I Kill Monsters: The Revenants (Book 2)

by Tony Monchinski

  Chink-chink-chink.

  “…The old man’s gone away. Now we lie low. All we got to do.”

  “Lie low,” Hank mused. Chink-chink. “Lie low.” He looked right at Tom. “Uncle Anthony know about this?”

  “Yeah.” Tom thought about the way he felt and the way Hank sounded and wondered how Jerry was able to sit there like that with his fingers tented together not shaking, Jerry all steady. “Yeah, I talked to him.”

  “And?”

  Chink-chink-chink.

  “He’s not happy.” Tom told them the truth. “But if we need him he’ll help us.”

  “Dickie have any idea?”

  “Yeah, Hank. Gooch thinks so.”

  “Great. Fantastic. Hey—” Hank called, too loud, rude “—I get some coffee over here?”

  “Be right with you,” the waitress called back, all smiles.

  “Wake my ass up out of bed this early in the morning for this shit.” Hank tapped his mug a last time and replaced his spoon on the napkin where it’d set.

  Jerry said it as friendly as he could, in that diplomatic way he had about him: “Calm down, Hank.”

  “Leave me alone, Jerry. Let me handle this my own way.”

  “Let’s talk.” Tom visibly uncomfortable now, his stomach welling up on him.

  “What do you think we’ve been doing?” Hank asked derisively, not knowing the other three had been talking about him before he’d come in. About how he could get. How he was now.

  Tom ignored Hank, ignored his stomach. “If Dickie knows—”

  “Dickie don’t know yet,” Gaby said it like he knew it for a fact. “If Dickie knew…”

  “How you know?” Hank looked like he wanted to rip the table from its mooring and toss it across the diner. “What do you got a direct line to Dickie in the pen?”

  “If he knew,” the way Gaby said it, firm without raising his voice, silencing Hank, “We wouldn’t be sitting here right now. And, Hank, might I add, I don’t like your tone.”

  “You don’t like my tone?”

  “I know you think you’re big man with the badge and all that, but if we go away behind this? Guess who’s going to have the toughest time on the Inside?”

  That shut Hank up for a few.

  Gaby was right.

  If Dickie knew they’d robbed the Hiney, it wouldn’t have been Jerry on the phone calling him and inviting him to a diner. They would have called him up and invited him some place nice and quiet. Hank would have arrived to find himself the only guy there and before he would have been able to compute all that someone like Johnny Spasso or that Sully fuck would have stepped up behind him and—“Okay,” he agreed, “so he don’t know.”

  That other thing Gaby was alluding to, their getting caught and going to prison? Hank wouldn’t even countenance it.

  “No, he don’t know,” Gaby saw Hank saw, adding, “Yet,” because there was no denying this last part.

  The waitress set three plates of food down in front of Jerry, Hank and Tom, refilling coffee mugs that needed refilling, pouring one for Hank, remarking, “I didn’t think you wanted any, hon.”

  “I changed my mind.”

  “May I have a glass of ice, please?” Tom sounded like a little boy.

  “Sweetheart—” Hank said and the waitress looked at him, the man all rude before, now with the sweetheart “—can you leave the pot?”

  She left the carafe on the table and went back to whatever she’d been doing.

  Tom resumed their conversation. “If Heinlein thinks for a minute that Gooch, his own employee—”

  “Heinlein don’t know, not yet.” Gaby stuffed a forkful of sausage in his mouth, spoke around it. “But Gooch isn’t going to hold up.”

  “Yeah.” Tom exhaled and looked down at his food. “I know.”

  “Where is Gooch?” As if Hank had just noticed the fifth man wasn’t here now.

  “Should be at home.” Jerry bit down into his wheat toast.

  “You woke my tired ass out of bed to meet you guys here but Gooch is at home counting sheep. That makes no sense. Prick bastard is probably counting our money. And where the hell is the money anyway. Don’t tell me—Gooch’s place, right?”

  Jerry told him he was right.

  “I hate to say it.” Hank looked at each man at the table. “We should have bumped him.”

  “Bumped him?” This was exactly why Tom hadn’t wanted to bring Hank in from the start. “The hell is this—Goodfellas?”

