Masters of Horror Read Free Page B

machine. Better check. When Jim Pale come back, they going to need that card. They’d already burned through the dove, and another one, and the guy was making his second run to the bank machine, and he’d left the keys in his Acura, and . . .
     
    The high was buzzing in Dwayne, but the buzz was fading. Time for another hit. He lit up some of the base he’d palmed when Jim White Guy wasn’t looking, sucked it up in the stem, the glass pipe he’d picked up on Telegraph Avenue.
     
    There. There it is. Spreading out in him, expanding through his nervous system. The blast. The rush spreading its wings. Wings made of flash-paper on fire. Going up, gone.
     
    Blasts were getting shorter, weaker. Need bigger hits.
     
    Maybe some black tar to go with it, ease the landing.
     
    Maybe take the car now.
     
    But then Jim White Guy was back, sliding in. “I got some money for that pussy, too.” The guy said. Thinking he was real street-smart, talking about pussy that way.
     
    They made a stop at Doc’s dope house, Dwayne breaking some of the dove off with a thumbnail, sliding it into his change pocket while he was walking around behind the Acura. Then Dwayne said, “Okay. Left at the corner. If you want ho’s.”
     
    It was coming together in Dwayne’s head. He knew a whore, Joleen, used an empty building up on Martin Luther King and Winston. That the opportunity,
     
    They found Joleen easy. She was a floppy-titted bitch with skinny legs, not getting much work, walking up and down the sidewalk in front of the condemned house. Across the street from the demolition lot where Samson Ramirez had dumped that OD case out of his rockhouse. Joleen, clutching a fake patent leather purse, was moving back and forth like a wind-up toy, marching on broken-down white Adidas gone gray from the street.
     
    Jim White Guy was so high, anything with tits looked good to him. Two minutes, and Dwayne had him out of his car, across the sidewalk, making a quick deal for Joleen. Acting like Joleen was going to do them both. Joleen was cheap. Didn’t work out of a house or a motel or anything, she couldn’t handle the overhead. Bitch just do it right there in your car or wherever was handy.
     
    Forty dollars for two. Another time, if he was trying to get some pussy from a toss up, he’d trade some smoke for it. But now he didn’t want to waste time in negotiations.
     
    “ I got a place back here,” Joleen said, leading them up a walkway used for storing garbage cans. The side door had been knocked off its hinges long ago. They stepped through it, went down a stairs, into a furnace room. There was a pile of dirty blankets in the corner; gray light coming through a grimy window from the street.
     
    “ Shit,” Jim White Guy said, whirling on Dwayne. “You setting me up to rob me? I got some friends, I’ll fucking have you killed —anything happens to me, they—”
     
    “ Yo, chill out, we here for some pussy. Look, I got my dick out. I usin’ my dick to rob you?” Dwayne pulled out his dick, wagged it at Joleen, who dutifully went to her knees. Started sucking. Wouldn’t be able to get it hard, after all the base. Not Jim White Guy’s dick either. But the man was too piped-up to care. “I’ll take her from behind while she does you,” Jim White Guy said. But what he was doing was firing up his pipe.
     
    “ All right, I hear you!” Dwayne said, and slapped Jim’s side in a companionable way; taking the Acura’s car keys from Jim White Guy’s jacket pocket as the white guy got his blast.
     
    “ Suck the man’s dick, Joleen, he payin’ for this shit,” Dwayne said.
     
    Joleen silently shifted over to the white guy, unzipping his pants, taking his pasty, shriveled thing out in her hands.
     
    “ You gonna give me a blast, honey?” she said, playing with his dick.
     
    The guy took out the pipe, put it in her mouth, flicked the Bic onto the glass bowl. Not noticing Dwayne moving off behind him.
     
    “ Got to pee,”