COUNCIL ESTATE DIRT BAG WANTS TO WANK YOU OFF

It had taken him hours to find one. He’d even started to think that they didn’t even exist any more. Extinct technology, gone the way of the fax machine and mini-disc. 

But now here he was standing before what was probably the last phone box in the city, a scrawled number in one hand and a pound coin in the other.

But now that he’d found one he was anxious of what he might find inside, or catch.

A part of him thought about walking away and forgetting the whole thing, but he he needed to call Julie, he needed to tell her that he was sorry, that he loved her and that he’d do anything to make it right.

Placing his hand in his jacket sleeve he opened the door and stepped inside. A stagnant wave of piss stung his nostrils and caused him to gag. He pushed the door back open, took a gulp of the relatively fresh air outside before diving back in, being certain to breath only through his mouth.

With his jacket sleeve still over his hand he lifted the receiver, unfolded the scrap of paper and inserted the pound coin into the slot. There was a series of loud clanks before his pound coin was promptly rejected into the change tray at the bottom. He tried it once more but was again greeted by his returned coin. He tried to place it in as gently as he could. It slid out. He put it back in, but this time with great force, but out it came once more.

He tried as many ways as he could think of putting a coin into a slot before he finally gave up and slammed down the receiver. He launched into a tirade of abuse against the machine, suggesting that its dwindling population was due to the fact that it was a cunt.

He put his back against the door and was about to leave when he noticed the crudely made adverts stuck to the back wall.

“Adult Massage”

“Live Cucumber Show” 

“Anal Angel. Dirty girl loves it up the arse”

“Fuck my wife!”

“Granny likes hot spunk in her old wet bucket. I’ll take any cock I can get!”

He suddenly found himself laughing and stepped forward to get a closer look at the filthy ads. Some made him laugh, others made him shudder and a few even made him feel physically sick.

What sort of a sad cunt would call these numbers!

  Then he came across one…

“Council Estate Dirt Bag Wants to Wank you Off, call Sue on: 07XXXXXXXX”

There was a picture attached of a middle aged blonde, not bad, looked a little like his Aunt Shirley. He’d always had a bit of a crush on his Aunt Shirley. Ever since her nipple had popped out of her bathing suit on their family trip to Málaga.

It was the first nipple he’d ever seen. 

He’d felt a strange stirring in his swimming trunks.

He stood staring at the picture for some time.

He slid in the pound coin, there was a click and the receiver suddenly came to life with an audible hum. With his jacket sleeve wrapped around his hand he typed in the number. There was a brief ring before the phone was answered.

“Hi sweetheart” a voice said on the other end.

“Is that Sue?”

Yucatan Sirens and Mission Bells

The siren on the ambulance wails, oscillating between rapid-fire cries and long, droning moans. The driver weaves in and out of traffic, honking his horn as yet another voice in our chorus, singing the city’s song of the night.

Raindrops pelt the windows and roof of the emergency vehicle as we careen through the city. I’m being tossed back and forth on the gurney, its safety straps having been left unbuckled. Flashing red lights reflect off of concrete buildings and the wet asphalt of the street flying by.

I can’t figure out why I’m being transported in an ambulance. Physically there doesn’t appear to be anything wrong with me, no blood or broken bones. There must be some kind of misunderstanding.

“Hey, excuse me!” I holler in Spanish. “Where are you taking me?”

Up front in the cab, the driver and his EMT partner are startled by my sudden outburst. Both of them jump from the unexpected voice, yelling at them from the darkness. The overhead lights flicker to life, both men staring back at me with terrified expressions on their faces. 

“¿Santiago que haces ahi?” (What are you doing there?), the EMT in the passenger seat screams.   

I recognize the voice. It’s Beto, my friend from the hospital. Suddenly everything becomes clear to my foggy mind.

I’d been sleeping in a decommissioned ambulance waiting on repairs in the hospital’s parking garage. I must have taken refuge in the wrong ambulance that night.

“Santiago, what are you doing back there?” Beto hollers. “You can’t be in here!”

