An over-the-top story based on the Southwest
Okay, so here's the deal: I've kinda wandered back into the Org after a long leave of absence, and in my time away I've started writing a biker-and-outlaw story. It's basically intended to be the print equivalent of an action movie; what I'm really shooting for, if anybody out there knows that I'm talking about is a Cormack McCarthy setting with an Elmore Leonard plot. I'm trying to put together some solid, entertaining characters and writing, without necessarily being very dependent on realism (I want to keep some elements of realism, like the individual action scenes, but the fact that most of these people would immediately attract police attention and get arrested means that for the sake of entertainment I have to take some liberties with reality.) If anybody can make it through the already fairly long section I have written, I would love to hear any and all feedback about the writing.
Also, I just realized that, this being the Org, I'm going to have to edit this pretty carefully because the dialogue is fairly salty.
Smart Guy
There was an awful stench of mildew in the room, mold on the molding, the wallpaper and ceiling were peeling and Cosmo was absolutely certain that if he picked up his foot he would find a roach sitting under it. Pretty much every dark spot in the motel room hid hundreds of the bastards, ready to swarm out at a moment's notice once the lights were out. A few of the bravest members of the roach army would scurry out into the daylight anyway, perhaps out of bravery, more likely because there was no more room underneath the furniture except on top of other roaches.
Normally, Cosmo Kowalski wasn't too terribly bothered by abhorrent conditions like this; despite strongly resembling a CPA he was used to enduring some of the absolute worst conditions possible in order to avoid trouble. It came with the job. The combination of weasely-looking man in threadbare nineteenth-hand clothing with his willingness to take the cheapest motel room without complaining meant that most people's eyes slid right off him. It was an image he had perfected. When people saw him, the carefully calculated reaction was pity mixed with disgust, with a hearty helping of I-don't-want-to-have-to-deal-with-this-creep on top. It let Cosmo perform his job as illegal courier with incredible ease. Not that Cosmo couldn't handle a little trouble; oh, no, he could handle himself. Sure he could. He just found it easier to slip by, like a thief in the night. A thief who looked and smelled like an out-of-work claims adjuster who had spent the last six months living in a dumpster.
But despite being used to these conditions, right now they made Cosmo want to throw up.
Cosmo could only sit and grip his stomach, which for some goddamn reason was producing gasoline instead of its usual digestive acids. It was that horrible, burning cold clenching feeling one gets after chugging vodka on a bet, but with a whirling, confused mind that just made the nausea worse. Cosmo's head was a hornet's nest, and the hornets wanted out. No matter how many times he kept trying to rationalize what he had done, his mind kept assaulting him with paralyzing waves of fear.
I had to get out somehow, this was the chance –
YOU'RE ****ED MAN YOU'RE ****ED
I'm not ****ed, I thought all this through –
YOU'RE ****ING DEAD GODDAMNIT YOU'RE SCREWED LIKE A PRISON *****
I know the plan, my partner will be here soon –
**** THAT THEY KNOW WHERE YOU ARE YOU CAN'T ESCAPE **** WHAT THE **** WERE YOU THINKING WHAT THE **** ARE YOU GONNA DO
Cosmo just gripped the suitcase tighter.
Everything was going to be okay. He just needed to calm down, calm the **** DOWN. His man would be here any second, Cosmo knew it –
BANGBANGBANG
...Okay, that was a little loud, but hell, that was it. He was here. Cosmo was safe.
“Hello?”
“Room service.”
Whoever that was, it sure as hell didn't sound like the guy he had been talking to. He had talked to the guy in person, and this was not him. And for that matter, since when did Issac Hayes deliver room service?
Hey, that was pretty funny. Nice one-liner... **** it, I'm gonna use it.
“Since when does Issac Hayes deliver room service?”
“I ain't Issac Hayes, man. Open the door.”
“O-okay, no, I don't think so. Not until you tell me who you are.”
A pause. “NOT Issac Hayes, mother****er. Now open the goddamn door, I ain't got all damn day.”