  “I’ll give you your Goodfellas, Tom. Dickie finds out about this, whoa, that motherfucker,” Hank gave a little chuckle devoid of mirth, “he’s going to come to your place and kill you in front of your landlady.”

  “Kill, kill, kill.” Tom tried to sound a way he didn’t feel, hadn’t touched his food. “Listen, Hank. Just be quiet.”

  “Here’s that ice.” The waitress set it down and Tom thanked her. “Your food alright, hon?”

  Tom assured her it was fine, Hank trying to light a cigarette, the waitress telling him, “You can’t smoke in here.”

  “The fuck not?”

  “It’s the law.”

  “I’m the law, sweetheart.” Hank pulled his wallet out of his jacket and flipped it open to his detective shield, laid it facing up on the table. The waitress stood there looking at the badge, looking at him, thinking about how she was going to say what she was going to say next.

  “Not in here you aren’t,” Jerry reminded Hank before she could say anything to him.

  Hank scoffed, set his lighter and smokes down, shoed the waitress away with a nod and the flick of two fingers.

  “Okay, listen,” Tom poked at his meal with his fork, still made no move to put it in his mouth. “We got to keep Gooch quiet. Keep him quiet and we can get away with it.”

  Jerry put it out there for them all: “Gooch is a nervous fucking wreck—”

  “Like this guy,” Gaby nodded to Hank, Hank raising his coffee cup to salute him.

  “—I mean,” Jerry continuing, “We robbed Heinlein what? A week ago. And Gooch’s got to get up and go to work alongside him every day since then. You know Dickie brought Gooch along for his ride upstate?”

  Tom said what was on all their minds. “As long as he don’t talk.”

  “He’ll talk.” Gaby pushed his plate away, done. “One day he’ll break down and burst out crying. Or Heinlein’ll come up behind him, go boo and Gooch will spill the beans. Or Dickie’ll get wise, have Spasso or someone visit him.”

  Hank thought about it and shook his head, looked at Gaby sitting there with his empty plate. “You done with that already?” Ignored Gaby when the tall, heavy man said “I was hungry,” saying, “The fuck is Gooch going to do Johnny Spasso shows up to talk to him?”

  “Okay.” Jerry mopped up his eggs with another piece of toast. “So, what do we do.” It wasn’t a question. “And, Tom, why are you putting ice cubes in your coffee?”

  “It’s too hot.”

  “You wanted ice coffee you should have ordered iced-coffee.”

  “I didn’t want iced-coffee, Jerry.”

  “We’re going to have to kill the Hiney,” said Hank.

  “What?” Tom’s spoon froze over his mug, an ice cube on it.

  Jerry asked how.

  “Does it matter?”

  “You’re a cop,” Jerry reminded him. “Maybe you can…arrange something.”

  “This ain’t the turn of the century, Jere. I can’t just haul his ass to the basement of the police station.”

  “Yeah? What about Rodney King?”

  “He’s got a point there.” Gaby held up a finger.

  “Those guys are in jail,” Hank dismissed the both of them. “So are we we get caught. What was that you were saying about cops in prison?”

  “Dickie’s people catch us,” Gaby fingered the edge of his plate longingly, “we’re never going to see the inside of a jail.”

  “Be quiet, Gaby. I don’t see you coming up with any brilliant ideas.” />
  “You are a cop.” Gaby’s brilliant idea. “Get us another gun. A few of them.”

  “What for?”

  “Get us guns,” Gaby told him. “Like when we robbed Heinlein. You can still do that, can’t you?”

  “Damn right I can do that.” Hank thought about the storage locker in his precinct. “I can have a goddamned machine gun here tomorrow afternoon I want. Get you guys as many guns we need.”

  “Wait a second.” Tom was sitting up ramrod straight in his chair, close to losing the battle with his spinchter. “This sound like it might be going maybe just a little too far to anyone else?”

  “We’re gonna kill Heinlein, right?” Jerry all matter-of-fact.

  “Yeah,” confirmed Gaby.