“Sorry Beto, mi culpa,” I say. “Where are we headed?”

“Barrio de San Sebastian, big car accident. You’ve got to get out there. I can get in trouble. Understand?”

“Claro, desculpe,” (Of course, I’m sorry,) I reply.

It must be one or two in the morning, and I’m about to be dropped off in an unfamiliar barrio in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico.

I had just gotten out of Valladolid prison after serving 14 months. I had absolutely no money, not even enough for bus fare. My cousin in Sinaloa was supposed to be sending some startup cash to help get me back on my feet. I’d been waiting for two days now already, my survival hanging in the balance. I’m hungry and in desperate need of a shower and some clean clothes. And now I won’t even have a roof over my head.

It could be worse, it could be raining as I always say. And of course there’s a rainforest deluge presently raging outside. Always another trying element added to an already challenging situation. Never has any such scenario been easy for me. Without fail, a secondary obstacle always presents itself.

We reach the scene of the accident where there are numerous police cars, fire trucks, and other ambulances already present. It’s a large pile up involving five, maybe six cars along with two large produce trucks. One has spilled its cargo of fresh mangos, oranges, bananas and lettuce all over the place.

Exiting the back of the ambulance, my first instinct is to snatch up a few pieces of fruit as they roll across the street. I still don’t have a clue as to where the hell I even am, but at least I’ll have something to eat for now.

Scurrying in and out from under storefront overhangs like a gutter rat, I take refuge from the downpour, making my way toward a cathedral down the street. The church bells ring out a short melody before clanging twice, announcing the ungodly hour.

Finally reaching its large, ornate doors, I’m hoping to find shelter within. My hopes are quickly dashed, however, upon finding the church locked up tight. Pounding my fists on the doors, I shout until my voice goes hoarse, but no one will heed my calls. I think how unfortunate it is that churches are shut down at night. Do they think that people only require the assistance of a priest or the power of prayer during daylight hours? Is God now available only from eight to five, with an hour free for lunch and the customary two fifteen minute smoke breaks? Did the Catholic Church form some type of orthodox union? There should be no question as to why I’m a recovering Catholic myself.

I notice down the street what appears to be a commercial area with bars and restaurants. Quite possibly there may be a business still open I could loiter about without having to purchase anything. I peel a banana and shove half of it in my mouth, once again dodging from overhang to overhang as I make my way toward the neon oasis.

My hair and clothes are thoroughly soaked by this point, but I pull up my hoodie anyway out of habit. A lot of good it does me in rainstorm like this.

Passing by a Chinese restaurant, I stealthily duck inside, hoping to go unnoticed. Maybe I can hideout in the bathroom for a while, at least until the storm passes.

I haven’t made it two steps through the door before another guy in a hoodie jumps over the counter and points a pistol at my head. An old Chinese man stands near the cash register with his hands raised in the air. I immediately follow suit.

Just my luck to wander straight into a robbery.

The robber orders the restaurant owner to lay down on the floor. A voice from behind tells me to lower my hands so as to not alert any passing cars that a robbery is in progress.

Clearing out the cash register, his accomplice grabs me as they start toward the exit, dragging me along with them. As we reach the door, they begin pistol whipping me in the head, swiftly knocking me unconscious.

I’m awakened by a policeman slapping me in the face, telling me to get up. The old Chinese guy is pointing at me, screaming I was one of the perpetrators that had just robbed his restaurant. The cops already have me in handcuffs, trying to pull me to my feet.

“Officers, I had nothing to do with the robbery,” I attempt to explain, blood running down my face. “The perpetrators attacked me before they fled the scene. I just came in to use the bathroom and get out of the rain.”

They don’t say a fucking word in response, instead they just load me into the paddy wagon.

On our way to the station, we pass by the scene of the accident from before. The cops stop to check out the damage, one of them exiting the vehicle. 

“Officers, can I get some help with the cut on my head?” I yell through the barrier between us. “I think I might need to go to the hospital.”

