December Update

I hope you're all having a decent holiday season. I'm slowly making my way through sending out responses to stories received over the last few months. I hope you'll still bear with me as I do that.

I'm still actively looking for books to review, so if you have a forthcoming or recent book you'd like to have considered for review, please send it to me in .mobi or PDF at toughcrime@gmail.com.

Current News

Hi folks. Thanks for sticking with Tough over these few months since we began. For a few reasons, there will be new content until February 5th 2018, when we'll have a new story, our third from Michael Bracken, who's rapidly become a favorite of mine. This off time will also give me a better opportunity to catch up with submissions, as I'm seriously behind, and to build a new stock of reviews, as I have exhausted my supply. Along with that, I need new books to review. If you can send your recent small press crime fiction title in e-book or PDF form to toughcrime@gmail.com, I'll do my best to find a reviewer for it. Finally, I want to build up a four or five month lead time for publishing stories. As Tough has gotten more popular with submitters, I've been unable to do as much editing on stories as I'd like. Most of that is due to getting more and better stories, so thank you. The editing is my pleasure, though, and I want to do more of it. So, thanks too, for bearing with me. See you in the new year!

Dodgers, by Bill Beverly, reviewed by Tim Hennessy

Dodgers
Bill Beverly
Broadway Books
April 5, 2016
290 pages
$15.00
reviewed by Tim Hennessy

Not long after my brother-in-law arrived in Wisconsin for the first time, he could not hide his confusion. Having spent a good portion of his life in California, he didn’t have any point of reference for the Midwest beyond vast blandness and ridiculous accents. One cannot escape the presence of cheese, but we were to his mind and humor, the land of cows and Indians and he hadn’t seen a sign of either. We chose to overlook his sarcasm and tried to oblige, driving until we could locate a few active dairy farms. The part of Wisconsin I’ve lived in most of my life is a notch in the Rust Belt that more closely resembles my brother-in-law’s hometown of Buffalo, which he happily escaped, more than the lawless open expanse punctuated with pot--luck dinners and an unquenchable thirst for beer that he anticipated.

In much of pop culture, the Midwest, particularly Wisconsin, has been a mundane purgatory that remains underexplored in fiction. As young residents are told when wanderlust sets in, Wisconsin is a place you are either born into or you are sent. In Bill Beverly’s Dodgers, the baby-faced characters’ journey to Wisconsin has a critical objective: murder. Rife with coming-of-age trials, Dodgers poetically renders remote beauty among unforeseen dangers.

Beverly’s protagonist East, at fifteen, has risen to a position of authority watching over older boys and keeping an eye on the drug houses his Uncle Fin controls. The night one of the houses gets raided, the usually focused and attentive East is distracted by a girl visiting relatives in the neighborhood who naively tries to impress the corner boys while she plays outside. During the police action and subsequent firefight that erupts, the girl catches a stray bullet and bleeds out before East’s eyes. He bears the guilt and responsibility of her death.

In the wake of the increased attention the girl’s death and the raid brought onto the business, Fin commands East and a crew of other four boys to travel to Wisconsin. A judge who was an asset to their organization, now a witness in hiding until he can testify against them in an upcoming trial, must be killed. Beverly interjects uncertainty that plagues East throughout his journey: is this a precautionary maneuver or a deal with the devil, where the intended objective may be too many moves ahead for East to see? Has Fin’s distant, yet paternal influence, hardened him or overprotected him?

Beverly thrusts a crew of African-American boys 2,000 miles into middle America, giving them a stealth mission into a part of the country where their presence always goes noticed, among a sea of homogenized white faces.

“Everybody tired, even the people getting paid to be there. Everyone with eyeballs, noticing the black boys. The lady with chin length, orange-dyed hair, bright sweater, staring in the candles aisle. East felt small, tried to stay small.”

