Simple Justice by John Morgan Wilson Page A

don’t need no weapon.”
    He took a step away from the car, closer to where I stood.
    “We’re two grown men, Luis. This really isn’t necessary, is it?”
    “I say what’s necessary, faggot-lover.”
    He shoved my chest with both his hands, leaving greasy prints. It rocked me a little, but my feet held.
    I figured he was right-handed, from the way he’d gripped the wrench. I also knew that if I shoved him in return, and he came instinctively back at me, his momentum would be moving forward, with his weight on his left foot as he prepared to swing his right fist. The street’s slope would propel him forward even more. At least that would be the natural motion.
    “What’s the matter, Mr. Reporter? All words, no action?”
    “Tell me, Luis, how are you with basic physics?”
    “What?”
    “For example, the laws of gravity.”
    I thrust my hands hard against his solid chest, moving him back a step or two, then set my feet, with my knees slightly bent and my weight on my toes.
    He reacted predictably, coming back fast, planting his left foot as he cocked his right arm. I dropped away to his left, sweeping his foot from under him as I skimmed the ground. In college wrestling terminology, it was known as a single leg pickup. It worked about as well as I’d hoped. His momentum pitched him forward, and he landed flat on his soft belly.
    As he started to rise, I mounted him around the waist, like a rider atop a horse, slipping my legs under both of his, then spreading them as I raised my heels back and upward. It knocked his legs out from under him, flattening him again and holding him there.
    With my right hand, I drew his right arm into a hammerlock. I snaked my left hand around his left arm, under the inside joint of the elbow, then up around his shoulder, cinching it tight in a hold known as a chicken wing. From there, I reached farther to secure his throat in a chokehold, the only move among the ones I’d just executed that would have been illegal on a college wrestling mat.
    He struggled, so I cinched everything up tight, well beyond the allowable limit. It caused him to emit a high-pitched squeal. I lowered my mouth to his ear.
    “Old wrestlers get out of shape,” I said, “but we never forget our best moves.”
    He cursed me in Spanish and started squirming, so I cinched the hammerlock up so tight that another inch would have snapped his shoulder blade. This time, the pain was enough to make him scream. I could have broken either of his arms in a matter of seconds, or choked off the blood to his brain. It was a feeling of pure power, and I liked it.
    I loosened the chokehold a little, before I started to like it too much.
    “I told you, Luis, I don’t want trouble. Understand?”
    He sank his teeth into my arm, so I cranked up the chicken wing, forcing a thin, constricted sound from his throat and leaving him gasping.
    “Don’t ever threaten me again, Luis. I’m just as capable of inflicting punishment as you. ¿ Comprende? ”
    He nodded furiously, moaning; tears leaked from the corners of his eyes.
    I let go of him all at once, leaving him facedown in the street to work the painful kinks from his twisted limbs.
    I flung the wrench up toward the house, among his father’s roses, climbed into the Mustang, and set the odometer at zero. Before pulling out, I glanced at the dashboard clock.
    Luis Albundo was in my rearview mirror as I drove away, standing in the street and yelling after me.
    “¡Mata todos los pinches putos!”
    I knew enough street Spanish to make the translation.
    Kill all the fucking faggots!
     

Chapter Nine
     
    I drove down out of the hills to Sunset Boulevard and a land of bodegas and tiendas and taquerías , where spirited Latin music drifted from bars and workers poured out of city buses stacked up at intersections three or four deep.
    Late afternoon traffic clogged the street, pushing radiators and tempers toward the boiling point. When it came to a standstill, I passed the