“Gimme a fookin’ break,” Slide said, “and get me a cold one, the kid is heavier than he looks.” Slide tied the kid’s arms behind the chair with a length of chain, then wrapped the remainder of the chain around Kyle’s chest and legs. Then he got a basin of water and lashed it into the kid’s face, going, “Wakey wakey.”
“Thank God,” Angela said as Kyle’s eyes opened. “Slide, listen to me. I want you to let him go.”
Slide laughed.
“I’m not joking,” Angela said, and she grabbed the butcher knife from where Slide had left it when getting the basin. Pointing the knife at Slide’s throat she went, “Let him go.”
“The fook’re you going to do with that?” he asked.
“I’m not going to get mixed up in another fookin’ murder because of you.”
“So what’re you going to do, kill me? That’s a good way not to get involved in another murder-kill somebody.”
“I will if I have to.”
“Oh, Christ, just put the knife down and give me a hand here. We’re wasting valuable time.”
“I’ll put the knife down when he’s safe.”
Slide laughed, said, “That’s a great plan. You think he’ll go home and decide not to tell anyone he was kidnapped? I guess we’ll just hope he sees the fun in it, eh?”
“He might not tell,” Angela said.
“Oh, stop with that shite talk and give me the knife.”
Slide reached out, but Angela didn’t give it to him.
She said, “I’m not going to let you hurt him.”
“Don’t you get it?” Slide said. “This is the way it has to be. If we hurt him a little he’ll be afraid, then when we release him he’ll keep his mouth shut. Trust me-I’ve studied kidnapping and I know how the gig works. We have to hurt him, but I won’t kill him, I promise you that. Now just give me the fookin’ knife.”
Slide inched closer to Angela then he lunged toward her suddenly and wrested the knife away. They stood looking at each other for a moment, he with the knife, watching his own reflection in the lenses of her glasses. For a moment, they both wondered whether he was going to plunge the knife into her. But he didn’t. He swung his other arm around in a roundhouse instead, clocked her solidly on the temple, and she went down like the proverbial steer.
He dragged her out of the way, then got busy, spreading plastic on the floor, especially under the chair where the kid was sitting.
Slide knew he had to cut something off. A finger, an ear, whatever. That’s the way it was done. It’s how you showed you were serious.
In his chair, the kid was struggling weakly.
“What shall I cut, boy?” Slide grabbed him by the hair, tugged the boy’s right ear away from the side of his head. Just like slicing off a chicken wing. Ear’s lookin’ at you, kid. But ears, ears had been done, like, so often, they were fookin’ old. He needed something new, something original. Then, bingo, it came to him. Oh, man.
He unbuckled the kid’s belt and worked the kid’s jeans and Y-fronts down over his hips. The kid was near catatonic with fear.
Slide stepped back to marvel-this kid had a whopper all right.
“Fook, not even the black fellahs could equal that,” he said.
He grabbed the dick, and began to cut.
When she came to, Angela heard Kyle whimpering. Slide was nowhere in sight. She went over to Kyle, saw his pants around his knees, saw the crude pressure bandage Slide had put in place, saw the blood all over, and she ran into the bathroom, barely reaching the sink before violently throwing up.
Twenty-Four
He was as attractive as a barracuda.
Max knew what he was looking at and it didn’t take him long to figure out who it had belonged to. He had once walked in on Kyle taking a leak and had noticed the kid’s huge dong. At first he was surprised and-let’s face it-jealous, but then he realized it made total sense. Little brain, big dick, right?
Speaking of brains, Max racked his, trying to figure out who could’ve done this and why. He’d found another note in the box-in addition to the now who’s a dick? one-warning that if Max didn’t deliver $50,000 in cash to the “phone box” on the corner of Second Avenue and Fourteenth Street by 1:00 PM, more pieces of Kyle would arrive. Yeah, like Max would ever pay a penny to get Kyle back. Shit, Kyle out of the picture helped Max-if the kid was dead Max wouldn’t have to worry about him flipping on him for the drug shooting.
But Max still wanted to know who was behind this, if only for his own safety. The one explanation that made any sense to him was that it had to have been the fat guy from the drug deal, what the hell did Felicia say his name was? Shoe-Shoe? Yeah, Shoe-Shoe must’ve nabbed Kyle in revenge and cut off his dick, the sick fuck.
Then Max had a thought that horrified him a lot more than the sight of the Ziplocked dick lying on the floor. What if Shoe-Shoe came after Max next? The thought of getting his dick chopped off terrified Max to the point where he was ready to call the cops and get his ass arrested pronto. Spending the rest of his life in jail, or even the death penalty, had to be better than walking around dickless.
But then Max managed to calm himself, his old Zen side taking over. He thought, Okay, be wise, Maxie, be in the now. Yeah, Shoe-Shoe was bonkers, but maybe this was it-maybe one dick was enough for him. After all, the note had been, Now who’s a dick? Not, Whose dick is coming off next? This gave Max some reassurance.
Max stared at the dick, nudged the bag with the tip of his shoe. He was mesmerized by its size. For years Max had been using pumps and taking pills trying to enlarge his dick, but to no avail. Max wondered-couldn’t those things be transplanted nowadays? If they could do hearts and livers they had to be able to do dicks, right? And didn’t that guy down south, Bobbitt, get his reattached after his old lady dumped it on the road? Kyle was from the south-maybe there was something about southern dicks. Maybe Max could go for dick replacement surgery or whatever the hell it was called. Maybe he should, like, save the dick just in case. Hell, what if Shoe-Shoe showed up at the apartment later and chopped off Max’s dick? Wouldn’t it be good to have a spare?
He entertained the idea for a moment, but the moment passed. He picked up the Ziplock with two fingers, went out to the hallway, and dropped it down the garbage chute.
Slide was seriously antsy. He’d been hanging out at the phone box on Fourteenth and Second since dropping off the package. He was waiting for Fisher, but there was no sign of the bastard. What the fook was with that? You get a dick hand-delivered to your building and you don’t even show?
He said aloud, “Bollocks.”
He was drinking Coors Light, yeah, Light, not by choice, mind, he’d hit a deli and that’s what they’d had.
He asked himself, What’s with Fisher? Why is he ignoring us? Is he scared to leave his apartment?
And right away, he knew what to do.
He caught a cab, went directly to Fisher’s building, and told the doorman he was a police officer, quickly flipped his wallet open and shut. Nothing in there but a MetroCard, but Slide must have made a convincing-looking cop, or could’ve been the Irish accent, because the guy let him right up.
He took the elevator to the penthouse, rang the buzzer. The door opened slowly and there he was, the man himself, looking a little the worse for wear, like he’d been on a speed jag or some such shite.
Max went, “Yes?”
Slide figured this guy would be a pushover, said, “It’s about your young friend.”
Fisher looked sick, as if he was going to throw up and then said in a weak voice, “Shoe-shoe sent you.”
Slide thought, The fook was Shoe-Shoe? but, going along with it went, “That’s right.”