"Oh, come the fuck on," James said as he slapped an open palm against the dash of the car, somewhere above the glove compartment, "there is no way Bob Saget hasn't had sex with the Olsen Twins. I just can't fathom it. If he didn't, then, well...I don't know if I want to live in a world with such stupidity."
"Dude," Greg replied while staring straight ahead at the road, trying to keep his focus on driving, "think about it. They were little fuckin' kids when Full House was on. What, you think Danny Tanner was getting it on with a couple of three year olds?"
James threw his hands into the air at his partner's statement, eyes rolling back into his head. "You are so not looking at the big picture here, man. Of course Bob didn't have sex with them when they were filming Full House. That's just sick...unless, y'know, he's related to Jerminy somehow. But c'mon, he played their dad for how many years? He was as close to a surrogate father as those little bitches could get. When the two little monkey girls suddenly sprouted tits - millionaires with tits, mind you - don't you think ol' Unca Bob didn't try to get a little piece? I know I sure as fuck would've."
Spinning the steering wheel of the car in his hands, Greg sighed. "You're probably right...but I don't think it was Saget. It wasn't that loser that made the lame jokes either... Uncle Jesse hit that shit."
"No, no, no," James again argued, "wrong again. Uncle Jesse - despite being the coolest fucker on T.G.I.F. - had Rebecca Romijn to fingerbang every night. I'm sorry, yeah, the Olsen cunts are hot and all, but when you've got Mystique rolling around in your sheets you don't tend to fuck that up."
"But they got divorced," Greg countered, "maybe because of a little adolescent infidelity?"
"Can you two please just shut the fuck up?" a deep, gravelly voice said from the back of the sedan. Greg glanced up into the rear-view mirror, catching their passenger's face while illuminated by a cigarette lighter. His face was the epitome of seething frustration.
"Yessir," James said sheepishly, "no problem, Mr. Cordova."
Thomas Cordova exhaled the smoke from his puckered lips, reclining back into the leather seat with full confidence that he would be listened to. He hated Atlantic City with a passion, and since that moment all those years ago, when he finally managed to break away from the city that had nearly killed him for the bright lights of New York, he had made it a point not to return to his birthplace without good fucking reason. His little brother was the reason this time, one sibling requesting the presence of the other at a gala event in Quentin's honor. He wasn't sure just what the party was supposed to be for, but all Tommy wanted to do was make an appearance, shake his brother's hand, then get fuck home.
He had no idea that he'd never see New York City ever again.
As the driver - who, along with his partner, doubled as a crack security team - turned onto the Atlantic City strip, the traffic seemed to part the way for them. They had an open lame all the way to their destination, something neither Greg nor James had seen before in their years as wheel-men. James simply shrugged and tapped Greg on the shoulder, keeping his voice to a whisper. "Two words," he said, "Candace Cameron."
Greg smiled and nodded, but his reply was cut off by the shattering of glass. A small hole exploded into the car through the windshield, causing both men to jump in surprise. "Holy jumpin' Jesus!" Greg yelled as he pulled hard on the steering wheel and slammed his foot on the brake, sending the car into a careening tailspin down the deserted street. The vehicle finally came to a sudden stop as it crashed into a fire hydrant on the sidewalk, causing the street and car to become instantaneously drenched in water.
"Did someone just shoot at us?" James asked, already halfway out the car with his shotgun in hand.
"It was a sniper," Greg answered as he looked around the interior of the car, "and if he wanted to hit me or you, we'd be dead by now."
"Then what the fuck, man...?" James began, his question already answered by the time he looked at their passenger in the back seat.
Despite the car's bullet-resistant glass, the shoddy lighting provided by the casino neon on the roadsides, and the distance such a shot would have required...Thomas Cordova was dead from a gunshot wound to the face.
And everything was going exactly according to plan.
ARTIFICE AMERICA
LUV + H8
Chapter Two: "The Devil in the Dark Blue Suit"
By Chris Munn
Henry Savant VIII tugged on the collar of his shirt, freeing his throat from the constriction of the bowtie that was affixed around his neck. He looked horrible in the tuxedo, like someone had stapled a bat to his throat. His slight gut was pressed tightly against the belt that kept his slacks from falling down, and he was just incredibly uncomfortable. He hated dressing to the nines, but as he stood in the corner of the Empire Ballroom he thanked his lucky stars that he at least had his anonymity intact.
