Warpath

“Give us a minute, will ya, honey?” I say.

Petticoat and his secretary explode away from each other in a desperate attempt to conceal whatever it is they both have hanging out. Petticoat leans at the waist and fiddles with his zipper as his pants are left open like Travolta’s collar in the ’70s.

His secretary, blonde, ten pounds past ‘curvaceous,’ sweet-looking, squeals and tucks a freckled boob into her shirt with one hand while the other is grabbing handfuls of her skirt and yanking down. All she accomplishes is pulling it down too far and de-pants-ing herself.

“Petticoat, ask the dame to go into your office and take her time fixing herself up.”

They just look at each other and his eyes say it all it. He flicks his head at his door and she scoots off. The door shuts. I pull up a chair to the front of the secretary’s desk, sit down, kick my feet up and light a smoke.

“You’re one serious motherfucker,” I say.

“Just what in the fuck do you think you’re doing here, Buckner? Aren’t you supposed to be out there getting results? I mean really—”

“Oh, I’ve gotten results.” Pull my iron and cock the hammer back. Point it at his face. “Sit the fuck down and get ready to explain some things.”

Petticoat turns white as pureblood neo-Nazi and drops right where he is. Lucky for him a corner of waist-high filing cabinet is there to catch him or else I really think he would have just fell flat-ass to the ground.

“I’ll just rattle some things off here and you tell me when it’s enough. You used to be a corrections officer at Happenstance. You meet Carla Gabler there and she tells you about Mickey Cantu. You get washed out of the all-women’s prison and wind up meeting Mickey. Arrange with him to burglarize your place. Something happens and your wife gets raped instead. Fast forward to when you’re rich and your face is plastered everywhere about town. The rapist sees this and knows you’ll never squeal so he blackmails you. You pay until the price goes up and then you hire me, give me some complete bullshit story and hope I deal with your blackmail problem for you in a very final way. Sound right?”

He just stares.

“I went to the hospital you said you were at. Worked my magic. You’re not scheduled for surgery.”

“All right. Maybe I told you wrong—” he starts.

I jump out of the chair. Come across the desk. He screams like a bitch and falls off the cabinet. Gun to his eyeball, hand on his throat. I hear him piss his pants.

“Okay! Okay! Okayokayokayokayokayokayokay! I lied! All right! I lied!”

“GIVE UP THE STORY!”

“I just hated being a CO! All right? All right?” He swallows hard around my grip and tears roll down his face, up the crest of my fingers and down into the troughs between them. He breathes deep and his jaw shudders.

“Before—I dabbled in real estate before my wife got sick. I mean, really sick. The bills, all that. She needed the hospital but I convinced her to stay out until I could get a job that had benefits and when I did we had to wait until they kicked in...she almost died but we weathered through the worst of it. I wanted to go back to real estate, but you know how—how it is. I was already in the corrections job, had a few years under my belt, the wife was touch and go for a while, then I was just...I dunno, stuck. I was used to the routine, the guys I worked with, everything. But I just knew if I could get back into it...but it’s so damn expensive. The license, the testing fees, promotional materials, the cost of speculation. It goes on. I needed cash. Everything costs money, man. So I thought, an insurance scam would be perfect.”

He wiggles and I let him go. For good measure I shove him hard enough to send him sprawling. Lower the gun. Stand up. Walk back over to my chair where my lit cigarette is burning a hole in his carpet. Pick it up, take a drag.

Petticoat stands there behind his desk, looking helpless. “I...I just started looking around at Happenstance. See who the burglary folks were. Which ones were solid. My grandpa always said, no matter whatchoo do in life, ya gotta surround yerself wit solid peoples. He’d always say that.”

He fiddles with his loose belt for a second, then gives up with a frustrated yank. “So I looked for solid. Carla wasn’t, but her boyfriend sounded like it. He was over at the men’s prison and it just so happens I got transferred there. Big hustle and bustle. But, I met Mickey Cantu, told him I knew his gal at my last gig. Told him I took care of her, you know; all the usual. Kept her safe from the gym teacher dykes and all the crazies, snuck her goodies. All bullshit, sure, but still. Bought his goodwill, I guess.

“We made a deal. Simple. I take my wife out on a date from six p.m. to ten p.m. He has a four-hour window to rob my house empty. Anything I wanted to keep I moved somewhere else. He could have the TV, stereo, furniture, art. I didn’t care. Insurance money. Plain and simple, simple, simple. Then we never see each other again. He agreed.”

He leans against the wall and looks furious.

“I come home at ten fucking thirty and we get jumped. I open the door and BOOM I get hit square in the face. Out cold. I come to and the first thing I see is my house...it’s still full. Nothing is missing. I was so angry I completely missed my wife sobbing in the corner, two black eyes and blood coming from her crotch. I walked through half the house in a trance while she curled up into a ball. And I did come back to her, asked if she was all right, the only thing she could do was ask me why I went walking around the house like that? What did I know? We had an agreement. We had an agreement!”

He cries. Drops to his knees. Bares his teeth like he wants to devour every word coming out of his mouth.

“I never told her. I never said it was all my fault. All this...I never said anything. Not to the police, nobody. Talking to you, right here right now, this is the first time these things have ever been spoken aloud.”

He makes a fist and hits the floor, over and over. Curls up himself.

“And when she committed suicide I hoped there was no God. Because if there is she’d go to Heaven just because of the raw deal she got. And if she went to Heaven, she’d know what I did to her and what I hid from her. And, I guess she’d know about all the inmates I’d fuck while she was too sick and she’d know she completely threw her life away by ever setting eyes on me.”

All true.

“So I wanted Mickey Cantu dead. But I’m no good at man hunting and I never found him. I don’t know how hard I tried; the sick ironic thing is I had a life insurance policy on Sheila and when she died, it paid off. I had the money to get into the business then.”