THE LITERARY EVENT OF THE CENTURY

[East Coast Hustle]

don't get all wet just yet.

I've been waiting for him to stop dicking around with my computer for quite some time now.

Either he's really souping it up to the nuts, or he's stalling so the CIA people can have a little more time to go over my hard drive.

[Jenne]

Yeah, damn, this one's been stewing for a while.  *needs closure!!!!*

This shit's awesome...reads like a real novel.  Great stuff, ECH.

[LMNO]

I received a text message from ECH this weekend...

"The Sequel Has Begun."


Which is a shame, since he hasn't even finished the first episode, yet...

[Jenne]

Yeah, Dude...he better work on some shit to wrap THIS edition up...

[East Coast Hustle]

heh.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Someone care to explain to me why this wasn't brought to my attention sooner? 

I'm starting to see a theme here, fkin quality work that leaves you hanging for months waiting on the next instalment?

[LMNO]

Because we (the authors) are just too fucking cool to spend all our time churning out petty amusements for the proles.

[East Coast Hustle]

I've got another chapter....

actually, I've got TWO other chapters. Now y'all just have to wait for me to transfer them from my everything else computer to my internets computer.

[East Coast Hustle]

oh, and since I apparently never posted the other two chapters that I finished a while ago, that means there are FOUR NEW CHAPTERS.

obviously, I can't release them all at once, but I'l try to get one or two of them posted this week.

for those of you who've never seen this, read it from the beginning so you too can wait in breathless anticipation while I continually tease and promise and inevitably fail to deliver.

[East Coast Hustle]

Chapter Seven

It's the longest five seconds of my life. Longer than the previous 28 years put together. There's shouting and gunfire and the sound of cars hitting cars and cars peeling out, but I can't hear any of it. All of my attention is focused on a crumpled human form laying in a quickly-spreading pool of blood about 5 yards away from the car I'm crouched behind.

I have to go help Cuz. If I wait until everything calms down, he'll be dead. If I don't wait, I might be dead. And I don't even have the gun.

Fuck.

I run over to where Cuz is laying on the ground. It's worse than it looked from a distance. He caught two of them. One went through his shoulder and came out the other side clean. One went into his neck and is still in there somewhere. The blood that's flowing freely from his neck is too dark, and he doesn't appear to be breathing. Fucking St. Thomas. Anywhere else in the civilized world, and the cops and EMTs would be crawling all over this place, but here I can just barely make out the first sirens off in the distance. They're still 2 or 3 minutes away, and I don't think Cuz has that long.
I take my shirt off and feel in Cuz's cargo pockets for the knife I know is in there. Applying a tourniquet to someone's neck is tricky business, but it beats watching him bleed out right there in my arms. Once the flow of blood from his neck is somewhat abated, I wrap a couple strips around his shoulder. As my hearing and vision begin to lose the hyper-focus that comes with emptying your entire adrenal gland all at once, I am aware of someone standing behind me.

I manage to stop from burying the knife in Scott's eye by a matter of inches.

"Bro, you shouldn't sneak up on a motherfucker like that after he's just been shot at. You almost got yourself killed. We need to get him to a hospital."

"No, you need to follow me out of here before the cops show up. We've got about 45 seconds before we find ourselves in a St. Thomian jail cell, where we'll get to hang out for a few days until they get around to us."

"We NEED to get my fucking brother to a fucking hospital."

"Dude. 30 seconds. Get in the fucking car, and let the professionals take care of him. You've already done everything you can do for him, J. We need to GO."

"I'm taking his ride. I'll follow you."

The Mustang responds well, and Scott and I clear the back entrance to the Havensight complex about 10 seconds before the space in front of Offshore fills up with cops and paramedics. We break right to avoid going back past the scene of the crime and continue towards the East End. My cell phone starts ringing, and the caller ID shows a VI number that I don't recognize. On the road ahead of me, Scott is flashing his hazards on and off trying to signal something. I pick up the phone.