He'd been asked to attend the party by his boss - his childhood friend - Quentin Cordova. He'd been in attendance for over an hour, and he still didn't know why he'd been asked to come. He'd watched through eyes half closed by boredom as Quentin made his way through the people that had paid their money to be seen amongst Atlantic City's high society. A famous actor, the one from that movie that Henry had been forced to endure but just couldn't understand why dames loved it, had already made a drunken embarrassment out of himself. A politician, one that he couldn't help but believe to be way too conservative for his old friend's tastes, was giving out handshakes like they were hundred dollar bills to anybody that chanced a glance in his direction. Cordova seemed to be perfectly at home amongst them all, smiling so broadly that it just couldn't have been genuine, swimming through the sea of people like a shark ready to feast at any moment.
And then there was Henry, who was perfectly happy being ignored. A slightly tipsy model had been the only one to attempt a conversation, but Savant brushed her aside with barely a grunt. Not enough meat on her bones for his liking, he'd reasoned, but that wasn't it. Not the real reason, anyway.
"Weren't you in that movie?" the girl had asked, her arm clumsily slipped around his, her drink sloshing out onto the floor with each broad movement of her hand. "You know, that black and white one that came out a while back?"
If he'd had much of a sense of humor, Henry would have cracked up right then. His look of accusing stupidity had silenced the petite blonde, causing her to go away with her nose turned up in the air. He was standing alone again, buried so far deep into the background that he might as well have been invisible. But that suited him just fine...if he had to attend such a stupid party of insincerity and ass-kissing, then he'd just rather not be noticed at all.
It also gave him an undeniable advantage, being invisible and unloved. He was able to observe his surroundings without distraction, without fear of being interrupted by conversing retards. His gaze occasionally wandered across the faces of the sycophants populated around him, but ultimately his eyes always fell back on Quentin. Sharks and guppies, he again though to himself. Taking a sip of his champagne, the most expensive alcohol he'd ever tasted in his life, Henry was bored out of his mind.
"How's it hanging, chief?" a voice said from beside him. Henry allowed his eyes to shift to his right, catching sight of a young man leaning against the wall, a small plate of cocktail shrimp resting in his hand. Glasses teetered on the bridge of his nose, ready to fall off at the first nervous twitch. His hair was meticulously sculpted into a mess, an attempt to make people think he didn't care about his appearance when he obviously had taken a bit of time to look so disheveled. The stranger smirked as he shoveled another shrimp into his mouth.
"Do I know you?" Savant grunted, his eyes returning to the crowd of people in the center of the room.
"Probably not," the young man answered, small bits of food flying from his open mouth as he spoke, "but I know you. Or, well, of you, anyway. Ol' Quenty can be quite a Chatty Cathy when he gets a few drinks in him. Says you're his right hand man, his # 1... Spock to his James T. Kirk. Heir to the throne and all that."
After barely thirty seconds, Henry already hated the man with a passion. Information was power in nearly every game in the book, and this boy knew way more than he should, regardless of whatever association he had with Cordova. Henry was already deciding how he could quietly kill the stranger when he noticed something he'd been waiting for since he'd first arrived at the party. Quentin was coming over to him, breaking away from the throng of admirers to pay his respects to the man that had been with him since the start.
"Henry, I'm sorry I haven't had a chance to do this yet," Cordova said as he took his friend's hand in his, shaking it firmly, "but I am Man of the Hour and everything."
"It's okay," Henry replied.
Cordova flicked his eyes over to the stranger and nodded in greeting. "Hello, Mr. Frost. Enjoying yourself?"
"I ass-fucked a supermodel in an upstairs broom closet," Fenton Frost replied as he tossed the empty cocktail plate into the base of a decorative tree beside him, "so yeah, you could say I'm having a grand old time."
"Wonderful," Quentin stated as he turned back toward Henry, proving that he hadn't listened to a word Frost had said, "how about you, Henry?"
"Why am I here?" Henry asked without hesitation. "I'm still waiting for your big announcement."
"And don't you worry," Cordova answered, "you'll hear it soon enough."
"If a shark stops swimming," Henry advised as he took one last swig of his champagne, emptying the glass, "it dies."
"Mr. Cordova," Steve, Quentin's personal bodyguard, said as he approached from behind his employer, placing a hand on his shoulder, "I have some bad news. Please, come with me...this isn't something you should hear in a room full of people."
"Of course," he said, shooting a smile at Henry before leaving, "I'll catch up with you again, later."
Frost sighed and stretched his arms above his head as Cordova left the two men alone in the back of the crowd once again. "I think I'm gonna go mingle a bit," he said to the uncaring hitman, "pay attention to the work of art that'll be attached to your boss's arm later. I'm mighty proud of it, and I think you'll dig it."