  “Understand something, you guys.” Hank was much calmer now than he had been ten minutes ago when he’d come in the diner. Hank was always calm when he was planning or executing violence. It was the times in between that the man couldn’t control himself. “We don’t kill the Hiney, we die. It’s us or him. Now, it won’t be all that bad. We just keep quiet for awhile—it’s like Jerry said—then we can start spending.”

  “I’ve got to be honest,” Tom clutched his stomach, “none of this is turning out the way I’d thought.”

  “We’d a had to kill Heinlein last week,” Jerry pointed out, “You were okay with that then, right?”

  “Right. But that was a week ago. And we got away with it.”

  “Hey, you going to eat that?”

  Tom pushed his plate over to Hank, rising as he did, saying, “I mean—what are we going to do, rob him and shoot him?” Tom stood, leaning down, one hand on the table, one on his stomach. “Make it look like a robbery?”

  “Not bad.” Hank chewed and nodded.

  “Exactly, Tom,” said Gaby. “We go to his house, make it look like a break-in.”

  “And what, Gaby? ‘Bump’ him in the process?” Tom looked towards Hank as he said this last part.

  “Yes. Little louder, maybe?”

  “What about the wife?” Jerry asked.

  Hank grunted a question, his mouth stuffed.

  “The wife. What about her?”

  “Well,” Hank swallowed, gulping down some coffee. “We’re gonna have to take care of her too.”

  “Her too?” Tom couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe how it had all started, where it had gone, and where it was all going. “That’s the solution, then. Great.”

  “Keep it low,” Gaby warned. “Why you standing there anyway?”

  “Her too?” Tom looked to Jerry. “Really, Jere?”

  “Maybe we can tie her up or something.” Jerry gestured with his fork. “If she don’t see us.”

  “Dickie doesn’t know us.”

  “And?” Hank looked up at Tom.

  “Well—we are going to ‘take care of’ Heinlein, that’s what we’re deciding here isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, but so what?” Hank dabbed at the side of his mouth with his napkin. “He’s a criminal, Tom. He launders money for the fucking Mafia. He’s a scumbag.”

  “And what are we?”

  “I’ll tell you what we are, Tom.” Hank used his fork to emphasize his words. “We’re scumbags too.” The tines of his fork jabbed the air in Tom’s direction. “But the thing is, we’re rich scumbags.”

  “And I’d rather be a rich scumbag,” said Jerry, “than a dead scumbag. Any day.”

  “But the wife?”

  “What do you think, Gaby?” Hank asked the heavy man. “You think the Hiney talks to his wife, you know, about stuff?”

  “Don’t know. My wife never said much to me.”

  “Shit. We’ll figure this out tomorrow night. See, the Hiney, this guy is an asshole. We let him go with just a warning, he ain’t gonna keep his trap shut. Nuh-uh. No way.”

  “It just doesn’t sit well with me,” Tom admitted.

  “The fuck was that?” Gaby waved the air in front of him, his face scrunched up.

  “That was me.”

  “Tomorrow night, then?” Jerry was nodding his head.

  “What if something goes wrong?”

  “Look, Tom.” Disgust on Gaby’s face. “You gotta take a dump—”

  “What could go wrong?” Hank sat back, arms folded, seemingly content.

  “—go take a dump.”

  “I don’t know, but suppose something does?”

  “Worse-case scenario, something gets fucked up, we have to run.” Gaby explained how it would work. “We grab the money and we hit the road. Canada.”

  “Nah, Mexico.” Jerry had his hands tented in front of him again. “Uncle Anthony’s got people south of the border, right Tom?”

  “What? Yeah.”

  “I got a job here, guys.” Hank had taken a cigarette out of its pack, was tapping its butt on the tabletop. “I got a wife here. I don’t want to lose my job.”

  “Tell you what, Hank. We get caught—you stay here with your job and wife. See how long either lasts.”

  “I’m just saying, Jere, we can’t get caught.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Which is why,” Hank continued, “We’re going to do, what it is, we’re going to do,” he looked directly at Tom. “We all agree?”

  Tom knew what he was expected to say, knew what he had to say. “Yeah. Of course.”

  “Well,” Hank sat back in the booth. “That’s settled then. Damn waitress, I need more coffee.”

