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  DANGEROUS BOYS

  Greg F. Gifune

  PRAISE FOR DANGEROUS BOYS

  “Extremely well written and quite compelling, Dangerous Boys hits all the right marks. It’s a novel you’ll enjoy reading and regret when the last page is turned. Reminded me a bit of Dennis Lehane, a bit of Martin Scorsese, and a bit of S.E. Hinton. What I’m saying is: Greg F. Gifune has written a crime novel that’s character-driven, jarringly violent, and somehow tender.” —Grant Jerkins, author of Abnormal Man

  “Dangerous Boys may well be the best thing Greg F. Gifune has written, and that’s a tall order given his deep and accomplished oeuvre. Stunning, breathtaking, and a bloody nightmare of a ride, this crime novel will reverberate through every inch of your heart and soul, and will cement Greg’s already top-shelf reputation with readers of real literature.” —Trey R. Barker, author of the Jace Salome novels

  “Dangerous Boys is Vision Quest meets The Outsiders with a dash of Less Than Zero thrown in. If none of those references make any sense to you, then you have some reading to do...AFTER you devour Dangerous Boys! Whether you want nostalgia, pain, darkness, sex, violence, or struggle, you’ll find it here.” —Frank Zafiro, author of Blood on Blood

  “This is it—a gritty, street-wise, cigarette-behind-the-ear coming-of-age novel that evokes Hinton’s The Outsiders, the best of Dennis Lehane, and a dash of Mean Streets. Gifune continues to astound, able to perfectly balance the darkest parts of humanity with its most tender moments. Dangerous Boys is Gifune at his best.” —Ronald Malfi, author of Bone White

  “Dangerous Boys is a testosterone-fueled, taut moral tale in the tradition of Nelson Algren’s lonely street hustlers and Richard Price’s The Wanderers. Greg F. Gifune drops you into the backseat of an IROC cruising the hot mean streets with cigarette smoke in your eyes and last night’s booze on everyone’s breath. He makes your palms sweat and your heart break for these small-time hoods. Fast, brutal, vivid action—and dialogue as sharp as a broken pool stick. These boys are gonna kick your ass!” —Steven Sidor, author of Fury From the Tomb

  Copyright © 2018 by Greg F. Gifune

  All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

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  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Cover design by JT Lindroos

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Dangerous Boys

  Author Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by the Author

  The Down & Out Books Publishing Family Library of Titles

  Preview from Bad Samaritan by Dana King

  Preview from The Devil at Your Door by Eric Beetner

  Preview from Texas Two-Step by Michael Pool

  For the great Ed Gorman, with respect and thanks.

  Rest well, my friend.

  CHAPTER ONE

  We rolled through the city, stealth and confident, predators in a sea of night. Always loved the dark. Made me feel alive and powerful, like a restless spirit set free once the sun went down. Always liked the heat, too, but that summer of ’84 was hot. Really hot. A series of heatwaves slammed Massachusetts one right after the next, like ducks in a row. Ducks straight out of Hell’s furnace. And no one in the commonwealth was spared, not even those of us on the southeast coast, an area known for cool ocean breezes during even the worst summer months.

  Dusk had settled quickly, and the night was getting stronger. Once darkness took hold, the city turned even more dangerous than in daylight hours, but the neighborhood we found ourselves in was quiet and seemingly deserted. On a lonely side street, less than a full block from the waterfront, a breeze rolled in off the nearby Atlantic Ocean, but it was hot and thick and did nothing but move the stagnant air around a little and fill it with the smell of saltwater and the pungent aroma of dead fish from the nearby seafood plants. From a dive bar halfway up the block, a lone figure emerged, stopping at the curb long enough to light a cigarette. The guy cupped the flame, drew a deep drag, then exhaled through his nose as the dark sedan we’d stolen slowly rounded the corner at the top of the block and pulled into a space across the street. In the car, four guys—me among them—watched as the man stepped off the curb and started down the street, his long, dirty-blond hair dancing in the hot breeze.

  “That’s him?” Aldo asked, scratching at his nose with a gloved hand while resting the other over the steering wheel. “This fuckin’ guy?”

  “Yeah,” Petie said, clearing his throat awkwardly and fidgeting about in the backseat like a kid with bedbugs. “That’s him.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You got to be sure, Petie.”

  “I’m sure. That’s the guy.”

  “Then everybody get on the clock.” He turned to Petie and Fritz in the backseat. “Here we go.”

  We stepped from the car in unison, moving like separate parts of a single organism. Aldo and I headed straight for the guy while Fritz and Petie crossed the street so they could close on him from the opposite direction. Dressed in black, we blended into the growing darkness, as was our intention, there then gone then back again, hallucinations in a bad trip.

  The man stopped. His cigarette glowed bright orange then died as it fell to pavement and was crushed beneath the toe of his sandal. If he’d noticed us, he gave no indication. I could hear the blood in my veins pulsing in my ears and the beat of my heart in my chest. He looked maybe four or five years older than us, but we already knew he wouldn’t be any trouble. Focusing on the task at hand, I cracked my knuckles and shook my hands a little, loosening them up for what was about to come.