They are not just driving away from their comfort zones; they are driving into a region that isn’t comfortable with them. Given the fraught nature of their mission, Beverly imbues the plot with an underlying tension daring anyone the boys pass to do more than notice them and wonder if they are actually up to no good. To them, their quest borders on the slightly absurd. Why would an asset to their organization hide where he could be noticed? Or, the more succinct, “What’s a black man doing in Wisconsin?” asks Walter, an older boy whose skills with computers and his part-time job at the DMV have proven useful enabling the gang members access to well-made fake IDs. Also joining East on this mission is Michael Wilson, an annoying showoff who ran Fin’s expansion into the insatiable market of his college campus; and East’s wolfish younger brother Ty, who’s more hood than all three of the older boys combined. Ty’s brashness combined with the volatile group dynamic provides surprises as complications spring up along the way.

When the group distrust of Michael Wilson reaches mutiny levels, he lays out the troubles the youngsters face without him: “You a neighborhood boy. You ain’t in no neighborhood now. There is plenty you don’t know, gangster. You don’t know you can’t go back, because when you fail, there’s no place for you.”East eventually emerges as the group’s leader; forced to no longer observe, but to put his thoughtfulness into decisive action.

The easy reflexive comparison would be to suggest Beverly’s coming-of-age novel channels Richard Price’s work; it does inasmuch as they both strive for a verisimilitude (although Beverly in interviews admits freely that he admires Price’s depth of research, but doesn’t subscribe to the same process) and both authors’ dialogues are absolute joys to read. Beverly has gone beyond the conclusion of Clockers and combined it with his interest in narratives of fugitives in flight.

The journey allows East to shed the confines of growing up impoverished in an urban environment, the limitations of climbing the ranks within the drug trade, and even the cardboard shelters in which he finds comfort enough to sleep. Rising to the challenges, East finds himself expanding beyond the world that has held him. East embraces the change in environment. He learns to adapt, showing a resilient nature to become the man he wants to be. The freedom of leaving behind his home opened him up to possibilities outside of those he knew.

Now my brother-in-law rarely visits. His trips here cause him more anxiety than relaxation. It’s never been clear if it’s any one thing: the inefficiencies of a state slow to evolve or just the pace; the maddening way Wisconsinites live like they drive, clogging lanes, taking time to rubber neck any little thing out of the ordinary. The grating sound of rounded vowels stretched when we speak. Maybe what bothers him isn’t where we live, or even how we live; it could be just who we are.

Bad Luck City, by Matt Phillips, reviewed by Heather Luby

BAD LUCK CITY
Author: Matt Phillip
s Publisher: Near To The Knuckle
Release Date: February 2016
Price: $5.99
Reviewer: Heather Luby


California native Matt Phillips has been carving his name in the table of crime fiction for close to a decade. As a formally educated writer, poet, and journalist; Phillips knows his way around a story, from flash fiction and poetry, to his latest novel “Three Kinds of Fool,” out from All Due Respect Books.

Phillips is a writer’s writer. He knows the power of the carefully chosen “telling” detail, the beauty of the perfectly placed phrase, and the impact of subtle subtext in dialogue. But when it comes to capturing the sweaty underbelly of sin city and the depravity of criminals who hurt people for pleasure—it takes more than a sexy sentence to make the pain of it all feel true on the page.Lucky for us; Phillips knows his way around the dark recesses of the heart, too.

Sim Palmer is a lonely guy. The only family legacy he has comes in a bottle and burns going down. A rumpled veteran reporter whose best days and best stories seem to be behind him. No wife, no kids, just the job and a city that never sleeps. In walks a man in a fedora who offers him something he can’t refuse. There’s a girl, booze, and bad men to go around. If it all sounds a bit too familiar, you’re right; but you’re also wrong.

Bad Luck City pays homage to the well-worn crime fiction conventions, but it also steps up with more than a few unexpected detours. The pages deliver the well-timed gut punches, but they also carry with them something more potent: the revelation by Palmer that when you start digging, you’re bound to uncover a bit of yourself along the way. Whether you like it or not.

As the story progresses, Palmer begins to catch glimpses of his long dead father. These sightings force him to contemplate the dark instincts that kept his dad under the thumb of the city until his death. Palmer begins to wonder if maybe he’s inherited more than his dad’s .38. As he squares against tough guys and a sinister casino boss, Palmer suspects there’s more to uncover than just a good headline.

