I am sitting at a table with one other man. Before looking at any cards, I know our odds are fifty-fifty, and, I got to say, I like my chances. I sit, staring, from the other side of the table across this glowing opponent of charisma and character. We understand, at this point, it's a showdown, and the only one's to outplay and outwit are each other. We zone in, looking forward to the culmination of our hard work and determination, and focus on the last lap of this race. Because, after all, second place is indeed the first loser.
The first hand is dealt and something rings loud enough to visibly shake us both off our concentration-the shrieking whine of incompetence in the tone of F. I turn away from the game, not because I want to, but I curiously wish to know where I should target all this newly pooled silent hatred and rage. A single chair between finalists pulls from the table.
What a wretch of a human being. Absolutely no positive remark. Just a rack and smile poorly pinned to five-foot stack of human waste. What right does this woman think she has being here? A pretty face? Hardly.
I roll my eyes, and viciously attempt to fight locking them in my skull. I can't believe this. I am sickened throughout, as every fiber of my body revolts against my logic of remaining pleasant in my chair. How foolish, I think, must all the players I eliminated feel, knowing some discount bin whore was added to the final table on the fly. That pretty much removes any validation and prestige this tournament had in one shift move. I look over her shoulder, and ponder that whoever is running this little shindig may either be a complete idiot or made a clear and blatant mistake -one I hope he has to physically wipe from his face.
This is about numbers, and, not just a wildly spinning array of chaotic values, but fluctuating percentages firmly fit in rules and situations. Now, as this new broad passes a shit-eating grin over the table, I feel this is becoming less and less a fair competition with guidelines and rules and more like a stint of Russian Roulette. It's a game with worse odds, but, considering the chance her head could actually explode, it's a game with a better payoff.
I find myself reckless and I don't like it. I hear myself settling for defeat if I can have the glory of taking down the newcomer. Again, I am not thrilled. This was my game -my victory- and what she's done is accomplish what I've done with hard work and focus with her drama, bullshit, and nonsensical female persuasion. This was fifty-fifty, and the only things that were going to change that value from that to one hundred-zero were my opponent and I. Now the whole table has been sent into a tailspin. Now I am looking at thirty-three point three repeating chance, and any number of wacky characteristics to consider. I am disenfranchised with the whole thing. I want to stand and leave, quickly to prison, after landing a stiff left.
Across the table is a man like me. He knows the value of this situation -this final encounter. He understands every slip-up could cost him very dearly. He too has sidelined an equal number of competitors like me. He is a worthy opponent, one I was looking forward to matching my best against, but that notion has felt dead for what seems lifetimes.
She doesn't know, I shout to myself. She doesn't know what each dollar in her chip stack is worth. She doesn't have the conscience to minimize her mistakes. She doesn't know the heartbreak of the men and women eliminated. She physically holds the same value as she keeps over this meaningless, casual, game night of Old Maid. She a bleeding joke -a mockery- of this game, myself, my opponent, and this establishment.
Out of premise alone, I want to be the last one standing, just so my thoughts remain over this ocean of ever-rising retardation. I want my commentary to be heard and regarded as one from a winner. Winning would mean that I am right, and the manager has a lot of explaining to do. With a win, honor for this game and tournament will be restored to be passed down to others with a winning ethic. So God help us if I get too carried away and let her slink by with what is rightfully mine.
At the epicenter of my explosive rage, a pair of cards are dealt, and I look. Normally brutally average, middle of the road, cards don't lift my spirits this high, but I know I have this game. I know how to play these right. I know how to play, period. I glance over and crack a smile. She's as easy to read as she appears to lay. So finally, I welcome this wretched waste of a third-wheel to what was going to be a glorious showdown, and look forward to the warmth her self-destruction. I place a pair of dark shades over my face, in preparation.
I know, as she sits to our side, she rests pleasantly on her thirty-three point three repeating chance, but I feel that value lowering. Diminishing, in fact, because she's not just playing any game of risk and reward with just any foolish gambler. She's losing odds because I am Jack Goddard, and this is my ocean, little fish. She's playing the devil at the devil's game, and in hell too boot, and, at this fact, I can't keep my proverbial tongue off my gnashing, sharp teeth.
