About Story Openings

THERE WILL be a story opening contest on this blog. Details forthcoming.

Two questions: Why a Story Opening Contest? What defines a good story opening?

Music composers from Beethoven to the Beatles understood the value of a dynamic opening. In this oversaturated cultural age, it might be the single most important key to literature’s survival, its ability to compete.

A story opening needs to be dynamic and attractive in itself—the best written part of the work. (See Fitzgerald’s “Great Gatsby.”) More, it needs to lay the groundwork for the rest of the tale—to present at least one thread or idea to be developed later—and to keep the reader reading!

The best story openings are striking from the first sentence. Remember Stephen Crane? "None of them knew the color of the sky." ("The Open Boat.") Or Stevenson: "Did you ever remark that door?" ("The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.")

POP21: “The Prisoner”

BIG BOY SAGA CHAPTER TEN

Life is a messy business.

The city was overrun by grubby life. Termites, cockroaches, pigeons, mice, rats, stray dogs and cats, inhabiting walls, floors, rooms, streets, alleyways, and backyards. They brought with them their cries, smells, gas, shit, disease, blood; their refuse and garbage. Among the various messy creatures in the city moved the messiest, grubbiest, most violent organism of them all.

A couple hundred of the most prosperous and ruthless of these harsh creations crowded into a lavish ballroom, a food-and-drink engulfed soiree at the poshly clean center of the violent city. For these individuals, the violence happened outside, away from them, on the streets. Here in the warm room of soothing white and violet colors circled the safe conflict of expressions and opinions, whose reverberations led to the more visceral flesh-ripping, life-ending kind.

Despite his throbbing shoulder, Fake Face shook hands with urgency. His battle with Big Boy hadn’t been one solely of bullets and fists. There remained the more intense battle against the District Attorney, Big Boy’s aunt, for justification and allies. Fake Face’s great aid in this struggle against the frowning and corrupt woman was his face. How could anyone not trust its generosity and benevolence? He was simply misunderstood by his critics. The stories people heard about him weren’t true. No! Couldn’t be. The kindly face must be the reality.

As media reports of gang warfare sped through Killtown, the District Attorney sat frozen within the flimsy security of her office, wondering if she should respond, and if so: how? She obsessed over political calculations, while people died. While Fake Face drew powerful figures to his side.

Word of Maxwell’s imprisonment reached her. Big Boy had lost the fight which she, the D.A., had initiated. Ever-generous Fake Face offered her a deal, one incumbent upon his victory.

As negotiations took place, Maxwell—aka Big Boy—remained securely hid. He’d been taken to a spot near the river, to the bottom of a railtower whose above ground structure had been obliterated. This sat within the remains of the end of a railyard in a broken-down neighborhood whose chief residents were river rats. The captive had been stashed inside the concrete-walled basement beneath ground. Within the basement, he’d been chained inside a small room, which in its decay, dirt, and dampness became a medieval dungeon.

The prisoner was strongly chained. His captors knew his strength. The guards who brought him food and water did so reluctantly. The large man-beast in the room had great reason to hate every one of them. They feared the injustice of his situation; sensed, in their animalistic way, the retribution which would surely fall upon them.

Therefore, the thickness of Big Boy’s chains.

The disheveled, shaggy-haired prisoner pushed the delivered food away with red eyes. Eyes as wary and piercing as those of any rat’s.

Max stopped eating. His huge form wasted away. He lost all appetite. He renounced his appetite, along with his physical body, which provided him now with nothing but heartache and unrelieved physical pain. The chains upon him were very tight. Max gave up the world, because the world had destroyed him.

At the highest corner of his cell: a dirty window with iron bars over it. Through the window could be seen amid the crumbling gray neighborhood a soot-gray church with a single red stained glass window left in it. The red spot appeared like a distant beacon within the town’s grayness. Maxwell smelled the closeness of the river. The red window stayed in the church tower, too high to reach.

Max tried to comprehend his situation. His cell was entirely gray. Senselessly with his hand he brushed dust from the gray wall. Until he saw that the wall behind the dust wasn’t gray, but green.

