by Mike McCrary
Mike McCrary
www.outofthegutteronline.com
www.gutterbooks.com
Published by Out of the Gutter, an imprint of Gutter Books
Copyright © 2013 by Mike McCrary
Cover by J. T. Lindroos
This is a work of fiction in which all names, characters, places and events are imaginary. Where names of actual celebrities, organizations and corporate entities are used, they’re used for fictional purposes and don’t constitute actual assertions of fact. No resemblance to anyone or anything real is intended, nor should it be inferred.
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Printed in the USA
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
You can’t do a damn thing alone, so I’d like to thank the people who gave help and hope during this little fun and self-loathing writing life.
First, thanks to Elmore Leonard, Don Winslow, Stephen King, Chuck Palahniuk, Duane Swierczynski, Charlie Huston and Dennis Lehane. You don’t know me, but thank you for what you do. Thanks, in no particular order, to the following writers, bad-asses, good dudes and Book Gods: Blake Crouch, Tom Pitts, Allan Guthrie, Joe Clifford, John Rector, Peter Farris and Johnny Shaw. Thank you for talking books and the publishing world with me, even if you didn’t know you were doing it.
Big, massive, sloppy love to the good folks at MXN Entertainment (Michelle Knudsen and Mason Novick) for never wavering in their help and support over the years. Mason . . . thank you doesn’t cover it, man.
Love and appreciation to my family and friends who have put up with me and my bullshit—you know who are. Thanks to Mom and Dad for not selling me for medical experiments, and last but not least, thank you to my beautiful wife and daughter.You have endured and embraced me during my bitter, cranky, moody and (let’s just say it) dark days. For that and for everything, every day . . . I love you.
PART I
(such an asshole)
1
Leslie likes to fuck men.
Sometimes she ends up fucking some dudes that she doesn’t really like.
It happens.
So what?
When you’re a thirty-three-year-old woman living in New York and you like to fuck men, you may find yourself bedding a few pricks. Yes, the literal nature of that statement is understood, but you get it. An attractive woman in a demanding job, working ridiculous hours, surrounded by men of loose moral fiber may have to drop her standards in order to get some.
Sex or the high road.
The low road has an impressive win/loss record.
Again, it happens.
All of this swirls around Leslie’s pretty little head as she nudges back and forth on her back. On a desk.
In the dark.
Having sex with one of those previously-mentioned pricks.
It’s not so much that Remo is a prick, really. Actually, she doesn’t even really know him all that well, probably best. What she does know is that he talks while doing the deed.
Like, a lot.
He’s been rambling practically the whole time.
With hump-altered speech Remo tells a story. “There’s this pack of vicious assholes who decide to hit a bank on a random Tuesday . . .”
Remo describes a seemingly normal weekday morning in the big city. Everyday New Yorkers file into a Midtown bank as it opens. Good folk enter before work, grab some cash, make a deposit, bitch about a fee. All walks of life. Men, women, kids. The wealthy, the middle-class, the just-getting-by. A cultural and financial melting pot. None of them have a clue what’s coming.
A van sits parked across the street. Six men wait inside the van, dressed for bad things. Armed and ready.
Three of them are the Mashburn brothers. They sit along one side. Dutch, the oldest brother. is both experienced and damned evil. The middle Mashburn is Ferris, a sharp-minded, ice shard of a man. The youngest, a wiry wacko called Chicken Wing.
The other three are hired hands and pals of the Mashburns. On the opposite side of the creepy rape van sit two more members of this crew. Garden-variety crime boys. A slick criminal called Bobby Balls, and a young punk of a bastard called Country.
Their real names escape Remo at the moment.
The final crew member is the driver,Lester, an aging career criminal who’s never moved up in the ranks. Lester looks uneasy.
Uncertain.
Uncomfortable.
Dutch, the obvious leader, gives the nod. Dutch has his craft down, and has developed some simple rules for working jobs.
Rule # 1: He sees no reason to get creative with dead president masks or all that movie horseshit. Be nondescript; don’t give the law something exotic to look into. Hmmm, where do you find this unique, hard to find mask? Run a check on all retailers that might carry masks like it, pull the security camera video and synch it with the register on the date those masks were sold. Any shit-stain who caught five minutes of any of the ten Law & Order episodes last night could piece that together. Just use something to cover your fucking face.
The crew pulls down classic black ski masks.
Rule #2: Don’t use semi-automatics when doing banks. Don’t use a weapon that spits out evidence like a PEZ dispenser. All those shell casings bouncing off the floor looks really fuckin’ cool in the movies. Glocks going crazy, lead flying in slow-mo, But in the real world—Dutch’s world—it only creates evidence for cops to bag and help them tell a story.
.357s don’t leave casings.
You say, “But what if you need more bullets? You have to reload, Old West style.” If you need more than five guys with seven rounds a piece to do a bank you don’t deserve the take; go suck a dick. Now if the cops join the party, that’s different. The AKs on their backs are for that.
Rule #3: In case of emergency, use AK.
The crew readies the guns. All nickel plated, rubber griped .357 magnums. AKs strapped on their backs.
