Blood for the Masses Page 5

  He looked at me with a puzzled expression on his face. Then he put his palms out toward me to show there was no threat. He stepped back and opened up a locker that was full of clothes and other things.

  He grinned while looking into the locker at something. The grin looked totally evil. He looked at me again while rummaging through the locker. His eyes were intense. They bore into my skull.

  “You think I want to have sex with you.” He spit the words out like vinegar. “If I wanted to, you could not stop me.” He laughed a loud laugh and I felt almost sick to my stomach.

  “Not fucking likely, Chuck!” I said to whoever this big asshole was. “You go shoving something at me and I’ll rip it off and feed it to ya.”

  Our eyes locked.

  “You are mine.” He snarled at me.

  I had my shoes and socks and shirt on by then. “Bring it on, Faggot Frank!” I said and motioned the muscle-head toward me. I wanted to bust this idiot's head wide open.

  He smiled at this.

  The door to the locker room banged open. Into the room strode two tall lean mean looking black fighters.

  The instant they saw me, the one in front thrust his finger out and pointed at me. "Yo, Motha-fucka!” He yelled. “Sherman wants his money back and we’re comin’ to take it. Sherman told you no cheap shots. You threw about a dozen and a half.”

  The muscle-head was between me and the two blacks.

  I reached into the paper bag that I’d put my gear back into and grabbed onto the insurance I brought with me, my .38 caliber revolver.

  This is my gun of choice. It’s small and maneuverable but has enough weight so I feel like I have something in my hand I can grip onto and it packs a big punch.

  “You and Sherman can both kiss my ass,” I shouted back at him. "I ain’t giving shit back.”

  They were coming at me fast when they reached where the muscle-head was. He stopped the first black cold with an open palm blow to the chest that sent him stumbling backward into his buddy behind him. The two went down in a tangle of arms and legs.

  “Hey bitch!” The first one yelled at the muscle-head. “You don’t have shit to do with this. But we’ll fuck you up too."

  The muscle-head calmly reached into his locker and pulled out what looked like a short wide bladed sword. The kind you’d see in an old Hercules movie.

  “He is mine.” He snarled at them. “I say when he will be harmed.”

  The black in back yelled, “You think that Ginsu knife gonna scare us? You’re full of shit. We’ll kick your fuckin' ass for ya!” The second man in line was talking shit, but the first man in line didn’t look too eager to be charging that big blade.

  I figured it was about time to end the meeting of this social club. I pulled my .38 out and showed it to them.

  “Back the fuck off!” I told all of them. “I’m leaving now! If any of you follow me, I’ll shoot a hole in you that you can stick your fist through.”

  I motioned them off to the side with my gun.

  They stepped aside.

  At the door I told them, “It’d be better for all of you if I never see any of you again.”

  The muscle-head smiled at me. “I am Caesar Lanista,” he slowly hissed at me. “Remember my name. You will see me again.”

  I walked out through the gym with my gun in my hand. There were a lot of mean looks thrown my way, but no one tried to stop me.

  It was just another nice day for making new friends.

  CHAPTER 7

  Tacos for Tom

  It was almost twelve o’clock noon. I was dying for something to eat. I drove down the streets of St. Louis and every time I turned the steering wheel my right side screamed to the rest of my body for mercy. Where Roy used my torso for a heavy bag hurt all the way to the bone.

  But you know what?

  I felt good.

  That boy was a world class middleweight, rated in the top ten by at least one of the known sanctioning bodies. And I just beat the fuck right out of him.

  Yeah I fouled him. But so fucking what? That kid’s got somewhere around twenty years less wear and tear on him than I do. He should have been ready for me to do anything. If he wasn’t, then too fucking bad.

  I drove through the take-out line in a Jack in the Box and ordered five giant tacos with extra Picante sauce. I was in a spicy mood, so I figured why not have my mouth on fire too.

