, waiting for me to ask something. I don’t take the bait. “I suppose you want some sort of explanation,” he prompts.

“Not especially,” I reply. But I know he’s going to provide one. They always do.

It’s the same when they hire me: clients seem compelled to account for themselves. I tell them up front that I don’t give a damn, but they tell me all the same.

When I first started in this line of work, I thought they felt guilty, or didn’t want me to think them a bad person. But you become a pretty astute observer of human nature after a few years of doing this, and I eventually tumbled to the truth.

See, here’s the thing. To get to the point of killing someone, the typical person has to invest considerable time and energy into justifying the decision. They don’t call it “premeditated murder” for nothing. By the time they contact me, clients usually have a nicely polished rationale all queued up and ready to go. A real labor of love. Something to be proud of.

And they want to show it off. Convincing yourself that murder is acceptable takes as much skill and dedication as building a ship in a bottle. My clients don’t want to set their completed project on a shelf somewhere; they want someone to admire their handiwork.

So I pretend to listen, assure them that, were I in their shoes, I’d be doing the same thing. They beam like they’ve won a blue ribbon at the fair.

I don’t often get to hear the other end of the story, where they explain why they no longer want a target dead. Only three of my assignments have gone uncompleted-four, if you count the guy who keeled over from E. coli the day before I got to him. Even in the cases where a client calls it off, it’s never because of misgivings. It’s always for reasons as self-serving as the first.

This client’s tale is no different. The Target is a business rival who’d been blocking a key acquisition. Suddenly, the situation has changed. They’d been up all night negotiating a new arrangement, one in which the Target is now essential to the transaction’s success. Or something. I’m only half listening, honestly, though I dutifully hold the receiver to my ear for the entire story.

He reaches the culmination of his narrative, and I utter some stock phrases to imply I’ve paid attention. My goal is to wrap this up as quickly as possible.

“Anyway,” the Client concludes, “our meeting just finished, and I’m on my way to your motel. I should be there in ten minutes.”

“Why are you coming here?” I ask. “Our business is complete.”

“Well, yes. Except for the refund.”

Huh. That’s a first.

I should simply hang up, but can’t resist a riposte. “Ah yes, I see what the problem is: you appear to have confused me with a Radio Shack. I do not give refunds. Under any circumstances.”

“You never said that.”

“You never raised the possibility that the contract might be terminated,” I counter. “If you had, I would have made the policy explicit.”

“Your oversight,” says the Client, “not mine.”

At this point it occurs to me that he might be joking. It happens. Some clients, having hired a hitman, come to fancy themselves “hard-boiled,” start thinking they can treat me like a drinking buddy. They pull out all the stock phrases they’ve heard on The Sopranos, asking what kind of “heat I’m packing,” wondering when I’m going to “whack the guy.” I had one client-a woman, even-who managed to cough out the phrase “twenty-five large” with a straight face. You can see why I strive to keep my contact with these idiots to a minimum.

I have a hunch that the Client is serious, though. A refund is the sort of thing he would expect.

The customer service provided by Opulence Online is legendary. Small items are hand-delivered to the buyer within hours of purchase, occasionally by the Client himself; ownership of larger items is transferred with lightning speed. You can buy an island in the morning and be sitting on its beach in time for sunset. It’s often said that the company will bend over backwards for all their customers, and bend over forward for an elite few. And they never-never-refuse a refund.

But I have a different business model, a fact I reiterate.

He barrels ahead, undeterred. “Look, I know you had to fly out here and everything. And I’m sure you had other expenses, meals and your motel. I don’t expect you to pay for that stuff out-of-pocket. But there’s no way I’m going to let you keep forty grand for nothing. That’s outrageous.”

The Client pauses, as if considering. Then: “Let’s say you keep five thousand and return the rest? I think that’s more than fair.”

“How about I keep it all and you shove off?”

I appear to have touched a nerve. He abruptly shifts into Intimidation Mode, bellowing, “Do you know who I am?”

The question is certainly rhetorical, a line used to bully his way into restaurants and out of speeding tickets. But I decide to answer anyway. “As a matter of fact I do, Mr. O’Sullivan.”