And, oh yeah, Rule #4: Witnesses are like shell casings. They should not be able to help tell a story.
The van doors bust open and the masked crew pours out, armed to the teeth. One throws down tosses an innocent bystander to the concrete in route to the bank door.
The five men rage into the bank like cowboys from hell.
A relentless rat-tat popping of gunfire echoes from inside the bank. Screams wail behind the closed doors. People on the street scatter in every direction.
Lester watches from behind the wheel. His eyes drop, each pop of gunfire seeming like it physically hurts him. He rubs a small cross hanging around his neck. He hates all of this and he doesn’t even know why. He’s really struggling with this. It’s not like he’s never been around killing or killed anybody before. God knows, that’s not the case. But today for some reason the pounding blasts from inside the bank, the obvious outcome from those blasts, are almost too much for Lester to bear.
A final bone-rattling shot sounds from inside the bank.
Remo powers on with his mid-sex tale, “Sixteen dead. Three point two million gone. Over in two minutes and eleven seconds.”
At some farmland just north of where the hell are we U.S.A, the bank crew digs a massive hole to stash the cash. Large money bags drop in. Dirt falls. Another thought from Dutch, possibly Rule #5. Don’t get caught with the money. This isn’t an international crime crew of sex symbols off the lot at Warner Brothers. They don’t evade laser sensors and they don’t have the capacity to launder that kind of green within a day of stealing it. They need to keep it safe until the heat subsides a bit.
The first forty-eight hours are dicey, but after a few days you can get your money and get on with your life. If you get pinched holding bags of money, well, your options are somewhat limited.
The crew holes up in a tiny dump of a cabin in the New Mexico mountains, living like the fucking Amish on a bad day. They make it a day, two tops before a swarm of lawmen arrive with zero warning. The cabin is surrounded by police, and they are not in the mood for any shit.
Dutch peels back a rag posing as a curtain. Like a switch is flipped, a balls-out gunfight ignites. Shotguns and handguns punch at the shoddy construction.
Bullets fly in every direction.
Back and forth like a ballistic shit-fit.
Fire begins, spreads into blaze throughout the cabin. The police hold steady. Dutch and the driver, Lester, fly out the door, fire and smoke pouring out behind them.
The cabin goes up like it was newspaper soaked in gasoline.
The police jump on Lester and Dutch. Dutch looks back at the burning cabin with a knowing sneer. . . .
Remo, in mid-stroke. “Most of the crew dies in the fire, including two Mashburn brothers.”
Leslie flips a light on, one of those bankers lamps with a green shade.
It illuminates her face as she moves back and forth rhythmically. Around the office are a smattering of quickly removed clothes and empty booze bottles. The 30-something intellectual beauty looks up at Remo, completely shell-shocked. He stares down at her. What?
Remo is older than Leslie, by almost ten years, but a damn handsome man with a bar-boy charm that has served him well over the years. It’s been stated before, Leslie does this with pricks and Remo more than qualifies. None of that bothers her right now. Really, it doesn’t.
It’s not that he’s been talking the whole time. Sure, she’d rather the talk be dirty or not at all, but it’s not that.
It’s not even that she is the Assistant District Attorney assigned to prosecute the very bank crew that Remo has been rambling on about.
What bothers Leslie about all this, what’s really throwing a wrench into this potential pleasure fest, is that Remo is one of the top defense attorneys in New York City. Sorry, the top defense attorney in New York City, and this bank crew, Mashburn brothers, Lester and the others are. . . .
Remo’s fucking clients.
2
“Stop,” snaps Leslie.
Remo explains. “The math on this is simple.”
“Can you stop?”
“It’s a huge case. I have a bulging box of evidence. You can put them away forever.”
“What?”
“What, what?”
“To be clear, you’re admitting while we’re having sex that your clients are guilty.”
“Too weird for you?”
Leslie scrambles off the desk and pulls on some of the balled up clothing on the floor. Her confusion is surpassed only by her hostility.
“You unbelievable shithead.”
Drunken state showing, Remo stumbles while trying to find his pants, yanking open the curtains as he falls and hits the hardwood. It’s the middle of the day and sun lights up the room. Through the window is a magnificent view of Manhattan.
Leslie wants out of there, fast. She tries to get her head around this situation. This Remo Situation.
“I am the fucking prosecuting attorney, and you’re telling me how to put your clients in jail forever?”
Remo slides over to the cabinet, pouring himself a foot-sized tumbler of Johnnie Walker Blue. He gives her that damn smile. With her last bit of dignity, she fires, “Fuck you, Remo. My team is going to win this case . . . cleanly.”
“Highly doubtful.”
She’d defend herself, but he’s right. Damn it.
He takes a large gulp of booze, then pulls a box from under his desk. The box is packed. You can’t even close the thing, files and photos almost spilling out. A bursting, spewing, geyser of evidence. Leslie’s eyes nearly pop.
“I can’t take that.”
“It’s not that heavy.”
“Remo, I cannot accept the box.”
“Leslie, your team is fairly shitty.”Complete disbelief that he said it, but she knows he’s right.