  The voice that came out of the speaker when I gave my order was one of those sultry Spanish sounding voices. I had an instant vision of Sophia Loren or maybe Rita Moreno, the way she looked in West Side Story. So when she said, “Is there anything else I can get for you?”

  I came back with, “Yeah, you can get yourself naked and we’ll become best friends and get real close, real fast.”

  She giggled over the microphone, which surprised the hell out of me. When the words were spilling out of my mouth faster than my brain was working, I figured I’d soon be wearing these tacos. I was too far away in my car to soon be wearing a hand print like I’d got the night before.

  The way she giggled it almost sounded like she actually liked what I’d said to her.

  “Come to the second window, lover,” her voice purred at me through the speaker.

  Well, what do you know, I thought. Maybe this will be my lucky day. Hey, as much as I’ve tried to, I haven’t fucked Julia yet. So what she won’t know won’t hurt her anyway. Maybe I’ll be throwing the bone to someone tonight.

  I drove up to the second window.

  Through the opening a large head with a bush of bleached blond hair was thrust out at me.

  “Hi lover,” it said to me. It had on heavy black eye make-up, huge fake lashes batting at me and ruby red lipstick. The most important feature on this face though, was the mustache and goatee that he wore.

  “We can be real good friends,” he purred at me and winked.

  “Not fucking likely,” I told this cross-dressing nightmare.

  He handed me my bag of tacos and deliberately brushed my hand as I took it. I jerked my hand back as though I’d been electric shocked.

  “Ooooh, so tense,” he purred at me. “My number is in the bag. I can calm you down.”

  “Fuck off,” I said and squealed my tires getting out of there.

  This might be my lucky day but that wasn’t the kind of luck I was looking for.

  I drove back to my apartment, taking McKinley Bridge. For a Saturday, the traffic wasn’t all that bad. On the way to my place I listened to K-SHE on the radio. They were blasting out some ear-ringing rock songs.

  Ted Nugent told me about Wang Dang Sweet Poon Tang and Nazareth told me that Love Hurts. As I was turning off the car’s ignition Blue Oyster Cult was telling me, Don’t Fear the Reaper.

  Well I don’t. The Reaper is going to get you in the end no matter what you do. So what’s the use of worrying about it?

  In my apartment I dropped the bag of tacos on my coffee table and took a long hot shower. As I inspected my bruises closer in the shower, I was definitely aware of the fact that I was getting too damn old to be doing this shit anymore.

  My right side was already turning purple. My shoulders, elbows, and knees hurt from being moved faster than they wanted to go. Even my arms had large purple and blue welts and blotches from blocking punches.

  This had only been for something less than three minutes, one round.

  If I had just finished up a ten rounder in a semi-main event, I guess I’d be heading for the emergency room right now.

  I stayed in the shower until the water was starting to come out cool.

  In the bedroom it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen that cat that was here earlier. While I was putting on a pair of boxer shorts and a tee-shirt I heard some scratching coming from the front room.

  In the front room the cat was there underneath the open window. He was on top of a thick magazine. The cat was squatting and was taking a dump on the magazine.

  I didn’t rush at the cat screaming and yelling and
waving my arms. I figure, there really are sometimes when everyone needs a little peace and quiet to work by.

  So I left him alone to finish his business and I went and finished dressing.

  Sitting on the couch, I took my tacos out of the bag.

  The cat came and sat looking at me from across the room. I looked at the cat then looked at the pile of shit he’d left on the magazine under the open window.

  “I guess you’re not all that dumb after all.” I told the cat. He had to go, but at least he didn’t just do it on the floor like most animals would have. And, he’d dragged the magazine close to a place where I could get rid of it.

  “Not bad at all,” I told him. “I guess I better get rid of it before Rosa shows up.”

  I went over and picked up the magazine by its edges, keeping it flat out so the shit stayed in the middle of its cover.

  The magazine was an old Playboy the cat must have dragged out from under my bed. Marilyn Monroe was on the cover. Now her face was covered in a pile of cat shit. That was probably the cat’s way of telling me his opinion of Marilyn’s film career.

