Big dumb Barry. Barry the bitch. Buttface Barry.
The names didn’t have to be clever. The important thing was to be an asshole. That’s what Barry did to you, brought out your asshole—so to speak. Don’t get me wrong, you loved him too. Yes, you loved him like a brother. And like a brother, sometimes you wanted to throw him off a bridge. Love is a funny thing.
It was this strange love that found me in the passenger seat for a nightmare that comes off like some sort of gold-medal fever dream from hell. I’ll admit that it’s fair to see it that way. I mean, fuck, I still do, and I was there. Buttface Barry has that effect on you.
1
The glitter-coat indigo blue Chevy Nova flew down the Gulf Freeway, on a crash course with stupidity. How the tires stayed on the road was always a mystery to me. Every swerve across multiple lanes of stupid-heavy traffic made me feel like we were going to lose our connection with the asphalt and spin off into disaster. It was as if that damn car had magical properties. The thing is, if I’m gonna come clean, it was fun—for a while. It was a laugh riot right up until the moment when we heard the piercing scream of a police siren rapidly approaching us from behind. But instead of slowing down and pulling over like a sane person, Barry did Barry and mashed the pedal to the floor. The big nasty engine roared its approval, like it had been waiting for just this moment. In the chaos, I stole a moment to check the speedometer. The damn thing only went to 140, but Barry had the thing pinned well beyond that into an oblivious range of lunatic frenzy. If I wasn’t so worried about shitting myself, I might have been impressed.
And the sight of him. You have to picture it. Barry was built like a brick shithouse. So, seeing him behind the wheel of that monster vehicle was laughable. It was like a one man clown car. His hulking frame slumped forward and his giant head was cocked at a slight angle so he could fit his huge ass in the car. He looked a cartoon character. His pudgy sausage fingers encircled the circumference of the steering wheel, digging into his palms.
Despite Barry’s best efforts to evade our friend in Columbia blue, the cruiser had gained ground on us. It was at that moment that I decided we were either going to end up in a jail cell, a hospital bed, or a hole in the ground.
“Pull over, you fucking idiot!” I screamed at him, trying hard to mask my terror.
No, he didn’t pull over. Instead, he looked over at me and gave me that shit-eating grin that would crawl across his fat fucking face whenever he was about to do something really stupid.
He didn’t pull over at all. Instead, he kept on, doubled down on his reckless weaving between the lanes, stitching up the freeway like an ugly sweater.
And then, seemingly out of nowhere, Barry cried out “Hold on!”
I grabbed the door handle just in time, because Barry suddenly slammed on the brakes, cranked the wheel hard right, and with not a moment to spare dragged us across all four lanes of heavy traffic, barely catching the waning edge of an exit.
The cop tried to keep up with us, slamming on his brakes as well, squealing the tires and kicking up plumes of burnt rubber and gravel. He had to bail out at the last moment, because otherwise he’d have spent the afternoon trying to explain to his boss why he wrapped his cruiser around the emergency barrier. From the feeder road, Barry waved at the cop like the grand marshal of the buttface parade and then threw up a pudgy middle finger, which he kissed.
Still flying, Barry hung a sharp left under the next overpass and then mercifully slowed down, merging us into the flow as if we were just two regular Joes going about our boring day. Just two dickheads off to grab a burger, or catch a ballgame, or evade a police chase. We came up to an aged shopping mall. One of those Houston specials, barely hanging on. Barry turned into the parking lot and took us all the way around the mall where he pulled into a walled-in maintenance area.
“C’mon,” he said, hopping out of the car as if we were going to get our portraits done at JCPenney.
“Where are we going?”
“To the mall.”
“Jesus, you’re a fucking bitch.”
We entered the mall through a double-doored service entrance, and were met with an intense waft of pine scented floor cleaner. We turned a corner and followed the hallway until we stepped out into the mall proper. Families with strollers stuffed with crying babies, elderly walkers, and little cliques of sullen teens wandered about aimlessly while the insidious Muzak pumped through hidden speakers. I always hated malls. It was where America went to die. George Romero nailed it.
