Sex, Thugs and Rock & Roll

Private Craps Shooter at Dawn by Steven M. Messner

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.

It’s noon and I’m eating a sandwich at Ritz’s Diner. Billy Strap rushes up to my booth. “Burma, Burma, someone stole Cordoba.”

“Stole? I don’t think so. He’s probably off eating a pack of Cub Scouts.”

“I had him tied up outside the bank. When I looked outside I saw some guy jam a needle in his neck and then throw him in a van and take off.”

“Did you get a look at the guy?”

“Not really…yes, wait, he was wearing a Yankees baseball cap.”

“Well, let me get right on that. I’ll check every man, woman, and child in the city who wears a Yankees hat. That should only take about forty years.”

Billy grabs my arm and I spill coffee all over my lap. “I read about this in the paper. They’ve been kidnapping dogs and putting them in fights. They’re gonna kill Cordoba. Come on, you have to go find them.”

“Can I at least eat my breakfast?”

Billy scoops my eggs up with my toast and makes a sandwich. “Here, you can eat this on the way.” He slaps down a sawbuck on the table and pulls me out the door.

“I don’t have time for this. I have a case I need to work on.”

This of course is a complete lie. I haven’t had work in weeks.

Billy pulls a thick wad of cash from his pocket and hands it to me. I have a soft spot for dogs, kids, sexy women, and money. That bastard knows all my weaknesses. I’ve been too candid with him.

“So, you’ll do it?”

“Sure, sure, I’ll do it. I’ll find your damn dog.”

As a kid I had a dog, a Chihuahua named Tank. At my command he’d latch on to the ankles of my enemies and rip with his little needle teeth. I loved that goddamn dog. His life ended one night in our driveway when my stepfather, weaving his way home on a drunken bender, squashed him underneath the wheels of his Pinto. Funny thing, the Pinto disappeared that night. If I were a betting man I’d bet it was at the bottom of Lansing’s Quarry collecting silt.

The sign reads HARRISBURG CITY DOG POUND. What a fucking dump. It wouldn’t surprise me one damn bit if a tumbleweed suddenly rolled by. The building itself looks like an old car dealership: big plate-glass windows, a huge broken-up parking lot, and four garages.

I go inside the building and make for the front desk. The dogs are stacked in cages against the big windows. I avert my eyes. The last thing I need is to see some abandoned Chihuahua that reminds me of Tank and end up taking the mutt home with me.

There’s a guy behind the counter reading a Dog Fancy magazine. He looks like he might be Howdy Doody’s twin brother, only he’s fat and doesn’t wear the cowboy getup.

I figure small talk is the way to go. “Is that any good?”

“You’ve never read it?”

“I don’t read anything with ‘Fancy’ in the title.”

“What?”

“We need to talk.”

He sets his magazine down. “Okay.”

“First of all wipe that smirk off your face.”

He touches his lip. “I’m not smirking. I had a harelip. It was surgically repaired when I was an infant. It’s a scar.”

“That’s what they all say.”

“They do?”

“No, not really but I won’t hold that against you. Now, tell me what you’re doing selling these dogs.”

The color drains out of him. I gambled and laid it all on the line because that’s the only way I know how to do things and I got damned lucky. First stop and I’m on to something.

He sits down on a stool. “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t ‘what are you talking about’ to me, Howdy Doody. The word’s out you’ve been selling dogs to lowlifes for fighting. We have you on video making several of these transactions.”

“Are you a cop or something?”

“Or something is right, now spit up the details or I’ll have to rough you up.”

“I want to speak to my attorney.”

“Sure, why don’t you speak to your attorney, and while you’re busy planning a legal strategy I’ll go spreading the word around town that you gave up the dog fighters.”

He puts his head in his hands. “You don’t understand. These people will kill me if I tell you.”

“There’s an upside to the scenario that you’re not looking at. If you don’t tell me I’ll kill you.”

“That’s an upside?”

“Shut your piehole. I’m not done laying it out. Now, if you tell me, I let you live and then maybe, just maybe, you’ll have enough to get out of town before they come looking for you.”

“Shit, all right.”

“Good. Now, I’m curious, why do they snatch dogs off the street if they can come here and pick up a stray pit bull or firedog?”

“Ha-ha, firedog? You mean a Dalmatian?”

