The Big O (A Screwball Noir)

by Declan Burke

  Worst of all, though, was the bowel-loosening realisation – one not helped by the intermittent spatter of what Frank believed to be gunfire – the realisation that he was to be handed over to some ruthless maverick called Rossi, and that his life had spun irretrievably out of control.

  Frank, still blind, stumbled into Doyle, who had pulled up short. He heard a nasal voice say: ‘That’s Frank?’

  He pawed at his face with his free hand, wiped the mud from his eyes. Then wished he hadn’t.

  Karen

  ‘Let her go, Rossi,’ Karen ordered.

  Rossi, not hearing her, said again: ‘That’s Frank?’

  Karen, palms up, arms outspread, advanced cautiously down the incline towards the lake. She was aware of Doyle and Frank behind her; to her left was Ray, squirming in the mud, all choked up behind clenched teeth. She half-slid past Anna, the girl prone and lifeless, but Karen kept her eyes on Madge, the shuddering shoulders, hearing her sob.

  ‘Don’t do anything stupid, Rossi,’ she said. ‘Let her go.’

  But then Karen realised, as Madge turned towards her, sniffling, that it was Madge releasing Rossi….

  She turned all the way into Karen’s arms. ‘I’m okay, Karen. Really.’

  ‘Now you are,’ Karen said. Saying this while she patted Madge on the back, then on the hip. Then Madge’s ribs, bringing her hand around the front so Madge was between Rossi and the blue-steel .44 in Karen’s jacket pocket….

  Rossi saying: ‘You’re telling me that skangy fuck is Frank?’

  Rossi

  Rossi, waiting on Frank to show up, had been expecting something else. Not this sad sack of shit with shaky knees making a noise like a punctured frog.

  ‘How come he’s handcuffed?’ he said.

  ‘He’s under arrest,’ Doyle said. ‘And my advice to you is, put the gun down and make things easy on yourself.’

  ‘Make it easy on you, y’mean.’

  ‘Rossi Callaghan, I am arresting you for aggravated assault, unlawful detention, intent to ––’

  A bullet sang out and struck the cottage about five feet from Doyle’s head, showering cop and captive with tiny splinters. Frank squealed and shrank away. Doyle, Rossi was impressed, shuddered but then just wrinkled her nose and sniffed hard.

  ‘Frank?’ he said. ‘How’re you doing? I’m Rossi and first off I’m personally arranging for you to be fucked up the ass precisely seventeen times by some needle junkies. Then we’re going to play buckwheats. Ever heard of buckwheats?’

  Frank, bewildered, shook his head.

  ‘Well,’ Rossi said, ‘you take a gun ….’

  Except Frank keeled over long before Rossi hit the punchline, leaving Doyle tilted over at an angle, her arm straight. Rossi said, to Karen: ‘Where’s the money?’

  ‘In the van.’

  ‘You want to, y’know, go get it? So we can all crack on?’

  ‘If you want it, you go get it.’

  Rossi thought that over and realised, hey, it wasn’t such a bad idea. ‘Okay,’ he said.

  Off to his right, still sprawled in the mud, Ray ground out one word from between clenched teeth: ‘Six.’

  Rossi glanced across, saw that Ray was still a long way from his Glock. He turned back to Karen. She was, he thought, a brand new Karen – calm, poised, in control. Rossi was intrigued.

  ‘So where’s the Ducati?’ he said. ‘That in the van too?’

  ‘There’s no Ducati, Rossi. The Ducati’s gone.’

  ‘Six!’ Ray screeched.

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘I traded it in. It was a gas-guzzling pile of flashy crap. Joy-riders wouldn’t be seen dead on it.’

  Rossi digested that, then let it slide: half a million would buy him any amount of Ducatis. Karen said: ‘And by the way – the money? There’s only two hundred grand. But that’s Frank’s fault. He fucked up with the insurance company.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘It’s true,’ Doyle confirmed. ‘You can ring them if you want.’

  ‘You want me to ––’

  ‘Six!’ Ray bawled, then lunged to his left, screaming in pain.

