Sick City by Tony O'Neill Read Free Book Online

SITTING RIGHT NOW AND TOLD ME THAT THIS SONG DIDN’T MAKE THEM FEEL SOMETHING, YOU KNOW WHAT? I’D HAVE TO BUST THEIR FUCKING ASS. I’D FUCK THEM UP. YOU KNOW WHY? YOU KNOW WHY, BEE?”
    Unsure of how to answer, Bee just shrugged.
    â€œBECAUSE THEY’D BE FUCKING WITH ME. YOU COULD ONLY SAY SOMETHING SO STUPID IF YOU WERE TRYING TO FUCK WITH ME. I MEAN, SHIT. IF THIS SONG DON’T MAKE YA FEEL SOMETHING YOU GOTTA BE DEAD OR A FAGGOT OR SOMETHING. GODDAMN. AM I RIGHT? HUH? AM I RIGHT, BEE, HUH?”
    â€œYou got it, man,” Bee answered quickly. “It’s a classic. A total classic. None better.”
    Pat smiled. He lowered the music slightly. He seemed calmer now. His eyes were wet, gleaming.
    â€œHe sure was an ugly son of a bitch, though,” Pat mumbled to himself as they sailed past Rampart. “Kind of amazing he managed to get laid in the first place, if ya think about it. . . .”
    When they arrived at Bee’s tiny apartment, Carla’s pissy mood relented somewhat now that Pat was here with the speed. Pat knocked on the door and cooed, “Home honey, we’re high,” and laughed a crackly laugh at his own joke. Carla opened the door and ushered them inside, dead-bolting it afterward. “Here comes the candy man.” Pat grinned, giving Carla a kiss on the cheek. “How are ya, baby?”
    â€œDoin’ better now.” Carla smiled, handing Pat some twenties.
    â€œAin’t that the truth. . . .”
    Henry, his girl Heather, and the girl from San Francisco with the dyed green dreadlocks immediately flocked toward Pat to buy. When everybody was fixed up, Pat lingered for a while to bang a little speed himself. They sat around the apartment, loading the pipe, cutting up the rocky gray powder with razor blades, absorbed in the process of preparing the drugs. Pat noticed the dreadlocked couple watching him hungrily as he prepared his shot. Pat instinctively recognized that they were junkies. New junkies for sure, baby junkies, but junkies just the same. It was the way that they stared at the needle as if it were a twenty-dollar steak. They looked young and clueless. The boy, whose name was Sunray, was wearing what looked to be a pair of girl’s jeans slung low at the hips. The girl was pale and pretty despite her ridiculous dyed green dreadlocks.
    â€œYou guys from San Francisco?” Pat said to Sunray absently, as he tapped the air bubbles from his syringe.
    â€œYeah, how d’you know?”
    â€œJust a hunch.”
    Pat returned his attention to the needle. You never could tell who was or wasn’t a faggot in San Francisco. He slid the spike into his scarred, leathery forearm, pulling back the plunger, sending a plume of thick blood blossoming into the syringe. Then he pushed the speed in, his lips pulled back, exposing yellow teeth, worn flat by decades of meth-induced grinding.
    When Pat withdrew the needle from his arm and sucked away the black-red bloodspot that bubbled from the crook there, the girl with dreadlocks asked, “Uh, that’s a cool pendant. Who is it?”
    The meth made the blood pound in Pat’s ears. His jaw was clamped in a grimace of pure euphoria. He said, “What’s your name, baby?”
    His eyes burrowed into her. She stammered, “Salvia.”
    â€œSalvia . . .” He grinned, breaking her gaze and addressing the room while pointing to the pendant. It was on a gold chain and featured a portrait of a man with a neckerchief and mustache, rendered in semiprecious stones in a religious-iconic style. “This is Jesus Malverde. The patron saint of drug dealers. Old Jesus here was a Mexican bandit who was executed in 1909. He’s a bit of a folk hero south of the border. The beaners believe that wearing an image of this guy will keep you alive when you’re in . . . my line of business.”
    â€œWow . . . where did you get