“What the fuck, dude,” I asked him, “what were you thinking back there? You could have killed us.”
“Yeah,” he said, his giant, ginger-curled head turning my way. He gave me one of his buttfaced little half smiles. “But I didn’t.”
2
I met Barry when I was in the 12th grade. I was hanging over my buddy Eric’s place that day. Eric and I were sequestered away in the dingy cave of his upstairs bedroom. His bedroom was the place we went to smoke ungodly amounts of weed, listen to records, and forget how much we hated everything else. He had acquired an expensive, high-end stereo system funded entirely by his rich dad. That day, as per usual, the music was turned up so loud it was nearly impossible to hear anything happening outside of that smoky room. This included Barry who had arrived uninvited and was pounding on the front door. He simply showed up. That was expected with him.
When the song we were listening to ended, the racket at the front door blared. Barry stopped the record.
“Who is it?” I was afraid it was the cops, standard paranoid stoner fare.
Eric said “God damn it,” got up and headed downstairs.
I followed him down the stairs, and had to squint to adjust to the bright sunlight radiating through the colored glass door, revealing a hulking, monstrous silhouette.
“Eric, it’s Barry, c’mon man, open the door.”
Eric shot me a fucking great look and unlocked the door.
He was easily six-foot-four. He wore filthy, torn and faded Levis, shredded black Converse high-tops and a Care Bears t-shirt small enough for a child. His hair was a thick nest of ginger curls. His skin was pale white with blotches of freckles so thick it looked like he had a skin condition.
A giant hand thrust out in my direction.
“Hey dude, Barry. Who are you?”
“Tony,” I said, placing my hand in his dry, sandpapery vice-like grip. His hand was warm and moist.
“Cool.”
He turned to Eric.
“You holding?” he said, which, unless he’d lost the ability to smell, was quite obviously true. Eric sighed and then led the three of us back up to his cave. We all sat on the floor. Eric loaded the bowl to his bong and handed it to Barry. He stuck his giant hand out, “flame?”
Eric gave him the lighter, which I soon discovered was the equivalent of throwing it out the window. Barry lit the bowl, and for the first time, I took note his facial features. He had a large, wide-bridged nose. His ears stuck out from the sides of his head like a gigantic Alfred E. Neuman. Eric put the music back on while Barry was hitting the bong. The floor vibrated. All was well.
While Eric dicked around with the sliders on his graphic equalizer, I watched the bizarre spectacle of Barry smoking pot. He had his entire fishlike mouth buried into the lip of the bong. I watched in disgust as a single, elongated strand of saliva stretched from Barry’s open mouth down into the sludgy water. I tapped him on the shoulder, which jolted him from his reverie, and he snapped his head up, causing the salivary strand to adhere to the side of the bong. He wiped his chin with the back of his hand and handed the bong in my direction.
“You know what? I’m good,” I said.
“Eric?” I asked, “Hit?”
Barry waved the bong like he was directing traffic. Eric looked up from the album cover his nose was buried in. He hadn’t seen Barry drool into the pipe, and I didn’t feel like telling him, because that’s what friends are for. He pressed the slimy rim of the bong up to his mouth and took a hit. And only when he was done did I go ahead and told him.
3
Barry came around whenever the urge struck him. He just hopped in the Nova and popped on over. To my knowledge, Eric never once invited him. Sometimes we were there, sometimes not. None of that fazed Barry, he just fucked off somewhere else. I mean, it wasn’t like he had anything better to do. And as a special bonus, if Eric’s mother was home, she would let him in any time he showed up.
So, one day she’s home and lets him in. Eric hears him lumber up the stairs, so we jumped up, opened Eric’s window and climbed out onto his roof and jumped down into the backyard for a grand getaway.
Of course Barry saw the open window, and as we were running for it we heard him call down to us.
“C’mon, guys, what the fuck? If you don’t want me to come over just tell me.”
“We have,” Eric yelled up, “several times.”
There was an awkward pause. Barry smirked.
“You holding?”
