Free Bayou Brigade by Buck Sanders

entered her suite.
     He promptly knocked over a decorative vase, but Wilma couldn’t hear it crack apart on the rug.
    He deposited the broken vase in the kitchen sink and stole into the adjoining pantry. Kneeling behind a set of cheesy, gold-braided
     curtains, he smiled maliciously.

7
    “You wanna tell me where yo’ from, motherfucker?” This line accompanied a swift boot in the groin, sending Ben Slayton’s lower
     abdomen into convulsions.
    The pimp stepped back, letting his rat-faced buddy take his turn with the honky trash, pulverizing his stomach and chest with
     a succession of blows. Slayton, wind knocked out and head spinning in agony, collapsed to the floor of the two-room apartment.
    “I don’t think this shit’s gonna talk,” said Rat-Face, cracking his knuckles.
    The pimp took a handful of Slayton’s hair. “He’s out, man.”
    “Lemme finish off the motherfucker.” Rat-Face loved to beat up on whitey. “I want to rip out his goddam heart and slap him
     in the face with it.”
    The pimp let Slayton fall back against the wall. “No, man, we ain’t gettin’ paid to blow away this turkey. Let’s drop’m in
     the basement and let him rot.”
    Rat-Face hoisted Slayton’s legs in the air, while the pimp, a tall glitter-boy dressed in a three-piece suit, jangling change
     in a breast pocket and carrying a blade the size of a machete, held his head.
    “Any money on this dude?” Rat-Faced asked.
    “1 cleaned’m out. Thirty bucks, hardly worth a shit in a pail.” The pimp kicked open the basement door. Barely conscious,
     Slayton smelled the garbage below as they lowered him in.
    He could hear his arms and legs twisting down the moldy stairs; he was too close to passing out for any feeling to reach his
     mind. The stairs flew past—he did not hear the door close behind him.
    “What happened? Slayton whispered, not expecting any reply; he was disoriented, unable to coordinate his muscles, and his
     brain was on fire. Landing in a small pile of debris, he could barely move his face out of the. months-old sweepings and refuse.
     Breathing slowly, propped up against the bottom steps, Slayton tried to struggle out of the pit of unconsciousness, tried
     to stay above the darkness of sleep, or what he interpreted as death closing in.
    “Bambi,” he sighed, wondering what became of the frightened young girl he’d left alone with a psychopath in the room directly
     overhead. His memory slipped-Bambi who? While searching for an answer, his legs had enough strength to slide him back up the
     stairwell. One try, though, pushed him up barely an inch. Settling down into a seat of musty wood and carelessly hammered
     nails sticking into his back, Slayton recalled how he ended up in such an unflattering condition on the lower floor of a ramshackle
     building on Chicago’s west Side.
    The last he could remember was just three days ago, stepping off the plane at O’Hare Field, shaking hands with Special Agent
     Parks of the Treasury Department’s Midwest branch. Snow littered the ground as Chicago began a slow recovery from a harsh,
     cold winter. The temperatures were well above freezing, but a brittle wind cut through Slayton’s thin coat, filling his lungs
     with discomforting, icy air.
    “Welcome to Chicagoland,” said Parks as they drove the highway into town. “I only got a day’s notice that you were coming.
     Booked you into the Hilton.”
    Slayton had other plans. “I’m going to need a room somewhere else, preferably a lot less ritzy.”
    “Whatever you say.” Parks was confounded. “Why hole up in a dive when the taxpayers can put you up in style?”
    “I’m interested in the locations of all warehouses in the area that might to used to store an incredibly large number of weapons.”
    “Okay, I can have that for you by tonight. Where will you stay?”
    “Parks, we have to move faster than that. Get the addresses for me within the hour. Can I use this car?”
    “Sure. Would you mind