by Daniel James
Isaac shook his firm hand, cold as an ice sculpture. There was definitely a bite in the air but Isaac could only assume the old-timer had some circulatory issues. “Good to see you, Mr. Monahan.”
“Likewise, my boy.” Monahan let his coat sag off one shoulder and made toward the staircase. “Let’s have a word in my office. I could use a drink.”
Monahan’s stately office sat on the top floor. It was warm in temperature but cold in décor: deep royal blue curtains and matching carpet, sapphire-tinted lampshades, and lots of dark wood. It made Isaac think of an ancient seafaring vessel smashing against glaciers.
“I need to warm up.” Monahan poured brandy from an elegant decanter into a small glass. “Anybody else care for one?”
They all politely declined and hovered around his desk in wait. Monahan eased into a leather wingback chair, then gestured at the four of them. “Would you all mind sitting down? You’re making me nervous.”
The desk lamp revealed the weathered and worn features of Monahan. He was a man who looked like he had enjoyed the finer things in life for a long time: tanned skin from holidaying in Italy or the south of France, the beginnings of a turkey neck, bags under his humorous eyes. But his dark, wavy hair was untouched by Father Time, either from regular drownings in dye or by good fortune.
Isaac and Roach took the seats before the desk. Grace and Fitzy made a din of cracking leather as they took to the blue couch along the wall.
Monahan sipped his cognac and regarded Isaac with tired, hooded eyes. “I’ve been out of town for a few days. Roach filled in a few basics for me on the phone. Some men fear getting out of prison because they’ve become institutionalised, but you get out to a freak with a mask fetish trying to stuff you over a mantelpiece.” Monahan paused, delicately adding, “And I try to keep up with local news even when I’m away. I’m very sorry for your grievances.”
Isaac dismissed the apology, not needing or wanting the sympathy.
“Roach mentioned “Laylow” got hauled off last night. I guess he didn’t lay low enough this time. However …” He nursed his brandy and sighed tiredly. “Pissing people off is an occupational hazard. Any idea what level of security you’re all going to need? What type of threat do these men pose?”
“I think they’re hitmen. Hired by a relative or close friend of Alfred Jensen’s. Real Old Testament, eye-for-an-eye deal,” Isaac said. “I’m just spitballin’, but the few things we’ve pieced together add plausibility.”
Monahan squinted in thought. “The dead heart surgeon? I know the broad strokes, some hearsay, but that’s about it. Would you fill in the details for me?” He sipped.
“It was the damn cigarettes. Janine Ludlow smoked like a tire fire her whole life, ended up needing an emergency heart transplant. No surprise, Ludlow became distraught, started running around like a crazy person looking for the best cardiac surgeon he could find. He found Jensen. And this guy ticked all the boxes. A superstar in his field, so naturally, there was a waiting list. Ludlow hounded the guy, bending his ear at every opportunity, calling and calling, talking about Janine’s chest pains. Well, Jensen finally gets around to assess her candidacy, and then he gets cold feet. Turns out Janine had been suffering with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease for a time, which, as it turns out, is a risk factor for surgery.”
Isaac snapped his fingers. “So just like that, after keeping her waiting and letting their hopes, our hopes”—he gestured between Roach and himself—“build up, he wipes his hands of the whole idea so he can keep his unblemished surgical record.” Isaac took a deep breath. “Ludlow didn’t take that well, and decided that if he had Jensen’s wife and daughter kidnapped, he could leverage him to operate. Lud was hanging on by a thread. Kept saying how he didn’t give a shit about going to prison, he just wanted Janine to be okay. So he starts putting a crew together, already has a driver in mind, and Roach and I jump at the chance. Not our usual type of work, but for family you make exceptions. He fought us on that until he turned blue, but we didn’t give an inch. We weren’t taking no for an answer, and eventually we wore him down.”
“That’s quite impressive. He was widely regarded as a stubborn prick,” Monahan added. “No offence.”
“He needed one more guy. Some seasoned extra muscle as insurance. Ludlow and Payton were sharing one of their truces, and Jack told him good things about this new guy, Michael Wyndorf, who’d been dealing for him and doing some rough stuff on the side. We meet him, no alarm bells start ringing, so he gets the green light.”
