by Carmen Faye
Once his wives were gone he got to work installing guns into hidden holsters under the couch, love-seat and large chair in the living-room. He considered putting one under the dining room table, but decided against it — his sisters might discover the weapon, and he didn't alarm them or his wives. He did put one into a holster he nailed to the wall in back of the downstairs closet, and another inside a lower kitchen cabinet.
After this was done, he cut out a section of drywall beside the front door and put the M-16, loaded and ready, into the hole. Then he covered the hole. After applying the texture and repainting, he inspected his work, and decided they wouldn't never notice it unless the paint wasn't dry by the time they got back.
He just finished cleaning up, when he heard the Shelby engine pull up outside. Checking the time, four hours had gone by. He pulled the boxes, paint and other materials into his studio, and stashed them into the closet, and then went to the kitchen to start dinner.
Chapter 24
Anton Selick was, by his own definition, a self-made man. He lived by that code. He believed that his self-importance was both justified and well earned. He rode with the Knights for sixteen years before becoming the club's president. His ruthlessness and drive was well known and feared. His goals for bringing the Knights into a higher level of power and territory were viewed by most of the membership as being not only desirable, but a long time coming.
Jacques, the previous president, acted too cautious, hesitated too much and from where Anton was looking, he cost the Knights much more than he ever brought in. Their territory not only didn't increase during his tour, they lost ground. Being stagnate was an unforgivable sin to Anton. In fact he saw it as a capital crime in a leader of men, but to lose ground — that was simply too much to bare. So Anton had no second thoughts when he pulled along-side Jacques on the highway, blew out his bike's back tire with a shotgun, sending Jacques into a uncontrollable slide, and then ran him over with the van. That Anton was then elected into the office of president was fortuitous, and not unexpected, but not the goal of removing Jacques. Anton simply couldn't sit by and watch his club, which he loved dearly, fall to shit under Jacques' spineless leadership for another day.
There were other ways he could have dealt with Jacques, but his solution was clean, direct and final.
Within the first month of taking the reins of leadership, Anton doubled their cocaine sales. Never before in the history of the club, had such an increase of revenue befallen them. There was plenty of work, and lots of territory to reclaim. The membership was happy, money poured in, life was good.
Not everyone believed his changes were good, but those who voiced such views were in the minority. His goal of taking over the Steel Highwaymen, not just their territory, but the whole club, was met with greater resistance, but not enough to deter him from continuing to takes steps in that direction.
And then, things began to fall apart. Men got arrested. The Highwaymen made several retaliations, targeting drug drops and taking product. The club's two strip clubs suffered under multiple raids for prostitution. Then, those two cunts decided to jump ship.
Anton realized, in the grand scheme of things, Shayla's and Sydney's rebellion was minor — all things considered. The bottom line, really, was timing. Everything else going on could be looked at as part of the environment; raids happened, men got arrested, and sometimes competitors won the day — but the cunts were personal.
Shayla and Sydney were the club's best movers, true, but they were much more than just coke pushers. They were, in many ways, the promotional team of the entire club. They were the glitz. They threw outrageous parties, they entertained exactly the right people. They were geniuses at putting a face on the Knights -- the face of power, prestige and romance. When two girls like those high-class pieces hung on you as if Apollo were your ugly half-brother other women bought into it, and showed up at parties too. He didn't understand how that worked, but like hundreds of other things, he didn't need to. It worked.
At their parties, major deals were realized. They were the perfect hostesses for brokering agreements with current partnerships and wooing new alliances. They were, in fact, the only diamond given to the club by Jacques. When people discovered that they were with the Knights, it gave the club clout.
Then, they decided to stop. Just fucking stop. Everything going on could have been mitigated with the right spins, except them. When they cut back on their sales, going only for their stables and regulars, they not only took away four to five kilos of sales a week, they also took away an effective business environment. Clients and partners expected the entertainment provided by Shayla and Sydney. Losing them was like cutting off the club's cock.
If everything else wasn't going on, perhaps he could seek out and recruit, what basically amounted to, a new public relations team. As it was, it was worse than losing any member or group of members. The perception was that the cunts were turning their backs on him; declaring that the Knights were no longer a power.
He doubted that the cunts actually understood their political importance — they were fucking party pussies. Prime pussies, but still just fucking cunts — and he wasn't about to make the mistake of confessing their importance.
Now, on top of their rebellion, Neil, one of his best men and a serious son-of-a-bitch, with a ton of respect in the club, backed the cunt's play. It was like being thrown into ice water just before orgasm. It was completely unexpected. It was bad enough that the cunts were pulling the rug out from under him, without a patch-holder like Neil giving his support.
From that point, things just went wrong, again and again. Now he couldn't even sit in a fucking chair!
