Serenity Avenged

by Craig A. Hart

  “You’ve never been in here, have you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “What do you think?”

  Jimmy looked around the room. The walls were lined with paintings, some of which sported their own soft illumination. Jimmy knew nothing about artwork but could only assume these were valuable. He wondered if they’d been obtained legally or if some museum around the world was wondering what had happened to their priceless treasures. Aside from the paintings, there were pedestals displaying small statues and pottery. A section of one wall was covered with assorted weapons from across centuries: pikes, swords, muskets, automatic weaponry.

  “Well?”

  Jimmy nodded. “I haven’t seen this kind of collection outside of a museum.”

  “This collection is more complete and valuable than those of many museums. Of course, I’m not bound by the same regulations and pesky international laws as they are, so I have an unfair advantage.” Darkmore’s smile widened and became a touch less terrifying. For a man capable of cruelty and lawlessness, Darkmore could exude great charm. His charisma compelled others to not only follow, but engendered within them a need to please, as if Darkmore was the father and everyone else his attention-starved children. Jimmy had watched Darkmore use this skill—both natural and honed over the years—to manipulate those in his service. The first man Jimmy had seen killed had “let Darkmore down.” The man cried at the end, but it hadn’t been clear if the sorrow was due more to his impending death or because he felt crushed by Darkmore’s disapproval.

  With measured steps, each footfall seeming like the tick of a clock, Darkmore walked toward Jimmy until only a few feet away. Darkmore stopped and stood, hands still behind his back, smile still on his face, head tilted slightly to the left.

  “You’ve really let me down, kid.”

  Jimmy couldn’t maintain the gaze. He dropped his head. “Yes, sir.”

  “And you know I warned you.”

  “I need a few more days.”

  “You don’t need more time. You messed it up.”

  Jimmy glanced up. Darkmore was still smiling.

  “You messed it up so well that now we’re in deep with an unknown party. And you know how much I hate unknowns. These new characters could be anyone: cops, the feds, rivals from the East. If you’d kept on schedule, this would have been done long ago. But instead, you sat around with your thumb up your ass, and now I have to clean up the mess you made after shitting yourself.”

  “I’m sorry, okay? Look, I can fix this!”

  Darkmore moved closer and put a hand on Jimmy’s shoulder. “I took you in when nobody else wanted you. It was risky and I took some heat for doing it. But you were family and a kid, so I decided to give you a shot. And this is how you repay my trust?”

  Jimmy closed his eyes, waiting for the guards to be called and told to escort him to the killing room.

  “I don’t want to kill you, kid. I’d take no pleasure in it. But it occurs to me that you might be taking our relationship for granted.”

  “Sir?”

  “It’s almost as if you think I’ll treat you differently because you’re my nephew, my brother’s kid, God rest his soul.” Darkmore made the sign of the cross and then muttered, “Christ, that’s a hard habit to break.”

  “I don’t think that at all, sir. About you going easy on me, I mean.”

  “You should. Because I have been. If you were anyone else, you’d be dead by now, your body dumped and eaten by worms. I have only myself to blame, in a way. I could have prevented this mess by following my head and not my heart.” Darkmore squeezed Jimmy’s shoulder. “You probably thought I had no heart, didn’t you? Well, I do. Family’s important to me, even though I’ve been shown repeatedly it doesn’t pay to make it such a priority.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You remember your dad, kid?”

  “Not much. He died when I was little.”

  “Four years old, to be precise. Do you know how he died?”

  “A work accident, I heard.”

  Darkmore shrugged. “Close enough. And do you know what he did for a living?”

  Jimmy shook his head.

  “He worked for me, doing much the same as you’ve been doing. Collections, errands, even some enforcement when I pressed him. He wasn’t much good at it, though. You get your soft streak from him. A sucker for a sob story, your dad. Like you.”

  “What happened to him? How’d he die? The cops?”

  “Oh, hardly. The cops weren’t much of a problem then. Still aren’t, if we keep a low enough profile.”