“We will have an EMT take a look,” the cop behind the wheel replies. The other one walks around the back of the vehicle, and I hear the door unlock.

He pulls me out into the rain and we start walking toward an ambulance that’s still on the scene.

“Santiago what happened to you?” Beto hollers, glaring at the cop as he marches me forward. “Why are you in handcuffs? Did the police do this to you? Come here, let’s get out of the rain.”

I crawl into the back of the ambulance once again, wet, bleeding, and exhausted. The church bell rings three times, indicating three o’clock, making it seem like not much time has passed. For me, this night has gone on forever, a never-ending pesadilla (nightmare).

I explain the events of the robbery while Beto attends to my injuries. 

“Officer, he is going to need some stitches,” he says. “You should take him to the hospital or I can transport him in the ambulance.” 

“No, he’s under arrest robbery,” the cops says. “We will take it from here.”

“What I know about Santiago is that he’s no thief,” Beto declares in my defense. “You should know he came here with us in the ambulance earlier. He wasn’t with anyone else. Tell me why would they have beaten him if he was part of the gang?”

“The owner said he was one of the robbers,” the cop replies, wiping the rain from his face and shaking off his plastic Poncho. “We had to arrest him.”

“You didn’t have anything to do with it, did you Santiago?” Beto asks.

“I explained what happened to them but they weren’t buying anything I had to say,” I say. “Of course I didn’t have anything to do with the robbery. Just another instance of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Just then, the rain comes to an abrupt halt, the sky not spilling another drop. The clouds above part to expose a brilliant waxing moon upon a backdrop of sparkling stars, as though the cosmos itself was advocating for my innocence.

Taking me away, the cop begins walking me back to the paddy wagon. As we approach, the other cop gets out of the vehicle and motions to his partner to come over.

“They looked at the security video in the restaurant,” he says. “He’s telling the truth, he didn’t have anything to do with the robbery. The owner is in shock, probably doesn’t have a good memory. So we can let this guy go.”

“Do you have any identification?” the other cop asks.

I was hoping this situation wouldn’t present itself, but I pull an answer out of the dark like a magician.

“My passport, money, and everything I owned was in my backpack. The thieves took it. So my answer is no, I don’t have any identification. Is there a chance you could take me to the hospital? I don’t have any way to get there.”

“No, we’re not a taxi service. It’s only four kilometers (two and a half miles), straight down this street.”

“Great, thanks for your assistance. I’m touched by your kindness.”

Just then, Beto drives up with his partner in the ambulance.

“What is going on, Santiago? You need to get to the hospital or you’re going to bleed to death. The bandage I put on is already soaked with blood. It’s only temporary, you need to get to the doctor.”

“They’ve released me because the restaurant’s security footage showed I wasn’t involved. Now they won’t take me to the hospital. They’re just going to let me walk.”

“Walk! The hospital is ten kilometers (six miles) away. You could pass out before you get there.”

“The cops said it was only a couple of miles.” 

“They’re liars. We have two patients in the back already. I’ll get on the radio and see if another ambulance is available. If not, we’ll come back and get you, okay? Tranquilo jefe.”

He hands me a towel and a bottled water through the window and pats me on the back for reassurance. He then turns to the cops and gives them the finger with both hands. “Pinche cabrones, sin corazóns,” (fucking heartless assholes) he hollers as they drive off.

I watch the flashing red lights of the ambulance fade away into the city streets. I find a bench near the cathedral. A statue of Saint Michael vigilantly stands guard as I take a seat, leaning back in surrender to the demands of my exhausted physical condition. I drift off to sleep or quite possibly pass out. 

I wake up to bright lights, the sound of voices, babies crying and people moaning. The amplified voice of a woman paging Doctor Perez. I am warm and dry, and at what I assume to be the hospital. My head is wrapped in a gauze bandage. Beto walks up with a smile you couldn’t buy. He’s holding a large cup of what I hope is coffee. 

“Hey patron, you made it, you’re alive. Well there must be a God after all, because we both know it couldn’t be your luck that rescued you.”

