Frank Jr.
by
Don Lafferty
“Looks natural, right?” Frank Jr. primped and tousled and teased out the front of his
new hair piece while Lumpy held the notebook-sized mirror as still as he could.
Frank Jr. looked at his left profile, then his right. He looked slightly down
and then up. Frank Jr. loved Frank Jr.
“Whadda ya
think?” he asked again. Nobody said shit. It looked like a fucking toupee.
He looked
around the mirror at Lumpy.
“Am I
fuckin’ talkin’ to myself here?”
“It looks
good, Mister G. It looks real good,” Lumpy answered. Nobody else spoke up and
Lumpy’s hands shook.
“Hold that
thing still, ya fuckin’ jackoff,” Frankie Jr. turned to the left again, then back
to the right.
“Yeah,” he
said,” I think it looks pretty good too. He turned around to face Louie and me and
pointed at himself with two thumbs. “Bitches are gonna be falling all over me
now. You watch.”
Louie dealt
a new hand, we kept our mouths shut. Sometimes when you say nothing, it says everything.
“Fuck the
both of you, assholes,” said Frank Jr., “in fact, get the fuck outta here.
Don’t you fuckers have shit to do anyway?”
“The old
man told us to meet him here,” Louie said without looking up from his hand. He
flipped a card on the table and took one from the pile.
“He didn’t
tell me nothin’ about coming here,” Frank Jr. said.
This was the first I'd heard of it too.
This was the first I'd heard of it too.
Lumpy stood
quietly behind Frank Jr. still holding the mirror and I could see toupee shift along
the line where the piece ended and his real hair hung on for dear life.
“Don’t know
what to tell you, Junior,” said Louie.
“Don’t you
fuckin’ call me that,” Frank Jr. seethed, scattering the cards with a swipe of
his hand, but Louie didn't get excited, just placed his cards neatly on the table and
folded his arms across his chest, looking up at the smudged Purolator clock on
the wall for a moment before closing his eyes.
“I’m gonna
catch a little nap,” he said.
Frank Jr.
pushed some numbers on his cell phone and walked out the front door.
“Put the
mirror down, Lumpy,” I said.
“But what
if-,”
“Put it
down. It’s okay.”
“Go down
Dunkin Donuts and grab us some coffees.” Louie shoved a twenty at him and Lumpy
slipped out the back door of the garage to avoid Frank Jr.
“Go ahead,”
Louie said to me, his eyes still closed. “What’s on your mind?”
“What if he
talks to the old man?” I asked.
“He won’t.”
“How do you
know?”
“I just
know.”
“But-,”
“Ginny took
the old man to A.C.,” Louie said. He slipped a cell phone out of his jacket
pocket and showed me a picture of Frank Senior splayed naked and bloody in an
empty spa tub. The gaping wound across his throat was visible even on the
little screen, and my heart pounded so loud in my ears that I didn’t hear
Baseball Mike come into the room until he clapped me on the back.
“Where is
he?” Mike asked.
“Out
front,” Louie said.
“Where’s
Lumpy,” Mike asked.
“Sent him
for coffee,” replied Louie.
Mike peeked
out the dirty front window and slid a black iron pipe out of his sleeve.
“Nothing
happens to the kid,” said Louie.
“Yo, guys,
hang on a second,” I said. “What the fuck is going on?”
“Time for a
change,” Louie answered.
I turned to
Mike. “The Harts are good with this?” Mike said nothing but slid over behind Louie,
out of sight of the front door.
“The Harts
don’t know yet,” said Louie.
“Shit man,
you’re gonna get us killed with this,” I said, peeking out the window at Frank Jr.
on the phone.
“Don’t be a
little bitch. I got this,” said Louie.
The clank
of the iron pipe and the wet crunch of Louie’s skull caving in didn’t register
right away. I turned to see Baseball Mike lay Louie’s head down on the card
table and bring the pipe down hard against the base of his skull.
“It’s okay,
Ronnie, you ain’t a part of this,” he said.
He walked
over to the front door and waved Frank Jr. in.
“That
worthless piece of shit thought he could just grab what’s mine,” Frank Jr.
said, spitting on Louie’s cooling corpse and kicking him to the floor. “And
you,” he looked at me. “You were going right along with it weren’t you, ya fuck?”
“Mister G,
I swear, I didn’t know a goddamn thing about-,” I started, when in a flash,
Mike brought the pipe down on the back of Frank Jr.’s head and he collapsed
like a puppet with its strings all cut. He lay gurgling on the greasy cement
floor of the office with his new hair piece all flapped over. Baseball Mike clipped him once more at the base of the skull for good
measure just as Lumpy walked in with the carrier full of coffees.
“I picked up
a dozen a doughnuts,” his words trailed off to a squeak.
Mike bent
to check Frank Jr. for a pulse and looked up at Lumpy.
“Don’t you spill
them coffees,” he said. You got enough cleaning up to do."
#END#
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