  Jimmy’s blood chilled. “You…you didn’t…”

  “I did what I had to do, kid. He double-crossed me by helping a target skip town before I could collect. I lost a lot of money on that deal—a lot more than you’re on the hook for—and it taught me a valuable lesson about projecting weakness.”

  Jimmy felt stunned, speechless, rooted to the floor. His eyes stared without seeing anything, and the only thing he was vaguely aware of was Darkmore’s voice as he continued to speak.

  “You know what happens when you enter a cage of wild animals and they smell fear? They attack and rip you to shreds. The moment they smell fear, they know they have you. A whiff of weakness is all it takes. My men are like those wild animals. Rumors were spreading about how I’d lost my nerve and gone soft. I could see the respect draining little by little out of their eyes. And I knew I had to end it.”

  Jimmy found his voice. “You…killed him. You killed my dad.”

  “Sorry, kid. It had to be done. And the day I did that, everything went back to normal because the wild animals knew I wasn’t soft, wasn’t weak, and wasn’t afraid to kill anyone—anyone—who crossed me. And I haven’t had a problem with them since…until now. The men are thinking I’ve let you get away with too much, that you’re getting special treatment because you’re my nephew. It’s starting again, kid. And I can’t have that.”

  Jimmy looked at Darkmore. The smile had disappeared and the face was now a cold, inscrutable mask. Inside, Jimmy was a mass of rage, terror, and grief. He wanted to leap the last couple of feet and wrap his hands around his uncle’s throat and squeeze and squeeze until it crunched and his uncle lay still and dead. But he knew he couldn’t. He was afraid, yes, but it was also a fight he had no chance of winning.

  Darkmore brought his other hand up and held Jimmy by the shoulders. He looked into his face and shook his head.

  “Oh, kid. What am I going to do with you?”

  “Whatever it is, could you make it quick?”

  Jimmy hadn’t meant this to be funny or defiant, but Darkmore burst into unexpected laughter.

  “You’ve got balls, kid. There you stand, the smell of fear all over you, and still have the stones to give me lip. You’re stronger than your old man. He begged for his life at the end. Started crying—I can’t handle that kind of weakness. If I hadn’t been planning to kill him before, the tears sealed his fate. But you! Not a tear-drenched plea in sight.”

  Darkmore walked back to his desk and pulled open a bottom drawer. Jimmy tensed, expecting a gun, but instead watched as Darkmore set two glasses and a bottle of liquor on the desktop.

  “Have a drink. This bottle of whiskey cost me twenty-five hundred bucks.”

  Jimmy walked over to the desk, trying to conceal the trembling in his legs, and accepted the offered glass. He tasted the whiskey and found it to be horrible. Then again, he was used to cheap domestic beer. Apparently, he disliked the taste of money. He resisted the urge to throw the liquor into Darkmore’s face and either make a run for the door or grab one of the weapons hanging on the wall. In some way, he felt he owed it to his father to try something, anything, no matter how slim the odds. But at the same time, a sense of self-preservation kept him from doing anything quite so stupid. Instead, he sipped the whiskey and watched Darkmore, trying to read him for any indication concerning what his own future might hold.

  Darkmore seemed a differe
nt man. The terrifying visage of cold death had disappeared and been replaced by the smiling magnetism of before.

  “I want to give you another chance, kid. A chance your father didn’t deserve and didn’t get.” Darkmore smiled broadly, as if expecting Jimmy to run into his arms, gushing with gratitude. “This will cost me something. As I’ve already explained, these wild animals I keep around here are waiting to sense weakness. But I can handle them—if you’re willing to prove yourself.” Darkmore took a long drink from his glass, never breaking eye contact, never blinking. “Are you willing to prove yourself?”

  Jimmy met the gaze, though not without difficulty. The man had eyes like a viper. Finally, Jimmy nodded.

  “Yeah. I’ll prove myself. What do you have in mind?”