I like to foster, in my patrons, the illusion of anonymity. I tell them not to reveal their names or any information that might enable me to identify them. It’s a charade, of course. As soon as my intermediary tells me that someone is interested in my services, I conduct a thorough background check on the potential client. The goal is to weed out the nutcases. Mr. Sullivan is proof that it doesn’t always work.

The legwork was unnecessary in this case, as the Client had delivered the money to my motel room himself. I told him to send it via courier. But when I opened my motel door yesterday afternoon, there he was, Steffen O’Sullivan, with his ridiculous hair and trademark bomber’s jacket, a duffel bag of money in hand. Behind him, in the parking lot, I could see his brand-new Lexus wedged between a run-down pickup truck and a Datsun with a garbage bag taped over a missing window.

He was restless and giddy-nervous, I assumed. That was to be expected, meeting a guy like me in a neighborhood like this, with no visible form of protection. Then I realized he was exhibiting excitement, not fear. He cheerfully handed over the cash and attempted to make small talk; I cut him off and closed the door in his crestfallen face. Afterwards, I wondered if his primary interest in doing business with me was novelty, the thrill of purchasing one of those rare things he’d never bought before.

I’d given no indication during our meeting that I knew who he was. Maybe he thought I wouldn’t recognize him, as unlikely as that sounds. Maybe he just didn’t care.

Still, I expected him to drop the matter when I actually spoke his name.

Instead he sounds pleased.

“Excellent,” he says. “And do you know how I got to be where I am today?” This time he doesn’t wait for a response, answering the question himself. “Six simple words: ‘Give the customer what he wants.’ I’ve built an empire on that motto, and it’s a good rule for any business. Even yours.”

“Now,” he continues, “I’ll make this…hang on.”

I hear honking horns and screeching tires, though no sounds of collision, alas. The Client swears colorfully at another driver, but I’ll wager he was the cause of whatever happened. People who talk on cell phones while driving are a goddamned menace.

“I’ll make this as clear as I can,” the Client resumes when the crisis has passed. “I am your customer. And I am asking for my money back. What do you say?”

“What I’ve been saying all along. I don’t give refunds.”

The Client remains silent. I listen to the petulant hum of my room’s decrepit alarm clock. Someone, a few rooms down, is watching late night television, and I can hear every line of dialogue through the paper-thin walls. I close my eyes and pinch the bridge of my nose, hoping we are done.

“Fine,” says the Client, but I can tell he has some new subterfuge in mind. “However, most businesses that don’t offer refunds at least allow exchanges. A substitution would be acceptable.”

“A substitution for what?”

“The Target, as you call him.”

“You want to switch the contract to someone else?”

“I don’t want to,” he says, “but will settle for that, in lieu of the refund you so stubbornly refuse to provide.”

“Who?”

“I don’t care. Anyone will do.”

By now I’ve decided that the Client never jokes, even when jest seems the only explanation for a statement. “You think it’s that simple?” I ask. “Do you have any idea how much effort I put into planning an operation?”

“I’m not asking you to plan,” he says magnanimously. “Just shoot the next person you see. Take his driver’s license and mail it to me afterward. I’ll have someone verify that he was killed, and we’re square. You keep the cash, I get my money’s worth, everyone’s happy.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Take it or leave it.”

“Listen,” I say. “I read the papers. I know how much you’re worth. If forty grand fell out of your pocket it wouldn’t be worth your time to pick it up. We made a contract, and you broke it. Write the money off. Why drag an innocent person into this mess?”

He barks out a theatrical guffaw. “Yes, heaven forbid an ‘innocent person’ gets involved. Everyone you’ve murdered in the past had it coming, no doubt.”

Well, he’s got me there.

I mull over his proposal. Targeting a stranger has some advantages, actually. For one thing, there will be no way to trace the victim back to me. With a hired hit, there’s always a chance that someone will blab, or the death will prove so convenient for a client that the authorities start poking around.

But I am hesitant to select the target myself, even at random. I wonder why. Maybe because doing so would run afoul of my nicely honed rationale: that I am just a gun to be pointed by others. Just doing my job, just following orders. Ultimately not to blame.

