by Graham Smith
He shakes his head.
I lie on the bed beside him, so I can hear both sides of the conversation, and scroll through Tagliente’s contacts until I find The Mortician’s number.
I press call and hold the cell to Tagliente’s head.
Give Tagliente his due, he does a good job of convincing The Mortician that he not only has a job for him, but that he must come over and see him right away.
The Mortician agrees and promises to be here within three hours. I expect him to be here in around two and a half.
84
We now have a minimum of two hours to kill; time I intend to put to good use. I instruct Ike to check the prisoners are okay, and dispatch Baruch to check on Yerik at the gate. Their secondary tasks are to secure the house and make sure every door that can be locked, is locked.
As for me, I plan to have a further chat with Tagliente.
I could tell by the way he looked at me that he hadn’t recognised my voice as the guy he’d spoken to at his brother’s wedding. This doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. People like Tagliente don’t pay attention to the little people like me. Unless we can provide them with a service, we’re of no interest to them.
I’m pleased he hasn’t identified me as I haven’t yet decided whether he deserves to live or die.
I pull a padded chair to the side of the bed and look at him. A part of me is enjoying the terror in his eyes, while another part feels revulsion at what I’ve become.
‘We need to talk.’
The old favourite break-up line makes his eyes widen, and there’s a tremble to his voice as he begs me not to use the blowtorch.
It’s good that he’s afraid I’ll use it to make him talk; it means I don’t have to stoop to that level again. I’m fully prepared to use the blowtorch on him, but only if I have to. Every step I walk along the road to vengeance is costing me a piece of my identity.
Last week I was a doorman who broke up fights – sure, I have taken a man’s life on two previous occasions, but only as a matter of self-defence.
Since Taylor’s death, I have set out to kill. I have planned murders and have executed my plans – and anyone else I felt may have impeded my path to Taylor’s killer. A line has been crossed and, while I know I can never undo the implications of my crossing it, I don’t want to travel so far over to the dark side that I lose sight of the line.
‘I want to know all about The Mortician. Who he is, where he’s from, where his loyalties lie, and his background.’
Tagliente’s head thrashes against the silk sheets as he shakes it. ‘I can’t help you. I don’t know any of that stuff.’
I pick up the blowtorch. ‘What do you know about him?’
‘Just what he does. And that he’s very good at it.’ He yawns but I ignore it. It’s almost midnight, I’m threatening him with a blowtorch, and a paid assassin is coming to his house. I’m confident he’s tired rather than bored. ‘The tales I’ve heard about him are the stuff of legend. He kills his targets and never leaves a trace.’
‘Why do they call him The Mortician?’
Tagliente gives a sigh of relief; this is the kind of question he’s happy to answer. ‘It’s because, after meeting him you’ll be needing a mortician.’
‘Where do his loyalties lie?’
‘You mean whose side is he on?’ I nod. ‘He works for the Italian families as far as I know. He is freelance and has a rule that he won’t take out a target who works for any of his regular employers.’
‘How much does he charge?’
Tagliente is a money man. He will know the answer to this question.
‘It starts at fifty thousand and goes up from there depending on the difficulty of the job.’
‘What is his background?’
He shakes his head.
A press of the blowtorch’s ignition doesn’t make him talk, but as soon as I lean forward with it aimed at his pecker, he starts chattering.
‘It … it’s only rumours, but I heard he used to be Special Forces; that he’s done tours in both Afghanistan and Iraq.’
What he’s saying makes sense. A former Navy SEAL or Army Ranger would make for a good hitman. They are trained killers who’ve been taught to use guns, knives, and their bare hands. I’m no expert, but I’d expect them to have a working knowledge of explosives as well.
None of this information is comforting, but I’ve no plans to take on The Mortician in either a shooting match or a one on one fight. Instead, he’ll be ambushed, told the reason he is going to die, and executed.
‘Is he right or left handed?’
‘I don’t know.’
It’s a shame he can’t answer this question as the answer may prove useful. I don’t push him though. It’s too easy for him to lie and I’d rather not find out the hard way that he’s spun me a line.
I’m about to leave him be when I hear the creak of a floorboard.
I turn, expecting to see Baruch or Ike, but the person creeping my way is a stranger. He has a baseball bat in his hands and fury in his eyes.
As I turn my body towards him, he dashes forward and swings the bat at my head.
I have enough time to duck beneath its tip and shoulder charge him against the wall before he can halt the vicious swing.
I’m inside his arms, throwing punches at his kidneys and ribs, and he’s banging the bat against my back and shoulders.
When he catches the back of my head with his bat, I disengage myself and put some distance between us.
‘You chickenshit pussy. Come and fight like a man.’
He’s misunderstood my reasons for finding space. He thinks I’m running away.
As he advances, I pull out the carving knives and wait for him to reconsider his options.
He smiles at me. ‘They ain’t gonna help you none.’ He strokes his bat with one hand. ‘This here, has got way more reach than your knives.’
‘You’re right, it has.’ The knife in my left hand flies towards him.
He swings the bat at it, but he’s too slow and the handle of my knife bounces off his thigh.
