More fiction

The first draft of another chapter, now available.

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Chapter 9

Jock Shaw switches from spiked coffee to pure Scotch at eight o’clock sharp, a habit he developed soon after his divorce ten years ago. That humiliating affair had almost been his downfall, but he’d turned the tables on the bitch. She never learned to submit like Jesus said a wife should, not even after he smacked her around. His lawyers said he should let her go quietly, but the woman got greedy and sued to steal his fortune. Nobody fucks with Jock Shaw like that. Nobody. A few weeks after she walked out, he pulled some strings and had her committed to a psych ward, with him as sole guardian. She wasn’t crazy then, but she is now. And she’s still locked up.

Living by himself at Shawmoor has been a lonely affair since then, even more so after those old darkies who raised him died off. He tried buying some younger ones, but no one would have him. Jock Shaw couldn’t find anyone, not even darkies, who would put up with his evil ways.

::

“Ye'll win again.” He yells those words to his empty house as he moves upstairs to his lavish bedroom. The stench of stale cigars laced with Lectric Shave welcomes him into the chamber. “By god, me nephew had better be right.”

At sixty, winning again is a familiar experience for Jock Shaw, something he’s done almost every day of his privileged life. Through nothing but dumb luck, he inherited a silver spoon to match his silver Scottish tongue, gradually acquiring all the benefits that money can buy, and then some. Now he’s set to take control of the state supreme court, some seriously sweet revenge on the liberal slime that cost him the only job he ever loved. Those bastards took away his badge.

Jock Shaw would tell you he never set out to be a sheriff, not in any way you could trace. He always assumed he’d be a shopping center slumlord like his daddy. But one day on a dare, this was twenty years ago, he tossed his name into the hat for Orange County sheriff and got elected in a landslide. All it took was eighty thousand dollars of Madmax money, a drop in the bucket for sprawling retail empire.

To everyone’s surprise, Shaw’s law enforcement career got off to a decent start. Most people in the county knew and respected his old man, which earned the son more benefit of the doubt than he deserved. But when his father died in a head-on collision with an illegal, Jock lost community favor in a rapid fall from grace. He pushed the limits of his power, casting an intimidating shadow across any door he dared to enter – and he dared to enter any door he damn well pleased, including the reinforced steel door of Maria’s Massage Parlor on the east side of Hillsborough. There he kept the girls on their toes – and knees – under the constant threat of arrest.

Most people with an ounce of sense know enough to be afraid of Jock Shaw, but not Maria. She didn’t cower, and she was the one who brought him down. All because he’d smacked one of her wetback whores. The case that went all the way to the top, where five out of seven state supreme court justices refused his unworthy appeal.

“Let it go, Jock,” his angry wife advised when the charges were filed. “You fucked up and you’d damn well better settle this one out of court.”

“Settle out of court? With a darkie? Ye canna be serious.”

“Well don’t blame me when you lose,” she said.

But blame her he did when he lost, and he lost big. After four years of legal maneuvering and millions in legal fees, the battle turned out as his wife had predicted. Jock Shaw got taken to the cleaners.

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With the scourge of darkies in mind, Shaw throws down another shot of scotch, then strips off his bathrobe in front of a full-length mirror. He winces at the sight of his sagging belly and sucks in his stomach. He looks down at his pasty white legs, spindly toothpicks hanging from a bloated marshmallow.

Leaning over the bathroom sink, he splashes his face and head with Lectric shave, just like his daddy always did. Starting at the blunt end of his bulbous chin, he slides his Norelco along his jaw line, up past the front of his right ear, across the top of his head, then down the other side. He repeats the motion exactly one hundred times, covering every square millimeter of skin above his collarbones, leaving only his eyebrows and the fat brush of his cigar-stained mustache.

From a closet filled with camouflage utilities, the old man chooses a uniform that’s starched and pressed, suitable for semi-formal affairs. He’ll stop by the courthouse later this morning, then on to early voting. Tommy Roy said reporters might show up to watch him do his civic duty. He’ll look sharp for the cameras. Spit-shined combat boots with a nickel-plated .357 Smith & Wesson revolver strapped to his hip.

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