by AnonYMous
Hubal monks value peace above most qualities, but they practise martial arts from childhood. To Kyle and Peto, therefore, taking out a couple of drunken thugs was child’s play (almost literally, given the monks’ upbringing), even if the men were pointing guns at them. Both monks reacted right on cue, and with bewildering speed. Without a sound, each ducked down and thrust his right leg between the legs of the man facing him. Each then hooked his leg behind his opponent’s knee and spun round. Taken completely by surprise, and bewildered by the speed of the assault, Jericho and Rusty managed no more than an astonished yelp as the monks whipped their pistols away from them. Almost immediately there followed a couple of thudding sounds as both men fell backwards to the floor, which shook. From being in a position of power only a second earlier, both were now lying flat on their backs staring up at the ceiling. Worse, from their point of view, the two monks were now pointing their own guns at them. Kyle stepped forward and placed one pointed black boot on Jericho’s chest to keep him from getting to his feet. Peto didn’t bother to copy him, simply because Rusty had hit his head so hard when he fell that it was unlikely that he even knew where he was any more.
‘So, do you know where the Bourbon Kid is, or not?’ Kyle asked, pushing his foot into Jericho’s chest.
‘Fuck you!’
BANG!
Kyle’s face was suddenly freckled with blood. He looked to his left and saw smoke drifting from the muzzle of Peto’s gun. The younger monk had shot Rusty in the face. There was an almighty mess all over the floor and all over both of the monks.
‘Peto! What did you do that for?’
‘I’m … I’m sorry, Kyle, but I’ve never used a gun before. It just kind of went off when I squeezed the trigger.’
‘They tend to do that, you know,’ Kyle answered, though not unkindly.
Peto was trembling so much he could barely keep his grip on the revolver, such was the shock that had engulfed him. He had just killed a man, something he had believed he would never do. Ever. Yet, anxious not to let Kyle down, he did his best to put the killing to the back of his mind. That wasn’t going to be easy, however, what with all the blood everywhere acting as a constant reminder.
For his part, Kyle was more concerned by the fact that their credibility was taking a pounding, and was grateful that the bar was not full.
‘Honestly, I can’t take you anywhere,’ he said, tutting.
‘Sorry.’
‘Peto, do me a favour.’
‘Of course. What?’
‘Stop pointing that thing at me.’
Peto lowered the gun. Relieved, Kyle returned to his interrogation of Jericho. The three men at the middle table had turned their backs on the action and were carrying on with their drinks as if what was happening was perfectly normal. Kyle still stood over the surviving lowlife on the floor, boot on chest.
‘Listen, friend,’ he said reasonably. ‘All we want to know is where we can find the Bourbon Kid. Can you help us or not?’
‘No, goddammit!’
BANG!
Jericho screamed and grabbed his right leg, which was now spurting blood in several directions from a bullet wound just below the knee. Once again, there was smoke rising from Peto’s gun barrel.
‘S-s-sorry, Kyle,’ the novice stammered, ‘it just went off again. Honestly, I didn’t mean to …’
Kyle shook his head in exasperation. They had now killed one man and wounded another. Not exactly the most discreet way to go about retrieving the precious blue stone men called the Eye of the Moon. Although to be fair, he thought, and even though he was the senior of the two monks, he too was nervous about being out of Hubal, so he accepted that Peto was probably twice as jittery.
‘It doesn’t matter. Just try not to do it again.’
Jericho’s cursing was turning the air blue by this time as he writhed in agony on the floor, with Kyle’s boot still pinning him down by the chest.
‘I don’t know where the Bourbon Kid is, I swear,’ he yelled hoarsely.
‘Want me to get my friend to shoot you again?’
‘No, no! Please, I swear I don’t know where he is. I’ve never seen him. Please, you gotta believe me!’
‘All right. Do you know anything about the theft of a precious blue stone known as the Eye of the Moon?’
Jericho stopped writhing for a moment, which told them that he did know something.
‘Yeah. Yeah I do,’ he winced. ‘A guy name of El Santino is after it. He’s offerin’ large sums of money to anyone who can get it for him. But that’s all I know. I swear.’
