Wolfkind

by Stephen Melling

  Barlow coughed. “So long as you’re clear. Big-city life is a culture shock for you, where all your beliefs will come into question, but you must be strong. You are not like the others, you are…”

  “I know,” Joshua squeezed his eyes shut. “I’m an abomination. An aberration of-”

  “Stop it right now,” Barlow said. “Self pity’s a luxury we can’t allow ourselves. Stick to the job. Forget the Durant woman. We’ll have to think of something else.”

  Scarcely aware he was speaking, Joshua said. “Someone wants the phone.”

  “They can wait.”

  “I’ve no more change.”

  “Joshua!”

  “I’ll call tomorrow.” He hung up.

  He stood in the booth looking at the small mirror. His face expressionless as a puppet’s. The moment of levity inspired by the girl’s company fizzled away. In its place he found only disillusion. Barlow was right. Living among ordinary people wouldn’t make him one of them any more than swimming in the ocean would make him a dolphin. At best he was a tourist. After all, he existed not to gallivant with the natives but to find and exterminate the renegades. It was the only reason he was here.

  He left the booth and made for the exit, wondering how he was going to make the several miles back to the medical center where his car was still parked.

  Directly he left the coffee shop and stepped into the sun, he sensed trouble. It came to him on the air before he saw the two men. The first, a statuesque dark-skinned South American dressed in a black suit, fell into step alongside him. Joshua looked down and saw a pistol jammed into his ribs. A second man, short and squat with a lopsided mouth, grabbed Joshua’s other arm. Both men wore disarming smiles.

  Durant’s men. Wow, these guys moved quickly.

  The gun pressed hard in his side. “That way, sonny.”

  Joshua allowed himself to be frog-marched into the service alley to a waiting Sedan. A third man got out of the car and opened the trunk.

  Whilst he was manhandled to the back of the car, Joshua surreptitiously inspected each of the gangsters. All it took was a few seconds. None of them were renegades. Their scents were all characteristically human. So at least three of Durant’s people – four including Genna, were human. Yet these represented only a tiny percentage of Durant’s full strength; far from conclusive that their syndicate was clean.

  The third man removed something from his pocket. A black silken hood. “For alley-cats like you the little lady’s out of bounds,” he said without looking directly at Joshua.

  This confirmed Joshua’s earlier suspicions. Since the moment he had met Genna she had continually looked over her shoulder, or in her mirrors, or out of the coffee shop window. These were the people she feared.

  The big man, who Joshua recognized as from his scrapbook as Carlos Mondragon, raised his mouth to Joshua’s ear, his breath warm and reeking of chewing tobacco. “I think you used up eight of your nine lives being hit by the car.”

  Joshua frowned. If they had witnessed the accident, it was also likely they saw him tailing Genna; watched him snooping around her car, too. They must have waited for her to leave the coffee shop. Ironically, his unconventional plot to infiltrate Durant’s clan proved a resounding success. He half smiled to himself

  “Find something amusing?” Mondragon half turned to his buddies and chuckled softly, shrugging his shoulders. “Hey Manny, he must be some kind of bad ass.” With the butt of his pistol he cracked Joshua across the bridge of the nose.

  “Easy,” Manny Winkler said, placing the hood over Joshua’s head. “The ki-ki-kid can’t talk with no tuh-tuh-teeth in his head. Get him i-i-i-in the truh-trunk.”

  “Jesus, Manny,” the third gangster said. “You can’t talk with teeth in your head.”

  Joshua allowed them to lock him in the Sedan’s trunk. For the first time since arriving in Los Angeles he experienced pangs of fear. In a matter of hours – or even minutes – he could be confronting his first renegade. More by good luck than good management, his plan had worked perfectly. He couldn’t hope for a better opportunity to look at Durant’s men. There was a small problem.

  The Beretta was still cased and under the bed at the Hollywood Jewel.

  After thirty minutes in the cloying confines of the trunk, listening to muffled conversation and the calming sounds of the engine’s drone, Joshua felt the Sedan slow and ease gently along a winding incline. The car stopped briefly, he heard clipped dialogue, and then they were moving again. Pollen and pine resin smells slunk into the car. The Sedan’s tires crunched gravel and the engine died. Doors opened and closed and the sound of a key in the trunk’s lock preceded a blast of fresh air.

