I’m a dead man
They wouldn’t let me kill the punk, even when I told them the punk was costing me two hundred gs a day in lost receipts.
Bad for business, said the big nosed jew who did the company books, not blood enough for family, but one of theirs just the same.
Eating at the same table with them, patting his lips with the same linen napkins, telling me they wouldn’t let anyone kill the son of a mayor over such a small thing.
Had the boy raped my daughter, well maybe they would have let me put a bullet in him. But for money -- especially it being my money -- they weren’t going to let the city start a war over it.
I wasn’t blood either. Just the a small town hood that had made something of myself, out eating the rest of the sharks so that I was the big shark in my corner, but never so big a shark as to take on this suit and tie cigar smoking crowd, who decided life and death of people like me over sips of espresso.
I wanted to kill them all, the jew and the big noses, and the few other tokens neighborhood boys they made feel like equals by letting them sit at the table, too.
But the heavy weights outside the room had taken my pieces, even finding the small knifes I kept in my socks for those moments when I needed a little extra something.
No dice, the jew told me, though he would drop a little hint with the mayor that maybe the mayor should talk to the kid and calm him down a little.
The piss ant stealing from me as if I was just another tax payer.
The jew treating me like shit because he thought the heavies had stopped me from being dangerous by stripping me of my piece and my knives.
Think of it as a tax, one of the big noses told me, like I was paying a little extra to keep the city running, my share of keeping the city’s books balanced.
I asked why didn’t the big nose pay the tax for me if he was so civic minded, which made him see red, and made the other big noses glare at me, and tell me I ought to learn respect.
I said the 200 gs wasn’t coming out of their pockets, so they didn’t care, and that I was going to kill the son of a bitch no matter what the jew or the bid noses said, and when I said that, everybody got serious, and the jew slowly told me that wouldn’t be a good idea.
I think they thought I was already a dead man, and my thinking that made me think they ought to be dead men first.
And so they were, the jew dying first with a fork in his throat, before anybody could call out or any of the gray headed big noses could draw out a gun.
Maybe I figured I could get away after that, blasting my way passed the heavies with the hardware the ld big noses had, and maybe I figured once I got clear of the restaurant, people might forget, learn a little respect for me, because I had gut enough to kill the big noses where they lived, and maybe I went a little too far making certain I got the mayor’s kid, too, putting a bullet between his eyes as he begged me not to do it, promising me the city if I didn’t, shitting in his pants as his brains blew out the back of his head.
Maybe I figured wrong, once I heard the contract was out on me, and that every bid nose with a taste for blood was looking to spill mine, and with me having murdered a jew, big noses and a mayor’s son, scared to beg for help from the law.
I’m a dead man, but you know what?
I would do it again.