Author’s Note: This story is not about a dog. It contains some coarse and flippant use of an offensive term. Many things people find offensive are still in common use and routinely accepted in some circles. It is not my intent to offend anyone. My only intent is to accurately portray characters from different worlds.
I also have a postscript for you at the bottom.
***
He didn’t rat. He didn’t rat anyone.
The border distribution unit of the operation got popped and he could never prove he didn’t rat ‘em.
If he went to the auxiliary warehouse, they’d shoot him as soon as he got out of the car.
Four couriers were locked up.
Kovo’s face was briefly on Channel 7 along with a still shot of the Windsor Baking Company truck that had the dope stashed in it.
He wondered if one of the four couriers had ratted and they arrested him just to make it easier to swing him into witness protection. Who fucking knew? He didn’t concern himself with what cops did with rats because he’d never rat.
Kern and Plasma thought he ratted, and that was all that mattered. Judge and jury were done.
Pooch waited at the beach, thinking about the executioner.
His phone was on if they wanted to talk about it. It had been 34 hours. They didn’t want to talk about it.
They might not take him in wide-open public, and they wouldn’t take him at home because he was never going home. Fuck. My pinball collection.
He hoped the young bucks wouldn’t smash his vintage pinball machines to teach him a lesson or some silly unprofessional shit. Kern knew they were worth money. He could have ‘em, sell ‘em, whatever.
A guy in a black and gold UAW windbreaker was fishing off the pier, throwing fish back. Pooch never got that. Why torture the poor fish if you weren’t gonna eat ‘em?
Pooch’s dad never took him fishing. Somehow he had made it to 41, living in Michigan, never fished.
But I’ve done so much other shit. Sitting on a bench at the beach, overdressed, silently he started cataloging in his head the good times he had throughout his life. Started at about twelve, robbing that Sunoco station, so much damn money for a twelve-year-old.
He clicked off the happy memories, year by year, made it to fifteen, Kelly Petruzzi on the slide at Flintstone Park, backtracked to fourteen because he missed that one Pistons game with that hippy guy from Big Brothers.
Then Pooch got mad at himself.
You’re only doing this because you know you’re gonna die and you’ve fucking accepted it. Kern and Plasma are gonna kill you, or get one of those Armenian guys from that lumberyard in Melvindale to do it...fuck.
An old guy and a young kid walked along the beach with metal detectors. Grandpa and Grandson? Might be. Pooch never met his grandfather either. Saw a picture of him in his Navy uniform during World War II.
Pooch’s dad said he bailed because he was a fag. Must have been hard to be a fag back then. Plasma’s brother was a fag, but he didn’t get any shit for it because he was a bodybuilder, and because he was Plasma’s brother.
Some girls in bathing suits set up a game of horseballs in the sandpit by the restrooms.
He watched the girls play horseballs, laughing, drinking from plastic cups with straws. You know they got booze in ‘em because the laughter got louder quick.
Pooch looked around. If Kern blew his brains out would the girls be scarred for life?
The beach was wide open. It was still kinda empty this time of year. Parking lot was farther south, only a few benches scattered along a twisting walkway.
They wouldn’t shoot him from far back, give him a chance to live.
If I’m the type that rats, why wouldn’t I rat them again for shooting me if I live?
Something didn’t make sense. Why just rat the trucks? Why not rat the whole fucking operation, have the Feds get me a little place in Maryland or some shit?
He knew when they did it, they’d have an alibi.
Plasma has a guy, Rock, black dude he grew up with, he might do the deed, especially if one of the couriers ratted Kern and Plasma and they get locked up too.
But those guys were Teflon.
The bakery was a real bread distributor, serviced restaurants, it would be hard to pin the dope on them.
All he knew was that Kern said he was deleted. All three guys Kern had said that about over the eighteen years Pooch worked for him, all of ‘em were dead. Zero indictments, zero arrests.
He should just leave town, but that would be an admission of guilt. Pooch wasn’t gonna let that happen.
Mariana was long gone, met a guy who wasn’t in the dope game, that guy had balls, stealing his woman. Pooch coulda had him killed, didn’t wanna break Mariana’s heart.
His sweet ass loft might as well be gone, his pinballs... all the goddamn Gottliebs and the 70’s era Williams, fucking Bally KISS and Playboy.
He had ditched the Charger over by the projects, Beemer was in the shop, took the Gratiot bus as far as it would take him, walked to the beach.
