Three Twisted Stories Read Free

wouldn’t go home. They’d move in with their mistresses. They’d never see their children again. They’d grow their beards long and follow Skynyrd back and forth across the country.
    And this list didn’t even include Charlie’s siblings, who routinely came to him with their hands out. He was the only one of them who had made a success of himself, and they felt he owed them for it. He had left at sixteen with a broken eye socket, cracked ribs, and a sprained wrist that still ached when it rained, and
he
was the selfish bastard who owed them for abandoning his family.
    And what a family it was. They were all one long series of Irish twins, born close together because Charlie’s mother had figured out there was only one thing that would stop theirfather from beating her. Deacon was the closest to Charlie in age. He was a charity case who couldn’t sell a car if you held a bazooka to his head, which scenario often played like a silent movie in Charlie’s brain. Then there was his baby sister who always had her hand in his pocket. His shifty brother who showed up once a month with the law on his ass. His stupid brother who kept losing his money on the cockfights. His other stupid brother who kept losing his money on tail. His asshair of a brother who had so many kids that he’d given two of them the same name.
    Charlie tapped the brakes. He was so lost in his worthless family that he’d almost driven straight past the dry cleaner’s. He slid the Buick into the parking space beside a police cruiser. There was no one behind the wheel.
    Charlie walked across the lot toward the building. The glass windows were floor-to-ceiling. He could see Mr. Salmeri behind the counter doing his crossword puzzle. The cold sweat was back, but not because of Mike Thevis. Charlie’s mind was veering toward panic lately. The constant sensation of something bad about to happen followed him around like a shadow. He didn’t know where this came from. Nothing had changed. Nothing except there had been a lot more calls lately from Mr. Chop, which was a good thing if you looked at the face of it. More Chop, more money. More money, more security. More security, less worry.
    Why didn’t that math play out?
    The bell over the door clanged as Charlie walked in.
    Mr. Salmeri did not look up. He was a hairy Italian guy with a push-broom mustache and hair so black it glowed blue under the fluorescent lights. Gold rings were on his fingers. A rope chain as thick as Charlie’s pinky wrapped around the man’s neck. His shirt was unbuttoned so that the way the yellow necklace lay on his hairy chest reminded Charlie of the green polyester grass and pastel eggs in the Easter baskets he used to buy for his kid before she got too fat for candy.
    Charlie guessed his daughter got her gluttony from him. He was a textbook example of somebody who didn’t know when to stop. He had a thriving business. He lived a good life. He lived in a big house and drove a smart car. But then he’d run into Mike Thevis at a party and decided he wanted more.
    How it worked was like this: Mr. Chop called Mr. Lam and told him to pick up his dry cleaning. Charlie hightailed it over to Salmeri’s, where he was given a suit. The suit pocket contained a slip of paper with a very important man’s name written on it. The next day, that verysame man showed up at Charlie’s dealership ready to pick out a brand-new car. Charlie would give the man whatever he wanted, no questions asked. Then he’d go to Mike Thevis’s joint and walk away with the cash to cover the cost of the car and then some.
    Not that Charlie sought out the details, but usually a few weeks later, the commissioner or judge or deputy whoever it was Charlie had given the car to could be found in the newspaper or on the local news talking about how he was supporting or not supporting something that in the end would greatly benefit Mike Thevis.
    Charlie wasn’t stupid enough to think he was the only man Thevis was