  “Easy, kid. There’s no hurry. I’ll let you know when the time is right. For now, I want only two things from you.” Darkmore downed his drink and poured another. “And the first thing I want you to do is finish that drink.”

  11

  The night at Helen’s house passed quietly. Shelby and Mack took turns keeping watch so the other could get a few winks of sleep, but by six o’ clock, they were both up and restless. Shelby brewed coffee, while Mack broke down a shotgun for cleaning.

  “Cream or sugar?” Shelby called from the kitchen.

  “Black,” Mack said.

  Shelby walked into the living room and set a steaming cup of coffee on the table next to the dismantled shotgun. He sat down and watched his friend continue working, the coffee untouched.

  “I don’t remember you liking your coffee black. Trying to grow hair on your chest?”

  Mack paused in his work and glanced up. “Huh?”

  “Sorry to pull you back from whatever world you were in.”

  “What?”

  “Shit, Mack. You okay?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Gloria?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “I’ve been there, remember?”

  Mack nodded.

  Shelby sipped his coffee. “I remember when reality began setting in for me, when I knew it was over. I’d known for a long time, of course. We both did. But then I really knew…that hit hard.”

  Mack closed the top of the cleaner bottle and began the reassembly process. “I think that happened to me early this morning. You were taking a quick snooze and I started thinking about what might happen if we end up tangling with these guys.”

  “You mean getting killed.”

  “It could happen.”

  “Very true. If you were smart, you’d walk out that door right now and go back to Detroit where it’s safe. I wouldn’t think any less of you; damn, how could I?”

  Mack laughed. “Go to hell.”

  Shelby grinned. “I’m kidding, of course. I’d totally think less of you. But I wouldn’t blame you. This isn’t your fight, like the one up at my place wasn’t your fight.”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Mack said. “I’m not leaving. I don’t even want to leave. And it’s not that death scares me; it got me thinking.”

  “About?”

  “Priorities.”

  “A sense of mortality will do that to a man.”

  “You know me, Shel—I’ve never been one for regrets. They always seemed a waste of time. Crying over spilled milk and all that. But I can’t help thinking I could have done things better.”

  “Of course you could have done things better. We all could have done things better. But most of us did the best we could at the time. It’s only that sometimes our best wasn’t good enough. You can’t blame yourself for it. We make decisions using information we have at our disposal. We’re human, and therefore stupid, so we make mistakes. And sometimes things happen that are going to be shitty no matter what. And you’re right: regrets can certainly be a waste of time. We all have them, though. The key is to learn from them and, once we’re done learning, set them free.”

  “You’re starting to sound like someone we would have beaten up in college. Have you been reading a lot of self-help books lately?”

  “Would that be so surprising?”

  “Yes. Mostly because I didn’t know you could read.”

  “Well, I learned.”

  With a final, decisive snap, Mack finished putting the shotgun back together and laid it on the table. “Thanks for your insight, Shel. This isn’t a situation I ever thought I’d be in. Gloria and I have always fought, but it never came to anything. I suppose I should have been paying closer attention.”

  “Happy to help. And try not to assume all the blame. There’s nothing wrong with accepting our part in things, and we should, but let the other person shoulder their own part in it.”

  “You know, Shel, you’re surprisingly good at giving relationship advice.”

  “I’ve already made all the mistakes, that’s all.”

  “Any more bits of advice?”

  “Just one. Drink your coffee before it gets cold. I’m not your valet, you know.”

  Mack raised the cup to his lips and drank as a knock sounded on the door. The two men looked at each other.

  “Do killers knock?” Mack said.

  Shelby stood up and took a pistol from the table. He walked to the front door, unlocked it, and then stepped back and assumed a shooting stance as it began to swing open.

  “Shelby?” Helen stood on the front steps. “For God’s sake! You could have shot me!”

  Shelby lowered the weapon and shoved it into his belt. “Why are you knocking on your own door?”

  “I gave away my key, remember?”

  “Ah, right. Sorry about the reception. We thought you might be someone else.”

