The Speed Chronicles (8 page)

The female was talking about teeth, a subject she probably should have avoided. First of all, hers were huge and starting to get meth gray, despite her claims that she still brushed and flossed thrice daily. Second, nobody wants to hear about that kind of shit from a dental hygienist even when they're a captive audience in the chair, let alone when they've got an ongoing criminal enterprise they're trying to concentrate on.

“You ever hear of meth mouth?” I asked her, hoping she'd get the picture and shut the fuck up. No such luck. She went into lecture mode, expounding at length about her personal theory that meth mouth was a result of tweakers neglecting their flossing because they were too distracted by the getting and consuming of their drug of choice and not because of the drug's unorthodox chemical manufacturing process itself.

“Look at me,” she said. “I've been doing this for like a year or more and my teeth are as beautiful and straight as they've ever been.”

I agreed, but just because I thought I might want more access to her person later.

“So where are we going to sell this cold medicine once we get it?” she asked.

I had an idea, I told her, a friend of a friend up in Topeka went by the name of Crumdog, sergeant-at-arms for a bikers' organization.

“So how come this Chuck guy wants to sell it to you?” she asked. “Wouldn't he make better money selling it to some cook? Doesn't he know anybody?”

“You sure do ask a lot of questions,” I said, trying not to sound like I was thinking about backhanding her.

jerry

God, I hated seeing what had become of Glen. I ignored the maybe-penis in the box and glanced back at Torie, who was still looking down her nose at him.

“So what happened to the home for the blind and deaf?”

“Well, my brother had some licensing issues with the state of Oregon, we never quite got it open, and then my girlfriend kicked me out. Blah blah blah, long story short, I'm back here. But I still got the Lexus.”

“That's good.”

“So how much for Frank's pecker?”

“Nothing, Glen.”

“Nothing? For a relic that's seen the insides of Ava Gardner and Mia Farrow both?”

Just then Matt Sweeney walked in. He used to be a doctor, so I waved him over for a quick look. “That a human penis, Matt?”

He stuck out his lower lip and took the box from Glen. “Hard to say. Could be. You'd have to show a pathologist.”

“How much, man?” Glen was whining now.

“Nothing. Even if that is a human penis, it's not Sinatra's.”

“Prove it!” Glen shouted.

“Calm down now, pal,” I said. “What makes you think it's worth anything, anyway, even if it is Ol' Blue Eyes' John Thomas?”

I could see his fantasy beginning to implode inside his skull. “You could charge money to see it. They auctioned Napoleon's off for big bucks.”

“There's no proof. You'd have to show provenance. A chain of custody. Where'd you get it, anyway?”

chuck

When I ran into him at the Brass Candle, trying to get someone to buy him a drink without actually lowering himself to asking for one, Glen looked like a cat had done its business in his mouth. There was a slight pleasure in the recognition that I was now doing better than he, so I bought him a beer and a shot and he asked me how was Gretchen. It was the half-hidden leer I perceived that made my pity, such as it was, evaporate.

“Last I heard she was in jail for soliciting.”

Did I enjoy the look of shock on his sagging face? I did for a moment, until I realized that there was no guilt in it, that he bore no sense of his own responsibility in this tragic matter. Though I am long out of the narcotics trade, it was plain Glen wasn't, and seeing my long-awaited shot at comeuppance, I asked him if he knew anyone who wanted in on a score.

His eyes narrowed as if he was already trying to figure out how to screw me out of the score I was generously letting him in on. “Might be I'd be interested,” he said.

“For five hundred I can get five cases of store-brand pseudoephedrine,” I said.

“I got something right here on my person worth a fuckload more than five hundred, and I'd trade you outright.” He reached into the inside pocket of his coat, and I put my hand on his arm, shaking my head no.

“Cash only,” I told him, which got him real quiet.

“You going to be out behind the Choose'n'Save dumpster tonight?” he asked.

“Fuck yeah, every night,” I said, reverting to an exaggerated version of my former manner of speaking. In catching up with him I had deliberately skipped the uplifting “can-do” parts of my redemption story: the associate's degree in English, the pretty happy marriage to Bonnie—who is a nurse's aide and disapproves of any and all illicit drug use—and especially the assistant manager job at the very same Choose'n'Save behind which I once dealt dope.

torie

As soon as we got the money we went over to Larry the dishwasher's house and scored, then we headed out toward the supermarket where Glen's friend would be waiting with the cold meds. In the heady rush of new love Glen and I both maybe overdid the snorting, but God, it felt good. I'd packed my bag with all the clothes and jewelry I thought I'd need in my future life as Mrs. Glen Frobe.

Did I feel bad about taking Jerry's $2,565? Nope. The gun in his night table? A little, because what if someone broke in and there was Jerry scrambling for the weapon in the drawer and it's not there and he gets killed and his last thoughts are,
That conniving thieving bitch took my fucking piece and I loved her more than anything I ever loved, goddamnit
, while the intruders, bikers as I'm imagining them, cut off his slim-as-a-pea-shoot pecker and do all manner of horrid things to him in an orgy of speed-fueled sadism that lasts until one of the bikers, I'm imagining his name is Seth or something else biblical—I know: Esau!—says something like, “Shit, man, this is one dead motherfucker,” and they go rooting around looking for whatever they can scavenge since Jerry never has much dope lying around the house and the money taped under the drawer is gone, another thing Jerry probably would be cursing me for, even as he reflects that he's never loved anybody like he loved me, with my prominent overbite and my twenty minutes of Kegels every day.