Green liqueur drinks moved upon silver trays at the important gala through which Fake Face happily circulated. Allies of the District Attorney treated him with abject deference, signal of his win. Around the room stood the city’s most esteemed and charitable residents, who’d stolen so much they had much to be charitable with. Several said out loud, “Aren’t we wonderful?” What was the purpose—or rather, the excuse—for the benefit? The Face didn’t know or care. Likely another cultural institution, a larger museum or redesigned library; a swankier palace.

Fake Face expected word about his ransom negotiations. He’d made only one request. Not money. He’d soon have enough of that! He’d asked instead for the D.A. to resign from her post.  “A statement,” he’d insisted. “I want a statement!”

He checked his phone. No updated messages. Then: a new text. “D.A. press conference in ninety minutes.”

Bored with the impossibly stupid, affluent, phony crowd, Fake Face hustled outside to his yellow limo parked at curbside. He grabbed keys from the waiting driver, climbed inside and to the stolid thug’s worried stare, Fake Face drove off into the night.

The prisoner waited. Time was short. Max struggled to remember a phrase that someone had said to him once. Or he’d said it. His forehead scrunched. Tears welled behind his eyelids.

In the corner of the bleak scene, through the high window, stood the soot-gray church with a single red-stained glass glowing out from it, the red spot more intense than before. The stark image reminded Maxwell of an existence outside himself.

Max knew he was going to die. Maybe that was why he didn’t mind the suffering. He minded the pain—very much minded the pain!—but knew he could take it, knew it would soon go away.

What was the point of his life?

As he asked the question, he felt strangely deepened. Existence expanded. For his entire life he’d been a child. He’d played roles to please other people. Football player. Deputy. Gangster. To please himself according to what he’d seen in movies or on TV. Only Merrily had seen the real Big Boy, seen through his size, his poses, his imaginings. Merrily!

After an hour of sadness and contemplation Maxwell remembered the missing phrase. His face brightened.

Echoing footsteps sounded suddenly upon the metal stairway that led down to the basement. A muscular guard thrust open the thick steel door to the cell. A moment later Fake Face stood within the damp enclosure.

Through the mask, the Face’s eyes studied the captive. Big Boy looked peaceful. His eyes were bloodshot. Likely he’d been sleeping. The stupid beast!

“You haven’t yet talked,” Fake Face said to the large chained animal. “It’s not too late for you to talk!”

Fake Face grabbed a loose chain and struck the kneeling man several times across the head with it. Crimson blood flowed from Max’s scalp, cheek, and mouth. His cut lips moved within his pale white face, as if ready now to talk.

“I’m someplace where you can never go,” the Big Boy whispered.

Fake Face grunted at the man’s imbecility.

“Keep your secrets,” he told him. “It doesn’t matter.”

Fake Face checked his phone.

At this moment, television screens across the city switched to the District Attorney’s news conference. Dark blue curtains served as backdrop. The gray-haired woman with black eyebrows, representative of power and authority, stepped to the podium.

“It’s almost done!” Fake Face exulted. “How triumphant. You know, I always win.”

Maxwell made no acknowledgement. His blue eyes gazed elsewhere.

“Your Auntie has agreed to my terms,” Face continued. “She’s on television now. You’ll be returned to Dear Auntie. I didn’t specify how!”

With a slim pistol Fake Face shot Max through the forehead. Then the Face grinned. The Face always grinned. Blood everywhere.

The District Attorney finished announcing her resignation. She took no questions. Bright lights turned off in the room. Bars of color shimmered across television screens before the stations resumed regular programming.

END OF THE BIG BOY SAGA

POP20: “Killtown USA”

BIG BOY SAGA CHAPTER NINE

The jail cell Merrily was chained to smelled of decay. Her hand touched something on the floor behind her, cold and dust covered. A loose iron bar.

The world enclosed her in darkness. In some distant place, the sun rose. A corner of her swollen eye glimpsed, through an opening in a wall, the reddening, expanding city.

