The Scarred Man by Basil Heatter

and fishtail mufflers. I've got like maybe four thousand in that chopper."
        "Are you trying to sell it to me?"
        "A straight like you? You'd kill yourself the first time out."
        "Probably."
        "A hundred miles an hour that close to the ground is living, man."
        "Or dying."
        He shrugged. "It's like all the same, man. You want to try it?"
        "Sure."
        "When?"
        "Anytime."
        "Tomorrow?"
        "Why not?"
        "I'll come by for you."
        "Okay," I said. "Have another beer."
        He was getting loose and lubricated on the combination of beer and pot. We talked the drug scene. He said he had been a pothead from way back, and he didn't mind dropping a little acid now and then, but he wasn't into anything harder. Sometimes he would drop a few cartwheels or bennies, but no heroin. No way, man.
        "Could you beat a drug rap, Billyboy? Like you did in Islamorada with the Gut?"
        I shook my head. "I doubt it. It would depend on the time and place of course. Possibly here in Miami where they're accustomed to processing hippies and school kids on drug charges it might be a little easier, but I don't think there would be much I could do for you. If you want to stay out of the slammer, keep away from murder, rape, and drugs."
        Head lolling, he giggled foolishly, "Are you kidding, man?"
        "Not particularly."
        "I mean about the rape. Rape is going on all the time."
        "Is it?"
        "What other way is there?"
        "I can think of a few."
        "It's what the chicks dig."
        "Do they?"
        "Billyboy, where you been livin'? Like when we break in a new mama. We turn ten, fifteen, maybe twenty guys loose on her. It's a gig."
        "I'll bet."
        "Hell, just a couple months ago out in the boondocks…"
        "Yes?"
        "Nothin'."
        I handed him another beer. He bit into it with a crunch.
        "It's all ginch," he said. "Anyway you cut it."
        "I suppose."
        "You married, Billyboy?"
        "Was."
        "That's a bummer. A guy gets hung up and wrung out and wasted with one chick. Like we had this brawl one time out in Hialeah in an empty warehouse. The chicks and the beer and the acid rock. Guy brought his wife. What kind of guy would bring his wife to a gig like that?"
        "I don't know."
        "Kinky. She asked where was the ladies' room, and two of us took her out back and showed her. We had her on an old mattress out there with her skirt up around her neck and all the guys comin' and goin' and takin' their turns, and then a lot of them comin' around again for seconds and thirds, and all this time her old man is in drinkin' beer, and he thinks maybe his old lady is just out for some fresh air or somethin', and finally some guy says to him we got some ginch out there and he should go take his crack, and it's dark out there and he's half smashed anyway and he gets in the saddle and that's when we throw on the light. That was some scene."
        "I can imagine."
        "Now if that come to court what would you call it? Was it rape or what?"
        "An interesting point."
        His voice had grown fuzzy. "Three…"
        "Yes?"
        "Three of us one time… This guy and his old lady on a Honda… like out in the fuckin' Everglades, man. We… Ginch!"
        I sat very still. Sweat was running down the back of my neck, but my hands felt as though they had been dipped in ice water. He stood up, lurching a little. "Sheet. All this pussy talk. Mama waitin'. Gotta split. Tomorrow then, huh?"
        I nodded, watching him as he climbed up onto the dock, unzipped his fly and urinated defiantly in the direction of the two young women who had emerged again onto the foredeck of the Chris-Craft.
        When he had mounted his machine, he gave us the full benefit of his tailpipe once around the turn and dusted off. I watched him go, hoping he