He hands me the coffee and gives my shoulder a squeeze. Ordinarily I’d dispute his assertion that God was my savior, but I decide not to challenge him.

“How you feeling?” he asks.

“I just woke up. I must have passed out. I’m feeling fine so far. Not sure of how I got here or what happened after that. Anyway Beto, thank you for your kindness and support through all this chaos. You’ve been a great friend and I owe you.”

“Happy to hear you say that because your cousin’s friend came by the hospital garage this morning, asking for you and me. You must have given him my name I guess. I have to tell you, the muchacho scared me to my death. Where did you find this guy? Anyway, I brought him here but you were still out from the medication. So he left me some money and said for you to get a bus ticket to Mazatlan, Sinaloa when you are better. I have his phone number right here along with the money. There’s a lot of money here, Santiago. Who the hell is your cousin in Sinaloa? I have also a message for you in an envelope from your cousin.”

“Can you hold on to the money until I get out of here? I’m sure I already know what the message is, I’ll read it later. You don’t know how much I appreciate your help. I should be getting out of here today, don’t you think? “

I went to shake his hand and he responded with a puzzled look. “So, you going to tell me?” he asks.

“Maybe you could find the doctor and see when I can get released.” 

“Okay, but can you tell me, is he really your cousin? I mean for real? Him?”

“Unless one of us is an imposter, yes, he is my cousin. Now can you find the doctor please?”

“Okay patron, I’ll find him. Don’t go anywhere.”

“Don’t have any clothes on,” I laugh. “So pretty good odds I’ll be here when you get back.”

Sometimes the gods smile down on you and give you a break after all. Or it could be just a head start before the next ordeal begins.

Cold Cuts

This is how it all ended. 

Blyth’s Mom had stashed her dead husband’s service revolver in the cupboard up high once she found him playing with it as a kid. She drank a lot back then to deal with the stress of raising Blyth by herself and the whole dead husband cop thing – so we pretty much did whatever we wanted over there. His Dad bought it on the job, and she got his pension, a flag and his weapon, ‘cause back then cops paid for their own guns. Blyth didn’t remember his dead dad at all (he was six when he bought it) and once Mom sobered up and found out Blyth was showing all of us pre-teen kids who basically camped out in her rec room his revolver, it disappeared into her closet and we eventually all forgot about it.

‘Til last week.

“You think it’s still there?” I asked, as Blyth rolled. He’d mastered the art of navigating his Mom’s LTD, driving with his knees, as he built a joint. It wasn’t the type of skill that looked good on a job application but neither of us were applying for work anytime soon.

“Where else would it be?” Blyth answered, shaking his head at what was apparently another dumb-ass question from me.

Once his Mom got Jesus, stopped drinking and kicked all of us kids out of the basement, there was little reason to hang out with Blyth. The cool gun was gone, his Mom started handed out God comics and there was no more liquor cabinet to experiment with and steal drinks from.

But Blyth and I were in the ‘dead Dad’ club – a rarity in our neck of the woods. Divorces and separations were common, sure but only him and me had actual bonified for-real dead Dads.

“I checked the other night when she was out a prayer meeting. It’s still there. Plus, a box of shells. They’re all old – but bullets don’t go bad, do they?”

I shrugged, snagging the joint from Blyth as I torched the end as we sat in the car at the B-Mall looking at the Deli two rows over.

Piles of kids from Bloordale, the Middle School were lined up outside for the $4 Buck Special – a smoked meat sandwich, donut and soft drink – alongside a lunchtime sign stating only two kids at a time in the store.

Thick fragrant smoke filled the baby shit brown ride. Back then, we smoked Dumbos – Columbian bush weed nowhere near as strong as the shit out there now – but it got the job done.

“Bullets don’t go bad. Not that we’re gonna need any. He gets one look at the gun, we get the cash. In and out in two minutes…How many kids are out there right now?”

Blyth squinted through the salt-crusted windshield. It was cold as hell out there and the kids standing in line shivered as snow eddied around them. The big car we sat in rocked as a hard-arctic blast hit.