4
Barry could be an absolute pain in the ass. But in time I grew to love him as I might a giant fraternal twin. He was good natured, and he could be fun. He was also fearless. The guy was up for anything, no matter how harebrained it was. I don’t think I’d ever heard of him saying no to a single bad idea.
I know for certain that he’d committed larceny, grand theft auto, and a host of other delightful crimes. And although he’d been arrested so many times all the cops in the neighborhood knew him on a first name basis, somehow he was always able to talk his way out of getting them to press charges. He’d get the stern talking to and then it was “Now I don’t want to see you in here, again, understand?” And that was it. He was off on his merry way.
He loved to rope his friends into his exploits. Most of the time I just said no to whatever crazy ideas he had. That was always the safe bet. But in a fateful moment of weakness (one which I grew to regret), he roped me in to one of his schemes with the promise of scoring some “killer weed.” Potheads are pretty soft when the supply is running out. According to him, all we had to do was drive to Baytown and buy the bag from some guy who knew some other guy, or some such nonsense. Baytown is a refinery town. If you lived in Baytown, you either worked at a refinery, or you worked to serve refinery folks. No one moved to Baytown because they liked the place. Well, except for the roaches. They fucking loved it.
He drove us through the depressing town, past rows of worn down strip centers and fast food restaurants, and then into an equally run down subdivision with a bunch of single family homes looking the worse for wear. We pulled up to a ramshackle little house with a dying yard full of Harleys and broken down cars. The place was in desperate need of a pressure washing. Dirt and green algae stains clung to the base of the house. Classic rock blared out at punishing volume. I could hear the windows rattling. Apparently these guys were having a biker rally right there in that tiny cottage. I was getting that sinking feeling.
“Barry, what the fuck is this?” I said as we stepped out of the car.
‘This is the place,” he said.
“Yeah, I got that. Whose place is it?”
“Jimbo’s.”
“Oh, Jimbo, right. Who the fuck is Jimbo, you idiot?”
You know Smiley, right?”
“Chris Smiley? The fucking dimwit Chris Smiley?”
“Yeah, that one. Jimbo is his uncle.”
He smiled.
“Don’t worry, man. It’s cool.”
“Oh, goddamn it.”
I shook my head. It most certainly was not cool.
“Have you ever met this guy before?” I asked.
“Nope,” he said, “but it’s cool, man. I’m telling you. Smiley set it all up for me. His uncle is gonna spot us and then we’ll sell it. It’s all kosher. We’re good.”
“Hold on. You aren’t even buying it up front?”
“Fuck no, where would I get the money for that?” Barry said.
“Oh that’s just great. How did I miss that.”
“I got a call from Smiley the other day, and he said his uncle wants someone to start selling his shit in the burbs, so, I volunteered.”
“And you trust that moron? Because this place looks a giant mistake.”
“I trust him enough to steer us toward some decent weed.”
“I thought we were just going to by a quarter ounce, not get into the fucking business.”
“Relax,” Barry said, “it’ll be fine.”
According to Barry, every half baked scheme of his was going to be fine.
We walked up to the front door, he knocked, and then we stood there like the two idiots we were. I felt like chum in the water.
No answer.
He rang the doorbell.
No answer.
The music must have been too loud to hear the door.
So, Barry, being Barry, opened the front door and strolled right the fuck in.
“Barry, shit man, hold up, you can’t just…” But he was already inside.
The house was packed to the gills with an unreasonable number of gnarly looking bikers, and some equally gnarly, scantily-clad young women, many of which were grinding their crotches up against the bikers like they fed that way. The house was thick with a hazy blend of cigarette and weed smoke, cheap perfume and an undercurrent of acidic body odor. The bikers were sporting black leather vests emblazoned with the patches and insignia of their club. Some wore t-shirts underneath the vest, and some wore nothing under the vest but crude and racist jailhouse tattoos. These were the kind of guys who would shoot you for fun and then unceremoniously dump your ass in a field. And here we were waltzing in like we owned the place.
