Waffles
Jamie Grimes
“What happened to you?” Randall beamed his usual cool smirk as he slid into the booth with such fluidity that the seat cushion didn’t even begin to make that embarrassing mock-flatulence noise. “Never seen one of Satchel’s guys with so much as a hair out of place. And you--”
“Long story,” Martin mumbled through a mouthful of waffle and egg, glancing up from his newspaper to acknowledge his associate’s arrival. Martin’s hair was a damp mess of black tangles that kept falling in front of his face, no matter how often he swept the stray strands behind his ears. His clothes--a dark blue Brooks Brothers business suit--had what looked like mud at the cuffs and at the collar; there was a hole in the right shoulder of his jacket, another through the left lapel, and one that went through the left forearm.
Randall pushed up on the edge of Martin’s paper and struggled through the pronunciation of the headline. “I never even stopped to think that you guys was literate. Figured that, considering the business, you was more, you know, television guys.”
Martin swallowed and readied another bite of breakfast food. “I like the pictures.” He picked up his fork and pointed the waffle-covered end at Randall. “Have you ever tried the food here?”
“Can’t say that I have.” Randall leaned back in his booth, away from the syrup-drenched offering, then he reached between the napkin holder and condiment rack for a laminated menu. “Never eaten at a Waffle Lodge. Sounds yummy.”
“Try the waffles and eggs.” Martin shoved more food into his mouth. “Raisin toast is good, too.”
“I was thinking about the steak and potatoes,” Randall said, tapping the picture in the middle of the brightly colored sheet.
Martin shook his head.
“What?”
“What’s the name at the top of the menu?” Martin asked, tapping the tip of his fork against the top of the menu.
Randall paused, the responded. “Waffle Lodge?”
“Waffle Lodge.” Martin tapped on the menu with his fork again. “Not the fucking Steak Shack. Waffle Lodge. You know what that means?”
“What?”
“Means the steak’s shit. Try the waffles.”
“Right, then. Never had breakfast food this late at night. You mind telling me what’s got Satchel calling around for help at three o’clock in the morning? I’d be home asleep if I didn’t need the money.”
“He didn’t tell you?” Martin made eye contact with a waitress with a Lucille Ball haircut and freckles everywhere on her face except the tip of her nose; he nodded for her to come over.
“No. He just said for me to meet you here soon as I could. Nothing other than that.”
“No?”
The red-haired waitress stopped at the end of the booth and pulled a notepad from her wrinkled, grease-spotted apron. Her look was the picture of utter indifference; her voice was husky and monotonous. “What can I get for you?”
Randall’s finger rubbed the picture of the steak platter on the shimmering menu. He ran his tongue against his teeth and looked over at Martin, who was shaking his head. “Steak and potatoes. And a tea, unsweetened. You can do unsweetened, right?”
“We don’t get many orders for it, but I can brew some up special for you,” she said as she jotted down his order.
“I’d appreciate it.”
The waitress confirmed his order and walked off to greet a family of four that was coming in. After a short conversation with the waitress, they quickly left. Martin smirked and rolled his eyes at Randall.
“What?” Randall shrugged as he removed his silverware from the white-napkin-and-tape wrapping.
“Nevermind.”
“What is it?”
Martin closed his paper and set it net to his plate. After staring Randall down with an apathetic expression, he leaned forward with his elbows on the edge of the table and his hands interlocked in front of his mouth.
“You ever been to Great Steaks Alive?” Martin asked.
Randall nodded.
“Of course you have. And I bet you ordered a steak when you went, didn’t you?”
Randall threw his legs into the empty cushion and pulled a cigarette from his jacket pocket. “Yeah, I had the steak.”
“And it was a good steak, wasn’t it?”
“Christ.” Randall reached into his pocket and took out a silver lighter with a devil’s face etched into the side. He put the cigarette in his mouth. “Is this why Satchel called me down here, to find out my dining preferences?”
“I’m proving a point. Just bare with me.”
“Alright,” Randall moaned as he flicked the top of the lighter open with his thumb; yellow fire shot up. He lifted the flame above his head and waved it for dramatic affect. Feigning a British accent, he said, “It was a good steak.”
