Dispatch Manny

Chapter One

`Manny checked the gun for perhaps the fourth time in the last ten minutes.  It was still there, in the top drawer of the desk, right next to the half-smoked pack of American Spirits, right next to the half-drunk bottle of Wild Turkey.  The Ruger Automatic was still loaded; the safety was still in the off position.  The hammer was still pulled back, ready to fire the second his finger touched the trigger.  He wanted to go smoke another of the cigarettes, but that would mean leaving the office, and leaving the office meant death.

He gave a longing look and the cigarettes and closed the drawer.  Three-fifty.  Another hour, hour and a half and it would be all over, one way or another.  Another hour and a half and Manny could smoke the cigarettes, smoke ‘em all the way down to the filter, one after the other if he felt like it.  Or he’d be past worrying about smokes.  One sure final way to quit.

The ringing telephone brought him back from his thoughts of smoke.  Reality again, if you called this reality.  Manny called it going through the motions.

“Dispatch.  Manny.”

“Manny, it’s Tom.  You know that job that was confirmed and then canceled?  Well, they just called back and confirmed it again.  And they want it an hour earlier now.”

He was already past worrying about shit like this.  Some bastard in Pinole wanted a box or a thing or a gadget or some damn thing.  Well let him want.  “Important” is always relative, and deliveries were no longer important.

“Manny?  Are you still there?”

“I’m here.”

“So an hour earlier, and can you put Dave on this?”

“Which Dave?”  Like he cared.

“Either one would be fine.”  There were four Daves.

“Call me back after five to confirm, OK?”

“Thanks, Manny.  I’ll call you back at five.”

“After five.”

The line was dead.

“Hold your fuckin’ breath,” Manny thought.  He pulled out the drawer and checked the Ruger again.  Still there.  Still ready.

He figured they’d come all at once, but there was only one way into the office.  One door, opposite his desk, so they’d have to come one at a time, single file.  He had eight bullets in the cartridge and one in the pipe.  They might get him eventually, but it was going to be a real bad day for the first nine through the door.

 They could sneak up behind him if the put their minds to it.  The office walls were made of windows on                         
three sides, two of them facing the warehouse, and he obviously couldn’t face all three directions at the same time.  They could wait until he was distracted, until he let his guard down, although that wasn’t going to happen.  They could wait, but they couldn’t wait for long.  The clock was running and, frankly, he was surprised they’d waited as long as they had.

When the door finally opened, he was surprised to see Norma come through.  He yanked opened the drawer and reached in. The idea of Norma lying on the floor in a pool of her own blood, vomiting out her last breaths, gave him a momentary pause.  He liked Norma. He was sorry it had to be her.  He reached for the gun.

“Hey, Manny, got a cigarette?”

That was unexpected.

A cigarette?  What kind of vicious game was this?  Some sacraments you don’t fuck with, and Norma should know better.  Did know better.  It was like being betrayed with a kiss.  Was she ratcheting the stakes up another notch?  Was she coming to kill him, or just send him to hell?

Manny’s hand closed on the half pack of American Spirits.  He pulled them out and tossed them at Norma.

“Thanks,” she said.

She made no move to pull a butt out of the pack, and no move to leave.  Instead she walked up to Manny’s desk and pulled up a chair.  She fiddled with the cigarettes.  Manny’s hand hovered over the open desk drawer

Norma sat down.  “Here’s the thing.  The guys sent me in to talk to you about the new girl.  Manny, she’s not really working out.”

That was more unexpected bullshit; another attempt at misdirection.  Another attempt that wouldn’t work.  He looked in the drawer.  No more cigarettes, but he still had the gun and the bourbon.  Pretty soon he was going to have to use one or the other.

“The thing is, Manny, everyone’s afraid of her.”

The new girl was Katy and all the trouble had started when he hired her.  Her references were up to date, she was experienced, she was personable, at least at first.  She was tall and thin with black black hair, black hair that some how seemed to radiate a light of its own.  She had a high forehead and a striking profile and a tribal tattoo that covered the right side of her face.

The moment she walked out into the warehouse, the tension level turned up and up and up, and before he knew it, Manny found himself with a drawer of booze, guns and cigarettes, and not know which one was the most deadly.

