Jack O'Connell - The Skin Palace

“I will, Mr. K. I’ll remember.”

“Because when we send you out on the road, you can’t be calling back home every few minutes. You’ll have to develop some personnel skills. You’ll have to learn how to pick the cream of the crop.”

Johnny sits up in his chair. He looks from Weltsch to Felix, wonders if this is some kind of confusing joke.

“On the road?” he finally says.

Hermann pushes up from his seat, walks to Yew’s back, puts both hands on the manager’s shoulder and says, “Tell him, Gustav.”

In a bland and quiet voice, Weltsch says, “The co-op has proved so successful that we’ve decided to back a franchise. Ultimately we’d like to go national if arrangements can be made with the Families. For now we will initiate a pilot program. Keep things in the northeastern China-towns. You move in for the entire length of the start-up and training programs. I estimate a three-month stay in each town.”

“You’ll need your own bankroll,” Hermann says from behind. “We’ve already begun to contact the appropriate people about lines of credit. But you’ll have to seek out the workforce and the merchants. I’d be happier if they didn’t speak English. At least at the beginning.”

Johnny Yew can’t believe his ears. He made the jump to Kinsky only six months ago and now he’s about to become a trusted lieutenant. He’s about to become wealthy. He’s about to become a man of influence and respect and importance in the scheme of this Family. Johnny Yew, who escaped Hong Kong and a street hustler’s short life by selling his sister to a freighter captain, who spent his first years in Quinsigamond washing dishes and gutting fish around the clock for any noodle house that would have him, who doesn’t even have his first gang tattoo yet, this Johnny Yew is about to become the chief sales rep for the Kinsky Family. He’d like to dive into the Benchley tonight, find what’s left of Yun-fat’s body, pull it to the surface just to spit in the skeleton’s face and say, Fuck you and your tribal preaching. I’m not your shop clerk anymore, asshole.

“All our projections say we can’t miss,” Hermann says. “The sexual appetite is something you can bank on. You’ll want to monitor which booths become our top grossers, see if this differs from city to city or if there’s a standard we can rely on.”

“We should be tracking the demographics from the start,” Weltsch adds.

“What’s to track?” Felix says, staring at Johnny. “Every hard-up chink in the country. There’s your customer base.”

“Felix!” Hermann barks and glares at the young man. “Forgive my nephew, Johnny. He has a weakness for crude humor that I can’t seem to curb. I don’t have to tell you that we harbor no exclusionary policies in this family. The coops will be open to all peoples.”

“Everyone’s money is green,” Johnny says.

Hermann nods. “You are a real find, Johnny Yew.”

He reaches into his pocket and slaps a wad of crisp new cash in front of Johnny.

“You go out and celebrate tonight, young man. You are on your way, as the saying goes.”

Hermann’s hand slides back into his suitcoat pocket.

“I know of the perfect club,” Hermann says. “You must take your young woman. Do you like music?”

Johnny just stares down at the money. The top bill features a picture of Grover Cleveland. Across the table, Felix stares up at the ceiling and laughs.

“Mr. Kinsky …” Johnny begins and immediately goes silent, unable to harness words powerful enough to express the enormity of his gratitude.

Herman pulls out a length of Schonborn wire, twines it in equal lengths around both of his meaty hands.

“Piano music, Johnny?” he asks. “Do your people like the piano music?”

“How can I thank—” Johnny starts, shaking his head at the immensity of his good fortune, beginning to turn around and smile on his benefactor.

It’s a single, fluid move, one honed into a reflex in the alleys off Kaprova back in Maisel. Nothing harsh or jerking, a simple arc over the Asian’s head and then the retraction backwards. The wire has already bitten its groove into Yew’s neck before Johnny realizes he’s choking.

“You steal from me,” Hermann explodes now. “You pathetic yellow cur.”

The piano wire passes in all the way to the trachea as Johnny’s eyes do the patented bulge and his hands flail upward furiously but ineffectually.

“You steal from Kinsky,” Hermann screams, his body an unmoving block of stone, the fat hands doing all the work, keeping the wire taut and ever-closing.

Blood is oozing down Johnny’s chest, soaking the tailored shirt under his jacket. The body begins to jerk in its seat as if the impetus toward death were electricity. Felix stares at the scene, tries not to blink, studies his uncle’s form, concentrates on the victim’s tortured upheaval.

Jakob stares out the door and across the hall where Veronica Lake is doing a combination magic act and song and dance routine.

But the sound track to Veronica’s performance is the horrible noise seeping from somewhere in Johnny Yew’s face, a muted scream grafted onto a nauseating gurgle, all accented by the furious scuffling of his loafers off the floor and the chair legs.

And then, finally, it is over.

Hermann unwraps the wire from his left hand, takes hold of Yew’s bristly buzz-cut and pulls Johnny’s head back, which opens the running gash fully from ear to ear. The smell of blood gulfs around the table and no one speaks.

Hermann leans forward until he’s inches above Johnny’s slack face. Then he spits into the left eye and Felix hears him mutter, “Never steal from Hermann Kinsky.”

Hermann turns and walks to the far side of the room until he’s standing before the stained-glass window, bathed in the transformed light of the moon. Weltsch and Felix nod to each other, get up simultaneously, take hold of the body, and begin to carry it from the room as if they were disapassionate medics who have seen too much of an endless war.

The silence in the chapel is awful.

Until Hermann turns away from the window and stares at the quivering back of his only son and whispers, “You see how easy it can be, Jakob?”

They get home, both a little drunk, Perry worse than Sylvia, though he drove. They try to be quiet helping each other up the back stairs to the apartment, hoping they don’t wake Mrs. Acker, the landlady, or trip over one of her cats. It’s not that Mrs. A would get angry. She’d just start in again, asking Perry about the legal ramifications of her refusal to return the grocery cart she appropriated from Blossfeldt Discount Mart. But they’ve got so many carts, she always ends up yelling with her hands at the sides of her head.

There are mornings Sylvia see Mrs. Acker from the living room window, coming back from the grocery store or Levi Park, and the landlady could be mistaken for some homeless streetperson. But Perry got talking to her one night and found Mrs. A has six figures planted in mutual funds that she tracks on a daily basis. She’s really a sweetheart and she’s been kind to them, but Sylvia doesn’t want to talk with Mrs. Acker right now because Perry’s hands are everywhere. The back stairway has always had this effect on him, even when he hasn’t had a drink. When they first moved into the apartment, they could barely get in the door with their clothes on.

Sylvia remembers the first month they lived together, coming in from the movies, groping each other with more force and speed at each landing, and finally making love with her back pressed up against the door to their third-floor apartment, the bedroom six yards away, one of the calicos mewing around Perry’s ankles.