  “Excuse me.” Tom hurried off towards the men’s room, hoping he’d make it.

  35.

  10:45 A.M.

  (Central European Summer Time)

  “Maybe you should, like, you know, slow down with that stuff.”

  Big Duke’s suggestion irritated him, Boone having just snorted more meth and found himself walking back and forth across the large central room of the apartment, his eyes wide, his temple twitching.

  “Thanks for your, like, you know, concern.” Boone shot back at the man in the high-crowned, wide-brimmed hat, the unlit spliff in the side of Big Duke’s mouth. “But why don’t you worry about yourself.”

  Big Duke held his hands up, palms out.

  “If I drop this,” Damian was asking Kane, “will it explode?” The white-haired man with the star-shaped scar around one milky eye had blocks of what looked like modeling clay on the table before them. Damian had picked up one of the blocks and was studying it in his hand.

  “Let’s see.” Kane took a lump of the material from the table, rolled it into a ball in his hands and threw it against the wall, where it stuck.

  Damian nodded. “Guess not.”

  “No,” Kane was smiling to himself, amused. “I guess not.”

  Boone paced the rooms of the flat in Amsterdam, thoroughly tweaked. While most of the others had slept on the flight over, Boone had openly hit the meth, not bothering to hide it. And he’d continued to do so for the last day they’d been here. The seven of them holed up in this apartment, the idea to prep their equipment, get over the six-hour time difference, and generally prepare for the coming mayhem.

  Boone’s mouth was dry, his skin flush and he was restless as hell. He passed the door that led to where the three vampires rested, the door locked and barred from the inside, the vampires smart enough not to trust the men they were teamed with.

  How they’d found an apartment with so few windows Boone had no idea. He figured it for a vampire safe house, a place only Rainford and his allies would be aware of. The windows were either bricked up or blacked out from within. Boone wondered what they’d look like from outside.

  He passed through the kitchen, not at all interested in whatever there might be to eat, wondering fleetingly where and when the vampires would feed, how often they had to have their fix. He’d been pacing the apartment for the last few hours, restless, popping into the kitchen to snort more meth. Damian kept him supplied.

  When he came back into the room, Big Duke looked back quickly to his task, unpacking crates, propping submachine
guns up against one of the walls. Boone couldn’t read minds like Big Duke, but he knew the man would have been talking shit about him to the others while he was out of the room.

  “Composition 4’s very stable,” Kane was telling Damian as he shaped charges. “We used to burn it in Vietnam, cook our food.”

  “It wouldn’t explode?”

  “Not without a blasting cap.”

  “What are you?” Boone asked the scarred man, brushing his forearm across his runny nose. “Some kind of explosives expert?”

  Kane showed his teeth, looking like the intimidating older uncle everyone in the family knew not to fuck with. “Expert’s too strong a word.”

  The ball of plastic explosive that had stuck to the wall dislodged, thunking on the floor. Something on Boone’s head felt like it popped.

  “You were in ‘Nam?” Boone wanted to be outside and walking around, but Colson had told them to stay put in the apartment. “You have a necklace of human ears or somethin’?”

  “It served us well in Laos,” Kane ignored the ear comment, stacking one block of C4 on top of another. “It’ll serve our purposes here just as well.”

  “You can bring the castle down around all them all I care.” Big Duke had the muzzle of his Benelli shotgun pointing towards the floor. “But I’m not going to hurt the children.”

  “The fuck not?” Something in Boone’s face twitched again as he turned from the window. “They’re bloodsuckers.”

  “They’re innocent.” Big Duke fished a steel box of shotgun shells out of their equipment stacked against the wall, taking it to another folding table with the shotgun. “They’re children.”

  “They’re abominations, son.” Kane had a way of referring to anyone younger him—which meant all the other humans on this job—as son. He raised an eye from the task before him to look at Big Duke. “They’re damned.”

  “They’re still kids.”

  “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”

  “That the Bible?” Boone asked.

  “Yes it is.”

  “Amen.”

  Boone stood over Big Duke, studying the man’s belt buckle.

  “What are you looking at?” Big Duke never took his eyes off his task, thumbing shells into the shotgun’s tubular magazine.