Grabber woke, opened his eyes and looked at the alarm clock near the bed. Exactly 3:45 a.m. Exactly the time he’d set his mind’s alarm clock for. He got up from the bed carefully, using every well-toned muscle in his body to keep the bedsprings or the floor from making a sound. Once he was up he glanced at Lea, assuring himself she was still asleep. She was. He touched her long dark hair once, softly, and then crept to the kitchen. This wasn’t going to be easy. Jack Grabber didn’t usually drink, but he now poured himself a full glass of Goldschlager and tossed it back. “Here’s to memories,” he whispered, “or soon-to-be memories”. Lea died for him in that moment. She had to. It had turned out that Murlock, his arch-rival was still alive; still alive and onto his trail. He couldn’t afford to have a girlfriend now. And he couldn’t afford to have an ex-girlfriend either. He entered the bedroom. He didn’t look at Lea’s sleeping body. He didn’t think of her family or friends. He didn’t think of her dreams of being a high powered corporate consultant. He couldn’t think of those things now or he wouldn’t be able to go through with it. Instead he just saw a breathing mass on the bed. He pulled the roll of duct tape from where he’d hidden it under her nightstand. He pulled the series of injections he’d prepared for her from under his bed. He pulled the sledge hammer from behind her bookshelf, the welding iron from her walk in closet. He took all these things, kissed her once on the forehead, and set to work…

So this was the drug lord they called La Muchacha. A dark figure moving swiftly through the dewy green of the jungle. Jack Grabber tried to follow as quietly as possible, but the man was like an animal in its natural habitat while Grabber had to inch slowly to keep from being detected. Suddenly a snap. Grabber knew it was a branch under his foot. Hard to miss them when you have size 16 steel toed army boots on. La Muchacha turned. Grabber could see his eyes (lashes curled, lined with eye-liner) hone in on him. La Muchacha fired something but it wasn’t a normal gun. A small grenade landed nearby, chemicals hissing from its top in Grabber’s direction. Tear gas seeped into his eyes, blinding him. That’s when instinct kicked in. It had to if he was going to survive. He remembered what his mentor had taught him. If you can’t see, then rely on muscle memory. He lowered his gun to his crotch like so many times that he had peed in the dark. And since he was 16 he’d never missed the toilet, his target. And he didn’t miss now. As the bullets issued rapidly from his crotch he could hear his prey drop like a dead deer. Or Quail. After was done firing he shook the gun twice to clear the smoke. Shaking it three times would have been playing with it.

The man with the glasses and the safari helmet was still pushing his way through brush and bushes. Jack Grabber continued to follow him, but his patience was wearing out. Fast. Suddenly they stopped at a man-made clearing. He was looking out on a bull-dozed pit filled with dinosaur bones. The thing was as big as half a football field and what looked like hundreds of the biggest creatures known to man were continuing their final rest in it. “What is this?” Grabber asked. “Mass grave”, the safari man said… “Only one of it’s kind in the world.” Grabber paused… anticipating what was coming next. “Why did you bring me here?” The man wiped his brow, looked Grabber in the face, “Because it was one of the earliest male members of the Grabber clan who killed every single one of these beasts. This was before tools, before arrows, even before rocks were invented.” Grabber took a deep breath. A slow smile spread over his face. “I recognized the work” he said. He spat into the grave and walked away. There were more monsters out there to reckon with he guessed. And the Grabber clan wasn’t finished yet.

“That’s it. Keep the stock tight against your shoulder because this gun KICKS. Site your target. Now a lot of people say you should breathe in and then exhale gently while you pull the trigger, and maybe that’ll work for you, but not me.”

“What works for you?” asked the incongruously intense, yet still unchanged, pre-teen voice.

“Just yank away. It doesn’t matter. You’ve got the body and the muscle to hold it steady, that stock ain’t going anywhere.” And it was true, the kid had the body. Those Grabber genes. The little fuck was already nearing 6’0 and that was about 6 feet of young muscle and bone. Solid bone. Pretty much through the whole male side of the Grabber clan the bone was almost entirely hard with just the thinnest streak of marrow running through the very center. Just enough marrow to stay alive. Too much marrow for Jack Grabber. Too much marrow, also, for his little bastard of a son.

The child yanked the trigger repeatedly, putting his whole body into it each and every time, the muzzle jerking up and down, side to side, bullets unseen but nonetheless travelling through the muzzle flash, out into the world, and shattering their targets. They didn’t necessarily hit the targets where the little fucker had been aiming, but they hit alright. And those that didn’t hit something. And as Jack Grabber had said for years, “‘something is a target, too”. Some people could use such logic as a kind of fuzzy math to obscure their lackluster shooting skills. Grabber said it because he meant it. Completely. That creeped some people out. Grabber had saved the lives of just about eighty percent of those people.

