Slide

Seventeen

Max was ravenous. He wanted junk food, Italian, Chinese, mountains of carbs, fizzy drinks, cold brews, a heap of coke. He wanted to go on shooting motherfuckers for hours, capping them good. He wanted, he wanted to kill the goddamn world, but first he was gonna have fucking Kyle’s ass.

In the car, leaving the bloodbath, Max tried to figure out if Kyle had sold him out. He even put the Glock to the kid’s head, threatened to play Russian Roulette, but the stupid hick still wouldn’t spill. He just kept quoting from his bible-Ezekiel, Job, Jonah, fucking Ecclesiastes. Yeah, like any of that shit was gonna help him now.

They pulled over and Max tossed the Glock out the window, into the East River. Even under pressure, with the cops on his tail, riding the high of his first-ever murder, Max knew how to cover the bases. They dumped the bullet-riddled SUV on Queens Boulevard and hailed a livery cab into the city. He knew the cops would find the car, trace it back to him, but he had a story all planned.

In the cab, Max told Kyle exactly what to say when the police questioned them, but he wasn’t sure if Kyle was listening to a damn word he was saying. Kyle was still praying, frantically turning pages of his bible, like he thought the faster he read it the deeper the shit would sink in. It occurred to Max, does Kyle even know how to read? Down where he was from didn’t they all live in trailers and start working on their momma and poppa’s farms when they were, like, thirteen?

When they got up to the apartment, Kyle locked himself in the bathroom, where he sat chanting more of that bible shit. Max, fueled on crack, was banging on the door, trying to get him to open up. Then he had an idea. Bible boy wouldn’t like to be the cause of another man’s suffering, now, would he? Max stormed into Katsu’s room and-oh Jesus, the skinny little sushi chef was jerking off to a Jap porn movie.

Max went, “Fuck, you’ve been making my salmon maki with those hands!”

Then Max thought about all the sticky rice he’d been eating lately and wanted to yack.

Katsu stood up quickly, his boxers at his knees, covering himself and bowing, going, “Sorry, sir. Sorry, sir.”

Max grabbed him by his hair and pulled him down the hallway to the kitchen. He grabbed the butcher knife, put it up to the terrified chef’s neck, then dragged him to the bathroom and screamed to Kyle, “Okay, bible boy, get your grits-and-collard-greens ass outa that toilet right now, boy, or sushi man’s made his last hand roll.”

Katsu screamed, “Max crazy! Kyle, you listen to Max and open door right now! He not fucking round!”

Kyle opened the door a crack, saw what was going on, and said to Max, “All right, all right! I’ll come out, just let him be. Let him be.”

Sounding like some John Lennon freak, like he was gonna go hold a fucking séance at Strawberry Fields.

“I want the truth out of you,” Max said, “and if you tell me I can’t handle the truth, trust me, you’ll make my day, asshole.”

He slit his eyes like Eastwood while going for the Nicholson hardass tone. He almost hoped Kyle wouldn’t give in. It would be fun to cut Katsu, to see what it felt like to kill with a knife. He’d already shot somebody today; if he strangled Kyle afterward it would be like hitting the murder trifecta. Yeah, Max felt fucking omnipotent, all right. He used to think that word had to do with, you know, getting it hard, getting a woody, but now he knew what it meant, he fucking knew.

“Okay, okay. I told her,” Kyle said, tears streaming down his cheeks. “We were in love, Mr. Fisher. I was gonna her take back down to Alabama and turn her into an honest woman.”

“You sold me out? After all I’ve done for you?”

Max felt seriously betrayed. He was Tony Soprano, getting ready to whack Pussy. He was Pacino asking his brother if he’d ratted him out.

Kyle said, “I tried to stay strong, I tried to do Jesus proud, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t resist her. That woman, she did something to me. I think…I think she might be Jezebel.”

“Yeah, she did something to you all right,” Max said. “She tried to get your ass killed, and my ass too. Who were the guys Felicia was with?”

“I…I don’t know.”

“Bullshit, she must’ve told you something.”

Kyle waited then said, “She said it was her cousin, I think.”

“Did she tell you a name?” Max asked.

Again Kyle wouldn’t answer right away, slow annoying fuck, then he said, “Yeah…It was Sha-Sha.”

