Kill for Me

by Tom Wood

  It would be a death sentence.

  Diaz raised his right hand, and the gun within it, high above his head.

  At that moment, every pair of eyes was focused on Victor’s hands.

  Except Victor’s own.

  • Chapter 50 •

  Victor’s gaze was locked on Diaz’s right hand and the gun gripped by it as it rose up from waist level, past Diaz’s chest and shoulder until it paused high above the man’s head.

  The moment Diaz tensed—an instant before the hand began coming back down to strike Victor’s hand—Victor kicked out with both feet, hitting the table’s central support and propelling it away.

  The table couldn’t move far—there were people sitting in the way—but it didn’t need to move far to slide out from beneath Victor’s palms.

  Without the table to resist the downward force, the guy gripping Victor’s wrists fell forward, over Victor’s legs and into the path of the gun in Diaz’s hand.

  The heavy .45 struck the man on the back of his head before Diaz could pull the blow, before he could react, before anyone could react. The guy fell into the table, scattering cards and chips. He wasn’t knocked out, but he was concussed. He wouldn’t be able to cause Victor any trouble.

  The other players were slow because it was a lot to process. One second they had been eager spectators; the next their brains were rushing to catch up with what was happening. They had to understand before they knew how to respond.

  Diaz understood. He was the cartel man. He had witnessed violence before. He had been in life-and-death situations. He was the only one not stunned into inaction, but he had struck the wrong target and he had lost balance when the table he was bracing against went out from under him.

  Victor was out of the chair and going for the gun before Diaz was ready to fight back.

  He was strong though, and not easy to disarm. An elbow to the face reduced his resistance and focused his mind on warding off further blows, not keeping hold of the gun. Victor knocked it from his hand and it skidded across the floorboards.

  Diaz was strong and he was tough, and although he could fight, he had no idea how to defend against someone like Victor. He covered up, trying to block the incoming strikes, but when knees joined the assault—swift, savage attacks to his abdomen and groin—he collapsed, bloody, winded. Dazed.

  Victor spun around to face the others, now rising from their seats, brains caught up and ready to respond. One bent over to scoop up Diaz’s dropped revolver.

  Two steps took Victor close enough to put a stomp kick into the rising face of the man with Diaz’s gun. The nose crushed beneath Victor’s heel and the pistol hit the floorboards for the second time. The man doubled over, but Victor resisted capitalizing with an upward knee strike. The knee was one of his preferred weapons, but with the man’s position, there was too much chance of hitting the man in the mouth. Victor didn’t want that. He had learned that lesson a long time ago. It had been no fun prying incisors out of his kneecap.

  A player launched himself at Victor from across the poker table. No real threat beyond the size of the incoming human-shaped missile and easy enough to dodge. The man managed to land on his feet, however, so Victor swept his legs out from under him.

  Diaz was back on his feet, now holding a knife, so Victor took a pool cue from the nearby table and snapped it across one knee. At full length it made a great melee weapon: light enough to be fast and nimble, but with one heavy end to generate plenty of power. A guaranteed kill shot to the temple. A decent blow anywhere on the skull could end the fight. But it required two hands to make the most of it. It was a little too long, a little too top-heavy, to wield with one hand with speed and agility, and that’s what he most needed against a knife.

  The cue had enough reach to outdistance a blade many times over, but good as it was when connecting to the head, anything less than a full-force strike to the rest of the body might not stop an incoming attack. Diaz could take a cue strike to the chest and stay standing.

  Unlike the young guy with the slicked hair from the comedor, Diaz knew what he was doing. He held his weapon, which was a polished fighting dagger, well.

  So Victor wanted a weapon in each hand. The heavier end of the cue in his right for striking with, and the lighter end in his other hand for parrying the knife.

  Like a pro, Diaz was taking his time. For all his own weapon’s advantages, he didn’t underestimate Victor’s chances. He saw two weapons against one and compensated by switching the knife between hands, from right to left and back again. The message was obvious—Victor wouldn’t know which hand the knife would attack from.

