It's important to be thorough in every facet of life.
Especially if you work in the Gutter.
Especially if you work in the Gutter.
Scrubbers by D.V. Bennett
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“You
gonna shoot him?”
“No,
Benny.” Nick Pertwee opened a pocket knife and stepped around the body of the man
lying at his feet. “I have questions for him. I need answers.” He grabbed a
reel of heavy twine and cut off a ten foot section.
Benny
Davis pouted. “I wanted to watch. Shit.”
Pertwee
looked disdainfully at his partner. “What have I told you before, Benny? Watch
your mouth. Profanity is a crutch, for the inarticulate motherfucker. Turn him
over.”
Benny
flipped the man onto his stomach.
“Man,”
he said, “you really cracked him good.”
“Get
his wallet out.”
Benny
fished it out and flipped it open. “I thought his name was Caddy. Says here
it’s—”
“Give
me that.” Pertwee snatched the billfold from the smaller man, “Caddy’s his
nickname, idiot.”
Caddy
had earned fearful respect in his few years on the Chicago streets, and coming
at a guy like this from the front would have been stupid. Pertwee knew
everybody had the wrong idea about Caddy, because he drove a candy apple red
‘73 Cadillac . The man hadn’t acquired that handle because of
the car, though. Pertwee knew it was because he carried all the “iron” for his
drug-dealing pimp of a boss.
Benny
held a hand out, “We split his money, right?”
Pertwee’s
patience was wearing thin. He threw the few hundred bucks in the air to see
Benny scramble after the fallen bills, clawing them up from the concrete floor.
“Junkie
shitheads.”
Benny
stopped. “You shouldn’t swear. It’s an inevitable guy’s crutch.”
Pertwee
pressed his fingers against the area above the bridge of his nose. He could
feel a headache coming on.
“He’s
waking up.” Pertwee bound the man’s arms behind his back with the length of
twine.
“Bet
you didn’t think you’d ever see this day coming, did you, Caddy? The big man.”
Benny kicked him hard in the ribs.
“You
do that again, Benny, and I’ll put a bullet through your skull.”
“What’d
I do?”
“We
need him to talk.”
“Then
maybe you shouldn’t have hit him so hard.”
They
had broken into the old chop shop and waited for Caddy to enter. Four minutes
past midnight, the big man had strolled through the door. Benny had tased him,
but he hadn’t gone down. He’d was still fighting it when Pertwee stepped in and
pistol whipped him.
“Hey.”
Pertwee tapped at the man’s cheek several times with the back of his hand.
“C’mon, wake up.”
The eyes opened, centering on Pertwees’ face.
“You understand me?”
The eyes opened, centering on Pertwees’ face.
“You understand me?”
The
man nodded, so Pertwee dragged him up to sit against a wall and squatted down
next to him. He used the tip of his knife to clean a fingernail, making a show
of it. “It’s been decided that you and the man you work for are a detriment to
my employer and his business, Okay?”
The
man shook his head.
“Right,”
Pertwee said, “not okay. You’re well known in this town. People admire you
because you’re good at what you do. I don’t have any such regard for you. I think
you’ve built a reputation as a cheap bully, and you’ve been torturing and
murdering people for so long that you’re believing your own press. If you were
as good as you think you are, you wouldn’t have allowed us to take you down. I
think you’re a sad, worthless waste of skin without a clue, and tonight you’re
going tell us where your boss lives.”
The
man shook his head, his eyes wide.
Pertwee
stood, leaning over to a workbench to grab a set of bolt cutters. “You know
what’s nice about these? They don’t have to cut all the way through a chain
link before the metal snaps in two from the pressure. It won’t cut all the way
through your toes, either, but you’re
going to snap from the pressure, just the same.”
The
man tried to kick away, but Benny moved in to sit on his legs and remove a shoe
and a sock. Placing
the jaws of the cutter over the big toe, Pertwee looked down at his prisoner and
raised an eyebrow. “Last chance.”
In
the ten seconds Pertwee used to slowly bring the handles together, the man
never screamed. A high-pitched moan escaped, more breath than whine.
“You’re
every bit as tough as your reputation, Caddy. I’ll give you that.” Pertwee
selected another toe. “This little piggy?”
“Hey
Nick,” Benny said, pointing.
Pertwee
turned to see a large man, leveling a revolver at Benny’s chest. Even with the
warehouse lights on, the muzzle flash was briefly disorienting, to say nothing
of the sound.
Benny
stood for just a moment, pointing at his sternum, where a dark spot grew,
trailing quickly down the middle of his shirt. He crumpled to the floor.
The
gun rose to a point between Pertwee’s eyes.
“Raise
your hands,” the man said. “Turn around.”
Pertwee
complied, and something hit the back of his head.
Pertwee
woke up to find his hands tied behind him and his back against a wall. His feet
were bare, and the big man was sitting in a folding chair in front of him. The
bolt cutters straddled his lap.
“My
name’s Caddy,” the man said, “and you’ve made a huge mistake. You see, my
cousin had an important date tonight, and I allowed him to use my Cadillac. That
sweet guy has gone through a lot in life. He can’t talk. He’s deaf and he’s mute.
Now, because you assholes were so stupid, I have to explain to his mother why
he’ll be going through life without a big toe on his left foot. That makes me unhappy,
but not half as unhappy as you’re going to be before you die, you dumb,
miserable piece of shit.”
What
an inarticulate motherfucker, Pertwee thought.
