by John Etzil
Frankie was on him in a second. She jumped on his back, landing just to the right of the knife. She wrapped one arm around his meaty neck and clamped her free hand over his mouth.
He collapsed to his knees and fell forward, and Frankie dismounted before he hit the ground. She and Harold grabbed him by his feet and dragged him over behind the shrubs. She yanked the knife out of his back and rolled him over. He was still alive, eyes wide open and mouth moving like an out-of-water fish. Harold pointed his pistol at his head and Frankie held her hand out for him to stop. She knelt down and felt for the center of Tremont’s rib cage. Finding the bottom rib, she placed the knife just below it and shoved it all the way in and up. She flicked it left, right, and sliced his heart into pieces.
He died with his eyes open. She withdrew the knife, slowly wiping the blood off on his black T-shirt and looking over her shoulder as she did.
“Wow, that was impressive,” Harold offered. “You’re pretty good with a knife.”
“You should see me with an axe.” She smiled and winked at him.
They heard the door squeak open and turned their attention to the entrance of the Red Barn. Colin strutted out, all smiles, no doubt having just received an atta-fuckin’-boy from Cosmo and feeling real good about himself. His smile disappeared when he looked around for Tremont and didn’t see him.
“Tree?” he called out. He took the pistol out of his belt and walked over to where he had last seen his buddy. “Tree? Where you at?”
At most there was two inches between his chin and the top of his sternum. He widened the target area a little when he turned his head to the left. Not that she needed it. In one fluid motion, Frankie stepped out from behind the shrub and fired another strike, dead center into Bobo’s Adam’s apple. He stood there for a split second, a look of wrinkled confusion on his forehead, and then pitched straight forward into the parking lot, driving the knife so far into his throat that the blade stuck out the back of his neck two inches.
Harold looked down at him and grimaced. “Damn, that’s gonna be a bitch to get out.”
51
I saw Catherine approach the front door, wearing Debbie’s clothes, and wondered what the hell she was doing. One of Cosmos’s bozos had her by the elbow. He swung open the door and pushed her inside. “Hey, Cosmo, look what I found.”
Cosmo turned and lowered his sunglasses. “Catherine?”
Bozo gave her a little help from behind in the form of a smack in the rear. She lurched forward and stumbled over to Cosmo, who smiled and looked at Bozo.
“Good job, Colin. Go back outside.”
Colin grinned at his boss’s adulation and left. Cosmo turned his attention back to Catherine. “What happened, girl? Who took you from my house? I know you didn’t run out on me.”
“Oh, no. Of course not, Cosmo. I would never leave you.” She smiled, hugged him around the neck, and kissed him on the lips. She turned to Debbie, her smile replaced by an angry scowl, and pointed at her. “She did it.” She grabbed Cosmo’s shotgun and tried to point it at Debbie, but he didn’t let her. Instead he grabbed her by the waist with his free arm from behind and chuckled at her outburst.
“Easy there, I’ll handle this.” He gestured to one of his bozo men, who came over and grabbed Catherine by the shoulder, hauling her kicking and screaming out the door. “She killed everyone. You fuckin’ bitch! I’ll kill you, you fuckin’ bitch!”
What the hell was she doing?
I caught on when I saw a shadow move in the parking lot, just after the door closed, and the bozo fell forward like a rotten oak. Who was in the parking lot and had just taken out Bozo? My heart sped up in excitement. Frankie?
That meant that there were only four men left.
My short-lived excitement was beaten down when I caught sight of Cosmo walking behind the bar. He grabbed Debbie by the ponytail and placed the business end of the sawed-off shotgun against the underside of her chin…
52
Rodney was the first to speak up, the two-beer superman effect having lifted him from the floor and into a standing position.
“She don’t know nothing. Now you leave us be. Take your kind and get out of here.”
“My kind?” Cosmo’s voice crackled, his eyes widened, and I could tell that he was about ready to blow a fuse. “My freakin’ kind?” He removed the shotgun from Debbie’s mouth and leveled it at Rodney.
