Blood & Tacos #4 Read online

  Pipowitz checked his gold Rado. It could tell the time in Monte Carlo, Beverly Hills, London, Paris, Rome, and Gstaad, but now all he cared about was the tick of the second hand. The chopper would only be another minute or two. His mysterious superior had sworn a five-minute exit. And his mysterious superior was never wrong, never late.

  The lawyer’s eyes shot to the roof access. The stairwell. Orange light flickered within and smoke billowed up. He smiled and wrung his hands together. The priest could never make it through that. Even if he survived the final bout.

  And yet the Killing Floor mastermind had a moment of doubt. The priest had shown some mettle. A bullheaded tenacity. And yes, the luck of the Irish.

  A noise came from the stairwell even as the chopper blades became a clear beat and underlying whoosh. Pipowitz took a step back. The roofing tar stretched between his sole and his footprint like a strand of taffy.

  Oh, right: he had a firearm. Pipowitz drew it from the holster and kept a bead on the stairs. “So much for your sweet science, you shillelagh-humping paddy sheep rapist.”

  Behind him the smoking rooftop burst. He spun in time to see his doom: Father Dukes, sooty black, grinning wide-eyed like a one-man minstrel show of death. [The similes of Milt Walsh do not necessarily reflect the views of Bart Lessard or the editor and publisher of Blood and Tacos. —Ed.] His red hair had been singed down to a stubble and roof debris stuck to his shoulders. Sparks shot up from the exit he had just made, then the very tongues of the flames.

  “Never could find the goddam stairs,” said the smoldering priest.

  The Piper’s hand shook. The revolver tumbled free.

  “Have you ever once shot that thing?” Father Dukes asked. “Set up a line of cans, maybe?”

  The shyster’s eyes went to the priest’s deadly right. He saw that the arm was broken, hanging useless. “You’re out of the match,” he said, getting back his nerve. “A technical knockout.”

  But the left came up, and it wasn’t empty. Gripped firm was the hammer the Piper had left below, the hammer used to strike the ringside bell.

  “Wrong,” said the priest. “Round three.” He swung.

  The whole oily wig seemed to dent, tucked into the cranium. The eyes popped from their sockets, bloody and agog. At first the priest thought the lawyer had stuck out his tongue. But the pinkish-beige and squiggly surface protruding from that open mouth could only be human brain.

  Dead on his feet, the shyster fell aside, the hammer lodged in place. Wads of money fell from his collar and waist, flitting away on the heat-gust of the inferno.

  “Now how about those macaroons?” said the fighting priest.

  Cookies or no cookies he smiled, contented, ready for his victory pyre and a little family reunion. He was reaching for his hip flask—there might be a happy dribble in it yet, just a taste to tide him over before the pearly gates—when he saw the helicopter.

  It came through the thickening smoke, hovering only ten yards off. The rotor wash cleared the view. The machine was not what he expected. Sleek, sinister black, with blacked-out glass. Not the sort of thing a sinful sheeny tightwad like the dead Pipowitz would choose for a rental. Instead it looked ... bank-y. And fine watch or none, the Piper couldn’t afford bank-y.

  The priest watched the machine. He knew he was being watched in turn through that inscrutable glass—he and the cash-stuffed corpse at his feet.

  And just like that, the black helicopter pitched and sped off. Father Dukes watched its flight. A corridor that led straight to the high-rises on the far side of Delaware City. Looming like hell’s own fortresses. Well-defended fortresses that had to be, what, sixty floors each?

  So it went farther up. Lower down. Whatever. Goddam it, he would have to live.

  Dat’s the spirit, pisher! Take it all the way!

  “Lefty! I thought you were gone!”

  A shudder interrupted the reunion. The whole building groaned and leaned. A fireball roared up the sides. The roofing tar went ablaze.

  The tenement’s boined through, Mick! She’s comin’ down! You gotta jump to the next roof!

  “That’s crazy!”

  Just like you, boychik! It’s one story shorter. If you rolls, maybe you won’t break your neck!

