Wolfkind
Page 10
“Never saw him before,” she said. “Now will you get out of…?”
“He came into this building fifteen minutes ago.” The voice remained monotone. “This is serious, Miss Durant. Who’s in your apartment?”
“Leave.” Genna started to close the door when someone jammed his foot in the gap.
“We know that you know this guy,” the caller said. “You ran him down and drove him to hospital. You paid his bill. We spoke to Doctor Harper. He wouldn’t tell us much but he did say the guy was unhurt. Now, if you would secure the dog and open up.”
Genna kicked lightly at the shoe in the door. “If you value the number of toes you have I’d move my foot if I were you.”
Almost painfully compunctious, to the point of mewling, the guy sighed ruefully: “’fraid I can’t do that, Miss Durant.”
Genna stepped back from the door. “Benji,” she said. “Sic him.” Her face, whose profile Joshua saw from his position on the chair, remained calm and resolute.
Benji needed no persuading. He launched himself at the exposed shoe. Bulky as the Doberman was, he moved fast and sure, snagging the foot at his first attempt. Too late, the gangster tried to pull away. Benji dragged the foot through the gap, let go for an instant, and went for a meatier grip. The man in the hall shrieked.
“Benji,” Genna said. “Stand down, Benji! Leave! Leave!” She patted his muscle-bound haunches, and with a show of almost comic reluctance, he relinquished his grip on the ankle. The foot disappeared back through the door amid wails of pain and profanity. “If you show up here again maybe I will open the door. Now get lost or I call the police.” She closed the door.
After a brief pause, the two men went; their irregular footfalls receded down the corridor. Their voices, raised and argumentative, faded to nothing.
Genna spent a moment alone at the door with her dog. When she finally came back into the room proper, she wouldn’t meet Joshua’s gaze, nor did she re-take her seat. Her hand stayed close to the dog, drawing strength and maybe comfort from the contact. After returning Benji to the kitchen, she paced the floor in front of Joshua’s chair. “I don’t know how much of that you heard,” she said.
“Nothing, really.” Joshua said. “I wasn’t listening.”
Genna finally met his gaze evenly. “My father tends to be over-protective and...seems to think my destiny is to be raped and mutilated.”
“You didn’t tell them you had company.”
“Are you kidding?” She said. “After pegging you as a serial killer with a penchant for single women they would burst in here as judge, jury, and executioners.”
“They?” Joshua said.
Genna watched him a moment. “I still don’t know anything about you, Joshua. For all I know you could be a serial killer.” She immediately regretted her words and held up a hand. “I’m sorry.”
Joshua opened his mouth to respond but quickly closed it again. The evening had turned irretrievably sour. Everything about Genna’s demeanor now said go away.
“Don’t you know who I am?” She searched his eyes. “Or what I am?”
Joshua stood, feeling big and awkward, pulling at his shirt and hitching up his jeans. “I don’t understand.”
“I’m bad news,” she said. “Can’t you see?”
“You’re not bad news,” was all he could think of saying. “I’ve never known anyone like you.” Though he was sincere, he knew his words were futile.
Genna stared at the watercolor of the horse-girl. “Trust me; I’m not someone you want to know.” A haunted look came into her eyes. “Joshua, you need to leave.”
He put down his wine glass.
“Will you do something for me?” she asked.
“Sure,” he answered. “Anything.”
“Leave by the service door at the rear,” she said. “Those men might still be out there.”
“I’m not afraid,” Joshua said.
“No, I don’t believe you are. But I am,” she said. “Please. The back way.”
In the kitchen, Benji mewled. Joshua turned to leave and Genna followed, head down, ready to close the door after him.
As he stepped into the corridor he turned around: “I know it isn’t my business, but if your father’s the way he is why don’t you move away? Quit this city for real?”
She held the door open, just a crack. “I wish I could.”
“Can’t I…call you?” he asked in a low voice.
“Oh Joshua,” she said, smiling in spite of herself. “You really are sweet, but I’ve caused you too much pain already. I don’t want to cause you anymore.” She brought a hand to her mouth, quickly closing the door.