The Client remains quiet, patiently awaiting a reply. I curse myself for even considering the idea-my delay in responding implies that the “no refunds” policy is negotiable.

I am about to say something, but sensing indecision, he pounces.

“I’m about a minute from your motel, so let’s cut the crap. I want my money back. Or I want another killing in exchange. If you don’t have the guts to do the latter, then I’m taking the cash. If you don’t do either, I’ll drop a dime on you.”

Drop a dime. Christ, I hate these people.

“And what?” I say. “You think I’d just neglect to mention your name?”

He laughs, and it sounds genuine. “Say whatever you want; I’ll take my chances. In the unlikely event that anyone takes you seriously, I have the best legal team in the nation on speed dial. You don’t want to scrap with me, boy. You’ll come out the loser ten times out of ten.”

That’s the problem with these rich guys: they think they are above the law.

No, I take it back. The problem with these rich guys is that, by and large, they are above the law. He’s absolutely right about the odds. If it comes down to a legal pissing match between me and the Client, I’ll wind up in jail and he’ll come through unscathed. If anything, the rumors of dirty dealings will probably bolster his reputation as a hardball negotiator. I know it, and he knows I know it.

The blinds on the front window glow briefly as headlights rake across them. A moment later, through the phone, I hear the sound of a pulled emergency brake. The purring of the car’s engine, which had served as a backdrop to our conversation, ceases.

“So,” he says lazily, “how about that refund?”

I consider my options one last time, but he has me over a barrel. I have no choice but to comply with his demand.

“All right,” I growl, “we’ll do it your way.”

“Excellent.” He speaks briskly, closing the deal. I hear him open the car door; when it slams shut a moment later, the sound comes to me in stereo: a sharp report from the receiver, a distant bang from the parking lot outside. “I knew you’d come around.”

A crescendo of footsteps, expensive shoes on asphalt, ceases outside my door.

“Knock, knock,” says the Client into his phone before ending the call.

I cradle the receiver and yell, “It’s open.”

The Client, clad in the same clothes he’d worn yesterday, lets himself in. He takes two steps into the room, pivots, and closes the door. He is grinning when he turns back around, his face awash with triumph.

We lock eyes for a second. Then he breaks contact, glancing around the room in search of the duffel bag. “Is the money still here?”

“I think I’ve made my policy clear,” I say, rising to my feet. “No refunds.”

He continues to smirk, but his eyebrows knit in puzzlement. “I thought we were doing it my way.”

“Oh, we are,” I reassure him. “I believe your exact words were ‘Shoot the next person you see.’”

His smile falters as I draw the gun.

“Give the customer what he wants,” I say. “That’s my motto.”

Stripers swam up the Hudson earlier than usual that spring, and right away the fishermen were talking. I was working near Woodstock, hauling shale and aggregate for my cousin, and every day the other drivers would bring back stories about who caught what. Describing the good fishing spots on the river in detail, or lying about them-to keep the good fishing to themselves. The truth depended on who you were talking to. Baseball scores came first, then the fish stories. As far north on the river as the Athens lighthouse and as far south as you felt like sailing, although most of the guys didn’t go below Poughkeepsie. My cousin’s materials outfit was acting as a subcontractor on a state job, so we weren’t hauling weekends. Saturday and Sunday were good days to be on the river. I was simply glad to be out in the world and earning money at the time. I got involved with the wrong side of things up in Canada-moving meth on the northwestern border of Maine-and had just come back after four years away. It was my first stretch and I wanted to put it behind me. Listening to the guys talk about fishing made me want to get out there and put a line in the water. They were catching some big ones.

