RUFF STUFF

RUFF STUFF A

Novel by Smcallis.

This is a work of fiction. No similarities between any person living or dead is intended, and any such similarity is purely coincidental. All characters © 1992 by Smcallis.

Chapter 13

KNIFE FIGHT IN THE DARK THE OLD MAN SAT IN HIS WHEELCHAIR, a lap blanket over his legs, calmly smoking a Bolivar Royal Coronas. He was an old man; his legs virtually paralyzed with phlebitis. His heart was weak, his eyesight failing, his hand trembled, not from fear. Nothing scared him, anymore or evermore. There was no cold wind that blew that was colder than he. His failing heart pumped pure ice water through his veins; it was they that should fear him. Perhaps though, a little Schnapps, a little Schnapps before you die. Drat that god cursed Granddaughter of his. “No smoking, no drinking.” He puffed with great satisfaction on his cigar. What the fuck did she think was going to kill him, a bullet? He should be so lucky. His cursed granddaughter had deliberately set the bottle out of reach. He needed a monkey to reach it. Fortunately, the old man smiled to himself. He had a monkey. “FRAULINE!” He shouted at the girl playing on the floor with a puzzle game. “Frauline!” Again, there was no reaction. The child was deaf. He cursed his granddaughter. “Eighty-nine fucking years-old and I’m reduced to being a goddamn babysitter to a dumb deaf mute. FRAULINE!” He picked up an apple and hefted it in his hand, once, twice, contemplating his wicked deed. He pitched the fruit hard at her, part of his lunch, now more useful. The errant fruit smacked the girl in the side of the head as surely as a well-placed OSS dagger. At least he got her attention. “FRAULINE!” The old man motioned for the girl to come to him. She was not afraid of him, she was not angry for having been besotted by a flying vegetable. No, there was honesty in this girl. “I could teach you to shoot one day.” She had beautiful oval face, brown skin exactly the same color as pure white oak. Her large brown eyes were full of years. Initially he was not enamored with her, initially he hated her, rejected her. Initially he demanded that Lea remove the insect from the premises and never should she ever speak of such a creature again. That was initially, of course, initially, he hated everyone, but Lea persisted, she knew her grandfather’s one weakness. She knew he had a soft place in his heart for children, but a brown skinned-cracker girl? That was almost too much for an old Nazi to bear. He considered her a Negro, an inferior, not Aryan, she was not blonde, blue-eyed, and she was certainly not one of the “Master Race.” Old prejudices die-hard, eventually the old Nazi learned to respect the girl’s spirit, her spunk. He saw in her what Lea saw in her. She was not one of “them” not one of “the other.” However, she was special, she could learn. Practicality has a way of leveling the playing field. After a few weeks, the old man learned she was all he had. The two became fast friends, she the little brown-skinned cracker girl and he the impossibly ancient Nazi. “FAULINE! Come here. Ja, good girl.” The old man beckoned, “Der schnapps,” he gestured to the bottle that sat tantalizingly out of reach on top of the refrigerator. “You go and bring the bottle to Grand-Pa-Pa.” The girl veritably beamed, she understood. The child was an absolute wizard. Deaf as a stone, yet somehow, she intuitively understood. Luka scurried up onto the refrigerator and retrieved the forbidden bottle of liquor. The tantalizing prospect of a quick tot of schnapps was interrupted by a knock at the door, not the knock of the friendly neighborhood Fuller brush-man, less of a knock, than a boom, a thud of an attempted forced entry. The door was steel-clad reinforced, solid core oak; three Slag dead-bolt locks held it shut. “YOU BETTER OPEN ‘DIS DOOR OLD MAN OR WE’LL BUST IT DOWN!” The girl was virtually on top of him, she knew what was happening, and she had felt the vibrations through the floor. She did not want to leave him. Ten-years-old going on eleven, and he, who had killed over 400 men, his brave little cracker-girl, she was trying to protect him. “Come and get me you little Schwanzlutscher!” For the first time in twenty years, he felt alive. Luka was visibly frightened, in her short life she knew what this meant, she knew about hits, about drive-by shootings and gang warfare. “Shhhh, Frauline, it will be OK.” He stroked her hair, wiped a tear from her eye.