Joshua blinked at the blue paneling, feeling as welcome as the aforementioned Jehovah’s Witnesses. Through the thickness of the apartment door, beyond the range of human hearing, he heard the girl crying softly.
He lowered his head, feeling a strange stillness about him. What had he been thinking? That she would ask him on a date? Invite him into her life? He had willfully taken a wrong turn and he knew it. Coming here was a mistake – he had made the wrong decision. Forsaken his real purpose to pursue fantasies. Acted foolishly and irresponsibly. Functioning within society was proving far more complex than he had dreamed. Lord, not only was it hard – it also hurt.
With the girl on his mind and heaviness in his chest, he left the building as Genna requested, by the service entrance.
The black limousine pulled up at the side-street bar and Divo Serefini climbed out. For the dispensing of contracts, they never used the same venue twice. This particular bar, a small earthy joint, catered for the solemn drinking soul; those for that Los Angeles swallowed as colorful wannabes and spat out as washed-out might-have-beens, forever bleached of the vitality that brought them west.
Serefini told his driver to wait in the car. Then he strode up to the modest entrance, ignoring the doorman’s greeting as he stepped into the comparative gloom of the smoky interior.
Like a gunslinger just swaggered in through the bat-wing doors, he searched the booths for the snot-nosed cocky bastards, whose only role – which they exploited to embarrassing proportions – was to act merely as go-betweens, glorified couriers for the Invisible Assassin.
Smoldering with precisely the destructive kind of hate Durant had warned him against, Serefini stalked the line of dim booths. The whole place stank. The carpet stuck to the soles of his shoes. Clearly he didn’t belong here. Not someone of his caliber. Three months ago, maybe – when liaising with the assassin’s people was considered heavyweight
He reached the last table. Still no sign of the rowdy trio. A warm, almost silky string of anger issued from his heart, slipping through his veins, opening his pores to combat the heat prickling his skin. If that bunch of sassy-assed shit-kickers failed to turn up…
An object flew from the shadows and struck his jacket, leaving a cardboard flecked wet patch. A spitball. His eyes traced the missile’s trajectory until he spotted the soles of Nike training shoes propped up on the table.
Serefini ground his teeth together and clenched his right fist hard as he could for five seconds. Then slowly relaxed his fingers and exhaled evenly. He placed a foot over the paper missile, crushing it in his stride toward the table. Sufficient light reached in for Serefini to see that only one of the usual three was here. Nathan whoever-the-fuck he was, feet up comfy as you please, eyes in shadow, swigging from a bottle.
“Where are your playmates?” Serefini asked.
“Playing with your mother, but don’t fret, they’re letting your father watch.”
Serefini rode the wave of anger, which shot up like a rev-counter, burying the needle of his flaring temper in the red. The tips of his fingers started to quiver. A hot flush engulfed his neck. The skin on his back shrank and pricked. He felt a sudden wave of dislike not for the guy in front of him, but for his boss, who insisted he keep swallowing the chill pill.
As Serefini reached into his jacket for the manila envelope, his
hand brushed his holstered sidearm. For a split second, he hesitated, wanting so much to plug fifteen rounds into the kid’s impudent puss. Instead, he pulled out the envelope and dumped it on the table.
The kid leaned forward, and in the cone of light he tore open the seal. A wad of bank notes fell into his palm, which he pocketed absently. A sheet of notepaper came with the bills. Nathan smoothed out the folds and read the typed words. Then he looked up at Serefini, a knowing smile on his lips. “It’s finally happened.” He plucked the pack of matches from the ashtray, set fire to the sheet, allowing the paper burn out in his fingers.
“Particulars of the contract don’t concern you.”
“No,” Nathan said. “But they concern Hector Kelvecion, Juan Martinez, and last, though by no means least, good old crusader, Delbert Johnson.” He spoke with musical arrogance.
“In the same order,” Serefini replied.
“All of them,” Nathan said. “You want them all whacking.” He calmly swigged his beer. “What’re you weasels going to do when the competition’s gone? Hock your bullets and go sit on the beach humming War is over?”
