Crawdad, the white gangbanger, had the build of a linebacker, with a hard face accented by cold, brown eyes and a misshapen nose that resembled a lump of clay somebody had just stuck to his face, a product of too many street brawls. He wore his hair in a high-and-tight buzz cut, dyed multicolored in a rainbow hue. On the street, he had a reputation as a good soldier and enforcer who made extra points as muscle-for-hire. Crawdad was the kind of thug who enjoyed violence and inflicting pain and cared nothing about the intricacies of scheming or running the rackets. Other people did the thinking. He did the hurting.
Papa Doo was slighter in build and wore his hair in Rastafarian dreadlocks, the ends tipped in yellow and green. He probably weighed less than Freddy, but there was a lot of rage packed into that wiry body.
His eyes were shielded by large wraparound shades that were too big for his face, but that’s how he liked them … and for good reason. A nasty scar ran diagonally from the left side of his nose across his cheek to the rear of his jawline, a souvenir from one of his mother’s boyfriends. The bastard had been prone to drunken rages and beating his mother. At age thirteen, Papa had tried to intervene and got a broken gin bottle raked across his face for his trouble. The scar would forever make him self-conscious, insecure about his looks, and uncomfortable around women. Those who were stupid enough to tease him about it, soon found they’d rather be trapped in a den of rattlers. He was expelled from high school his sophomore year for fighting and was later arrested and spent six months in juvie for AWDW. He’d stabbed a kid who thought it would be cute to mock him in front of a bunch of girls at a party. It was during his incarceration that he sought initiation into The Demon Posse.
A few years later, he ran into his mom’s old beau outside a ‘beam den. Old, sick and now a pathetic junkie, the former badass who once took pleasure in beating up on women and children now wanted no part of the gangbanger standing before him. He tried to apologize, wanting bygones to be bygones. Papa Doo smiled, shook his hand and waited until the bastard turned to walk away. He then put a rail pistol to the back of his head and blew the man’s brains through his face.
Even if Gideon had known what kind of violent young men stood before him, it wouldn’t have mattered one iota. He looked slightly confused as he looked to Papa Doo and then back to Freddy.
“I thought you was supposed to be a Nazi or something like that?” he asked, a puzzled look on his face.
Freddy shrugged, “Hey, business is business, man. White’s still right, but green trumps ‘em all, you know what I’m sayin’?”
“Is that right?” Gideon mumbled, studying the pulse rifle momentarily. He then looked up to the two newcomers. “You boys got the rest of my stuff?”
“That’s right, old man,” Papa chewed a toothpick thoughtfully, not knowing what to make of this decrepit old one-eared fool. He’d heard of Gideon Tuttle, the man had quite a rep around town, but looking at him now, he sure didn’t look like the man of legend.
“Good, good!” Gideon replied, seemingly overly preoccupied with the pulse rifle that now rested on his hip. “This is one fine piece of work,” he remarked, following it up with a whistle of admiration. “My, my! I wish I had a woman with these kinds of lines.”
“She’s a beaut!” Freddy agreed.
“Well, now that you got me all kitted out,” Gideon looked to the arms dealer. “I could sure use some extry gun hands. You wanna make a few points on top of what I’ve already paid ya?”
“Nah, I think I’ll pass,” Freddy shook his head. “Not really my thing. I’m more into distribution than I am production, if you know what I mean.” He turned back to Crawdad and Papa Doo. “Now these here fellas … they’re more along the lines of what you’re looking for.”
“S’that a fact,” Gideon pursed his lips, obviously contemplating his next move. Inconspicuously, he flipped the “FIRE” selector switch on the rifle from “MAN” to “3 RND” while it rested on his hip. “Well, in that case, I reckon this concludes our business …” Gideon dropped the barrel and squeezed the trigger before anybody knew what had happened. The electronic trigger automatically let off a three-round burst with just the slightest touch of his finger. The first round was high and blew the top of the Neo-Nazi’s skull off, killing him instantly. The second went lower, blowing the man’s chest open, and the third went wide right, taking his left arm off just above the elbow. Before anybody could even think, the man’s smoking, bloody wreck of a corpse had already hit the magnicrete floor.
Junior could only stare in horror. What the fuck? Across the shop, Papa Doo and Crawdad had been close enough to get splattered by superheated blood and charred bone fragments. Neither looked particularly happy, but not a word was said, as Gideon held the rifle at the ready. He had the drop on them, and they could easily be next.
For Ollie, it was the first time to see someone die, shot down in cold blood. This wasn’t firing rockets at an aerocraft using a PDC. This was up close and personal. Blood-splattering. Flesh-searing. Bowels-releasing. The shit had just gotten real.
Gideon sneered at the ruined corpse. “Fucking pussy-whipped pansy-ass! I never liked you from the moment I saw you!” He spat at the still-smoking body. “That’ll teach you to let a woman and some foreign-jibberin’ bird disrespect me!”
Junior closed his eyes and clenched his teeth. God, how he hated the old bastard! That was just all there was to it. His father was not only a cruel, sadistic and mean fuck,