"It's me. Cuz tried to call you from my phone yesterday, that's how I had the number. We're headed to Duffy's. you need to stash the Mustang somewhere if you wanna get back to the North Side alive, and I know just the place. Dude there might even be able to lend us some heat, but you gotta keep your mouth shut about what just happened. He gets wind of that shit and he'll shoot us himself before he'll get involved helping us."

"Ok...then you tell me how we're gonna explain showing up with some stateside stranger he's never seen before driving Cuz's car?"

"Bro...you still don't get it, do you? He might not know you, but he sure as fuck knows who you are. Just tell him cuz left with Ashley and left you with the Mustang, and you were fucking around and drove past a cop at 70 with a joint hanging out the window. He'll understand, and be happy to help a legend escape the long arm of the law."

"Legend? Shit...now I've heard everything. But whatever. If he'll help us, let's go. But Scott?"

"Yeah?"

"We are NOT staying at fucking Duffy's for any amount of time. Period. I hate that bar."

"Well, I just wanna talk to one guy..."

"No. Period."

"A'ight. We'll bounce as soon as we've safely stashed the car."

As I close my phone, we round the curve that brings Duffy's into view, along with the rest of the grossly overdeveloped strip that marks the edge of the east End's commercial hub, Red Hook. Scott whips into the strip mall just before Duffy's and drives around to the back of the building, where there appears to be some sort of autobody shop. I park right next to him and as I hop out, I remember that I'm not wearing a shirt and my pants are covered in blood. Maybe we oughtta re-think how we play this.

"Dude...I just realized something."

"Dude? Scott?"

"Scott!"

I walk around the car to his driver's side window. He's just sitting there, like we've got all the time in the world to spare. I tap on the window. Nothing.

I open his driver's side door.

He spills out onto the concrete, clutching his side and covered in blood.

TO BE CONTINUED...

[East Coast Hustle]

Chapter Eight

Apparently, Scott was stabbed in the side during the fracas at Offshore. Why he failed to mention this fact is a mystery to me. Perhaps he had just done THAT much coke. Needless to say, this totally ruins our immediate plans. Cuz's car might be hot, but the inside of Scott's car is covered in blood. I perform my second attempt at triage in the past hour, slow the bleeding down to a trickle, and get him into the passenger seat of the Mustang. The hospital isn't that far away, but unfortunately for me, Offshore is directly between my current location and where I want to be. Since there's no way I'm driving past there in Cuz's car, it means I have to go all the way around the East End, over the mountain from the back side, and through the Bovoni ghetto to get to the hospital. Bovoni is one of the most dangerous places on the island, doubly so because it's someplace where I don't have any acquaintances. This turns a simple 10 minute drive into a very tense half-hour drive, during which my right hand alternates between working the gearshift on the switchbacks, and gripping the pistol in my lap every time I have to bring the car to a stop. As I come down the other side of the hill and weave my way through Tutu towards the hospital, I wake Scott up.

"Wha? Huh? Where am I?"

"We're at the hospital, bro. You gotta get out here. You've lost a lot of blood."

"Dude, where's my car?"

"Funny guy. I left it parked by the autobody shop near Duffy's. You neglected to tell me that the inside was soaked in your own blood. I'd rather take my chances with the Mustang. I locked it and set the alarm. You can pick it up tomorrow, I'm sure."

"Fuck that, J. We gotta go get those fucks, man. We can't let that shit go down like that."

"I appreciate the sentiment, but you'll be more of a hindrance than a help in your condition. You get sewn up, man, I'm'a go find out a few things and come back to check on you. Don't forget to NOT ask anything about Cuz, or you and I are gonna meet up again sooner than we'd like, and not where we'd like to be. Now go."

"But..."

"No. You'll be fine once you get patched up, so I'll catch up with you tomorrow and we'll figure out a plan."