Henry narrowed his eyes at Frost's back while he walked away into the population. Oh yes, killing him was going to be a must.
***
His name was Salvador Escalante, and he was the undisputed whoremaster of Atlantic City. One of the "Council of the Damned" in Quentin Cordova's criminal empire, Escalante was the head of the syndicate's prostitution ring. Everything from twenty dollar crackwhores to thousand dollar plastic-enhanced escorts were at his beck and call, meaning he never went a night without running the gamut of blowjob aficionados.
And at the moment he was snorting a line of cocaine from the double D chest of a seventeen year old girl, high as a fucking kite and ready to party. He'd heard about Cordova's gala event through the grapevine, but the overly-tanned and grotesquely clothed Salvador hadn't paid the news much of a mind. Of course, he would have liked an invitation - too many of those parties contained whores just waiting to break out of debutante shells - but what concern was it of his if his boss decided to rub elbows with the filthy rich?
Thomas Cordova had died only ten minutes before, and Escalante had no idea what was about to happen.
Undoing his bathrobe and relaxing back into the satin sheets of his circular bed, Salvador smiled a shield of yellowed teeth at the pretty little redhead that was crawling between his legs. "Go ahead and suck it, baby," he said, his voice thick with a Cuban accent, "and make it good. Coke dick is as easy to get up as the sun during an Alaskan winter."
Salvador closed his eyes and let his head fall back into the pillow as the girl wrapped her lips around his cock, pierced tongue working its magic as she kissed and sucked. Had his eyes been open, would he have even noticed the shadow that moved across his blacklight-lit bedroom? "Oh, you are gonna make me so much money, you bitch," Escalante purred as the girl suctioned her mouth to his penis and cupped his testicles in her hands. With her mouth occupied, she wasn't able to question the pressing of a strange object against he back of her head.
The pull of a trigger shot the bullet through the silencer, piercing the back of her skull and exiting with incredible precision directly through her mouth, striking the head of Salvador's dick. The teenage girl's mouth exploded in blood, teeth flying like shrapnel into her pimp's soft flesh. She was dead, but the suction created by the lips still continued, the twitching of her body continuing the act of fellatio on Escalante's burst member.
"Oh, fuuuuuuuck!" Salvador screamed as he attempted to pull the dead girl's head from his crotch, the pain from his injury mixing with the pleasure of the death rattle blowjob.
When he finally looked up, his screams stopped and his eyes widened in panic. The man in the dark blue business suit smiled at him...a smile of bone from the skull mask stretched across his face. The assassin raised the pistol and fired again, directly into Salvador Escalante's face.
And everything was going exactly according to plan.
***
He noticed him as he wove between the people in the crowd, making his way toward him in as direct a line as possible in the busy room. Henry drew hard on his cigarette and leaned against the wall, deciding against meeting him halfway. For whatever he wanted, he would have to come to him, not the other way around.
He thought he could possibly grow to enjoy being the boss.
"Mr. Savant," Steve Cobalt said as he stopped a few feet away, his facial expression showing just how difficult it was to address Henry as someone of importance, "Mr. Cordova wishes to speak with you in private."
"Then let's go," Henry replied, tossing the half-smoked cigarette onto the marble floor. Steve led him through the crowd, toward the staircase of the grand hall that sat nestled at the base of the Emperor Hotel, and Henry kept his eyes focused on his guide. Cobalt had been a professional boxer, close to fifteen years ago, that had fallen on hard times. Thrown fights, steroid addictions, gambling debuts grown fat and dangerous...all had transpired to turn a proud athlete into someone desperate to survive. Quentin Cordova had given Steve the position of head bodyguard, and he had been quite successful in the endeavor. Intimidation went a long way, and a former middle-weight champion of the world was heavy intimidation indeed.
"Mother fucker!" Henry heard from the hallway, followed by a loud crash. Steve, ever aware of his job as a bodyguard, shoulder-pushed his way through the oak double-doors, gun drawn and in the air. Standing in front of a broken coffee table was Quentin, sweat drenching his forehead enough to make his normally-greased hair break into unruly waves.
"Boss, everything okay?" Steve asked as he placed the gun back in his shoulder holster beneath his sport-coat.
"No, everything is most certainly not okay!" Cordova shouted while motioning for Henry to come closer. Steve closed the doors behind them, taking post outside of the room in order to ward off any curious passers-by.
"Henry, this is John Franklin," Quentin said, pointing out the man sitting on the room's sofa love-seat. "He's a dick on our - excuse me, your - payroll. One of the Council."