  Father Dukes made the sign of the cross. Then he crossed his fingers. With a furious sprint, he shot toward the curtain of flames at the edge

  [He makes it. The end. —Ed.]

  Bart Lessard is the fake name of a cranky loner. Here he has adopted a cranky loner persona through the use of a fake name. He is the author of Rakehell and The Danse Joyeuse at Murderer’s Corner, both out on Kindle.

  BROWN SUGAR BROOKDALE

  in

  TITTY TITTY BANG BANG

  By Chester Olden Earnest

  (discovered by Thomas Pluck)

  “Brown Sugar” Brookdale, the black Vietnam Vet kung fu master who “broke his bare foot off in the ass of The Man,” was the creation of Chester Olden Earnest. Brookdale went through many incarnations. He was originally created when Earnest, a Harlem protege of Richard Wright, saw the success of, but did not read, the plantation pulp novel Mandingo. Earnest assumed the title referred to an Australian aborigine who could transform into a were-dog to fight injustice. The first Brookdale novel, Brother Coyote, reflects this. Brookdale was cured of lycanthropy in the second volume, where he encounters the eponymous Witch Queen of New Orleans. Our selection came late in the series and shows how Earnest successfully merged social consciousness with the martial arts novel. In it, Brookdale tackles an evil town of sex traffickers. We bring you the provocatively titled TITTY TITTY BANG BANG.

  Brown Sugar Brookdale motored his chopper into the sleepy town of Titwillow and plunked his behind at the luncheonette wanting nothing more than a cup of joe and a bite to eat. From the glowers of the hardhats behind him, the blue plate special came with a free ass-whupping on the side.

  The waitress, a dimpled cornsilk blonde, poured his coffee with a smile. The rest of the crowd looked none too happy to see a six-foot negro in a fringed vest and cowboy boots interrupting their meals. A signed photo of Nixon grinned at Brookdale’s situation from above the kitchen window, and the floor creaked as the five burly men blocked Brookdale in.

  The tallest man had a mouth tighter than a chicken’s ass, but he managed to squeeze out the usual: “What you doing here, boy?”

  “Having my lunch,” Brookdale said. “This is a lunch counter.”

  “Just ’cause there’s no Whites Only sign out front don’t mean you can dirty up the seats.” The big man slipped a Crescent wrench from his back pocket.

  “We don’t want no trouble, Burl,” the waitress said.

  “I hope you’re not here looking for the Pussywillow Palace,” Burl said. “We don’t serve your filthy, uncouth kind.”

  Cups rattled and chairs creaked as the customers leaned to watch.

  “Burl, is it?” Brookdale smiled. “Let me show you something.” He tipped the pitcher of cream into his cup. “Watch what happens to this milk here.”

  The men stared as the cream swirled into Brookdale’s cup of strong, black coffee.

  Burl narrowed his eyes. “If you’re talking about mixing the cream and the coffee, we call that miscellany, and it’s a hanging crime.” He pushed Brookdale’s shoulder, but the big brother didn’t budge or spill a drop.

  “No. The sweet white milk messed with something strong and black, and now it’s gone,” Brookdale said, then sipped his coffee and smiled. “Besides, it’s called miscegenation, you ignorant redneck.”

  “Why, you dirty—”

  Burl swung his wrench, and Brookdale blocked the blow with a fierce cry. He spun from his stool and sent the thug tumbling into his friends with a mighty backhand.

  Burl’s hard hat clattered down the counter, and his friends caught his limp body. Brookdale calmly removed his cowboy boots.

  Hammers, beater sticks, and Buck knives came out as the hardhats surrounded him.

&
nbsp; They had weapons.

  They had anger.

  They had the dirty laws of Jim Crow on their side.

  None of that mattered to Brown Sugar Brookdale. He had the soul of a warrior.

  Forged on the Detroit streets. Fired in the white man’s war in the jungles of Vietnam. Tempered into razor sharp steel in the ancient temples of Shaolin.

  He beckoned them over with a curl of his hand.