Martin shot his hands forward; one knocked the cigarette onto the table; the other smothered the lighter.
Randall lurched back and shielded his face with his forearms. “Jesus, what was that about?” He glanced through his arms at Martin, watching as he examined the etching on the lighter.
“There’s no smoking in here.” Martin ran his thumb over the devil’s face, then pulled a fresh handkerchief from his breast pocket, cleaned off the smudges, and handed it back to Randall. “That’s a quality lighter.”
“Yeah.” Randall relaxed as the waitress approached with his platter. He straightened his collar and gave her a crooked smile. “Got it not too far back. Works like a beauty.”
“Just give a holler if you need anything else, sugar,” the waitress chimed in, sliding Randall’s order down in front of him. The cook’s rendition of the steak platter looked nothing like the perfectly portioned and garnished dish that was the centerpiece of the Waffle Lodge dinner selections. Instead, what sat before him was a mass of gray meat and an equally-sized lump of off-white potato cream with little green specks mixed into it. Between the meat and the potatoes there was a heap of sliced peppers and soggy onionssitting in a pool of dirty brown liquid. Randall picked up his fork and pushed the heap of mushy vegetables onto the table.
“Let me finish what I was saying before you try to eat that,” Martin said, putting his hand over Randall’s fork.
“Just get to the point. Unless you’re paying me for my charming chit-chat.”
“Look. You went to Great Steaks Alive, you got the steak, right?”
“Right.”
“Of course. You go to a steak place, you get the steak. You go to a Chinese buffet, you eat the Chinese food. You don’t eat those little rubberyfried chicken wings, nobody does. You want chicken at a buffet, you eat the Kung Pao or the General Tso’s.” Martin motioned for Randall to eat. “Try the steak.”
Randall cut into the gray beef with his butter knife. “They could’ve at least brought a steak knife,” he said.
Martin smiled as Randall used his knife to stab the tough meet. “I wonder how many people have ever had the steak. You may very well be the first.”
Just then, Randall bit into his steak and chewed. His face distended with disgust.
“Well, how’s the steak?” Martin asked through a chuckle.
Quickly, Randall pulled a handful of napkins from the dispenser and spit the gnawed meat into them. As he wadded the paper and meat into a ball, he choked on the taste. “Awful.”
Martin sat back and clasped his hands together. “Of course it is. It’s awful because this isn’t fucking Great Steaks Alive. It’s Waffle Lodge. Waffle Lodge.” He scooped a bit of his waffle onto his fork and put it down next to Randall’s steak, just outside the reach of the mysterious brown liquid that was slowly invading the potato mass. “The waffles are damn-near orgasmic, but the salads, the steaks, all that other shit sucks.”
Randall nudged the donated waffle with his fork.
“There are occasional anomalies, but on the whole, if you go to a place and said place has an understood specialization, you can bank on that specialization to be the best item on the menu. It’s an issue of propriety on the part of the establishment.”
“That so?” Randall asked before tasting the waffle.
“It is. How’s the waffle?”
Randall wiped his mouth with the edge of a napkin. “It’s good. Real good.”
“And the point of my little culinary diatribe is this,” Martin said, raising his index finger for added emphasis. “You gotta know what it is you’re dealing with. Not just when it comes to food, either.”
Randall held his tea, swirling it and making the ice rattle. “I get what you’re saying. Deep philosophical shit.” He took a long gulp from the clear plastic mug and grimaced. “Fucking sweat tea.”
“What do you know about Satchel?” Martin asked as he pulled a cigarette from his pocket and lit it with a pink plastic lighter.
“I know nobody fucks with him. I know that.”
Martin took a long drag from his cigarette and blew the smoke up into the air.
“What about no smoking?” Randall asked, glancing down at his own cigarette, which had rolled to the edge of the table.
“I’m a hypocrite. Besides, nobody cares if you smoke in here. Do you see any No Smoking signs? I was just fucking with you.” He took another drag. “You know why it is nobody fucks with Satchel?”
