“Sure you can, Henry.”
Jack left him like that.
4
A little while later Jack stood in the street, on the fringe of the crowd around Costin’s. He wanted to tell the vultures to go home, that it was going to be a long night. He was about to leave for home himself when Fat Henry came out.
Costin’s front door slammed open and there he was, all three-hundred pounds of him, brandishing his shotgun and screaming like a wild man. He got off one blast that looked like it was aimed at the moon. All around Jack the crowd screamed and dove for cover, leaving him standing alone as the two-dozen cops out front opened up.
The fusillade slammed Fat Henry back against the doorframe, his sawed-off went spinning, and then he was turning and falling and rolling down the steps. It was over in seconds. No Peckinpah slo-mo. No ballet-like turns. Quick, graceless, ugly, and red. He hit the sidewalk face first and never moved again.
Fat Henry Thompson had finally stood up. And he’d got his wish: He wouldn’t be going back to Attica.
Jack turned and walked away, stepping over the prone onlookers as they peeked between their fingers and made horrified noises. As he headed home he tried to put his finger on the feelings massed in his chest like a softball-sized lump of putty – cold putty. Not sadness, certainly not glee or satisfaction. More a bleakness. A dark despair for all the hardcore losers in this city, the ones it created and the others it attracted.
He passed a corner litter basket and gave it a hard kick, adding an especially deep dent to its already bruised flanks.
A waste. A damn stupid fruitless futile ass-brained waste.
When he got to his door he realized he didn’t have his beer. The six-pack he’d gone out for earlier in the evening was long gone from where he’d left it sitting on the curb. He could really have used a Rock about now. And he could probably find an all-night deli to where he could buy some.
Nah.
Jack stepped inside and locked the door behind him.
He couldn’t risk it. The way things were going tonight, he might not make it home again.
introduction to “The Wringer”
In August of 1991, Ed Gorman called requesting a story for the third Stalkers anthology. I don’t know where I came up with “The Wringer” or its sick villain. The anthology was titled Night Screams and wasn’t published until 1996(!) The story was never reprinted and I loved its cat-and-mouse dynamic too much to let it molder forever in an out-of-print paperback, so in 2010 I included it in Fatal Error.
The Wringer
1
Munir stood on the curb, unzipped his fly, and tugged his penis free. He felt it shrivel in his hand at the cool caress of the breeze, as if shrinking from the sight of all these passing strangers.
At least he hoped they were strangers.
Please let no one who knows me pass by. Or, Allah forbid, a policeman.
He stretched his flabby, reluctant member and urged his bladder to empty. He’d drunk two quarts of Gatorade in the past two hours to be sure that it would be full to bursting, but he couldn’t go. His sphincters were clamped as tightly shut as his jaw.
Off to his left the light at the corner where 45th Street met Broadway turned red and the traffic slowed to a stop. A woman in a cab glanced at him through her window and started when she saw how he was exposing himself to her. Her lips tightened and she shook her head in disgust as she turned away. He could almost read her mind: A guy in a suit exposing himself on a Sunday afternoon in the theater district – New York’s going to Hell even faster than they say it is.
But it has become hell for me, Munir thought.
He closed his eyes to shut out the bright marquees and the line of cars idling before him, tried to block out the tapping, scuffing footsteps of the pedestrians on the sidewalk behind him as they hurried to the matinees, but a child’s voice broke through. “Look, Mommy. What’s that man–?”
“Don’t look, honey,” said a woman’s voice. “It’s just someone who’s sick.”
Tears were a pressure behind Munir’s sealed eyelids. He bit back a sob of humiliation and tried to imagine himself in a private place, in his own bathroom, standing over the toilet. He forced himself to relax, and soon it came. As the warm liquid streamed out of him, the waiting sob burst free, propelled equally by shame and relief.
He did not have to shut off the flow. When he opened his eyes and saw the glistening puddle before him on the asphalt, saw the drivers and passengers and passers by staring, the stream dried up on its own.
I hope that is enough, he thought. Please let that be enough.
Averting his eyes, Munir zipped up and fled down the sidewalk, all but tripping over his own feet as they ran.
2
The phone was ringing when Munir got to his apartment. He hit the RECORD button on his answering machine as he snatched up the receiver and jammed it against his ear.
“Yes!”
Pretty disappointing, Mooo neeer,” said the now familiar electronically distorted voice. “Are all you Ay rabs such mosquito dicks?”
“I did as you asked! Just as you asked!”
“That wasn’t much of a pee, Mooo neeer.”
“It was all I could do! Please let them go now.”
He glanced down at the caller ID. A number had formed in the LCD window. A 212 area code, just like all the previous calls. But the seven digits following were a new combination, unlike any of the others. And when Munir called it back, he was sure it would be a public phone. Just like all the others.
“Are they all right? Let me speak to my wife.”
Munir didn’t know why he said that. He knew the caller couldn’t drag Barbara and Robby to a pay phone.
“She can’t come to the phone right now. She’s, uh… all tied up at the moment.”
Munir ground his teeth as the horse laugh brayed through the phone.
“Please. I must know if she’s all right.”
“You’ll have to take my word for it, Mooo neeer.”
“She may be dead.” Allah forbid! “You may have killed her and Robby already.”
“Hey. Ain’t I been sendin’ you pichers? Don’t you like my pretty pichers?”
“No!” Munir cried, fighting a wave of nausea. Those pictures – those horrible, sickening photos. “They aren’t enough. You could have taken all of them at once and then killed them.”
The voice on the other end lowered to a sinister, nasty, growling tone.
“You callin’ me a liar, you lousy, greasy, two bit Ay rab? Don’t you ever doubt a word I tell you. Don’t even think about doubtin’ me. Or I’ll show you who’s alive. I’ll prove your white bitch and mongrel brat are alive by sending you a new piece of them every so often. A little bit of each, every day, by Express Mail, so it’s nice and fresh. You keep on doubtin’ me, Mooo neeer, and pretty soon you’ll get your wife and kid back, all of them. But you’ll have to figure out which part goes where. Like the model kits say: Some assembly required.”
Munir bit back a scream as the caller brayed again.
“No no. Please don’t hurt them anymore. I’ll do anything you want. What do you want me to do?”
“There. That’s more like it. I’ll let your little faux pas pass this time. A lot more generous than you’d ever be – ain’t that right, Mooo neeer. And sure as shit more generous than your Ay rab buddies were when they killed my brother over there in Baghdad.”