Maybe this isn't the final table I thought I had coming or deserved, but if I must defeat the whole royal court before it's kingdom to claim my crown, then so be it. I have always been a man who has seen success out of the most dire situations, and, once the last hand is played, everyone will understand why, although this is a game of chance, why the same people always win.
The suits are changing and this kingdom is switching hands. No longer will some random face card or female paint run things here anymore. Not with this ace in the hole.
“What the fuck do you mean you can't find him?” mob boss, Baby, shouts, over his desk speaker phone. “It's not like that fat fuck was something you could accidentally misplace, like your fucking brains! He only blocks out the sun, for crying out loud!” He pauses only to rub the temples on his head back into calming positions. “Swivel that pin head of yours around until your beady little eyes burn at the sight of a solar eclipse, and, so help me, bring me back some better fucking news.”
Baby, although never really running low on quick-witted vulgarity, has been lacking reinforcement as of late. He has had better times as a crime boss -most of which include a heavy supply of able fists and boots. Now, after a few exhausting encounters with a certain miserable individual, Baby finds himself writhing in his own frustration, than anything else.
Under his thumb lies a paper, mostly scribbled out. He appears to ponder it's necessity for quite some time, going back and forth. His constant meeting with defeat has got him desperate and irrational -something any mob boss never wants to feel.
“Teddy, gone,” he starts in, gruff and irritated. “Block, gone. Ball, is fucked in IC, and Crib was a waste of my fucking time.”
He shakes his head from the parchment laid over the counter. He rolls his tongue under the back of lips, disgusted with the taste in his mouth.
“Something has got to be done,” he calmly pouts. “It's never always been this fucking hard to flush one piece of shit.”
“Do you assholes know why I have called you in this beautiful morning?” Baby asks, turning to his full legion of strong-armed lackeys, and, with no chance to reply the rhetorical question, he continues. “No, of course, not. You brainless motherfuckers have been here, standing in complete darkness, equally puzzled and unaware of each others presences, until I showed up and brought the glorious sun.”
The men, half ignoring their boss's rant or too butch to bother, look on picking their teeth and grumbling Neanderthalic morning grunts. Although lacking the seeming interest in any matter their boss has to say at the moment, the whole lot of these men are ready and able to do whatever he wishes, at any time he chooses. In fact, that's all they really wish to know.
“I am not sure if all of you know where Price's is on West Orderly,” he continues, pacing back and forth, furthering his examination and ridicule. “But I want the lot of you to go there and collect some protection payments. Don't act like a bunch of assholes and charge in there all together, scaring off all the nice looking ladies there with your impressive three-inch, fully-erect, Italian, hard-ons. I want Crib and Formula to go in first. The rest of you dildos can just wait in the vehicle.”
The dick and race jokes continue as Baby explains the details of their next job. As doing so, he turns to a smiling middle-aged man, grinding a wooden tooth pick between his glistening, white teeth. He puts a finger hard against his chest.
“Got that, boy?” Baby asks, not really for confirmation, but just to continue the tirade. “I want you and Crib to go in first. You two go in and do your motherfuckering best impersonation of someone cool, and pleasantly inform Mister Price his payment is due by the end of the day. If, and only if, he gives you a hard time, calmly go and round up the rest of the idiots for some extra persuasion.”
“You got it boss,” the cool cat with the tooth pick replies, heavily sarcastic and overconfident.
He sticks out like a sore thumb -even standing with a bunch of low-life thugs. There is something intangible about him, something uneasy -something reckless.
“I do got it, Codename Formula,” Baby shouts, finding only a microsecond of peace away from his cocky thug's face. “And no fucking funny business this time. I am sending you with Crib to Price's, knowing very well the fucking person you are, and, if you fuck this one up like last time, I'll have these men turn on that loose jaw of yours and stomp it clean off your fucking skull. Capish?”
“Aye, you don't have to worry about me, boss,” Formula quickly replies, his ear-to-ear grin serves nothing to validate the word he speaks. “We'll go be cool at Price's and we'll be back with some dough, just in time for some Judge Mathis. Piece of cake.”
“No, motherfucker,” Baby scolds. “Not you. Even if you guys do exactly what I say to the letter and come back with some green, you personally don't deserve any motherfucking Mathis, Formula. Not after the shit you pull.”