Uh-oh…
It dawned on me that poor Rodney hadn’t learned how to be politically correct in his choice of words, and it was going to come back and bite him in the ass. Cosmo slid the shotgun out of Debbie’s mouth, swung it around toward Rodney, and laughed. Everyone else wormed away from Rodney, but good old Rodney stood there and looked Cosmos dead in the eye.
“You heard me. Leave. Now.”
Cosmo pulled the trigger, and the shotgun blasted a slug into Rodney’s chest, sending him cartwheeling across the room. He slammed into the restroom door and disappeared inside.
Screams broke out, and I saw the other bozos pointing their pistols around the room, just waiting for Cosmo’s order to open fire.
Cosmo pumped the shotgun and pushed the hot end back in Debbie’s mouth. I cringed at the thought of how much it must have burnt her lips and the inside of her mouth.
Cosmo appeared to have lost his patience. He screamed, “Enough fuckin’ around. Who hired you?” He grabbed Debbie and turned around so that her back was to us. “Three seconds and I blow her brains all over you fuckin’ hick bastards,” he shouted. “Three, two…”
I knew enough about Cosmo from my HFS research on him to be sure that no matter what I told him, we were all dead. But ya gotta go out swinging.
I stood up and stepped forward.
“Me. It was me. I was hired by Catherine’s family in LA to get her back. I killed your men.”
Cosmo turned toward me, and even in the dim lighting I could see the fire in his black eyes. He took the shotgun out of Debbie’s mouth, pointed it at me, and the lights went out.
The timing was perfect. The only light coming in was from the streetlight, and I dove to my right while drawing my Glock. I saw silhouettes of the two guys standing by the door, and Cosmo with Debbie behind the bar. They didn’t realize that making everyone lie down would make their silhouettes easy targets. I fired four times at the men by the door and was satisfied when I heard the solid impacts of bullets hitting bone. They both fell to the ground, one of them screaming in agony.
I turned and fired twice into the corner, where the other man was last standing. There was no silhouette there, but it was pitch black in the corner, so I didn’t expect to see one. My first bullet hit him somewhere, but I couldn’t tell where from the sound, and the second might have missed. I heard him collapse to the ground, so I turned to look for Cosmo.
He was gone. So was Debbie.
I felt the unmistakable round metal end of the shotgun pressed against the side of my neck, and my heart sank. A big meaty arm wrapped around the other side and put me in a standing headlock. Cosmo whispered in my ear, “Drop it.” I let the Glock slip from my fingers and closed my eyes and shook my head when I heard it hit the floor. I was in big trouble.
The lights came back on, and Frankie came running through the front door and sent two more slugs into Cosmo’s fallen bozos, who were crawling on the floor and reaching for their guns. Both were head shots, and they were dead before their foreheads bounced off the hardwood floor.
In the mirror behind the bar, I saw Cosmo’s reflection standing next to mine. He was smiling. “Throw your gun down and put your hands up, or I blow his fuckin’ head off.”
Frankie dropped her pistol and put her hands behind her head. She looked right at Cosmo, a deadpan, almost comically bored expression on her face. Frankie and I had been through a few tense and exciting rides together, and I knew she was as deadly as they came, but this was bad even for her. I hoped she wouldn’t die here because of me. Wouldn’t that be ironic, after her warning and all…
?
I looked for Debbie, but she was nowhere to be seen. A nightmare vision of her lying on her back behind the bar, a bullet in her head, overtook me, and I couldn’t shake it free. I hadn’t heard any other gunshots during the melee, so that was a good sign, but it could have been a simultaneous firing.
I felt Cosmo’s stinky breath on my neck and almost gagged when I smelled the horrid combo of salami and sharp cheddar cheese. He was a wheezer too.
I caught sight of Frances disappearing behind the bar. A second later, she reappeared with the shotgun that Debbie kept stowed there. I cringed when I saw her holding the twelve-gauge on us. Even if her ninety-plus-year-old eyes could lock on to Cosmo, I estimated her chances of success, and by success I meant not hitting me, at twenty percent. And that was without the smoke from the cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth getting in her eyes.