  I couldn’t agree more. It was a case of great tits making up for no talent.

  “Good shot,” I told the cat. “You gave her the old brown-eyed kiss.”

  I dropped the magazine and crap out the window. Some drunk in the alley yelled something up at me.

  I yelled, “Fuck you, there’s more where that came from.” You’d think they’d learn not to hang out under my window with all the bullshit I throw out.

  I sat back on the couch.

  The cat was still sitting in the same spot. He looked at me. I looked at him.

  I unwrapped a taco.

  “If I try to chase you out of here,” I said to the cat. “You’re just gonna run under my bed, right?”

  The cat blinked at me. He gave a quiet meow.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  I took a few bites of the taco.

  “We’ve got to come to some kind of an agreement,” I told him.

  He looked interested. Well, at least he didn’t fall asleep.

  “Look, I’ll let you stay. But, you’ve got to eat any other critters that come in here. You know like mice, rats, ants, flies, hell cockroaches, too. You got to eat them all. Think you can handle that?”

  The cat looked at me. He blinked. He made a motion with his mouth like a silent meow.

  “OK, then,” I told him. “We got a deal.”

  I finished off the first taco. That sucker was hotter than hell. I started on the second one and unwrapped the third.

  “Another thing,” I told the cat. “No bringing home your friends with you. I don’t want to come in to no fifteen tom cats running around here acting crazy. Now, if you bring home a woman cat,” his ears perked up when I said this. “That, I can understand. Every Tom wants pussy. I know that. Just don’t make her scream too loud.”

  The tom cat looked like he was grinning. I decided right then I was going to call him, Tom. I’ve always hated animal names life Fluffy or Tiger or Snowball or some shit like that. If I was going to do that I’d call him Shithead or Fuckhead or Asshole or well, the list goes on and on.

  Tom would do just fine.

  I unwrapped a taco and laid it on its wrapper on the floor between us. Tom sniffed at it.

  “Go ahead,” I told him. “Just don’t get the shits from that picante sauce, all right.”

  Tom took a little bite and shook his head from the spiciness of the picante. Then he sneezed.

  “Yeah, I know,” I told him. “That goes for the both of us.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Doormen and Babes of All Flavors

  I stretched out on the couch and dozed until it was almost four o’clock. When I woke up, Tom was laying on my stomach.

  “You’re not all bad,” I told him and scratched the top of his head. He made that motor sound that cats make then jumped down.

  After I cleaned up a little bit and got ready to go over to Sherry St. Clair’s for tonight’s body guard stint, I laid another old Playboy magazine under the window for Tom.

  A playmate grinned at the both of us from the cover of the magazine.

  “Hey Tom,” I told the cat. “You give her a big butt-hole beard for me too.”

  He meowed.

  I took that as a yes.

  * * *

  At five o’clock I was standing in front of the Blaine Building.

  This was one of those steel and glass structures that looked like it belongs in a science fiction flick that takes place in the far distant future where computers rule the Earth. The Blaine Building didn’t look like an apartment building. It looked like where the CIA Headquarters should be.

  Sherry St. Clair lived here.

  At the big glass front doors a doorman of sorts stood with his arms crossed. He had the build of an old time movie Tarzan and wore a three piece, black, pinstriped suit that liked a little too small for him. His face had the look of a prize fighter who never met a punch he didn’t want to eat. This wasn’t the prettiest boy in the world.

  He halted me with an upraised palm. “What’s your business here?” He asked.

  “I’m here to see Miss Sherry St. Clair in apartment five-twenty.” I told him. “I’m expected.”

  “She called down,” he answered. The doorman’s voice was a hoarse raspy whisper. He sounded like he’d been hit one too many times in the throat.

  “You’re her new bodyguard?” He shook his head. “You don’t look so tough to me.” He opened the big glass door.

