THINK FROM THE HIP; SHOOT

FROM THE SPINAL CORD

Lew is batting eye-lashes and flashing Colgate for all she's worth. Polly's been sent-on. "Please Red, don't be angry with me. I won't let you down. You know that, don't you?"

Lew thinks things are going great. Red's being a sweetie. He even invites Lew into the backroom for a private conference. Red wants Lew to sit on his lap. Lew's into such a sugery con that Red's starting to slice her up with his eyes. He's thinking a little piece of cake would even the score with this insufferable crank. Brinkmanship is Lew's tactic She figures she'll slide onto Red's lap, coyly butter him with wide-eyes and then make a pitch for increasing her share of 'the Business'. Red's not listening to Lew's melodious flutter. Cake is his monster and this phoney bitch is Little Miss Muffet. Lew's sinking deeper and deeper into the maple syrupy muck, moving closer to Red's lizard-lick of a maw. That's it. The trap shuts tight. No sir. Nobody fucks with Iron Red. He doesn't feel like waiting for Lew's song and dance to jerk him around. He gets her wrist and pulls her down. When Lew struggles, Red bends her over his telephone pole thigh, whips up her skirt and forces her to take a hot-spike of dilaudid in the snow white cap of her little meloness ass. In a few minutes, she'll be putty, like raping a baby.

Red doesn't count on Lew's resourcefulness under duress. She's clever. While Red's poking around with a cigarette stained finger between her rubbery thighs, Lew makes him a deal he can't refuse. She submits to his evil probing with saucy glee and begs for a more respectable sized instrument to be placed at her disposal. Red lets her up to strip and vroom; she's out the door before the dilaudid turns her to jello.

“But Blindinan, Oh Adolph! Please help Blindman," she pleads in slow, painful gasps. Blindman is up the proverbial creek without a paddle. He's crapped-out with two of the meanest hombres in New Hope Park. Red Hannahan: saloon owner, drug dealer and arm twister for the Macaroni Kids. Snowball: Red's uncouth, one armed, black lackey. These are hard times and even harder people.

Adolph wanders into Red's, looking for Blindman. Velvety dark folds ensconce table and stool, patrons and help, in a thick smelly atmosphere of cooking grease and candle light. The vidiots stand before futuristic display boards, the machine intelligence chirping like angry birds, dappling their dull gray eyes with cheerios of electric color. Snowball bends lugubriously over a dog-eared book, his metal arm resting on a pile of greasy rags. The joint hangs like a hoodooed sundowner, ready to pull the blanket of night over its carp-face. None of the bucolic monsters, seated at the bar, pay Adolph any notice. They have long since stopped caring who walks twixt these misbegotten doors.

Adolph is woozy from too long on the tilt-a-whirl of reds and bourbon. The light from the candles casts his skin in pale green. Like artichoke hearts. The contrast between Adolph's sickly flesh and his shiny black crop of vigorous hair is made even more notable by a cyclatronic pair of navy blue eyes. He can rivet these eyes hypnotically on even the most indifferent target and with a flick; impale them on his silvery words like butterflies in a box.

There is still a shimmering behind those glassy hollows where life grapples with death. Not the bright-eyes of youth, but unmistakably the bloom is not entirely tried It takes refuge in Adolph's spinal cord and from there, florid with remarkably virulent blossoms, life sinks its teeth into the bone and marrow of his lamentable flesh. Against the back wall, a red and white cane gathers photons from the waxen bar light. It belongs to Blindman.

Adolph has borrowed a .45 cal, service revolver. It's tucked not so neatly beneath his wool flannel, double-breasted. His lumpy face is trying desperately to draw itself up into a tight V. Lips are curling over hard, yellow teeth. Eyes screwing into narrow slits.

The gun gooses Adolph on. Gives him an extra ooch of courage. He slides onto an eviscerated bar stool. "Give me a bourbon and coke!" he growls. Snowball, startled by the aggressiveness of the request,looks up from his book. Hanrahan himself turns from his money counting to ascertain the source of the disturbance. Adolph checks for weapons, not wanting to use his ace-in-the-hole for anything less than the ultimate conflagration. The sink, filled with empty whiskey bottles, will do nicely, he thinks.

"Hanrahan!" Adolph says, modulating his best means-business voice to indicate the seriousness of what is to come next. "What’ve you done with Blindman? You low-life scum!"

"What're you talking about?" retorts Hanrahan, spinning around bad-ass quick. "Forget the drink and get out of my bar!"

Adolph drives his glare like a stake into Hanrahan's heart, all the while, keeping Snowball under careful scrutiny. Hanrahan's toady stands stock-still, a frightened look in his silky eyes. "What about Blindman?” Adolph presses the point forcefully.

"What Blindman?" Hanrahan shouts back. "We ain't got no blindman here. Has we boy?" Hanrahan says as he turns to Snowball for confirmation. "I'm counting quietly to myself. When I get to ten, I want to see Blindman or I'm gonna tear you a new asshole Red," rankles Adolph malignantly. "How would you like me to come over this here bar and break your neck?" comes Hanrahan’s challenge. Hanrahan's words are accompanied by a slight forward bent of his lumberjack body as he rebalances himself on the balls of his feet, ready to attack. Adolph reaches quickly for the neck of a liquor bottle. He cracks it in one motion on the edge of the bar and shards of glass explode at the point of impact. It tinkles on the floor like raggedy teeth, leaving only an unconvincing edge of jagged cutlery in Adolph's soft green hand, glinting its signal of menace like a lighthouse on some rocky sound.

The memory of Lewlyn's humiliation at the hands of this sorry excuse for a human being has Adolph in a state of murderous hysteria. This ridiculous remnant of flossy thorn seems ball-less in the face of Hanrahan's cruel sneer. Adolph shakes visibly with rage. Hanrahan's meat hooks suddenly grow a crude looking shillelagh about four feet long. Snowball, dangling a black leather flap filled with heavy lead shot from his good arm, makes a move toward the end of the bar to get into position on Adolph's flank.

"Yeah! Come on around the bar bitch!" Adolph challenges as he jumps off his stool and switches the broken bottle to his left hand. "I'll feed you to your own roaches. Now where's Blindman? I'm tired of this gentle persuasion shit!" Adolph foams. He whips the service revolver from beneath his coat and immediately there is a detonation. He doesn't expect it to explode so arbitrarily. Boom! Like some field-piece.

The bullet wings past Red's ear and penetrates the door of a squat white Norge, breaking a bottle of cream of Kentucky and spreading the refrigeration coils like so many retracted ribs. Coolant oozes onto a brownish head of iceberg lettuce. That's when Adolph beats-feet. He figures the bullet took Red's head and cracked it into a million shiny pieces.

When Adolph blows into Lewlyn's, he finds her consoling Blindman. The two are cooing and grooming each other like frightened monkeys. Blindman, as it turns out, slipped out of Red's unnoticed while everybody was playing hounds and hare with Lew. Adolph twitches nervously. Now he's a killer. Or worse! If Hanrahan is still alive, then Adolph's life isn't worth a plugged-nickel. The future for Adolph holds either life in prison or the goons. In either case, he is doomed. Lew knows what to do immediately. He is to get on a bus and out of town. When the bus arrives at its destination, Adolph must find the nearest center for the treatment of alcoholism and commit himself.

"Don't waste anytime," Lew says as she hands Adolph her last money in a crumpled wad. "And don't call here. In a week or so, call Polly and give him a pay-phone number and a time when you can be reached. Now go! I'll take care of things at this end." Jeezusfuck! Adolph really didn't mean to kill Red despite that he needed to be killed. He really didn't mean to kill anybody.