I was living on an old run-down farm-thirty acres-between Saugerties and Catskill that had been in my family for years. My great-grandfather’s brother George had owned the property. Nobody remembered what George had done for work, but he must have enjoyed his privacy. The farm was set way back off the road-the dusty dirt trail that led to it was close to a mile and the mailbox on the road never had a name on it-with the two-story main house on a slight hill. The main house was white and blue, with a wraparound wood porch overlooking the pond. A couple large sturdy red barns and two buildings about ready to fall over. The property had three little gray cabins on it, facing the mountains. Someone, years ago, put the cabins up and tried to get people to stay there. It hadn’t worked. The cabins each were equipped with a sink and a stand-up shower in addition to a flush toilet, which was probably illegal given the size of the property. The cabins had black phones in them, hanging on the wall, and when you picked them up, they rang to a single phone in the main house. For the guests, I imagined. There was still a gas pump and buried tank next to the one barn. I suppose if I went through the trouble of having someone come out and inspect the pump, I could have had my own gas on-site. It was an empire of dirt, but it was paradise to me.

I pulled the truck up the road that Friday and my father’s silver truck was parked in front of the house. He was sitting on the front porch in a lawn chair with his ball cap on, drinking a soda. He’d retired two years before from a local lumberyard.

“Hey there,” he said.

“How’s it going?” I said. “How’s retired life?”

“Can’t complain,” he said. “What are you doing tomorrow?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“You’re going fishing with me and Rich, okay? Be the best thing for you.”

“Sounds good,” I said.

He was getting in his truck. “See you at six a.m. Catskill dock.”

“See you tomorrow. Say hello to Mom for me.”

“Will do,” he said. “She’s going to visit her aunt.”

“Wish her a good flight,” I said.

He waved as he pulled away from the house.

Patricia Abbott writes literary and crime fiction from Detroit. Stories have appeared recently in Pulp Pusher, The Thrilling Detective, Demolition, Spinetingler, Hardluck Stories, Bayou Review, and Storyglossia. She has just completed a novel set in Detroit.

Jedidiah Ayres lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

Matthew Baldwin spent the late ’90s as a customer service rep for an online store, right at the height of the dot-com bubble. He is now a programmer by day, freelance writer by evening, and sound sleeper at night. He maintains the Web log Defective Yeti and lives in Seattle with his wife, son, and a handful of good-for-nothing cats.

Greg Bardsley is a former newspaper reporter who covered everything from politics to deranged, homicidal psychos. Since then he has worked as an editor, ghostwriter, speechwriter, and video producer. In addition to Thuglit, his pulp fiction has appeared in Demolition and Pulp Pusher.

Gary Carson is a former feature writer for the Kansas City Times and the Westport Trucker. His fiction and essays have appeared in Hardluck Stories, Thuglit, and Noir Originals. A California refugee, he currently lives in Rolla, Missouri.

Lyman Feero graduated in 2006 from the University of Southern Maine Stonecoast MFA program in creative writing. He is also a published alternative fiction author with works in several genres including crime, horror, and science fiction. Most recently he participated in the Blog Project #3 and L.A. Noir’s Mugshot Challenge. He is currently working on his first novel.

Allan Guthrie is an award-winning Scottish crime novelist.

Jordan Harper, born and raised in Missouri, is a frequent contributor to Thuglit. He has been nominated for the Derringer Award and has had two stories selected by the Million Writers Award as notable short stories of the year, including “Like Riding a Moped.” He is currently working on a novel and is turning “Like Riding a Moped” into a screenplay. He currently lives in Los Angeles. Contact him at author@jordanharper.com.

Daniel Hatadi wasted lots of valuable time as a musician, a petrol station attendant, and a programmer in the shady world of gambling before turning his attention to crime fiction. The Sydney-based writer has published several short stories and articles and is currently working on a novel. He is also the founder of the Internet crime fiction community, Crimespace. Visit Daniel online at crimespace.ning.com or at his Web site, www.danielhatadi.com.

D. T. Kelly grew up on the mean streets of Chicago. After years of dodging firebombs, two-bit hoodlums, and drive-by shootings, he now resides in upstate New York, having traded in his bulletproof vest for hiking boots. He can be found online at www.dtkelly.net.

Jónas Knútsson committed arson at five. When Jónas was ten someone not unlike Viddi Golbranson tried to throw Jónas into a duck pond. Jónas enjoys the distinction of being the only person to be expelled from a prestigious German film school before commencing his studies.