When casino boss Stan Evers preaches to Palmer, “There’s a difference, lots of times, between what feels true and what really is true. I think you know that,” Palmer begins to put the pieces together—seeing both himself and Evers for what they really are—men searching for something they can’t quite name.

For me, this is how the pieces come together in Bad Luck City. I think it feels true to say, in many ways, Bad Luck City has a little too much in common with most of the crime fiction out there. But what really is true, is that Phillips makes the reader care about his story anyway.

If characters are to ring true on the page, if readers come to ache along with their suffering, the stories can’t just be about rage or retribution. The stories must have heart, and Phillips delivers it beating on the pages in Bad Luck City.

For Sim Palmer the truth boils down to family. Behind all the bullshit and booze is an oozing wound of want; a primal need festering for decades until it ignites a fire in his belly so fierce he no longer recognizes himself or fears what he may be capable of doing to satisfy it.

If Phillips goal was to explore the emotional landscape of a washed-up reporter, pushed to the edge in order to grasp his deepest unspoken desire; then he succeeded. The raw need on the page reminded me of the desperation so potent in the writing of Denis Johnson. His quick turns of phrase even called up a little Elmore Leonard.

So, despite my small concern that the plotting in the work might ring too familiar for some readers, there is a lot to admire about Bad Luck City. If Phillips continues to integrate the best elements of his influences while exploring ways to break from some of the more traditional crime conventions, then I’ve no doubt even bigger and better things are coming for this writer and his work.

Day's Work by Matt Phillips

Monday

“Get you a good haul of forever all-in-ones, that’s Graco brand, you want the best. Talking like, say, twenty-thirty of the suckers. All boxed up now. Unopened—see, if they get used and sold secondhand, the value goes down.” Roddie lifted a shot glass to his lips, drained brown liquid and hissed through chapped lips. He slammed the glass on the bar, lifted a hand at the burly bartender with the shaved head. “Another shot of Beam and a tall Bud back.”

Reflected in the mirror behind the bar, through dried liquor and beer stains, Roddie squinted at a tired stripper as she latched non-manicured fingers onto the pole, twisted around it like a drunk child.

Grace, he thought to himself, has many faces and forms.

He cleared his throat and said, “Them models got everything you need. Got six-position adjustment, state of the art latch system, a steel frame you couldn’t crush with a backhoe. Shit, they got a seat level indicator about as accurate as a laser on a sniper rifle. Plush fabric, too. I mean, real comfortable.”

The bartender slid a full shot glass and beer bottle toward Roddie who dug into his shirt pocket, came out with a crushed, greasy twenty dollar bill. “That’ll do her for these two and my first round?”

The bartender nodded, swiped the twenty from the sticky bar top.

Roddie drained the second shot of bourbon, coughed hard into a greasy palm. He scratched the side of his face until red welts surfaced on his cheek. “And don’t you forget about style, okay? That’s one hell of a design team they got over there, wherever-in-the-hell-China they make the fuckers. I’m talking little beady-eyed motherfuckers who went to some tai-chi art school or some kind of shit like that. I think it’s real funny when they get a new color scheme. Comes out every year all spanking new, like fucking colors make a difference in the things themselves. But I’ll tell you what—and my prick of a daddy taught me this—you give the customer what they think they want. That’s the secret: Give ‘em what they think they want. Now, write this down: Forever, all-in-one, I said. That’s Graco brand, and don’t you go after nothing else.” Roddie turned on his bar stool, shrugged off the awful mirrored image of the too-tired stripper.

Next to him, a middle-aged man with a missing front tooth plugged a pinch of chewing tobacco into his plump bottom lip. He smirked hard at the bent over stripper, turned to Roddie. “Dude, I got no fucking idea what it is you’re gabbing on and on about. I got no fucking idea in hell.”

Roddie sighed, lifted his eyebrows in surprise. “Car seats, man. Forever all-in-ones. I’m talking the hottest model on the market. I’m talking—for goddamned shit-in-the-hell sake—about stealing fucking car seats. I’m talking about gettin’ rich, or dyin’ motherfuckin’ tryin’.” He grinned and rolled his head.

