Citybeat
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Whitey lived near the canal, in a cavernous loft, in a largely vacant industrial park.
“What’s not to love? Since the factories idled, you can hear a pin drop at night. And the stars came back. And the toxic runoff mostly washed out to sea.”
Whitey pointed to the waterway.
“People still crack jokes about the colour of the water. But it’s never been cleaner.”
Whitey went in all the time.
“You see the bridge where the 93 crosses over? That’s where the syndicate guys used to toss their guns after a job.”
When the weather was nice, Whitey liked to don his snorkel and see what he could salvage from the murky depths.
He drew a pistol from the end table.
“1911 Colt Government. I found it in a bucket of concrete, wrapped in an oily rag.”
He wasn’t troubled to think it might have been used to take a life.
“That’s a selling point for a certain kind of collector.”
Whitey was in the water again when tragedy struck.
“All of a sudden, I hear a woman cry: ‘he’s drownding!’ And out of nowhere this kid appears, fully dressed, and paddles by me into the shadows under the bridge. And a woman is crying, ‘My gawd! He’s drownding!’ But he wasn’t drowning, not as far as I could see, so I just headed home.”
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Whitey was opening the door when they caught up with him.
“Hold up, hold up,” a reporter called out, waving a microphone for attention.
She was a giant of a woman, barely contained by a straining yellow raincoat.
“Citybeat News. We’d like to get your account of the drowning.”
She turned to the man lumbering after with camera and equipment bags.
“Oye, Francisco. Hurry the fuck up. We gonna lose our light.”
She held out her hand.
“Remi Faso. Citybeat on the beat. Can we set up a shot?”
Cisco squeezed by with the equipment.
“The living room is good, yeah?”
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Whitey was skeptical.
“I mean, the kid was fine when I saw him. I couldn’t understand what the crying was about.”
Remi checked her notes.
Crying from the boy’s mother. Well, she wasn’t crying about her son. She saw a man struggling in the water, and the boy jumped to the rescue.”
Whitey shook his head. “Nobody else was in the water.”
Cisco leaned over. “Pepe died trying to save you.”
“Pepe?”
Cisco raised his hand as if to slap Whitey across the room, only to swipe away a tear.
“Little Pepito. He was such a good boy. His papa would have been proud.”
Remi patted his hand gently.
“Pepe was his favourite nephew,” she explained.
Cisco smiled bitterly. “Such a good boy. You know, he promised to give me one of his kidneys. Can you believe that?”
Cisco lifted his shirt to show a heavily tattooed midsection.
“You see? Mine’s no good. And now I will probably die, too.”
He hung his head.
Whitey didn’t know what to say. He wondered if the man was angling for a kidney. But Cisco didn’t pursue it.
Instead, he produced a shaving mirror and a razor blade and started chopping at a little white nugget.
Suddenly flushed, Remi unbuttoned the top of her coat, and Whitey was reminded of a giant popcorn kernel building up steam.
“So, you dig living out here?” She asked.
“What’s not to love?” Whitey replied.
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Cisco divided the powder into three long lines and brought the lot over for Whitey to do the honours.
“For Pepe,” he said in salute.
Whitey laughed at the idea that he would ever put Cisco’s mystery powder up his nose (especially with the cameras rolling).
But Cisco had a different idea altogether. He raised the mirror to his lips and blew the contents right into Whitey’s scoffing face.
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Whitey drifted back to the surface to see Cisco looming over him with a boom mic.
Remi’s voice approached from the side: “You know what I came for.”
Whitey didn’t know, but he couldn’t work his mouth to say so.
Remi grasped him by the ears, and he just caught a glimpse of her unencumbered breasts before he was smothered by her embrace.
“Oh, give it to me, daddy. Give it to me, and I’ll give it to you.”
Cisco leaned into the mic to answer for Whitey: “Oh, baby. I’m all yours.”
Remi climbed onto Whitey and started swaying in and out of view. “But, daddy, I don’t need all of you. Just. Oh. Just. Oh. One. Little. Oh. Oh.”
Cisco got in tight with the camera between her thighs, then pulled back to record her breasts crashing together like wrecking balls.
“Just. Oh. Oh.”
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For the finale, Remi performed an acrobatic manoeuvre that left her ass planted firmly in Whitey’s face. This made for spectacular footage, but between the crushing weight and the suffocating heaps of flesh, Whitey was pushed back into the darkness.
As he turned from blue to purple, Remi tried slapping him into consciousness with her tits, and when that didn’t work, she cried for an ambulance.
“Oh, my gawd. Is there a doctor in the house?”
Cisco, in a lab coat and a vintage headlamp, stepped into frame.
“Where is the patient?”
Remi stopped beating Whitey with her tits and waved frantically.
“Over here, doctor. I think I fucked him to death!”
Dr. Cisco gestured for her to climb off the patient as he retrieved a stethoscope from his bag.
Whitey gulped the wind back into his lungs, and his eyeballs settled into their sockets.
Remi bounced excitedly.
“You saved him, doctor!”
Cisco looked at her gravely and snapped on his headlamp.
“He’s not out of the woods yet! Fellate the patient!”
Remi hurried to comply.
Meanwhile, Cisco swabbed Whitey with a thick layer of yellow antiseptic.
“Stand clear!”
Remi backed out of the shot and pushed the camera in for a close up of the action.
It was a bloody business. But Cisco knew how to handle a blade, and the ordeal was soon over.
He packed Whitey’s kidney into an insulated bag.
Remi’s voice approached from the side.
“Give it to me, doc. Give it to me, and I’ll give it to you.”
A leering Cisco turned his head slowly to the camera and snapped off the headlamp.
“And cut!” He shouted.
“That was good.”
They congratulated each other as they collected their gear, and Cisco let Remi know what a star she was.
Then a car pulled into the drive.
Cisco shoved the 1911 into his waistband and headed out the door.
It was a quiet night, and Whitey could hear the car speeding up the 93. It stopped for a moment at the bridge, and Whitey could swear he heard a splash in the canal, and then the car continued on its way.
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