Fish Farm by Walt Sautter (top rated books of all time TXT) 📕

had no fuckin’, conscience like an animal. So I guess based on that the rest of them just did exactly what he told ‘em including him keeping the money. They were all scared shitless of him. All except for one guy who was kinda his right hand man but I guess the Sandman screwed him too cause he’s still around. He didn’t disappear.”
“What did you call him? Sandman?”
“Yeah, they called him Sandman cause he put a lot of guys to sleep, for keeps!”
“What’s the guy’s name that you said was his right hand man?”
“They call him DS. That stands for Deuce of Spades, like he’s number two and he’s good at puttin’ people in the ground too”.
“Who’s the guy that’s telling all this anyway? What’s his name?”
“Like I told ya, he’s a guy that lives in the building next to mine. His name is Frank. I don’t know his last name.
I was takin’ the garbage out one day and I happened to meet him. He had a Nam tattoo and I saw it and I started talkin’ to him. He was over there too, in the Delta. He even had a couple of holes in his leg to as souvenirs.’
“Well, how does he know all this shit about the FM then?”
“He almost every day goes over to the Box, you know the Lunch Box, that little divey eatery on Hudson Street. He goes over about ten o’clock in the morning to get a little breakfast and who’s always in there but a bunch of FMers. They always sit at the same table and bullshit for an hour.
They never pay. They always tell Charlie, he’s the owner to put it on their tab. Of course, they never pay the tab. It really pisses Charlie off but what can he do about it?”
“Not much I guess. Not much”, replied Jack disgustedly.
Jack took his final drag on the remaining cigar stub, discarded it and walked with Hal back towards his building.
“Where’s Hudson Street? The Lunch Box?”
“It’s about three blocks down and turn left. Ya can’t miss it. Just look for the place with the windows that haven’t been washed in a couple years.”, replied Hal as they approached his house.
Hal went upstairs and Jack proceeded to the Box. He looked in through the hazy window and there, just as Hal described, sat four of the gang at a table near the front.
Jack went and sat at the counter about three stools up from the table. It was just as he described, they all bantered back and forth in loud, boisterous voices.
Jack ordered a coffee, slowly sipped and listened.
After twenty minutes or so,
“Put it on my tab Charlie. I’m buyin’ today”, announced DS with a laugh, as they all got up and left.
“Those bastards! Every god damn day. Same shit”, blurted Charlie, as the door slammed.
He smacked the spatula on the grill.
“God damn!”, he repeated.
“What’s the problem?”, answered Jack naively.
“Those fuckin’ bums come in here everyday, order up breakfast and never pay a dime”.
“He just said, ‘Put it on his tab’, didn’t he?”, replied Jack, again in a naïve tone.
“Are you shittin’ me? Tab! There’s no tab. The only tab there would be, would be my hospital bill if I tried to collect”.
“Why not call the cops?”
“Cops! They’re more afraid of those punks than I am!
And, even if I did call, the next thing would be, my place would get burned out.
Did you see the FM tats on the back of their hands?
They call themselves the Firemen. Why do you think? It’s sure not because they put fires out!”
“It’s a bitch”, answered Jack in a sympathetic voice and with that, he left the Lunch Box and walked home.
When he got home, he immediately got on the phone.
“Larry, it’s Jack.
I had to call you. You know that TV we brought up the other day, the one we had to get rid of because it was broken?
Remember the stuff we burned up afterwards?”
“Sure Jack, what about it?”
“Well, I come to find out there was a shit load of money in there. We didn’t even look. I guess we were in such a hurry to do what we had to do that we never even looked.”
“Man! What a hump!”, replied Larry.
“What can I say?”, he continued.
“Next time, we’ll make god damn sure we take a real good look”.
Next time!”, exclaimed Jack.
“You’re not gonna keep taken this shit, are you, Jack?
You don’t look like the kinda guy that’s willing to be shitted on, livin’ in fear all the time.”
“They haven’t bothered me yet. I got no problem with them. I don’t like what they’re doing, but they’re not bothering me”, replied Jack
“Trust me. They will. They will.
And when it happens you‘ll get sick of it real quick, and I might be getting’ a call about some free food for my boys.
I’ll be waiting’ by the phone.”
Chapter 6
“Pow! Pow! Pow!”
“What the hell is that?”, thought Jack as he was awakened.
He looked at the clock. It was ten o’clock. The television was blurring. He’d fallen asleep in the living room chair.
“Pow! Pow!”
It was coming from his front door.
He arose and walked to the door and looked out through the peek hole to see three men. He recognized them immediately.
“Open the door!”
“Open the door or we’ll huff and we’ll puff and we’ll blow your house down”, said the second man with a laugh.
“What do you want?” asked Jack.
“What the fuck do you think we want. We want to get in. Open the door”, answered the first man.