  That was Diaz’s first mistake. He had advertised his intent. He wanted to put Victor off guard. He wanted to intimidate. He failed.

  Victor attacked him, going high with one cue and low with the other. Diaz was far too slow and took both: one to the face, one to the abdomen. He went down harder this time.

  A downward strike broke bones in the back of his right hand and he lost the knife.

  Victor dropped the cues and scooped up the revolver from where it lay and aimed it at Diaz, who had pulled himself up to his knees. He stopped, but this was no paralysis of fear. Diaz wasn’t scared, but neither was he stupid. It was only over because Victor had the gun, which Diaz considered a temporary problem.

  Victor saw him glance at the others—a silent message to make them understand that too.

  “No one has to die here,” Victor said.

  There were five of them at point-blank range and six bullets in the revolver, but Victor didn’t want a massacre. He didn’t want cops investigating the scene. He didn’t want the cartel to question who’d killed their man. He didn’t want Maria Salvatierra to find out there was a dangerous foreigner in town.

  The old guy had his hands up and the two others who weren’t injured did the same. The man with the crushed nose was writhing on the floor, his face bright with fresh blood. The one Diaz had clubbed with the revolver was on the floor too, conscious but on his hands and knees with a pool of vomit beneath him. Diaz seemed steady on his knees, despite breathing hard. He had a split lip and a cut beneath his left eye. The broken hand was already swelling, but if the pain bothered him, he didn’t show it.

  He spat out blood. “You’re dead.”

  “Be glad you’re alive and let this go,” Victor said.

  “Never.”

  The old guy said, “Shut up before you get yourself killed.”

  Victor nodded. “You should listen to him.”

  Diaz was silent.

  “But you’re not going to,” Victor said. “Are you?”

  Diaz sneered. Blood made his teeth pink.

  “You’re going to do whatever it takes to salvage your pride. You’re going to hunt me down, aren’t you?”

  Diaz didn’t answer, but he didn’t need to answer. Victor could see the relentlessness in his eyes. The thirst for retribution was unmistakable. Even Victor was not above acting out of a need for revenge, but he would never do so for something as insignificant as pride. Diaz wasn’t like Victor. He had too much ego to let such an attack go unpunished. However much Victor wanted to avoid tipping off his target to a potential threat or the attention of the police, he wanted a vengeful cartel lieutenant even less.

  “Your choice,” Victor said, and put a bullet between Diaz’s eyes.

  The .45 was a heavy slug with a big charge and blew out the back of Diaz’s skull. A storm of bone, brain, and blood followed it, plastering the wall behind.

  The gun wasn’t designed for recoil management and the kick was significant. The two guys on the floor didn’t react—they couldn’t—but the old guy and the two others who were standing could, but they didn’t. They were hoping that was the end of it.

  Victor rotated on the spot, his arm following in a smooth, fast arc, squeezing the trigger twice more to deliver
another two head shots, then aiming down to execute the two injured guys on the floor.

  The old guy was left alive, but only long enough for Victor to tell him, “Diaz set me up. He slipped the extra jack on to the table.”

  The old guy was scared, but he was calm, if confused. “What? Why are you telling me?”

  Victor said, “I wanted you to know I didn’t cheat,” and killed him too.

  • Chapter 51 •

  A petrol station, a comedor and a few other buildings surrounded a crossroads. No town, and not even a village. Just a place. It had no significance that Constantin could decipher. He left the bus and strolled along the side of the road. He walked with a slow gait. In part because he exerted himself only when he had to; a man of his dimensions drew attention enough standing still. If he moved with haste, everyone saw him. No one forgot him.

  He wore a fedora, made from pale wicker, to keep the sun from his scalp. He never tanned, and burned with little exposure. The color had been bleached out of him long ago. Fled, perhaps.