I saw a face peering out from the small oval window in the door that led to the kitchen, and I saw him bring a pistol up to his face and aim at Cosmo. Harold? What the hell was going on here? Crap, between him and Frances, I knew I was dead.
Cosmo walked me over to Frankie, who still had that same bored “Really? Are you kidding me?” expression on her face, like she had just been challenged to a basketball game by a ten-year-old. Her self-confidence was insane, crazy off the charts. Not a twitch, a blink, a movement by any part of her body. I almost felt sorry for Cosmo and had to refrain from telling him that he should drop his gun and beg for mercy. I felt like I was watching a movie and fought the urge to go make popcorn and plop down on the couch.
When we were about ten feet away, Cosmo stopped and looked at the two dead clowns on the floor, their brains lying all over the hardwood. The dance floor sawdust had sucked up their blood and formed gritty maroon globs. He shook his head and snarled at her. “You fuckin’ bitch.” He swung the shotgun toward her.
Quicker than I’d ever seen a person move, she flung her right hand forward and fastballed a knife into his chest. I grinned as her right elbow rose, ever so slightly, and I realized that her hand was sliding down the back of her neck. I knew what was coming; she was Annie Oakley with a knife. It hit him so hard that I felt the bony vibration travel up his body, through his arm, and into me.
I’d seen her in action on many occasions and knew that she never went anywhere without her throwing knives nestled snugly between her shoulder blades in a custom-made holster that fit her perfectly, providing lightning-fast access to three of the perfectly balanced razor-sharp six-inch blades. They were her safety blanket, like Linus and his blanket, or Karl Madden and his American Express card.
Harold fired a single shot from across the room, and I closed my eyes and winced. Cosmo’s head whipped to the side from the impact and bashed me in the temple. I saw stars and felt warm fluid all over the side of my head. Was I shot?
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Max and Gus help each other up. Max scowled at Cosmo. He reached into his pocket and—oh God, no—he pulled out the eight ball. He went into a full windup and let it fly. I’d experienced Max’s pitching prowess and knew that he had a great arm, but blasting a pool ball through the rear window of a big-ass SUV was one thing. Nailing Cosmo in the head—albeit, it was a large one—was on a whole ’nother skill level. I closed my eyes, ducked, and said a silent prayer to the gods of good aim.
I’ve killed a lot of bad guys in my life, and I’m not what would be called a squeamish individual, but the sound that a Nolan Ryan’ed pool ball makes when it slams into a human skull is as sickening as it gets. I admit I smiled when I heard it, partly because I was relieved that it wasn’t my head, but mostly because after the initial impact, I didn’t hear the ball hit the floor.
It was stuck in Cosmo’s forehead.
This was some crazy shit, and I breathed a sigh of relief that it was over and I was still alive. Cosmo’s dead arm was still wrapped around my neck, and I went to duck under it when I saw Frances struggling to bring the twelve-gauge up to her shoulder, aim, and pull the trigger on the big shotgun that probably weighed more than her.
This was going to hurt.
Cosmo’s lower body shot out from under him, and he went airborne for a split second before face-planting onto the hardwood floor. I heard the muffled crack of the pool ball as it slammed into the floor. He was already dead three times by that point, but just the same, the vision of that eight ball being driven further into his head had me stifling a laugh when I envisioned the coroner performing the autopsy and trying to determine the exact cause of death.
I turned around and looked at the jukebox. It was covered with pieces of Cosmo. Damn, I’d never be able to play another song again without smiling. Ah, good times…
I looked down at Cosmo’s body and saw a huge gap between his legs. Frances had shot his balls off.
The blast of the shotgun sent her reeling backwards, and I cringed as she went flying into the glasses and bottled spirits that lined the mirrored back wall of the bar. I flashed back to the bar scene at Sparky’s Massacre and closed my eyes so that I wouldn’t witness the carnage that would rain down on poor Frances if our shelving didn’t do a better job of holding up than Sparky’s Tavern’s had.