Suddenly Cosmo felt a bit emboldened. Maybe it was just the way the conversation was going, but he felt like he could handle this guy. “I didn't ask you who you aren't, I asked you who you are, and I'm not opening the door until I know who the hell you are.”
Cosmo heard a sigh loud enough to carry through the door. “I'm the mother****er who's gonna tear you apart like a paper towel in about thirty seconds.” And with that, he heard the vicious warning call of a handheld internal combustion engine roaring to life with a quick pull of its starter.
OOOOOOOH ****.
Cosmo moved fast. He didn't like fights, but he had been in them, and he had some idea of what to do. He leapt over to the coffee table and immediately began pulling off one of the legs. As he was wrenching the leg free, he saw the blade of the chainsaw bite through the top of the door. Backing up with the leg, he saw what the guy was doing: he was chopping an entire section of the door off, just enough to disconnect the lock body and any deadbolts or other locks from the rest of the door. He hadn't even bothered to check how bustable the door was. He just chopped the whole damn door open.
It was a scare tactic. And sure as ****, it was working. Cosmo missed the dread he had a few seconds ago, because this was screaming terror, a fight-or-flight response that demanded flight but had nowhere to run to.
Once the chainsaw reached about nine inches from the bottom of the door, it was withdrawn and shut off. Cosmo gripped the table leg tighter.
The separated section of door exploded inward.
Cosmo wanted to laugh, but it came out more as a high-pitched “Neeugh!” Other than being black, the guy was completely the opposite of what Cosmo had expected. He had to be three inches shorter than Cosmo and at least fifty, wearing a Styx concert t-shirt underneath a cheap leather jacket. The chainsaw was sitting unused behind him, leaving the guy weaponless. Oh, he could definitely take this guy.
“Yeah? YEAH?! YOU WANNA TEAR ME APART LIKE A PAPER TOWEL?! COME ON, MAN!” Cosmo raised the table leg like a baseball bat.
The guy just looked at him like he had just stepped in dog**** and had to wipe it off his shoe. And then he walked right at Cosmo like Cosmo was already knocked out cold on the floor, and **** all if that wasn't a bad sign.
As soon as he got in range, Cosmo swung at his shoulders with the table leg, hoping to hurt at least one arm before the fight started, or at least clip the guy's head if he tried to duck. No good. The guy ducked fast and took advantage of Cosmo's stance to deliver a crushing uppercut to his stomach. Cosmo doubled over, dropping the stick, and placing his head in the perfect position for a good, hard slug to the jaw. On the way down, Cosmo hit his head on the dresser. Black.
Cosmo woke up a few seconds later feeling himself being lifted right back up, quickly feeling nauseous from the dresser-delivered concussion and the feeling of his jaw sitting about a foot too far over to the left. He was smacked down into a chair, and duct tape was being wound around his hands.
He managed to shake out a few words: “I'm gonna be sick, man.”
“****.” The guy hurriedly finished with the tape and grabbed a trash bucket and stuck it between Cosmo's legs. While Cosmo painfully threw up every drop of bile in his digestive system, the guy finished taping to his satisfaction.
Finally, the man pulled a chair up in front of Cosmo and said, “Okay, man, here's the deal: you're gonna tell me here the shipment is, then we're gonna bring it back to Billy. You ain't gonna **** around. You try and **** around, I go to work on ya. Understood?”
Cosmo nodded. “The briefcase, on the floor.”
The guy picked up the briefcase, dusted off a few roaches, and set it on the bed and opened it to check inside. He nodded, snapped it back shut and turned back to Cosmo. “Okay. Get up.”
Cosmo stared dumbly at him. Aren't I tied to the chair?
The guy lost his patience after about half a second, walked over and jerked Cosmo to his feet. Cosmo felt stupid – it was just his hands that were taped together. The guy lead him out to an old Crown Victoria sitting outside, picking up the chainsaw on the way. Cosmo was smacked down into the front passenger seat, and the guy sat in the driver's seat. He pulled a .38 Special out of the glovebox, but didn't bother training it on Cosmo, instead stuffing into his jacket pocket. The guy knew Cosmo was whipped.