So everyone thought they were afraid of her, did they?  Her attitude or her appearance or was it the tattoo?  The tattoo gave her two different profiles.  The un-tattooed side of her face looked like a schoolgirl’s, and the tattooed side, well, it looked like something else.

Manny decided to see where this was going.  “What do you mean ‘afraid?’”

Norma stared at the cigarettes.  “Well, it’s hard to say.  She’s just got a way of doing things.  She’s kind of creepy.  The way she. .  The way she….”

More bullshit.  Red flags went up.  Lots of ‘em.

“The way she what, Norma?”

A long pause.  Norma was still staring at the cigarettes.

“I don’t know Manny.  Maybe it’s her accent.  She sounds like a Nazi.”

“She’s Russian.”

Norma finally pulled out a cigarette and tossed the pack on Manny’s desk.  “I don’t know. There’s just something about her…maybe it’s the tattoo.  Maybe…”  She fondled the cigarette but made no move to light it, or even to put it into her mouth.  “It’s her whole attitude.  The way she walks around like she’d just as soon rip your throat out as look at you.  Creepy.   And Hal…I know Hal’s kind of…sensitive…but Manny, yesterday she made him cry.”

“Jesus!”  Manny stood up, realized he was too far away from the gun, and sat back down.  “Jesus, Norma.  Gimme something more than that.  The whole accounting department is afraid of you.  And Hal cries if someone uses his coffee mug.  Katy shows up on time, works hard, and gets the job done.  I’ve already had two clients tell me they liked her.  I don’t give a shit about her tattoo, and I’m not getting rid of her because you think she’s ‘Creepy.’”

Manny waved his hand out the window of his office in the general direction of the loading dock.  “Look out there!  It’s a fucking warehouse!  It’s not a poetry club!  Half the guys out there are creepy.  We hire men who think wrestling is high culture and girls like you and Katy who can hang with them and then we hope no one gets hurt.  And you wanna talk tattoos?  Have you ever seen Tito with his shirt off?  Them’s tattoos!

What Manny knew, and no one else in the warehouse did, was the tattoo that covered the left side of Katy face made it’s way down her neck to her shoulder, wrapped around her, down by the small of her back and ended up by her rib cage on her right side, where the swirling colors intensified into the laughing face of the Devil.  The face stayed with him, burned into his brain, and the worse part was that each time he’d seen it, he swore it had a different expression.  He saw that face all the time now, the face and all it’s expressions.  Saw it even in his sleep.  And Manny didn’t sleep very much.  Not anymore.

Norma got up and started to stalk out but she paused at the door and turned back to face Manny.  “I know ‘creepy’ doesn’t really cut it, but people are unhappy out there, and if you don’t do something, if someone don’t do something, there’s going to be trouble.”

She walked out of the office and closed the door behind her.  Manny could have blown the back of her head off right there, forcing their hand you could call it.  At least that would have put him in the position of being in control.  But he wasn’t yet sure of what he’d be controlling, and if he didn’t know where he was going, that advantage, that upper hand would be a very temporary thing.  With the odds stacked the way they were, he had to hold on to whatever advantages he could create.

“Force their hand”, Manny thought.  Maybe….   He  opened the desk drawer, part way this time, and checked the gun and the bottle again.  Both still there.  He checked the clock.  4:04.  The time to create advantages was short and getting shorter.  He looked at the “American Spirits” laying on his desk where Norma had tossed them.  He really wanted a cigarette.   Just half a cigarette.  He stuffed the pack in his pocket.

Force their hand. There was more than one hand to be forced, wasn’t there?  He wasn’t in this alone; he was just in the worst position.  He turned his gaze from the cigarettes to the telephone.  An idea was starting to formulate.  Not a brilliant one, but an idea nevertheless.  He didn’t know exactly where it was headed, that was a downside, but he might still be alive in an hour, which, you might say, was an up side he didn’t think he had otherwise.

He picked up the phone, and diale”200” for the paging, waited a second, and said “Katy, come to dispatch please.  Katy to dispatch.”

It was something.  Norma wanted something done about Katy.  Norma and the rest.  They all heard the page and it was going to take them some time for them to figure out their reaction.  He took a deep breath and tried to look busy.