“He’s got you guys, for starters.” Randall picked up his neglected cigarette and flicked the ash over his potato lump. “Gotta go through you to get to him. I don’t think I even know anyone that’s ever seen him in person. Can’t nobody get through you guys.”
“Well, that’s a very humbling sentiment, Randall.” Martin bowed gracefully, humble. “But, no. You see, I’m just a thug, a grunt, a heavy. What Satchel needs done, I get done. That’s what I do. But Satchel,” he chuckled, shook his head, “Satchel’s the sick mother fucker that sets everything into motion. He plans it all out to the letter, makes it real easy to follow. Hell, Randy--”
“Randall.”
Martin blew smoke across the table. “Well, Randall, I bet even you could do the stuff he tells us to do.”
Randall lit his cigarette and puffed. “You know what he wants me to do, or what?”
“Yeah, I know.” Martin opened his jacket, revealing the tops of two folded sheets of paper sticking out of his breast pocket. “Got these from Satchel earlier today. Like I said, it’s all planned out to the letter.”
Before Randall could reach for the letters, Martin closed his jacket and began fastening the buttons. “But we’ll get to that soon enough. Let me tell you a little story about how we got to where we are.
“A couple of weeks ago, someone tried to take out Satchel while he was taking a shit at Chez Dante.”
“Taking a shit?”
Martin flicked the end of his cigarette. Ash flicked onto his eggs. “Man’s gotta shit, don’t he? I mean, Satchel’s about as classy as they come, and he probably would have waited until he got back to his place to release the hounds, but incontinence waits for no man. Not even Satchel.”
Randall snickered.
“So, Satchel’s doing his thing when his guy at the stall door gets taken out, right? Wasn’t no gunshot or nothing. Guy got taken down by a dart through the neck and then got dragged off into one of the other stalls. Now, I’ve said that Satchel’s a classy guy, but he’s still a crazy mother fucker if you get him in the mood. And that’s just the kind of thing that sets him off.”
Randall sipped his tea. “He kill the guy?”
“Nah. I was working the same restaurant that night. Neither one of us saw the guy. My guess is somebody else must’ve come in before he could get to Satchel, threw him off. That’s my guess. I got a call on my cell, Satchel in the men’s room, and when I get there it’s just him pacing back and forth with his pants around his ankles, bare ass to the four winds. Like I said, crazy. He was so set to find the fucker that killed Jimenez that he’d forgotten he had his drawers down. Would’ve been a funny sight if it weren’t so damned scary.”
“So he wants me to help find the guy who tried to off him?”
“Call I tell the story?”
“Sorry.”
Martin smirked. “Thank you,” he said. “So word gets back to Satchel that Tito Cabrone knows the guy, and I get the call first thing this morning to go have a pleasant conversation with him.”
“With Cabrone?”
Martin put his cigarette out in a pool of syrup on his plate. “You’re keeping up. Good. Satchel insisted that I take somebody with me, and since I was going just to gather information, I got the new guy.
“I hate new guys.
“So I’m stuck with this guy, Sammy or somthing like that, and I can tell he’s nervous from the start. Can smell the guy’s sweat and nervous funk, even over that load perfume he was wearing. He said he did it for the benefit of his marks; he wanted the last thing they smelled to be something good, since they were going to be stuck for eternity with the smell of rotting ass.”
Randall shook his head. “Goddamn.”
“I know. I never put much stock in gimmicks. Don’t really have any habits, other than smoking.” Martin lit another cigarette. “Anyways, I try not to smoke around the new guys out of respect, because most of them grew up with humidifiers and air filters, and I’m afraid they’ll rupture a lung or something. But that perfume was getting to me.
“Guy had balls asaking me to not smoke in my own car. Did it real calm. Calm is scary, especially when it comes from a guy that size. So I offered him a smoke, real gentlemanly. Of course, I was being a smart ass. Just trying to bullshit with the guy a little, trying to get him to relax. He was making me nervous. As much fun as it is watching new guys that close to pissing themselves, it really wasn’t the time.