.....
A few hours later they had reached a random spot in the New Mexico desert. There was absolutely nothing for miles and miles. That is, except a group of figures way off the road to the right. The man got out, took the briefcase and yanked Cosmo out of the passenger side door, pulling him along by his collar.
One of them turned around, and Cosmo cringed. He had known who he would see, but he felt another wave of freezing terror just seeing him anyway:
Boss Billy.
Boss Billy was a seven-foot tall two-hundred-ninety-pound full-blooded Comanche and he ****ing hated white people. Not because of what they had done to his culture – Boss Billy hated most other Indians too, for various reasons – but because of an ongoing fight with a Neo-Nazi motorcycle gang that had been trying to muscle in on his stranglehold over Western New Mexico for years now. He tolerated some white people, as long as they were useful to him, but for the most part not knowing when some random white dude might try to stab him had made Billy extremely surly and antagonistic towards anyone who was white. As a result, he outfitted his gang almost entirely with Hispanics, many of them ex-Cartel muscle who had emigrated North during slower times, only to stay when they decided they liked the way Boss Billy ran things. Having a giant gang of Mexicans, however, did not exactly help smooth things over with the Neo-Nazis, and as a result did not help Billy's relationship with white people.
And now Cosmo Kowalski, once-trusted courier and go-to man for moving anything you wanted, had betrayed that trust for the first time. With Boss Billy. And Cosmo was whiter than plaster.
Boss Billy was grinning as the man pushed Cosmo to his knees. The man walked over and opened the suitcase in front of Billy, who never took his eyes off Cosmo. Billy nodded. “Nice work, Walter.”
Then he said nothing for what seemed like several minutes, just stood there, watching Cosmo warming up with the ground in the morning sun. Finally, he walked over to Cosmo's right, so that the sun would be completely out of his eyes and in Cosmo's. Cosmo was turned on his knees by one of the Hispanics; Walter was long gone, having taken his payment and driven off. The only other person around for miles was a man driving a motorcycle down the road in their direction.
“You think you're getting' smart, Cosmo?”
Cosmo squinted up at Billy. “...What?”
“I said, do you think you're getting smart?”
Cosmo tried to pull his best poker face. It didn't work.
“You think you can pull one over on me all the sudden?” Billy still had that evil grin. “Little Kowalski, little [polish person] *****, you think you grew some ****in' balls outta nowhere? You think, man, look at this stupid ****in' Indian, he needs me so bad, always comin' to me to move ****, I must be smarter than him? Is that what you think, Kowalski?”
Cosmo just shook his head slowly. “I... I just... I wanted to – ”
“Nah. That ain't what you was thinkin'. You're too ***** for that.” Billy wasn't smiling anymore. “I know what you was thinkin'. You's thinkin', that's what I want Billy to be thinkin'. So I don't think that somebody paid your ***.”
Cosmo choked on his own dry tongue. Oh, ****. ****, no, please don't tell me this paranoid mother****er is gonna say –
“The ****in' Skins bought you.”
Cosmo could only kneel there and shake. His mind desperately searched for anything to distract itself from its own primal terror, but all there was to distract him from the mountain of menace that was Billy was the motorcycle on the road, getting slowly closer.
He wondered what that guy would think, seeing all these people out there in the middle of nowhere.
“You're ****in' stupid, Kowalski. Not me. You shoulda known I'd find your ***, that I'd know right away what was goin' down.”
Cosmo finally unplugged his throat. “Buh – Bill – Boss Billy, I swear – it wasn't a payoff! I – I just wanted out, I needed money to get away! I don't think I'm smarter than you, I swear to God, I just wanted to get away, live a decent life for once!”
“And how the **** did you expect to get away?”
“I... I hired a guy, I was gonna meet him – ”
“No. You weren't gonna meet a guy. You were gonna meet guys. ****in' Skins.”