Kyle took his boot off Jericho’s chest and walked back to the bar. He picked up his untouched glass and took a swig before following Peto’s lead and spitting it out in disgust. The only difference was that he spat it all over Sanchez.
‘You might want to get some fresh water in here, I think this stuff has gone bad,’ he suggested to the bemused and dripping bartender. ‘Come on, Peto. Let’s go.’
‘Wait,’ said Peto. ‘Ask them about the other guy – Jefe. Do they know where we might find him?’
Kyle looked at Sanchez, who was wiping the piss from his face with a dirty rag that might once have been white.
‘Bartender, have you ever heard of a guy named Jefe who lives around these parts?’
Sanchez shook his head. He had heard of Jefe, but he wasn’t in the business of snitching, or certainly not to strangers, anyway. Besides, even though he knew who Jefe was, he had never actually met him. The man was renowned as a bounty hunter who travelled the world. True, he was rumoured to be spending time in Santa Mondega at the moment, but as yet he had not set foot in the Tapioca. And that, as far as Sanchez was concerned, was a blessing.
‘I don’t know no one. Now fuck off outta my bar.’
The two monks had left without another word. Good riddance to them, too, Sanchez thought. Cleaning blood from the floors of the Tapioca was one of his least favourite tasks. Now, thanks to two strangers whom he should have told to get lost the minute they showed up, he was going to have to do just that.
He headed out back to the kitchen area to fetch a mop and a bucket of water, and returned just in time to see another man enter the Tapioca. Another stranger, in fact. Tall. Well built. Dressed oddly, he noted. So were the last two creeps. It really was going to be a shitty day. Sanchez had had enough of it already, and it was only early afternoon. He had one dead guy lying on the floor with his brains spattered all over the barroom, and another guy with a bullet wound to his leg. The police would have to be called, although not for a while yet, at least.
After wrapping an old rag tightly around the bullet wound in Jericho’s leg and helping him to his feet, Sanchez made his way back behind the bar to serve his latest customer. Jericho hoisted himself up on to a stool at the bar and sat there quietly. He wasn’t about to make the mistake of picking on the latest stranger to enter the Tapioca.
Sanchez picked up a clean(ish) dishcloth and wiped the blood from his hands as he took a look at his new customer.
‘What’ll it be, stranger?’
The man had taken a seat on the stool next to Jericho. He was wearing a heavy black sleeveless leather jacket that was part-way unbuttoned, showing off a richly tattooed chest and a large silver crucifix. He had matching black leather pants, big black boots, thick black hair and, to top it all off, the blackest eyes Sanchez had ever seen. And in those parts, that’s very black indeed.
He ignored Sanchez and picked a cigarette out from a thin paper packet he had placed on the bar in front of him. He flicked the cigarette up into the air and, without moving, caught it in his mouth. A second later he produced a flaming match from out of thin air, lit the cigarette and flicked the match at Sanchez, all in one swift movement.
‘I’m looking for someone,’ he said.
‘And I serve drinks,’ Sanchez replied. ‘Now, you gonna order, or what?’
‘Give me a whisky.’ Then he added, ‘Give me piss an’ I’ll kill ya.’
Sanchez was unsurprised to note a distinctly gravel element in the voice. He poured out a whisky and placed the glass on the bar in front of the stranger.
‘Two dollars.’
The man tossed back the drink and slammed the empty glass down on the bar.
‘I’m looking for a man named El Santino. He here?’
‘Two dollars.’
There was an uneasy moment of ‘will he pay or won’t he?’ before the man pulled a five-dollar bill from a small pocket at the waist of his jacket. He placed it on the bar, still holding on to one end of it. Sanchez pulled at the other end of the note, but the man held on.
‘I’m supposed to meet a man named El Santino in this bar. Do you know him?’
Shit, Sanchez thought wearily. Everybody’s looking for somebody or some-fuckin’-thing today. First two oddball killer creeps come asking about the Bourbon Kid – the name made him shudder inwardly – and some fuckin’ blue stone and that bounty-hunter guy, Jefe, and then another fuckin’ stranger comes askin’ about El-shitface-Santino. But he kept his thoughts to himself. ‘Yeah, I know him,’ was all he said.