“So we get to Tito’s place, and it takes forever for him to come to the door. New guy’s getting fidgety, pacing a lot, like a kid that stole a cookie right before dinner. I keep knocking ‘til Tito comes, coked up to the moon and back, still got the shit under his nose. He’s sopping with sweat like he knew we were coming.
“So Tito lets us in, and I’m not sure who’s shaking more, him or the new guy. So I say to Tito, to both of them really, that we were just going to have a little informal exchange and be on our way, trying to calm everybody down. We sit there watching each other for a few dragging minutes. Nobody’s moving, making any noise. so I pull out my gun and start polishing it, because I was bored, mostly--and that’s the first thing I think to do when I’m bored--but that seemed to make Tito real talkative.”
“Probably thought you were going to kill him,” Randall pointed out.
“You think?” Martin responded with narrowed eyes.
“Sorry. Go on.”
“So Tito opens up like a paper fan at a Southern Baptist convention. Starts talking about things don’t nobody care about. Said his mom and dad molested him when he was a kid, that he took his anger out on stray dogs and cats. He went into this long, autobiographical rant about how he didn’t want to get involved with the drug game but needed the money, started crying.
“When Tito starts begging for his life, that’s when Sammy loses it. He flies across the room and fucking sacks the guy and starts pistol-whipping him in the back of the head. I hadn’t ever seeen anything like that, not from a new guy. I thought Tito was dead when I managed to pull Sammy back. He tries to argue with me, me, saying that Tito was just trying to bullshit for more time. And I tell him, first of all, that it isn’t his decision when we shelve the pleasantries, and second, that I know the difference between the look a man has when he’s bullshitting and the look a man has when he’s got the fear of God in him. If he’d killed Tito, I probably would have shot him on principle.
“But Tito wasn’t dead.” Martin patted his right shoulder and tugged gently on the circular perforation in his jacket. “And this was how he said thanks, soon as I turn around to check on him. I’m surprised he managed to hit me at all, frantic as he was. Second shot caught Sammy in the stomach.”
“Sammy die?” Randall asked.
“Sammy got pissed, shot out Tito’s kneecaps and started pistol-whipping him again. I try to talk him down, and he tells me to stay the fuck back, that he ain’t taking any more from the little punk, and he puts his pistol to Tito’s head. Now I’m fucking livid. I’m bleeding from the shoulder, my suit is ruined. I never meant for things to get so out of hand. If things got dirty, I planned on making it as quick and tidy as I could. But now there’s fucking blood everywhere, and I’m not sure who I want to shoot more, Tito or Sammy. So I say ‘fuck it’ and go into the bathroom to call Satchel.”
“You left those two alone?”
“Like I said, fuck it. Satchel promised his immediate attention, so I took my time in the bathroom. Cleaned out the fucking hole in my shoulder with peroxide and found some gauze and bandages to wrap it with. Checked out the cabinets, found Tito’s coke stash. I felt bad taking it, you know, but then he wan’t gonna need it once the clean-up crew got there.
“When I come out of the bathroom, Tito’s damn-near unconscious in the corner. Sammy’s sitting on the couch, holding his stomach. ‘Satchel’s got someone coming,’ I tell him, then I sit down in the comforter by the door. I thought to tell him to go deal with his stomach wound, but at that point I could give a shit. So we sit there, all of us quietly bleeding together, when someone knocks on the door. I was expecting Dimante or Lilly, but no, when I open the door, Satchel’s standing in the hall in the sharpest suit I’ve ever seen in my life. Fucking immaculate. And Nigel and Stitch were at his back.
“‘Sorry it took so long for us to get here,’ Satchel says, ‘but we had to take care of something of great consequence.’ He looks over my shoulder at Sammy on the couch and at Tito in the corner, and he motions for Nigel and Stitch to go in.
