Jack Diamond: Hell Of A Way To Live

There’s something to be said for that first cigarette after going without for so long. You realize the things that you usually take for granted: the feel between the fingers, how it sits between your lips, the smell of the initial burn, the long, slow inhale and soothing sensation as it rolls down the back of your throat and into your lungs, a cloud of softness comforting your nerves as it runs out your chest and through your arms and legs, spreading out and settling down.

For a moment, one blissful moment, it’s like meditating. The all encompassing ohm. It makes you wonder what all the fuss is about.

It only takes a shorter moment spent with a woman thrashing in your backseat, screaming as she claws at her arms to wretch out the poison that tears through her veins, that burns at her organs, the frothing of her mouth, the groan and snaps of her joints that spasm at unnatural angles, all in response to a voluntarily injected substance, to remind you that the same thing that drives her back to this point at least twice a month is the same thing that makes that cigarette seem so damn good.

Addiction is a hell of a way to live.

I would say that May in the back was learning that the hard way but she’d been going about things the hard way for as long as I’d known her and I’d known her for about as long as you can know anyone without having been birthed by them.

“We’re almost there,” I said to May’s reflection in my rearview though I doubt she heard me.

She hit a lull, a point where her body just jerked with full body cramps to a beat of a distant tune only audible to her. It took me a moment to realize she was trying to say something, that the sound coming from her lips was not out of pain or doped up daydreams but of actual effort to talk to me.

“N… n…” a hard constant of a stutter that eventually gained sensible anchor with a vowel, “no…” and she repeated it, again and again, the second word so hard to come by, so distant.

“‘No’ what, May?”

“No hospital!” she shouted, as if so happy to finally find the word that the whole world must hear it, her back arched, her feet pressed against the door, her head pushed hard into the corner of where the back seat meets the door, her hands out and gripping at air, one at the back windshield, the other just over my shoulder, fingers clenching once, twice, thrice before finding my shirt and bunching it in her fist.

“You need help, May,” I said as I swerved to dodge a car whose driver seemed oblivious to the siren and blaring lights that nearly tore through his back end.

“Y… y… y…” The stutter again, as if trying to gulp for air, and her hand was now digging into my shoulder, her nails clawing at me, as if they’d find the words she’s trying to spout from in there somewhere. “You…”

“What about me, May?”

“N… n… no. Y… you…”

“I’m getting you help, May.”

A gust of air and I’m slamming on the breaks as May manages to open the door at her head, forcing me to go from eighty to dead stop and toss her to the floor of the back.

“S**t, May!”

She was clawing and crawling her way out of the back before I got out and around to her. She tried to fight me off but did about as good a job of it as she had of talking.

“Y… you…” she said again as I grabbed her under her arms and tried to pick her up. “You will he… help. Help!”

She pushed off of me and fell against the car, sliding along the side and I grabbed her before she hit the ground.

And I realized she wasn’t saying “You”. She was saying “Eww”.

What the hell had she put into herself?

***

You’d think a pusher with a tendency to have his place raided would have a stronger door. Or maybe he just got sick of replacing it every few months so he just put in something cheap and inexpensive. He’d just need to replace it again sooner or later. Or tonight.

“What the f**k!”

Eww Tomb leapt off his couch and fell over his coffee table as I came in with May in my arms, May fighting all the way.

“Whatever you sold her, Eww, you damn well better have a fix.”

“You can’t just keep f*****g coming in here like this, man,” Eww said as he pushed sweaty, stringy hair out of his eyes and back over his head. I laid May on his couch and tried to hold her down as gently as I could which was a whole lot harder than one might think. “Where’s your warrant?”

I looked at Eww who raised his hands as if to shield himself from my glare.

“Fix her, Eww, or else.”

“S**t.” Eww turned and disappeared down the hall, his curses bouncing about as he went from room to room, tearing through wherever he kept stuff.