I grab the dog treat bowl on the counter and smash his right hand with it. There’s crunching and blood.

He holds his injured hand and hops around. “Ouch! Fuck, my hand. You didn’t have to go ballistic on me.”

“Ballistic is what I do best. Now answer my question.”

“They go through a lot of dogs. Ouch, my hand…sometimes we don’t have the types of dogs they want. Hell, they’ve even fought stray Chihuahuas if they’re desperate for dogs.”

“Those sick bastards. I had a Chihuahua named Tank.”

He snickers. It’s involuntary but so is my reaction. I slam his face into the Dog Fancy magazine and the counter.

“Ow, fuck, why did you do that?”

“I’m the one asking the questions here, Carrot Top. You think it’s funny to hurt a Chihuahua?”

“No, no, it’s not funny.”

“That’s right, it’s not funny. Now tell me, where do they hold these fights?”

He hesitates and I don’t blame him. Anyone who would fight Chihuahuas is a sick bastard and capable of any atrocity. “They fight the dogs in Still’s Billiards Hall over on Amity Road, every Tuesday night.”

“Tonight is Tuesday night. You have to get me into these fights.”

“I can’t, the invite list is very strict.”

“Then I’ll have to find my own way into those fights.”

“How?”

“I have my ways, fancy pants.”

The parking lot of the Penn National Racecourse is packed with cars and I have one hell of a time finding a spot. Oftentimes driving a boat like the Monte Carlo necessitates creative maneuvering like parking on a bush or pushing a compact car out of the way. After driving around for ten minutes I end up parking in a flower bed and hanging a T-shirt out of the driver’s side window so it looks like my car broke down.

Inside the building it’s five minutes until race time and the gambling junkies are flitting around like hornets after someone’s blasted their nest open with a shotgun.

I place my bets and search for a busy area and find a nice one right next to a concession stand. Let the show begin.

I scan the crowd. “This is nothing like the dog fights in Tijuana. Now, that’s some real sport.”

No one pays me the slightest bit of attention. So I move to another area down closer to the track and repeat my little speech.

“This is nothing like the dog fights in Tijuana. Now, that’s some real sport.”

Still nothing. I head over to the bar and repeat, “This is nothing like the dog fights in Tijuana. Now, that’s some real sport.”

I look around the place and I notice some dame noticing me. It sure as hell isn’t for my looks. My face looks like a bus full of kids was playing hopscotch on it. I press on. “I wish they had dog fights like that around here.”

She turns away, attacking a tall glass of giggle juice. I saddle up to her at the bar, purposely rubbing up against her hip. It’s important to make physical contact…okay, maybe not important, but it’s damn nice.

She smiles like a dame ought to smile, and I’m transported to that golden place in my head-the place like Vegas with gaudy lights and sin and smut, where a man can roll naked in a bathtub of whatever it is that flips his switch and all the while a high-class call girl sucks his toes… Maybe I’ve said too much.

I make my move. “They call me Stern, uh, Howard Stern.”

Damn, that was a bad fake name.

She sets her glass down. “Like the radio shock jock?”

“The name sounds the same, but if you saw it spelled out, well, you’d realize that it looks nothing like the other name sounds.”

“Huh?”

“Right.”

I try to take her mitt, introduce myself properlike, but she pulls back as if I’ve just tried to hand her a used handkerchief.

“You’re not my type.”

“This whole metrosexual thing has put a dent in the business of being a man. If you wring one of those bastards out like a washcloth you won’t get an ounce of testosterone. They wear those funny black-rimmed glasses, tight pants, and shiny shirts. I’d never wear a shiny shirt.”

“You wouldn’t look good in a shiny shirt.”

“Who are you trying to fool? I don’t look good in or out of any shirt. This face has been intimate with a fair share of closed fists and my body, well, I’ve been told by my doctor not to bother to leave it to science.”

“You’ve got a lot going for you.”

“Yes, I don’t. Fortunately there are a lot of dames that like a guy just for his money.”

“You’re rich?”

“Thanks, you’re not bad yourself.”

She frowns and there’s silence between us for a moment and not the sexy kind either. We’re watching the end of the race. Everyone around is consumed with either complete disgust or utter joy. That’s the life of a gambler, there’s no more than two ways about it. Win or lose.

