Sordid: Five Crime Stories About Amputee Strippers, Drifters, Meth Heads, and Other Lost Souls by Harry Hunsicker

Author:Harry Hunsicker [Hunsicker, Harry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B07MFWNPMB
Published: 2019-01-07T11:00:00+00:00

THE STICKUP GIRL

(Dallas Noir; 2013)

I’m a bandit.

Hands up, sucker, and give me all your money.

A gun and a mask, getaway cars, the whole enchilada.

Call it a family thing, if you want.

My name is Nadine Parker.

I’m twenty-seven years old and the great-great-grandniece of Bonnie Parker, she of the Bonnie and Clyde fame.

I used to be a stripper, along with my twin sister, Chloe.

Before that I was the night clerk at a 24-hour Stop-N-Shop on Singleton Boulevard in West Dallas, down the street from the site of Clyde Barrow’s family’s service station and not too

far from where my great-great-aunt grew up.

Now Chloe and I rob places, which, occupational hazards aside, is a lot more fun than pole dancing. Not always as lucrative but sometimes you gotta make sacrifices for quality of life.

We mostly hit liquors stores, bars, and gas stations, with the occasional fast food joint thrown in for good measure. I handle the weaponry and the actual stickups; my sister drives.

Speaking of weapons, for those of you that don’t know, a gun is a hell of a piece of equipment, much more than just the ‘bang-bang-you’re-dead’ stuff you see on TV. There’s that, of course, but the real juice comes on the other end, the butterflies-in-your stomach feeling of dominance for whoever’s grabbing the handle.

That’s the part I like, the control that the gun gives me, especially when I’m telling some gold-chain-wearing, convenience-store-working Ethiopian to hand over all the cash, or I’m gonna pop a cap in his skinny black ass.

See, me and Chloe have never had a lot of control in our lives.

First, there was Mama with her gambling and Daddy dying in the Gulf War in ’91. Then there were all those lowlife stepfathers groping on us as we got older.

All of which was accompanied by a steady downgrade in our living arrangements: the snug, two-bedroom cottage with the porch swing replaced by a doublewide near the Goodwill Store, followed by a HUD-voucher apartment on Westmoreland, a couple of streets over from the crack houses, the only gringo family for blocks around.

So the guns and the robbing, that gives us a little control, and that’s a good thing.

What’s not good is when someone gets shot.

Chloe and I are in our hideout du jour, a motel on Fort Worth Avenue, next to a lube-and-tune shop and a used tire store.

My sister’s lying on top of the covers, and she’s in a bad way.

I ease back the bloody bandage from her abdomen. She doesn’t open her eyes this time, doesn’t grimace in pain. Her breath comes in shallow gasps. Her skin is unhealthy-looking, gray like storm clouds rolling in from Oklahoma.

At least the wound has stopped bleeding.

It’s a puckered, ugly little hole a few inches to one side of her navel. The room smells like blood and sweat and human waste.

I mop her forehead with a damp washcloth. Tears well in my eyes.

She’s the only family I’ve got left. Nothing to my name but the three thousand dollars in cash in the closet, the results of our last two months’ activities.

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