Patrick J. Lambe lives in New Jersey, the cradle of civilization. He’s had short stories in various Web sites and magazines, as well as short stories in the Plots with Guns anthology, Dublin Noir, with more coming out soon. His short story “Union Card” was listed as a distinguished mystery story in The Best American Mystery Stories of 2005. He’s currently working on several novels while working as a telephone technician. Please visit his Web site at http://patlambe.com

Joe. R. Lansdale is the author of thirty novels and many short works. One of his novellas, Bubba Hotep, was filmed to considerable acclaim, and his short story “Incident On and Off a Mountain Road” was part of the Masters of Horror series on Showtime. His works have received The Grinzani Prize for Literature, the Edgar, seven Bram Stokers, the Herodotus, and numerous other awards. A Fine Dark Line is scheduled to be filmed next year.

Hugh Lessig is a career newspaperman who has worked in his native Pennsylvania and Virginia. He now lives in Richmond, Virginia, where he reports on state politics, a beat that provides occasional inspiration for things nefarious and noir. Besides Thuglit, his short stories have appeared in Plots with Guns and Thrilling Detective.

Richard J. Martin Jr. was born in 1956 in Bossier City, Louisiana, and came to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1962 at age six. He is a graduate of San Francisco State University’s Creative Writing Program and works as a grant writer for nonprofit human service agencies. His stories, poems, and articles have appeared in the San Francisco Herald, Seattle Weekly, Thuglit, Working Magazine, Bay Area Reporter, In the Fray, the Noe Valley Voice, Tea Party, the Red Hills Review, and Frisko Magazine, as well as trade publications like the Walden House Journal and Successful Fundraising. He’s a member of San Francisco Musicians Union Local 6, and currently divides his time between San Francisco and Lakeport, California.

Steven M. Messner lives in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where he is employed as a legal assistant and personal trainer. He received his bachelor’s degree in English from West Virginia University in 1994. In 2002 he graduated from Johns Hopkins University, where he received his master’s degree in fiction writing. He has recently finished his first book, The Barbecue Wire Boy, and is currently working on a book based on his Burma Ludlow character.

Justin Porter was born and raised in New York. He’s crass, uneducated, obnoxious, and has lain down with dogs so many times that he’s on a first-name basis with three generations of fleas. He’s been published a few places online for his fiction and for journalism in the New York Times. He’s been a teacher, a skateboarder, an amateur fighter, a Rollerblade salesman, and a number of other ridiculous things. He’s eagerly awaiting the next round of absurdity. And he thanks everybody who does, for reading.

Marcus Sakey spent ten years in advertising, which gave him the perfect background to write about criminals and killers. His debut novel, The Blade Itself, was a New York Times Editor’s Pick, featured on CBS Sunday Morning, and named one of Esquire magazine’s 5 Best Reads of 2007. It has been translated into numerous languages, and the film rights have been purchased by Ben Affleck for Miramax. His second novel, At the City’s Edge, was released to similar acclaim, and he is currently working on a four-book contract for Dutton. Marcus has shadowed homicide detectives, toured the morgue, interviewed Special Forces officers, ridden with L.A. gang cops, and learned to pick a deadbolt in sixty seconds. He swears it was all for research.

Mike Sheeter attended Ohio State University. He has worked as a magazine editor, advertising copywriter, and screenwriter.

Anthony Neil Smith was born and raised on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, has lived in Michigan, and currently resides in Minnesota. He is the author of the novels Psychosomatic, The Drummer, and Yellow Medicine, and his short stories have appeared all over the place, including Thuglit, obviously. He is also the editor of the Plots with Guns Web-zine. Okay? Is that enough? What more do you need to know?

Jason Starr is the Barry and Anthony Award-winning author of eight crime novels, which are published in ten languages. He also writes screenplays, cowrites a series of books with Ken Bruen for Hard Case Crime, and is at work on a graphic novel to be published by DC Comics. He lives in New York City.

Albert Tucher began writing about Diana Andrews with the new millennium and is now up to fifteen published stories and five unpublished novels. Why is he obsessed with a hooker? Because prostitution is as hard-boiled and as noir as it gets. Self-deception is at the core of the transaction, and it always runs out.