My horse finishes dead last. If they paid out for picking losers I’d be a millionaire.

I pull out the wad of lettuce Billy Strap gave me and make sure the she sees it. “Horse racing is for the birds. In Tijuana they have dog fights-real sport-but then a dame like you probably wouldn’t go for dog fights.”

She looks over at me. “A dame like me?”

“Yeah, you’d probably faint at the sight of blood.”

“Maybe some dames would, but I’m not just some dame.”

“That’s what they all say. When I lived in Mexico I had a girlfriend who would go to the fights with me when I was fighting my dogs. Every time a little blood would be spilled she’d faint.”

“You fought dogs?”

“Not personally but I had dogs that would fight other dogs.”

“That’s what I meant.”

“I bet you did.”

She looks over each shoulder and then back to me. “What if I told you I had a ticket for the only dog fights in town?”

“I might say you’re a liar.”

“You’d be wrong. So what do you say? Are you up for some real action?”

“I’ll get the rubber sheets and baby oil.”

“Not that kind of action.”

“Oh, right. You mean dog fights.” I try not to think of Tank, but his bristly little mug keeps popping up in my head. “What’s your name?”

“You can call me Natasha.”

“Sure, Natasha, I’m up for some dog fights.”

She takes a pen and piece of paper out of her purse and starts writing directions. “Do you still raise dogs for fighting?”

“I raise them but I don’t have anywhere to fight them right now.”

“Well, maybe we can change that.”

“Yeah, maybe we can.”

The Monte Carlo makes such a racket I have to park it at a fast food joint a quarter mile down the road and hoof it to Still’s Billiard Hall. Goddamn heap. It’s been coughing up terminal black smoke lately, pinging and panging like it’s on its last wheel. I can’t take a chance of anyone seeing me pull up in the Monte. The illusion of me being a high roller would be all but destroyed. I can’t have that, my life depends on it.

I go around back and whisper the secret password to some guy in a bad black suit. He ushers me in. I don’t like what I see. This is a dark place, a place where sick bastards with twisted inner secrets come to get off. This isn’t strictly about gambling. It’s about power, control, and a blatant disregard for Lassie. That’s right, I said it. Something happened to these sick bastards as children. Maybe it was as simple as not having enough love or maybe they just didn’t like how a dog like Lassie was better than them at making friends and they’ve held a grudge against canines ever since. Whatever is broken with them, whatever it is all those psychologists couldn’t figure out, whatever makes these sick fucks tick, I’ll cure tonight.

In the center of the room everyone is gathered around a deep pit. Immediately I spot Cordoba chained to the wall. That I never liked the bastard doesn’t seem to matter now. He doesn’t deserve this, no beast deserves this. He looks up at me and I can see in his eyes that he knows who I am. Good dog. He doesn’t give me away. It’s not lost on the mutt that something bad is about to go down.

“Hello there, stranger.”

I turn and standing there like a Polaroid of my wettest dream is Natasha. She’s got the “come hither” thing down pat: tight red latex, black straps, fishnets, and heels a mile high. And then it hits me, and it hits me hard. She’s wearing a blond wig. She was the dame with the Dutch boy haircut who cut through our craps game this morning. She was scouting out dogs to snatch. I’ve never been surer of anything in my life.

“Howard, I’m glad you could make it.”

I look over my shoulder, thinking she’s talking to someone else, but then I remember I told her my name was Howard Stern. “Uh, yeah, it’s damn nice to be here. Who decorated this place? Martha Stewart’s evil clone?”

“Very funny, I don’t think anyone actually decorated this place.”

“I think you’re right.”

She does some sort of little hop and her tits jiggle underneath her red latex dress. It’s all I can do not to unfold like some sort of card table. There’s something bothering me, though. She just seems too goddamn nice to be mixed up in this dog fighting stuff. Or maybe it’s me projecting on to her, maybe I just don’t want to believe someone so beautiful on the outside could be so rotten on the inside.

She grasps my arm. “Ooh, there is Tan Blancard. I want you to meet him. This is his setup.”

I know this guy from somewhere. I hope he doesn’t make me.

“Who is this?” Tan asks. “And what happened to his face?”

He rubs a wispy little porno star mustache with his thumb and forefinger. I hate porno star mustaches. I can tell by the way he carries himself that he considers himself a tough guy.

