= "Good Eats"
  by Laird Long


"Open it!"
  
The little jeweler stared at Morgan, terrified. His eyes poured tears onto the floor. His emaciated body trembled spasmodically with fright. Morgan pointed the big gun at the jeweler's cadaverous head and hissed, "Open the goddamn case."

They stood looking at each other for ten long, torturous seconds - a game of eyeball chicken that had no place in what was supposed to be a jab and grab armed robbery. Suddenly, the jeweler's bony, quivering face settled into place, like concrete. His expression became hard--defiant.
  
"What the hell's going on?" Annie shouted in a tight voice from her post at the door. She shifted her gaze nervously between the street outside and the men inside. "Why isn't the little bugger opening the display cases!" Her shrill voice quickly sank into the warm sunlight and disappeared. 
  
The gun stayed steady. The jeweler's liquid eyes stayed steady. The jeweler had been robbed three times in the past two years. Brutally beaten, the last time. He had been driven out of his old store in the old neighborhood by the convulsing and darkening inner-city landscape. Two weeks ago, he'd been diagnosed with throat cancer and given six months.
  
The jeweler shrugged his puny shoulders. His mouth twitched and he gasped, "Sorry." He reached under the counter and pressed the alarm button. Morgan shot him point-blank in the chest. The frail body hit the wall, then fell to the floor and found a final resting place on the dirty carpet. Blood speckled the display cases. The jewels winked seductively under the harsh fluorescent light.
  
The 'whoop, whoop' of the alarm was deafening. A bolt shot into place on the front door, like a prison cell slamming shut. Annie rattled the door. Locked. "We can't get out!" she screamed.
  
Morgan smashed the front of the glass display cases with the butt of his gun. He shoveled diamonds onto the floor with a sweep of his arm. "Grab what you can!" he called to Annie. 
  
Annie ran towards him. She lost her footing on the gem-laden floor and pitched forward. She banged her head with a thud, then sat up, groggy. A bullet tore through the store-front window and buried into the plaster just above Annie's head. She giggled stupidly as the dust fell on her like rain.

Morgan yelled: "Cops!"

He fired a shot out the window, spun around, pulled Annie off the floor, and ran for the back door. The window exploded with gunfire behind them. They raced down a narrow, dirty corridor and barreled through the emergency exit door. They charged down a sun-drenched alley and ran free.

* * *

"Why'd you have to kill him?" Annie asked, for the third time.

Morgan groaned. He pushed a thin, pale hand through his greasy black hair. He picked up a paper cup and swallowed the bitter dregs of cold coffee. He didn't bother answering. He knew that there were no answers. And on top of that, the whole robbery had been for nothing.

"We gotta get outta here in the morning," he said.

Annie nodded her head. "I don't like this place, anyway," she said, a frown flowering on her face. She was nineteen and pretty--she wanted excitement and she got it. She slid off the narrow metal bed and tip-toed up behind Morgan. He was sitting in a wooden chair, looking out the window and picking at a scab on the side of his pock-marked face. She wrapped her arms around his scrawny neck and pressed her warm face against his. 
  
"I love you, you know," she whispered.

Morgan felt the cold lump in his guts thaw ever so slightly. He patted her arm reassuringly. "Sure," he said. At forty-five years old, most of that behind bars, he was damn lucky to have anyone say something like that to him. 

They had met through a prison pen-pal program. She had written to him as part of her community service. He had written back out of sheer boredom - she was a way to pass the time. They met when he was released. They stuck. Morgan had taken her away from her little town with its little people and shown her the big cities. 

Morgan pushed her arms away and stood up. "Here comes Grinder," he said.

They both stared out the dirt-crusted window.

What appeared to be a tub of suet poured into a pair of grease-stained overalls was waddling across the motel parking lot. The fat man sweated hard and heavy under the glaring sun, but he kept a stupid grin pasted to his face. He ambled up to Room Six and knocked loudly on the door.
  
Morgan split the door open a crack. "Yeah?"

Grinder spat a stream of black chaw onto the dead yellow grass. His moonface beamed. "Everthin' okey-dokey?"

"Sure. Thanks for lettin' us stay."

Grinder spat another black stream. Some of it dribbled down his unshaven chins and he wiped it away with an oily rag. "No prob, man. Everone knows Grinder's got a cool place to stay--if'n you're hot." He smiled a crooked smile. There were gaps between his brown teeth big enough to fit your finger through, if you didn't value your finger. "Long as they don't say nothin' 'bout the chop shop out back, course." He grunted with laughter.

"We're takin' off in the morning," Morgan said. Grinder was the kind of slow-witted slob he normally wouldn't waste a word on. A fist, maybe, but not a word. 

Grinder bobbed his bald, sun-burnt head in agreement. He tried to look over Morgan's shoulder and into the room. The expression on his face became thirty degrees goofier. "What's Annie up to, anyhow?"
  