Scott Wolven is the author of Controlled Burn (Scribner). Wolven’s stories have appeared six years in a row in the Best American Mystery Story series (Houghton Mifflin), including 2007, selected by guest editor Carl Hiaasen and series editor Otto Penzler. Wolven also contributed a story to Expletive Deleted (Bleak House) edited by Jennifer Jordan.

I don’t know if any of you out there in Citizens-ville know just how hard it is to pare down a year’s worth of blood-and-guts, balls-out stories into this anthology.

It’s torturous.

My first edit-my “dream edit”-came in at over 260,000 words. I’m not kidding. More than double the number of words you’ve got clutched between your hairy palms right now.

SO, in order to avoid a couple of slugs to the back of the skull from the divine Michaela Hamilton over at Kensington, I had to cut some stories that flat-out deserve to be in here.

Listed below are the contributors to our second year of Thuglit. Raise your glasses of hooch high, cats and kittens. They’ve earned my respect, and damn sure deserve yours.

Hana K. Lee-Mark Bowen-Kevin McCarthy-Miles Archer-Ann Androla-Pete Hogenson-Marianne Rogoff-Cristobal Camaras-James Williams-Tim Wohlforth-AT Mango-Dave Zeltserman-Joseph Taverney-Robert Spencer-Karl Koweski-J. D. Smith-David C. Daniel-Alejandro Pena-Max Glaessner-Tony Black-Lloyd Hudson Frye-Keith Gilman-Michael Colangelo-Paul Beckman-Bryon Quertermous-Barry Baldwin-David Rosenstock-Kieran Shea-Ed Lynskey-Geoff Hyatt-Glenn Gray-Ian Nicholas Carleton-Nathan Cain-Hilary Davidson-William Boyle-Brian Haycock-Tim Murr-Kim Cushman-Brian Murphy-Linda Sharps-Anthony Rainone-Katherine Tomlinson

Thank you all. Without you, there is no Thuglit.

Thanks to YOU, Not-So-Gentle Reader, for slinging down your dirty blood money for the book. Next year, buy two, ya chiselin’ mugs…

And to Allison, my Bruising Bride of the Beatdown, my Lady Detroit…Without you, none of it would be worth spit.

Copyright © 2009 by Todd Robinson

Introduction copyright © 2009 by Sarah Weinman

“Double Down” copyright © 2009 by Jason Starr

“Like Riding a Moped” copyright © 2009 by Jordan Harper

“Viddi and the Bucharest Brawler” copyright © 2009 by Jónas Knútsson

“A Flood of Mexican Porn Star Tits” copyright © 2009 by Justin Porter

“Markers” copyright © 2009 by Albert Tucher

“Bullets and Fire” copyright © 2009 by Joe R. Lansdale

“Judy’s Big Score” copyright © 2009 by Patrick J. Lambe

“Killing Billy Blain” copyright © 2009 by D. T. Kelly

“Buddha Behind Bars” copyright © 2009 by Daniel Hatadi

“The Days When You Were Anything Else” copyright © 2009 by Marcus Sakey

“Cramp” copyright © 2009 by Anthony Neil Smith

“Private Craps Shooter at Dawn” copyright © 2009 by Steven M. Messner

“The Trouble with Trolls” copyright © 2009 by Patricia Abbott

“Eulogy for a Player” copyright © 2009 by Richard J. Martin Jr.

“Politoburg” copyright © 2009 by Jedidiah Ayres

“Haermund Hardaxe Was Here” copyright © 2009 by Allan Guthrie

“We All Come from Splattertown” copyright © 2009 by Hugh Lessig

“The Switch” copyright © 2009 by Lyman Feero

“Big Load of Trouble” copyright © 2009 by Greg Bardsley

“Violated” copyright © 2009 by Mike Sheeter

“Black Sun” copyright © 2009 by Gary Carson

“Customer Service” copyright © 2009 by Matthew Baldwin

“High Limit” copyright © 2009 by Scott Wolven

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