Rays of light fell then on her pink bangs. She saw the revelation of blue painted walls. Sunlight! Everywhere around her. Pleasing, healing sunlight. The beaten girl basked in it.

She’d thought about much during the endless night. The only way she could save Max was by killing or dying. Her small, sinewy hands slipped with tearing skin out of the handcuffs. Her right hand gripped the iron bar beside her. She lifted the bar and swung it, testing its weight.

What was death? You died and became dust, became life for new organisms. The cycle continued. Somehow, somewhere, in some distant time, you lived again. She wanted to believe that.

Merrily had missed a chance at Fake Face with the gun Sal had given her. But she’d give herself another chance to stop the madman. She heard his footsteps now, ascending the stairway.

Merrily knew she’d meet Max again. She visualized Max’s face. A phrase popped into her head. It made her feel good to repeat it: “It’s only life!”

The steps grew louder. The rising sick smile came into sight. Merrily crouched, the iron bar hidden behind her legs. The Face approached, closer, close—Merrily sprung and aimed the bar directly at his head to destroy it to destroy him!—but the Face moved at the last instant the bar jumped against his shoulder, a bullet from his golden pistol smashed into her torso in an explosion of yellow flame and black smoke, through her spine.

Merrily fell forward would have plummeted but Fake Face grabbed her hair. There was yet a spark of life in her eyes, glaring at him with undaunted fury—he took her neck and choked her with his fancy gloved hands until the spark left. Then he tossed her below.

**************************************

With the bait dead there was no hope of getting the Big Boy away from his nightclub. They’d have to go to him. Fake Face gathered his gang into a line of cars, his yellow limousine at the front. He climbed awkwardly into the backseat, hiding his stiff shoulder. Eager Jake Pol sat next to him clutching a sawed-off shotgun.

“Let’s go hunting,” Fake Face said.

Within ten minutes the gang surrounded the Green Club. Jake Pol helped the stiffening Fake Face from the large yellow car. Fake Face caught Jake’s sweaty expression. What was Jake’s look? Fear? Disgust? It wasn’t friendliness. It wasn’t benevolence. In the Fake Face gang all were required to be benevolent.

The Face pointed with a smudged yellow glove. Behind a battering ram his men invaded the Green Club.

Most of Big Boy’s crew had fled as soon as local websites and radio stations screamed, “Gang War!” They wanted no part of that. Their only loyalty to Max was through a pay envelope.

Big Boy had waited though, along with his three best football player friends. Four giant men. They believed they could take on the world.

They retreated into the club, backs against the long bar, which was wrecked. They held weapons. The other side held more of them.

“No shooting,” Fake Face suggested as he stepped into the room. “Otherwise we’ll all be dead.”

“Just you and me,” Big Boy agreed, tossing aside his machine gun and adopting a fighter’s stance.

“Why not?” Fake Face laughed in a sing-song happy voice. “You’re a slow, heavy punching bag—an easy target. If I can reach you I can beat you.”

He put away his gold pistol—and produced instead from his pocket a chunk of pink-colored human hair. Pink, with dried red blood through it.

In shock and grief, Big Boy put his hands to his head. For a moment his strength left him—enough pause for Jake Pol to knock him over with a chair. Within minutes Max and his friends were tied up. Max himself was curiously subdued. He filled now with other thoughts. His fight and his cheap role-playing were over.

“The Big Boy is no more!” Fake Face proclaimed.

(NEXT: The Saga concludes with “The Prisoner.”)

Short Story Rerelease

"STRANGE MUMMER CREATURES OF PHILADELPHIA"

(Originally posted in January of this year as POP02. Reposted because of its timeliness.)

Every year New Year's Day Philadelphia is invaded by strange-looking Mummers, creatures who've been making costumes and practicing all year to be "on stage" in the Broad Street parade their one special day, the parade beginning appropriately in the huge crazy neighborhood of South Philly. It ends there as well that same evening after the City Hall awards competitions when many various Mummer clans return to their Two Street home base for a gigantic block party stretching from Washington Ave in a mad carnival pointing endlessly south to the end of the world, or at least the end of town. Many participants by then have exceeded 24 hours straight of drinking, marching, and partying.