“That's a bit harsh, don't you think, Baby?” his devilish employee retorts, knowing all too well in his boss's seriousness.
“Harshness?” Baby snarls back, quickly catching on to Formula's playfulness. “Harshness is having a position that I have, with a dumb-fuck like you, thinking I can make money off corpses!”
Formula breaks out and laughs, to the absolute irritation of his boss and fellow brothers. He looks down in nostalgia, smiling, rubbing his forehead.
“Yeah, really fucking funny I bet,” the boss snaps. “I bet it's funny every time we lose out on an investment, you stupid son of a bitch.”
“I wasn't laughing at your business,” Formula corrects, lifting his head from his memory. He childish smile remains across his face.
“Well, I am having something of a miserable day,” Baby calmly replies. “I have you brainless goons standing around, looking present as always, but, thankfully, I have you with a joke. So, do me a favor, and brighten up my day.”
“-Their faces,” Formula quickly blurts. “It's the people and their faces. That's what's funny. Just seeing the expression on their faces when you tell them you are going to kill them, and the inescapable look they provide when I follow through with what I say.”
Baby instantly lashes out and wraps his fingers around the cheeks of his warped subordinate, violently squeezing his face like a vice.
“You listen here, you sick fuck,” Baby shouts, gritting his teeth, spit escaping through the gaps between his teeth. “You are to do exactly what I said and no different. You and Crib are to collect money, not lives, and, for the love of God, if you even return, from doing what I said, with that fucking smile on your face, I am still going to have these men come down on you.”
Moments later, a vehicle rolls along the sidewalk of a building displaying a giant Price's sign in neon lights. It creeps into place and comes to a silent stop.
“Alright, boys,” Crib, the driver says, turning around to the rest of the men in the car. “This is routine and real fucking easy. Let's not get this gnarly -easy in and easy out. Just make it simple, so we have someplace to come back to next month.”
The surrounding men nod in agreement, even with Formula following as haphazard and joking as possible. With that, the driver's and the passenger's doors both open together, and Crib and Formula calmly approach the doors under the neon lights, just as planned. They, of course, are greeted with a few scantily-clad women, pitching their trade.
“Stay on task, Form',” Crib warns, professionally pushing through the sea of skin, glitter, and coconut butter. “All we want is the payment. The last thing we want is Price to think we can be bought off.” Crib turns to see a woman rubbing herself along Formula's side, as his hands liberally reach into her underwear. “Motherfucker, quit that shit right now.”
“Hey, this whore likes it,” Formula quickly replies, innocently, squeezing the goods that lay in his hands.
“We weren't sent here to find out what the girls like,” Crib shunts, pulling his partner and his hands out of transaction. “Plus, that type of shit costs money-”
“-I can pay.”
“-Again, not the reason why we are here,” Crib continues. “After we collect, come back and do whatever the hell you want.”
Reluctantly, Formula focuses and follows Crib to the back of the establishment, reaching the vicinity of one of the dancers, who waves and greets the two strong boys.
“Good evening to you too, Lori,” Crib professionally replies, keeping his distance and hands in his pockets. “-Price in the office? We gotta' talk to him for a sec' -nothing serious.”
She smiles and nods, winking at Formula as he passes. The pair reach a painted door, partially blended with the design of the rest of the interior – everything but the window. Crib casually raps on the hinged surface, catching the owner's attention, and opens the door.
“How's business, Price?” Crib asks, looking to break some tension with a bit of small talk. Formula steps in the room beside Crib and tries his best to remained focused at the job at hand.
“Not as good as I would like,” Price turns and answers. “But you know the times.”
“Of course,” Crib patronizes. “It's crunching every business -yours and mine. It's tough to just stay in the black.”
Price softens up, feeling Crib may actually empathize his situation. He turns completely around from his desk, and leans back in a way to suggest defeat and disregard.
“You never can guess what's gonna' happen next,” Crib continues to pitch. “One week you're busy, the next it's a ghost town, but I'll tell you one thing that's a good piece of mind- stability.”
Price smiles, shaking his head. He has already heard this sale before.