The kid looked up from from the smoking barrel. Smoke was even leaking from the firing mechanism and out of just about every seam of the old Viet Cong sniper rifle. Sniper rifles aren’t meant for rapid fire. At all.
Ahead of them was the target area. They crossed the street and walked toward it. Most of the diners were still on the ground, covering their heads. Almost every wine-glass on the outdoor cafe table was shattered. The wall looked like it had been painted in a combination of light brown and duck confit. One child, a little older than Grabber’s, was crying.

Just as Jack was about to make a remark he was seized from behind and dragged back about 20 yards by an absolute monster of a human being. His arms were pinned. They weren’t pinned physically, of course, no one could accomplish that. They were pinned in the sense that he was letting them be held down because a gun was being held to his head. A very large gun. The kind of gun that when you pulled the trigger didn’t just spout out a flag that said “bang.”

Grabber looked at his son. Saw hesitation in his eyes, and fear. He was still an untested warrior. By the time he turned 13 that fear would be gone. There was fear but there wasn’t much. He just needed encouraging. “Take him out”, Grabber said, feeling the grip holding him get tighter. The kid raised the gun and sited but didn’t shoot.

“I can’t, dad, I’m not accurate enough to hit him with you in the way.” Which was true. He wasn’t. At all. Didn’t need to be. He could sense the figure (undoubtedly an old enemy) behind him beginning to feel that he had won. Could sense the man thinking, beginning to phrase together his demands.

“Son,” Grabber said with all the intensity he could muster, “who said I was going to get out of the way… TAKE HIM”, he roared.

The little asshole didn’t need time to think or process it, he UNDERSTOOD. Yanking the trigger four times he saw his father’s body convulse at four points. The man behind staggered more, beginning slowly to fall to the ground. The son yanked the trigger nine more times for good measure until with the last shot the barrel burst into flames and fell from the stock. He spiked the barrel into the ground and ran over to his father.
The kid offered Grabber a hand to pull him up. Grabber pretended he needed the assistance. 13 holes smoked in his chest and thighs. His son took a now burnt out half cigarette from one of the scattered cafe ashtrays and lit it off the smoking hole closest Grabber’s heart. Grabber looked, adrenaline pumping, at a priest who had been sitting nearby. The priest looked back at him, stunned by what he had just seen. “Now there’s a stigmata,” Grabber said. “THERE is a stigmata,” both Grabber’s said in unison.

They began walking to the local whorehouse. It wasn’t far away.

It was a town he could understand because it understood him. It was Santa Fe, New Mexico. He was Jack Grabber. Most places nowadays have a problem with drifters. Not this place. If it didn’t exactly embrace them it didn’t look down on them either. Whereas in most places you can’t easily hitch a ride anymore, it was not so here. Drivers in the Southwest still tended to sympathize with the down-and-out and were willing to help a stranger in need. When their bodies were found a day later you couldn’t help but admire their big hearts. They still had faith in humanity.

“Faith”. Grabber said it out loud and smiled. The driver who had picked him up glanced over at him like he was crazy. And maybe he was. Maybe he was. Grabber loved the clean mountain air that streamed into the car through small slit where his window was rolled down a little. He wanted more of that air so he turned, grabbed the window at the top with both hands and forced it down further with all his might. “Jesus, man, use the goddamn switch”, the driver protested. “I don’t use machines”, Grabber said, pulling the cell phone from his pocket to see if he had missed the call. He hadn’t. Where was Samir Godot? They had agreed to meet today and he had never known Samir to go back on his word.

Samir was a hard man. Ex-Republican Guardsman from Iraq. Like Grabber, Godot had been run out of the military against his will. Grabber for issuing commands to an officer who outranked him. Godot for an alleged rape. He hadn’t done it, but unfortunately the massive amount of evidence presented at the trial convinced the jury of twelve peers. An ugly smile formed on Grabber’s lips. “I bet if there were thirteen he would have gotten off” he said out loud. The driver began to sweat. “STOP” he roared. The man jammed the brakes on before the sound had ceased echoing off the dashboard. His hands were trembling. “I MEANT STOP SWEATING” Grabber yelled. The guy started the car back up. “STOP”, Grabber shrieked again. “I can’t”, the driver feebly protested. “ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS HIT THE BRAKES”, Grabber yelled. “To stop sweating” the man asked with fear streaked throughout his faltering voice. “NO, I WANTED TO GET OUT THERE” Grabber yelled louder than anything the man had ever heard. He pulled over. Fast. Grabber got out. Before the man could take off, Grabber leaned back in the window. The man cringed. “Thanks for the ride,” Grabber said, “no one ever stop to pick me up. I can’t say that I blame them either. Not a great idea to take on a hitchhiker who is 6’5, 250 lbs, so it really makes things hard for me, as you can imagine. But you were different. It really means something to me. I don’t show my emotions on my sleeve, but… (and here his voice faltered touchingly) it’s little things like this that really touch my heart. Now it’s time to see some titties jiggle.” The man almost looked more scared now. “What?” he managed to say quietly. Grabber pointed back behind him to the dark little building. The neon sign said “Cheeks” and had a nude woman on it. He looked back to Grabber. “Uh, ok” he said, “no problem.” Grabber didn’t say a thing, just put two outstretched fingers so they pointed out from where his nipples were, nodded, and started walking toward the club.