Before the first one has fallen to the floor, the second is arcing its way towards his stomach. This one needs to be accurate and successful, otherwise I’ll be fighting him with my bare hands.
The knife digs into his skin and its handle flops downwards as gravity takes hold.
As he’s dropping the bat and reaching for the knife, I’m on the move.
I get to him as his fingers grasp the knife’s handle.
Instead of wrestling for control of it, I deliver a hard palm-strike to the top of the handle, driving it further into his gut.
He yelps, giving me a strong whiff of stale barbecued meat.
My next blow strikes his hands, driving the knife in his gut sideways. I grab his wrists and shake them until he loosens his grip.
The knife is slick with blood as I grasp it and open his stomach.
Entrails slither from the wound as he crumples to the floor.
I put him out of his misery with a stab to the heart and turn away from him. He’s dying, and I don’t want to watch the light in his eyes diminish.
Who he is doesn’t matter. He’s not The Mortician; that much I do know. This guy is tall and thin, whereas the glimpse I got of The Mortician confirmed that he’s short and stocky.
I check there are no more unexpected assailants, and leave Baruch standing guard over Tagliente and the people in his upstairs lounge.
With that dealt with, I find a quiet space and call Alfonse. We talk for a few minutes and hearing his voice makes me feel normal again, but I don’t learn much beyond the fact that he changed his plan for the release of Ms Rosenberg’s information, and sent it out under the cloak of the Anonymous Hackers Group.
It’s the thing he excels at and I don’t need to ask him if he’s protected himself from detection.
The most important thing he tells me is that Cameron’s donation has gone ahead, and John has received the necessary treatm
ent.
I cut the call and offer up a silent prayer that it works.
85
While searching the house Ike found the intercom, which connects the house with the guardhouse where Yerik is stationed.
When its buzzer goes off, Baruch, Ike and I tense. My hand reaches its telephone first and I put it to my ear.
‘What is it, Yerik?’
‘There’s someone here. I don’t think it’s him because he’s driving an SUV, not a Ford.’
I relax a little and tell him to get rid of whoever it is.
Baruch and Ike join me at an unlit window and together we watch as Yerik leaves the guardhouse and walks to the gate.
The garden’s lights cast a mixture of shadows and glare and it’s not easy to see much more than a silhouette, but Yerik is more than big enough to stand out.
For some reason I start to get an uneasy feeling. It doesn’t just tell me things aren’t right, it tells me they are very wrong.
Before I can verbalise my concern, I see the driver’s arm snake from the SUV’s window.
There’s a gun at the end of the arm and, as Yerik halts and returns to cover, it flashes.
Yerik drops to the ground and doesn’t move.
Beside me I hear an outburst of Yiddish from Baruch and anguished wails from Ike. There’s some scuffling and more Yiddish, but neither man leaves the room.
I leave them to manage their grief and keep watching. The car’s door opens and a short, stocky man steps towards the gate. He slips through the opening, puts his gun against Yerik’s head and pulls the trigger before dragging him behind the wall. As with his first shot, there’s no sound. His pistol must have a silencer.
A minute later he’s opened both gates and is driving the SUV in.
He turns the vehicle so it’s facing the gate and climbs out.
I watch as he reaches into the back seat and pulls out what looks like a machine pistol.
There’s no doubt in my mind that this man is The Mortician, despite being way ahead of his stated ETA.
This, along with the way he dispatched Yerik, tells me a few things. First, he is not here answering Tagliente’s call. Instead, he’s got his own reasons for being here, and the way he killed Yerik suggests they’re not friendly in nature.
Second, he straight away murdered an unknown, and then prepared his SUV for a swift exit which tells me he’s got his own agenda.
Third, you don’t pack a machine pistol when you’re making a social call, even if it’s dressed up as a summons. Therefore he either knows we’re here, or his agenda has something to do with Tagliente.
I whirl to face Baruch and Ike. We have seconds to make a plan that will see three amateurs face a trained assassin.
We have two automatic pistols and a sawn-off shotgun, while he has a machine pistol, plus the silenced pistol he used to kill Yerik. That’s before we even mention his superior training and the fact that he does this for a living.
All we have going for us is the element of surprise as he’ll be expecting no defence from Tagliente.
As he’s coming through the front door, Baruch and Ike move an antique dresser so it will provide cover for us should we need it.
I pull out my gun and check the safety is off – and that the spare clip is easily accessible from my jacket pocket. I’d gotten more ammunition courtesy of Baruch, and I wasn’t dumb enough to ask questions about where it had come from.
With the barricade established, I make my way to the far end of the landing.
The Mortician has been here before, therefore he’ll know the layout of the house and will probably head for the upstairs lounge and Tagliente’s master bedroom when he breaches the top of the stairs.
I plan to creep up behind him and put a bullet in his back. It may not be gallant, but that’s tough; he killed my girlfriend. So far as I’m concerned, the normal rules of engagement don’t apply.
There’s no sound of footsteps but I hear the racking of a gun’s slide an instant before a deafening clatter erupts.
86
I don’t see The Mortician, but he must be firing both ways as I’m forced to duck back into the bedroom of the doorway I’m hiding in. All I can hope is that neither Ike nor Baruch have been hit.