The man let go of his five-dollar bill and Sanchez snatched it away. As he rang up the sale on the cash register, one of the regulars, as was customary, began interrogating the newcomer.
‘What the fuck you want with El Santino?’ called out one of the three men from his seat at the table near the bar. The leather-clad stranger did not answer straight away. This was the cue for Jericho to get up from the barstool he had been resting on, and hobble out. He had seen enough action for one day, and he wasn’t crazy about being shot again, especially as one of the thieving bastard monks had waltzed off with his pistol. He limped over the dead body of his friend Rusty on the way out and made a conscious decision not to go back to the Tapioca for a while.
Once Jericho had gone, the big black-eyed stranger at the bar finally decided to answer the question he had been asked.
‘I got something El Santino wants,’ he said, without actually looking around to see whom he was addressing.
‘Well, you can give it to me. I’ll pass it on to him for you,’ one of the men at the table replied. His companions guffawed.
‘Can’t do that.’
‘Sure you can.’ The tone was decidedly menacing.
There was a clicking noise, very much like the sound of someone cocking the hammer on a revolver. The stranger at the bar sighed and took a long drag on his cigarette. All three of the lowlifes at the table got up and took seven or eight paces towards the bar. Still he didn’t turn round, though they had stopped right behind him.
‘What’s your name?’ asked the one in the middle, ominously. Sanchez knew this guy only too well. He was a sneaky little fucker with bushy black eyebrows and eyes that didn’t match. His left eye was dark brown, but his right had a colour all its own, a colour someone had once described as ‘snake-like’. His two comrades, Spider and Studley, both appeared to be slightly taller than him, but this may have been because both wore grubby cowboy hats that had seen better days. These two men weren’t the problem, though. They were the balls; it was the cock in the middle with the weird eye that was the trouble. Marcus the Weasel was a small-time thief, mugger and rapist. Now he prodded a small pistol into the stranger’s back. ‘I asked you a question,’ he said. ‘What’s your name, chief?’
‘Jefe. My name is Jefe.’ Fuck, thought Sanchez, hearing the name.
‘Jefe?’
‘Yeah. Jefe.’
‘Hey, Sanchez,’ Marcus called to the bartender. ‘Weren’t those two monks looking for a man named Jefe?’
‘Yeah.’ The bartender had decided to be at his most monosyllabic.
Jefe took a long drag on his cigarette, then turned to face his interrogator and slowly exhaled, blowing a lungful of smoke right into Marcus’s face.
‘Did you say “monks”?’
‘Yeah,’ said Marcus trying not to cough. ‘Two monks. They left just before you came in. You probably walked right past them.’
‘I didn’t walk past no fuckin’ monks.’
‘Sure. Whatever you say.’
‘Look, boy, do yourself a favour. Tell me where I can find El Santino.’
Marcus the Weasel moved the pistol away and pointed it in the air for a moment. Then he lowered it again, aiming it at the end of Jefe’s nose.
‘Like I said, why don’t you just give me what you have and I’ll pass it on to El Santino for you, eh … chief?’
Jefe dropped his cigarette on the floor and slowly raised his hands in surrender to Marcus, all the while grinning as though he was in on some private joke. He placed his hands behind his head, then slowly slid them down to the back of his neck.
‘Well now,’ said Marcus. ‘I’ll give you three seconds to show me what you’ve got for El Santino. One … two … ‘
THUD. Simultaneously both Spider and Studley, who had been standing on either side of their odd-eyed companion, fell to the floor. Marcus made the mistake of looking down. Both were lying on the floor, stone dead, each with a short, heavy, double-edged knife sticking out of his throat. When he looked back up he realized that his gun was no longer in his hand. It was now in Jefe’s possession and being pointed at him. Marcus gulped. This guy was fast. And deadly.
‘Say,’ offered the Weasel, acutely aware of his own survival instincts, ‘why don’t I take you to see El Santino?’ Be generous, he silently reminded himself.
‘Sure. That’d be great,’ Jefe grinned. ‘But first, why don’t you buy us a couple of whiskies?’
