INSIDIOUS ASSASSINS

by Jack Ketchum

  INSIDIOUS ASSASSINS

  Edited by Weldon Burge

  Smart Rhino Publications

  www.smartrhino.com

  These are works of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, places, and events portrayed in these stories are either products of the authors’ imaginations or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events, or locales is purely coincidental.

  First Edition

  Insidious Assassins. Copyright © 2015 by Smart Rhino Publications LLC. All rights reserved. Individual stories copyright by individual authors. Printed in the United States.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9896679-7-5

  DEDICATION

  For my parents, Clark and Doris Burge.

  They raised five quiet yet audacious children.

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION: THE ALLURE OF THE INSIDIOUS

  WELDON BURGE

  THOSE ROCKPORTS WON’T GET YOU INTO HEAVEN

  JACK KETCHUM

  DEAD BILL

  SHAUN MEEKS

  WORSE WAYS

  MEGHAN ARCURI

  NO ONE OF CONSEQUENCE

  CHRISTINE MORGAN

  AND THE HITS JUST KEEP ON COMIN’

  DOUG RINALDI

  THE NIGHT GORDON WAS SET FREE

  BILLIE SUE MOSIMAN

  ALMOST EVERYBODY WINS

  LISA MANNETTI

  FRIENDS FROM WAY BACK

  DENNIS LAWSON

  THE REPO GIRL

  PATRICK DERRICKSON

  LETTER FOR YOU

  CARSON BUCKINGHAM

  THE ROCK

  JOSEPH BADAL

  THE HANDMAIDEN’S TOUCH

  DOUG BLAKESLEE

  THE BITTER AND THE SWEET

  DB COREY

  INFLUENCE

  MARTIN ZEIGLER

  AGNUS DEI

  JEZZY WOLFE

  LABYRINTH

  JAMES S. DORR

  BLENDERS

  J. GREGORY SMITH

  ONE OF US

  AUSTIN S. CAMACHO

  THE ABSINTHE ASSASSIN

  JM REINBOLD

  SLAY IT FORWARD

  ADRIAN LUDENS

  TANTSE SO SMERT’YU (DANCING WITH DEATH)

  ERNESTUS JIMINY CHALD

  WHAT THE BLENDER SAW

  L.L. SOARES

  CODE NAME TRINE

  MARTIN ROSE

  BEST-SELLERS GUARANTEED

  JOE R. LANSDALE

  THE WRITERS

  THE ILLUSTRATOR

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks go to Whitney Cook for her striking cover illustration, to Scott Medina for designing the cover, and to Terri Gillespie for her excellent proofreading skills.

  I must also point out here that, although most of the stories are original to this volume, a number are reprints. Jack Ketchum’s tale, “Those Rockports Won’t Get You into Heaven,” was previously published in his collection Closing Time. “Labyrinth,” by James Dorr, first appeared in the March 1997 issue of Tomorrow SF. Joe Lansdale’s story, “Best-Seller Guaranteed,” was initially published in Espionage Magazine, and later appeared in Best-Sellers Guaranteed, a collection of Lansdale’s short stories published by Ace Books.

  INTRODUCTION: THE ALLURE OF THE INSIDIOUS

  BY WELDON BURGE

  In 1913, a novel was published introducing one of the first true super-villains in popular fiction. The title of the book was The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu. The book by Arthur Sarsfield Ward—better known by his pseudonym Sax Rohmer—was the first of 13 novels, numerous short stories, and eventually many feature-length movies.

  Bent on world domination, Fu-Manchu was the epitome of “insidious”—a criminal mastermind with unlimited cunning, a giant intellect, and a talent for monstrous cruelty. Killing to reach his goals was never even questioned, and his use of exotic poisons unknown to traditional science was legendary.

  What I find interesting is that Fu-Manchu, the arch-villain, is far more memorable than his heroic adversary, Nayland Smith. Why is this? In the films based on the books, Fu-Manchu was played by venerable actors like Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee, and Warner Oland. Now, name me even one actor who portrayed Nayland Smith. No? Why is the hero of these tales far less interesting than his evil counterpart? Why do we find insidious characters so appealing?

  Now consider Walter White, the antihero of the TV series Breaking Bad. Here we have a high school chemistry teacher, diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer, who turns to producing and selling crystal meth to assure his family’s financial future. We can easily label Walter as “insidious” as he turns to murder, betrayal, and multiple criminal acts to obtain his goal. He is a heinous, despicable character. Yet, largely because of Walter’s popularity, the Breaking Bad series ran for five seasons and became one of the top-rated and most-watched cable shows ever, winning numerous awards.

  Clearly, there is a peculiar allure of insidious characters—and especially assassins, hit men, and their ilk. Perhaps we find their uncomplicated moral codes and brutal efficiency appealing. These characters care little about ethics—and perhaps that alone, that freedom from guilt, is exactly why we love them. Perhaps, deep down, we wish we could be like them. And perhaps, by reading stories with such characters, we can vicariously experience that thrill.