Franklin stood and took Henry's hand in his, shaking it firmly. Henry eyed the man curiously, examining the bad toupee and ratty trench-coat that made him look every bit the stereotypical police detective. "I just told Quentin that we pulled his brother's dead body out of a car about an hour ago, tapped once in the head by a sniper firing from god knows where. He didn't take the news very well."
"Henry, I want you on top of this as soon as this party's over," Quentin ordered after pouring himself a drink. The glass was shaking in his hand. "No mother fucker kills my brother and gets away. I need you to do this for me, because after tonight I can't have anything to do with our organization. Not if I'm going to be mayor."
"Consider it done," Henry answered, a reassuring hand placed on his friend's shoulder.
"Thank you," Cordova said, and then he swallowed the brandy in one upturned shot. "I have to get back downstairs now. I have a speech to give. Johnny, give Henry anything he needs. He's your new boss."
Straightening his bowtie, Quentin walked through the doors, followed down the hall by the ever-present Steve. Still standing in the room, Henry looked over at Franklin. The corrupt police officer smiled and lit a cigarette. "Hail to the chief, man."
***
"So, okay, get this. I used to know this guy that was all about the pussy. I know, I know, what guy ain't, right? But this dude was different. You've heard of people who have fetishes, where they're obsessed with weird shit that really shouldn't turn a man on, but for these guys it does? He was like that, and his fetish was piss."
Letting his cliffhanger of a statement linger in the air, Jerminy Cricket took a swig of his beer. Sarah was dancing on stage, and he'd taken a seat a few tables back from the front row for a good view. The guy sitting next to him motioned with a bobbing of his head and impatient look on his face.
"Yeah, that's nasty as shit," the other man said over the thumping bass of the Open Slot's stereo system, "but it ain't that weird."
Jerminy smirked at his friend's statement. "Check it, Knuck," he said as he placed his bottle back onto the table, "the guy was banging this chick a while back, some dumb skank, and one night he was cock punching her in the dirt-star. He suddenly gets the urge to piss, and he tells her "hey, I gotta piss", right? She tells him to go ahead, meaning to go ahead and pause for a bathroom break. The guy just shrugs and goes "okay", and pisses in the bitch's ass."
"Oh, fuck that," the other blurted out, "no way."
"That's not the funny part," Jerminy retorted. "The chick looks back over her shoulder at him and asks "did you just cum?". The guy just looks back at her with a big ol' goofy grin and says "nope"."
"Yeah, on that note," the other man says as he stands from the table, "I'm gonna go piss myself. Maybe some chick will be sprawled out in the urinal for me."
Jimmy "the Knuckle" Gray couldn't help but laugh slightly at his friend's story as he made his way through the crowded strip club, on a bee-line for the bathroom in back. Gray was another of Cordova's "Council of the Damned", and his vice-extraordinaire was fight-fixing. The Knuckle was the one responsible when a boxer in Atlantic City took a dive in the fourth for a healthy sum of money. He was also the one who would beat the shit out of any boxer that had the nerve to not go down when told. He was starting to press on in years, though, and his once muscular physique was starting to sag and fatten. He was still big, bigger even than Jerminy, and he often noted to himself that the Cricket made him feel like he was young again.
As he walked in the bathroom, he had no idea that Tommy Cordova and three of his fellow Councilmen had been murdered.
Stepping up to the urinal, the Knuckle unzipped his pants and started the stream of urine. He'd broken the seal about fifteen minutes beforehand, and he knew that he'd be on a ten minute pissing regime for the rest of the night. His eyes wandered around the empty bathroom as he urinated, and his eyes fell on an open window above and to the left of him. Someone had obviously decided to sneak in without paying the cover, he noted, and he'd have to have a talk with the owner after he finished.
He felt the muzzle of the silenced gun pressing against the back of his skull at the last moment, and then his exploded in a splash of blood against the white wall in front of him. Jimmy's body fell straight down, his damaged face landing directly in the puddle of piss resting in the drain of the urinal. A hand reached forward to the handle at the top of the urinal and pulled it down, flushing yellow and red liquids down into the drainage pipes.
"Hey, Knuck," a voice said from the door, "I got another one for you."
Jerminy stalled in his tracks when he saw the man in the dark blue suit standing over the dead body of his friend. Normally, he would've had his gun drawn and fired in the span of only a few seconds, but this time he hesitated. The skull mask stretched over the assassin's face gave him pause, confused and frightened him for just long enough. The gunman with the skull-face moved as a blur, his gun positioned and fired at Jeremy in one rapid motion. The bullet came with a slight hissing of air and slid like a razor across his temple, spinning him around like at top. Jerm's face collided hard with the door frame behind him, knocking him unconscious.