“Live in peace,” Serefini said.
“Dogshit, live in peace.” Nathan said. “Weasels like you don’t know how. In a couple of weeks you’ll get tired, paranoid or pissed and before long start nailing each other. ‘And then there’ll be none,’” He laughed softly. “Who knows, maybe someone new will come along and take you out.”
Serefini’s face twitched. He pulled a photograph from his jacket pocket and threw it like a playing card onto the table. “We want this guy doing, as well.” The snap landed face down, revealing on the reverse an address written in ballpoint.
Nathan flipped the picture and regarded the blurry image, taken with the use of a telephoto lens, of Joshua crossing a parking Lot. Nathan looked long and hard. “Who is this guy?”
“Another wiseass prick,” Serefini turned to leave.
Nathan spat a gob of beer at Serefini’s back. Serefini froze, continued to walk but managed only two steps. He squeezed his eyes shut and used all of his will-power to dampen his temper. His mouth was twisted and working.
The barkeeper, who had kept a wary eye on the proceedings, signaled for the Bouncer. The doorman came bounding in, looking left and right. When he saw the source of the trouble, he shook his head and scurried back outside.
Ever so slowly, Serefini turned around and raised a quivering hand. “You don’t know how close you just came.”
Nathan slid the beer-bottle to one side and squared up to Serefini, pressing his chest against Serefini’s palm, their faces less than a foot apart. Standing this close made Serefini very uneasy, as if he were in striking distance of that unstable guard dog. Some primal instinct urged him to back off. He didn’t.
Nathan mouthed his words with care. “Go butt-fuck your boss some more, you two-bit clammy-haired weasel.”
Finally - somewhat inevitably - Divo snapped. His hand flew inside his jacket as he whirled, pulling his gun and jamming it in the younger man’s face, finger squeezing the trigger, his voice broken with rage: “Your fucking mouth.”
In his mind’s eye, Serefini pulled the trigger, putting a bullet squarely between the cocky punk bastard’s eyes, blowing out the back of his skull. Before the kid collapsed, Serefini would see daylight through his head.
But as he drew the bead, started to squeeze the trigger, he glimpsed a blurred band of pink to his right. Only this was no illusion, for it had form, and somehow snatched the weapon from his grip a microsecond before he fired. While his brain struggled to decipher what had happened, an explosion of light briefly blinded him. The thud that followed also had form. It was his backside hitting the barroom floor.
More stars fizzed and fell. The world slipped sideways and he quickly planted his hands to steady himself. Hot, moist breath hissed in his ear. “Human slug,” Nathan spat. “Don’t ever play king-shit with me. You’re as big time as pubic lice on a dead pig. All you pricks are one-eyed men, Serefini; only LA ain’t the country of the fucking blind anymore.”
And then he was gone.
In the next booth an old-timer was mothering a shot of whiskey, staring impassively. Serefini half considered asking him what happened, but pride wired his mouth shut. All the same the old timer, raising his glass, said: “I never saw nothing so cock-knocking quick in my whole life.” He gulped the whiskey. “And I’m eighty.”
Serefini heaved himself off the floor and stumbled up to the bar: “Scotch,” he said huskily. His reflection stared at him from the mirror behind the bar. Identical gashes marked both cheeks. Like Indian war paint. When he reached into his pocket for a handkerchief his hand brushed something hard and damp, and he held open his jacket to look inside.
His sidearm was back in its holster. “What...” A tide of unreality washed over him. Had he imagined pulling his gun? No – fresh blood stained the stock; his blood. A shiver ran along his scalp.
He drained his glass and quickly left.
Joshua
Unable to settle, Joshua paced his motel room.
Although Genna Delucio had ultimately sent him away, he could not keep her from his mind. But coiled like a serpent on the heels of the rejection were Barlow’s teachings: humans were proud people, generous to a fault, but at the same time abhorred by freaks of nature.
But Genna knew nothing of his dubious identity; she believed he was an ordinary person, had invited him into her home where he had tasted her wine, tasted her life. Then sent him away. Whether for his own safety, she had wanted him to leave. A small glass of wine and a large farewell.