“No, please, I swear to God, I wouldn't do that – ”
“STOP ****IN' LYING TO ME YOU FUKCIN' [polish person]!”
Billy was towering above Cosmo, rage squeezing through his gritted teeth. Cosmo just shook. The motorcycle got closer... something about the guy riding it...
“Are you starting to get a clear picture of the amount of **** you're in?”
Cosmo whimpered. “P... please.”
Billy laughed. “Please. Magic ****in' word.” He shook his head. “Ain't gonna be no magic for you, [polish person]. I'm the only one with magic around here. And I'm gonna use it to make your *** dissappear.”
He pointed at the ground: “Down there.”
Cosmo looked at the ground, then back at Billy, google-eyed and unable to breathe except in shallow breaths.
“You ever watch old cowboy movies, Kowalski? You ever see how Indians used to kill white folks in them movies?” Cosmo didn't move. “I don't mean when they shot them, I mean when they wanted to cook up somethin' extra nasty to do. They would bury them in the ground up to their heads. Just leave 'em there.”
Cosmo was watching the biker out of the corner of his eye, still getting closer. Those clothes, he had seen those clothes before, on the big mother****er who he had hired –
IT'S HIM! ****! HE FOLLOWED ME AND HE'S GONNA RESCUE ME!
Cosmo managed to maintain the look of blank fear, just waiting now for the guy to pull over. Billy was still speaking: “Anything can happen to you when you're buried there, man. A coyote can chew off your nose. A vulture can **** down your neck. You'll get blisters, sunstroke, fever. Ants will eat away at your face while you're still alive.”
The guy was almost here, the thunder of the motorcycle edging closer.
Salvation was right there. Cosmo let himself look a little defiant. “You really think you're gonna be able to bury me?”
Billy burst out laughing. “Man, you're ****in' right I think so – I ****in' know so!” He threw out his hands. “How the **** do you think you're gonna get away? Just get up and start running? All that's out here is me and my boys. You ain't goin' nowhere except straight down, Kowalski.”
“Maybe I'll get away. You don't know.”
The motorcycle was seconds away.
vrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooom
HEY WAIT WHAT THE ****?! WHERE ARE YOU GOING?! COME BACK AND RESCUE ME!
The guy was gone, the doppler effect turning the approaching roar of salvation into a distant rumble. No Deus Ex Machina for poor Cosmo Kowalski.
Billy was smiling. “Yeah, I do.”
.....
Big Mike just kept driving right past the cluster of people. That had been Boss Billy, he knew it.
He felt sorry for the poor weasly bastard, but there was nothing he could have done in that situation. He also felt bad about missing out on his big payment, but there was nothing that could be done about that, either. Besides, there's no way in hell he would have gotten involved with the guy if he had known he was trying to steal from Boss Billy.
He had met the guy in a bar back in Arizona – what the hell was his name? Something blatantly Polish – and he had offered Mike half of what he was carrying. He showed the stuff to Mike in the parking lot, explaining that it was worth half a million dollars, and that was more than enough for Mike. All Mike had to do was take him out of the state, somewhere way up North or something.
But when he arrived at the motel the first thing he saw was Walter Sands cutting through one of the doors. He knew that Sands was the kind of guy you hired when you needed a quick and dirty job done right, say, the kind of job that would require retrieval of a missing $500,000. He had hung back, and sure enough, a minute or two later Sands came back out, pulling the poor bastard who had tried to hire him. He waited until Sands hit the road, and the followed, hanging way back, waiting for him to stop somewhere. Sands usually stopped for a candy bar or something just to let the guy he was bringing back sweat, and that would have been Mike's chance. But this time he kept going, driving for three straight hours across New Mexico until they reached the guys in the desert. Right away Mike had known he would have a tough time taking on that many guys, no matter who it was, and when he got close enough to see that the man facing away from him was around seven feet tall with long black hair and Boss Billy's signature denim jacket, he knew it would be impossible.
Well, damn. Just gonna have to find some other way to drum up beer money.
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