Isaac slumped back in his chair. “We drive to the doc’s townhouse, burst in, wave the guns, yell, the whole deal, and Jensen, his wife and daughter are putty in our hands. All going smoothly.” He exhaled slowly. “Until the doc tries to be a hero. He grabs a vase and tries to bust it over Wyndorf’s head. Wyndorf didn’t handle that well. The vase only glanced him, but it was like hitting a switch—he went from cold and professional to complete fucking maniac, whipping out a butcher knife from his coat.” Isaac closed his eyes, the imagery haunting his memories.
Roach sat quietly, wearing his own look of disgust at the recollection.
“We tried to stop him but it all happened so quickly. He was stronger than he looked. Roach landed some good shots but got dazed when his head was bounced off a doorframe. I didn’t fare any better, fucker stuck me in the stomach; luckily I was angling away, but it was still deep. Then he turned to the wife and girl. They were on the phone to the cops when he got them. He sliced … and hacked … until they looked like they belonged in a butcher shop window. Then he went back to work on Alfred, and he started to fillet the guy’s face. The police sirens were on their way when I managed to crawl back to my gun and put a bullet in Wyndorf’s leg. I was aiming for his head.” Disappointment bloomed on Isaac’s face. “My blood was already all over the place, and I wasn’t running anywhere, and Wyndorf had already fled, forcing our driver to get the pair of them out of Dodge. Roach was shaking off the cartoon birds when I told him to get back to Ludlow. No sense in us both getting pinched, and with Ludlow climbing the walls and my Maggie being pregnant, I needed him on the outside to watch over them.” Isaac cleared his throat, and looked like he had extracted another sliver of the evil which had pierced his frail soul.
Roach’s large frame had shrunk a few inches in his chair.
Monahan placed his empty glass on the blotter. “Tragic story.” He wasn’t speaking facetiously, he was merely too spiritually calloused to be surprised by such a tale of woe.
Becoming introspective, Isaac took a moment to think his answer through. He shrugged lightly. “There’s one more thing I can’t stop turning over in my head. The wolf mask. Janine was originally scheduled for a pig valve transplant. Wyndorf thought it would be hilarious to get us all pig masks for the job. Having a wolf hunting us feels like a taunt.”
“Sending a wolf to eat the piggies who killed the doc and his family. How poetic.” Grace broke her silence, and this time there wasn’t a hint of mockery in her voice.
“So you’re likely dealing with contract killers.”
“The manpower you got here will be enough. We’re not planning on turning this into a six-month vacation. We only need time to knock a few plans around to draw these guys into an ambush,” Roach answered.
“And I’m going to need a gun.” Isaac’s voice was as low as his mood.
Monahan gave Isaac a crocodile’s smile. “I understand that Ludlow’s welfare makes this a personal matter for you. A real “Cry Havoc, and let slip the dogs of war” type scenario. But tell me, when you find these individuals, how far are you prepared to go? If I recall correctly, one of your idiosyncrasies was a cast-iron insistence on killing no more than a target’s nest egg.” The explanation didn’t make the act sound any nobler in speech than it was in practice. “Have your recent sorrows made your code a bit more flexible?”
Isaac’s countenance became worryingly abstract, leaving Monahan looking baffled.
“I’ll
kill ’em,” Roach intervened.
Monahan hummed softly, scrutinising Isaac a moment longer. “What the hell, for the man who stole me the Cardinal Ruby, I’ll give you two guns.”
Raid
The 9mm was feeling more and more familiar in Isaac’s grip. It was as if one of his muscles, long atrophied, was regaining lost strength. The gun was a Smith & Wesson M&P Shield. Monahan had led him down to a Spartan basement, lined with cheap wood laminate and unfurnished apart from several wall racks weighted heavily with a variety of concealable, and a few not-so-concealable, weapons. The room felt like a discount coffin to Isaac.
Monahan gasped at how Isaac wielded the gun, like it was a shoddy piece of equipment waiting to go off and take his fingers along with it. “For Christ’s sake, you didn’t use to do stick-ups with a paintball gun, now did you? Stop acting like a debutante. You know where the business end is.”