  By the time the man saw Aldo and me walking toward him, it was too late to run. And he knew it. Instead, he stopped and nervously looked around. When he realized Fritz and Petie were coming up behind him, he held his hands in the air like the victim of a robbery, which he likely figured he was at that point.

  “Hey, man, what—okay, what—what’s this all about? Can I help you guys, I—what’s up, dude, hi, I—what’s up?”

  Aldo hit him first. He kept the bat down by his leg until the last moment then swung it viciously and without warning. Following through with a fluid motion, the bat slammed into the man’s side with a horrible thud and buckled him immediately. With an incredulous look, the man cried out, stumbled off the curb and into the street, clutching his shattered ribs and gasping for breath. He tried to run, but we all knew he’d never make it. He wasn’t going anywhere.

  Fritz and Petie followed him into the street.

  The guy screamed for help but didn’t have the wind to make much noise with his ribs in that condition. “What are you guys doing, I—who are you, what do you want, man? Ain’t got much bread on me but you can have what I—”

  Fritz hit him with a solid combination to the kidneys. The blows dropped the guy to his knees.

  As he knelt there, coughing and gasping and babbling through tears, I stepped forward and kicked him in the side with everything I had.

  Grunting, the man flopped over onto his back. Chest heaving, he coughed again, spraying spittle as he held his side.

  I grabbed him by his G
rateful Dead T-shirt, lifted him off the pavement enough so that his head wouldn’t bounce against it, then punched him twice in the face. The man cried out as his nose exploded blood and snot, sending ribbons of both into the steamy night air. I dropped him back to the street and moved away, shaking my hand. It stung. Fucker had a face like granite.

  Aldo looked up the street, then down. “Still clear,” he said flatly.

  Petie moved in. “Look at me,” he said. “You know who I am? You recognize me now?”

  It took a few seconds, but through the blood and tears and darkness, the guy gave a slow nod.

  “Good. I got something for you.” Petie unzipped his fly, pulled his cock free and urinated on the guy, spattering his face, neck, and chest with a strong and steady stream. “Drink up, asshole.”

  The man tried to squirm away but couldn’t. Finally resigned to what was taking place, he shielded himself as best he could with his hands.

  Aldo, stunned by what was happening, let a quick burst of what-the-fuck laughter slip free. “Holy shit, Petie, that’s fucked up, bro.”

  “Fuck this guy,” he said, shaking out the last drops. “He’s lucky I ain’t got to shit or I’d be droppin’ a steamer on his head, too.”

  Guess we’d all gotten lucky on that count.

  Once finished, Petie put himself away, zipped up, then reared back and kicked the guy in the crotch. As he prepared to deliver another, Fritz grabbed him and hurried him back to the car.

  Aldo and I stayed behind.

  Gagging and weeping, the man curled into a ball.

  Using the tip of my boot, I rolled him over onto his back and pinned him there, flat on the pavement. “Stay.”

  He did.

  “Good boy.”

  Aldo crouched next to the man, careful to avoid the puddle of urine. “This is what happens when you put your dirty little hippie prick into pussies where it don’t belong. Like Tammy’s. You see what I’m sayin’ to you?”

  The man gagged, then vomited onto the pavement.

  “Christ.” I waved at the air. “Like this fuck didn’t smell bad enough already.”

  Unfazed, Aldo wagged a finger at him like a parent reprimanding a child. “Don’t you ever do nothin’ to make us come lookin’ for you again, you piece of shit. You do, we’ll finish the job, understand?”

  “I—I’m sorry, man, I—she said she and her boyfriend broke up, I’m sorry!”

  “I don’t give a shit if you’re sorry.”

  The man looked at him helplessly, crippled with pain and terror.

  “Tell me you understand,” Aldo said.

  “I understand. I do, I—I understand, please—”

  “What?” Aldo held the bat close to his ear, as if it were speaking to him. “Uh-oh.”

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Why, I—”

  “My bat. He thinks you’re lying, too.”

  “Your bat? Hell you talking about, man?”

  “I get very upset when I think someone’s lying to me.”

  “No, I—I swear, man, I—I’m not, I—please, no more, all right? Please.” The guy put his hands up in front of him and winced. “This shit hurts so bad, and—and that dude, he—he fucking pissed on me, man!”

  “Did you just raise your fuckin’ voice to me?”

  “No. No, I did not.”

  Aldo looked at me. “Did he just raise his voice to me?”

  “Little bit, maybe. Kind of sounded like he did.”

  “I’m sorry,” the guy gasped. He began to weep. A grown man lying in the street covered in another man’s piss. “I get your message loud and clear, okay? I got it. No more. Please, I—I’m a pacifist, man.”

  “You’re a what?”

  “A pacifist.”

  “Fuck’s that?”

  “Huh?”

  “You’re a what?”

  “P-Pacifist, man, a pacifist.”

  Aldo looked at me. “Hell’s he talkin’ about?”

  “Means he don’t fight. Doesn’t believe in violence.”

  He turned back to the man. “Well, whatever you call someone who does believe in violence, that’s what I am, what we are, so don’t make us come back.”