  They charged. Brookdale snapped a flying spin kick into the faces of the first two, sending them tumbling like bowling pins. The next man set upon him with a scarred beater stick. The kind that rolls under the driver’s seat of an ignorant redneck’s pickup truck; the one he calls his “negro-be-good stick.”

  Brookdale ducked and weaved, and the weapon shattered the spinning dessert case. He palm-struck the man in the solar plexus then twice in the face, and the stick fell harmlessly to the floor, followed by its owner.

  The last man’s face twisted in fear, and he jabbed wildly with his Buck knife. An old woman screamed.

  Brookdale tugged his nunchaku from his back pocket: two pieces of a policeman’s nightstick, broken in half and connected with six links of iron slave chain.

  The sticks blurred as Brookdale spun and swung them, and the crowd stared at the display. The knifer swung wild. Brookdale cracked the man’s wrist and sent the knife flying, then upswung into his groin.

  The knife stuck in the photo of Nixon behind the counter. The crowd gasped.

  As the man fell clutching his pummeled manhood, Brookdale scooped some lemon meringue pie with his finger and tasted it. “Ooh, I do like a good slice of pie.”

  The old woman fainted into her husband’s arms.

  The cook popped his big bald head out the kitchen window. “What the Sam Hill’s going on here?”

  “Burl and the boys started a fight, Earl,” the waitress said.

  Brown Sugar Brookdale peeled off bills from his thick bankroll and set them under his broken coffee cup. “For the coffee,” he said. “And your trouble.”

  “Leave my place of business,” Earl hollered. “And you too, Alice. I told you we don’t serve coloreds.”

  A fat man complained, “Aw, don’t fire Alice! She’s the last pretty girl we got round here!”

  Alice threw down her apron. Brookdale picked up his boots and stepped over the moaning bodies of his foes.

  Brown Sugar Brookdale had found the sleepy hamlet of Titwillow in his quest to stay after dark in every “sundown town” in America and kick some redneck ass.

  Sundown towns had once been easy to spot, with signs warning black folks not to be caught in them after sunset. Only in more direct and ignorant language. The signs were gone, but not the message. Some brothers in Chicago said Titwillow had the best go-go club in the country, but any black man who dared linger would disappear.

  Brookdale straddled the long-forked chopper he’d fought a chapter of Hell’s Angels to acquire and fired her up. Alice the waitress slammed the door as she stepped outside.

  “Sorry about your job,” he said.

  “I should’ve known better.” She stomped up the road.

  Brookdale kicked his bike along and followed. “I appreciate you behaving like a human being. I know that takes guts, around here.”

  “That and a hundred bucks will pay my rent.”

  Brookdale reached for his bankroll.

  “I don’t need your charity,” she said. “You sure are free with your money.”

  “When I get low, I bust up a Klan meeting and steal their wallets. This part of the country’s a gold mine.”

  “I bet it is,” Alice said. “Sometimes I wonder what they make their beds with, since all their sheets are sewn up into pointy hoods.”

  Brookdale chuckled. “You need a ride someplace?”

  “On that heap? You’ve got leaky valves,” Alice said. “I’m surprised it’s still running.”

  “Sounds fine to me. Maybe you should stick to waitressing.”

  Alice snorted. “That’s just to make ends meet. I’m a mechanical engineer, and if that engine makes it another ten miles, I’ll turn in my slide rule.”

  Brookdale frowned and revved the engine. He didn’t know machines. “So what are you doing in this backwater, Lady Einstein?”

  “My father’s the Einstein,” she said. “He was hired by Willem Cain to help with the corn crops. He disappeared, and I’m stuck here. But if I leave, I’ll never find out what happened to him.”

  “Is that when that big go-go club opened up?”

  “A few months after,” she said. “You’re not going there, are you? It’s whites-only, and Mr. Cain’s got dozens of trained guards running the place. They all know karate. They train in the cornfields, in those white pajamas.”

  “This Mr. Cain sounds like quite the character,” Brookdale said, “but I’d rather listen on a full stomach. Where can a black man get some chow around here without getting stabbed?”

  Alice pointed a finger, but it didn’t direct him anyplace but up.