Isaac didn’t feel the pistol grip, he felt death’s hand holding his. Some extra-sensory phenomenon, a universal snitch, was telling him that his choice to kill or spare a life was inevitable. He was too far down this path, and wicked men were at the toll. Isaac grumbled, and to appease his host and armorer, quickly and efficiently dropped out the eight-shot magazine, checked it was full, slapped it back home and racked the slide. “Happy?”
“Delighted, Isaac.” Monahan didn’t sell it. “Well, that’s me. You and the boys and girl upstairs are welcome to all this stuff whilst you’re here.”
Isaac revisited the ample supply of hardware and damn well hoped none of them would need half of the collection to get the job done.
Monahan started for the stairs with Isaac at his heels. A sudden thought struck him. “When all this blows over—if you’re still alive, that is—I’d love to hear from you. I always have plenty of work.”
Isaac chose not to feign any interest. Monahan tipped his hand in a fair-enough gesture.
Wyndorf watched the quiet activity unfolding around the black Audi parked further up the street, his eyes alight with a territorial greed. Several occupants had slipped some lumpy, indiscernible masks over their heads and were using the shadows between the street lights and the parked cars to sneak closer to the house.
“Who the fuck are these guys?”
Garland was slumped down behind the wheel, his instincts screaming at him that this was a bad scene. “We’re leaving.”
The soft clinking of a pistol against the passenger window froze the pair of them. It was a snarling wolf, beckoning them out slowly and carefully.
“Fuck.” Garland didn’t fancy his chances of waking Shauna up in time to get a shot at such close proximity. Instead, he slipped his ballistic knife into his hand.
Slowly, they opened their doors.
Roach, Grace and Fitzy were idling in the parlor, while Grace was cockily twirling her gun like a flashy sharpshooter, jubilant that the security had returned their weapons without any bullshit or dick-swinging.
With the gun secured snugly in the back of his waistband, Isaac followed Monahan from the basement into the kitchen. The big, bald behemoth left his seat at the poker table and tailed them both into the living room, ready to lock the door after Monahan’s exit.
Monahan stopped in the hallway and looked at Roach. “This is your favor paid back in full. Remember, you can always earn another.”
Roach nodded. Monahan wormed about under his overcoat, bracing for the cold night air that would rush in when the henchman unlocked the door.
As if recalling something, Monahan stopped on the threshold and threw a departing glance at Isaac. “Oh, and Isaac, buy yourself some new clothes. You look terrible.”
Monahan stepped onto the porch and shuddered twice. The back of his coat billowed outwards in red squirts as two bullets punched through his chest. The ogre of a doorman bellowed out a yell of alarm and reached for his sidearm. Several shots thudded into his massive torso, the coup de grace punching through his rock-shaped head.
Outside, two men in rotting pig masks quickly emerged from the shadows between the parked cars, walking swiftly but softly to minimise the spoil of their aim. Several more suppressed shots cracked against the bulletproof wooden door Roach was attempting to slam, whilst aiding Fitzy in dragging the guard’s cumbersome body aside. One of the pigs pulled something from a pocket in his dark suit and tossed it into the closing mouth of the doorway. It bounced and rolled along the hall floor. A brief moment was all it took for them to identify it.
A brief moment too long.
The flash-bang went off like an enraged Odin, calling down thunder and lightning from the firmament. Still standing in the parlor, Isaac managed to dive and pull Grace away from the doorway and the retina-cooking flash of the blast, but their ears bore the brunt, the piercing trill of violently displaced air drilling into their eardrums.
Cards and cash rained down as the players tipped the table over in their haste to jump into action, taking defensive positions. Two moved into the kitchen to check the windows for a rear assault. The back door was bulletproof steel set into a steel frame, but the bars on the windows would only resist so much. The other two joined Isaac and Grace in the living room, keeping their guns trained on the open front door.
Blind and deaf to the world, Roach and Fitzy rolled about in the hallway. The two frontal assault pigs cautiously took the porch steps, spotting a gunman descending the hallway staircase, his gun strafing for a target. He was too slow. The lead pig tightly grouped two shots into his heart and he collapsed down the remainder of the flight, landing several feet from where Roach continued to fight for his equilibrium. He and Fitzy fumbled across the floor toward the living room, the white flare in their eyes beginning to fade back to a blurry semblance of normality.
