Suckers - Jack Kilborn [65]
But you also have to call up Bunny Muffin’s Personal Massage Assistants on Halsted, and tell them to send Candi over, on your dime. You’ve made me all tense.
And make sure it’s Candi with an “i”. They have a Candy with a “y” there, and I’m not into that weirdo enema stuff.
Kisses,
Harry
P.S.: On second thought, send them both.
* * *
Andrew,
Harry and I had a nice long phone conversation after I e-mailed him the ultimatum. I realize that he’s not the easiest person to get along with, but he does understand that keeping his advance money is contingent upon both of you submitting a publishable final product. So you shouldn’t have any more problems. Keep me in the loop.
Yours truly,
Chad
* * *
“Wow, those are some sharp-ass teeth!” said Harry, pointing at one of the cops.
The cops smiled. One of them pressed the button on the side of his walkie-talkie. “Just a party that got a bit loud,” he said. “We’re breaking it up right now.” He replaced the walkie-talkie on his belt.
“So…uh, when you say ‘breaking it up,’ does that mean you’re going to arrest the bad guys, or am I pretty much screwed?” I asked.
“The second one,” said the cop.
“That’s what I figured. The fangs sort of clued me in.”
“I like hamburgers,” Harry said.
The cops looked at each other, then at me. “What’s his problem?”
“He’s drugged up. And stupid. Just ignore him, unless you’re looking for somebody to kill first.”
The cops grinned. “Ignore the inspiration for Fatal Autonomy? Not likely. You, on the other hand, are going into the Pit.”
I did not weep at this.
But I wanted to.
“Keeeyaaaa!”
I struck the first cop with the knife-edge of my left hand, Drunken Jeet Kun Shaolin Monkey Fu style. I connected with the bridge of his nose, and he made like a bad poker hand and folded.
Cop Number two pulled his weapon, but my instincts were honed like something really well-honed, and I grabbed his wrist and shoved the gun upward.
Mayhem was bending down near the second cop’s butt, but I am close to 100% positive he wasn’t sniffing anything. Following my heroic lead, Mayhem drove his shoulder into the second cop’s stomach, driving him backwards.
The gun went off, the bullet zinging over my head. Then Andrew made a fist and hit the cop in the jaw, and it was like watching a gigantic macho volcano unleashing its manly fury, all muscles and testosterone and heroics.
Mayhem threw a series of powerhouse Clubber Lang lefts and rights, growling like a heroic grizzly bear as he pummeled the Pire. Not once did Andrew whimper like a whiney little tattletale bitch boy, no matter what anyone says.
The cop went down, and Mayhem pried the gun from his hand and pointed it at me. I wondered if, in the frenzy of the moment, my heroic good friend had somehow forgotten who the bad guys were. I grabbed Pepe the Dancing Leprechaun and ducked.
But Andrew had retained a clear head, and he fired at the first cop, who had gotten up behind me and was now holding one of those Conan swords, the really thick ones with the blood groove and the handle made from the tail of a dragon, but not a real dragon because they aren’t real, one of those plastic dragons with reinforced graphite fibers.
Then, somehow, the whole house burst into flames.
“Could this be supernatural vampire magic?” I thought, searching for the dropped morphine bag.
The screams of the damned echoed from the house. Or maybe it was the screams of all those poor fuckers who were on fire.
They must have had some sort of meth lab in there, or maybe an oil refinery, because then there was this gimungous explosion, which blew Mayhem and I at least ten yards across the lawn.
Sadly, Pepe didn’t make it.
Mayhem and I slowly got to our feet, picking off the burning pieces of his poor victim neighbor Dan Foltersmith, and parts of some naked elderly old women, and a heavily pierced ear that forensics later identified as belonging to Tanya Mertz, the runaway who began this whole sordid mess.
Little Tanya had finally come home.