  A man sitting outside the petrol station gave him a suspicious look, so Constantin knew not to speak to him. Instead, he crossed the street and approached the bar. Inside, he removed the hat and used a handkerchief to blot his brow and the back of his neck. His face shimmered with moisture. Sweat beaded in the crook where his throat met his ribcage. He approached the counter, removing his jacket and taking the time to fold it into a neat pile that he placed on a stool he had first checked for cleanliness. The bartender watched him the whole time. The patrons did the same.

  He had come to expect a lack of air-conditioning. He had come to expect heat and humidity. The bar met those expectations. It had a large fan on the ceiling turning at such a slow speed that Constantin could not feel even the trace of a draft. The air was dense. It stank. Liquor and sweat fused into an invisible cloud of wretchedness. He didn’t try to hide his expression of disgust, of revulsion. He placed bony knuckles beneath his nostrils as a pitiful defense.

  If the patrons could smell the cloud they sat in, they made no obvious sign. They seemed happy enough, drinking and eating snacks, laughing and arguing. A transistor radio sat on one end of the bar and provided a distortion of local folk music. Constantin was aware of the sound only as he drew close to it.

  “Why play music if none can hear it?” he asked to no one in particular. “Why bother when everyone talks louder?”

  A man, a regular from the relaxed ease with which he sat at the bar, heard him, and said, “Perdóname?”

  Constantin waved a hand to dismiss further enquiries. He was in no mood to chitchat. He had never been in such a mood. Should a conversation without purpose have any appeal to him, it would not be here, it would not be now.

  “It would not be with you,” he said to the man.

  “Perdóname?”

  “Indeed, sir. Indeed.”

  Insects exploded on an electrified lure. They made a pleasant sound to Constantin’s ear: half fizzing, half popping. If only it was as easy to construct his own trap, if only his targets exploded with the same fizz-pop, he would be in a perpetual state of boredom. He took pleasure in killing only if it had some intimacy. He wasn’t here for the money, after all, but for the experience. For the satisfaction.

  Constantin gestured for the bartender to approach. He was a short man, dwarfed by the Czech, and young. A child, to Constantin’s eye. Only the faintest trace of stubble on smooth cheeks. Constantin smiled at him in an effort to soften his otherwise severe appearance.

  “Ruiz?” he asked.

  The smile was, at best, of limited effect, because the bartender responded with a cautious nod. “Que está pidiendo?”

  “A man came to see you sometime in the last couple of weeks,” Constantin said, speaking in Spanish. “A foreigner, like me. He had dark hair. He might have worn a suit. Remember?”

  Ruiz shook his head. It was unconvincing, even without the backward step, the retreat, from his questioner.

  Constantin smiled wider. “I understand. He paid you, or scared you? Which is it? I can do the same. I can pay you more. I can scare you more. Which do you prefer?”

  Ruiz was confused. He was too young, too naive to make a wise choice. His eyes, wide and unblinking, showed his fear, but he refused to heed what his soul knew: that it faced true evil.

  He stalled. “You want a drink?”

  Constantin rotated his head a fraction to the right and then a fraction to the left. “I want you to choose.”

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

  Constantin drummed his long, thin fingers on the bar. His nails were clipped short, but were hard and sharp. They rapped on the wood.

  Ruiz said, “You need to go now.”

  Constantin leaned over the bar and glanced down. “As I thought: you’re wearing flip-flops.”

  “So?”

  “Which means you haven’t walked far. You live close by, yes? I don’t imagine there are too many dwellings within walking distance.”

  Ruiz was confused once more, and he didn’t like that confusion. “Get out.”

  Constantin used his handkerchief to wipe his scalp and placed the fedora back on. He removed his jacket from the stool and draped it over his left forearm, which he raised to a right angle. Ruiz watched in silence.

  “Thank you for your time.” He tipped his hat to the young man. “I look forward to our next conversation.”

