Heart of Gold by Michael B. Brodin

Heart of Gold by Michael B. Brodin

Sissy Krawczuk, just shy of her twenty first birthday, was swinging her hips down Santa Monica Boulevard in East L.A. when she stepped in shit.

She knew it right away — the unmistakable squish and smell — but it was her own damn fault because instead of looking where she was going, she’d had her eyes on a man in a silver BMW.

Chalk it up to education, she said to herself as she ducked into a diner where the trannies hung out. She went into the bathroom, sat down on the toilet, took off the shoe, crumpled up a handful of toilet paper, and went at it.

Thing was, the shoes were brand new, and they were plenty expensive — peep-toe, slip-on, black patent leather stilettos by Balenciaga that made her four inches taller, the heels as pointed and sharp as real Italian daggers. Hell to walk in, but they showed off her calves and went with her mid-thigh black leather skirt, her black stockings, her black garter belt, and her lacy black thong, which you only got to see for cold hard cash.

The rest of her outfit consisted of a tight white top that showed off her bullet nipples and gold hoop earrings, which set off the whole ensemble nicely. Dawn, her friend, had helped her put it together, calling it a classic CFM outfit. Dawn knew how to dress. “Don’t ever buy anything that doesn’t make you feel sexy,” she told Sissy, and it seemed to work, probably being responsible for an extra hundred or two a week, money Sissy really needed.

Her financial situation had turned to shit all at once, just like the shit on her shoe, landlord jacking up the rent, twin brother sick with HIV, the previous pair of high heels disintegrating when she stepped on a grate. Money. Always tough but especially for someone saving for college. She was smart enough to know she wouldn’t be able to do this forever.

When she thought she’d gotten the shoe clean enough she brought it up to her nose. There was still some odor, so she got soap from the dispenser and scrubbed it down with paper towels.

She left the toilet and went back to the dining area, thought about buying something from the dollar menu as recompense for using their facility, but more bad luck. Bobbie Maloney, whom they called Bear, sitting in a booth shoveling a cheeseburger into his face. She saw him first, pivoted on her heel, and scurried out the door.

The deal with Bear Maloney was this. He was the brother of a cop and the muscle guy for Sissy’s pimp. They were partners, the pimp and Bear, and Sissy was already behind in her remittances, what with her brother’s expensive antiretroviral medications, the rent, and the shoes. The Bear had talked to her twice already about it and everybody knew what happened the third time because all the girls had seen him do it. He’d come up behind you and grab you around the waist and squeeze your guts up against your diaphragm and your diaphragm up into your lungs so you couldn’t breathe. And he kept pushing them up until you passed out and that way you learned your lesson, and he didn’t leave any scars except the scar of the memory of being suffocated in a bear hug. In other words, everybody paid up after that treatment and if you were smart, well before.
That’s why Sissy didn’t look back until she reached the corner where the other girls were hanging out. When she stopped she was out of breath.

Dawn asked what was going on.

“Bear,” said Sissy.

“You behind?” asked Dawn.

“Yeah.”

“I’d give you something, Honey,” said Dawn, “but I’m all busted up.” This was true. Unlike Sissy Dawn was a junkie. She was also impractical in other ways, such as carrying around a big bag with three wigs, a bleach blonde, a jet black, and a bright red, even though Sissy had never seen her in any of them.
It was a slow night, hot and slow. No traffic and hordes of girls. It was hard to keep your spirits up. The great miracle of the American economy, the private enterprise supply and demand capitalist free market system seemed to have stopped working just when Sissy needed it most.

So she decided to change her approach and try the opposite side of the street. But as she was waiting to cross the Bear came up behind her.

It happened so fast none of the girls saw him coming. They scattered, except for Dawn, who took out her iPhone and began filming.

The Bear started slowly, just hugging her, gently, like she was his girlfriend, his cheek on her neck, nuzzling, whispering in her ear. He was saying something but she was so scared she didn’t understand him. She opened her mouth, gasped. He tightened his grip, his enormous fists right beneath her ribs, shoving her insides into her chest. She tried to resist, but it seemed to turn him on.

“Mm-mm,” he moaned. “That’s right. I like it tight.”

She tried to keep breathing, short shallow breaths, but it just made her more anxious. Catching enough oxygen to scream was out of the question. Black halos began appear in her peripheral vision. Her knees trembled and felt week.
That was what did it, that feeling of her legs giving way, for she desperately didn’t want to fall, for that’s what he did to you, just let you collapse after you became unconscious, and that thought terrified Sissy most of all.