May’s convulsions started to ease a bit but not from a lull. Her eyes started to lose focus, started to roll.

“May!” I shouted as I smacked her and she jarred but her eyes still were gone. “Hurry up, Eww!”

“F****n’ coming!” Eww came back into the room and dumped a pile of stuff out of his arms and onto the coffee table. “Hold her shoulders down,” he said as he came around with a tube and sliver of metal. “Get her mouth open.”

I leaned onto May to hold her down and pried her clenched mouth open. Eww slipped in the metal and followed with the tube, pulling away the metal and nodding toward the table.

“Gimmie the can.”

I grabbed it and handed it off, Eww screwing the end of the tube onto the can’s tip and spraying the can.

May’s eyes quickly focused and widened, her body stiffening as Eww emptied whatever was in the can into May’s lungs. May’s hand grabbed my shirt and pulled, though whether it was voluntary or not was beyond me.

“Alright,” Eww said, pulling the tube out of May’s throat and letting her gasp for air. Eww bounced aside to the table, grabbed something, the bounced back, pressing small plastic cylinder to May’s neck. A snap and a hiss and May started to relax, her body easing, her eyes fluttering before she passed out.

“She’ll be out for a couple hours,” said Eww as he whipped hair from his face again. “She’ll probably be starvin’, but she should be as good as new.”

My hand coming around his throat caught him by surprise, though not as much as my motion, my lifting him into the air, spinning, and slamming him through his coffee table and onto the floor. The whole thing was more for effect than actual practicality, but sometimes effect has a practical purpose.

“S**t, Jack,” he croaked and I tightened my grip to shut him up.

“What was she on?”

“Inhalant called teft,” croaked Eww. “Some synthetic s**t passed down about a week back.”

“What’s it do?”

“Small doses it makes you feel like you’re having a f****n’ orgasm for the length of the rush, twenty to forty minutes. A little more and you feel an orgasm like the opposite sex would.”

“How much would do that?” I asked, nodding toward May.

“Just a little more,” said Eww with a shrug and a smirk.

I pulled my hand from his throat and stood up with a growl.

“What the hell kinda purpose is a drug like that?” I asked as I rubbed my face, exhaustion and frustration mixing for one hell of an effect.

Eww stood up and shrugged again.

“I’ve heard it’s for anything from throwing off the enemy to a top brass unable to please his mistress or himself wanting to have a little extra fun. They don’t tell me what this s**t is for, I just…”

“Yeah, yeah, you just push it.”

Eww with his damn shrug.

The problem with being a nowhere town is that its people are nobodies.

The city’s a dumping ground for the nation’s refuge, unwanted problems to be swept under the rug quickly and quietly. Retired spooks who know too much, supernatural things that no one’s supposed to know anything about, former druggies in the employ of the government now tasked with testing its latest developments on a populace no one really cares about anyway.

And a handful of people in place to keep it all in check.

“Who all have you given this stuff to?” I asked.

“Just a few or the diehards.” Eww started scratching at his all too fresh trackmarks, more in thought than in itch. “May, Joey Lowe up on the north end, Tiff tried a hit the other night.”

“Tiffany Gordon?” Eww nodded. “Your girlfriend?”

“Curiosity’s a beast, man.”

“Is that it?”

“Yeah. They didn’t give me a whole lot to begin with.”

“But they gave you enough for May to get like that?”

“It doesn’t take a lot.”

“Do you have any left?”

“Just a couple doses.”

“Give them to me.”

“What?”

“Give them to me.”

“S**t, Jack, you know I can’t do that.”

“I know I can make your life a living hell if you don’t.”

“Oh yeah? And what about the feds?”

“You think I can’t make it look good?” Eww narrowed his eyes. “You think I can’t hide a body?” His eyes weren’t so narrow anymore.

“S**t, Jack…”

“‘S**t, Jack’ me one more time, Eww,” I said, pulling out my cell phone and starting to dial. “Just one more time.”