jerry

Soon as I saw something going on between Torie and Glen I sensed a golden opportunity, because Glen is a guy who can't say no to a piece of ass and Torie will do anything to get high, and when she made an excuse to leave five minutes after he headed out the door I had that magic feeling, like I might, just might, have a shot at getting rid of her for keeps. And for fucking his old friend's girl it would serve Glen right to get stuck with the bitch for a few years.

chuck

So I went out to the store, and after pretending to make some revisions in that week's work schedule (a job that strictly speaking should fall to Walt, my superior, who on the pretext of giving me valuable management experience via delegation has been weaning himself off just about all his own responsibilities over the last couple of years), I stepped onto the loading dock out back and removed from their hiding places five empty, flattened Choos-a-Fed cartons I'd been saving for a while. What kind of a man hides at his workplace empty cardboard cases of Choos-a-Fed, you may wonder? The answer lies in my abandonment some years ago of the drug life. I never, though I was so urged at the time, joined a twelve-step recovery program. Had I joined such a program I would not have encountered Glen in a bar, since participants are honor-bound, as I understand it, to shake off their other addictions as well. Had I joined such a program I would not have spent these last years stewing over Gretchen's fate and plotting different kinds of revenge on Glen. I'll bet I have twenty or thirty such scenarios, of varying degrees of complexity and practicality and lethality.

And now an opportunity had arisen, and I filled each case with what I figured the weight of the Choos-a-Fed would have been, and then I sealed it up carefully enough that it looked brand new and unopened, a level of craft that was probably unnecessary, because he was tweaking like the very dickens when I saw him at the Brass Candle. I loaded the empty cases into the bed of my truck and sat and waited out back by the dumpster.

torie

So I'm thinking maybe it's time to get out of the hospitality business altogether, once we've made this score up in Topeka, and cut way back on my crank habit before it turns into an addiction. Also thinking what beautiful babies Glen and I could make, and what a contribution I could make to society after getting my hygienist's license back.

glen

We're driving north on the turnpike and I am feeling pretty damned fine. This Crumdog will certainly, upon hearing who our mutual friends are, take the Choos-a-Fed off our hands for three, maybe four times what we would have paid poor old Chuck for it. As far as Chuck goes, the cops aren't going to spend much time on the shooting of a well-known low-level pot dealer tossed into a dumpster behind a supermarket. Not the cops I used to know.

As I listen to the female prattling on about our future of domestic bliss, I wonder about leaving her with the bikers. She needs more crank than I can afford to provide, and where I'm going I won't want a woman attached to me at the hip. The turnpike snakes through the Flint Hills, and up around Matfield Green I swear I can feel Frank Sinatra's penis start to vibrate in my pocket out of something not unlike joy.

SCOTT PHILLIPS
is the author of six novels, including
The Ice Harvest
and, most recently,
The Adjustment
(Counterpoint) and
Nocturne
(les Éditions la Branche). He lives in St. Louis, MO.

osito

by kenji jasper

M
an, you know shit is fucked up when we comin' way the fuck out here,” Gary said between puffs. He'd rolled the blunt with a Phillies, which meant it wouldn't last long. I'd told him that there were better brands, but he insisted. “This what I started with. So I'ma stick with these shits till I ain't have lungs no more.”

I was never a fan of working high. Hell, I didn't even touch weed or anything else. For me it was all about control, all about making mind and body one whenever needed. But Gary was the one who'd got us the job. So Gary was calling the shots. That's how it was and how it is still, at least in theory. Execution, however, was a completely different matter. At least he wasn't smokin' meth.

“This is where the money is,” I said.

Gary's country-fried English made me self-conscious about the way I pronounced my syllables so clearly, a lesson from my father about living in the “other” world, the one where people wore shirts and ties and worried about their balance sheets and annual reviews. All I wanted was a cubicle with my name on it. All I wanted was a quiet place to do my job. Too bad I wasn't any good at it.

“What the fuck does that shit even do?” Gary asked, the blunt already at half.

We'd boosted the car from the Dunn Loring station lot, a white Beamer wagon with factory rims. An '01 or '02 most likely. But I couldn't be sure in the dark. We were headed to someplace called Osito, about an hour outside of Baltimore. Rico told us it would be like palming a Snickers from a checkout.

My name is Nsilo. Don't ask me where it comes from. I got it from my pops. Any explanation is as gone as he is. He took a .38 slug to the chest on a dance floor six months home from the first Gulf War. All he was trying to do was break up a fight. But when the line on the screen went flat, it was my mama who ended up broken.

Rico had a cousin in Osito, the only child of the only black family in the whole town. This cousin had a father who was on the road most days driving eighteen-wheelers. The mother was the secretary at the all-white Pentecostal church. I could smell the sellout all over them.

“I mean, why in the fuck would you wanna be up and runnin' around all the time?” The roach that remained of the blunt was practically burning his fingers. But he kept pulling from it, even though he was at the wheel a long way from home.

Gary had memorized the directions after a thirty-second read back at the house. A heavy-hitter with a photographic memory is a beautiful thing. As long as you can control him, that is. I'm middle management, which means that I'm the one who takes the dog for his nightly walks.

Much like rap, the crack business ain't what it was twenty years ago. Back in the day, you couldn't walk down a street in the neighborhood without somebody trying to hire you to work one of their corners. But Rockefeller and the Patriot Act and rap changed all of that. That's why Rico got into meth. There's still plenty of money to be made in that game.

So Rico's family of sellouts sold him the location to the biggest meth lab in the county, five trailers in a park of twelve cooking crank like a twenty-four-hour convenience store. We were being sent to make a pickup, one we weren't paying for. There was a bit of other business too. But I was supposed to handle that personally.