The inside of Cheeks was small, darkly lit, and teaming with the smell of soured beer and low self-value. Girls born with little other than beauty milled around in little outfits picked out for them by fat, balding, old men. In a way they had chosen it but in a way they hadn’t. If they had been born to another family or in another town maybe they be a normal level of slutty. Instead they turned out a little more slutty than that. These girls gyrated and fellated for the basest of reasons. Money. While the luckier, classy girls fellated for a sense of acceptance, a nice new dress or part-ownership of a cute little Miata. A very pert little stripper walked by Grabber. He slapped her ass once, hard, and sarcastically said “oops, I don’t have any ones on me, I’ll have to remember to pay you later” with a wink. She feigned disgust but then smiled as she walked away. After all, he was 6’5. “Nice flapjacks” he said to another. Then he got her digits and headed over to the main room. Grabber was on his fifth personal table dance and had just slid an IOU under the girl’s (for she was but a child) strap when a huge commotion went up in the hallway that led to the shitters. A girl was yelling and screaming in real distress and pain. It was hard to tell what she was saying because the voice was so manic and anguished, so Grabber sat and listened intently until he was sure that she was being accosted by some hooligan who didn’t realize that he was currently in the last minute of his life.

“That’s it” Grabber yelled, picking up his table in one big hand and smashing it on the edge of the stage, knocking the dancer down. He stormed back toward the restrooms, grabbed the back of the attackers collar so hard that three buttons in the front of the shirt ripped off and his pants fly burst, and was turning him for the first (and probably fatal) right hook when he suddenly stopped in his tracks. An enormous smile spread across his face like a storm of happiness. SAMIR GODOT!

The woman was crying and trembling on the ground. “You old joker,” Grabber said, “I thought she really was in trouble! That someone was actually trying to rape her!” He laughed hard for what felt like ten minutes. He laughed hard for what also in fact actually was ten minutes. His friend Samir laughed with him with a wild look in his eyes. Something bulged in his pant-front that Grabber assumed was a gun though the placement was a bit odd. Grabber slapped him on the back as they both calmed down. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. Then, looking at the woman who still gazed up at Godot, her hands crossed defensively between her legs, he added “and you, my lady, are quite the actress” before taking Godot’s arm and leading him away. Godot turned once and told the girl “this isn’t over.” Grabber guessed it meant that they had another prank in store for him.

never hesitatin’ never wastin’ no time / Jack Grabber gon’ bust through / wit da rock solid 9 / whether a bitch be in trouble or prostratin’ in bed / spit spit spit go the bullets from da barrel da head

Grabber was breathless from slapping, so he pulled an empty crate over and sat for a moment. It was hard work in the New Orleans heat. This guy wasn’t going anywhere anyhow. Grabber had been wailing away at the suspect for about four hours now trying to get him to talk. Sometime during the third hour he had forgotten what he was even hoping to get the guy to talk about. He didn’t care anymore. Jack Grabber knew that some people said that torture yields bad information. He even admitted they were right about that most of the time. It didn’t make a difference, though. He needed the practice anyway. He didn’t get into the gym to spar much anymore. Call it an interrogation / workout. Whatever. He had caught his breath. He barked at the prisoner again to tell him where the child was hidden. The prisoner didn’t answer. Would have needed a functioning mouth to have done so even if he wanted to. Grabber threw his issue of People to the ground and got back up. He slapped and slapped and slapped and slapped and slapped and slapped until it sounded and looked like he was slapping something more liquid than solid. He finally stopped and took a look at what remained of the guy. It was nothing more than chunks of meat and wetness everywhere. The blood, hot from the frenzied whipping, smelled almost spicey. Grabber mopped it all into a corner and then scooped it into a large ceremic bowl. Looked at the concoction again and muttered “looks like we’re having Jambalaya tonight” and walked out of the garage and back toward the French Quarter.