“Don't shut down on me quite yet, Price,” Crib friendly warns. “You know the business I do. We could be very handy in securing any assets you have made and are going to make. Plus, for no additional cost, making sure if any of the backstreet scum partakes in your facilities, they don't give you any grief. That's an invaluable service, especially in this time of financial recession, where you need to keep an eye on every penny coming in and going out.”
“I-I-I'm...” He's losing him, and Crib knows it.
“Listen, Price, we're not just going to make sure your business is safe,” the salesman presses. “I have men that are customers or are going to be customers.” He quickly turns and slaps an open palm on Formula's chest. “Look at this guy right here. He hasn't heard one fucking thing we've been talking about. He's had your girls dancing in his mind since we've arrived. You better believe he's going to come back and hand you back your own money. See, we are offering you something virtually for free.”
Formula shakes out of his daze with a smile and speaks. “Oh, yea. I am totally coming back here.”
The sales pitch pauses and awaits the customer's call.
“Gee, I don't know,” Price answers, unhappy with his decision. “I really can't see how I can afford another investment, as tasty as a deal it is. I am really sorry, man, but I already have shit to take care of already. I have a couple girls that are fucking pregnant-”
“-I could fucking go out there and gun the whores down, if you need someone to shave the fat off your checkbook, Price,” Crib, not so kindly, suggests. “What the fuck are those bitches doing getting knocked up, anyway?” He continues to grumble. His partners eyes begin to glow.
“No,” Price replies, adding some stiffness to his tone. “I don't think I'll be needing any of your services.”
“That's a real fucking shame,” Crib somberly accepts, placing a gentle hand on his associate's shoulder. “I'm going to tell the boys to start up the car. We won't be bothering you with this anymore.” Before leaving, he whispers to Formula to stay there and keep an eye on Price while he goes and gets the gang. Crib walks out of the office, closing the door behind him.
Alone inside his own office, Price stares up at Formula, who stands quietly with a childish grin, before speaking like a young boy showing off his new toy. “-You like knives?”
Outside, Crib barges around the vehicles hood, banging his palm on the metal exterior. “Yeah, we got a tough one,” he starts in a lower tone that gradually picks up, revealing the anger he attempts to hide. “Another case of 'can't afford it' bullshit. The motherfucker has got the money, as we all fucking know it. He's got, what, thirty to forty fucking broads cooped up in there, and pussy has never been that cheap!”
As the super-charged men break from their leather and steel confines, and gain the momentum to wreck havoc inside Price's place of business, something has happened quickly in their absence. Havoc has already started. As the thugs charge in, every last one pauses in shock, forcing the one in behind them to slam into the block. Crib, in the front, goes pale, putting his hand to his face.
“Formula...” he mutters, growing violently ill, envisioning the vicious throttling Baby is going to hand him personally for this number. “That sick motherfucker...” He regains his composure out of rage and revenge, now looking to rain down on the man who has rained on his parade. “Somebody!” he shouts over the insane chaos and confusion of screaming, bloody women inside. “Somebody find that fuck Formula and fucking kick his head off!”
Left alone for only a minute or two to his own devices, lurked a madman, in a general term that didn't suit his particularly lack of morality very well. His name was Codename:Formula, and as madmen preferred it, enjoyed a proper place without an identity or a past. He didn't last long in place, as Baby discarded this loose-screw on sight, after word of their utter self-destruction that night at Price's. He followed to pay in a lot for what Formula's gory little fingers have tainted -not just in the annihilation of a possible investment but his business reputation. So, after that faithful night, under the red rain, Baby made a choice, not to put down the uncontrollable mutt, but to let the mad dog free into the wild, and distance himself, for if he ever needed something so ruthless, chaotic, and evil it could be called in.
“Yes, and how are things? Good, good. That's a relieve to hear...”
A one-sided conversation is heard from behind the crime boss's desk. The receiver from his speaker phone appears to be off the unit and in use.
“I have a favor to ask, if you are interested. And I want it done however you feel -your rules not mine...”
A wide glass of brown liquor comes down across the counter-top from the shadowed conversation. The ice rolls and settles to the bottom.
“His name is Jack Goddard-”
A scab of a man, crawling in his own oddity, speaks into his side of the phone in the green light of his poorly kept apartment room.
“Jack Goddard? You mean the punk on this wrestling show right here?”