Frances stumbled, a burst of profanity flowing out of her mouth like a rap singer, but the shelves held. She stood up, her cigarette still dangling from the corner of her mouth. She looked around and must have sensed that order was restored, because she laid the shotgun on the bar and took a deep drag on her Lucky Strike. She poured herself a glass of whiskey and nodded to me before raising the glass and toasting me. My ears were still ringing from all the gunshots, but I couldn’t help but smile at her when I heard her yell, “Sheriff Joe, bottoms up!”
But where was my Debbie?
53
Harold came running out of the kitchen and pushed me to the side. The clown who’d been standing in the corner before the lights had gone out was getting to his knees, his hand inches from his pistol. Harold let fly a single shot just as the bozo was lifting his gun to fire at us. The bullet tore into his face, snapping his head back and slamming it against the wall. He fired off a round in his death dance, but it went harmlessly straight down into the dance floor.
I picked up my gun and ran behind the bar. Frances was helping Debbie up. She was wobbly and had a big gash under her chin that dripped blood all over the front of her shirt. She had another wound above her hairline over her forehead, and her face was covered in blood. She looked like Carrie on prom night. I sat her down on a barstool and held her so that she wouldn’t fall over. Frances came over with a roll of paper towels and pressed them lightly against her wounds, but that didn’t slow the blood flow. Within seconds the floor was littered with red paper towels, and Frances was elbow-deep in blood that ran down her hand, dripped off her arm and pooled on the floor.
The state troopers arrived, and once the scene was declared secure, the EMTs came sprinting in, carrying their bags of life-saving equipment. The first one to enter, a young girl in her twenties, stopped at one of Cosmo’s clowns and knelt down next to him. I grabbed her by the elbow and pulled her away. “Forget them, help the bartender.”
She looked over to Debbie and recognized her right away. “Debbie!”
She grabbed her bag and ran over to her.
By this time, Frankie was helping with Debbie. Since she was fading in and out of consciousness, they decided that it would be best if she sat on the floor, her back against the bar for support. On the rare occasions that Debbie opened her eyes, usually only for a split second, they were blank with no focus in them. Frankie was sitting on the floor next to her, holding Debbie’s head against her shoulder and talking softly to her as she held a paper towel to her head and brushed the bloody hair from her face. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but I knew that it was something reassuring.
Francis was still swapping out paper towels against her gash under her chin, and the blood flow had slowed down to the point where I could briefly see the whiteness of her
chin bone between paper towel changes before the two-inch canoe-shaped opening on her chin filled up with blood again. Nasty.
The EMTs stepped in, laid her on her back, and went to work on her. Frankie stood up and came to my side. “She’s in bad shape, Jack. No pupil response. Better ride in the ambulance with her. I’ll grab Catherine and follow you to the hospital.”
The EMTs stabilized Debbie and fast-wheeled her out to the ambulance. I could tell by their rapid pace that they feared for her. I climbed in to keep her company on the way to the Cobleskill Hospital. A somber trip, with no talking except for the two first aiders discussing business as they worked on her nonstop. I touched her ankle and squeezed it softly. No response.
I knew that head wounds bled a lot, oftentimes making the injury look far worse than it was, but she’d really lost a bucketful of blood. I could see her broken nose swelling up before my eyes. Her T-shirt was soaked with so much blood that when they cut it off to examine her for torso injuries, it fell to the floor with an audible splash.
We arrived at the emergency entrance, and when I stepped out of the ambulance, I was surprised to see many of the other patrons from the Red Barn trotting towards us from the parking lot. They weren’t here because they needed medical attention. They were here because of Debbie. They must have caravanned behind the ambulance. That’s one of the nice little surprises you got when you lived in a small town, one that often went unmentioned. Folks looked after each other. They genuinely cared.
The EMTs wheeled Debbie inside, and I stood and watched my fellow small-town folk make me proud to be part of such a tight-knit community. They gathered alongside the walkway that led to the emergency room and called out Debbie’s name, followed by all kinds of get well wishes. I’m not sure if she heard them, but I hoped so.