Chapter One
They were standing in front of the
old boarded-up church on Bristol Street.
“Gimme a light,” said Kitty, leaning toward Isley, cigarette trembling
in the corner of her mouth. Isley snapped a flame from his big silver lighter
after three false starts and held it to the tip of her cigarette. His hand was
numb and shaking from the cold.
It was one of those bleak November Sundays when everything is dead and
the sky is full of sleet and you’re just waiting for the full weight of winter
to come down.
“Thanks,” said Kitty.
Peachfuzz was vomiting warm champagne on the granite steps; it hit the
stone with a slap, and steam wandered up toward the
streetlight.
“You okay, Peach?” Kitty asked, drawing on her cigarette.
“Yeah.” She straightened up and gave Kitty a weak, wan smile. “Gimme a
smoke, willya?”
Kitty shrugged. “My last one.”
“Well, then give me a drag, then.” She gestured toward the cigarette.
“Fuck off. I don’t want your nasty-ass puke all over my filter.”
“But I’m all out,” said Peachfuzz.
Kitty chuckled. “Sorry...”
Isley removed a battered pack of Camels from his coat pocket and offered
them to Peachfuzz.
She pulled off her right glove, slipped a cigarette from the pack.
“Thanks.”
Isley nodded.
“How much longer? I’m freezing,” said Kitty. “Any champagne left?”
Peachfuzz grinned. “Just what’s on the steps there.”
“Fuck you, Peaches.”
Isley stood stone-faced, watching the deserted road for Gambol. Isley
was tall – six-five – and wore big Frankenstein workboots to give himself even
more height. His face was brown and, despite being only thirty-two years old, tough
and pockmarked and running with deep lines. He told people he was 83% Cherokee
and that his real name wasn’t Isley Louis but Louis Redwolf. Not many believed
him. He’d come up from New Orleans
six years ago and spoke with a weird, sometimes hard to understand accent that
made Peachfuzz roll her eyes and giggle.
“What time is it? Is he late yet?” said Peachfuzz.
Isley glanced at his watch but said nothing, just went back to his
silent vigil.
“Thanks,” said Peachfuzz.
“We should’ve waited in the car,” said Kitty, shivering. She sat on the
steps and folded her hands between her thighs. She looked up at the church. It
was a big gothic monster with an ornate archway and sharp spires that stabbed
the sky. The stained-glass windows had been smashed out long ago and covered
with plywood. The rest of the building had been violated with spraypaint: names,
Fucks and backwards, misshapen
swastikas.
“I think I see him,” said Peachfuzz, ascending the steps, careful to
avoid the puddle she’d created.
Kitty stood up. Down the street – In the middle of the street, actually –
she could see Gambol hunched in his wheelchair, pumping the wheels with his
massive arms, vapor puffing from his mouth and nostrils.
“That dude can move,” said Peachfuzz, coming down the steps.
Gambol came to a skidding stop in front of them. Despite the cold, he
wore only a long-sleeved T-shirt, jeans, and ratty, paint-speckled sneakers. “The
Famous, Well-Equipped Twins and the Isley Brother,” he said, catching his breath.
“Glad you could make it.” He smiled. His face and mouth were badly scarred,
making his smile tight and crooked and weird. It looked more like a pained
sneer than a smile and took some getting used to.
Five years ago, the night of his senior prom, Gambol and his girlfriend
Justine Roche had gotten screaming drunk and Gambol, driving over one-hundred
miles an hour, lost control of his prized `68 Pontiac. They flew off Oxford
Avenue, down a gravel embankment, and into a concrete bridge abutment. Justine
died immediately, her head coming apart against the cement corner. Gambol
suffered severe head and facial injuries (they removed almost seventy shards of
glass from his face) a broken arm, and a broken spine. His legs (and though he
denied it, his penis) were useless.
Isley handed him a roll of bills. Gambol reached between his dead legs
and slapped what looked like a brick wrapped in brown paper and clear plastic
into Isley’s huge hand. Isley nodded, grunted, and walked away.
“And how are the Famous, Well-Equipped Twins this evening?” His smile tightened like
parched leather.
“Good, Gam,” said Peachfuzz.
Kitty pulled her purse around to her stomach, opened it.
Kitty and Peachfuzz weren’t actually twins – they weren’t even related –
and only resembled each other from a distance. They were both blond, true, but
Kitty was three inches shorter than Peachfuzz and a few pounds heavier.
Peachfuzz had disarming, ice-blue eyes, Kitty a nice comfortable brown.
Peachfuzz had an angular, sharply-sculpted face, while Kitty’s face was fuller,
rounder – a Ziegfeld Follies face from the `20’s. Kitty was twenty-four,
Peachfuzz twenty-two.
Kitty handed Gambol a white envelope. He held it up. “This doesn’t look
thick enough to hold the three-grand you owe me,” he said, sending her a sharp
look.
“Um. No. Next time, Gam, I promise. We’ve had so many expenses this
month. I mean, the car broke down and that was, like, five hundred. And then
Peachfuzz had a dentist appointment and they found, like, three cavities and…”
Gambol put up his hand. “Enough. Just make sure I get it next time. Understand?”
Kitty nodded.
“Understand?”
“Yes, Gam.”
He looked at her for several beats too long, she thought, then nodded
and, with gasping effort, tucked the envelope into his back pocket, reached
between his shriveled legs and removed another brown paper brick, smaller this
time. Peachfuzz stepped forward like a soldier, grabbed it, and plunged it into
her purse. She started moving to the side of the church, back to the car.
“See you next month?” Kitty said.
“If not sooner, Kitty-cat.”
“Where next time? Here, or the tire dump again?”
“I don’t know. I have to play this shit by ear.”
“Call me, then?”
Gambol shook his head. “Not if I can help it. I heard some weird clicks
on my phone the other night. I think it might be tapped.”
Kitty thought he was just being paranoid again but didn’t dare say so.
“I’ll send Sax into the joint in a couple weeks. Okay?”
“Sure, Gam. That suits us fine.”
“Alright then.” He looked around nervously, as if surrounded by a
hundred invisible snipers, then lifted the front of his wheelchair and swiveled
around.
Peachfuzz pulled the El Dorado
she and Kitty shared to the curb and rolled to a grit-crunching
stop behind Gambol.
“See you, Gam,” Kitty said.
“Yup.”
Kitty opened the driver’s side door. “Scoot over, Peach, you’re too
fucked-up to drive.”
“No I’m not! I just had—“
“Move over!”
Peachfuzz slid across the seat. Kitty took her usual place behind the
wheel. Gambol’s wheelchair was already halfway down Bristol Street, his huge
arms pumping like an industrial machine.
“That dude can move,” Peachfuzz said as Kitty eased into the street and
accelerated toward home.
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