  With this fascination with evil characters in mind, Smart Rhino Publications decided to publish this anthology, Insidious Assassins. The book contains 24 stories by some of the best horror, suspense, science fiction, and fantasy authors writing today. Here you will meet some truly insidious characters, characters you may find yourself applauding when you know you shouldn’t. I hope you’ll find their stories not only entertaining, but in many ways thought-provoking.

  If Sax Rohmer were still with us, I think he would be proud of the following collection of stories. I know I am.

  Enjoy (and don’t feel guilty about it)!

  THOSE ROCKPORTS WON’T GET YOU INTO HEAVEN

  BY JACK KETCHUM

  The place was going all to hell—not that you’d necessarily notice unless you worked there. The floor was mopped and the glasses fairly clean. The bottles were dusted and the bar wiped down, but then I took care of that.

  But the owner had two other restaurants on the same block and kept swapping bottles back and forth between them. So you never knew when you came in after the day shift what would be on the shelves. You’d have plenty of Dewars one day and the next day maybe a quarter of a bottle. It also meant that you’d find a liter of peach brandy or port wine getting overly chummy with the single-malts. The wines kept changing according to whoever threw him the best deal that week, and half the time there was no beer on tap whatsoever.

  Waiters, busboys, hostesses—everybody was owed back pay. Myself included, half the time.

  It was March and one of the coldest, longest goddamn winters on record and the heat was off again. Had been all week. All we had between us and runny noses was a single space heater looking lonely and pathetic behind the hostess station. Customers ate their taramasalata and souvlakia with their coats on.

  There weren’t many of them. You don’t associate Greek cuisine with frozen tundra.

  It was six o’clock Thursday evening and of my dwindling group of regulars not a single one had shown up. I couldn’t blame them. They were all wised up to the heating situation. We had more waiters and busboys than customers. Two couples and a party of four in the restaurant and that was that.

  I was going fucking broke here.

  No
t a tip on the bar in two hours.

  I polished bottles. It’s a bartender thing. You got nothing to do, you polish bottles.

  When the guy walked in with his kid trailing along behind him the first thing I thought was Westchester. Either that or Connecticut. I don’t know why because plenty of guys around here are partial to Ralph Lauren and Rockports and outfit their kids in L.L. Bean. But there was something vaguely displaced about him. That’s the best I can do. He didn’t belong here.

  You get so you kind of sense this shit.

  They walked directly to the bar but neither one sat down. The kid maybe fourteen I guessed and taking his cue from dad.

  “Glass of white wine,” he said.

  “Sure. We’ve got pinot grigio, chardonnay, and two Greek wines—Santorini and Kouros. Both very nice. What can I get for you?”

  “Whatever.”

  “Would you care to taste one?”

  “No, that’s okay. Give me the Santorini.”

  “You got it.”

  Like I say, you just get a sense about these things. The guy was wrong somehow. Wound so fucking tight he was practically ready to give off sparks should he start to do any unwinding, and you probably didn’t want to see that.

  You’re not supposed to have an underage kid with you at a bar in New York City but most of the time we look the other way and most of the time the guy will order his kid a Coke or something and we look the other way on that, too. This guy didn’t. And of course I didn’t offer.

  I poured the wine and he drained off half of it in one swallow.

  “I used to come in here all the time,” he said. Not to me but to his kid.

  Though he wasn’t looking at his kid.

  His eyes were all over the place. The rows of bottles behind me, the murals on the wall, the ceiling, the tables and chairs in the restaurant. But I had the feeling he wasn’t really seeing much of it. Like he was scanning but not exactly tracking. Except when he turned to look out the plate-glass windows to the street beyond. That seemed to focus him. He drank some more.

  “It’s changed hands, hell, maybe a dozen times since then. This was way before I met your mother.”

  The kid was looking at him. He still wasn’t looking back. Or at me either for that matter. He kept scanning. As though he were expecting something to jump out of the clay amphorae or the floral arrangements. That and turning back to the window and the street.

  “Not really, sir,” I said. “You must be thinking of another place. A lot of turnaround on the Avenue but not here. It’s been the Santorini for about ten years now and before that it was a Mexican restaurant, Sombrero, from about the mid-fifties on. So unless you’re a whole lot older than you look ...”

  “Really?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Damn. I could have sworn ...”

  He was trying to act as cool and casual as the clothes he had on but I could feel him flash and burn suddenly all the same. He didn’t like me correcting him in front of his kid. Tough shit, I thought. Fuck you. Snap judgments are part of my stock in trade and I hadn’t liked him from the minute he walked in. He made an attempt at a save.

  “I used to live around here. Long time ago. Early seventies.”

  “Really? Where was that?”

  “Seventy-first, just off the park.”

  “Nice over there. And pretty pricey these days. So where are you folks now?”

  “We’re out in Rye.”

  Westchester, I thought. Gotcha.

  He turned back to the street again. I noticed that his son was staring at me and I thought, Jesus, if this guy looked displaced his kid looked absolutely lost. He had big brown eyes as bright and clear as a doe’s, and the eyes seemed to want to make contact with me. For just a second there I let them.