On this particular New Year's Day Maggie aka Mags was working deep into her South Philly dialect while sipping beer from a plastic cup having become separated from her own club of Mummer creatures. Her costume was a mad sparkling mix of violet, silver, and green, of feathers and sequins, with a violet star spread over her silver face. She drank now among rival Mummer gangs. A silver cap obscured her red hair.

Stumbling, she backed into a tallish young man or young-something in a harlequin get-up of black-and-white.

"You clown," she drawled. "Whyn't youse watch what youse doin?"

The clown grinned stupidly at what he'd found before him.

"Didn't I see you strutting at City Hall earlier?" he asked. "You're quite the dancer. How'd you finish?"

"Foist place, of coise," she bragged. "We took the prize. T'anks for the compliment-- but youse forget the middle of my routine I slipped and landed on my fanny!"

He said, "All along I thought that was planned!"

They leaned together for support. Mags liked this guy, but realized she was smashed and the colors of the world were spinning on all sides. She needed to get back to her friends before she did something messy.

"So, tell me, young lady, how you became such an amazing dancer?" the boyish clown asked with intense seriousness.

Mags snapped her fingers, which caused him to start.

"I just am," she said, looking into his blue eyes. "Comes easy." (Pronounced "oisy.")

Completely entranced, the clown took the gorgeous colorful creature in his arms and kissed her very sloppily full face. The kiss lasted a full minute, long enough for Maggie to feel a fire begin inside her costume, which she was surprised didn't burst immediately into flame.

Then the striped clown had vanished away.

For a week afterward Mags was crazy in love and tramped all through the riotous huge area of South Philly thinking she could somehow run into the clown creature and recapture the magic. She had no idea what he looked like beneath his costume and makeup, though she recalled he had dark hair and of course she remembered his blue eyes. Maggie walked up and down Passyunk east and west; up and down 13th Street, which contained many young people; of course Two Street, the Italian Market on 9th including Gleaners coffeeshop and 12 Steps Down bar; Pat's Steaks and their rivals Geno's; and all over and around South Street; futilely.

It occurred to her the young man wouldn't recognize her either; that maybe she'd looked more dazzling in Mummer costume than in reality.

Mags sat in her place, contemplating. She snapped her fingers.

"Oh well," she said, resigning herself to the loss, of that which for only a moment had been found. "That's life." She put the encounter out of her brain.

Two months later Maggie was drinking at a tough but trendy saloon up on 7th Street with a gal pal named Connie. Dark-haired Connie and Mags had met after work for a quick beer, but both were dressed as if on the make, and there were now many a green beer bottle on the polished dark table before them. Maggie's black top and blue eye shadow contrasted starkly with her red hair and white face in the subtly-lit room.

Maggie was thinking how many new people were in the neighborhood who weren't real born-there South Philly people. It was a great neighborhood and they wanted to get in on it, but it'd always been a great neighborhood.

A table of the new type sat near the two women; college-grad people who'd come to Philly to attend school and stayed. They worked Center City jobs and had easy money.

Mags sneered their way. "What do you know about the Phillies?" she asked. "Where were you when they had losing seasons? What marks the true Philadelphia fan is their loyalty."

Part of Maggie's attitude was territorial, but part may have been an age thing. She was already 27 and the kids now in bars appeared to her to be babies.

One of the table looked at her with amusement.; a lanky pretty boy in a tie and white shirt, already drunk, bangs of hair on his forehead disarrayed.

"You can't be serious?" he said seriously. "Throwing snowballs at Santa? That's your history. Booing your own players? Scott Rolen. Even Mike Schmidt! Is that loyalty?"

"But we were there!" Maggie insisted. "Thick and thin. We booed affectionately."

Mags took a swig of her beer. Lager: Yuengling. Philly's beer. No designer beer drinking for her!