Barry led the way through the rowdy throng, giving quick nods all around. Within minutes, he had managed to finagle two beers from the bikers and work his way into the rotation for a massive coned joint. It looked as though we were going to live a little longer after all.
We eventually filtered our way to the back of the house and into a filthy kitchen, where a tiny wastrel of a man with long, greasy black hair hanging in lifeless strands around his gaunt face sat as if he was a degenerate king holding court. He was using a half of a torn beer can as an ashtray. On the table lied several packs of cheap cigarettes, a stupid amount of empty beer cans and bottles, and a lighter sleeved in a cheap metal dragon holder with red plastic-gemmed eyes. To his right sat the only person of color in the entire building. Considering the message I was getting off the bikers’ tattoos, the fact that the guy wasn’t dead yet told me that he and the swarthy guy had to have some sort of a connection.
Barry walked right up to the edge of the table.
“Jimbo,” he shouted, trying to be heard above the 38 Special song blaring from a jam box so big I’m not sure how anyone was able to lift the damn thing.
“Yo, Jimbo?”
Barry nodded at me and gave me a wink. Yojimbo. This fucking guy.
The man looked up and then reached behind him and turned the music down so little I couldn’t tell the difference.
“That’s me. What do you want?” he shouted.
“Jimbo, I’m Barry, Smiley’s buddy.”
Jimbo squinted his eyes to signal he hadn’t made it out.
“Smiley sent us,” he shouted. “I’m Barry.” He pointed to his own chest. “And that’s Tony.” I gave a nod.
With that, the tiny man waved his hand at the two women sitting across from him. They stood, one grabbing some cigarettes and the dragon lighter, and then they left the room. They didn’t look too happy to be told what to do. Jimbo pointed at one of the chairs and nodded back at us. We sat.
He reached behind him again, this time without looking, and turned the jam box down just enough to speak audibly over it.
“You spoke to Smiley, right?” Barry asked.
“Yeah. He called me.”
Jimbo had a raspy Southern drawl that was hard to make out because he was slurring his words. It sounded like he had rocks in his mouth. Maybe he had a speech impediment, or maybe he was just drunk off his ass. Probably both.
“Said y’all are lookin’ for a QP, right?”
“Right. And you’re saying $250, right?”
“I’m sayin’ 3 bills, son,” Jimbo said with more than a hint of lip.
“Hey, I tried.”
Fucking Barry thinking he could talk this guy down.
“If it’s as good as Smiley says it is, it’ll be worth it, I suppose.”
“No need to suppose nothin’,” Jimbo said, “‘cause this shit right here is primo. Wanna taste?”
“Fuck yeah.”
Jimbo reached behind him a third time and pulled out a small green plastic toolbox from behind the radio. He placed the toolbox on the table and opened it. Immediately the room filled with the pungent skunky stench of strong weed. He took out a gallon-sized Ziploc bag filled with large, tightly-packed buds. I think my mouth may have watered just a little bit.
Then he took out a golf ball-sized bud and began pulling it apart on the tabletop. Now the smell was almost overwhelming. I’d never smoked weed that smelled this strong. He took some well worn rolling papers out of his filthy jeans, licked the gum on one, stuck a couple together, and began rolling a huge joint. The black guy, who had remained mute through all of this, suddenly perked up, muttering “Mmm-hmm.”
He was wearing a faded welders cap so worn it’s a wonder it stayed in one piece. Over a greyed and dingy t-shirt the man wore a heavily stained pair of denim overalls. I could see his shirt through the holes in the bib covering his chest. He was unshaven but not yet bearded, and there was a fair smattering of grey throughout. His face looked tired, like he’d driven a long, hard road in his life. He caught me looking at him and nudged Jimbo with his elbow. Jimbo looked at the man who nodded in my direction.
“What’s up, brother?” Jimbo asked me.
“Nothin’, man. Yeah, Sorry, uh, just taking in the scene.”
“Oh, you’re just takin’ in the scene? You’re not wonderin’ who this spook is, right?”
“What?! No, man, I was just looking around, you know.” I was busted.