“Alright, alright. Just give me a sec.”

Eww disappeared back down the hall and I put the phone to my ear.

“Pierce, it’s Diamond. I need you to run uptown and drop in on a guy named Joey Lowe. Yeah, same one. Call me when you check him, let me know how he is. You’re just checking to make sure he’s not convulsing on the floor or dead. Yeah. I’m being purposefully vague, Pierce. Just do this, alright? Alright.”

I hung up as Eww came back in with a shoebox.

“That all of it?” Eww nodded. “And the antidotes?” He nodded again.

“What do I tell them when they ask about this s**t?”

“You tell them to call me,” I said as I walked to the couch and looked down on May for a moment. Out like a light. So peaceful.

“They aren’t gonna be happy, Jack.”

“Yeah, well I’m not too happy either, Eww.”

***

May woke slowly, her eyes blinking open as she stretched and looked around, getting a feel for her surroundings, figuring out where she was. She saw me sitting in a chair across the living room from her couch and cocked her head, as if trying to remember me.

“Jack?”

“How are you, May?”

“What happened?” She sat up as she ran a hand through her stringy hair, groaning as she moved, getting upright and then leaning forward, ungodly skinny elbows on her equally thin legs, and she hung her head.

“You tell me.”

She looked up with visible effort, her head seeming to weight a ton. She tried a smile on but it only came out half way, a smirk that just amplified the look in her eyes, the one so sad and tired.

“Oh, Jack. To the rescue once more.”

“Almost didn’t make it.”

“Like last time?”

“Worse than last time.” I pushed myself to my feet.

“You know you don’t have to do this, Jack. I’ll be fine.”

“Just because you haven’t died yet doesn’t mean you can’t.” I picked up a glass off the coffee table as I walked around.

“You don’t trust me?”

“I don’t trust what you put in you. Drink this.”

She took the glass from my hands and began to drink as I sat down.

“Eww’s not dealing to you anymore.” She nearly choked.

“Jack…”

“I told him not to deal to you anymore and if he does he’s done.”

“You can’t do that.”

“I can and I will.”

“The feds…”

“The feds will come down on me and I’ll give right back. Don’t worry about the feds. You just worry about staying clean.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

“I know you’re a stronger person than this, May. And I know that I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. But I can’t keep saving you, May.”

“Then why are you always there, Jack?”

My phone rang before I could reply and I stood up as I answered.

“Diamond.” I started pacing. “He’s what? How long have you been there.” I stopped and looked at May. “Uh huh. Okay, just stay held up. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

I hung up.

“What was that?” May asked.

“What’s Eww’s number?”

“What’s going on?”

“What’s Eww’s number, May?”

She hesitated and then gave it to me.

“Keep yourself clean, May,” I said, dialing as I headed to and opened the door. “Don’t make me lock you up.”

“You wouldn’t.”

I left without an answer.

***

Joey Lowe hovered ten feet off his front lawn wearing nothing but a used condom and a large, toothy smile. I focused on the smile.

“How long has he been like that?” I asked as I approached the group of mixed dressed city’s finest that stood at the curb and did their best not to stare.

“He was like that when we got here,” said Al Pierce, the only other detective in this town and one of the many people who seemed to take a great dislike in my existence. “Neighbor says she heard some noise early this morning, around two or so. Peeked out the blinds and saw him wandering the streets in about the same state.”

“She call it in?”

“Said she didn’t think much of it. Seems this is normal for Joey.”

“The wandering, sure,” I said. “This, though…”

Our small group all turned to look at him now, in all his naked, blissful glory.

“Any idea who he used that thing on?” I asked, pointing in the general direction of his flaccid member.

“No one’s in his house,” said one officer, flatfoot named Bill Greene who’d been around for a few years. “I wouldn’t put it past him to have done it himself.”

“Normal for Joey,” said Pierce, shaking his head.

