"Let each man hear his own music and live by it. Th e drums roll one way for one man, I guess, and another way for another. You have to listen to your own."- Audie Murphy
"Let each man hear his own music and live by it. Th e drums roll one way for one man, I guess, and another way for another. You have to listen to your own."- Audie Murphy
eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
"Let each man hear his own music and live by it. Th e drums roll one way for one man, I guess, and another way for another. You have to listen to your own."- Audie Murphy
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781463439620 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 08/16/2011 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 929 KB |
Read an Excerpt
Soldier In Paradise
A NovelBy Steven S. Cullen
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2011 Steven S. CullenAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4634-5982-6
Chapter One
There are certain things human beings Are not permitted to know— Like what we're doing.—William Burroughs
So, there I was: in lovely, downtown Providence after midnight, parked outside Skinny's expecting to roll a queer. My first time, it was far from my usual Friday night out of sucking down sixteen-ounce cans of cheap Schlitz or Schafer somewhere in the woods. No, not tonight. Tonight, Jesus Christ, I was going to beat the shit out of some poor bastard for a few bucks.
I sat in the back of Angelo's apple-red GTO, not wanting to be there and wondering why the hell I was. Russ sat beside me, and Paulie sat up front—their first time, too.
Angelo (Angie, Ange) razzed us. "You cherries sure look nervous. Breathe, for Christ's sake. What the hell are ya afraid of, some fucking homo? Mick, you wanna hit of this?" He turned and offered me a half-pint of peach brandy over the back of the front seat. Peach brandy in June. He loved the shit. Not for me though. It tasted awful, like guzzling orange-flavored Romilar, cough syrup with codeine that was used recreationally at the time for its ability to impair, if you drank enough of it (and only through a straw).
My father said that Angelo was very Italian, you know, the dark skin/ greasy hair/talks with his hands criteria. That he was, and handsome, too. Five-foot-nine, powerfully built with wide shoulders tapering to a flat, stomach over solid legs, dark eyes in a rugged face topped with thick, black hair. He was behind the wheel without any worry, having busted his cherry a long time ago when he rolled his first at fourteen. His cousin, Mario, had hooked him up with some very bad dudes from Federal Hill, the city's nefarious Italian section. Yeah, and I mean nefarious, because The Hill was Mafia country. For six months now, Angelo had traveled regularly with his paisans, bushwhacking the homosexuals who frequented Skinny's, bashing their heads in with their old Little League Louisville sluggers, right in the alley adjacent to "their" bar. "Their" meaning, as Angelo put it, "those rip-roaring faggots" who brazenly sashayed up the steps to Skinny's. They had come to own Skinny's, one of the few places they could go public.
Angelo had parked a couple of shop doors down from the alley entrance that began ten feet from Skinny's front door. This section of the street was narrow and still cobblestoned, the roadway uneven and canted toward the front of the bar. There were some cars parked on both sides, and the street lamps cast a yellow haze over them. Skinny's was a cruddy dive, seemingly held together precariously by walls of rust, its brick friable and copper colored, appearing oxidized like all the exposed chrome and steel in the little Rust Belt city on the bay.
Skinny's was located a few blocks from the bus station on Weybosset Street and a mile from The Hill. The East Side—where the upscale Jews lived. Centrally located you'd say for the convenience of a certain socio-economic clientele who arrived by Greyhound or Trailways. Above the door sign for Skinny's, the place boasted Narragansett beer signs—neon in two single-pane windows on either side of a piece-of-shit front door faded red.
While we waited, Angie filled us in. Most of Skinny's patrons parked in a lot behind the esteemed establishment, but Skinny wouldn't allow anyone to use the rear door. So, the regulars came and went by the front, and when they left, after hours of downing 'Gansett—rot gut beer brewed right down the street at the massive brick brewery—they turned down the darkened alley and staggered through a hundred feet of shadows to the rear lot. And no matter how many times they got rolled on the way, Skinny, who was the bar's four hundred pound owner, refused to make the rear door available. We said to Ange, "explain that, will ya?" Well ... ends up that Skinny didn't give a shit about his customers getting robbed because, one, Skinny was straight and didn't care who took the faggots' money, and, two—you go it—he took a piece of the roll. Yup, we had to pay Skinny off—that's the deal.
I tipped the bottle a couple of times. Too sweet, but I felt better and passed the bottle to Russ, despite his preference. He passed it back to Ange. Russ took a rolled joint from his top pocket, fired it up with a silver Zippo lighter and took his pulls, the burning end glowing a charcoal red in the darkness with each draw. Russ wore black-rimmed glasses, which he kept poking back up on his nose with his middle finger. Dressed in chinos and a polo shirt, he was a very conservative looking pothead. He leaned forward, passing it up front to Paulie. "Come. rrrhhh. on. come. rrrhhh. on," Russ choked out, the smoke still trapped in his lungs, then forcefully exhaled "where the hell are these guys, anyhow?" in a long plume of gray fog. We had been there almost an hour and hadn't seen anyone enter or leave the bar.