“This is Tito, man. He’s my brother.”
“As in ‘brothers in crime,’ that sort of thing?” Barry asked, incapable of sensing trouble.
“No. As in my motherfucking brother. You good with that, fat boy?”
“Yep, sure am,” Barry said.
Jimbo’s beady little rodent eyes turned to me.
“And you?”
“Not a problem at all. It’s just, uh, just the, well, you know.”
“The boys? Son, they don’t see nothin’ but my brother. Nothin’ more. This fucker right here,” Jimbo said, jabbing a finger into the man’s arm, “he took a fuckin’ bullet meant for me. Show him, T.”
Tito pulled the collar of his t-shirt down, exposing a grotesque indentation covered in a lumpy, pink keloid scar.
“45 caliber, son. Coulda killed him if it was a few inches over. That’s a brother if I ever known one.”
“Understood,” I said.
“And, who the fuck are you, again?” Jimbo yelled.
“Oh, uh, I’m Tony. I’m a friend of Smiley’s too,” I added, hoping that would matter.
“You know, it’s a funny thing, but Smiley didn’t never tell me about no Tony comin’ around. Only this big ginger motherfucker right here. Not you, though.”
His voice was getting out of control. The room suddenly got tense.
“You strut up in here, talk shit about my brother, and think you just gonna sit your ass right down here at my table, smoke my best weed, and that’s all gonna be just fine? Am I getting this right? TONY?”
I held my hands up.
“Hold up, man, I’ve got no problem with your brother. It’s cool.”
From under the table Jimbo whipped out a rusted revolver and pointed it directly at my face.
“It’s cool, now? I may need to cool your ass way down, right fuckin’ now,” Jimbo yelled.
In that moment it felt like time stood still. I thought, well this is it, here’s how you’re going out, bleeding out, with tetanus, right here amongst America’s finest…
And then Jimbo broke out in a gravelly laugh that erupted from his wiry frame, sounding every bit like a dryer full of rocks. His whole body shook with each round.
“I’m fucking with you, dude! Ha ha ha ha ha!” He drew out the word fucking, placing pointed emphasis on each syllable so it sounded more like Fuhhh-keeeeng. “Smiley said you was good people. He ain’t gonna steer me wrong. God damn. Y’all some gullible motherfuckers!”
Relieved and pissed off in equal measure, I joined in with the rest of them and began laughing. I was cutting it up, but all I could think about was how I wanted to ring Barry’s fat fucking neck.
The blimp joint was lit, and we all got uproariously high. Jimbo told us that he was in fact the founder and President of the motorcycle club, which meant that none of these guys would dare lift a finger to Tito regardless of their personal feelings about the color of his skin. I didn’t understand the dynamic, and I really didn’t care to. We were in uncharted terrain, as far as I was concerned. I was just glad my head was still attached at that point. And I was more than ready to get the hell out of that place as soon as possible.
We stayed for hours, which turned out to be just as well because after that huge joint, I was so goddamned high I could barely function. I was convinced that I was incapable of standing up from the table. At some point Jimbo must have turned the music back up, because it felt like it was coming from inside my head, as if I was now generating classic rock straight from my ruined brain. It swirled through the tiny kitchen and coated every surface. Steve Miller had become my spirit guide. I can’t recommend that.
After what must have been hours I felt sober enough to move, so, we got the hell out of there, a quarter of a pound of weed in tow. It felt like my head was filled with cement, and I didn’t say another word until we were safely home.
5
As I’d suspected, the weed was gone in no time. Barry only sold at most an ounce or two and then smoked the rest. That meant he now owed this guy money that he didn’t have, which was not good.
“I think I can get Jimbo to spot me again,” he said, somehow missing the entire plot. “I’m calling Smiley.”
“What the fuck are you talking about, man? You already owe him for a quarter of a fucking pound! Why would he let you walk off with more?! He’ll probably murder us with that rusty piece of shit instead.”
“Dude, relax, because I have a plan.”
“Oh good, you have another plan! I’m sure I don’t want to know, but go ahead, what’s your plan?