  The street outside was pale under the hot sun. Shadows were harsh and unyielding blackness. Constantin’s was long and thin, extending before him in a jagged ripple over the paving stones. He watched it watching him, mocking him.

  He was a shadow, chasing a ghost, always close but always a step behind. Early days, and Constantin enjoyed the chase. So little moved him, but what did moved him greatly. He absorbed the sights and sounds and smells of the land and was repulsed by them all. The inhabitants scattered before him, ants, tiny and insignificant. He would step on them all if time would allow.

  It would not, of course, so Constantin was forced to select particular ants with care. He ignored the workers, the peasants, and sought out the soldiers, the knights, to prove his worth, and the queens to grant him satisfaction.

  An imperfect system, perhaps, but it was an imperfect world.

  Constantin thought of geography. He considered this rambling collection of buildings at the crossroads. A place of no significance, except that it was within one hundred miles of Maria Salvatierra’s horse ranch. Surely too far to be of any importance to Constantin’s competitor.

  He heard a buzz that was not unlike the sound mosquitoes made. Few people would notice it, but Constantin had exceptional hearing. The buzz became a whine and he tilted his large head to the blue sky above and watched a small prop plane on its descent to land.

  Ah, he thought.

  • Chapter 52 •

  Firefighters had tackled the blaze, but not before it had torn through the bar and barbecued the five corpses. Joanna Alamaeda circled them as the crime scene investigators did their thing. She didn’t need to be told the fire was deliberate—she could smell the accelerant—and she didn’t need to be told that all the men had been shot. Five shell cases were charred but obvious even before the investigators had labeled them.

  The detective assigned to the case filled her in on what they knew so far, which wasn’t a lot, but they knew one of the corpses belonged to Diaz, thanks to his jewelry and gold teeth.

  Alamaeda looked down at the blackened remains of Diaz and said, “Well, that’s one surefire way of avoiding indictment. No pun intended.”

  Wickliffe nodded. “He was so scared we were getting close to him that he shot himself in the head and then, just for good measure, he followed up with the old self-immolation trick. He’s thorough, I’ll give him that. Also: always take credit for a pun, even when unintentional. It’s a dying art.�
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  The detective on the scene didn’t speak English, so he didn’t understand why they were smiling. He was a dour sort. He found nothing funny when bodies were involved. He stepped outside to light a cigarette.

  “Five for five,” she said under her breath, getting a closer look at the shell cases.

  “All head shots,” Wickliffe added.

  She nodded. “Three between the eyes and two in the back of the skull.”

  “Because they were already on the deck.”

  Alamaeda nodded again. “One round left in the .45.” She pointed to where the gun lay.

  “I’m surprised he didn’t use it to make sure. Seems like a waste otherwise.”

  “He didn’t need it. Dead is dead.”

  “Don’t get many cartel hitmen with that level of self-control.”

  “I’m not so sure this was in fact a hit.”

  “Diaz’s corpse says otherwise.”

  Alamaeda took a closer look, but watched where she stepped. She had only just gotten her trouser suit back from the dry cleaner. Her mother would be horrified if she knew. Mama Alamaeda had worked two jobs and still found time to iron the family laundry. She had taught her children to be self-reliant, as well as frugal, and had staunch working-class values. She would think her eldest daughter to be decadent and foolish, if not a snob. Alamaeda sometimes felt a little guilty collecting the clothes, which she eased by getting to know the old husband-and-wife team who ran the joint. She had trouble understanding them and they struggled to understand her, but there was always laughter in this. A nice couple.

  The bar stank of burned wood and burned flesh. It wasn’t a pretty sight, but Alamaeda had seen a lot worse. Cartels could be brutal. They rarely just killed their enemies. There was always a message to send. Alamaeda looked for the message here but couldn’t find one. That was a message in itself, but the kind cartels didn’t make.

  Wickliffe said, “Who kills a serious player like Diaz and tries to cover it up?”