  Rossi swivelled, pointed the .22. ‘One more word and I’ll blow your fucking – shit.’

  Because Ray was past hearing, was scrabbling – and Rossi had to admire the guy’s balls, if not his smarts – the guy crawling towards the Glock. If he was a gambling man, Rossi thought as he strode towards Ray, he’d have bet the Glock wouldn’t fire anyway, not after falling in a mucky puddle. But he wasn’t taking any chances. He booted Ray under the chin. Ray collapsed with a grunt.

  Rossi tucked the Glock into his belt. All this crap, he fumed, when all he’d wanted all along was his stash, the Ducati. And he was pretty sure Karen wouldn’t have the .44 either.

  Except, as he turned back towards her, Rossi realised Karen did have his .44. Pointing it now from behind Madge – Christ, taking liberties – pointing his own rod at Rossi.

  Rossi stared her in the eye.

  ‘Six,’ she said.

  Madge

  Madge, still clinging to Karen, heard Rossi say: ‘You’re asking me to fire down on a woman?’

  Madge felt herself being eased to one side by Karen. She stepped away and turned, wiping at her streaming eyes, and realised she was at home, asleep and deep in a nightmare in which Karen and Rossi were pointing guns at one another, Karen holding hers with both hands. Saying now, to Rossi: ‘Even if you wanted to, you couldn’t.’

  ‘That’s my .44, Karen. You traded in the Ducati, okay. But this is about principles. I mean, it’s my fucking gun.’

  ‘Take it.’

  Rossi advanced up the slope, his small gun still angled at Karen.

  ‘Six,’ Karen said.

  ‘What?’ Rossi said, still moving, slipping sideways now on the greasy turf.

  ‘Three at Ray. One for Anna. One at the cottage.’

  ‘That’s five,’ Rossi smirked.

  ‘And one when Anna howled in the van. That’s six.’ Karen took one hand off the butt of the .44 to cock it. ‘Get your hands out wide,’ she said.

  Rossi stopped, slid backwards a little. He looked down at his gun, shook his head. Saying, in a whisper Madge could barely hear: ‘Piece-a-fucking-crap….’

  He tucked the small gun away in his pocket, beckoned with his fingers. ‘That’s my .44, Karen.’

  ‘So you keep saying.’

  ‘You even fired a gun before?’

  ‘Why would that matter?’

  ‘Because holding a Magnum like that, you’d bust your wrist on the recoil. This is presuming it’s even loaded. And I’m guessing it’s not.’

  ‘Is that a fact?’

  Rossi nodded, began advancing again.

  ‘I’ll do it, Rossi,’ Karen warned.

  ‘In front of a cop? You’d fire down on a defenceless man in cold blood?’ Rossi grinned, still inching forward. ‘Not a chance. You care too much, Karen. Know what I mean?’

  Karen smiled in return. Leaned back, braced her feet in the mud.

  Madge closed her eyes.

  Ray

  Ray, his vision blurred, watched two .44s sail out over both of Rossi’s heads in an arc so high the two Rossis had time to turn and watch the .44s plunk down into the lake.

  The Rossis turned back to both Karens, saying: ‘For that I take all the money.’

  Ray’s vision blurring up thickly, as if someone had rubbed Vaseline into his eyes, so he could see little more than shades of grey. Then it cleared, came back in less blurred. Or maybe, he thought, he was crying. The arm, Christ, busted again, this time above the elbow; worse, no exit wound meant the round had lodged in bone, and Ray’d know all about that once the adrenaline rush wore off….

  Karen saying to Rossi: ‘That wasn’t the plan. You said, if we brought Frank, we’d work something out.’

  ‘Plan?’ Rossi flicked his head in Ray’s direction. ‘What about Elvis there, waving his cannon around? Or the hound trying to rip my throat o
ut? You see what I’m saying.’

  Then he sauntered across to Ray, hunkered down. ‘Where’s the keys, Ray?’