The killer in the dark blue suit stood over Jerminy Cricket for several long minutes, gun leveled at the unconscious man's head. He wasn't going to kill him if he didn't have to, because he wasn't on the list. Finally he moved toward the window, ready to make his escape.
And everything was going exactly according to plan.
***
Henry stood at the edge of the crowd, John Franklin at his side. The two men had made some minor introductions to one another before making their way back to the party, arriving just as Quentin was taking his place at the podium. He had the room wrapped around his finger from the moment he began to speak.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Cordova began into the microphone, "hell, we're all friends here after tonight. You're all standing witnesses to something that most of you never thought would happen. Finally, after the strangle-hold that's been on this city due to the ineptitude of Lorenzo Langford, our current esteemed mayor, someone has made the decision to stand up and declare a notice of war."
Henry took notice of who was standing at his friend's side. To the left was the honorable Senator William Gormley, representative of the great state of New Jersey, the man who was assumed made all of Quentin's plans a reality. But it was the person to Cordova's immediate right that took Henry's breath away.
It was the girl from the bathroom shower, the one that Henry had thought to be dead, and he thought it impossible that she looked even more beautiful than before. Long blonde hair hung in curls down across the sides of her face, accenting the stark-silver dress that conformed oh-so-tightly to her body. A diamond necklace hung across her neck, sparkling in the bright ballroom lights. She was perfection, and Henry suddenly found it very difficult to breathe.
"So it is on this night," Quentin continued, "that I - the city's most generous citizen - make public my candidacy for mayor in the upcoming primary elections. With your ample contributions to the war chest, and the 7,500 signatures that have been collected, I can finally make the dreams of the everyday Atlantic City resident a reality!"
The room exploded in cheers and handclaps, but Henry's eyes remained locked on the girl that had struck him so hard with her beauty. She had kept her attention on Quentin during the speech, but as he finished up her eyes began to wander...and they hit Henry's on a direct lock.
And then she smiled.
Savant fought his way through the crowd as the room rushed in upon Quentin and his entourage, everyone eager to shake the hand of the next mayor of Atlantic City. The girl had broken away at Cordova's urging, and she slipped away toward a far corner of the crowd to await her man's return. "Excuse me," Henry said as he nearly knocked over the actor he'd noticed earlier in the evening.
She turned just as Henry approached, and her blank expression transformed into a radiant smile. Searching for breath when he stopped in front of her, he simply outstretched his hand toward her. "I'm Henry," he said after a few pants for air, "I'm a friend of Quentin."
"Lilly," she said, accepting his hand in hers. Her voice was incredible - it was a dozen angels singing the praises of God, the most beautiful sound he'd ever heard. "I'm very pleased to meet you."
He was at a loss for words. What could he possibly say to her to express how he felt. He didn't even know why he was feeling such emotion toward a woman he'd only seen once before in his life, nor why she would be so accepting of an over-the-hill bruiser such as himself. What words could possibly come from his mouth that would make her love him?
"I'm... very pleased to meet you... too," he stuttered, mentally kicking himself in the balls for saying something so stupid.
He hadn't noticed that they were still holding hands until he felt the movement of her little finger brushing softly against his palm. She bit her lower lip and stared into his eyes, as if she were receiving an answer to a question she'd waited a lifetime to ask. Her mouth opened, cautiously, as if to speak...
The hand slapped down hard on Henry's shoulder, shattering the spell that had made him oblivious to his surroundings. Her hand slid away from his quickly as she looked past him, backing up a few steps to eliminate the intimacy of the encounter. Henry turned in confusion to find Fenton Frost with a wine bottle gripped in his free hand. "Hey babe," Frost said to Lilly, "why don't you go grab your man a drink. Give us boys some huddle-time."
Lilly nodded immediately and bid her farewell, forcing Henry to watch helplessly as she disappeared back into the crowd. "Can I help you?" he asked as he turned toward the very drunk Fenton, his rage building with each passing moment.
"I told you she was something, man," Frost said with a laugh, "but trust me, that girl is as high-maintenance as they come. Leave that filly for your boss and find yourself something with a little more...substance."
Angry, as much at himself as with Fenton, Henry roughly pushed his way forward, spilling some of Frost's wine with the force of his shove. He moved back toward the staircase, where Johnny Franklin was waiting.
"I think we have a job to do," Henry said as he directed Franklin back up the stairs, "and I'm in the mood to hurt somebody very badly..."
To be continued...