“This time you are going to sell it.”
6
“Like fuck I am! Jesus, man, I think you’ve finally lost it.”
“Tony, as you said, I’ll just smoke it all; and, that’s just it, you won’t. You are totally trustworthy. So, the way I see it, I find people to buy it and you handle the actual sales.”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“What do you do for a living, dude? Oh that’s right, fuck all, that’s what. And what are you planning to do to make money, work at Taco Bell? You’re too lazy. Or, maybe go sell your ass on the street? Nope, can’t do that either, because you’re too ugly for that.”
“Fuck you.”
“I’ll recoup what I owe him with the next QP we get, and then after that it’s all fucking gravy. I’ll split the profits with you right down the line. You’ll hold on to the cash and the weed, which means you’ll know exactly how much is there, which means I can’t fuck you.”
“Oh, I’m sure you’ll find a way.”
He already knew he had me. I was lazy as fuck. He was wrong about one thing, though, I look damn good.
Barry ran it all by Smiley, who contacted Jimbo, and by the next day it was all worked out. I just hoped we weren’t walking into a trap.
7
It was mid August and sweltering when we set out once again to Baytown to meetup at Jimbo’s. The air outside was so thick with moisture it felt like there was a coating of glue on your entire body. Barry waited until we were well on the road to tell me that the arrangement was now for a pound.
“A pound?! A goddamn pound? I have to sell an entire fucking pound now?”
“Would you rather go to Jimbo’s more often and keep picking up quarters?” Barry asked.
“I’d rather I didn’t go at all.”
“Aww, c’mon now, you know Jimbo loves you!”
“Like fuck, he does. He just likes to see his victims up close and personal.”
“You’re just being dramatic,” he said.
“He put a fucking pistol in my fucking face!” I screamed.
“It’ll be fine,” he said.
Buttface Barry.
Jimbo’s house sat adjacent to a massive refinery. The burn-off stacks were plainly visible from his yard, and the stench was unbearable. All the acrid venting and flaring made the place look (and smell) like a post-apocalyptic nightmare.
We parked the car and went straight to the back door, as per Jimbo’s instruction. The door was wide open, and Jimbo sat at his usual spot at the kitchen table. He saw us coming and waved us in.
“C’mon in fellas, take a seat.” He shook our hands like a politician. “Y’all ready to do some business?”
“Yep,” Barry said.
“Good. Now, I gotta tell y’all up front that the plan has changed a bit. Something really important has come up that I need to handle right away, and seeing as how you are already owin’ me big time, you make the perfect candidates to do what needs bein’ done.”
I didn’t like the sound of that, so, I interrupted him.
“Now wait a minute, Jimbo, what are you talking about? Are you fucking with us again, because we didn’t agree to this.”
“I most certainly am not fucking with you. And, I didn’t ask if you agreed with me or not. Don’t care either.”
He was tapping his lighter on the table, clearly agitated. He gathered himself and continued.
“My brother Tito, he gone AWOL, upped and gone. And that ain’t like him. In fact, he never done anything like that before. And I don’t need to know what happened to know it ain’t no good.”
“Okay,” Barry said, “I’m sorry to hear that. But how do you know something’s wrong? How long has he been missing?”
“Two days. And he ain’t got no place to go. He ain’t got no family, I’m all he has. I have a bad feelin’ about it.”
“But how do we fit into this?” Barry asked.
“Hold up, I’m getting there,” Jimbo said.
He lit a cigarette.
“Now, y’all are probably gonna think I’m fucked up in the head, but there’s nights I hear strange shit comin’ from that refinery back there. And, not no refinery type of stuff neither. I’ve lived in this house all my life. So, I know the difference. It’s animal sounds—deep, nasty-ass voices, maybe even screams, I don’t know. But, I’m telling you I hear weird shit at night. It ain’t right.”
He stood up from the table.
“C’mon, let’s go outside. I wanna show y’all something.”