It had felt good yelling at Norma.  Not at Norma, really.  Just yelling.  It made him feel like a dispatcher again.  That’s what Dispatchers did best after all.  They yelled and pointed and threw things and smoked, and if they did it right, everyone was afraid enough to do their job without fucking up.  “I am Dispatcher,” Manny thought.  “Tremble before me.”

The phone rang.  It was the outside line.  Manny didn’t know who it was, and he really didn’t care, but it would ring until he did something, so he did something.  He picked up.

“Hymie’s Tacoria” he answered.

“Um…  What?”  Came the bewildered reply.  “Is this Dispatch?”

“Hymie’s Tacoria,” Manny said again.

“Um…  Sorry.”  The line went dead.

Manny replaced the receiver and punched the “Voice Mail” button.  Now he could plot in peace.

There was a knock, and the door opened.  It was Katy.

“Wassup?”

“Come in and close the door.”

Katy was wearing black jeans and a white T-shirt that, oddly enough, didn’t have any logos at all.  Her black hair was parted in the middle, and hung down to her shoulders.  The lock on the front, on the side with the tattoo, was green today.

“Wassup.  I’m busy.  I got shit to do.”

“They’re on to you, “  Manny replied.

Katy stepped into the office and closed the door.

“What do you mean?  Who’s on to me?”

“The guys.  Everyone.  They just sent Norma in here to tell me you weren’t working out.  The word she used was ‘Creepy.’”

Katy laughed at that.  “’Creepy,’ huh.  That is good one.  ‘Creepy’.  I think they just scared of me.”

“Yeah.  That’s it, exactly.”

“Good, then.  They stay out of way.”  She turned back toward the door.  “Look out guys.  ‘Creepy’s coming!  Don’t piss her off!”

Manny grabbed the closest object at hand, an empty plastic water bottle someone had left on his desk, and heaved it at Katy.  He was aiming at her butt,  but the bottle sailed on him and it hit her in the back of the head.

“What is fuck?!” Katy yelled.  She spun around in a crouch with her hands up.  Her eyes weren’t laughing any more.  It looked like she was ready for a rumble.

Manny was up out of his seat.  Up, but never far from the top desk drawer.  “Did that get your attention?  If it didn’t, I got a bottle of whisky here.  Ya wanna try head butting that?  You aren’t listening to me, baby.  I said they’re on to you.  That’s what is fuck.   They’re onto you.”

“They’re nothing,” Katy yelled.  “They think I’m creepy.  They scared of me.  They are fucking sheep!”  She pointed her finger at Manny.  “And you are not throwing things at me!”

Manny looked at Katy, eyes flashing, finger pointing.  Spit was flying from her lips.  But for the first time, none of this was frightening to him.  He could see the clock over her head. It was 4:15, and with only forty-five minutes left before it all went to hell, the girl with The Devil on her hip suddenly wasn’t all that scary.

“Force her hand,” Manny thought.

He reached into the drawer and pulled out the Wild Turkey with his left hand and banged it down on the desk in front of Katy.  With his right hand, he pulled the gun, and while Katy was looking at the bottle, walked around the desk and jammed the Ruger into her ribs. 

“What is this?” Gasped Katy.  “You are fool.”

The gun in her gut made it hard for her to get her breath, and her words lacked force.  More than a curse, it sounded like a question, and Manny realized he was sticking the barrel of the gun squarely into the tattooed Devil face.  Given the current situation, the face might not be laughing now.  In his mind, Manny could see a surprise Devil face glaring up at him, and the thought made Manny feel good.  He pushed the Ruger in harder, and Katy’s second gasp of pain made him feel even better.

“Let’s go for a walk.  You and me.  It’s a lovely day for it.”

It wasn’t.  It was cold and raining, and never mind the weather, Manny had a feeling there wouldn’t be any more lovely days, not for a while.  Maybe not ever.  Katy started to struggle, but Manny wrapped his left arm around her waist and kept up the pressure with the gun.  Things might not be going his way, but at least now there was something real to deal with, something physical instead of questions with no answers, something instead of laughing Devil tattoos.  He had his arm wrapped around a real girl, and a real gun in his hand.  It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

“We’re outta here.  You can say good by if you want.”  He kicked the office door open and half-carrying, half-pushing the tattoo girl, made a left and another left and they were outside, heading toward the parking lot.