“Into the kitchen Frauline, up you go, you little monkey, open the window, out the fire escape. This is the one thing that Grand-pa-pa still knows how to do.” For the first time from under the lap robe, he revealed the pistol. Clad in .99 fine silver and embellished with intricate engravings of Quezetacotal and all manner of other fantastic Aztec deities. He had only one pistol; he had given the other one to Lea. “GIVE US THE GIRL, YOU DIRTY OLD MAN, AND NOBODY GETS HURT!” “Fick dich selber!” He drew back the slide on the M11911 Colt auto pistol one would be enough. The door splintered once, then twice. The Silver Angel did not wait. He emptied a mag into the door, the massive forty-five caliber slugs tore through the door and the flesh beyond. There was a long pause, a silent pause which, which gave the old man plenty of time to count out seven new bullets and push them into the mag, and re-cock the slide. He heard the kitchen window open and close, and the rattle and clattery bang of the fire escape descend. Now he could die. Luka had escaped. He had killed at least two of them with his first fusillade, of that he was certain. The Old man had the last laugh. He had scared the living fuck out of them more likely, all to his advantage, he would not shoot blind again, and he would mark his targets. He would kill them one by one. He had seven bullets. There had better be eight of them, or they all would die today. They rushed him a second time. The crazy automatic weapon fire was pure Hollywood. Seventy-five yards, that was the preferred killing distance; at seventy-five yards, he knew he was invulnerable. In his last gunfight, in the living room of his home, less than fifteen feet separated him from the door, a knife fight in a closet. The old man knew that today was the day he was to die. It was anti-climatic, seven shots, seven thuds and then the hush of utter silence. From the bottom of the stairs, High-Top counted seven shots fired. First four shots, followed by a cacophonic chaotic burst of automatic fire, then three calculated shots, High-Top counted them, one, two, and three. All of his men were dead. Zoomer, Da kid, Cleveland, Old Moe, Knuckles, Fish, Razar, his whole crew was dead. “God damn that old man!” High-Top picked his way past the bodies of his former compatriots, a tangled heap of humanity, most were boys, frozen in a macabre death grip, each one their head exploded as 200 grains of steel-jacketed soft lead collided and burst against flesh and bone. On the street nobody gave, much real thought to the technical aspect of shooting. Oh, they knew how to load and point, what end the bullet came out of, but as for real shooting, accuracy, the only real tactics was spray and pray. High-Top stood amidst the smoke and death transfixed, he was beyond dumbfounded, for a street hoodlum, High-Top was intelligent, intuitive. He understood finesse, and before him, was the act of killing elevated to the level of art by Rembrandt. He worshiped that old man. “There’s no fucking way anyone could shoot like that.” Yet he had seen it, seven shots, seven men lay were dead, two more bodies lay smashed at the bottom of the stairs. Nine gangsters in all, nine men one old man had killed and he was no closer to getting the girl. Isaac had told him to bring back the girl, alive. He was beginning to believe that wasn’t possible. If it wasn’t for the fact that it had been a twenty minutes since he had seen or heard any shooting from the doorway, High-Top himself would have fled in abject terror chased by a mortal apparition of some terrible old man in a wheelchair. Instead, High-Top did what any competent middle level manager would do; he spent the next ten minutes on the pay phone, summoning more unsuspecting bodies. More goons, more cannon fodder to face what ever it was, he didn’t know, but it had killed nine of his people and as far as he knew, it was still in that room. Two hours later, High-Top managed to assemble what amounted to a small army. It turned out nothing was necessary. Rocket propelled grenades, high-powered ordinance; High-Top picked his way through the blasted splintered door of the apartment and peered into the interior in disbelief. There was no old man there was no wheelchair. There was only a huge shaggy black object. High-Top screamed and blasted the carcass with AK-47 fire but it was already dead. A monstrous animal, its fur matted and moth eaten, pure white around the muzzle, a massive Kodiak bear, and very dead.