  Several pairs of hands heaved him out of the trunk and set him on his feet. The flower-scented air smelled blessed after the stuffy ride, and he inhaled deeply.

  Like a blind man with several guide dogs, Joshua was led up a flight of stairs, down a corridor, bustled through a doorway and guided across a room. A chair nudged into the backs of his knees, forcing him to sit. Though blinded by the hood, he nonetheless sensed the number of people present by their biological signatures. A sweaty gangster padded him down, removing items from his pockets – a few dollars, the news-clipping of Genna, and the motel receipt.

  Fingers that smelled of sweat and nicotine fumbled with the drawstring at his throat; a moment later the hood was snatched from his head and daylight hit him like a flashgun. He blinked at the sudden brightness.

  A dozen men were in the room with him. All wore suits of Italian design. Some stood, others leaned on furniture; but all of them glared, presenting a gallery of menacing expressions that varied from curiosity to outright hatred.

  Nearest was a guy of about fifty-five, short and squat, whose enormous belly pushed at his shirt buttons. Patches of sweat darkened the armpits of his jacket. The whites of his eyes were yellowed; he emanated an aura of pure anger and aggression. One mean guy – but not a renegade.

  The next man differed sharply from his portly counterpart. Slim and gaunt, he wore a full suit, mirror-shine shoes, and contact lenses – a sure sign the guy was not a renegade.

  Frustration crept in into Joshua. All were human. He did not detect the faintest presence of anything untoward. These guys were clean.

  The last person he inspected was also the youngest; a skinny guy who ceaselessly twitched and fidgeted, swapping his weight from foot to foot, touching his hair and checking his wristwatch. When Joshua made eye contact the young man stiffened. “Fuck are you looking at?” An expression of embittered disbelief drew itself on his face. As though appalled that someone dared to stare him out. A few of the other men sniggered.

  “Lighten up, Franco,” Mondragon said.

  All conversation abruptly stopped when the door swung open and another man entered the room. Others stepped aside to allow him unrestricted access to the prisoner. Joshua recognized him instantly; Divo Serefini. Durant’s bodyguard and second in command; the man Genna had encountered on the steps.

  Serefini selected a chair, positioned it back-first in front of Joshua and sat astride it. He proceeded to observe Joshua like a Botanist might examine a new species of Dandelion. Though the gangster appeared outwardly calm, Joshua sensed the man was bursting with aggression. Yet, despite the hate and the fury, the darkness of his hidden emotions, he was no more a renegade than any of the others.

  “Kid,” he said. “I think you know who we are, so I won’t bend your ear with biographies, chilling as some of them are.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “These guys would like nothing better than to beat out of you every word of your life-story.”

  Joshua raised his head.

  Serefini smiled. “But I don’t want your life story. Just the reason you’re sniffing around the girl.” His lips went thin and bloodless.

  When Joshua spoke he barely recognized his own voice. Any affinity he previously felt with James Bond had fizzled out. “Genna ran me over,” he said. “We had lunch.”


  “Ran you over?” Serefini repeated. “Now why would she do that? Could it be because you tailed her from Santa Monica? Or that you tried to break into her car?”

  Joshua said nothing.

  Serefini snatched a fistful of Joshua’s hair and pulled his head back. “You’ll talk, wiseass,” he said, spittle glistening between his teeth. “You’ll talk until you’re fucking hoarse.”

  Genna Delucio returned to her apartment block and parked the BMW in the subterranean lot, looking back once as she engaged the alarm. It was then she noticed the damage to her car. The front fender and lower section of the hood were badly crimped. Clutching her keys she sank to her haunches, running her fingers over the buckled metal. The grill was twisted and one of the headlights was cracked.

  “What?” She stood upright and sidled up to the car, positioning herself in the damage zone. Her knees fit roughly into the concavity. “You gotta be kidding.”

  She circled the car, inspecting the damage from several angles. This confirmed her suspicion. She was seeing the imprint of a man’s legs, as though the metal had yielded like clay.