"Yuppies," she muttered. The young man's friends glanced her way, snootily. "How gauche!" one said.

"Oh really," Maggie replied. "What do you know about Philly, anyway? How long you been here? A year? Six months?"

The young man stared mystified and curious at the outspoken South Philly creature.

"I'm learning that in Philadelphia," he said, "rudeness is a way of life. I've been here myself five years, by the way. I love the place as much as you do, you know. I am now fully a Philly native! You could say I've been baptized. But tell me, miss, how did you get to be so rude? Is it a learned trait? Or were you born that way?"

Maggie snapped her fingers.

"I just am," she said. "Comes easy."

Maggie braced herself, because the young man rose from his chair and stepped, carefully and quite drunk, toward her table. His friends and Connie watched in anticipation of a fight.

Mags clenched her fist was ready to knock the boy out-- almost did, but fortunately waited. He leaned over and kissed her sloppily on the face. She recognized his blue eyes.

He stood up in triumph, with a pronounced smirk, was about to return to his seat.

"Nothin' doin'," Maggie said as she grabbed his hand and pulled him down next to her onto an open chair. "You're not getting away from me twice!"

Their friends were confused, shaking their heads in disbelief, saying, "They're drunk," but the two people furiously kissing remained oblivious.

POP19: “The Lovers”

THE BIG BOY SAGA CHAPTER EIGHT

A phone call came in to Big Boy at the Green Club.

“Yeah?” he asked.

“I have her!” the voice of Fake Face exulted. “Listen listen pretty pretty please.”

Merrily’s voice, which Big Boy hadn’t heard in four years:

“No Max! Don’t come. He’ll kill you. He’s pure evil. Leave me be. I’m dead. He’ll kill me anyway. Save yourself. I’m nobody. Don’t come. Don’t come!”

As Big Boy swelled with comprehending anger, Fake Face’s voice came back on the line.

“I have her at the Armory. We’ll see you see you there!”

Fake Face touched off his phone. His malevolent eyes stared down at the girl. She was held prisoner within the lock-up ruins. Decayed green bars stood open around them. Fake Face had secured her with a fresh chain.

“Thank you very much for your outspoken approval of me, you sad little girl,” the eerie voice said from behind the static smile.

Darkening blood from her scalp mixed with her pink-dyed bangs. Both her eyes had been blackened. Her lips were split, several teeth knocked out. Bruises mixed with purple-green tattoos on her arms. What had been young artist Merrily would be unrecognizable to friends and family, except perhaps for the strands of pink. As her bloodshot eyes stared up at her tormentor, Fake Face grabbed those bangs and yanked her head forward. Enough strength remained in her to resist.

“I’m happy you’ve decided not to oppose me,” he sneered ironically.

“You can’t intimidate me,” she replied. “I’ll never be intimidated. Beneath your mask, your power, and your gang you’re cowardly.”

His evil eyes met hers in some surprise. Her hatred didn’t flinch. The small girl showed intelligence and will like few of his enemies. The Big Boy, for all his stupidity, had found an impressive mate. Too bad, Fake Face thought with some glee—they were fated to remain forever separated!

After the eyes within the mask turned away, the girl tried reason on him.

“Carny won’t like you in his territory,” she said.

“I’ll kill him after I finish with the Big Boy,” spoke the inhuman voice.

Fake Face checked the metal bracelets on her wrists. They were tied to the chain. His steps casually descended the stairway. After a minute she heard the cocky footsteps exit the building. His gang had smashed open the doorway. Likely Fake Face was checking on the men who’d been placed strategically around the tower to await Big Boy’s arrival.

Merrily exhaled. She was so tired. . . . Existentially tired. Her eyes gazed around this place. What time was it, she wondered? Morning? Not yet. Shadows of stairs and bars shifted inside the tower, a frame around the garish red-and-black expressionist painting which had become Merrily.

She prayed Max wouldn’t come. He was a bull in strength, but hadn’t the nature to go against Fake Face. Whatever Max had done, whatever part he’d played as a gangster, Max, after all, remained a human being.

