Warpath

I cruise by, park a few blocks over. Hotfoot it to the construction. Ease out my iron; lead the way with the business end. I sneak inside as the sun sets to my left. As I hit each landing I spend some time looking across to the other construction; telltale signs that he’s got a camp in there somewhere.

Here and there I kick a loose nail, crunch crumbled drywall. I duck and tread lightly but I still knock a wayward wrench off of a hip-level landing. It pings and settles; deafening as a firing squad. I crouch, wait for gunfire or the shadows to move. Something. But nothing comes.

Second floor. Only the wind rustling through to keep me on my toes. Nothing on the other side. Gang graffiti. Hobo trash. I skirt a long-deserted campfire on the floor and reach the third landing. A petroleum stink wafts down to me in little gulps, like the room is quietly belching fuel. I climb anyways. At the top is a window frame. I look long at the opposing building. Nothing but a good view of the roof of Molly’s car.

The wall coming up the landing turns a corner behind me and I clear it in increments. Slicing the pie, the Tac guys call it. Little steps, gradually opening the room to yourself. Gun out, holding my breath. A wall of cardboard boxes gets in my way before I see much of anything. But I hear snoring.

Rapist? Bum? He parked next to that building and comes up here? Decoy? Throwing off the scent? Clever? Fuck it. Let’s burn this place to the ground. Satisfaction rushes and my guts buzz with excitement. Motherfucker walks in on me while I’m wiped out and now I get to do it to him and—

Foot catches on a trip wire and as my body weight hitches forward, I think I smell the gasoline before it ignites.

The wire is across my shoe’s tongue and I jerk and feel my knee pop something bad and my nose hits the concrete floor something worse and I must break a knuckle in my thumb cushioning my revolver as it hits the concrete something awful and the Universe is laughing at me about how this piece of shit is always one step ahead and then—

God intervenes. The trip wire is hung up on my shoe, but nothing has blown.

Silence. Keep it silent. See if the snoring skips or adjusts. Stops, maybe. I lay in the quiet with my broken-thumb revolver aimed at the boxes. Life ticks away from us. Whoever is over there. If it turns out to be a homeless man sleeping one off I’m going to beat him to death and then carry him over to the other building, find the rapist and use the bum’s corpse to beat him to death. I swear.

Absolute calm licks at the walls and the sun draws its scalp down below the horizon.

Palms on the ground. Push up gently. Ease the tension on the wire. The faucet of my busted nose splatters on the concrete. I rest an arm under it so my jacket absorbs the crimson. Thumb throbs, holding my breath burns. I need a smoke. This takes time. I risk getting my flashlight from my pocket, fire it up against the wall behind me. Draw the beam until it catches the silk thread of the trip wire.

Follow it. Follow it. One end tied around a pipe stub-up. Next to it is a five-gallon can of gasoline. Why would there be a can of gas here, now? Don’t know. Why do some women think that nineteen cats are a suitable replacement for a man? That I do know.

But the other end of the trip wire goes straight into a homemade bomb, pulled over on its side by me. Yanked it over in the fall. Holy shit, I’m not sprayed across the wall because whoever rigged this thing didn’t anchor it the way it needed to be?

And everybody thinks God hates me.

I shrug the trip wire off my foot, still gentle—my luck enjoys cornholing me. I ease up, zero in on the snoring and make sure there are no other booby traps as I clear the boxes. First I see two brand-new lengths of chain. A drill bit fatter than most dildos and a hand crank for it. No power tool. Close and personal. Duct tape and wood clamps. A receipt from the hardware store that has more than ten items listed on which I’m not readily seeing in the pile. Oh Molly. God doesn’t hate you.

Now I see it. At the bottom of the list there is the red gas can. What was he planning on doing?

Lying there with a cooked spoon and used needle beside a flop-mattress is the sexual deviant I should have beaten to death in a women’s shower room.

41

The rapist’s snores are deeper than anything Confucius ever said.

He looks weak. Worn thin. His life was pedestaled very high just a little while ago, and those have since crumbled and left to oblivion. His clothes are dirty and stink of not being washed for days. His hair, mussed and oily. I got him good; his face is an ugly purple from bruising.

The spoon and needle look used before now. His escape. Pain management. Brown, wet cotton balls scattered like dirty snow in his private hell. Molly’s keys sitting on the floor near him. They go in my pocket. I lean in; put my barrel an inch from his head, just above the ear.

Why is he here? Just squatting? His blackmail money spent on heroin? He can’t go to any area hospital; they’ll have to call the cops. He’d get tied back to it all. He must have wanted one last hurrah before blowing this popsicle stand forever. Tiding over here tonight.

Half the trigger pull is out and I stop. Let it go. Back up, step over the trip wire. Look at the explosive. Glass jar filled with a gasoline gel. Suspended in the gel are razors and ball bearings. Like tidbits of pineapple and orange floating in Aunt Annie’s Christmas Jello mold. This is just the vicious version.

It’s wrapped in duct tape, packing it tight. The trip wire was supposed to drag a match along a striking surface and ignite some metallic-looking powder, which is piled neatly onto a sheet of cigarette rolling paper sitting atop the gel. Hmmm...

An angel on one of my shoulders, a devil on the other, they usually quibble but right now they’re putting their heads together. Then all of a sudden the angel is licking her lips and doing a little dance while the devil is twirling his greasy mustache between two fingers while a dastardly laugh escapes. I got it.

“Hey, douche, sleep tight until I come back,” I say. Leave.

42

I come flying up to my favorite intersection, which just so happens to be seven blocks south and five west.

Baltimore and 42nd.

The Carnivore Messiah’s new hooptie comes screeching out of the shadows and stops in my path. The same dickhead comes strolling out from under a porch awning and I get giddy with my luck. H