The Subtle Art of Brutality

The whore’s eyes slammed closed. “Haven’t seen him since he did me a favor a couple months ago. In Barefield.”

“Done us all a favor or two, ain’t he? Should’a drowned himself in a fucking river. That would’a been a good favor.” A hefty sigh. “I sent a package to Barefield. Far as I know, he ain’t even picked it up yet. Those little boys told me you know where he is.”

“What little boys?” The prostitute’s eyes popped open and then she frowned, highlighting the aged map of crevices that made up her face. “Who you talking about?”

“All of them...they all led me here. Right to you, doll.”

The woman’s mouth flapped, like so many mouths had before her. Flapped and flapped. Sometimes they said something useful, sometimes they just begged.

Eventually, the woman spluttered, drool white and frothy, ran down her chin. “Yeah...well...they lied. People lie about me all the time. I’m just a pro. They lie about me and think they can get over on me or not pay or do nasty stuff to me. People lie all the time, how can I help what they say?”

Her words rushed, tripped over each other like drunks in a dirty gutter. The whore tried not to cry, but her tears came and smeared black mascara into long scratches from cheeks to neck.

“Your conversations are so petty.”

“What?”

“So petty...the World is about to end.”

“What? My world is about to end? Please...no.”

“The World, junkie whore, the World, and you’re gassing me with petty conversations.” A pause. “Where is the Judge?”

Confusion sat on her face as one of her fat tricks might have. “But...but why you need to see him? I mean, if the world’s about to end.”

“Because accounts have to be set straight. Now talk, you goddamn whore junkie bitch, or I’ll kill you right the fuck now.”

When the gun fired, two shots through the wall and into the next apartment, the hooker screamed. “I don’t know, I don’t know. I don’t see him anymore.”

“Yeah, wrong answer, Gracie.”

4

They lied to you.

Resting his hand over his empty holster, Judge Royy Bean, II crunched ice. Cold shot through his mouth, a counterpoint to the damnable heat that dripped sweat down his back to the crack of his ass. His ice crunching had always driven Mariana batty. She’d berated him constantly for doing it. But always with a smile and a twinkle in her eyes.

Are my eyes sparking right now, Mariana?

Not in the least, baby.

Her voice was in his head but he knew it was only his heart wishing it so. She wasn’t actually talking to him or dancing with him or making love to him. Everything that was Mariana, for the last twenty-one years, was self-inflicted, a guilt-

inspired fantasy.

He used the barbeque joint as a mail drop. Johnny didn’t mind, for the occasional cannabis consideration, and it was the one place Bean always visited when in Barefield. Today, as he ordered his two-meat combo, Johnny had casually given him the package. Plain, free of writing or addressing or markings of any kind other than Bean’s name.

Now the finger, blood dried to a crusty brown, sinew and bone ragged and peeking out from badly-cut flesh, sat heavy in his pocket. He had no idea who the fuck it belonged to or who sent it. But the note, four harsh words, They lied to you, scrawled in jagged handwriting beneath a bad copy of a Ranger badge, told him everything.

Except not quite everything.

A lie? From Mariana? Impossible. His wife had been no angel, she had been a cop in a world filled with the evil and the vile, with predators and corpses, with victims and the vanquished, and no one ever came out completely clean. Dirt and stains and blood clung to everyone, but lying? He couldn’t conceive a situation where she would have lied to him.

Did you lie, baby?

So the note told him nothing concrete, but it did make him ask a question or two, didn’t it?

And who, exactly, might know the answers? Tommy-Blue? Andy? JD?