We followed him outside. The yard was an overgrown mess. There were bare patches where the grass had died, exposing black earth that appeared to be soaked with some sort of chemicals. He led us over to the run of hurricane fence lining his yard, pointing towards the refinery.
“See that black building over there, the big black one off to the left of them two big white tanks, off by itself?”
Set a short distance apart from the refinery was a large black building with no visible windows or markings. It was unremarkable in every way, other than the fact that it stood out from the rest of refinery.
“That there is where I been hearin’ sounds comin’ out.”
“Okay,” Barry said again, clearly trying hard to sound like he was along for the crazy ride.
“And I think that’s where Tito is.”
His words hung in the thick wet summer air. He had to be half out of his mind.
“Hey look, Jimbo,” I said, feeling pretty uncomfortable with the entire situation, “with all due respect, man, this is fucking insane.”
“Look, motherfucker,” he said, stepping towards me, his head tilted up to meet mine, “you think I don’t know that? But you don’t know everything yet, clever motherfucker. C’mere, lemme show y’all something.”
He lead us a bit further down the fenceline, just past the boundary of his property. He pointed to a spot in the fence that had been cut and was pushed outward towards the refinery, creating an opening just big enough for a grown man to pass through. A pair of heavily rusted wire cutters were sitting on the ground.
“See them cutters? Now, look at the grass, see how it’s all flat around the fence there? Someone cut up the fence and went through here. And, you can see where they walked through the tall grass up there headin’ towards that building. See the path?”
It did look as if someone had headed off through the grass from the hole in the fence.
“I think it was Tito who done this. And, that means he’s still in there somewhere.”
“Hold on, dude,” Barry said. “How do you know it was Tito?”
“Well, someone came through here recently. And, I can’t find my brother no place, so, I did the math.
I was pretty sure math was not this dude’s strong suit.
“And you think those sounds you heard have something to do with this, with Tito missing?” Barry asked.
“I wish they didn’t, but yeah, I do. Now, let’s go back inside.”
8
Back at the table, Jimbo laid it out for us.
“Now, y’all already owe me for the weed you smoked, and neither of you is offering me no money to pay me back for it. So, then you come back around wanting to make a loan deal to fix your last fuck up? Get in deeper? At first I wasn’t gonna go near that idea, was planning on fucking y’all up. But then all this shit happened, and now I got to find my brother. So, that’s where you two bitches come in.”
“How’s that?” I said.
“You’re gonna go through the fence, follow the path in the grass, and get into that black building down there. I don’t care how you get into it. Just get in the damn thing and find my brother, and bring his ass back here.”
“But that’s a suicide mission! They’ve gotta have tight security over there,” I said. “How are we supposed to get around that?”
“Well, they ain’t got shit for security back here, or they’d have been all over it when that fence got cut. Now, when it comes to that building over there, maybe they got security, maybe not. I don’t know. You’ll just have to be extra careful and not get caught. Because if you do, you’re fucked both ways.”
“I gotta tell you, Jimbo, it’s not the best plan,” Barry said. “We don’t even know for sure if he’s over there. or not”
“Well, you ain’t really bein’ offered no alternative. I Figure, if he didn’t cut that hole, who did? Just don’t make no sense. So, you two get to go find my brother in there. I like you boys, but I like my brother more. You bring him back safe and sound, debt is paid and we split the profit on this pound 60/40, my advantage. And if you don’t, my friends will make sure neither of you are ever found.”
Barry and I looked at each other. I was mortified.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Alright,” he said, sounding inappropriately upbeat about it.
“Okay. Now take this, in case you need it.”
Jimbo pulled out the rusty hand gun. It looked ancient, like a relic from WWII or something.
“Does that thing even work?!” Barry asked.
“Want me to show you?”
“No, thanks.”
“And yes, it’s loaded,” Jimbo said, popping out the barrel to show us the loaded rounds.
As if to christen our little adventure, Jimbo rolled another one of his specials. He and Barry smoked it while I pretended to get some sleep on the fetid couch. I didn’t need to be fucked up for this. I was already freaked out enough about the situation, sober.
To be Continued . . .