Being the president, he forgot something. Something basic. In fact, he forgot what got him here. He thought that a political problem required a political solution, instead of remembering that politics only worked between reasonable people. Jacques was not a reasonable person, and Anton didn't hesitate to deal with as required. When the Gomez brothers went to the Highwaymen, he didn't hesitate to deal with them in the same manner.
He hesitated with the girls. He let their importance to the club blind him to the danger of allowing them to get away with it — daily. Every day they were allowed to live, their threat and importance grew. Neil, was now the same level of threat. Just living — doing nothing else but breathing — he was undermining Anton's leadership. Hell, he had drug runners refusing deliveries on a regular basis now. Their sales were less now than when he started!
The cunts and Neil both, had to be dealt with. Which was why he was on Skype talking to Simon Grimm.
"I have a job for you. Something that is in line with your expertise." Anton told him, laying on his stomach in bed, looking at Simon's light colored, featureless face. The man was about as unremarkable as a man could be.
Simon leaned forward in the screen and for a moment Anton was sure the little mole rat was going to hang up, but then he passed and said calmly, "I was contacted by Juan, and Anthony. Are there details they would not have given me?" Simon asked him.
"Perhaps the level of urgency," Anton told him.
"Everyone who wants someone else dead, believes it to be urgent," Simon told him with a bored voice. "You do not have addresses? From what I gathered, you are not even sure if they are still in Miami."
"True," Anton admitted, because what would be the point of downplaying his position to an assassin?
"Fifty-thousand each," Simon told him.
"Fifty-thousand? I was told that you were expensive, not unreasonable," Anton told him.
Simon shrugged and said, "Then we have nothing to talk about." Then began to reach for his keyboard.
"Wait," Anton told him.
"Yes?" Simon said, with that same bored voice.
"Fine, fifty each," Anton told him.
"I'll give you my bank transfer information then, and after you have paid, then send me to this same address, all of the information you have on the targets," Simon said, as if having Anton a
gree to pay him $150k was no more important than the choice of a breakfast cereal.
"You expect me to pay you up front?" Anton asked.
"Your credit is shit," Simon told him. "I know you can't use club funds for this. I know that your personal funds probably can't cover this as well. So, yes, definitely. Even if your credit was perfect however, and you could show me the cash in your hungry fist right now — I demand upfront payment. Afterward, I will not discuss the matter with you. They will be dead. There will be nothing to discuss."
Fuck, Anton thought to himself. The bastard was right. He couldn't use club funds for this, and he didn't have $150k to pay up front.
"Is there a problem?" Simon asked, only mildly curious.
"Let's start with one. If that works out, then I'll pay you for the other two at the same time," Anton tried.
Simon shrugged again, and damn if he didn't look like he was about to yawn as well, "Certainly. After all, my reputation and references are pristine. Which one?"
"Neil. Neil Jackson. He'll be with the girls, I'm fairly sure," Anton told him.
"Fine. And if you decide not to follow up, do not worry about it. I understand that sometimes, plans change. No harm, no foul," Simon assured him.
"I think it's too late for alterations or profitable changes. This is damage control," Anton admitted.
Simon gave him the banking information to make the deposit into Simon's account, which he did right there while Simon waited. Once Simon agreed that his bank had the transfer information, Anton then sent the computer document with all of the information the club had on Neil.
"Good," Simon told him. "It will probably take about a week. Maybe less."
"I've been looking for four weeks now," Anton told him.
"I doubt they are hiding," Simon told him, and this time he did give a little yawn. "He's shot you three times now, yes? Retired from your membership? He's not afraid of you. I doubt he thinks about you at all."
You mother-fucking-son-of-a-bitch, Anton thought, but there was something in the man's manner which kept him from voicing this outrage. "I hope you are right," he managed to say.
Simon's lips gave just the barest hint of a smile, "Then our business is concluded until you deem it time to progress to the next two."
The Skype connection closed.
Chapter 25
Simon Grim spent a great deal of effort on being invisible. Few people remembered him even after talking to him at length. He had the face of every man on the street. He was a psychic blank moving through the world untouched and unhindered. He has walked past police protection and killed men in hospital beds, and then walked away with little or no resistance. He has walked through the front door into the homes of targets, confronted them in their living rooms and shot them in the head, before the victim was sure there was a threat. He simply did not appear dangerous, or remarkable, or memorable.
It was like they died of nothing.
Looking over the information given to him, he disregarded most of it, like known addresses, and the safe-house listed near downtown. Neil Jackson was not a killer per-se, but he was savage. He would have a predator's instincts. He was likely unconcerned with Anton or his thoughts of malice, but he would not disregard them either. He would be informed, cunning, and prepared. Neil Jackson would not be taken by surprise. He was not a man whose house Simon could simply walk into, without encountering immediate and lethal resistance, any more than he could expect to walk up to a tiger and give it a pat on the head. He was, in fact, Simon's preferred game.
