No Interest by Mark Joseph Kiewlak

Johnny Longo's idea of a martial arts demonstration was picking up the cinder block and smashing it over someone else's head. Every time Nick would try to teach the kid how to fight he'd get Johnny's stock response: "I got no interest in that." Still, I let Longo work for us. How could I not? Guy had a set of balls like a pair of medieval maces.

First job we give him was uptown, easy. This Wall-Streeter we had feeding us tips was getting antsy, trying to back away. We sent Johnny to hit him where it hurt most: "Trash the guy's Beemer," I told him. "Feel free to indulge yourself, but do it right. Make sure he gets the point."

Johnny comes back, tells us he took the guy off. Tells us the guy came out just as he was scraping a key along the side panels, started screaming about "his baby." Johnny says he walked right up to the guy's face, told him, "You're fucked," then got hold of the guy's necktie, applied a little pressure, whispered some nastiness in his ear. But when he let the guy go, the guy was limp, keeled right over. "Must of squeezed too hard," Johnny says.

"A warning was all it was supposed to be," I say.

"He'll be the warning," Johnny says, "for the next guy tries to mess with us."

Right then we knew he was trouble. More so for the other guy than us, we hoped. We, by the way, was me and my brother, Sallie.

Next up was a gambling debt. Woman owed us big. "Can't pay if she's dead," we told Johnny as we sent him to her. This time Nick, who's been with us since the womb practically, goes with him. Nick reports back:

"This woman had a kid, six-year-old boy. First thing Johnny does is lock the kid in a closet. Then he pulls out a container of lighter fluid, squirts it all over the closet door, breaks out a pack of smokes. The bitch is screaming, 'Do you want me? Take me! Leave Johnny' -- that happens to be her kid's name -- 'Leave Johnny alone!' So our Johnny asks again about the money, says he knows she's got a stash somewhere for her kid. 'Now he won't be needing it,' our Johnny says, and he strikes a match. The woman grabs for the match, snuffs it out right in her bare hand.

"Next thing I know the three of us are walking out of the bank with eight grand and change -- kid had a $10,000 Savings Bond from his grandparents that she was going to use to put him through college. We get back to the apartment, Johnny says to me, 'Start the car,' pushes me out into the hall. I hear screaming then a shot. Closet door opens, another shot. Johnny walks out, pulls the door shut behind him, lights up a Marlboro, says, 'Let's go.'"

After hearin' this, Sallie and me decide to make the best of it. If Longo was going to keep whacking everybody we sent him to, why not send him just for that purpose? Nick says no, he was there, guy's too reckless. "Maybe if you give me some time with him," Nick says, "I could teach him some tai chi, give him some discipline." But even as he says it, Nick knows it's no good.

"You shouldn't use a bulldozer," I tell him, "when all you need is a prybar." I know it too, but Johnny reminds me too much of what I've lost, of when I'd smash a long-neck off the table and do an emergency facial on a guy with too big a mouth. Then Sallie reminds me that there's only room for one rule-breaker, and that's the guy at the top. That's me.

There's this vice cop, been on our meter for half his tour, but now the guy's weakening. We helped put one of his kids through college, but now he's got a little girl, about puberty, and I guess the guy's guilt capacity is near over the limit.

Sallie and I call Longo into the office. Nick's there too. We tell Longo to meet with the guy, slip him a mickey, get his gun, put it in his hand, shoot him in the head with it. Cops won't do an autopsy if it looks like a cut-and-dried suicide, we tell him.

For the first time, Longo questions me. Says they will do an autopsy and heat'll be everywhere. Says it'll be very bad for business.

Both Sallie and Nick are ready to drop him right on the spot for telling me how to run things. I know better. I'm sending Nick with him, make sure Johnny doesn't come back.

"You're afraid of gettin' caught, maybe you got no place here," Sallie says.

"Cops are different," Longo says. "If you never hit one, you can't imagine the rectal examine you're in for."

"We hit plenty of cops," Nick says to him.

Suddenly I see where this is going.

"Nick," I say.

"And one of your guys went down for each, I'll bet," Longo says.

"Nobody ever went down," Nick says. "Yet."

Without looking away, I reach under my desk and get my palm around the 9 mm.

"Bullshit," Longo says. "What the hell cop ever got wasted, they didn't take down somebody for it?"

"Christ, asshole," Nick says, "you want a list?"

I bring up the nine and shoot Nick in the chest three times before he can say anymore.

The doors to my office fly open and in walk thirty cops, guns all trained on Sallie and me.

Longo's got his gun out, too.

Pointed at me.

He walks right up to my face and tells me, "You're fucked."

I've got time for one shot before they nail me. I look Longo square in the eye, and I say, "I fuck back."

I start to squeeze the trigger and Longo spins on one foot, right around, and his other foot comes up and kicks the gun out of my hand and the stray shot nails Sallie right in the temple.

"I got no interest in that," Longo says.

© Mark Joseph Kiewlak 2008 All Rights Reserved