Switch - Small Change

Small Change got rained on by his own 38.

His nickname, like everything else about him, was totally inappropriate. He must have weighed four hundred pounds and was fat in that way sports stars go when they've got nothing to force them into the gym every morning.

He was a Sumo wrestler, won a few minor contests but he had little in the way of discipline, no composure and would let his temper get the better of him. Clever opponents would just taunt him into making a mistake.

Just after the biggest win of his burgeoning career he was found in a compromising position with the Dojo owner's daughter. If he'd been a star wrestler it could have been overlooked. Small Change, however was kicked to the curb with a size sixty waistline and few transferable talents.

Beating people up for money is always a skill set needed by a subsection of society and he had both training and experience in this specialised field.

He worked as muscle for a few small time Loan sharks for a while, learning the game before that small brain, insulated by several hundred pounds of blubber, clicked onto a new concept. He bounced Jimmy the Fish out of business, literally, and took up Jimmy's old patch and markers.

That first week Small-Change was in charge, ten of Jimmy's long-time non-payees ended up in A & E. They were the lucky ones who found a way to get the money. Unlike the two poor saps who took a ride to the cold metal slab downstairs.

That was the first time I had the pleasure of meeting him. Vice have got the sharking side of things but as soon as pulses slow to a dead stop that's when my boys get called in.

From the coroners report it wasn't hard to work out what had happened.

Having all your ribs crushed and your organs turned to pate can happen if you have a horrific Auto accident, or if a pissed off ex-sumo who you owe money to uses your chest as a trampoline.

Of course we couldn't prove anything, nobody wanted to talk and the word on the street was after that first week of carnage, everybody paid on time. No-one wanted to owe him money for too long. That's where his nickname came from, the whispers were he'd kill you even if you only owed him a few pennies.

Still if you were in a jam, needed some dough up front, no questions asked, he was your man. Every day, in the same reinforced seat, in the same bar, drinking the same cheap whiskey and laughing through his broken yellow teeth.

He was still smiling when we arrived on the scene, black eightball eyes showing the death blood of fatal head trauma. He was spread-eagled on the cheap lino of the barroom floor with six bullet holes. Two in the head and the other four in the enormous gut that flopped around his torso like a half deflated beach ball.

There was just something inherently wrong about his mouth of broken dentistry still smiling after death. Like having a Sick Animal Hospital next to a Vietnamese restaurant.

The gun, his gun, was found a block away. Wiped clean of course, and nobody was surprised when the ballistics matched the six slugs they pulled out of him to the pistols six chambers.

No witnesses, no suspects, no clues. Everyone wanted him dead for some reason and there was no pressure on us to pursue it.

All that was left of him after the coroner had removed the carcass was a gaudy Hawaiian shirt the size of a ships mainsail, covered with blood and whisky.


FIN (With thanks to Tom Waits for the title.)