Merrily realized then she cared more for him than she’d believed.

*************************************************

At the Green Club Max—also known as Big Boy—bounded from behind his desk at the conclusion of the phone call with uncontrolled rage. The men present in the office saw what was happening and moved to restrain him.

“Don’t!” they said. “Big Boy, don’t! You heard her. It’s a trap.”

“AAARRRRGGHHH!” Big Boy yelled as he threw the several large men away from him.

He propelled himself into the main body of the Green Club, his men fighting him every step of the way.

“Quick,” one of them said. “Get more men. Bolt the doorway. We have to stop him. If he goes after her it’s suicide.”

For thirty minutes the battle raged within the Club—Big Boy against his own gang. The struggle wrecked the place—chairs, tables, rows of glasses crashing to the floor as the wrestling moved behind the long mahogany bar and outside it, across the vast room, shaggy-haired Big Boy carrying several men on top of him. At one point his voice was heard to cry out with love and desperation, “Merrily! MERRILY!”

“Get more men!” came a tiring refrain. Then: “Max. Max! You can’t go there. You can’t go there!”

At last five huge men halted his progress. They held him down with their weight against the green carpeting, yet felt his welling strength as Big Boy readied for another attempt.

(NEXT: “Killtown USA”)

POP18: “The Armory”

THE BIG BOY SAGA CHAPTER SEVEN

Sal the Hood escaped the police. But now he faced a greater danger.

He stood in a second floor room at Fake Face headquarters. The right side of his face was red-bruised from the Boss’s pistol-whipping.

Sal backed toward a large window as Fake Face and the gang interrogated him, surrounding him in a semi-circle like a hungry wolf pack. The silver-blue room was designed in trapezoids. The floor and ceiling spread in unusual angles. The room made no sense. The effect was unsettling.

“Kill him now,” Jake Pol suggested.

“Where’s the girl?” Fake Face asked Sal.

He wanted answers before he killed anybody.

Sal the Hood needed answers. He’d been utterly surprised by Big Boy’s trap, but could see why he’d be blamed for it.

Sal wondered how Fake Face had survived the onslaught of machine gun fire. The Boss moved very quickly—but could anyone move that quickly?

“The girl is innocent, Boss,” Sal said.

“No one is innocent!” Fake Face exclaimed.

His burst of emotion was enough opportunity for Sal to bring out his two pistols, with right hand and left hand, which he pointed at the gang.

“Dummies!” Fake Face said. “We didn’t search him.”

Fake Face held his own pistol, gold-plated, casually on Sal. The pistol glimmered in the room’s light. Involuntarily, all admired its polished beauty. The Face’s confidence was overbearing. Sal wished to disrupt that confidence.

“Stalemate,” Fake Face said. “I don’t care about you, Sal. I want the girl. The girl!”

At that moment Sal left his feet and crashed through the sleek window behind him in an explosion of cascading glass, dropping with it to the street.

****************************

Sal found Merrily at the coffeeshop where she worked. She’d not been home when the war of gunshots took place—had missed the action. But she’d heard about it.

Now she saw Sal walk into the coffeeshop bruised and bloody. Beads of blue glass and blood drops fell from his hair and clothes.

“I’m sorry,” he told her. “I’ve f’d up everything. You’ve got to get out of here. Bad people are after you.”

They left his car parked hidden behind the shop, then ran on foot. Merrily was too stunned by Sal’s appearance and the city’s gang war to say anything. The world had been tossed into chaos.

“I know a place,” he said.

Half-a-mile away in the midst of No Man’s Land stood a yellow-brown stone tower which looked like a castle. Sal pointed to it. The tower loomed amid the squat neighborhood in front of them.

“The Armory!” he said.

They hustled to reach it.

The Armory had been built during the nation’s Civil War. Later it became a police station used for gang squads, and to house in its lockups dangerous criminals. Gangs of various sorts had traversed the city for more than a century.