Roddie’s companion—if that’s what he was—shook his head with slow contemplation. “You mean to tell me…” He stopped for a moment, shoved a finger into his mouth and poked at the gob of tobacco. “That you just got out of the joint, fresh out the clink, and the best you got—the dang schooling you got—is a plan to lift car seats?”

“Them seats go for three-four hundred, buddy. And that’s on the open market, Amazon, eBay, Craigslist and the like. Not to mention word-of-mouth sales. Shit, place like this town—what’s it here, some twenty thousand souls?—you could make a damn good business out of car seats. It’s a gold mine.”

“Man, Roddie. You just got out the joint.”

“So?”

“We sittin’ here in a strip club goes by the name Hip-Diggity.”

“I know it.”

“And you’re talking car seats—shit.”

Roddie shrugged, pinched a red welt on his cheek. “You gonna throw in with me on this, make it like we used to do? I get the product and you—”

“I’ll be fucked up the ass if I’m gonna rob and sell car seats for a living. I mean, shit, I been low in my life, but even the lowest man got to have a fuckin’ limit. You can count me out, Roddie.”

Roddie lifted his beer, took a long, slow sip. “Well, shit,” he said and tasted the insides of his mouth, breathed deep like the DOC shrink taught him. “I guess all that means is…Hell, all it means is more for me. Roddie Gets Rich,” he said. “That’s the real title of this motherfuckin’ story.”

Tuesday

Bern C. Smith worked retail from the day he got his work permit at sixteen years of age. He was skinny then; a whiny kid with shit-brown eyes and pimples on his chin. Now, at 38-years-old, Bern pretty much looked the same. His zits were gone, replaced by crow’s feet around his still-shit-brown eyes. Bern wasn’t a virgin, but he was unmarried, couldn’t do a pull-up, drove a cheap-ass Hyundai Accent (off-purple), and knew everything on God’s green Earth about the retail business. More specifically, Bern knew how to stock and sell baby products; that meant onesies, tiny shoes, strollers, cribs, diapers, bottles, and car seats. He was responsible for sales on everything you might see in ‘Lil’ One’s Place,’ the store where Bern worked—hell, the store Bern ran all by his damn self. There was a plaque out front that had his name on it: “General Manager: Bern C. Smith.” Sure, he had to paste his name on the plaque with Gorilla glue, but that was just because corporate had it made up with the previous GM’s name. This was before Bern got the job, before his ex-boss fucked a stock girl in his office while those hacks at corporate watched on the closed circuit television.

One man’s fall from grace is another man’s rise.

Still, you get a promotion and you take it to the bank. When Bern arrived at seven each morning—today was Tuesday—he sat in his car and smoked a cigarette, watched for anybody tailing him or casing the store, a large blue building just off the main highway.

Bern never told anybody he did this; shit, he knew they’d call him crazy. But Bern knew—because he crunched the numbers—that ‘Lil’ One’s Place’ did a solid million, million-five in sales each year. That’s not profit, mind you—that’s total revenue. They did fourth best sales in the Southwest Region, and Bern was proud of that fact. Point was: Besides the money in the safe, the store had lots of high value product. And Bern C. Smith would be damned if he’d let some wily crook catch him by surprise. No fucking way; Bern would make sure a lowlife robber got put on that world’s dumbest criminal show before his store lost one cute baby sock to theft—in this life or the next.

Bern pressed his cigarette into the Hyundai’s ashtray, reached over and unlatched the glove box. He pulled out a black cartridge, pressed a button and smiled; an arc of blue-white electricity shot from one of the cartridges fangs to the other. While on duty, Bern carried a taser on his person at all times. This was only for safety, mind you. In the event of…As they are want to say. Or, whatever. He shoved the taser into his coat pocket, straightened the curled collar of his blue polo shirt, and stepped out of the car. Bern scanned the parking lot—it was empty. He could see the store’s sliding glass doors and decided they hadn’t been tampered with; it was all status quo this morning.