  I smiled at him and answered, “Good, keep thinking that fuckhead. You might live longer.” I went through the door, to the elevator, and punched the up button.

  While waiting for the elevator, I looked around to get a feel for the security set up.

  Where I stood was actually just the entrance to a long hallway with what looked to be office doors on both sides.

  There was no reception desk, just a couple of chairs and a fake plant near the glass doors. The wanna-be tough guy was outside the doors. He was now smoking a cigarette.

  I spotted a camera mounted from the ceiling. It was pointed toward the glass doors.

  Assuming that all the other entrances to the building were locked and that the windows were secure, this wasn’t a bad set up. Not fool proof, but not bad either. I was not going to do an inspection of the entire building. I was hired to guard Sherry St. Clair from home to work, then from work to home. That’s what I was going to do.

  The elevator came. I took it up to the fifth floor, then found five-twenty and knocked.

  The door was answered almost instantly.

  I was expected.

  The woman that answered the door was a bright bouncy blond. Her eyes sparkled. She seemed to be holding back a giggle and looked like she was almost bouncing up and down even though she was standing still.

  Just looking at her made me feel like grinning.

  “You must be John Dark,” she said and licked her lips, which gave me a twitch in the crotch.

  “That’s me.”

  “Sherry,” she called over her shoulder. “Your boy’s here. Come on in and sit down.” She indicated a couch that was occupied by a black girl with skin as dark as coal.

  I came into a room that was like an art deco display. The couch was a large wraparound model. No pictures were on the walls. The coffee tables and end tables were solid black, as was the couch and the entertainment center that their TV played from. A Lazy Boy chair was also black. The thick shag carpet was pure white. It was a room of sharp contrasts. Everything was either pure white or pure black.

  The color scheme was hard on the eye balls.

  “I’m Bobbie,” the bouncing blond said followed by an air headed giggle. “That’s Terry.” She pointed to the black girl on the couch, who was so into the soap opera that she was watching that she waved her red fingernails at me and never took her eyes from the screen.

  These two girls didn’t have enough c
lothes on between them to cover a small poodle. Considering how little bare female flesh I’d seen lately, I wasn’t gonna complain.

  I sat down on the black couch. Terry was almost invisible against the couch since she was wearing black panties and a black bra. What I did see of her, I liked. Terry was a short stocky black girl with large almond eyes and thick lips. She had all the right curves in all the right places.

  Bobbie disappeared through a door into another part of the apartment. I was left there to look at a woman who never took her eyes off the TV screen and was moving her lips to the dialogue the actors were speaking.

  A few minutes later Bobbie came bouncing back in. “Sherry will be out in just a minute or two,” she said. “Do you want anything to drink?”

  I did, but I said, “No, that’s all right.” I wanted to keep my head clear for tonight. It was my first night on this job. I wanted to be on my best behavior.

  I sat and waited and true to Bobbie’s word, in a few minutes the door to the other part of the apartment swung open and in walked a startlingly beautiful Asian woman.

  To say I was surprised is a huge understatement. This was not the woman I had envisioned from our phone conversion. This woman was small, compact and moved with the sureness and strength of a ballerina. She was dressed in a full length evening dress, complete with high-heeled shoes and sparkling silver earrings. She had jet black hair and small finely cut features.

  I stood up.

  She walked to me and thrust her hand out for a hand shake. I was surprised at the strength of her small hand.

  She said, “I am Sherry St. Clair. Please to make your acquaintance, Mr. Dark.”

  There was not a trace of an Asian accent. This was the clear, precise, perfectly paced voice that I had heard over the phone the night before.

  I answered her with, “And I am pleased to meet you.”

  She smiled at me and I found myself looking deeply into her liquid black eyes.

  “You are surprised at my appearance?”

  “Pleasantly surprised,” I told her.

  “My name throws many people off. My father is French, Jean Claude St. Clair. My mother is Japanese. Her maiden name was Myong Tokuyama.”