Three decades ago the Armory was used as a performance space. Now the entrance and windows were boarded. Local artists had painted a mix of swaths and lines of bright colors on the lower boards, to create vibrant artworks against the drab urban backdrop.

“Will we be safe there?” Merrily asked.

Sal replied, “It’s our only chance.”

He told her Fake Face was Max’s enemy—that Fake Face surely controlled a wing of the police. The cops wouldn’t involve themselves in a gang war.

At least, the Armory offered the illusion of safety. The kind of place to which kids growing up in Killtown wished they could escape. A castle! Protection against a hostile world. Now it’d become that for real.

“I know a way in,” Merrily remembered. “When I was younger we’d sneak inside to smoke dope.”

The tower looked impregnable, but a certain board could be shifted to create a sliver of an opening. Merrily was tiny enough to squeeze through. Sal was compact enough that she pulled him within. They shifted the board back into place.

Once their eyes adjusted, Sal found a hammer and nails among the debris: tools left by years-ago workmen. Quickly he hammered a two-by-four against their way in.

“Further security,” he said.

They climbed a metal stairway that rose into the higher reaches, past the level which held the lockups. As they passed they glanced at the rusted, inoperable doors.

Above this, they found a comfortable spot on a walkway. They crouched down in shadows against a wall. Merrily had stuffed her pockets with pastries from the coffeeshop. They shared these. Around them could be heard sounds of movement. Rodents.

Merrily shivered. Sal looked at her from his swollen right eye.

“I, Sal the Hood, promise I’ll do everything possible to get you out of this mess. I swear to God.”

“This Fake Face,” Merrily asked him. “Why doesn’t somebody do something about him?”

“Fear,” Sal said. “Or because they’re as corrupt as he is.”

Sal took out his two pistols, flipped off the safeties, and made sure bullets were in the chambers. They were ready to fire. He handed one to Merrily.

“If anything happens to me, wait until he’s right in front of you before you pull the trigger. Don’t miss.”

“How do we know it’ll be him?”

“It’ll be him,” Sal said.

As they spoke, a host of cars surrounded the Arsenal. Ever-happy Fake Face stepped out of his bright yellow limo, Jake Pol next to him. They wore their dress suits. The gangster’s keen eyes within the mask scanned the old structure in front of them.

Minutes later a figure could be seen climbing the tower, outlined against the purple sky. The figure found an opening on one of the upper floors and vanished inside.

“What’s the matter?” Merrily asked in a suddenly hushed voice.

“I don’t know,” Sal whispered. “I thought I heard a noise. Probably a rat.”

He stood up. A face smiled in front of him.

“Hello hello!”

BOOM! BOOM!

Their pistols went off simultaneously—two flashes with accompanying roars. Merrily saw amid light and smoke a plastic smile.

“No!” she screamed as Sal the Hood tumbled through space to the ground far below.

With both hands Merrily frantically pointed the other pistol—too late. Fake Face grabbed it.

**********************************

Cold rain pounded down hard upon the city. Particularly hard along the riverfront. Police in long raincoats stepped from patrol cars in response to a call. Beneath the bluish dark sky they searched the scene with flashlights. They’d been told a criminal would be found here. What criminal? Who’d be out on a night like this? An amber beam landed on a round red object. Cops ran toward it. One of them vomited. The gruesome object was a human head. Sal the Hood.

(NEXT: “The Lovers.”) 

POP17: “The Trap”

The Big Boy Saga Continues

CHAPTER SIX

Sal the Hood was a young guy with attitude, his confidence bolstered by two pistols kept on his person. He outlined to Fake Face his plan of how to use Merrily the coffeeshop girl. She’d innocently arrange a meeting someplace with Big Boy, then when Big Boy arrived, she wouldn’t be there. They would be.

“Sound good?” Sal asked.

Fake Face’s head moved in an agitated way, though of course the mask that was his face to the world smiled as always. You never knew where you stood with him, Sal realized. He couldn’t be fathomed.

“A nice plan,” Fake Face said. “But in my outfit I make the plans.”

He pointed to himself. His gloved finger jabbed himself several times.