He locked his off-purple Hyundai Accent and strode like a soldier on patrol toward the plaque with his name pasted onto it. Bern C. Smith, general manager, was on duty. And it was going to be a theft-free Tuesday.

You could be damn sure of that.

***

At a gas station across the highway, in a rented Honda with tinted windows, Roddie sipped cheap coffee and watched the skinny dude who ran ‘Lil’ One’s Place’ unlock the store’s sliding glass doors, slide between them, and shove them closed. Looked like a pretty wimpy dude from what Roddie could see. For a week now, since he got out the joint, Roddie watched the skinny dude who drove the pink car open the place. Most he did when he got to work was scan the parking lot. Parked in the same spot each day. At the same time, too.

Right on the motherfuckin’ dot.

Today was no different. Roddie knew from prison: It’s habit that makes a man weak. Why else they make you do what they say, and when they say it? Keep you weak, that’s why. He finished his coffee, opened his door, and tossed the styrofoam cup into the breeze. It tumbled behind the rented Honda, caught in a pile of tumbleweeds beside the gas station’s main building. There were seven other cups there, all Roddie’s. He slammed the door, scratched the fading welts on his left cheek. Too bad that old buddy of his wouldn’t be in on this thing, but Roddie knew—or, hell, he thought—he could pull this one alone.

More for me, he thought. Roddie Gets Rich.

In the morning, he figured. That was the time. Wednesday morning. Bright and early. Like right now, you just roll up on the skinny dude, pop him one in the face, and have him open the loading bay out back. What you’ll do, Roddie told himself, is rent a U-haul truck this evening. Park it out back and walk around the side of the building. Skinny dude always comes to work from the west; see, he don’t circle the building to make sure it’s all clear. He won’t even see the U-haul backed in, ready and waiting for a full load of forever all-in-ones. Graco brand that is. Best fuckin’ model on the market.

Roddie reminded himself: You got to make sure not to pop the wimpy dude too hard.

You need him to help you load up those car seats. Split the job in half, make it easy on old Roddie. That’s the whole point of this thing here.

Isn’t it? Make things easy on old Roddie?

***

Bern noticed the Conway girl—the high school chick—was late to work again. How many times did he have to tell her? If she wanted prom off, she had to show up on time during the spring break. Bern stood in the center of the sales floor, arms crossed, trying not to scream at her when she sauntered through the front doors. And her fucking polo shirt wasn’t even tucked. He moved through the model crib displays (time to get ready for the summer models) and surprised before she could make it to the staff lounge and punch her time card. “Conway, you’re late again. I thought I told you that—”

The girl, short and blonde with soft features and blue eyes, jumped and shrieked. “Mr. Bern, I’m so sorry. My mom didn’t get home until three and my sister needed me to take her to a friend’s house.” She ran her hands through her hair, pulled it back into a ponytail. “Besides it’s not even busy in here.”

Bern’s neck got red. So did his cheeks. It wasn’t busy? No shit—that pissed him off more than anything. Used to be, people had lots of summer babies and that meant they came to ‘Lil’ One’s Place’ and made a baby registry before May. Not anymore; between Amazon and Walmart and other retail behemoths, Bern had to practically beg the universe for weekday customers. Still, no fucking excuses. To Bern, you had to be on the floor to make a sale. “I don’t care how busy it is, Conway. You and I both know you can’t sell car seats while you’re listening to Kanye in your car.” Bern sniffed. “Or calling your boyfriend.”

The blond girl laughed. “You know I don’t have a boyfriend, Mr. Bern.”

He felt his gut loosen. “I’m surprised by that…”

Conway giggled, started to tuck in her polo shirt.

“In the staff lounge, please.” Bern said. “Don’t do that on the sales floor. And I’m letting it go today, but I expect you on time for the rest of the week.” He grunted, tried not to watch her jog toward the back of the store. Fine, he had a soft spot for the blonde, but only because he saw a little of himself in her. He had a responsibility as Bern C. Smith, general-fucking-manager: Get his staff on the same page, dammit. Get them to take this shit seriously.

