A Message from Big Daddy Thug
Welcome to the second collection of the best crime fiction culled from the depths of Thuglit.com and some of the best literary purveyors of mayhem and attitude on the planet.
Sex…
We got femmes fatales, lying Lotharios, and some Mexican porno comics, to name a few elements of the horizontal chicken dance we got going on between these covers.
Thugs…
Open any page. There’s bound to be one there. Hell, we even got a couple of bisexual ass-kicking Vikings on a Crusade.
No. Don’t read it again. That’s what I said.
Rock & Roll…
Shee-yit, brothers and sisters…we are Rock & Roll. These stories are the guitar-slingin’, drum-kit-kickin’, bass-amp-exploding riders on the storm of pulp fiction.
Testify!!!!!
Where else you gonna find psychotic street gangs, jailhouse lunatics, brawlers, psychopaths, pimps, hookers, and PIs all in one place? And in case you think you’ve seen it all, we still got those kooky Vikings.
Who else is going to give it to you, if not Thuglit?
You’re welcome.
—TODD ROBINSON (BIG DADDY THUG)
Double Down
Jason Starr
I needed the six horse to win the fourth race at Belmont in a big way, but as the horses went around the far turn I knew it wasn’t happening. The six made the lead but he was all out and another horse, the nine, was flying on the outside. In mid-stretch the nine hooked the six, but the six dug in—just to extend my torture a little longer—and they went neck and neck past the sixteenth pole.
“Hold him off, you cocksucker!” I yelled. “Get up, you fucking son of a bitch!”
Naturally, I was wasting my breath. Seventy yards to the wire, the six hit quicksand and the nine drew off to win by an open length.
I went back into the grandstand, cursing, ripping tickets. The six was my big play of the day. I bet my lungs on it—five hundred win and another six hundred in exactas and triples. Yeah, I hit a couple cover exactas on the nine-six, but what would that get me, a hundred and change? Big whoopy shit.
I rode the escalator to the second floor, went to the saloon, and ordered a J.D. straight up. I downed it in one gulp and asked for a refill. A guy sat next to me. He was my age, early forties, had a big gut and thinning gray hair. He was in an expensive suit and was wearing a Rolex. But he had a wannabe way about him. Maybe he was rich, maybe he wasn’t, but he wanted everybody to think he was.
He ordered a gin and tonic, then said to me, “How you doin’?”
At the racetrack when somebody asks you how you’re doing they’re not inquiring about your health.
“How do you think I’m doing?” I said, figuring I’d let the fact that I was at the bar downing J.D.’s at two in the afternoon on a bright sunny day do the talking.
“Had the six in the last, huh?” he asked.
“Tell me how he fuckin’ loses that race,” I said, getting aggravated all over again. “I mean, okay, the nine was good. But with the fractions he got, what, half in forty-seven and change? He should’ve won by open lengths.”
“Maybe he was a little green?”
“Green? Come on, give me a fuckin’ break. It was, what, his fourth time out? Mark my words, that horse’ll never win a fuckin’ race, not at this track anyway. Maybe if they ship him up to fuckin’ Finger Lakes or some shit track he’ll break his maiden.”
My heart was racing and my face was burning up. I felt the way people probably felt before they had heart attacks.
“Well, thank God there’s five more races to get ’em back, right?”
“Not for me. I came here to be the six horse.”
“And I came here to talk to you.”
During our conversation so far, I’d been looking away and at my glass mostly, but now I looked at the guy in the suit and said, “And who do you think you’re talking to?”
“Your name’s Jimmy Guarino, right?”
He got my name right, but I said, “Who the fuck’re you?”
I’d been doing PI and protection work for eleven years, three on my own. I hadn’t made a lot of friends along the way and I never knew when somebody’s life I’d fucked up would show up looking for payback.
“DiMarco,” he said, extending his hand. “Andy DiMarco.”
I didn’t shake his hand, just asked, “The fuck do you want?”
“Big Mikey said I could find you here.”
Big Mikey was a good guy, a bookie/loanshark from Staten Island. He grew up in my neighborhood—Brooklyn, Bay Ridge—and when I was a teenager I went out with his sister for a while.
“Sorry about that,” I said, feeling bad for treating him like shit. I smiled, trying to make nice, and said, “I hope you’re not looking for a hot tip, ’cause I’m telling you right now, you came to the wrong guy.”
“I’m not looking for any tips, I’m looking for a good PI, and Big Mikey said you’re one of the best.”
“I always do what I’m hired to do if that’s what you mean by good.”
“I was interested in hiring you to do a job.”
“What kind of job?”
He took a sip of his drink, swallowed hard, then said, “I think my wife’s fucking somebody.”
He sounded a little choked up, like it was hard for him to talk about it. I almost felt sorry for him.
“Take it from me,” I said, “guy’s been divorced three times. If you think she’s fucking somebody, she is.”
“Yeah, well, I want to know for sure.”
“Yeah, well, I’m telling you for sure.”
He glared at me, then said, “I want the fuckin’ evidence.”
They always wanted evidence. I guess seeing was better than believing, or at least it made it easier to walk out the door.
But I didn’t know why I was giving this guy marriage counseling. Cheating spouses were my easiest cases, how I made most of my money. I liked them because they were fast and uncomplicated. When spouses cheated, they were so lost and in-love that they got careless: writing incriminating e-mails, making long phone calls, doing public displays of affection. It was almost like they were begging to get caught, to get out of their shitty marriages. So I just took the pictures, got paid, and everybody was happy.
“If you want evidence, I’ll get you evidence,” I said.
“Thank you,” he said. “What do you take up front?”
I usually took five hundred as a retainer, but I took another glance at the well-pressed suit, the gleaming Rolex, and decided to roll the dice.
“A thousand,” I said.
“No problem,” he said.
Fuck, should’ve asked for two. Talk about nothing going my way.
He opened his wallet and took out a money clip. He peeled off ten hundreds from the wad and handed them to me.
I pocketed the money, then asked, “So why do you think she’s cheating?”
“She’s