“This is Howard Stern,” Natasha says.

“Howard Stern, like the disc jockey?” he asks.

“Yeah, but it’s spelled differently.”

I can tell by the tone of his voice that he doesn’t buy my name. He grabs me by my collar. “This isn’t Howard Stern. This is Burma Ludlow. He was my wife’s private investigator. This fucker helped to screw me over in the divorce. He even slept with her.”

“Actually there was very little sleeping going on,” I say.

“Private who?” Natasha asks.

“He’s right, I’m a private detective. I’ve come to take back my friend’s dog.”

Chances are I’m not going to make it out of this place alive. I’m okay with that, I have to be. Every day you go in search of the truth you know that odds are you won’t live to see another day. I can’t let these dogs die, though. They didn’t do anything to anyone. Me, I probably have it coming. At least I tell myself that because it will make the end that much easier.

I’m surrounded and I didn’t even get a chance to blink. A dozen goons dressed in black, a dozen goons with chains, guns, and pipes, a dozen goons wanting to sing me a sweet lullaby.

Be tough, I tell myself, you’re not going out like this. You were destined for a much more grandiose exit, something preceded by a lobster dinner, call girls, and a big explosion.

They start closing in and my fists lock around Mom’s brass knuckles. “Who’s first?” I say, and uncork my fists. It’s a glorious bloodbath. Mom’s brass knuckles behind my powerful fists are breaking jaws and crushing noses. I’m a human wrecking machine, but there are too many of them. Someone hits me in the back of the head with what feels like a magnum of champagne and I go down.

My body rises off the ground and I’m tossed into the dog pit. I land and the dogs chained to either side of the pit start barking.

I rise up onto all fours and spit blood. “There’ll be no dogs dying here tonight.”

Everyone from every direction is still laughing, having themselves one hell of a time.

“Release the dogs,” Tan Blancard says.

The dog handlers obey. The only things I can see are flashes of teeth and yellow eyes. I won’t hurt the dogs.

This is a damn hard pledge to keep, though, as the first pit bull rips into my arm and the second bites into my calf. “Good dogs. Nice puppies.”

I try to keep a picture of Tank and Lassie in my head. I picture them in a meadow sharing a couple of Whoppers. It helps the pain from completely reaching my brain.

“Stop, damn it! Stop,” I yell.

I see angels or something damn close to them fluttering around my head and I have to admit that this just might be the end. It’s been a damn good run-maybe too good for a no good bastard like myself.

Snap! Snap!

The dogs fall limp next to me. It’s Natasha. She’s shot the dogs with a tranquilizer gun. I know what was bothering me about her now. She’s a cop. Okay, maybe I was wrong about her snatching the dogs, but what I’m not wrong about is that she’s in trouble.

Tan Blancard comes up from behind her and beans her with a club. She goes down hard. I reach into my trench coat and pull out my roscoe. “This is for you, Tank.”

All those that came to watch the dog fights are scrambling for the exits. There’s smoke and flames. One of the bullets must have hit something flammable.

I pull myself out of the pit and see one of the goons mounting a giant stereo speaker. He lets loose with an Uzi, spraying lead all over the joint. It’s ugly. The rich guys dive behind their escorts. A bullet skims my scalp and blood runs down my face. I grab one of the dead dogs from an earlier fight by the collar and use it as a shield as I move toward the shooter.

The corpse takes shots and I can feel warm dog blood running down my forearm. I reach around the dead dog and fire one shot after another, hitting the guy on top of the speaker, blowing his arm off at the elbow. He’s in too much pain to come after me now, but I shoot him through the head anyway.

It’s a damn shame all this dying, but I figure that every time one of these bastards gets snuffed the positive balance of the universe is righted. I’ll make sure hell fills up real quick.

I reload and reload again, shooting up every bad guy in the joint. Soon everyone else is dead or gone except for Tan Blancard. I give him the bum’s rush as he unloads his pistol into the dog corpse and then I chuck it in his face, knocking him down.

Tan Blancard says something like, “Fuck you.” But at this point it doesn’t matter what he says. He’s going to die.