First things first. It's bad enough to be driving around the island in a flashy sports car that every cop on St. Thomas is looking for, but for that car to be full of drugs is just stupid. I turn right out of the hospital parking lot and head up Mafolie Hill on my way to the North Side. I'm just about to turn left into my Mom's driveway when I realize how unforgivably stupid that would be. Surely she's gotten a call by now about Cuz, and me showing up shirtless, bloody, and driving his car will probably not set me up for a smooth exit a few minutes later. I keep going and turn up St. Peter Mountain Road. My timing is superb, as usual. I'm just about to Cuz's driveway when I see Ashley's car pulling out. He's on death's door with a bullet in his neck, and she's over here? It strikes me as suspicious, but I have no interest in confronting her right now, so I file it away for future reference and keep driving past his apartment. A little way down the road, once she's around a curve and out of sight, I make a U-turn and head back to his crib.
I don't wanna stash his dope anywhere obvious if Ashley is snooping around. She'd rip him off in a heartbeat, and it'd be on me, so I put everything in a freezer bag, wrap it tight with duct tape, tie a string to it, and hang it down the cistern-pipe where no one would ever think to look. Then I get the first piece of good luck I've had all night. I had left my backpack there before we headed to the Old Mill, and there's an extra pair of shorts and a t-shirt in it. Ten minutes later, I'm freshly showered and changed and on my way back out the door, wearing clothes nobody's seen me in tonight and a floppy wide-brim hat that I stole from Cuz's wardrobe.
As I head towards the top of St. Peter Mountain, it occurs to me that I really have no idea what I'm doing or where I'm going. Cuz and Scott will have to wait for now. I'd like to find the Turbe brothers and find out what they saw and what they know about our assailants, but my guess is that right now that's exactly what the cops are doing with them. Too late to go bother Devin, and it wouldn't be fair to involve him in this anyway. God only knows where Timmy and Drew are right now. What I'd really like to do is to find Hannah and let her help me unwind, but she's probably still at the Old Mill, and the Old Mill is NOT a safe place for me to be right now. I keep on driving as my mind wanders, and pretty soon I'm making my way back down the hill towards town. I can think of worse places to be, I guess. Being right in the heart of Charlotte Amalie will afford me some much needed anonymity, and it's probably as good a place as any to run into a friendly face at this time of night. Sitting at a red light, I decide to head to Gottlieb's for some late-night munchies and a sixer of Heineken.
Lost in my thoughts, I don't even realize that the light has turned green until the car behind me honks. When I look up, I realize that, whether by chance or design, I have ended up right in front of where I meant to go all along. The one place I can find the answers I need and the people I need to get them from. I pull into an alley a couple blocks away. This is NOT the place I want to be recognized by the car I'm driving. As I hop out of the Mustang, I steel myself for what could be the last thing I ever do.

About 2 hours after the shooting, with the coppery smell of my own kin's blood still tickling my nose like the fast-fading remnants of a bad dream, I walk right into the hornets' nest.

With the pistol tucked firmly into my belt, and the hat pulled low over my eyes, I walk into Sky High.

TO BE CONTINUED....

[East Coast Hustle]

Chapter Nine

Lady Luck is truly on my side tonight. Of all the nights I could have picked to try to go incognito in a West Indian whorehouse, I picked the night when the place is half-full of white tourists with sunburns and panama hats. I fit right in. At this point, I'm pretty much running on fumes, so I decide to refill my tank with another Henny and cran. There's quite a difference between the drink I got when I came in with Cuz and the drink I get while passing myself off as just another stateside honky, but it beats drinking the tap water in this part of town. The corner table is occupied by a couple of crackheads trying to figure out which one of the bar skanks will accept a few rocks as payment for their services in lieu of cash. I walk over to them.

"This is my table. Get out."

"Huh? Who the fuck are you, man? You don't own this place. Fuck off."

I lift my shirt a couple inches, just enough for them to catch a glimpse of what the future holds if they don't comply with my request.

"I said get out. And if you make a scene, you won't reach the door alive."

"Uhh..."

They head for the door quickly and without so much as a muttered word or a backwards glance. No one seems sorry to see them go, nor do they pay any attention to the big white drunk in the corner cruising for a couple hours of companionship. Now all I can do is wait for the right opportunity, if there is such a thing at this point. At least the girl dancing on the stage is kinda hot, and even appears to be of legal age. The beginning of a plan starts to coalesce in my mind.
When the hottie gets done with her dance, I motion her overt to my table.