Joshua licked his lips; the wine had left him thirsty. He opened his door and went outside to the vending machine. His sudden inability to concentrate on anything but the girl troubled him deeply.
Moths buzzed into and bumped the overhead exterior light, casting soft, flitting shadows at his feet. He deposited several coins and selected Sprite. A cooled can thunked down into the plastic dispensing trough. He plucked out the drink and popped the ring-pull. The ice-cold liquid slipped down his throat in a continuous stream.
Three units along the promenade a door opened and a guy in Bermuda shorts and flip-flops rushed out, juggling a fist of loose change. He threw a quick look at Joshua while force-feeding quarters into the machine.
“Been another one,” he said as he pushed the buttons. The soft drink landed in the trough; he whipped it out and inserted more coins.
“Another one?” Joshua asked.
A second can came down. “Some high caliber criminal lawyer from the Palisades – Henry-or-Harry Kelvecion or something.”
Kelvecion.
“Dead as dogshit.” He giggled like a schoolboy. “Got his head chewed totally off his shoulders – you believe that? I think I do.”
“Kelvecion.” Joshua’s skin crawled.
Mr. Bermuda shorts hunkered down over his cache of drinks and lurched like Quasimodo back along the promenade. “Invisible Assassin. In-fucking-visible. You believe that? I think I do.” His shadow chased him through his door.
Joshua hurried back to his room and switched on the television; he tuned into CNN and sat on the bed. The flickering TV picture confirming his fears.
Kelvecion had been hit.
He suddenly lifted his head. If the lawyer had only recently been killed, then the crime scene should still harbor a trace of the killer. If he could get inside the house he could glean something from the aftermath that would tell him for sure whether Renegades were responsible.
As he slid the attaché case from beneath the bed and removed the gun, he caught sight of himself in the dark TV screen. This lawyer died whilst you played at let’s-be-human with the girl. He thrust the thought away and snatched the car keys off the nightstand.
Thunder rattled the panes and large splats of rain struck the window. Within thirty seconds, and before Joshua reached his car, the spits and spots became a downpour.
“Just one kid?” Salvatore Dura
nt, dressed in a bath robe, paced the carpet in front of the table where his bodyguard sat. Durant’s normally well-oiled hair was wet and straggly. A look of incredulity played on his face, but faltered, as though the muscles required for the expression were unpracticed.
Divo Serefini, a Band-Aid on both cheeks and yellow-purple bruising under his eyes, stood before his boss. Several hired heavies, each wearing a solemn expression, stood about the room. Underneath their stonewall facades brooded a certain tenseness, an unshakable belief that something stronger than they had begun to penetrate their previously impenetrable syndicate.
Serefini’s stony gaze fell upon those present, daring them to challenge him, then turned back to his Boss. “He moved fast – so much faster than-” His voice fractured with temper and shame. “I should have plugged him….minute he opened his puke-hole I should have plugged him.” His hands writhed into tight fists of frustration, his mouth twisted.
Durant gestured to one of his men. “Get him a drink.”
Appearing less than willing to approach Serefini, the guard poured whiskey and set the glass down on the table. Serefini took the glass. “He was so fast.”
Durant frowned, dabbing at his wet hair with a towel. “But he still took the contract?”
“Hell yes – unless Hector Kelvecion tore off his own head.” He knocked back the whiskey in one, slammed the glass down, took a deep breath and wiped his mouth with his knuckles. Two of his fingers were cut. He opened his mouth to say something, blinked at his boss, and then looked away.
“What is it?” Durant asked.
Serefini grasped at the air in front of him, as though he might strain the answer from the ether. “That guy…so wick…” he left the sentence unfinished. “I think maybe we’re looking too hard for the assassin.”
Durant put his towel down. “You get slapped around by the kid and now you think he’s the assassin?”
“It makes perfect sense,” he said. “They came crawling to us with nothing. Penniless kids like the rest of LA’s bums. We give them heavy contracts and all at once they’re wearing up-market rip-wear and drive seventy grand cars. They’re keeping the hit money.”