Ken Bruen - Pimp

He held his breath to make his face go red, started convulsing, let some saliva dribble down his chin like Leo in Gilbert Grape , and then let his head go limp. Silently cursing the cut to his palate he’d given himself while fake-convulsing with a gun in his mouth. Fuck, that shit hurt . That better have been convincing. Fuck.

One of the dudes holding an Uzi off to the side went, “Yo, you better chill with that shit, I think you killin’ the mothafucka.”

The thin white dude removed the gun from Max’s mouth said, “You gonna play ball and tell us how to cook up the PIMP, yo?”

Max let his knees buckle, his tongue sagging from his mouth.

Another of the Uzi guys shouted, “Nigga’s dying, K.”

Believing it, the thin guy said to Max, “Shit, you okay, man? Can you hear me?”

Perfect — he knew if he let The Max die he’d never crack the PIMP code.

Max was gasping, barely said the word, “Water.”

“Get the man some water,” an Uzi dude said. “The fuck you standin’ there?”

One of the thugs arrived with a glass of water. Max managed to get a pill into his mouth, making the struggle look good — where was his Oscar? — and then clutched the glass of water.

He’d seen enough attacks at Attica to know exactly what to do next. Gulped a sip of water then smashed the glass against the wall, holding onto the bottom of the glass, and then rammed the shard into the thin guy’s neck.

Blood splurted — bingo.

During the shock, Max kneed one of the thugs in the balls, grabbed the guy’s Uzi, and went Pulp Fiction on him and the rest of the room. He fired like Mad Max 2 — or was it Rambo III ? — Still the clip ran out. He was firing on empty for a minute before he realized it was done. Standing in the carnage, with smoke, cordite, and the copper scent of blood all round, and not even a sound, not even a siren... yet.

Time to get his Rambo ass in gear. Checked his watch, allowed two minutes to raid the dead. These Bloods were carrying serious weight, in Rolexes, bulging wallets, diamonds and, sweet Mary and Joseph — his Irish persona still kicking in — and lots of dope.

Max went outside, squinting against the sunlight. The Boyz n the Hood were still doing the corners gig, Jesus, how passé was that? Max, flying on PIMP and some margaritas earlier, marched up to a brother, shouted, “Where Demarcusmon at?”

The guy stared at him, showing gold teeth — was he smiling?

“Demarcus? Over there by the Caddy.”

Max blew the smiling asshole’s head off, scattering his friends.

Then he strode toward the big man. He was marching to a whole other deadly drumbeat, in his own movie that laid waste to the disbelievers who dissed The Max.

Precious wasn’t kidding when she said Demarcus was big. Jesus, the guy had to be six-eight, three hundred and fifty pounds.

Max went to him, “What up, Black?”

The enormous dreadlocked man turned to face Max, not in a hurry, gunfire notwithstanding. This wasn’t a man who got bothered by a little thing like gunfire. A smile already creasing his scarred handsome face, he was going, “The fuck you...?” when The Max shot him in the balls, then moved over, shot him in the face, turned, shot the lieutenant, who was going for his piece, in the side, then turned in whiplash movement — Jeez, that PIMP gave you some moves — and shot the guy on the corner. Then bent down, frisked Demarcus, found stash of cash, dope, and turned with the U, mowed down any brother who moved.

As the smell of cordite and utter disbelief spread over the street, The Max began to stroll down among the fallen bodies, putting a coup de grace in any mother who moaned, then turned, shouted, “That all you got? Spread the word you corn pickers, I own this fucking town.”

He piled everything into the white Caddy. Now a siren was blaring. He put the white in gear, cruised outa there like the King of New York.

His mowing down of the hood kept replaying in his demented head. He reached down as he put distance between him and the cops, unwrapped a shitload of PIMP. Pulled over, snorted four or five lines, punched the wheel as the PIMP hit, shouted like the anorexic pirate in that Hanks movie, “I’m duh captain now!”

Yeah.

In my fresh ride, blasting de hood, wasting dem there muthafuckas.

Yeah, he was down. Then up. But mainly he was rich.

He needed a pad, many women. As he pushed the pickup, he thought, gotta get me some Hank Williams, a coon dog, a Winchester instead of the two fluffy dice hanging in the back window. Pulled over at a convenience store, he was suddenly ravenous. Man, wasting dudes was like, exhausting. Needed some serious death-rate carbs. He was getting out, the Uzi still slung on his shoulder, and he thought, Uh-oh. Not smart .

He reached in among the litter of guns, jewels, and dope, left the Uzi on the pile, and selected a fat wallet brimming with Franklins. Shoved that in his back pocket, grabbed a Heckler, put that in his waistband, tight fit but he got it in there, then strutted towards the convenience store, thinking, fook, he might take it down, depended on whether they had Grey Goose or not.

Later, he sold the Caddy to a shady lot in Bed Stuy, piled his loot in a beat-up pickup he’d taken in part-exchange. The dealer, a wiry one-eyed huckster, looked at The Max, handed over the cash, said, “Got some freight there buddy.”

Once Max would have been intimidated by this but now, he whipped out the Uzi, got right in the loser’s face, asked, “You ever see me?”

“N-n-no... n-never.”

Max was on fire with power, pushed, “You want I come back, pop a cap in yer sorry ass?”

No, he’d prefer not.

Max went Clint, said, “Don’t have me come back here, punk.”

Riding back to Manhattan in his pickup, Max was crashing fast. He pulled over, snorted a couple lines to pump himself back up, then continued back to the city.

He parked on the street in Harlem near Precious’s, got into the building when someone was leaving. Went up to her apartment, busted down the door, knowing no one gave a shit in this tenement, doors got busted down here all the time. He heard the shower running. He approached like Norman Bates.

“Maxie, mon, you’re alive!”

“Yeah, but you’re not,” he went, and blew her away with the Heckler.

Joe Miscali had started out of the 1–9, back in the day when a cop wasn’t too pushed on procedure. Meaning you could beat the livin’ daylights out of a perp and not have to justify it.

He was almost a caricature of the beat cop. OD’ing on jelly doughnuts, caffeine way beyond ulcer alert, stomach bulging against his shirt — white of course, and soiled.

If he’d read books, he’d have read McBain. Though not Irish himself — he was 100 percent Italian — he had adopted the code of the Irish cops. Summed up in three basic tenets:

Fuck ’em

Fuck ’em twice

Fuck ’em all

Life had never been good for Joe, but it had been worse lately. He’d recently had his second quadruple bypass in three years, his ex-wife was engaged — to a fucking opera singer — and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d made a bust.

On top of all this, he was depressed, popping Prozacs like sucking candies.

He was off his game in every way possible and it wasn’t like he deserved it. Rumors were going around that he was getting soft in his old age — fifty-four now, thinking about taking an early retirement package next year. He hadn’t minded the talk when he was the star of the department, had all the street cred. But lately he’d lost his edge and everything was going steadily to shit.