Bern dropped a hand to the taser in the front pocket of his too-large khakis. This retail shit is serious business, he thought. And look what we have here… Bern moved toward the front of the store. Outside, through the glass windows, he saw a gray minivan pull into a parking spot.

Time to get selling.

***

Roddie spit on the ground beside the U-haul man. “You telling me you only got the small truck, the ten-footer?” They were in the rental lot, a dirt patch with a portable office trailer at its center. Above them, the blue sky was going gray with evening and Roddie wanted to get this shit settled. He needed a drink and a good night’s sleep. But more than that, he needed (no, he wanted) a twenty-foot U-haul truck. He scratched his face, grunted hard at the guy with the clipboard.

“We got ten-footers if you want it tonight. But I can’t get you a twenty-footer until Saturday morning. Got one coming in from Santa Fe. Least, I will if they stay on schedule. No guarantees on the truck. It’s too hard to make certain. People say they’re coming and don’t, I make a promise, and it all goes bad.”

“Oh, I bet.”

“People make all kinds of plans,” the U-haul guy said, “but things go to hell faster than a stripper from the bible country.” He choked on his own phlegm, coughed up a nice cigarette loogie and hit the bull’s eye, dead-center in the wet spot Roddie made beside him. “Best I can do is Saturday. Might be.”

“Saturday,” Roddie repeated and searched the distant skyline. “Ten-footer’s all the man’s got. All the man’s got is a ten-footer. Now, how am I supposed to get done what I got to get done if all the man’s got is a ten-footer.” His nose wrinkled and he spit again. Bull’s eye in a damn bull’s eye—how about that?

“You always talk to yourself, mister?” U-haul man tried like hell to clear his throat, gave up on it. “My sister talks to herself. Down at the urgent care, they say she has a sike-o-poth-ee. Something like that. You know what that is? She’s always going on about this, that, or the goddamn other. Phantoms to frog legs. Shit, my goddamn sister. Can’t say I don’t love her. Now, mister, if you don’t like the ten-footer’s, I can get you—”

Roddie punched the man dead in the face. The dude’s reddish nose crumpled against Roddie’s knuckles. Took two years in prison for him to learn to punch, but once you get the hang of it… Gosh dang bull’s eye, right there. And how the fuck about that, huh? He stood over the U-haul man with his hands on his hips, listened to him gargle blood and saliva. Roddie felt himself losing control, felt the familiar rage he knew of himself burning through his skin, goddamn running through his blood like a virus. He remembered the DOC shrink; breathe, the fucker said. Now, you just breathe real deep, Roddie. He cracked his knuckles, breathed as deep as his lungs allowed.

“Why’d you? Goth-dang it. Why you punth me, mithter?”

Roddie said, “Ah, jeez. I’m sorry about that.” He reached down, plucked U-haul man to his feet. Roddie brushed off the man’s backside, handed him his clipboard. “I got a little carried away is all. I just had it in my head to get a twenty-footer. You understand how a man gets a picture in his head?”

The U-haul man gulped, wiped blood off his mouth and chin. “A ten-fooder do you righth? Thath okay then? A ten-fooder?”

“That’ll do just fine,” Roddie said. “I appreciate you, buddy. Don’t never think I don’t.”

Wednesday

Cold this morning. Bite a man like a pincher bug. Roddie chugged the last bit of black-tar coffee from his styrofoam cup and tossed it out the U-haul truck’s window—yes, it was a damn ten-footer and it was backed in tight against the ‘Lil’ One’s Place’ loading dock. My, oh my, Roddie thought, I backed this sucker up to where it’s snug as saran wrap on a ding-dong.

He watched light morning traffic pass on the highway, mostly beer delivery, UPS, or mail trucks whipping up for the hump-day frenzy.

Work—Roddie never did understand it.

How people could get up each day and put on the clean uniform, act like nothing bothered them; hell, thinking about it made Roddie clench his teeth. That’s what Roddie had done his whole life, try to avoid work. Sure, it put him in the joint a couple times, but what are you going to do? He shook his head, tasted the thin film of coffee on his tongue.

