SNOW JOB by David Carver

When Fat Tony Corona pulled the gun, the cocaine was still on the table.

“Well, Chico,” he said, grabbing the blow and shoving it in the dufflebag. “It’s coming home with me.” He coughed one of his patented throat-full-of-mucus coughs. “And so is the money.”

“And if I try to stop you?” I said, not really scared as much as pissed off. I sat down in a chair at the dining room table. I watched him grab the cash and pitch it in the bag on top of the drugs.

“I’ll send flowers to your funeral.”

“Compassionate,” I said, oily with sarcasm.

“I’m thoughtful that way.” Finished with his packing, he took a seat opposite me at the table.

Fat Tony and I had been doing business for years, but lately he’d been using more of his own product, which had only made him nervous and sketchy. For example, I knew on good authority that he’d shot up an arcade, thinking that the bleeps and blips of the games were the oncoming sirens of law enforcement. He had also gone into debt, and was in big time to the usurers downtown. Rumor had it that if he didn’t pay, they’d soon be greasing the chassis of their Lincolns with his innards. And now here he was, taking my money to get himself out of his own scrapes.

But what was I going to do, tell the cops that I was robbed by the guy who sells me my blow?

Not hardly.

I’ve never looked good in prison orange.

“Can’t we work it out?” I said, as I dropped my hand beneath the table and worked it around the .45 I kept strapped to the bottom of the table.

“Not this time, Chico.”

My palm was sweaty, but eyes never left him.

I had a choice to make here, the kind you can’t take back.

Fat Tony laughed. “And what’s so funny is how life has been treating you lately. First I screw Sheila, then I screw you.”

My wife Sheila and I had only been separated a week.

Her idea.

“I didn’t know about Sheila,” I told Fat Tony.

“Sounds like there are a lotta things you don’t—“

Suddenly, the air exploded and my ears rang.

Tony’s eyes shut immediately, too soon to realize I’d made my decision.


David Carver enjoys flash/micro fiction almost as much as reruns of Happy Days. He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. This is his first published story.