“‘Satchel,’ I say, ‘I can’t work like this. This fucking newbie--”
“He puts his hands on my shoulders and I go quiet. Don’t even feel any pain where I got shot. Just calm. ‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘We got this under control.’ He hands me two letters, the ones I’ve shown you. ‘Seems Mister Cabrone is no longer necessary.’ He goes on. ‘Take that mother fucker over to the residence of one Mister Jackson Andrews. His address is in the letter. You take that mother fucker, get what you can out of him, then divest yourself of our little scrub. Bury that mother fucker in Andrews backyard, up to his neck, and you cover it with something conspicuous. I don’t know, tumbleweeds or something. Here that, Cabrone?’ he shouts over my shoulder. His eyes are little red beads. ‘You’re only necessary as long as you’re useful. When you’re no longer useful, you’re no longer necessary. You got that? That’s the way this business works.’
“Tito didn’t respond.
“‘You need anything?” he asks me. ‘A beverage or something?’
“I shake my head, tell him I’m okay. Nigel and Stitch drag Sammy out, agreeing that he probably wasn’t going to make it.
“‘Hell, no, he’s not going to make it,” Satchel says. he backhands Sammy across the face. He says, ‘You’re bleeding on my gators,’ and motions toward the door. ‘Get him the fuck out of here. I’ll deal with him in a minute.’ He turns to me. ‘Everything else you need is in the papers. Call me when you’re done.’
“Tito doesn’t say much in the car, except he mumbles ‘I’m sorry’ over and over ‘ti I give up trying to get anything out of him and tell him to not bother talking. Then he just cries until he passes out. I’m pretty sure the guy’s dead, but when I check, he’s still got a pulse, which I think is good, at first, until I remember that he’s got no fucking kneecaps and, alive or not, I’m gonna have to lug this guy around.
“When we get to Andrews’ place, and I’m sure there isn’t anybody around, I gather up my shovel and pickax from the trunk and take them out to Andrews’ garden and come back for Tito. Now, I don’t think I could have carried Tito too much further if I had two functioning arms, but I try and end up dropping him head-first on the pavement. He doesn’t move. If he wasn’t dead, he is now, I think. So I drag him around back of the house and go back to the car for my chainsaw.”
Martin took a sip of orange juice, then a deep breath. He rubbed his eyes with his thumbs.
“What’s the chainsaw for?” Randall stammered, his eyes wide and intense, his forehead beaded with sweat. “What d’you need that for?”
Martin shrugged. “It was in the letter, Satchel’s letter. I didn’t question it. Not at all.
“I’m about a quarter-inch into tito’s back when he starts screaming bloody murder. Scares the piss out of me. I fall backward, almost cut my face off with the chainsaw. I get up, wipe the dust out of my eyes. Tito’s laying on his stomach in the dirt with a spurting gash a couple of inches above his ass crack. He ain’t moving his body, just rolling his head around and screaming, gasping for air and screaming. Under normal conditions, it wouldn’t have bothered me that he’s bawling like this, but I’m not a monster. I do have some compassion, especially when I think that total wrath is a little excessive. So I take off my jacket and cover his head with it, and when I get him to hold still, I shoot him through the mouth, then I finish with the sawing and I bury him up to his neck in the garden, as per my instructions. Satchel wanted conspicuous, I give him conspicuous. I find a bucket big enough to cover his head and use a little of the blood from the corners of his mouth to draw a smiley face on it. Andrews is gonna get a mighty big rise when he finds it.
“Wasn’t until I was washing up with the garden hose that I remembered Satchel’s letters. That’s when I found out I was supposed to meet you here. So you’ll have to excuse the way I look, didn’t really have time to make myself beautiful.”
“You look fine,” Randall said. “A little muddy at the cuffs, but not too noticeable.” He used his thumb and forefinger to free a dried lump from the cuff of Martin’s jacket. It fell onto Randall’s plate.
“I don’t think that’s mud,” Martin said.
Randall pulled back. “Well,” he said as he used a napkin to wipe his fingertips. “What does Satchel need from me?”
Martin took the papers from his jacket pocket, put them on the table, and folded his hands on top of them. “You know, you never gave an adequate answer as to why it is that nobody fucks with Satchel. So let me ask you this: What do you think is Satchel’s business?”
Randall shrugged. “Drugs, I know for sure.”