* * *

LUKA'S NAKED TOES touched the cold hard iron of the fire escape. The unforgving lattice burned like fire. She flinched; it was freezing cold in the January thaw of a Michigan winter. Unprepared for her sudden flight, the cold wind clawed at the thin cotton fabric of her camisole, a great icy hand clutched her stomach where her supper lay. Forty feet above street level, the fire escape represented a most unforgiving, uninviting place. She wanted so much to return to the safety of the warm confines of Grand Pa Doc’s apartment. Luka couldn’t imagine in her little world, a ten-year-old-girl, going on eleven, what possible catastrophe, what calamity caused Grand Pa Doc to force her out into the cold. She didn’t know he was a Nazi, she didn’t know his past was full of enemies; he was a mass murderer, a war criminal. Full of innocents, she the little brown-faced cracker girl, and he the impossibly ancient Nazi. She had know idea when she played with her puzzle book on the warm confines of his living room floor that she played in the presents of a cold-blooded killer. All she knew was she loved Grand Pa Doc, and Grand Pa Doc loved her. Luka crouched and shivered at the window. Her eyes were sharp as eagles; she missed nothing, she was bright, smart, and intuitive. Her sense of smell, keen as a bloodhound, acutely aware of every sensation, every vibration, nothing escaped her. She remembered people’s faces, she watched their lips, and she probably knew more about people and her surrounding than anyone else. She was a deaf girl. Perceived as stupid, by her peers, her family and the ghetto society, she was an outcast, the village idiot. Luka bit down on the window sill. She felt the vibrations. Her sharp eyes counted the muzzle flashes from beyond the kitchen wall. She knew Grandfather’s guns held seven bullets. She knew this from the days, the weeks; she stayed with Grand Pa Doc. Each night she watched him lay out a clean white cloth and un-load, clean, and load those pistols. He chuckled, blew smoke rings and told stories; he smoked cigars and drank cognac. Little of what he said she understood. She tried to teach him how to make signs, but the old man rebuffed this effort. Grand Pa Doc mostly spoke German, which made no difference she couldn’t hear him anyway. What did matter was he spent time with her; he paid attention to her. Then there was the counting―the loading of the seven bullets. He tried to trick her by hiding a bullet under a saucer. She always caught him; it was a game between them, resulting in such laughter that before it was over, both were in tears. Luka was a silent witness, three days ago, when Grand Pa Doc gave his granddaughter Lea, one of his pistols. This was not a happy occasion, the passing on of a treasured family heirloom. It was an angry event, lots of shouting, arguing, Luka hid under the gate-leg table, and made herself very small. In the end, Lea took the weapon. That night when they cleaned and reloaded the one pistol, there were no games. Luka didn’t understand what caused Grandfather to be so adamant; why he gave away his most valued and prized possession. Grand Pa Doc had only one pistol. Now it was, that men came for him. Not Nazis, ex-Polish patriots, nor Communist or Baader Meinhof or members of Black September, none of the men who Grand Pa Doc killed or wronged. In the end these were her people, Isaac’s men, who came for Grand Pa Doc. They came for her―Luka felt ashamed. The sore spot on her leg chaffed, where Isaac had savaged her with a needle. She knew the men came for her.

Luka cringed. She counted the muzzle flashes four, five, six, seven. There was nothing but silence in her world. Luka knew she’d better go. It was a long way down to the street, and she didn’t posses the weight to actuate the mechanism of the fire escape. Grand Pa Doc always called her, his little monkey now was the time to prove it. Half way down, Luka shook with the force of an explosion. Fire and debris fell around her. Luka knew her only chance was to hurry. She scurried down to the street level and around the corner. GOT’CHA. YOU LITTLE WHITE NIGGA! . . . “