Sha-Sha? What the fuck kind of a name was that? It sounded like a guy in one those new videos Madonna was putting out-her tight and old in purple leotards with black guys hopping around her.

Max smiled, said, “But you don’t know anything, huh?”

“That’s all I know, honest to God.” He clasped his hands together, beseeching. “Oh, please, sweet Jesus, don’t invoke your wrath, and may the lord god Abraham, the sons of the tabernacle grant you the true wisdom-”

With his free hand, Max gave him a slap in the mouth, said, “May you shut the fuck up?”

Then Max gave Kyle another wallop, and because it felt good to beat on somebody he whacked his chef on the head too, the fucking jerk-off.

Leaving the two assholes, he went into the lounge, flipped on the TV and fixed himself a tall, dry martini, never letting go of the knife. It was like an extension of him. Maybe he’d be called Max the Knife in the movie. Jeez, then there’d be a musical. Max couldn’t wait to see it. Maybe they’d get Hugh Jackman to play him.

He cycled through the channels till he got to NY1. And sure enough, the main story was the shootings in Queens. Fuck, talk about popping wood. They were talking about a lone gunman who took down some of the baddest mothers in these here United States. Well, not exactly but that’s how it sounded.

Then someone handed something to the news lady, a sheet of blue paper. Breaking news, she said. An exstripper named Felicia Howard had been found, dead, off the Belt Parkway. Bye-bye, bee-atch, Max thought, then he heard a pair of loud sobs from behind him. He turned around to see Kyle and the freaking sushi chef, weeping in unison.

The fuck was Katsu crying for? Uh oh-Oprah light bulb moment-the little turd was giving the sticky rice to her as well? Christ, was there anyone in the apartment she hadn’t been screwing? If they’d had a dog, would she have fucked him, too?

Max turned back to the news report. A cop named Miscali or something was taking the heat for some monumental screw up. At first Max couldn’t follow it, but then he started to get the gist, in bits and pieces. Kyle and Felicia must’ve sold him out, but she’d given the cops the wrong location. But then who the fuck had shot Felicia? The only one left standing after the bloodbath had been Fat Albert-what was his name? Sha-Sha. But why would her own cousin shoot her?

Max’s head was throbbing from trying to follow all the ins and outs of this, not helped by no food, but he was fucked if he’d ever eat another morsel that jack-off chef produced. Also, the sounds of Kyle’s sobbing and wailing were seriously getting on his already frayed nerves. He shut the fucking TV off and stormed off to his bedroom, carrying the pitcher of martinis with him.

Max came to around ten the next morning. He was in his good smoking jacket, the one with M in gold on the pocket, and his stomach felt like a very large rodent was trying to gnaw its way out.

He wobbled toward the bathroom, then stopped, a thought hitting his very tender head, The knife, where the hell was it?

Nope, not on the floor. Then he thought, Kyle, and went to the living room, but the boy wasn’t there. He did a quick tour of the rest of the apartment-no Kyle.

Well, screw him, he had to get to the bathroom, like, now. As he sat on the bowl, feeling as if his intestines were pouring out, he decided Kyle had run on home to Alabama. Maybe Sushi Man went with him, the good ol’ boys down there, they’d sure appreciate cornholing some yellow meat, good for the skin. As another upheaval hit his tender stomach, he was sort of relieved he didn’t have the knife-he might not have been able to resist the urge to slit his own throat, put himself out of his misery.

Then the doorbell rang. What the fuck? The doorman was supposed to screen visitors or God knew what vermin could just come up and ring his bell.

He staggered to his feet, gave his tender ass a wipe, and was about to answer the door when he thought, maybe it’s Kyle. Eh, fuck him. Let the backstabbing bible boy sleep in the hallway.

Max started to walk away when a voice shouted, “Police, open up!”

Could Max have imagined it? Some side effect of the dope, the vodka…?

But the banging continued and a voice, said, “Police, open the fuckin’ door!”

Max opened it slowly, then they pushed it open all the way. That cop from TV-man, this was some bad trip all right-forced Max onto the floor and cuffed him from behind.

“Party’s over, big shot,” the cop said. “Time to get your scummy ass downtown.”