  It could have just been me but it felt like he was looking at me as though I were some kind of crazy lifeline. It wasn’t a look I was used to. Not after two divorces and fifteen years bartending.

  “I’ll have another,” the guy said.

  I poured it for him and watched him gulp it down.

  “We don’t get over this way much anymore,” he said. “Hardly at all. His mother’s across the street shopping.”

  His mother, I thought. Not my wife but his mother. That was interesting.

  And I figured I had it now—pretty much all of a piece. What I had here in front of me was one stone alky sneaking a couple of nervous quick ones while the little wife wasn’t looking. Dragging his kid into a bar while she was out spending all that hard-earned money he was probably making by managing other people’s hard-earned money so he could afford the house in Rye, the Rockports, and the Ralph Lauren and L.L. Bean.

  I wondered exactly where she was spending it. Betsy Johnson, Intermix and Lucky Brand Dungarees I figured would be way too young for anybody he’d be married to, and I doubted she’d be bothering with the plates and soaps or scented candles over at Details. That left either L’Occitane if she was into perfume or Hummel Jewelers.

  My bet was on the jewelers.

  My other bet was that there was great big trouble in paradise.

  And I was thinking this when I heard the pop pop pop from down the street.

  The kid heard it too.

  “What was that?” he said. He turned to the windows.

  The guy shrugged and drained his wine. “Backfire, probably. I’ll have one more, thanks.” He set the glass down.

  Only it wasn’t backfire. I knew that right away.

  When my first wife Helen and I lived in New Jersey, we’d now and then get slightly loaded afternoons and take her little Colt Pony and my .22 rimfire semiauto out to the fields behind our house and plunk some cans and bottles. The Colt made pretty much the same sound.

  Ordinarily, I’d have been out in the street by now.

  Instead, I poured him the wine.

  This time the guy sipped slowly. Seemed calmer all of a sudden. I revised my thinking big time about him being just another alky. His eyes stopped skittering over the walls and settled on the bar in front of him.

  “Dad?” the kid said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Shouldn’t we go see how mom’s doing?”

  “She’s shopping. She’s doing fine. She loves shopping.”

  “Yeah, but ...”

  And now it was the kid’s eyes that were darting all over the place.

  “We don’t want to rush her, do we? I’ll just finish my wine here. Then we’ll go see what she’s up to.”

  I got that look from the kid again. The look seemed to say do something, say something, and I considered it for a moment.

  The phone on the wall decided for me.

  By the time I finished noting down the take-out order—Greek salad, mixed cold appetizers, calamari, roasted quail, and two cans of Sprite for godsakes—the woman’s name, address, and phone number, the guy was reaching for his wallet. His hands were shaking. His face was flushed.

  “What’s the damage?”

  “That’s twenty-four dollars, sir.”

  He fished out a ten and a twenty and downed the last of his wine.

  “Keep the change,” he said.

  Nice tip, I thought. You don’t see twenty-five percent much. Maybe the bar at the Plaza, but not in this place. I figured he wanted me to remember him.

  I figured I would remember him. Vividly.

  The kid turned back to look at me once as he followed his father out the door. It was possible that I might have seen a flash of anger or maybe a kind of panic there but I could have been imagining that. You couldn’t be sure.

  I rang up the wine and cleared his glass and wiped down the bar. He’d spilled a little.

  There were a few ways to play this. First, I could be straight about it and report exactly what I saw. All of what I saw. Not just his being there but the high-wire tension going slack as shoestrings once the shots went off and then all nervous again when he was about to leave. The way the kid kept looking at me. Or just for fun I cou
ld try to fuck the guy over royally and completely by saying gee, I really didn’t remember him at all to tell the truth. Though that might not work if his kid said otherwise. Finally, I could find out who he was and shake him down for a whole lot more than twenty-five percent in maybe a day or so.

  Hell, I already knew where he lived.

  But I pretty much knew what I was going to do.

  As I say, I’ve had two divorces and know what a bitch they can be. And I’m no big fan of married women in general, either.

  But my daughter by my second wife was just about this kid’s age. Maybe a bit younger.

  I wondered who he’d hired. How much he’d paid. If they’d actually hit the jewelry store just for show or only the woman inside it.

  I polished bottles—it’s a bartender thing—and waited for the gawkers and the sirens and New York’s finest to come on in.

  Thanks to Matt Long.

  DEAD BILL

  BY SHAUN MEEKS

  “Why do they call you Dead Bill?” Justin asked.

  “One name’s as good as the next.” Bill said with a smirk. He took a sip of his beer, and then put his glass back down. “I guess the name probably has to do with how many times people have killed me. Luckily, a little killin’ doesn’t do much to me these days.”

  Justin looked at him, amused but curious. The guy looked like someone who belonged in a cowboy movie, one of those old black-and-white jobs with John Wayne or Roy Rogers. He wasn’t dirty like some of the homeless people that were outside the bar on a regular basis, but he had an air of dustiness around him, as though a cloud of hardtop would puff off of him if you clapped his back.