To limit the possibility of detection, I lie prone on the floor with my gun in front of me.
The Mortician’s voice rings out. ‘I know you’re there. I’ve seen you’ve tied up some folks downstairs. Where’s Jason Tagliente?’
‘I’m here. There’s two of—’
A heavy slap silences Tagliente.
It’s too little too late. The Mortician now knows there’s at least two opponents and that at least one of them is with Tagliente. Our only hope is that The Mortician thinks Tagliente was giving him a total head count, rather than the full locational information I’m sure he was about to give.
I should have either gagged or killed him when I had the chance.
It feels strange that I regret not doing the latter more.
I crane my neck so my line of sight increases and I can see more of the upstairs corridor. Where the bedroom door blocks my vision I can see the outline of a man’s arm.
I’m about to crane further when the arm whirls round and I see a gun pointing down the corridor towards where I am hidden.
I hold my breath, afraid to move lest it attracts him.
The arm turns round, so I crane an extra couple of inches until I can see The Mortician’s back.
He whirls again after a second step.
Like the trained professional he is, he’s keeping a good watch on his rear. My plan wasn’t much, but it’s useless in the face of his superior firepower and techniques. Unless we get lucky, or take near suicidal risks, he’ll pick us off one by one.
I hear the double boom of Baruch’s shotgun and see large amounts of plaster blast from the corridor’s rear wall.
The Mortician fires off a couple of bursts and I hear a pained yelp, followed by the considerable thud of Baruch falling to the ground. He’s moaning, which means he’s still alive, but it doesn’t mean he will be for long.
Ike bursts from the lounge where he’s been hiding. His gun is blazing but he’s shooting in anger without any amount of thought for his aim.
I’d join in with his fusillade were I not more fearful of us hitting each other than The Mortician. I’m maybe twenty feet away, and I know that’s further than I can aim with any level of accuracy.
The Mortician’s first bullet hits the shoulder of Ike’s gun arm, the second and third blast into his kneecaps. He falls with a scream and does his best to press his hands on his wounds.
I watch as The Mortician approaches the stricken Ike and kicks his fallen gun away. ‘Oh dear, has baby got a boo-boo?’
The Mortician drags Ike into the master bedroom and props him next to his brother. ‘It’s time for you to tell me a bedtime story before you go to sleep. First, you can tell me who you are and why you’re here, then you can tell me who sent you.’
Ignoring the fact that he’s killed one new friend and crippled two others, I’m pretty sure I’d hate The Mortician based on the way he speaks to his victims.
I rise and take slow, tentative steps towards him as he pulls a combat knife from a sheath on his leg.
‘Who wants to tell me a story?’
87
I’m twenty feet away and closing when Baruch roars with pain as The Mortician buries three inches of steel into his leg. Beside him, Ike is fighting to stay conscious, his face slick with sweat and twisted in agony. The wound in my leg aches in sympathy with Baruch’s injury.
The Mortician gives his knife a twist, but Baruch’s elephantine head just shakes. His jaw is set and he’s not letting another sound escape his lips. His hands are clasped against his stomach and blood is oozing out between his fingers.
Eighteen feet. Every step is taken with caution as there’s nowhere for me to hide should The Mortician become aware of me sneaking up behind him.
; The knife is removed from Baruch’s right leg and plunged into his left. His face judders, but he maintains his silence.
Fifteen feet.
The knife is removed and wiped clean on Baruch’s pants.
The Mortician uses a gloved hand to remove Ike and Baruch’s ski masks.
‘Your buddy looks awful like you. I’m guessing he’s your brother, or a cousin. If you’re not going to talk for your sake, perhaps you’ll talk for his.’
The Mortician moves his knife until it’s within an inch of Ike’s left eye.
Twelve feet. If I can get within ten feet, or less, I’m confident that I can put a bullet in The Mortician’s body without missing, or hitting Ike or Baruch.
My knuckles are white as I grip the pistol. My entire concentration is on what I can see over the gun’s sights.
Ike turns his head, so his eye is moved away from the knife, and his left eye is now looking my way. He sees me.
Eleven feet.
‘Screw you.’
As he speaks, Ike throws his head forward, driving his right eye onto the knife, and twists, so the knife is wrenched from The Mortician’s hand. He screams as he reaches up with his good hand and plucks the knife, complete with his eyeball, from where it has lodged.
I see all of this from the corner of my eye as I pump two bullets into The Mortician’s back.
Ike slams the knife into The Morticians leg then collapses to the floor and howls in agony.
I keep my eyes on The Mortician as I dash forward. My gun is trained on his back and as much as I’d like to kill him outright, now that he’s down and wounded, I need to tell him why he’s going to die. I want to see the fear in his eyes fade to nothing.
I’m two feet away when I realise what I’m seeing, but not seeing.
There’s no blood on the Mortician’s back; I’ve shot him twice yet there’s no sign of any blood.
I realise why there’s no blood at the same time The Mortician flips over and fires his silenced pistol my way.
The only reason his shots miss is because my lizard brain must have arrived at this conclusion before the rest of me, and therefore instigated the necessary dive for safety.