“No. It’s a little-known fact that Satchel neither condones nor condemns the use of drugs. He only allows his people to deal if he’s got control of the quality, the purity of the product, doesn’t even take his cut. He’s more like the government regulators in places like Amsterdam. But he’s not directly connected. Good guess, though.”
“He’s killed people, right? He’s some kind of hitman?”
“There’s no money in killing. Not for him anyways. That’s where people like me come in. I don’t think he’s killed anybody, ever. Not personally. Let me phrase my question differently. Where do you think Satchel makes his money?”
“Well.” Randall scratched his chin. “He’s not in the drug game, doesn’t make hits. Con artist?”
“No.”
“He run numbers?”
“Nope.”
“Well, fuck, man.” Randall threw up his hands. “Shit if I know.”
Martin tapped the end of his fork on the table. “No idea?” He leaned forward against the table and gestured for Randall to do the same. “You want to know where Satchel makes his money?”
Randall nodded.
“Waffles,” Martin said, his face inches from his coleague’s.
“Waffles?”
“Waffles. Satchel’s a waffle cook.”
Randall relaxed. “You’re bullshitting me.”
Martin laughed quietly. “Yeah, I’m bullshitting you. He’s in coke and heroin up to his hairline. I wanted to see just how gullible you are. Here.” He unfolded Randall’s letter and held it up for him to read.
Randall’s eyes swelled and threatened to break from their holdings. There were many words that he didn’t understand, and the few he did recognize made his stomach gurlge.
“I know what you’re thinking right about now,” Martin said, lowering the paper and replacing it with a gun. “You don’t want to die in a fucking Waffle Lodge. Well, you certainly wouldn’t be the first. But I’ve been thinking, here recently, in the time it took you to read the letter, that if Satchel were a cook, I guess that’d make me one of his waffles. See, if it weren’t for him, I probably wouldn’t be nearly so good at what I do. Long time ago he gave me the contempt for backstabbling mother fuckers like you.” He tapped his index finger gingerly against the trigger. “But after the Tito incident, I’m not so sure I want to be a waffle anymore. Know what I’m saying?”
Randall shook his head frantically, expectantly. “So you’re not going to kill me?”
Martin snickered. “No. I’m still going to kill you. I’m just saying, I don’t know if I can do the things Satchel wants done to you. Especially after I saw what they did to Sammy. How is the steak?” he added, framing the last word with quotation fingers.
A gelatinous, white fluid trickled onto Randall’s jacket from the corner of his mouth, but his expression didn’t change, though he was trying to choke down the rush of vomit that had filled his mouth. Martin wiped Randall’s chin with a napkin.
“Not that good,” said Martin. “I tried to tell you, didn’t I? Tried to give you a chance, but you didn’t listen. How do you think you’d taste, cooked up and covered with steak sauce?”
Randall closed his eyes to keep from thinking about the steak.
Martin continued. “I don’t want you to end up like that. You see, I know that I’m a bad person, can’t do nothing about that at this point, far as I can tell. But I don’t know whether or not you’re deserving of Sammy’s fate, but if I had darted Jimenez and payed off Sammy--besides, it wasn’t enough to keep him from spilling it all just before, well, you know--but if it had been me, I would have either finished the job or made myself disappear, but you didn’t know what you were getting yourself into did you?”
Randall whimpered, reached luggishly for the weapon in his pocket.
Martin cocked the hammer on his pistol. “Hands on the table, idiot. You gonna fucking dart me in the neck, too? Take my lighter, go ahead; it cost fifty cents. I’ve met some ridiculously moronic lackies in my day, but you, you, you may very well be one of the slowest. Who uses darts, nowadays? What kind of gimmick is that, anyways? So outdated. Now we have these things called guns. You saw what Satchel wanted done to you, and some of it may be justified. And quite honestly, I could give a shit. I’ve done some heinous shit for Satchel, but that Tito shit kinda got to me. I’m done being a waffle, man. I ain’t cutting up nobody else. Fucking done. Not quite sure what Satchel will think of that, but I think he’ll understand. I think I can deal with being raisin toast.”