“I got at least twenty, and lunch is an hour. Look, two in, two out every minute. It’s a cash machine.”

I passed the joint back to Blyth as I did the math. 

Fifty minutes of solid business with two kids per minute times four bucks on average equaled four hundred bucks. Just at lunch. The old Italian guy who ran the place was making money. Money that was all paper. No credit cards or ATMS back then. In 1985, four-hundred bucks was a good weekly salary for someone. 

And this Guido was making this every day at lunch from a bunch of cheese-eating middle school kids. Who’d think of ripping that off?

“It’s gonna be a cinch,” Blyth said as he toked deep. 

Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.

***

I can still hear the siren now. It’s was a way off and I didn’t think it would get here at the time – but that doesn’t matter now. I couldn’t feel my legs and my right arm was bent weird underneath me. I’m glad I was numb. I couldn’t feel anything. The thing that worried me the most was the sucking, wet sounds from my chest. Every breath felt like someone sticking a knife in me. 

But I was still better off than Blyth.

“I don’t want to stay in the car,” I argued that night as Blyth dropped me off home. Final count for the afternoon rush was 54 kids in total. Even more than we thought.

“It’s my gun. I want to do it. You drive. I’m going to call the car in stolen anyway and it won’t help if people see me driving, will it?”

Stoned as we were, it made sense at the time, he’d say that his car was jacked at our school, Silverthorne that was on the other side of town, and he only noticed after lunch when he came out on a free period. 

“We book right at lunch, nobody will notice ‘cause everyone wants to go to Apache or The Goof for burgers, we blend in with everyone and then haul ass to the B Mall and get it done just as lunch ends. I call the cops after we dump the car at Nielsen Park and we walk away clean.”

We’d spent all night doing the math, figuring how long we needed, the best time to hit – at the end, obviously and what masks to wear. Blyth thought that wool balaclavas were the best – but where do you even get those full-face ski masks anyway?

“We go to Consumers Distributing, it’s super close to the Deli, just down a few stores. Buy the masks there and go do crimes. What could be easier?”

Consumers, the catalogue store, now long gone had a mail-order-in-person collection of goods that you ordered up front and picked up your stuff from a conveyor belt out the back. It was all about shopping convenience meaning that you could stock a shit ton of stuff without any in-store displays. You just looked up the picture in the catalogue they had there, ordered your stuff and it came out of the back.

“But we gotta get ‘em before the day we do it, right?”

Blyth looked at me like I had two heads. 

“Of course, we go early. I don’t want a shitty color or not get the size I want.”

When I was lying on the cold cement bleeding out, my ski-mask long gone, I laughed as best I could as the blood pooled on my jacket. Consumers had them alright – just extra-large only and Blyth was definitely not a XL.  Let me tell you, dudes can be just as vain as women when it comes to what they want to wear.  Especially to a robbery.

So, Blythe got his XL red ski-mask and I got the black balaclava and we pulled them on when we rolled into the B Mall when we finally picked a day. The day was Wednesday.

I pulled right up front to the Deli as the Guido inside was taking down the lunch special sign. He got one look at Blyth, bopping out of the car with his old man’s service pistol in his hand and he hauled ass back behind the counter. We were busted before we even started. I stayed, hunched down behind the wheel, praying even though God’s not for me.

“No bullets, no problem,” Blythe had said as he winked at me when we left his place. “See?” But somewhere between his place and me pulling up in front of the Deli, he’d pulled a switcharoo and loaded up anyway in the backseat. 

Now I could only see everything from where I was sitting and Blyth had his back to me once he raced inside – but I sure as shit heard the gun go off.

One. Two. Three. WTF?

I glanced about the Mall from inside the car checking to see if anyone else noticed the sharp staccato cracks. Winter tends to keep people moving fast when they’re outside and the wind and snow was kicking up still, so I hoped that no one had heard.

We were in luck. Outside, nobody had twigged to what was going down. Just people down by the supermarket and coming out of the convenience store. No witnesses.