“So what do we do?” asked the other officer, a fairly green kid named Franks and whose first name I never could remember.

I looked to my watch. “We wait.”

“For what?” Pierce asked.

“For when I say we’re done, Al. Patience.”

Luckily Eww was early. The fear of God will do that to some people.

“That’s not normal,” Eww said as he approached, digging through a bag as he came.

“No s**t,” said Pierce and I held up a hand to shut him up.

“What’s in him, Eww?” I asked as I approached Lowe’s hovering body.

His arms were outstretched and head leaning to one side, feet crossed, a crucifixion in mid-air. And his eyes. There was something about his eyes.

“Not sure,” said Eww, crouching next to me and setting his bag on the ground, pulling out a couple bottles and a syringe. “Last visit he picked up some of that teft, a couple hits of guano and some tranq.”

“Tranquilizer?” asked Franks.

“It gives the guano a bit more kick,” said Eww as he half filled the syringe with the contents of one bottle and stuck it in another for the rest of the fill.

Guano in this case wasn’t bat s**t. It was ground up vampire bones.

“So the guano’s making him float?” I heard Pierce ask as I started circling Lowe.

“It doesn’t usually do that,” Eww said.

“Depends on the source, though,” I said, “doesn’t it?”

I was behind Lowe when he suddenly spun around, the move catching all of us by surprise. I jumped back and noticed Franks and Greene pulling out their pieces.

“Hold your fire,” Pierce said as I held my hands up to emphasize the point.

“Hello, Jack Diamond,” Joey Lowe said, rolling his head as he spoke.

“Hello, Joey.”

“Not Joey, Jackie-Boy.” His eyes. Pupils so dilated that they overran the iris completely, just dark pools of black surrounded by bloodshot.

At first glance they looked like any other drug induced crazy eyes.

Second glance, though, coupled with his tone…

“You figuring it out, Jackie?”

“Which bat did this s**t come out of, Eww?”

Eww shrugged and Lowe laughed.

“How many did you know, Jackie?” Lowe’s voice was gargled, phlegm in the back of his throat churning with his words. “How many took so much from you.”

Son of a b***h.

“How’s Constantina, Diamond?”

Joey Lowe’s body suddenly arched and he screamed in pain as Eww jabbed the syringe into Lowe’s back. Lowe spun around a swiped at Eww who was just fast enough to dodge the blow, already scampering back to Franks and Pierce who still had their guns out and ready.

Lowe’s body spun back to face me, teeth bared, a snarl, a growl.

“You know this isn’t over, Jack Diamond.”

“Yeah,” I said, “it rarely is.”

He made a weak lunge at me and I easily stepped aside, Joey Lowe’s body collapsing onto the ground where I stood, out cold.

I nudged his body with my toe, a groan the only response. He was still alive. I walked across the lawn and back to the group, passing Franks and Greene along the way, cuffs already out as they ran toward Lowe’s unconscious form.

“What was that stuff, Eww?”

“Just a half shot of efedra diluted in holy water.” Eww shrugged at the glances from the others. “It gets the guano out.”

“All your guano, I want it.”

“Yeah, sure,” Eww said, nodding rapidly, his eyes set on Lowe, sweat soaking him.

“Old friend of yours, Jack?” asked Pierce with a s**t eating grin as he nodded toward Lowe’s unconscious body.

“Something like that. I expect a full report, Pierce.”

I ignored his protests as I walked back to my car.

I climbed in and sat there for a moment, my hands on the steering wheel, staring at Lowe laying there in his front yard.

Hell of a way to live.

I sighed and started the car.

Reviews

[W.k.kortas]

It's old-school, Mickey-Spillane-issue pulp fiction...but, boy howdy, it's well-done pulp. The pacing, the sparsity of setting and description (so as not to detract from the dialogue) is handled just about pitch-perfectly. It's 50's dime-paperback or graphic novel text done to a T.