Jack, again squinted through the peek hole. He could see a little more clearly now. It was DS and two of the guys he had seen in Charlie’s.
Reluctantly, Jack unlocked the door, opened it and faced the three.
“That’s a boy.
We’re here doin’ some charity work. We’re collectin’ for a community group called the Firemen’s Fund.
Have you heard about some of the apartment fires here in the neighborhood?”, he asked rhetorically and then continued without an answer.
“I guess you heard about the one over on Hayes Street and the one on Aryers. If those people woulda had us on the job, I bet they never would a happened.
What do ya think?”, he again asked rhetorically and then continued with out an answer.
“What we do is make sure that, that kinda thing doesn’t happen to you.
Now, it’s hard to keep this kinda service going without support. We here to ask for your contribution. We suggest, strong suggest, a fifty dollar per month donation.”
“Let’s quit the bullshit. Give up the fifty bucks and ya don’t get burned out”, chimed in the second man.
Jack said nothing. He reached into his pocket and pulled out forty dollars.
“It’s all I’ve got now”.
The three hesitated for a moment.
“Okay, but we’ll be back next month and it’ll be sixty bucks. That’ll give ya a whole month to save up”, and with that they left, slamming the door behind them.
Jack went back into the living room and sat down and sighed.
He could hear, from out in the hallway, their banging on the door of the apartment next to his, as they made their way through the building.
“What a bitch”, he thought.
He’d allowed himself to be pushed around by a bunch of low life thugs and he hasn’t done anything about it. He’d just sucked it all down like a kid on a playground being roughed up by the schoolyard bully. He felt ashamed of himself, but then again, what could he have done?
He thought of what his father had told him when he was a child.
“There’s a fine line between bravery and stupidity and you should always know the difference”.
To confront these pricks certainly would have been over that line.
What would have it proved? They just would have beaten him senseless and taken the money anyway, he consoled himself.
He sat in the chair with a vacant stare.
As he pondered, Larry’s words came into his thoughts.
“Trust me. They will. They will.
And when it happens you‘ll get sick of it real quick, and I might be getting’ a call about some more free food for my boys.
I’ll be waitin’ by the phone”.
He more he thought, the angrier he became.
Why should those young punks be allowed to terrorize the entire neighborhood?
Should he and everyone else just stand by and be subjected to their tyranny?
“Would I have put up with this shit thirty-five years ago?”, he asked himself.
“Not a chance”, he thought.
“Then, why now? Because he was old?
Sure, old but not crippled “, he mused.
“Maybe Larry was right, after all. They’d certainly deserve whatever happened to them,.
Bunch of little fucks!”, he thought.
But the question then becomes how, when and where.
Chapter 7
“Hey Man , what the hell happened to you?”
“What do you mean?”, replied Hal.
“What do I mean? Your hand! What the hell happened to your hand?”, Jack replied.
“Oh, that”, Hal answered in a dismissive voice, as he raised his bandaged hand.
“Got my finger busted”.
“Well yeah, but how?”
“Got it slammed in a door. Broke the little finger real good”.
“Slammed in a door? How did you do that”, Jack queried.
“Don’t make no difference how, it just got smashed”, he blurted in a nervous voice.
There was a long pause as they sat in the warm morning sun, Hal staring down at his injured hand in a distant gaze and tapping his foot. Jack drew his usual, long slow drags on the cigar held in his teeth.
“You seem kinda jittery Hal. What’s the problem?”
“No problem Jack. No problem!”, he replied unreassuringly.
Again, there was a long pause.
Then Jack spoke.
“How long have I known you Hal?”
“Don’t know. I guess pretty much ever since I moved here, probably a good three or four years maybe.”
“How much time do you figure we spend on this bench every week?”
“I suppose a couple hours a day except in bad weather.”
“I’m not a great math guy but I’d say that adds up to thousands of hours. What do you think?”
“Probably right”, agreed Hal.
“I guess we know each other pretty well then. What do ya think?”
“I guess.”
“I think then, we can pretty much tell when the other one of us isn’t tellin’ the truth.”
“Suppose so”.
“So what happened to the hand?”
Hal began to speak slowly.
“It happened last night. The FM bunch came for the monthly ‘donation’ as they call it. Well, this time, when they came I’d already had a couple of beers in me and I just wasn’t in the mood for taken their shit.
So, when they pounded on the door, I looked out and when I saw who it was, I just told them ‘Fuck you, you scum bags. You’re not getting’ a god damn dime, now get outta here’.
Then they broke the door open and pushed me into the bathroom. They pushed me down into the bathtub and took the money out of my wallet.
Just as they were getting ready to leave DS showed up.
“What’s goin’ on with this guy’, he says to them and they tell about me not openin’ the door. That really pissed him off.
‘We can’t be goin’ through this