According to the file, he was six-foot-four and close to three-hundred pounds. He acted as an enforcer for most of his time with the Knights, and as a drug runner as well. The image of him showed a man who could probably rip another man in half, if he was threatened enough to do so.
What made him dangerous, however, were his eyes. They were calm pools of iron. They were the eyes of someone who knew he was at the top of the food chain. They were not arrogant, simply certain. They had the certainty of long experience and a history of successful dealings with violent situations. This did not concern Simon too much. After all, he wasn't a violent man. He did not create violent situations, or pose any threat. He simply killed people. Death was not violent, quite the opposite in fact. Next to sleep, death was the most calm, non-threatening state a human being could be in.
The file suggested that he was living with both Shayla Carson and Sydney Dane, and that he protected both of them with deadly force. Looking at the images of the two women, he wondered about their relationship. According to Anton's rather indelicate description, it was rumored that Neil was the lover of both of these women, and that the relationship was more than a Ménage a Trois — there was strong suggestion that perhaps there were deep feelings involved, which interested him, as all facets of human relationships interested him.
He began his search on the phone and going through public records on the computer. Finding nothing the first day, he began to think a little creatively, and checked public records for Shayla Carson and Sydney Dane. There he struck gold. According to a new court decision, both women had recently changed their last names to Jackson. It was no wonder that Anton had not found them, he was looking for the wrong people.
Spending the rest of the afternoon hunting through other records in the County Recorder's office, he uncovered the purchase of a condo by Shayla and Sydney Jackson, which ironically, was only a few blocks from his own condo.
Loading up his car with his rifle and his hunting pack, he drove over to the area, and scouted out the streets. The condo he discovered was one of the nicer ones in the area. The large windows in front certainly looked promising. Looking behind him, the apartment complex roof top, two stories up, and protected by a facade lip-wall, gave perfect protection and vantage. The only trouble would be the mirroring reflection of the condo's windows. He would have to do this in the evening, when lights were on inside.
He spent the next hour examining the terrain, planning out his escape route, and locating access to the roof. After that, he felt that he had been in the area too long, so he would wait another day. He was in no hurry. Tomorrow, the next day, next month, it didn't matter to him. Neil Jackson was already dead. Neil just didn't know it yet.
When Simon returned to his car, he decided that tomorrow, Friday evening, around seven o'clock would be fine. While it didn't matter when, there was also no reason to prolong the event either. The sooner he was finished, the sooner he could return to writing and illustrating his children's books.
Simon slept well that night, and worked casually on his illustrations the next day in his art room. He ate an early vegetarian dinner and then walked back out to his car at six o'clock, and drove over to Neil's neighborhood. There, he took his rifle case, which looked like a guitar case, and his royal blue day pack, up the flight of stairs, to the roof access of the apartment building. He encountered two couples on his way, who forgot him as soon as he passed.
On the roof, he took out his binoculars and studied the inside of Neil's condo through the large, well-lit windows. There he found five people. Two young girls, early teens, two women, and Neil himself. They were sitting down to dinner. The women were setting the table with take-out food put into nice dishware. The girls were helping with drinks and the youngest put a vase of flowers in the middle of the table. It was all domestic. Simon was looking at a perfectly normal family evening — except for the fact that the man had two wives.
He wondered who the girls were. They were blond, but didn't resemble either Sydney, who looked like a living Barbie Doll, or a Playboy centerfold, or Shayla, who had a haunting and vulnerable beauty. After some time, he came to the conclusion that they were Neil's, but probably siblings, rather than daughters. The face of the eldest girl resembled his same studious attention, and calm assurance.
Simon paused, wondering if he should wait for tomorrow. The condo was obviously a three bedroom, at least, but he didn't believe the girls lived there with Neil. The fee
l and body language told Simon that this was a special occasion. A visitation with their older brother. The youngest of the girls obviously had a bit of hero worship going on with her elder brother. Simon's studied eye could see it in the way she continuously stole glances at him. She also seemed attached to Shayla. Perhaps killing Neil at such a moment would be too much violence. The death would be quick, even painless; an AK-47 round to the forehead, and one to the heart. A second at most. The tinkle of glass from the window might be heard, perhaps. But then... screaming.
Simon meditated on this violent aftermath for some time. His preference was for instant, and unexcited deaths. The less noteworthy, the better. He came to the conclusion, however, that the aftermath couldn't be avoided. Even without the two girls there, the women would still react in the same dramatic and keening way. He would just have to settle for a death so quiet and sudden, that their reactions would be after a long moment of wonder, and then shock. So he opened his case and took out the AK-47, loaded it with a clip, and then sighted through the high-powered scope.