Right to Die

Airstream trailer. Two sets of bunk beds met head to toe at one corner, a cluttered desk to one side.
    I said, “The photo team from Better Homes and Gardens been here yet?”
    “Fuck you,” said Rick, burbling a little through the blood.
    I moved to the desk and started rooting around.
    “Hey,” said my greeter, “you can’t do that.”
    “Constitution’s suspended for a while, boys.”
    Most of the paperwork was in the form of leaflets, newsletters, and requests for contributions. White Aryan Resistance and some kind of affiliated group called the Aryan Youth Movement, both from southern California ; The American Front from northern California ; White Heritage from the Midwest . Some newspaper and magazine clippings, but of whole articles. About white supremacy groups like the Klan, the Order, and the Posse Comitatus. One long story from the Boston Globe on skinheads in New England . A poor Xerox copy of a report from the Antidefamation League of the B’nai B’rith, defaced with predictable remarks. Even an ad from a British magazine for steel-toed Dr. Martens workboots, which seemed to match what the skinheads were wearing.
    No mutilated headlines, though.
    I walked over to my greeter. “Let me explain the drill.” He looked at me sideways, the way you might watch a kid who steals ice cream from your cafeteria tray.
    I patted the pocket with the automatic. “I’m betting this isn’t registered, at least not to you clowns. I’m also betting I can get one of you a year the hard way for having it. Who wants to cover my bet?”
    Rick said, “Don’t say nothing, Tone.”
    “Tone? Tony, right?”
    Greeter who might be Tony didn’t say anything.
    I said, “Tony, let me spell it out for you, no big words. You guys were stupid, going hand to hand with the cops back at the library.”
    Tony looked me in the eye now, memory dawning. “But the piece, the piece is beyond stupid. The piece is getting to play drop the soap in a communal shower. Am I getting through to you?”
    Tony was definitely sensing the drift of the conversation. “I wasn’t anywheres near the gun.”
    “You fucking shithead.”
    I ignored Rick and said, “Where’s Gunther Yary?”
    Tony worked his mouth.
    I said, “Twelve months is fifty-two weeks, three hundred sixty-five—”
    Tony said, “He’s out on the bridge.”
    “You yellow fucking—”
    “What bridge?”
    “The Granite Ave bridge. The judge, the judge gave him public service.”
    “You’re a fuckhead. Tone.”
    I pointed to Rick. “The guy with the broken nose thinks you’re a yellow fuckhead, Tony. The guy who’s supposed to be standing next to you, standing up for you. Think about that.”
    I left the place. In the car I unloaded the automatic. Two blocks later I dumped the gun down one storm drain and the bullets down another.

    There were four men working on the surface of the bridge, a couple of orange barrels and a bunch of orange traffic cones keeping the passing cars at least three inches away from arms, hips, and legs. I walked up to the closest man, the only guy who didn’t have a tarbrush in his hands.
    He was wearing an orange safety vest with yellow X’s front and back. Below the vest, patched corduroy pants and sneakers. Above the vest, a green, battered hardhat. He held a filterless cigarette between a thumb and forefinger, the thumb missing its nail.
    I said, “John Cuddy. I’d like to talk with one of your men there.”
    “What’s it about?”
    “Case I’m working on.” I showed him my ID.
    “Lemme guess. The Nazi.”
    “Gifted, isn’t he.”
    “Sonofabitch. Fucking judge don’t got the balls to put a guy away so close to Christmas, that I can understand. But putting him on my gang, for chrissakes, don’t they even think about that? Judge’s got a criminal, what does he do, he sends him out to do my job. How do you figure that makes me feel?”
    “Yary been any trouble?”
    “Nothing but. Guy opened his mouth about the Jews and the—look, I’m not carrying the torch for anybody, get me? But I had to send this guy, Roosevelt Barnes, off with another crew. My best worker, and I had to send him off. You know why?”
    “Yary?”
    “Called Rosey a nigger. To his face. I mean, forget Rosey’s about three hundred pounds, you don’t say that to a black guy, not anymore. Took two a us to hold Rosey back. I’m not about to let a good guy like Rosey, got seventeen fucking years in, get bounced for dropping a piece a Nazi shit