It made him wish he hadn’t stopped working out three years ago. It took every once of strength inside him to make it stop. The sound of the gears as they ground to a halt was awful. Sparks bit at his hands. But he wouldn’t let go. Finally the struggle was over and the ride came to a halt. Grabber smiled. The ferris wheel car he was after was right there at the bottom. But Grabber didn’t get into it. He wasn’t in the mood for another ride today. At least not this moment. He had other business. Instead he pulled someone out the car, roughly. They called this thug Frederick “Soft Spot” Sambig because although he had grown normally as a child into an adult, his soft spot had never filled in. Grabber grabbed him by the throat and pulled him down the steps and over to a food booth. He smacked the attendant’s hands away from the machine he was working at and shoved “Soft Spot’s” head in the space where they had been. Over his shoulder the crowd couldn’t see what he was doing, it just looked like he was swirling the head around and around. Then he pulled the head back up into view. It was fully encased in pink and green cotton candy. Muffled screams came from inside the webby mass, creating a person hell of short breath and noise for the criminal. With each hot breath the candy half melted and crystalized, the webs turning hard and cutting off the remaining passages for oxygen. He couldn’t afford to stop breathing. But he couldn’t afford to breathe either without making breathing impossible. Grabber laughed at this catch 22. He let go of “Soft Spot’s” neck. No need for handcuffs on a suffocating and blinded man. But he wouldn’t let him die this way. Not even a pornographer like this asshole. There was a difference between good guys and bad guys. Grabber had always believed that. So he snatched a glow stick out of a child’s hand. Broke it to light it. And then drove it home through the soft spot in the pornographer’s skull. Sambig collapsed. Blood mingled with the cotton candy mask, adding a third color. Children from all over pulled out from their parents grips and went over and started licking at it. “Cotton candy is on me today,” Grabber said and then walked off toward the Scrambler. The line was short and he knew that if he walked fast he could make the very next ride.

Grabber was restless by the end of act one. By the middle of act two it was all he could do to stay in his seat. He shifted one way and the other, his date now and then softly admonishing him. On the stage actors carried out the seemingly endless story of two lovers, Romeo and Juliet, and what appeared to be their very tragic romance. Maybe Grabber would have liked it if it wasn’t in another language. Probably even then he wouldn’t. It wasn’t that Grabber could never be interested in the topic of romantic love. It was that he wasn’t even aware that the topic existed. To fall in love, even briefly, one had to stay in the same country for more than a day at a time. Not so with Grabber. He looked back at the stage. They were still prancing around like idiots and making a huge to-do. Boring. The perfect time to make a move. He yawned and moved his arm up, over her head and across her shoulders. She smiled. He knew she would. The girl next to her smiled too because his long, muscled arm encompassed her as well. The boy next to her didn’t smile but nor did he make any attempt to do anything about his displeasure. Smart kid, Grabber thought. He copped a feel.

The second act had ended. Grabber got up and told his date he would grab them a couple hot dogs. “What? There are no hot dog vendors – this is a theatre,” she said. “F*CK,” he yelled. “Well, then, I’m going for a little walk to clear my mind, I guess.” Most of the audience was out in the hallway, probably buying cotton candy and nachos with that drizzled cheese and jalapeno peppers, so Grabber walked up toward the stage. He hoisted himself up and looked around at the scenery. In the audience he had thought it was a real castle but up close he could see it was just flimsy fiber board. He put a fist through it effortlessly. He was right. He wandered across to the other side and picked up a sword. He was adept at knife fighting but had never studied swordsmanship. He swung it a few times in the air and then slashed at the drapery around Juliet’s window. Not even sharp enough to cut the fabric. Grabber pulled the drapes down and began distractedly tearing them in shreds while wandering around the rest of the stage. He wondered where Tybalt had gone, briefly considering kicking his ass. And then he saw it. Up in the balcony, indistinctly, but distinctly enough. A familiar face. A tanned face. A trustworthy face. A friend’s face. The face of alleged rapist, Samir Godot.