"Whatever I say." Morgan shut the door.

* * *

Morgan was up at six the next morning. Annie lay sleeping on the lumpy bed, a satisfied smile on her pouty, saliva-flecked lips. Morgan tucked the ratty bed cover under her chin and kissed her nose. He went down to the newspaper case at the front of the motel. The highway was quiet, the air was hot. He shoved three quarters into the slot and cracked open the case. The headline hit him so hard that it took his breath away: 'Five Carat Diamond Missing'. He slammed the lid down and slowly read the story. The diamond was worth twenty thousand dollars. It was the only item unaccounted for from yesterday's bungled jewelry store robbery. 

Morgan crushed the newspaper into a ball and fired it into a nearby garbage can. He stormed into Room Six and punched Annie in the head. She woke up and blinked her eyes. He punched her again.

A half-hour of muffled screams and blistering obscenities brought Grinder crashing through the door. "What the hell is goin' on?" he yelled. His muddy eyes widened at the sight of Annie's naked, blood-splattered body on the floor.

"The bitch has been holdin' out on me!" Morgan screamed. He was stripped to the waist, his wiry body covered with sweat, his chest heaving for air. His eyes were crazy.

Annie slowly crawled out of the corner and curled around Grinder's feet like a dog. "Help me," she whispered through broken teeth. Her face was blue and pulpy, and there were welts all over her body.

Grinder stared at the broken furniture, at Annie, at Morgan. The dirt-clogged gears in his thick head ground slowly. He thought about the newspaper he had plucked out of the garbage can a while back. 

Morgan ignored him. He shouted at Annie. "And where'd you get the fifty?" He angrily balled up a dirty bill and threw it towards her. The spilled contents of her purse lay on the bed. "We had twenty bucks between us when we hit this dump!" 

Grinder grinned sheepishly. He chuckled. He couldn't help himself--fifty bucks was a small price to pay for thirty minutes of Annie. Grinder swallowed his chuckle when he saw that Morgan was glaring at him. Rage roared through Morgan's veins, and his face had turned fish-belly white. "You son of a bitch," he whispered through clenched teeth.

Grinder gulped for air. He twisted his big clumsy feet away from Annie's grasping hands and stumbled backwards. Morgan tore Annie off the dirty carpet and choked her, hard, then chucked her body on the bed. Her big breasts quivered for a moment and then were still. She was a piece of meat.
  
"You-you k-killed her," Grinder stuttered.

"Sure," Morgan replied.

They stood there, staring at Annie's body. Flies buzzed through the suffocating, sweat-drenched room.

"Did-did you find the diamond?" Grinder finally asked. 
  
Morgan snapped out of his blood trance. "Tore her and the room apart. Nothin'!" He spat on the floor.

Grinder carefully slipped a heavy cast-iron wrench out of his toolbelt and swung hard and fast, caving Morgan's head in. He wiped the blood and brains off the wrench with an oily rag, then wiped his sweaty face with the rag. He picked up Annie's broken body and carried it out to the garage in back of the motel. The building was full of stolen cars in various stages of undress.

Grinder carefully placed Annie's body on a high metal table and sliced her stomach open with a razor-sharp hunting knife. He felt along her intestines until he found a lump. He cut the big diamond loose and held it up to the light. It winked seductively under the harsh fluorescent lights, then slipped out of his slimy fingers and clattered onto the metal table. "That girl sure 'nough could swallow," he said, and grunted with laughter.

* * *	

Grinder stared openly at the woman's large breasts, a simple grin on his fat face, like a thirsty man ogling a pitcher of ice-cold water. The woman sitting across the table gave him a paid-for smile. She cut another piece off her steak and chewed, trying to think about everything except Grinder's naked body--she still had dessert coming, after all.
  
Grinder pushed up the left sleeve of his suit jacket, the better to show off his new gold wristwatch. His right pinkie finger deliberately jumped up and down, the ring on the sausage-like digit flashing in the dim light. Satisfied that everyone knew how important he was, he stuffed a thick chunk of blood-red meat into his mouth and let loose with a huge, contented belly-laugh. The meat skidded down his throat and stuck in his windpipe. He began to choke. The waiter tried to help but couldn't get his arms around Grinder's bloated chest. The woman sat back and watched. Maybe, she thought, if she said he'd been her fiance, they'd let her keep the ring.


LAIRD LONG. Weekday number-cruncher, weekend wordsmith. His genres are hardboiled and humor. Big guy. Born in the sixties, attitude from the fifties. Credits include: 'Classic Pulp Fiction', 'Detective Mystery Stories', and 'Blue Murder Magazine'. Hangs a cyber shingle at: lairdo@webtv.net.

Copyright (c) 2001 Laird Long