And so she glanced down to where he’d placed his feet, selected her target, raised her right leg, and with all the energy she could muster speared his right foot with her heel. Like a pile driver, using legs grown powerful from running high school track. Immediately she knew she had done the right thing. They say the force generated in this manner is like that of several elephants concentrated on a tiny area, and Sissy confirmed this as she felt the crunch of her shoe traversing his shoe, then his sock, his skin, his muscles, bones, ligaments, and tendons, and came out the other side. In other words, through and through.
“Cunt!” he screamed, then growled like an animal, released his grip and shoved her away. As he did she slipped out of the weaponized stiletto since Bear was still impaled by it, and so she stood, quite lopsided, one leg essentially four inches shorter — or longer, depending on how you looked at it — than the other.
Bear was in agony, groaning and writhing trying to remove the shoe, which was really wedged in there. But he was strong, and when he did get it out he threw it at her. It was bloody, so she didn’t pick it up, instead taking off the other shoe for balance and running home barefoot. In her apartment she opened a bottle of vodka.

Two cops, one of them Bear’s brother, came to see her about an hour later to get her side of the story. She told it and said they could check Dawn’s phone for confirmation.

Both cops laughed but didn’t explain what was so funny.

Later, Dawn did. One of cops had accidently knocked the phone out of her hands as she was showing it to him and then to compound the error had stepped on it. And then, of course, they took it into evidence to see what they could recover, which was nothing.

Over the next several weeks Bear did not do well in the hospital. Sissy had essentially injected him with a large number of lethal microorganisms, not only the ones on her heel with its residual fecal matter but also those on his feet, socks, the inside and the outside of his shoe. Enough, as one doctor said, to equip a germ warfare facility.

And despite giving Bear multiple intravenous antibiotics he developed sepsis, which is the term given to an infection that gets out of control. And that led to tissue damage, organ failure, life support, and ultimately death. It wasn’t all that unusual. Sepsis is the leading cause of death in American hospitals. A month after the incident Robert Maloney’s name was added to that statistic and shortly afterwards they arrested Sissy. The charge was manslaughter in the first degree for which the sentencing guidelines are five to twenty-five years.

Although Sissy knew enough to keep her mouth shut, she didn’t have a chance. The police reports were falsified, Bear’s dying words — which are legally accepted as gospel — were full of lies, and the public defender, Scott, was a smart guy but he stuttered. Bear’s brother and the pimp also convinced the other girls to say that Sissy started it all. Dawn was the only one who stuck by her.

And with no assets of her own, no family to speak of, and no rich friends, Sissy couldn’t possibly make bail, which was set at a hundred thousand dollars. They tossed her into the Regional Correction Facility in Lynwood, California.

They offered her a plea deal of ten years, but Sissy told them to shove it. She planned to take the stand in hopes the jury would have sympathy for her, even though Scott recommended against it and even though this particular DA had never lost a case in which he’d prosecuted a prostitute.

Although she could have demanded a speedy trial she decided to wait a bit to prepare her defense. There was a decent law library at the jail and she developed an immediate fan club when they heard she’d killed the brother of a cop with a shoe.

Two big dykes even became her unofficial bodyguards and made sure nobody messed with her. Even the COs seemed impressed. They let her take showers by herself and got her better food. All the while she kept telling herself she’d never give up the fight, no matter what. And to that end, she became an expert in two legal principles: self-defense and the appeal process. She had quite a few dreams, in fact, of making an impassioned speech before the Supreme Court.

& & &

The day before the trial, Dawn came to visit.

They talked about the pimp, Bear, the girls, Dawn’s mother, who was sick, and Dawn’s habit, about the jail, the guards, the food, and the night it all happened.

Then Dawn talked about finally having enough money to buy a new phone and how expensive they had become and also the pain of having to put in new numbers and contact information.

“Wait,” Sissy said after a few moments. “Didn’t you have your phone set so it automatically backed up to the cloud?”

“Yeah,” Dawn said, “but I changed it… I think… I don’t know… it’s so goddamn complicated.”

The two of them stared at each other for a long time realizing the implications. “Maybe I never changed it,” Dawn said. “Maybe it did back up. Holy shit. Holy mother of God fucking shit.”

She put her hand over her heart. “I’m gonna die,” she said. “I’m gonna have a friggin heart attack. I gotta find out.” She stood up and called for a guard.
But the guard wouldn’t let her out. You had to stay until the end of your visit, for the sake of law and order. But as soon as they opened the door she sprinted to the locker where she’d put the phone, so fast that they thought she was an escapee.

Fifteen minutes later Dawn called Sissy.

“Thank God for Apple,” she said. “I’m going straight to the mayor.”

The suit Sissy brought against the city was for five million dollars, for false imprisonment, slander, and a bunch of other stuff. But ultimately, she accepted one million. And of that she gave a hundred thousand to Dawn, for MAT rehab, which stands for medically assisted treatment, the best kind, and fifty to Scott, for speech therapy. Sissy made them both sign papers that they wouldn’t use the money for anything else and if they did, they had to pay her back with interest and a penalty.

Sissy went to college, did well, and even got accepted to medical school. She became a doctor, graduating debt-free, and specialized in infectious disease. She now runs a clinic in East L.A. for HIV and STDs. She also set up a shelter and scholarship program for troubled women who wanted to get back on their feet.

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Michael B. Brodin 2023