“ME! Me me me me me. This is what we do. We don’t wait. We move right away. Right now. This minute. Speed is everything. You think I want to wait wait while maneuvers are created against me and flanking takes place on all sides in this game of mouse and cat? We go grab the girl now and once we have her Big Boy is ours!”

Sal the Hood shook his head.

“No, I’m against it. This girl. . . . No can do. It’d be kidnapping, Boss. You heard it on the cd. Big Boy’s aunt is the friggin’ District Attorney! That’s the trap. They’ll fry you for sure if we do that.”

“And I say we go NOW,” Fake Face insisted, holding a gold plated pistol against Sal’s head. “We go, just the two of us.”

The irony wasn’t lost on Fake Face (he was nothing if not ironic) that he was kidnapping Sal. But Sal was a thug, while he himself was a much beloved celebrity in Killtown. Rules were made for those with power.

Sal drove the two of them to the girl’s place, in the chaotic neighborhood of Anarchia. Fake Face couldn’t wait for other gang members. His greed and his hunger were his strengths. He was hungry to grab the girl. She lived with another woman in a tiny basement room which could be reached only from an alley. It was early afternoon. She slept late. She was undoubtedly there now.

Another cloudy day, so dark Sal had the car’s headlights on. The sky moved; purple: ominous. The car pulled into the alley and stopped in a side space against a fence so to not block the way of possible delivery trucks. Sal had described the small door leading to the basement. The door waited fifteen yards ahead. The two men looked at each other.

“Boss, I . . . ,” Sal began.

Fake Face hit Sal across the side of the head with the gold pistol, then again.

“What?” Fake Face asked the dazed figure. “WHAT?! You don’t want to go with me? Is that what you want to say? Or maybe you do want to go. A bad idea! Ha ha. Don’t you think I noticed when you played the recording? Methinks you fell for the girl yourself! No, no, a bad bad idea. You wait here. When I come out with her I only hope you’ve recovered.”

Fake Face left the car and stepped into the alley.

Here is where his plan had gone wrong. A trap had been set, yes. For him. He was the intended victim.

As Fake Face moved confidently forward, three large men in green appeared at the other end of the alley. Big Boy was one of them. They held, in order, an AR-14, an Uzi, and an AK47. They saw the hatted figure pause. In a moment orange flame and gray bullets jumped from their muzzles and tore through the alley to kill and destroy any living thing. For three minutes the weapons fired—the shocking noise of a war.

“Enough,” Big Boy finally ordered.

They ran forward to verify their victim and discovered—nothing. Nothing except the shreds of an expensive burgundy derby, which Fake Face had looked to be wearing when he approached. But where was the man himself? Where was the blood?

“Here’s a few red drops of something,” one of Big Boy’s men said.

The drops went right up to a wall. Fake Face couldn’t have gone through bricks!

For all they knew it was a rodent’s blood.

The three former college football players wondered if, as in a game, they’d been too slow—if they’d hesitated just a moment; full of too much eagerness—before pressing the triggers of their weapons. Had they fired too high? They didn’t know.

To the side sat a car with the gangster Sal half-passed out in the driver’s seat. A few stray bullets had dusted the car’s fenders. It was otherwise untouched. Big Boy and his men looked underneath the vehicle and behind it. Sirens sounded in the distance, growing louder. The three men were puzzled. The sirens grew louder.

“What do we do?”

The sirens grew louder.

“We beat it,” Big Boy said.

That evening Big Boy had a drink with his aunt in the District Attorney’s private office. He filled a plush red armchair as if it were a toy. The man was visibly shaken. A collection of nerves which no amount of whiskey could cure.

“Get ahold of yourself, Maxwell,” she scolded him. “It’ll do no good to fall apart.”

“But—,” Big Boy said.

“But—yes,” she countered, looking away from him toward the vulnerable window. “If Fake Face is alive we’re in trouble. He’s the kind you have to finish. Otherwise, he’ll be after us.”

The beetle-browed woman shuddered at the thought.

(NEXT: "The Armory")