‘Be glad to.’
After dragging the bodies of Rusty, Spider and Studley out to the backyard and dumping them where no one would easily spot them, the two men sat and drank whisky for the next couple of hours. Marcus did most of the talking. He was doing his best tour-guide impression, providing Jefe with the lowdown on the best places to go for a good time. He also warned his new buddy of the places and people most likely to rip him off. Jefe humoured Marcus by pretending to be interested in what he had to say, when in actual fact all he wanted was a drinking partner, one who was paying for all the drinks. Luckily for Marcus, when they had moved the bodies out back he had had the forethought to help himself to Studley’s billfold and the three dollars that Spider had in his shirt pocket. The billfold was full of notes, so he had enough money to sustain their drinking for a couple of days.
By early evening Jefe was very drunk, and neither he nor Marcus had noticed that the Tapioca had become quite busy. There were still plenty of tables and chairs going unused, but there were many customers – regulars – lurking in the shadows. Somehow, word had spread that Jefe was carrying something worth a lot of money. He had earned himself a reputation as a man to be feared, but he was not well known in these parts. And he was now very drunk, making him a prime candidate for the many muggers and thieves that frequented the Tapioca.
As it turned out, what happened to Jefe later that night would prove to be the catalyst for everything that followed. Which was mainly murders.
Four
Detective Miles Jensen arrived in Santa Mondega with a reputation. All the other cops disliked him already. To them, he was one of those trendy, new-age detectives. Probably never seen a real day’s action in his life, they thought. They were wrong, of course, but he had better things to do with his time than waste it trying to justify his position to a bunch of inbred scumbags like the cops on the beat in Santa Mondega.
The reason they took him for a phoney was there for all to see in his job title: Chief Detective of Supernatural Investigations. A waste of taxpayers’ money if ever there was one. It hadn’t been a problem when he was on someone else’s beat but now he was on theirs, and he was probably earning a truckload more than most of them. There was nothing they could do about it though, and they knew it. Jensen had been assigned to Santa Mondega by the Government of the United States. Normally the US Government couldn’t give a damn about what went on in Santa Mondega, but recently something h
ad happened that had made it sit up and take notice.
That ‘something’ was a series of five gruesome murders, and although that was nothing new in those parts, the manner in which the victims had been killed was highly significant. All five victims had been killed in the same ritualistic way. Murders like these had not been seen since the week leading up to the legendary Bourbon Kid massacre of five years earlier. Most murder victims in Santa Mondega were killed by gunmen or knife-wielding maniacs, but not these five. They had been killed by something else – something not entirely human. This fact ensured that the case was serious enough for Miles Jensen to be assigned to it, working on his own, with no help from anyone else.
Like so many of the buildings in the city centre, the Santa Mondega police headquarters was a decaying mess. It looked like an early-twentieth-century building that had probably been the pride of the city in its day. In comparison with most of the other police headquarters that Jensen had visited in his time, it ranked very poorly.
The interior had at least been modernized to some extent. Rather than early twentieth century, like the exterior, it had an early nineteen-eighties feel to it. The layout was much as one would expect to see in an old TV cop show like Hill Street Blues. Obviously, this wasn’t ideal, but Jensen had to admit to himself that he had seen plenty worse.
Check-in at reception – often painfully slow, in his experience – was remarkably simple in this new precinct. The young female receptionist merely took a glance at his badge and his letter of authority and advised him to make his way up to Captain Rockwell’s office, to which she breezily gave him directions. It was always good to know he was expected.
As he made his way through the building to the Captain’s office, Jensen felt the eyes of the other officers, each and every one of them, burning into his back. This happened every time he was reassigned. Other cops hated him, and that was that. There was nothing that he could do about it, or at least not in the early days of an assignment. In Santa Mondega, however, his case wasn’t really helped by the fact that he appeared to be the only black man on the force. This was a town full of people from all walks of life and many nationalities or races, yet there seemed to be hardly any black people. Maybe the blacks had more sense than to settle in such a shit-hole, or maybe they just weren’t welcome. Only time would tell, he thought.