I jump on top of him, pinning his arms down with my knees. He’s got more teeth in his mug than a pack of were-wolves and they’re glaring at me all yellowlike. I swing with my brass knuckles and half of them are lying on the ground in bits. I pick several pieces out of my fingers and then, as if my fists have minds of their own, they start pounding his face in. With each strike of my brass knuckles I feel power surge through my body. “You’ll…never…kill…another…dog.” It’s a goddamn beautiful thing. I see Tank, Lassie, and my mom smiling down on me from heaven.

“Ouch, my head.”

It’s Natasha or whatever her real name is. My fists are still working, grinding Blancard’s face into pulp. I have to make a conscious effort to make them stop.

I get up, tossing my brass knuckles to the ground. The smoke is getting bad now.

“What’s going on?” she asks.

“We’re getting out of here,” I say.

I drag Natasha and Cordoba up and out of this hellish place-through the blood and gore and the smoke-and as I reach the top of the steps I can see the cops are already here.

“Freeze, drop your weapon.”

I drop my roscoe. Everything looks hazy. Out of the corner of my eye I see something move. “Tank, is that you?”

A cop with his own roscoe pointed straight at my mug shuffles toward me. “Who the hell is Tank?”

“He was my best friend.”

I turn and start walking back into the burning building.

“Freeze,” the cops yell.

“There are two dogs still in there. I’m going back.”

The cops are yelling at me to stop, but none of them is willing to chase me into a burning building. I know it’s not romantic to die for a couple of dogs, but there’s no way I’m going to let them fry in that hellhole. I can’t have that weight on my conscience.

I sit in an interrogation room with cops yelling and working me over. I’m sure their punches hurt, but I’m in the golden place in my head where I see Tank and Lassie tussling over a bucket of KFC.

One of the cops answers the phone. He hangs up and they all leave. I’m given a box of donut holes, a pack of smokes, and a large cup of coffee and left alone. An hour passes very slowly. The door opens.

“Natasha?”

She extends her hand. “My name is Detective Uma Pocket.”

I push the box of donut holes towards her. “Private Investigator Burma Ludlow.”

“I’ve been working undercover for nearly a year trying to bust Tan Blancard.”

“Well, look at the bright side-now you won’t have to go through all that messy legal stuff.”

She looks through the box and picks out a chocolate one. She looks at it but doesn’t eat. “What you did was reckless, irresponsible, and downright dangerous. I should have you locked up for the rest of your natural born life.”

I stick my hands out so she can cuff me. “What are you waiting for?”

“Unfortunately what you did was also unfathomably brave. You did all that to save a dog?”

“I did all that because it was the right thing to do. Don’t go placing me on a damn pedestal. A piece of scum like Tan Blancard deserved what he got. If I have to go down to get rid of one of his kind, then so be it.”

Her eyes soften and meet mine. I’m pretty sure we could get a game of ring toss going if she unzipped my fly.

“You’re not going down. I made sure of that,” she says.

“Well, maybe you could go down…on me.”

“What?”

“Uh, nothing.”

She lays my charred brass knuckles and my roscoe on the table.

“I suppose I owe you big,” I say.

“You don’t owe me anything. I wish there were more men like you out there, Burma Ludlow. What passes for a man these days is nothing short of pathetic.”

She walks up to me and holds my head in her hands. Our lips meet and I’m transported to that golden place in my head.

They release me at dawn and I pick up Cordoba from the pound. The dog rests with its head on my lap as we drive back to my hotel.

Outside the hotel Billy Strap is playing craps as I pull up. He jumps to his feet when he sees me.

“Did you find Cordoba?”

I point down to my lap.

“Cordoba!” Billy cries.

I step out of the Monte Carlo, light up a cigarette, and watch the sun disappear behind a cloud. Billy hugs and kisses Cordoba. It would almost be touching if Billy wasn’t so sleazy.

“Thanks, Burma, I owe you big time.”

“Nah, you paid me. We’re square.”

“Well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I need to borrow back that four grand I gave you. I’ll pay it back next week.”

I take the wad out of my pocket and hand it to Billy. This case actually cost me money. I’ll never see that stack of lettuce again, but at least I saved those dogs. At least that’s something.

“All right, now, how about a game of private craps?” Billy asks.

“I don’t have any mazula,” I say.

Billy takes the wad out of his pocket. “I’ll lend you some. How much do you need?”