Grabber smiled and yelled out a hello. It caused some commotion because act three had started almost ten minutes ago. The actors were doing their best to perform around the huge man as he wandered distractedly from side to side on the stage. The crowd stirred but Godot didn’t acknowledge him. Just kept staring blankly forward from his seat at the front of the balcony. “What, you don’t say hello to your friend any more?”, Grabber thundered beginning to get very angry. After all, when Godot had been falsely accused it had been Grabber’s testimony alone that had gotten Godot off the charges in the face of overwhelming evidence. It was Grabber’s keen instinct for justice alone that had been able to bribe the military judge and force a not guilty verdict. It had been Grabber’s physical silencing of a military chaplain who swore that Godot had confessed to him the night before. Godot had been drunk that night, anyone would know that. And drunks did stupid things sometimes. Had the whole jury never been drunk? How could they not know that? Well they knew it after he had threatened their children. Behind him Juliet was buying some Tylenol or something from an old geezer with a beard. He remembered what he had been thinking about. Godot! He looked back at his friend and was about to yell “talk to me you asshole” but something was happening. The man sitting behind Samir got up, face covered in shadows and rapidly walked up the aisle toward the exit. Godot’s body slumped forward, his muscular torso hanging over the edge of the balcony rail and then falling over onto the crowd below.

Grabber did several things before the body even hit the ground. First, he screamed “noooooooooooooooo!” so loud audience members that should have been shielding their necks against the blow instead were holding their ears. Not good for them. Second, he imagined the nachos and cotton candy flying everywhere when the lifeless body hit. Third, he grabbed Romeo’s dagger and clubbed Juliet hard across her right ear with a closed fist. Fourth, he balanced his checkbook. Fifth, he jumped into the crowd, and waded through them toward the exit to catch the killer, grabbing Godot’s body along the way and dragging it by one arm like he had dragged his favorite doll as a child.

He shoved his way into the lobby. The assassin was almost to the door, almost into the street. ALMOST. Grabber tensed his back muscles, rocking his arm back and then threw Godot’s body with all his might towards the fleeing man. The legs and arms spiraled in the air like a Chinese star. “In the case, an Iraqi star,” Grabber thought, smiling. Impact came soon and forcefully, knocking the assassin off his feet and half-severing one arm just under the shoulder. The assassin tried to rise. “STAY DOWN”, Grabber roared. The assassin complied – white-faced with fear. Grabber stood towering above him and picked up Godot’s body, hugging it against his. “This was my only friend” he half yelled, half sobbed. “He deserved to live. HE DESERVED RESPECT”. With these last words Grabber swung Godot’s body over his head and brought it down on the man like a hammer. Over and over and over and over and over until he there was nothing left and he was tired and depressed and sleepy. It looked like a giant can of Campell’s soup had blown up in the lobby. Grabber sat down, his head sagging between his knees. “Clean-up on aisle two”, he said to no one in particular.

“I’m no mercenary. I don’t like to be involved.”
General Kern leans in close leaving a foot of breathing room, both of their breaths fighting for space,” You don’t have much of a choice, do you Jack?” Kern leans back in his seat, removes one of the thirty Panamanian cigars from its cedar box and lights it. “Listen, Jack, I’m not asking you to do this run, I’m telling you to do this. Back in 90′ when you were handling the Noriega job, you missed something.” Kern takes a long draw of the dark leaf wrapped cigar.
“That was 11 years ago Kern, remember you set me up for the fall, why would I trust you now, I’m finished with you…and Panama.” Grabber stands up. His 6’5” frame looms a shadow over the General across the military stamped desk. As he walks out he hears the creaking of the General’s chair. “Hey Jack!” Grabber turns around drawing his hand towards the 11 inch blade he keeps on his left. General Kern exhales a long cylinder of grey-black smoke. “Godot’s still over there.” Grabber is frozen in his tracks. Samir Godot was the only man Grabber worked with on a mission in the army, Samir Godot was the only one Grabber trusted, Samir Godot was someone Jack Grabber would call…”a friend.”

“Kern, you sonuvabitch” Grabber roars drawing the knife from his left. Within what seems like one second, General Kern’s cigar, once in his mouth, now stuck to the wall under the blade like a bug in a scientist’s biology lab. “Go to Hell, Kern. You lie.”
“Do I, Jack?” Kern throws a stack of pictures across the table fanning out like a deck of cards, except there was no luck lying behind these pictures… only death. Kern leans back again, drawing from his cigar that he had pulled off the wall. “It seems your pal Godot has made himself a little mess down in Panama.” Grabber looks through the pictures. One black and white shows three children all sharing a bed covered in blood, two of them with their eyes open. Another shows a pregnant migrant worker bloodied and swollen from the Panama heat, lying dead in shallow water and still another shows an entire family slumped over a table that rests on a dirt floor of a small thatched home. “Apparently, old Godot isn’t playing with a full deck anymore, you know, ovens on but nobody’s cooking?” Grabber didn’t cook or gamble and the obvious look of confusion overwrought his face. “He’s lost it, Jack, he’s completely lost it.” “You mean…Godot did this?” Kern gets out of his seat and approaches Grabber, “That’s exactly what I’m saying. Now, go back and get him.”