  Brookdale followed the main road out of town. He rode until he came upon some tarpaper shacks huddled along the river, where the folks had faces like his own.

  Women and children relaxed as the summer heat faded into dusk, but no men joined them. As his motorcycle approached, mothers herded their children inside and slammed the doors.

  Brookdale held them no enmity. They’d been driven all the way to the waterline, and any stranger playing hero would rain hell down on them long after he left town.

  As the sun dipped low, Brookdale circled back through the village and saw a man’s silhouette hunched under a bridge. He parked his chopper in the weeds and shuffled to the river, where an old man sat on an upended bucket and fished with a cane pole.

  “Evening, old timer.”

  “Hush, son,” the man whispered. “Gonna scare the fish. Or worse, bring the night riders.”

  Brookdale hunkered down on a stone. “Bring ’em,” he whispered.

  “You’re so tough and smart,” the fisherman said. “That’s what my boy Cecil thought. They took him.”

  “If the Klan’s coming, I’ll break a burning cross off in their ass.”

  “Didn’t say Ku Klux,” the old man said. “They call themselves the Sons of Cain. They live beneath us, and at night they steal our men away.”

  “They don’t look under bridges?”

  The old man gave a toothless smile. “I’m too old for what they need,” he laughed. “They take white women, too.”

  “What do they take white women for?”

  “For that club of sin,” he said. “Any white girl walking alone gets grabbed up like a fish on a hook.” The old man tugged the pole, and it bent double. “Just like this here,” he cackled.

  Brookdale hopped on his bike and roared back into town, his eyes peeled for a waitress’s uniform.

  The main road was empty, the windows shuttered. Not a soul dared walk the streets. Neon flickered in the distance. Brookdale headed that way.

  The Pussy Willow Palace glowed crimson at the edge of town. A busty neon dancer straddled the doorway and shook her goods in a manner that would give a real woman two black eyes and a concussion.

  A pickup truck with the headlights dark patrolled the club’s perimeter. Men in karategi—karate uniforms—stood in the back. The truck stopped and the karateka filed out, searching alleys and buildings.

  Brookdale puttered his chopper to a stop and kicked off his cowboy boots. He took his nunchaku and stalked his prey. As he neared the truck, Alice ran barefoot from an alleyway and screamed. Brookdale caught her and covered her mouth.

  “Ready for that ride? Get on my chopper, while I take out these fools.”

  A dozen men in white robes boiled out of the alley and surrounded them. Brookdale uttered a harsh cry and spun through a nunchuck kata to keep them at bay.

  Two men stepped from the alley and racked their shotguns. Burl, with his cheek swollen like half a grapefruit, and Earl, the cook f
rom the diner. They leveled the shotguns at Brookdale’s chest. “Strip him down,” Earl said.

  Alice rolled in on the chopper, the engine wheezing. It backfired, and the Sons of Cain pulled her from it and let the bike crash onto the pavement.

  “Told you it was dying,” she said, before a man’s brick-breaking karate hand covered her mouth.

  The Sons of Cain took Brookdale’s chucks and tugged off his vest, leaving his rippled mahogany chest bare.

  “Told you not to stay after sundown,” Burl smiled.

  Brookdale did not struggle against his bonds. A Zen man knows to reserve his strength. The truck rolled into a corn maze, and Alice bounced against him. He steadied her with his shoulder.

  The trucks parked in a flattened crop circle. Burl whistled. The circle of cornfield shook, then lowered into an underground silo.

  “We built all this,” Alice said. “Willem Cain said he was creating a new Manhattan project, for the future of mankind. We built state-of-the-art labs, and he paid us well.”

  “But why’s it all secret?” Brookdale asked. “If he’s helping humanity, something don’t jive.”

  “Silence,” a beefy karate man said. He raised his hand, the edge horned and callused.

  “I’ll speak if I damn please,” Brookdale said.

  When he brought his hand down Brookdale twisted to take the blow, and then shouldered him above the knee. The karate man tumbled over the tailgate into darkness, his scream sharp and brief.

  Two karate men knelt and chopped Brookdale. He took the blows in silence.