That Was When: Johnnie Walker Brought Jack Step Back to His Senses
The 13 men have again taken their seats.
Mack: I just want to repeat this, because it’s important. I had had no idea we – and you can put that “we” in quotations – sent Woo over to Dickerson’s. Why? As far as I knew, there’d been no reason. It wasn’t on the protocol. I, certainly, had had no… in any case, it’s not clear to me who authorized it, who gave the order… unless it was…
Syntax: Smith! Again – Smith… Smith…
Wales: We all know the way Smith got around here, being in Mack’s good graces…
Mack: So you say; but I say, not so.
Wales: Well, then, the way we perceived him to be, with him always going, “Mack asked me to tell you”, or “Mack told me to tell you…” After a while, some of us figured, it simply wasn’t true; that he was making it up. Sometimes, that turned out to be right. Other times, ignoring Smith, ultimately got us into trouble with Mack.
Mack: So, what you’re saying is…
Syntax: I think I see where Seb’s trying to go with this. Admittedly stretching it some. The point being, Smith told Woo directly, or called him to tell him, that Mack told him to tell him to go to Dickerson’s place. Going off Mack’s authority over Woo with that in-house psychology lab project he was running with him. Told him, Mack said, such and such address, such and such time. Bring your lab things, on the pretext of Dickerson being his patient, juice him up with poison… A thing Woo would do gleefully and readily, no questions asked. Told him, leave the door open so he, Smith, could come in after him. Take care of his friend, Dickerson, take notes on the effects of the hallucinogen, or whatever.
Wales: Or, finish him off.
Gonzalez: But why, Senor Wales? Why finish off Senor Dickerson, unless Senor Smith saw him as being somehow in his way? Or, perhaps, working with this Woo himself?
Sims: Working with Woo? Doing what?
Mack: The sex trade, for one. We all heard Dickerson a couple of hours ago give us a graphic description of how Woo ran the racket from his end – is that not so, Senor Gonzalez?
Gonzalez: Unfortunately, Senor MacDonald, it is…
Mack: Well, unfortunately, as you say, we have absolutely no record of Smith contacting Woo at or around the time the notion struck him to go to Dickerson’s, fully equipped with his lab coat and a medical bag full of nightmarish drugs and godforsaken concoctions – all new, untested, and out of China…
Step: You don’t need that record, Mack, because it was the Ferret, and not Smith, who urged Woo to go.
Gonzalez: Senor Step – that is fascinating.
Jean-Dan Asphalt: Ah, come on, Jack – how the fuck do you know!
Step: Well, as much as I hate to say it, because it seems I’ll only be repeating myself, but it looks like, in any case, it bears repeating: Because the Ferret is at the very heart, and very start of it.
Because when Mack had Dirk go to Woo’s office that first time, he did it knowing Dirk was then suffering, in part, from something Dirk was calling Ferret Fantasies. Naturally, and regardless of what Mack thought of, or knew of, Woo, at the time, he was curious to see what would come of it, which, as we know, truly piqued Woo’s interest when Dirk immediately opened up about it; started pouring out his guts, as he is wont to do.
Dickerson: All these years, Step, and yet you know nothing about me… [The Kyiv Unedited Editorial Board has very strong reservations as to whether Dickerson would ever say anything as nauseatingly mawkish and cheesy as this. Ed Tomorrow, if indeed his name that is, the supposed “author” of this piece, apparently lost his crib note on this one.]
Popper: So, Jack, you’re suggesting –
Step: That either Woo was working with the Ferret, or wanted to, as they were both operating in the trafficking of young women; or the Ferret was working with, or looking to work with, Woo. Except between the Ferret and Woo, the Ferret would, without question, be the one to eliminate Woo before Woo would ever think of doing the same to the Ferret. Two completely different… philosophies, let us call them. The answer to why is obvious: they were in the same local meat market, competing for the same goods, or, perhaps more appropriately, the same raw material… They were both criminals. And if criminals don’t, or can’t work with each other, then they work against each other, and, having seen the movies, you all know the rest.
Jean-Dan Asphalt: Yeah, Jack, but that would then imply, without proof, that Smith was working with, or for, the Ferret, and knocked Woo off in Dickerson’s apartment to –
Step: Precisa-fuckin’-mundo, you stupid fucking feral Frog…
Morne: Hey, it’s a good thing there aren’t any Jews here!
To a man, they all laugh – and quite heartily, at that.
Quarry: Um, I agree with Step. No need for proof, because it seems like I got it all right here: A series of fairly short calls by the Ferret to Woo a couple of days before, and then on the fateful day of Woo’s now-famous-infamous demise.
Syntax: What?! How did you get those?
Quarry: It’s called doing my job, jerk.
Wales: Yeah, Gus, but why you telling us now?!
Quarry: Jeez, guys, I don’t know. I couldn’t really make heads or tails of it, but then, listening to Jack, here, it all suddenly clicked, and –
Mack: Yeah, that’s all well and good, but it’s still only circumstantial – we don’t know what was said in those calls.
So, Dickerson, why were you in your underwear?
And Step, didn’t you tell me before you’d seriously contemplated trying to get rid of Woo’s corpse, potentially making you an accomplice to a murder after the fact, regardless of whether it was Dickerson who’d whacked him, or not? Do you realize just how lucky you are that you thought it all over when you left Dickerson’s apartment and went straight to that shitty little Indian-run convenience store for some more Red Man Tobacco, where you apparently changed your mind and decided to make that call?
Step: Yes, that’s right, Mack. Changed my mind. Called in the kill, thinking it’d been Dickerson, and allowing nature, as they say, to takes its course. You know – see how the cards would fall.
Because Dickerson’d poured me a big, fat drink of Red [Johnnie Walker Red – Ed.], and himself just as big a one too. Something he usually never did. Had the bottle there especially for me, when I’d come over with my pathetic-ass visits. And so like a good drunk, I drank mine down; alas, I don’t know what angel, or devil, depending on how you look at it, stopped me from drinking his down, too. Went out into the street. By the time I hit the store, the drink’d hit me. Knocked some sense into my head. Bent all my tormented thoughts right back into snip-snap shipshape.
Mack, I give that tumbler-full of whisky all the credit, and bless the people who made it, ‘cause if it hadn’t been for that drink, we wouldn’t be sitting here today obviously trying to get Dickerson here off the hook for the Woo kill. In very point of fact, by now, and long since, some of us would probably and even undoubtedly already be dead…
Filed by Ed Tomorrow, August 6, 2025