He had nothing, really. 71K he had sewn into longjohns he was wearing under his jeans in the middle of May.
He should just leave. But it would look horrible.
The old man and the kid went into the restrooms with the metal detectors.
He hoped they were grandpa and grandson.
The girls had gotten bored with horseballs and were just sitting in the sand. They were too young for him, early twenties, and he didn’t wanna get closer in case…
Pooch put his head in his hands.
Have I resigned myself to this too soon? Am I fucking romanticizing it? Have I wanted to die since Mariana walked out?
That’s it. They think I ratted because this game, this bullshit cost me my wife.
Pooch pulled his phone from his pocket.
Texted a code to one of Kern’s phones.
Sat for a minute.
The phone hummed. It was Plasma’s code followed by: Deleted.
The old man and the boy walked down the path toward Pooch.
“You never found anything better than a fifty-cent piece?” the kid said.
“I just started a week ago, before your mom moved you back” the old man answered. “The fun is in the not knowing.”
The little boy looked at the girls in bikinis, sitting in the sand.
“Wanna come back and give it a try again tomorrow?” The old man asked.
The little boy was still looking back at the girls when he answered “Okay”.
Pooch looked at the kid, thought about hitting that ice cream truck driver with a brick when he was that age. Got twenty-nine bucks and a box of Strawberry Shortcakes. Fuck.
Pooch stood and did a 180.
The only way they could track him was his phone. Plasma knew guys that did it. But if he ditched his phone, it would be an admission….
He texted Kern.
I would never, ever rat you. Not for any reason.
Almost immediately his phone received a code.
It took Pooch a minute to decipher it.
It was the numerical code for: cease all communication immediately. They hadn’t used it since immigration had raided the bakery floor eight years ago. Twelve Guatemalans had gotten popped, sent back. They weren’t in the dope game. They were just baking hot dog buns.
Pooch knew. He was in the dope game. Kern and Plasma were gonna kill him. If he ran, in their eyes, he’d be running because he was a rat.
He walked down the path and cut over the beach to the pier. The guy in the black and gold windbreaker was still the only one fishing. Just him, a radio, a tackle box and a bucket from a home improvement store.
The fishing line swayed in the breeze. There was no bobber. Pooch wasn’t sure how the guy knew when a fish was on.
“How come you don’t keep the fish?”
The guy turned to Pooch.
Local 228 was silkscreened under Hirsch, embroidered on the chest. His face looked like an old leather football Pooch once had. The football mostly just sat in the yard, getting older.
“They’re too small to keep.”
Pooch thought about the man’s answer, staring out into the water.
Then he shook his head like someone slapped him.
“Then why don’t you fucking fish someplace where they’re big enough to eat?”
Hirsch puffed up.
“I don’t give a fuck about eating ‘em. I just come out here to get away from assholes.”
Pooch stepped forward. He didn’t need to puff up. The guy was doing a pisspoor job of not looking nervous.
“Well then,” Pooch said, “your trip today was unsuccessful.”
He turned and walked back down the pier, cutting back across the beach toward his bench. Hirsch was reeling in his line. It was loose. Even Pooch, who had never fished, knew there was nothing on it.
The girls were packing up the PVC horseballs game into a small canvas bag.
Sand was getting in the Steve Maddens Mariana had bought him for his birthday the year she left.
The old man and the little boy with the metal detectors were leaning against a Jeep in the parking lot, a small cooler at their feet, eating Nutty Buddies.
Pooch took his left shoe off and shook out the sand. This is stupid, I still have thirty feet of beach to walk.
He looked back out at the old man and the boy in the parking lot. That kid is never gonna steal ice cream in his life.
Pooch pulled the Tag Heuer off his wrist and dropped it in the sand, scooping a few more handfuls of sand on top of it.
While he was down there, he pulled the Mossberg 9mm out of his sock, shoved it in his waistband, and walked off the beach to see how far north the path went.
***
Photo by Johan Mouchet on Unsplash
Post Script: This is entirely a work of fiction. But Pooch is an amalgam of people I have come in contact with over the years, a blend of people I have known in passing or perhaps slightly better than just in passing.
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great story!
kind of reminds me of the old film noir classic "the killers". the man who knows it's coming, but still won't run. hemingway wrote it and burt lancaster starred - what could be better?
Yet another leaves me wanting more.