Pin Monkeys

Love and Crime: Consecutive Substack Story 1175

The ashtray spun, gold glass making a little strobe effect, ashes making a little cloud of ash dust and a filter with lipstick on it falling onto the table.

Who was in here last that wore lipstick? Flick Meyers wanted to ask Putnam the question but thought about it first.

He didn’t like asking questions when his own memory might give him the answer.

Flick wanted to know why Putnam was nervous.

Putnam always spun the ashtray when he was nervous.

Annoying as itchy ballsack fuck.

But it was Putnam’s thing.

Everybody gets one.

Flick wasn’t gonna ask Putnam.

Wanted Putnam to offer.

You build more trust that way.

Putnam kept talking about the strip club numbers, way down, nobody stealing, not any more than usual anyway, just Only Fans cutting in. Girls doing live shit, customs, guys didn’t have to pay seven fifty a beer anymore, weed’s legal, less drinking, more smoking.

Low numbers at The Box Turtle isn’t why Putnam was nervous. Flick knew that.

Flick thought maybe it was time for a name change, the bar going all the way back to when you could do full nude if you didn’t sell booze.

Those days might as well be the Paleolithic Era.

“Maybe Warfield needs to change the name of the joint, rebrand or something,” Flick said.

Putnam spun the ashtray and Flick tapped Putnam’s wrist like Putnam was three and about to pull a glass jar off a grocery shelf.

He didn’t say “why are you nervous?” he didn’t say anything.

But Putnam knew.

“Ummm, Fuchsia Borman told Sigi you threatened to break her jaw.”

Flick laughed out the left side of his mouth, pulled the tip of his mangled pinkie to pop the knuckle where it met his hand. Satisfying pop.

“I didn’t threaten her. I told her what was gonna happen if I didn’t get my 24 grand before the first.”

Putnam nodded, seemed to agree, but his mouth was contradictory. “Can’t do that to a woman.Gotta work it out another way.”

“She still had a dick and went by Louis when she borrowed the 24 grand for that dog groomer chain thing strip mall, what the fuck daycare, doggie daycare or whatever.”

“Well Sigi is pissed. Says you’re unprofessional, says he won’t tolerate it. Just telling you what he says.”

“Is she working for Sigi now? Like…what the fuck would she even be doing for Sigi that he’s gotta have an opinion?”

Putnam unbuttoned one of the three buttons on his golf shirt and rebuttoned it.

Another nervous thing.

“I think they’re a couple.”

Flick’s eyes narrowed.

“So Louis Borman is Sigi’s woman now? Fuchsia, I guess, whatever. I wonder what surgically created pussy is like.”

Putnam reddened.

“Ummm, I…I…it’s none of my thing, Flick, but I think she kept the dick.”

Flick stood and emptied the ashtray, banging it against the aluminum bin, noise echoing through the defunct bowling alley.

He set the ashtray back down where Putnam could spin it if he felt like it.

He wondered.

And this time he wondered out loud.

“Ok, Putt Putt. Sigi is mad because I reminded Borman of the consequence of not repaying a loan.Seems to me…and I’m not a relationships, dating expert, morning talk show PhD motherfucker, but seems like it would be awful easy to wriggle out from under a debt you can’t pay by cozying up to Sigi.”

“Seems like a lot of trouble to g-”

“No, no,” Flick said, waving his hard-to-look at right hand, destroyed with a four way wrench when Droyman Raheem’s people objected to a little ATM venture Warfield had going in black-owned nightclubs, “I get that Louis wanted to be a woman. That ain’t the issue. I just question how quickly she got close to Sigi. Knowing. She knows. Ya know?”

“She…um… knows what?”

“That she’s got an extra layer of protection by hanging on Sigi.”

“Yeah, Flick…yeah, you’re not wrong, but…I don’t know.”

“I’m not wrong. When she was a guy she didn’t like Sigi. Right? You ever hear Louis say a good thing about that guy? Called him a pierogi bloated Walmart gangster and shit like that.”

Now they’re a couple? That don’t make no sense except trying to get out of his…her debt.”

Putnam nodded again, spun the ashtray.

“What about this makes you nervous, Putnam? Sigi ain’t gonna do anything to me, and even if he did, Warfield ain’t gonna start some fucking battle over it. He’ll just have one of the Honduran kids at the car wash off him. This has got nothing to do with you.”

Flick began trying to open a tin of Altoids with his right hand. People said the only thing he taught himself to do left-handed after Droyman’s guys mangled him was shoot a gun, and he probably knew how to do that anyway.

Putnam watched, knowing Flick didn’t want help.

A minute later, when the mints were opened, Flick dumped half of them into his mouth.

“Tell ya somethin’ Putt. If I called Fuchsia right now, told her the debt was erased, how long you think she’d be with Sigi? Huh? If you started living as a woman, if…would any woman just choose Sigi? Huh? “

Putnam’s eyes rolled and lit like the little ventriloquist dummy on the Funhouse pinball machine in the corner.

“Yeah, Flick, I like that. Let the debt slide.”

Flick froze.

Putnam spun the empty ashtray, and spun it again before it stopped.

Flick stuck his right hand under his left armpit, the thing he did when kids saw it and started freaking out or even crying.

“Slide? 24k? Putty, the fuck is wrong with-”

“I’m just…just saying it’s an okay option, I mean different…you know. Umm, karma or-”

“Different? Yeah. It’s different. And it’s fucking stupid. Why the fuck would I-”

Putnam reached in his breast pocket like he would for a cigarette.

He had done it in front of Flick a million times.

Putnam put his hand on the ghost gun and drew, squeezing too quickly and putting one over Flick’s shoulder.

His second shot hit Flick’s collarbone as Flick, utterly baffled, was reaching for his Taurus GX4.

Putnam’s third shot pierced Flick’s neck and Flick dropped, a grotesque spasm hitting his body before his body hit the bowling lane.

Putnam took the baggy of cigarette butts he had gotten from Sigi’s condo out of his pocket.

He was shaking, hated himself for shaking, spun the ashtray and deposited some of the butts in the ashtray before it stopped spinning.

Some sick part of him told himself that he had put Flick and his mangled hand out of his misery, but Flick was far from miserable.

Putnam looked at his friend one last time, bleeding out.

Sigi grossly overpaid for the job.

Flick himself could not have said no to the money.

Sigi and Fuchsia had gotten in the sauna as Putnam was leaving Sigi’s condo.

He stood in the foyer for five minutes, wanting to change his mind.

Sigi would notice the gap on his security camera, when it came down to it.

That’s when Putnam took the cigarette butts.

He felt like a genius in that moment, and a conflicted, brittle turncoat in this one.

Even if they didn’t convict Fuchsia, her DNA and lipstick brand next to Flick’s corpse would make things white hot in Sigi’s world for a while.

And if she did get convicted? Fuck her.

That’s what she gets for breaking the heart of Trent Putnam, who paid for her gender reassignment, in favor of a pierogi bloated asshole like Sigi Grelcyk.

***

This one was inspired by one of my heroes, Elmore Leonard, the King of Small Time Criminal Fiction.

If you like this one could you please buymeacoffee.com/JimmyDoom

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Photo by Jimmy Doom (Me!) in Detroit, Michigan.