He spoke into the sideview mirror, talked to his own reflection saying, “Forever all-in-one’s Roddie. Graco brand, my motherfuckin’ man. Roddie gets rich. Oh, yes he does.”

Or, Roddie thought, he dies motherfuckin’ tryin’. He checked his wristwatch—piece he ripped from Macy’s the week before—and saw it was about that time: Mr. Wimp in the pink car ought to be walking into the store, give it a minute or two.

Roddie hopped out of the truck, slammed the door. Around back, he flipped the lever on the sliding door and threw it open; the door clanged like hell. Roddie liked the look of that flat, empty loading area, smooth as a baby's butt. Still, he knew he’d like it better when it was full of car seats. Top models, too. The kind that go for three-four hundred on the open market.

The kind that make a man rich.

***

On the side of the building now, Roddie pressing himself tight against the cold gray brick, his breath shooting out in front of him. A couple more steps and he'd peek at the parking lot, see if Mr. Wimpy was headed inside, and then he'd clock the man on back of the head, a real good blow to his dome. Roddie had a tire iron in his hand, one of the cheap chrome ones from Walmart, do a man just as good as those elitist-fuckin' Auto Zone tools. Snap-On my ass, Roddie thought. He gripped the chromed steel, liked the hard coldness in his palm.

He reached the corner of the building, tried hard to control his breathing, but couldn't. Like breaking out of the joint that one time, Roddie thought. I couldn't get my breath running from those dogs. My goodness. Jeez-fuckin'-Lou-eez. He patted himself on the chest, shrugged. Here goes... When Roddie peeked around the corner, he saw Mr. Wimpy slam his door, scan the parking lot. The man loped around the pink Hyundai--sorry fuckin' excuse for a car--and headed toward the building's entryway, framed by sliding glass doors.

And when Mr. Wimpy reached the doors, when he was fiddling with the lever there, trying to push the doors open, Roddie sprinted alongside the building--five or six steps, seemed like--and he was behind the man, the chrome tire iron high above his right shoulder.

As Mr. Wimpy shoved open the doors, he turned; Roddie swung down, clipped the man above his right eye. He fell hard against the cold cement. Snap that on, motherfucker.

Roddie slipped the tire iron into his waistband, dragged Mr. Wimpy into the store.

***

When Bern clawed from the fog of his own unconsciousness, the first thing he saw was a rat-nosed fucker with a snaggle tooth and two tear tattoos on his left cheek. A dull ache lurked behind Bern's eyes, but he managed to say, "Who the fuck are you?"

"My friends call me Roddie. But you," he tapped Bern on the forehead with the tire iron, "can call me Mr. Roddie-Sir, if you dare please."

"The fuck do you want?" Bern squinted, tried to pin the man into one form––he was seeing double. "Why'd you hit me?"

"What I want, Mr. Wimpy, is a goddamn full shipment of forever all-in-ones, Graco brand that is. You know what I'm talking about?"

"Car seats," Bern said through gritted teeth. "Best damn car seats on the market."

"You fuckin' A right, Mr. Wimpy. Look at that––you know your biz-nass!"

"Car and Driver called them the––"

"Cadillac of car seats!" Roddie laughed hard, all the way from his crotch to his widow's peak. "That's what I'm talking about, a man who know his biz-nass."

Bern said, "Like you know yours?"

"Right again, Mr. Wimpy. One hundred percent."

Bern nodded slowly, pulled himself up against the wall. "You need my help? To load them up, I mean? I bet you don't want to do it yourself."

"Might nice of you, Mr. Wimpy. Put her there, pal." Roddie held out a grease-stained palm, fingernails black as mold.

Bern C. Smith shook the man's hand.

***

It was clear as mud to Bern, once it was halfway loaded, the U-haul truck wouldn't fit the store's entire stock of forever all-in-ones. No sir. This son of a bitch was going to have to make two runs. "Might take two trips," Bern said as he slid another stack of car seats onto the truck, pulled the hand-truck from beneath the boxes. "We can go unload, come back and get the rest."