The masked duo stepped over Monahan’s body and were drawing on the two crawling targets when a fusillade of bullets splintered the doorway around them. Before they could take cover, Roach rolled onto his back, his gun up, and squeezed off a couple of shots, hitting the lead attacker in the neck. The pig stumbled backward, hand pressed over the red geyser in his throat, and tripped over Monahan’s splayed arm, tumbling back down the porch steps. Fitzy pulled Roach to his feet, the both of them still wobbly and half-blind, and Isaac dragged them into the parlor. Then, providing his own cover fire, he charged for the front door, leaning into it like a shield and working to shove it closed.
The second pig was still on the blood-slick porch, crouching defensively. As Isaac began to shift the door, he leapt forwards, throwing his shoulder against the other side barring Isaac from shutting it.
Out on the street, the surprise peal of automatic gunfire perforated the quiet of the siege. At first Isaac was going to poke his gun around the bullet-beaten barrier and blast the triggerman in the leg, until he realised that the body was now dead weight. The hitman slumped across the threshold with several high-calibre exit wounds in his chest. The din of breaking glass and short controlled burst fire lit up the opposite side of the street. Everything was happening so fast it was difficult to process, but it sounded like somebody else was mixed up in this.
“Now what?” Fitzy shouted over the racket.
One of the housesitters approached the window and peered out, shifting the curtain with his gun. It was exceptionally poor timing. Another pig-faced assassin, pink rubber flesh turning necrotic, was crossing the pavement and placed several shots into his stomach. The latest victim on Monahan’s payroll fell backward in a screaming fit, his white shirt pooling into soaking warm crimson. The pig’s hand flailed up into view outside the window, a smoke grenade following in the wake of the bullets, passing through the bars and rolling along the floor, hissing like an angry viper.
“Upstairs!” Roach yelled out, the smoke billowing out and rapidly enveloping the ground floor.
A deafening boom rocked the house as the brick wall of the kitchen collapsed, crashing one of the hired help against the refrigerator in a ragdoll tangle. Gagging on acrid smoke and disintegrated brick, the remain
ing kitchen guard backed up and fired several shots into the dark, craggy mouth of the improvised doorway. He was just into the dining room when he was punched backward by a cluster of silent lead emanating from the smoking hole.
Eyes watering, Grace and Fitzy opened up, their shots lighting up the smoky parlor and searing through the obfuscating air toward the kitchen invaders, hitting nothing but cupboards and a coffeemaker. The final house guard abandoned his gut-shot companion and joined Grace in focusing his fire at the kitchen doorway. Several shapes loomed through the wall of smoke, shapes with big, swollen jaws and floppy ears. The pig-men moved in formation through the kitchen, alternating cover fire to close the distance. The final poker player cashed in his chips when through the roiling smoke he was lanced with two precise shots to the lung and heart. Quiet impacts peppered the stone wall over Fitzy’s shoulder. They were boxed in and the box was shrinking fast.
“Upstairs! Now!” Roach repeated. “We can hold them off.”
The street outside sounded like a battleground.
“We’ll be trapped like choking rats,” Isaac yelled, still using the front door as a shield and waiting to pop anyone else who made a run for the porch. “Fitzy, get the car.”
With killers swarming in to flank them from the rear, options were limited, but Fitzy still didn’t look too keen on the plan. Leading by example and staying low, Isaac was the first out the door and off the porch, gulping heavenly fresh air. What he saw confused the hell out of him. Across the street was a humongous guy in a long coat and boots, the stock of an assault rifle propped against his shoulder, tagging well-placed shots at several Audis blocking the north end of the street. Amongst the carloads of war pigs stood the wolf, commanding them as he gripped and tugged at something stuck in his shoulder. Shimmering street light showed it to be a small blade. Isaac didn’t know who the big guy was or what the hell his stake was in all of this, but the figure taking cover near him froze Isaac for a heartbeat. A clean-cut killer, crouching amongst a pile of shattered glass and reloading a suppressed handgun.