The windows were down and Hendrix was on the eight-track, the volume low. The June night was balmy but moist and sticky, covering us in a cloak of paste. The smell of salt air wafting from the bay blended with the odor of petroleum emanating from the storage tanks near the docks a few blocks away. I liked the penetrating scent. Growing up, I visited the city often enough for the scent to become part of the season's change as much as the sweet fragrance of apple blossoms in the orchards in our town. Ah, the potent combo of petroleum and the sea, its fumes like smelling salts reviving me from the cold, dead winters back to the warmth of a living spring.
"Hey, Paulie, how you doin', man?" Russ said, stoned and nervous.
Russ was talking to the back of Paulie's head. Paulie was blonde, a big Polack with a wide Slavic face. The left side of his skull was made of metal, the end result of a car crash years earlier. A little slow in the cognitive department, he seldom engaged in conversation and usually only when prompted. He was tripping on two hits of acid when he rolled his car on a back road up in Scituate, a small village in the Rhode Island boonies. The fifteen-year-old girl with him flew through the windshield of Paulie's old 1948 Pontiac and landed like a rag doll on a stone wall. She miraculously survived, too.
"Paulie, are you with us, man?" Russ asked, trying to reach him again.
"Yeah, I'm in the present, in the groove, in tune." Paulie replied, softly.
"So, how do you do this, Angelo?" Russ asked. "I mean what do you do? What do you say? Like hey, this is a stick up—"
"A stick up!" Angelo exclaimed. "Fuck no, Russ. A stick-up..." Paulie and I burst into laughter at how ridiculous that sounded. "... what the hell's that? From some old Cagney movie or something? No, you just walk up to him and tell him you're going to kick the living shit outta him if he doesn't give you his wallet. Jesus Christ, Russ, a stick-up ..."
I saw the bar door open. A small man, slightly built and dressed in a white Nehru jacket, stumbled out of Skinny's. He glanced over at us, and then turned the corner of the building, entering the wide alley leading to the rear lot. "Hey, we've got one," Angelo announced and yanked the keys from the ignition, abruptly cutting off Hendrix's rendition of the Star Spangled Banner in mid-riff. Shouldering his door open, he said, "Let's go."
By the time the three of us managed to get out of the car, Angelo had already reached the entrance to the alley. As we ran to catch up with him, I saw him grab hold of the little man from behind, spin him, then slam him against the bar's wall, pinning him there with one hand to the little guy's throat. Panting, Paulie, Russ, and me formed a semi-circle behind the two. We were several feet from where the building ended and the lot began. I was closest to a yellow umbrella streetlamp on Weybosset. The only other light was the one in the rear lot, which dimly lit the alley. Angelo demanded his money.
"You're hurting him, Angelo! Don't hurt him!" Russ yelled.
"Mick, watch the street," Angelo commanded me, pointing with his free hand up the alley without taking his eyes off the little man. I didn't, stuck on what was going on in front of me.
"Please ... take your hand ... off me," the little man did manage to say. "I'm not ... going to resist ... you. I'll ... cooperate." His voice was a forced and raspy soprano through Angelo's chokehold.
Angelo removed his hand and stepped back. Straightening his jacket, the little man moved away from the wall. He fiddled with stem of his glasses—rose-colored granny glasses—jiggling them and spoke in his normal voice, an octave lower. "Jeez. Okay, you guys definitely don't want to get into my pants, right? I mean, it better come out of my pocket and not my zipper, right?" He giggled, and then reached into the back pocket of his red bell-bottoms.
"Come on, come on! Hurry it up, hand it over!" Angelo demanded.
"Sure you don't want something else, handsome? He giggled again. Angelo snatched the wallet from his outstretched hand, tore some bills out, and then flung it to the pavement. Russ went over, picked it up, and brought it back to the little man.
"Let's go!" I said.
"Take off your shoes," Angelo commanded.
"Jesus Christ, Ange!" I said. "Let's go!"
"You know, good-lookin', I'd take everything off for you," the little man said, putting his wallet back in his pocket. Giggling, he sat down, tugged at his feet, and handed his footwear to Angelo. Angelo turned and held them up for us to see. They weren't shoes, but boots—calf-high, black "engineer" boots with large gold-colored buckles and thick heels and soles, the type worn by local members of the ECMF, the East Coast Mother Fuckers, a New England motorcycle gang. Angelo reached inside one, and then threw it down. He reached inside the other and pulled out some crumpled bills from the toe of the boot. Angelo displayed the money in his hand. "You see, Mick, I know these fuckers," Angelo said with satisfaction standing over the little man. Angelo tossed the other boot onto the pavement.
The little man got to his knees in front of Angelo. "You know, Angelo, I'm in just the right position to do you some good," he said. Angelo kicked him in the face. The little man's glasses flew off and blood spurted from his mouth as he fell back against the wall. I grabbed Angelo by the back of his shirt and pulled him away.
"Fucking faggot! You fucking faggot!" Angelo yelled over him.
Russ dashed about, gathering the boots and glasses. He plopped them in front of the little man curled up on the pavement, then backed up toward the street. Paulie stood there watching. "Paulie! Let's go, let's go!" Russ yelled, taking hold of Paulie's arm. I pushed Angelo passed them, back up the alley to the car.