Roddie stood watching Bern; the man hadn't lifted a goddamn hand to help load the truck. He'd stood in the loading bay picking his teeth, watching Bern with flat brown eyes, shit-colored, matter of fact. And Bern knew what that meant––the man ripping him off was a lazy son of a bitch. Well, Bern thought, I can work with that.

Bern had experience with lazy sons of bitches. Plenty.

Roddie said, "Try to get as many in as you can."

"Hell, I'd hate for you to leave some back here. Now, look, if I can get you to take all of them, that's a help to me when it comes to insurance. You understand?"

Roddie nodded. "I didn't think of that."

"Well, that's what I'm here for." Bern pushed the hand-truck––heavy red steel––closer to Roddie, got within spitting distance.

Roddie turned to look at the remaining car seats.

They were stacked in one corner of the stock room, ten rows or more of the same models, stacked three high. Sold like goddamn hot cakes and 'Lil' One's Place' always had plenty––Bern made sure of that.

Roddie looked back to the truck, over Bern's shoulder, studied it for a second. "Okay," he said, "what you do is––" Turning back to the stock room now, the rows of stacked boxes, "get me those two rows there and we'll flip the others on their sides to––"

Bern lifted the hand-truck and brought it down against Roddie's thin shoulder blades. It was a hard blow, but it only brought Roddie to his knees. As the crook turned to face Bern, the taser came out of Bern's jacket pocket, burst lightning in his palm.

Roddie said, "What the fuck?"

"Should have searched me, smart-ass." He pressed the taser to Roddie's neck, grinned with satisfaction as the man collapsed, shook himself into a stupor. Roddie pissed his pants, shit himself like a baby. "Well, holy shit. You got a mess in your pants," Bern said. "You want I should go and get you some Pampers?"

"Fuck you, I––"

Bern pressed the taser to his neck; the crook's body shook and shook and shook.

Roddie vomited, tried to scurry away shouting, "Momma! Gawdammit, momma! Where you at! I miss you, momma!"

But Bern was on top of him again, pressing the taser into the man's crotch.

"Ah, God! God-in-hell-for-fuck's-sake!"

"You fucked with the wrong baby store, pal." Bern laughed. "Say, what's your full name? I want to make sure your obituary reads just right. Your tombstone too."

"Stop," Roddie said. "I give you whatever you want. Just, please. Please, stop it."

"I didn't get that." Bern tapped the taser against Roddie's crotch again. "What's your name?"

"Roddie Day. My name's Roddie Day. I grew up around Pahrump. Dropped out of high school. Got me a job running car parts in and out of Vegas for a––"

Bern hit the taser against Roddie's chest.

The man shook, gulped, stopped moving. After a moment, he spoke, "Ah, stop. Fuck. Please, just let it stop."

"Didn't ask for your résumé," Bern said. "All I wanted was the name." He slipped the taser back into his coat pocket, took a few steps away and retrieved the hand-truck. Its tiny wheels squeaked as he wheeled it back toward Roddie. "Thanks for your biz-nass, Roddie Day," Bern said. He lifted the hand-truck to his chest, the flat tongue of it pointed downward at Roddie's rat-nosed face.

"I swear, I won't––no!"

Bern brought the hand-truck down as hard as he could, salivated at the crunch of skull, watched blood dribble out from Roddie's ears. He'd have to clean this shit up later.

Roddie's legs shook, became still.

"Mr. Bern?"

Bern turned and saw Conway, the high school blonde, standing there watching. And wouldn't you know it, her fucking polo shirt was untucked. The hell had he told her about that? Bern bent over, flipped the dead man's left hand, studied the watch on his wrist. He stood up and placed his hands on his hips. "You're late again, Conway. What'd I tell you about that?"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Bern. I got caught––"

"Go on and unload this truck," Bern said, motioning toward the U-haul. He looked back to the dead body on the floor. "I got another bit of pressing business. You show up late again," Bern looked at the Conway girl, "and I'm going to write your ass up. You got that?"

Slowly, chin trembling with fear, the blonde girl nodded.

And kept nodding.