"Hey there, sweet thing. You busy right now, or you got time to keep me company?"

"M'sun, I ain' wukkin' dis crowd! Stage gyuls ain' fo' whitey cheese like you. VIP only, d'man."

"I'm as VIP as it gets, baby. I own 12 import car dealerships in the Denver area."

"D'ain't mean nuttin' to me, m'sun. My boss ain' know who da fuck you is, so I don' t'ink ya on the VIP list."

I flash her a fairly sizeable wad of cash. Dangerous move in a place like this, but my options are severely limited.

"Does this get me VIP status?"

"I betta talk to my boss. And you beta put that away or one dese native boys gon' take it from you."

"Ok, go talk to your boss. Tell him to come talk to me if he wants."

She slinks off towards the door to the back rooms, presses a buzzer, and gets let in. I follow a few seconds behind and just manage to catch the door before it shuts and locks behind her. I can hear her conversation coming from the room at the end of the hall on the right.

"Danny! Some crazy white boy out there flashin' cash and wantin' to rent me for an hour. You wan' tell him to go fuck he'self, or you wan' me to play along so we co' take his grip?"

"Go tell him it alright, and take him to the room upstairs with the broken lock. Don' give he nuttin' though! String him along until one 'dem boys come up, then come back down here. I catch you gettin' down wit' he, you gon' feel the back of my hand, gyul. Jah as my witness."

Did he really just invoke Jah in the context of backhanding one of his hookers? No matter, I don't have time to appreciate the irony right now. She comes back out of the office and I duck into an empty room off the hallway. I figure I only have about 2 minutes to make my move before she comes back to tell him I'm not there anymore. I quickly move down the hallway with one hand under my shirt. I can hear Danny on the phone in the office, and the place appears to be otherwise empty. I knock on the door to the office.

"Who it is? Don' botha me now, d'man! Y'all can' see when a man is busy?"

I open the door and walk in like I'm supposed to be there. We'll find out soon enough if he really never made my face, or if he's just keeping that advantage to himself.

"Wha? Who the fuck you is? Dis ain' the bat'room, m'sun! Now get ya white ass outta here before I decide to shoot you myself."

Good. He really has no idea who I am. I come with my best native-born accent.

"Malik sent me to talk to you."

"Malik? Malik in prison, m'sun. He ain' send you or anybody else. Now y'gon' get all fuck up, boy."

Thank god I always paid attention to who my Stepdad's friends were and how they were connected to each other. Time for the trump card.

"Malik heard from Manny that you were having trouble with your NorthSide boy. Manny sent me over here to talk to you. I'm supposed to take over distribution for that part of the operation. You got a problem with that, I can have Manny come over here and you two can talk it out."

Only the biggest of big dogs would ever even think about getting crossed up with Manny. Danny is not that big a dog.

"Manny send you? Howcome y'ain' say so! Listen, I can't give you a full key right now cuz I ain' had a chance to get it back from the last dude, but I co' give you half a key for now and set you up propa tomorrow night."

Hmm. I think I know now what Ashley was doing snooping around Cuz's place earlier. I'll have to have a talk with her later.

"Sounds good to me. Only thing is, I'm right in the middle of selling my condo and moving to a new place out by Caret Bay, so I had to stash all my scales and shit while the real estate agents are poking around. You got a scale and a spare room I could use for a few minutes?"

"No problem, man. Come, I'll show you to the other office, and when you done, if you ain' got nuttin' else goin' on, I co' hook you up wit' one of my best gyuls for an hour."

"Hell yeah. I think I'm gonna like doing business with you, Danny. Lead the way."

He never even notices me grab the roll of duct tape from the storage bin by the desk as he gets up and motions for me to follow him down the hallway. Just as he's about to pass the side door to the outside, I pistol whip him in the back of the head and shove him through the door.

TO BE CONTINUED...

[East Coast Hustle]

bump for shameless self-promotion, and because in spite of the fact that I have not even come close to finishing this story, the first chapter in the next VI story is almost done, and while this story is loosely based on true events, then new one is 100% true, and twice as strange.

[Rumckle]

Bump for ECH's new story