I whipped back to the Deli, my foot revving the LTD in place, juiced by the noises as my mind raced. I didn’t figure that Blyth lied to me about the bullets but I guess he changed his mind. I had to pee bad.

The condensation on the Deli window created this porthole, you know, with tinsel and Xmas shit everywhere making it hard to see, like I said.

“C’mon, Blyth. C’mon.”

I was too scared what with the shooting and stuff to be pissed about him lying to me about loading the gun. My heart was smashing away, my mouth tasted like pennies and I still had to piss.

That’s when the alarm went off outside as Blyth raced out holding one of the cold cut sandwich bags the middle schoolers used stuffed with cash, 

When the front window exploded, Blyth took the hit in the back as I ducked down in the car. I felt him slam into his Mom’s ride as he howled in pain. 

And then nothing.

I jack-rabbited up, looking at the Deli guy behind the shot-to-shit window with a big-ass shotgun in his hands. He was bleeding with two holes in him already as he wobbled on the spot, trying to keep his scatter-gun on us.

I remember screaming for Blyth, looking down at my buddy who was slumped down on the ground, the whole back of his head just gone. 

“Blyth! Blyth!” I hollered, already knowing that it was pointless. 

It was when I opened the door and slid down next to my buddy that the window in the car blew out as the Deli guy shot at us again. I remember feeling something hit me, a hard slap in my coat as everything went grey for a second. 

People started screaming, closer now as I watched the Deli guy, still standing, crack open the gun and start reloading these big-ass shells.

I grabbed the wet bag out of Blyth’s hand and started to run.

In retrospect, I should have probably just jumped back in the car, hauled ass and dumped it like we planned. But I wasn’t thinking straight, Blyth was gone and I was scared shitless. I wasn’t so out of it that I didn’t grab the money though. I was scared – not stupid.

The B-Mall is one of those low-rise suburban motor courts with dry cleaners, a convenience store, a bank and a chain supermarket. We’d looked at all of them trying to figure out the best place to hit figuring the Deli was the easiest. We nixed the Family Restaurant and the Value-Mart as too many people and we had no idea how much shit Consumers actually sold – so the Deli with its big lunch cash run just made sense to us.

I looked back over my shoulder, tearing off my balaclava as I ran. This was another mistake as I saw the Deli door open and the bleeding guy with the gun stagger out. I’d left Blyth’s gun on the ground too and had spun backwards to track the guy, still hauling forwards.

I ran right off the stairs that lead to the lower basement area where a locksmith had his little shop. Two stories down. Forty-four concrete steps. My feet didn’t touch one of them.

I felt the arm break as the bag burst as I fell into the cement pit. I’d never paid much attention to this place before and I got no one to blame but myself for how this ended up. My head hit the wet cement and everything went white for a moment as I saw the money Blyth had grabbed floating in the air, a cascade of bills and coins.

I suppose it was the people too busy grabbing the money that kept the Deli guy from shooting me right there on the spot. I could hear him screaming in Italian and heard the cops screeching up as people slip-and-slided everywhere scooping up the lunch money from the ground and in the air as it floated down. 

After that, everything gets fuzzy.

So, I lived. Took a lot of work and hospital time but I live in Canada so it didn’t cost me anything to get patched up. Blyth was dead and my lawyer argued me down to a year in Juvie as I didn’t actually rob the guy and we claimed that I had no idea Blyth was going to rob the place. I’d lost my balaclava and they had no real proof against me as no one saw shit. My lawyer even put forward the idea of counter-suing the family once the Guido died of his wounds – but it didn’t feel right. The Crown knew I was guilty as shit but all they had me for was grabbing the stolen money on the ground which ended up getting thieved by everyone passing by at the mall. I lost a lung, got a busted arm and had to repeat Grade 11 because I was off sick so long what with the injuries and all.

Still, it could have been worse. I could have ended up dead like Blyth. 

They don’t offer the lunch special at the Deli any more. 

I don’t blame them.