  In the first floor room of Stromboli Mansion, while at the same time Genna Delucio examined her damaged BMW, two gangsters beat Joshua with Louisville Slugger baseball bats. They worked systematically on his arms and legs, aiming none of the blows at his head. And although every swing of the bats found its mark, Joshua made no sound. The only grunts came from the two men wielding the sluggers. They swung their clubs like railroad workers, sweaty and grunting and spitting. A stray swing caught Joshua a glancing blow to the head.

  “Knock it off,” Serefini said. “This guy doesn’t know how to talk.”

  The two men lowered their clubs, exchanged feverish glances as they reluctantly backed away.

  Joshua looked at the floor, breathing heavily, contemplating his position. Though his abduction had seen him beaten and tortured, it had nevertheless served a purpose. Afforded him a good look at who were surely the worst of the worst in Durant’s crew. Although most were rotten to the core, none of them were renegades.

  “Omerta,” Serefini mocked, stepping up with the black silken hood; he kissed the fabric and placed it gently over Joshua’s head. He then pulled his gun, and at point blank range, shot him in the face.

  The weapon’s hollow report startled those still in the room.

  Joshua’s whole body jerked spasmodically, then became still. He rolled sideways onto the floor, taking the chair with him. A thin line of blood trickled from under the hood, pooling in several dime sized splats on the carpet.

  Serefini holstered his weapon. “Take him out to the pit,” he said.

  “That shaft’s only sixty feet deep,” said Carlos Mondragon. “We throw any more stiffs down there they’ll start climbing out.”

  “Just do it.” Serefini left the room.

  Manny Winkler maneuvered the Sedan onto the off ramp, exited the San Diego freeway and joined a local road two miles north of Brentwood. The sun beat down from a cloudless sky, winking off every reflective surface. Winkler kept one eye on the road and the other on the Speedo needle; with a body in the trunk he did not need to get pulled for speeding.

  “Suh-Suh-Serefini’s a luh-lunatic,” he said. “His mamma must have balled a scuh-scuh-scorpion.”

  Mondragon said nothing.

  After a while the Sedan left the local road and bumped along a dirt track, which meandered into gently undulating foothills in the foreground of the Santa Monica Mountains. The road became rough, full of potholes, working the sedan’s suspension. One wheel dipped into a rut and Mondragon bumped his head on the roof. “Jesus, Manny, where the hell did you learn to drive, the funfair?”

  The disused mine was located at the edge of woodland that had sprung up during the last thirty years. In the middle of a clearing strewn with rocks and splinters of wood, the shaft, five feet wide and over sixty feet straight down, yawned at the sky. Overlooking the clearing was a rocky hill riddled with natural caves and aborted digs, relics of the Gold Rush.

  Mondragon eased his bulk from the car, crept cautiously to the edge of the pit and peered down into the festering darkness. The corrupt stench of decomposing flesh hit him like smelling salts. “Aghh!” he recoiled from the edge, stumbled on a rock, and fell onto his ass in the dust. “Son of a bitch.”

  Laughing, Winkler circled to the back of the car, selecting the key which opened the trunk. “They don’t stuh-stay fresh long in this heat. Suh-suh-some of those poor bastards down there passed their suh-suh-sell-by date before Carter left the Oval office. Dig deep enough you might even fuh-find Jimmy Hoffa.”

  The big man dusted the seat of his pants and angrily kicked the lump of rock that tripped him; it tumbled end over end into the shaft. He shuffled away from the edge. If he were to lose his footing…

  Winkler, still chuckling at his partner’s squeamish nature, popped the Sedan’s trunk. The lid flipped up and a wave of heat rushed out, forcing him to avert his face. When he looked closer he noticed the black silk hood had somehow worked free of the kid’s head. “Hey….” Then something else caught his eye, reflecting a shaft of bright sunlight, drawing him in for a closer look. He saw what appeared to be a spent bullet.

  He picked it up. “What the fuh-fuh-fuh-.”

