Yellow Mama E zine

THE DEMISE OF WILLY TWO DIMES
by Gary Clifton

         Detective Maggs Williams swished into Homicide Lieutenant Tom Wafers’s glass cage, every male cop ogling her fine ass.
         The lieutenant looked up. “Any headway on the No Jumps killin’?”
         “Only that the murderin’ bastard’s dead, dead, dead. Shooter oughta get a medal.”
         “Yup.”
         “Headin’ out to Fair Park to see that scum-suckin’ stone killer, Willie Two Dimes.” 
         “Help?”
         “No, sir.”

                                                                              *

         Maggs walked into Two Dimes’s place on Second Avenue without knocking. Two Dimes was standing at the kitchen stove cooking pancakes in silk underwear. He started to bolt.
        “Run, dumbass, your stove burns mama’s house down and get a bullet in your ass.”
        “Damnation, Miss Maggs, you scart the dog shit outta me. They’s criminals all over ‘roun here who’d walk in and cap my ass.”
        “Lock the door.”
        “It ain’t got no lock.”
         “Chair under the doorknob?”
        “Huh?”
         “Dimes, Ever sucker on the street is sayin’ you let the hammer down on No Jumps. Give it up now and I’ll see about takin’ the three needle cocktail off the table. Admit our offed him and you might get a medal.”
          “Hail far, Miss Maggs, I ain’t did shit. I hear Houston Red did No Jumps.”
           “You just make that up?”
           “Miss Maggs, knowin’ Red, I wouldn’t be surprised if you dug around in the Trinity beneath the Zangs Street Bridge whut y’all would find. That’s where he dumps any shit he wants to hide.”
            “Bullshit.”
            Dimes looked like he’d just swallowed a live gerbil.
 
                                                                            *

            Houston Red stayed in a one-room walkup on Birmingham. The door was wide open. Maggs walked in. A large gray sewer rat fled out. Red was on the floor valiantly trying to fuck to death the ugliest woman Maggs had ever seen. She spotted Maggs, shrieked, “Fuck me!”, clawed her way free, and ran buck naked down Birmingham screaming like she’d just laid a large egg. 
Red pulled pants over his fifty-three-inch waistline. 
           Maggs studied the woman, still visible running like a ruptured wart hog on the opposite side of Birmingham. She’d already caused two rear-end collisions. “Friend ‘a yours?”
          “Naw, she ‘jes a ho’.”
           Maggs listened to Red’s bullshit for twenty minutes before she got out her Glock and leveled up to shoot off his nuts. As he pissed his pants, he pleaded, “Dammit, Miss Maggs, it was that mope Two Dimes kilt Jumps. Some ‘a that bad blood. That lyin’ mu’fucker Dimes keep on goin’ ‘roun sayin I did No Jumps. I’ma gonna hafta let the air outta his rotten ass.”
            First thing next morning, they dragged the Trinity River at Zangs. The morning haul was a muddy .32 revolver with four spent and two unfired rounds, and Houston Red’s body with two bullets in the chest.
            In an hour, the lab squints had found Two Dimes’s DNA on the cylinder and had proven the piece had killed No Jumps and Houston Red both. Willy Two Dimes was well up shit creek. She called the lieutenant.
          “Maggs, jes’ fixin’ to call you with bad news. Two Dimes and his fourteen-year-old nephew was takin’ a boy out to kill him last night . . . contract hit. Two Dimes was drivin’, the mark was at shotgun, and the nephew in the backseat with a .45 against the victim’s head. The mark reminded the nephew how good he’d suck his dick, and the nephew seemed to agree and put one in Two Dimes’s head instead. Sorry to break up your good case.”
           “We got the nephew?”
           “The mark took the pistol away from the kid and blew off his head. Sorry you worked so hard on this deal.”
           “Sorry? Freakin’ halleluiah! We, by God, have removed from the streets, three genuine sorry pieces of shit and one more in incubation. Meet me at Louie’s. I’m buying for the house.”

           Gary Clifton, 30 years a cop, has been shot at, stabbed, sued, and lied to and about. He is currently retired to a dusty North Texas ranch and doesn't give a damn about much of anything. Clifton has six novels available on Amazon and other outlets. He has approximately 140 short fiction pieces published in Bewildering Stories and other publications. He is a review editor for Bewildering Stories. 

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      J. Elliott is an author and artist living in a small patch of old, rural Florida. Think Spanish moss, live oak trees, snakes, armadillos, mosquitoes. She has published (and illustrated) three collections of ghost stories and three books in a funny, cozy series. She also penned a ghost story novel, Jiko Bukken, set in Kyoto, Japan in the winter of '92-'93. Available in  Paperback and eBook on Amazon.