  Helen surveyed the arsenal on the coffee table with a mixture of curiosity, fear, and aversion. “Do you mind telling me why you’ve turned my house into the Alamo?”

  Shelby laughed. “If the defenders of the Alamo had access to this hardware, that battle might have turned out differently.”

  “Never mind that. What’s going on here?”

  “We had some visitors last night.”

  “Visitors? What did they want?”

  “The same as usual.”

  “What happened?”

  “Not much. We had one of their operatives under wraps when I drove over to the apartment to check on Leslie. By the time I’d heard from you and got back, they’d ganged up on Mack and rescued our hostage.”

  “Nobody was hurt or…killed?”

  “A few bumps and bruises, but I have a feeling it won’t be that harmless next time.” Shelby rested his hand on Helen’s shoulder and said gently, “I think it’s time you told me the whole story.”

  Jimmy stared at the ceiling and tried to remember where he was. Yesterday at the woman’s house—breaking in—being captured—Darkmore’s men rescuing him…Darkmore. That was it. He was at his uncle’s mansion.

  Someone knocked on the door.

  “Breakfast in ten.”

  Jimmy recognized the voice of the driver. He slid from the bed and pulled on his clothes from where they lay piled on the floor. Going to the bathroom, he splashed water on his face and ran his hands through his thick, curly hair a few times. He didn’t have a toothbrush or paste, but found a stick of gum in his jeans pocket. That would have to do.

  He stepped out into the hall, realizing he had no idea how to find the dining room. He needn’t have worried. The driver appeared from nowhere and beckoned.

  “This way.”

  Jimmy followed the man down the hallway to a wide staircase. They went down and then turned right. The driver pointed at an open doorway.

  “In there.”

  Jimmy walked into an elegant dining room that smelled of bacon. The scent, though mouthwatering, seemed out of place. Darkmore sat at the head of the table, eating scrambled eggs and bacon from a china plate. When Jimmy entered, Darkmore was in the process of spreading a crimson-colored jam on a biscuit half with a knife. He saw Jimmy, smiled, and used the knife to motion to the chair on his left. J
immy sat down. Almost immediately, a server filled his glass with what appeared to be mimosa.

  “Morning, kid. Sleep well?”

  Jimmy nodded. He had, in fact, slept very well. The first quality night’s sleep in a long time, perhaps since he’d been tasked with shaking down the old lady.

  Darkmore pushed a giant platter of eggs in his direction, followed by one of bacon.

  “Fresh biscuits and hot gravy in the kitchen. I can have them brought out if you’d like.”

  Jimmy shook his head. “This is fine, thanks.”

  “My parents hail from the Deep South. Gravy is a beverage down there. I still love it, although my arteries do not.”

  “No thanks.” Jimmy sampled the mimosa; it was strong. He wondered what the ratio of champagne to orange juice might be. It was difficult to tell, since orange juice always tasted horrible after chewing gum. “Thanks for the room.”

  “My pleasure. It occurred to me that your nerves were probably shot, given all that’s been happening, and you could use a good rest. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if that explains why you’ve been unable to put this job to bed. I realized I probably put too much on you too quickly, without providing you the proper training—pushed you in over your head.”

  “No, I—”

  “Listen, kid, if someone’s throwing you a lifeline, you need to learn how to grab it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jimmy heard footsteps and glanced over his shoulder to see Malone enter the room. Darkmore looked up.

  “Yes, Malone?”

  “It’s ready.”

  “And he’s all prepared?”

  Malone nodded. “Ready whenever you are.”

  “Then let’s get to it, shall we?” Darkmore stood up, wiping his mouth with a white cloth napkin. “Excuse me.” He dropped the napkin on the table and strode from the room. Jimmy noticed the napkin had a red smear of jam where Darkmore had wiped his mouth.

  The smear looked a little like blood.

  Helen sat on the couch. “What do you want to know?”

  “Everything. You do realize these are dangerous people.”

  “I do now.”