Russ and Paulie reached the street as Angelo pulled the car up to the alley entrance. I held the door open, pushed Paulie into the back seat and Russ piled in on top of him. "Go! Go! Go! Russ yelled.
I was halfway in the car when Angelo peeled out. "Those fucking boots!" Angelo yelled, as he sped down the street, "did ya get a load of those fucking boots?!" He laughed.
Russ and Paulie just got settled side by side as Angelo cut down an alley. "Jesus Christ, Angelo, did you have to hurt him like that?! Jesus Christ!"
"Fucking faggot! I didn't like what he said, Russ! I hate that kind of faggot talk!"
"Yeah, but damn, you could've hurt him, bad!"
"Fuck him! He deserved it, trying to hide that money from me!" Angelo turned sharply, roared down a side street, and then cut down another alley, tossing Russ and Paulie side to side in the back.
"Slow down, Angelo! Slow down!" I yelled.
Angelo turned right, wildly, out of the alley and onto Westminster Street. He gained control just seconds before swerving into an oncoming panel truck. We sped a few blocks and took another right at an intersection onto Broadway. Slowing down, at first I was confused as to where Angelo was going, but then it hit me. Shit, we were headed for South Providence—the ghetto.
Angelo explained that he had planned it—if we scored—he would take us to get a piece of ass. "Men, welcome to Angelo's coontown, where the whores are big, black, and beautiful." Angelo was delighted to introduce us to another pastime in his clandestine world of Mafia children. He took us on the scenic route, cruising slowly passed dilapidated five-story tenements lining both sides of the street. The houses stood just a few yards apart from each other, all looking the same with boarded up windows, peeling paint and collapsing stoops. Stripped down cars sat on their axles under street lamps. And while he drove, Angelo boldly exchanged menacing stares with soul brothers who passed by us in their boats: big Cadillacs and Bonnevilles and Monte Carlos. Angelo stared back at the revelers, too. Those who loitered outside the neighborhood bars, amazed at seeing four white boys in South Providence, on a Friday after midnight. They stood in the gutters and on the sidewalks, shucking and jiving as Angelo put it, to the sounds of Motown that blared through the open bar doors into the streets from the bands inside. We drove slowly passed it all, with Angelo, the tour guide.
Then there she was, with three other girls on a corner, waving to the passing cars and strutting her stuff in pink, hot pants. Angelo went wild and pulled over.
She was a large, very dark-skinned black woman who stood almost six feet tall with huge breasts and buttocks. She had to be fifty years old. Her name was Loretta, and she took all of thirty seconds to negotiate the price and act, after which she squeezed into the front seat between me and Angelo, smothering us in a pungent odor of hard liquor, cheap perfume and sweat. Loretta leaned over me and yelled out my window. "Connie! Come on honey, we've got a date! Come on sugar, hurry it up!" The smallest of the three girls on the corner walked quickly to the car. I got out and let her get in the back between Russ and Paulie. Then, Angelo did it to me again, speeding away from the curb when I was just halfway into the car.
Loretta was loud. "I'm feelinnnnn' finnnnnnne!" she said, "and no, I'm not drunk, Connie!" Loretta amused us, babbling on about her clientele: "mostly horny white boys," and her competitors, Wynona and Deloise, "those black-ass bitches back on the corner." The whole time she was directing Angelo to "my crib." Nothing was heard from anybody in the back.
We arrived at Loretta's in five minutes. She amiably pushed me out of the car and leaned on me at the curb as Russ and Connie got out. Loretta pulled Connie out by the hand, and that's when I saw Connie close-up for the first time. "She's a doll, isn't she Mick?" Russ said. I nodded. Hearing the compliment, she looked at neither of us, but parted her full, sensuous lips in a wide smile, revealing a perfect set of teeth. She had large, dark brown eyes and a very short Afro. She looked boyish, but her figure, under a clinging black mini-skirt and thin, white sweater was anything but that. Her skin was golden. She was very, very appealing, and very young.
Loretta told us to wait by the car while she and Connie went into the house, a three-story, fading puke green clapboard tenement, to get things ready. The street was dark, and quiet, and deserted. When Loretta returned to the car without Connie, she seemed anxious. Angelo and Paulie joined us on the sidewalk, and Loretta led the way down the sidewalk to the front stoop of the house. I nudged Angelo and motioned toward a driveway across the street where two men had suddenly appeared. By the time we reached the stoop stairs, the men were lounging against the back of a car parked in the drive, smoking and passing a bottle. Christ, oh shit, we're probably in for it when we come out, I thought. I felt a sudden urge to run back to the car, but Angelo seemed unconcerned.
We followed Loretta through the front door and climbed the narrow, winding stairs to her third floor apartment. The staircase reeked with the odor of fried meat, burning pot, and urine. "They're going to jump us when we come out," I whispered to Angelo on the first landing.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Soldier In Paradise by Steven S. Cullen Copyright © 2011 by Steven S. Cullen. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.