  With snake’s speed the kid’s hitherto stone dead hand sprang to life, lashed out, grabbed a fistful of Manny Winkler’s shirt and yanked hard. The gangster’s forehead struck the trunk lid with a sickening thud. He fell unconscious into the dirt.

  Joshua sprang from the trunk like an alley cat and hit the ground running; he leaped over the unconscious gangster and circled the car. Accelerating as he went, he darted into the clearing and ran at Carlos Mondragon, who had drawn his pistol and was firing repeatedly, a stupefied expression eating up his face.

  Kicking up clouds of dust and grit with his movement, Joshua jigged left and right through the dirt, presenting an elusive target. A stray round buzzed within an inch of his ear, smacking into bushes behind. He moved like a gazelle, and the dust disturbed by his movement swirled after him like slow hands.

  An almost comical look of surprise appeared on Mondragon’s large features as he shuffled backwards, putting distance between himself and his target. He took a final step back to widen his stance.

  But his sole never touched the ground. The stink of putrefaction rose from behind. His left foot sank into space. Mondragon pin-wheeled his arms, the gun flew from his fingers, but gravity sucked him greedily into the earth. The last image he saw, before the brightness of day shrank to a distant square of light, was a pair of crimson eyes watching him fall.

  Joshua saw the gangster falling, instinctively reached out to save him, but the man fell too quickly, his horror-struck face engulfed by the darkness. His fall into the shaft produced a displacement of air, forcing out a noxious gas cloud. Joshua, with his bloodhound sense of smell, recoiled as if scalded, withdrawing from the edge.

  He turned his back on the mineshaft and returned to the Sedan, secured the trunk and plucked the keys from the lid. He climbed into the driver’s seat and sped away. The opening of the mine shaft and the driver’s prostrate form diminished in the rearview mirror.

  Where the dirt track finally gave way to a smooth blacktop near the valley floor, Joshua took one hand off the steering and touched his cheek; the bullet wound beneath his left eye had completely healed. Though he no longer suffered discomfort from either the beating or the bullet, hunger gnawed at him. Tissue regeneration required a stupendous amount of energy, and today he had eaten only one meal. He needed sustenance right now. Inside him the furnace demanded to be fed. Failure to comply with the metabolism’s demand would eventually cause his body to scavenge protein from his own reserves, ultimately resulting in weight loss.

  Back on San Diego freeway, Joshua quickly assessed his newly gathered information. Durant’s men were human after all. Renegade characteristics were there – they were extremely dangerous, ruthless people, who would k
ill without conscience; violent men who saw no importance in human life. Yet they were not renegades.

  So who was the Invisible Assassin?

  Something else occurred to him. If Durant was clean, then Joshua no longer needed to use his daughter as a channel. Business there was concluded. He should continue with the original plan – to concentrate wholly on the Jamaican Gang. Genna Delucio had served her purpose. She had served it well.

  Confused and somewhat disillusioned, Joshua drove to within a block of the Medical Center to pick up his car. He abandoned the Sedan in the service entrance of a shuttered art gallery. The setting sun was dragging the remaining light from the sky when he finally belted up in the Camaro. Inside the car felt hot and stuffy. Joshua endured the heat and drove sedately across town back to Santa Monica.

  Despite his success in eliminating a major crime family from the shortlist of suspects, he could not align his thoughts. Something circled his mind, elusive as an eel – a thought, a revelation that might ease his confusion. But one he could not pin down.

  Back in his motel room, hearing only distant traffic and the occasional laugh or shout from the poolside, he lay on the bed staring into space. Occasionally, his eyes strayed to the news-clippings pinned to the wall and he thought about the Jamaicans.

  Delbert Johnson, a thirty-nine year old ex-revolutionary from Kingston, was the leader. Johnson once ran for an administrative post in one of the parishes, until his campaign was thwarted when he was indicted for conspiring to murder his opposition. He escaped trial and fled to America, where his political charisma worked upon the disillusioned kids of west Los Angeles. With his ruthless and brutal methods, he rose swiftly, and within five years, achieved the status as one of the city’s top six organized crime lords. Since none of his business interests clashed directly with those of the top five syndicates, he had been left alone to flourish.