“You will lose,” Remo clarifies. “Look at it this way: you get to help the world be a better place, with orgasms to boot. That’s as Kennedy as it gets.”
“Orgasms?”
“Seemed like your eyebrow twitched.”
“Why are you doing this?”
Remo pops a pill. Ritalin. It’s a delicate balancing act with the booze, but Remo has mastered the chemistry. He washes it down with a gulp of Johnnie Blue. Pours a fresh one. He’d rather not give his reasons.
Leslie has heard the rumors. Remo has had a few problems, to put it mildly. Something about a wife who left, and a kid. Somebody said something about that during a lunch, but Leslie can’t remember the details. One of those things you hear and give a forced-compassion response like, “Oh, that’s horrible,” or “Man, that’s tough. Is he ok?” That kinda shit.
Leslie gives a similar response now, thinking she knows what’s up. “You’re going through a rough patch.”
Remo barely appreciates her efforts, gives her his rebuttal. “I’m living a dream.”
“Come on, even an emotional dumpster fire like you has to acknowledge it. Everybody knows. The drinking, the pills, the whatever…and now you’re throwing cases. Your behavior is suspect, at best.” Remo is a blank slate. She tries to pry the humanity from him. “Your wife went bye-bye. Have you ever even met your son?”
“That . . . that has nothing to do with this thing . . . here.” Now it’s all over him, because it has everything to do with this thing here. He redirects; it’s what he does for a living for Christ’s sake.
“You have sex with the defense, I win your case for you, and you call me a shithead. Flat-out fucking rude.”
She continues getting dressed. Remo continues drinking.
“Healthy people have a cathartic moment of clarity and give up the pills and sauce.”Remo mulls that idea for a second. “That sounds awful.” He pushes the box toward
her. “This is a onetime thing.”
She thinks, then asks, “The money?”
“Wow. Hookers are less direct than you.”
“No, fucker, the money from the bank. The three point two million they stole.”
“Oh, I dug that up.”
“What?”
Remo shrugs.
“Well fucking hand it over.”
“Don’t fucking have it.”
“Where the fuck did it go?”
“You know that foundation for the families of the bank robbery victims?”
Leslie nods.
“Gave it to them.”
“What?”
“The city offers health insurance, because your hearing is horrible.”
“Bullshit. Which locker at what train station is it stuffed in?”
“I. Don’t. Have. It. Gave it to a good cause. That so hard to believe?”
Leslie’s eyes bore through him. Yes, it’s extremely hard to believe that a guy like this even knows how to do that. You could hand him a donation bag of used clothes and shoes, drive him to the front door of the local Goodwill, he still couldn’t pull it off.
Remo replies, “Take the box. Win the case and you’ll get hired to a better gig. Or you can run the risk of being that prosecutor who tried to trade sex for a guilty verdict.”
Leslie stares daggers as she struggles with her whirling thoughts. Is he right? Yes. Does she have a choice? Yes, but the right choice, not taking the box, does her no good whatsofuckingever. Eventually, as per usual, the low road wins. She grabs the box as she heads for the door.
“You are a stunning asshole. Thanks for the guilty-in-a-box and the god-awful sex.”
Remo stops her, his face now reflecting a surprising, almost alarming amount of sincerity. All the bullshit is gone, the slickness washed away. “Promise me these monsters wil
l never be able to do this again.”
Leslie takes in his complete shift in tone, his new body language, can’t help but be moved. This is the man who got her into bed…well, on a desk. This is a man with a heart and perhaps, God forbid, a soul. She understands there is a real reason for what he is doing. She hopes it’s a good one, and not that he stole the damn money to flush it away on hookers and blow.
Realistically, she knows that cocaine and boob jobs are exactly where that boatload of blood money is headed, but for the moment, this moment, she’d like to believe Remo is better than that.
The idealistic, hopeful little girl in her can’t help but respond, “I promise.”
A few shit years pass. . . .
3
The plan?
Simple.
Murder multiple motherfuckers, save one asshole.
This is the strategy of one Lester Ellis, former criminal, former wheelman, current man of the Lord. Lester’s résumé, if he ever felt the need to pen one, would read:
July 1968 to February 2012: Murdering Thief -- Team player. Individual contributor. Fluent. Six Sigma.
February 2012 to Present: Servant of God -- Six months experience. (But a good six months, you judgmental ass.)
Lester: weathered, seasoned, bleary-eyed, and beaten down by years of dirty deeds. He stands along an empty road some thirty-odd miles north of New York, surrounded by not a whole helluva lot. Behind him lies the unmistakable outline of a sprawling fifty-five acres on the east bank of the Hudson River known by most as Sing Sing maximum security prison.
His body is a wandering contradiction of personal philosophies. Tats tell the tale of a confused, or at the very least conflicted, man. A Swastika rests on one side of his neck, with a sad clown on the other. A large cross with Jesus nailed to it is scrawled from blade to blade on his back. “FuckU” on one of his shoulder. The cherry on top? On the fatty part of his right paw, etched in crude prison-blue fashion, “Right Hand of God.”