  “I won’t. I promise. I won’t.”

  Aldo casually laid the bat over this shoulder and strolled back to the car. I followed, hesitating near the passenger side door. I could hear the man sobbing and muttering, but I didn’t look back. With a heavy sigh, I slipped into the car.

  The sky to the north was black as coal, streaked with strange smears of orange clouds peppered with what looked like ash. Like the whole world was burning. Maybe it was. Wouldn’t have mattered to us either way.

  Night kept falling, bringing everything deeper and deeper into darkness, but nothing could hide what we’d done.

  None of us cared.

  We weren’t in the hiding business.

  No one said anything for a while. Except for the sound of our breath, everything was eerily quiet, so I watched the city lights and the night sky glide past the windows and pushed the memory of that poor, bloody, piss-drenched bastard as far from my mind as I could.

  I’d just turned twenty, and the city, the suburbs—all of it—were mine. All I had to do was step up and take it. Problem was, I didn’t want any of it. All I wanted was out. Not a lot scared me, especially in those days, but the unknown always seemed to get it done. Like the man said, the devil you know. Back then, everything was still out in front of me, waiting just up ahead. Only I didn’t know it. Didn’t believe it anyway. Not then. All I knew for sure was I didn’t want to end up like everyone else around me. I wanted better. But who the hell was I?

  We eventually stopped at an abandoned old factory down by the projects in the south end and gave the car to a guy Aldo knew who ran a chop shop just over the state line in East Providence. Once we’d unloaded the sled and Aldo got paid, Dino Abruzzo picked us up, and we all piled into his brand new metallic blue Z-28 IROC. Aldo took the passenger seat, which meant I had to jam myself into the small backseat with Fritz and Petie.

  “What’s up, pussies?” Dino screamed over the Ozzy tune blaring from his car stereo. “You take care of that problem?”

  “Yeah.” Aldo grinned like a shark. “Won’t be seein’ him no more.”

  “Cool. Anybody else hungry? I’m fuckin’ starving. Let’s get some eats.”

  Dino Abruzzo. We called him Ma, which was a nickname that stood for Mental Abruzzo. He’d acquired it in sixth grade, long before being expelled from high school junior year. At six-five and two hundred and sixty pounds of muscle and bad attitude, Dino was that kid in junior high who looked thirty, a monster by the time he was thirteen, and the toughest guy I’d ever known. He had a heavy rep he backed up whenever he got the chance, and much as we all loved him, we knew how crazy and dangerous he was, so unless it was absolutely necessary, we usually left him out of the kinds of things we’d handled earlier because we didn’t want them to get out of hand. Unlike the rest of us, Dino had little to no control over his violent tendencies, and once his hair-trigger temper was tripped, there was no stopping it or him. This was a guy who’d gotten out of his car on the way to his junior prom and pulled a man out of his truck at a red light, just so he could beat his ass nearly to death because he’d cut him off. Then he showed up to prom a few minutes later with his horrified date on his arm and blood all over his tuxedo and fancy ruffle shirt. Dino thought it was hilarious, even later, when the police showed up and took him out in cuffs. Took seven cops to hold him down and get those cuffs on, but when it was all said and done, three of them wound up in the hospital and he went to lockup. Since he was only seventeen at the time, he did a year in juvie. He’d been in and out since the age of nine, so for Dino it wasn’t exactly a big deal. Not much was, really. I’d known him since elementary school and had always been a little afraid of him. In high school, we’d once had a dispute over a girl, and before I knew what was hap
pening he’d knocked me out with a single punch. Felt like someone had hit me with a fucking sledgehammer. He apologized for days, following me around like a guilt-ridden little kid, helping me out and doing whatever I needed to make up for it, all the while promising he’d never do anything like that again. And he never did. But still, when it came to Dino, it was like hanging out with a tiger. All fine and good until the tiger went tiger on your ass. Couldn’t blame the tiger, it was just being a tiger. Only one left to blame was yourself. Just the same, tough as Aldo and the other guys were, there was nobody better in a pinch than Dino. You felt invincible with him by your side. And most of the time, you were.

  “Wanna get a slice over at the Greek’s?” Petie suggested.

  “Fuck that Greek cocksucker,” Dino growled.

  “Aw, he’s all right, Ma. He’s a nice old dude, and the food there’s good.”

  “You want pizza we’ll go to Dominic’s and get it made right, by an Italian. Greek assholes, fuck they know about pizza? Cheap imitation Italians is all they is. Butt-fuckers.”

  “I could go for a slice,” I said. I hadn’t eaten since that morning, when I’d wolfed down a bowl of Fruit Loops on my way out the door to meet the guys.

  “What about that new place over by the mall?” Aldo said.

  “The Italian place?” Dino asked. “It just opened.”

  “So?”

  “So when a new place opens, you should wait a while until they work all the bullshit out. If they don’t, they close. If they do and people are still going after a few weeks, you know it’s probably good.”

  “I don’t know if I got the cash for that kinda place anyways,” Petie said.

  “Broke-ass motherfucker.” Fritz sighed quietly. He rarely spoke, but when he did, it was usually memorable.