  Ray, his teeth clenched, just about managed a shrug. Rossi dug the Glock out of his belt, reversed it and hefted it by the barrel.

  ‘We can do this clean, Ray. Your call.’

  Ray weighed it up, looking past Rossi to where Madge had huddled in beside Karen, Karen on her knees beside the prone Anna. Hearing the squelching, the laboured breathing, of Doyle lugging Frank down the incline. He gritted his teeth. ‘In the ignition,’ he said.

  Rossi frisked him, found Ray’s phone, slipped it into his pocket. ‘Tell you what,’ Rossi said. ‘You got balls. So I’ll leave the van anywhere you want. What d’you say?’

  Ray just stared. Rossi shrugged.

  ‘Don’t try to find me, Ray. No kidding. You won’t even see me coming.’

  He strolled across to Karen and Madge, doing the rounds, picking up their mobile phones, Doyle’s too. Those he chucked into the lake. Then he stood over Frank. Ray watching it happen, helpless.

  Doyle, who’d been speaking to Karen, saw it late; stood up to block Rossi off. Except Rossi tripped her up, sent her sprawling backwards into the mud, and then braced himself, taking aim at Frank’s head.

  Frank screaming now, hoarse….

  Then Madge came in from one side to grab the Glock’s barrel, tug it down.

  Ray, relieved, closed his eyes and breathed out.

  Then opened them again to see Madge pointing the Glock at Frank.

  Madge

  ‘Don’t do it, Madge,’ Karen said.

  ‘Put the gun down, Madge,’ Doyle said.

  ‘Don’t jerk it,’ Rossi said. ‘Just squeeze.’

  ‘No!’ Frank screamed. ‘Jesus Christ, no!’

  ‘You’re rotten to the core, Frank,’ Madge said. ‘To the fucking genes. Liz and Jeanie, Israel here….’

  ‘Madge – how many fucking times? It’s Rossi, and my mother’s name is Shirley.’

  ‘ … but not me, Frank. There’s nothing rotten about me. Not one damn thing. You tried to ruin me, pump your poison in and make me rotten too. It didn’t work, Frank. And you’d want to hear the story I’m working on right now for when I see my first judge. One, you shot Ray because you were jealous, he was fucking me blind. Two ––’

  ‘If you’re going to do it,’ Rossi said, ‘just do it.’

  So she did it.

  With the weight of the gun, the shock of the kick-back, the first round shattered Frank’s shin. The second round, Madge’s finger twitching instinctively, would have taken his head off if the Glock hadn’t jammed.

  Rossi took the Glock away. Madge let it go, felt a jag of pain in her wrist.

  ‘That’s your thing with the Glock,’ Rossi said. ‘They’re temperamental bastards.’ Then, to Karen, who was still hunched over Anna: ‘All I wanted was the bike back, Karen. The .44. The stash. I mean, they were mine. You see what I’m saying.’

  Madge thought she’d been electrocuted. Staring past the detective to where Frank lay passed out in the mud, Madge was palpitating. She met the cop’s eye.

  ‘Hi,’ the cop said. ‘I’m Detective Doyle. That story about you screwing Ray? It might need a little work.’

  ‘By the way,’ Rossi said to Karen. ‘The truffles? You’re welcome.’

  Then he slip-slithered up the incline, around the side of the cottage, and was gone.

  Karen

  Karen looped the tourniquet that had only recently been Frank’s shirt-sleeve around Ray’s bicep. ‘Y’know,’ she said, ‘it doesn’t even seem to be bleeding all that hard.’

  ‘No,’ Ray gasped.

  ‘It’s the same arm, isn’t it? That’s four-for-four now.’

  Ray, thin-lipped, whispered: ‘How’s Anna doing?’

  Karen swallowed hard as she fussed over the tourniquet, her eyes watering up and starting to sting. ‘Bad,’ she said. She pointed at her forehead. ‘He got her right there. Point blank, it looks like.’

  Ray reached for Karen’s hand and gave it a squeeze. Karen let him, still shaky inside – Karen had never looked into a gun barrel before, never seen that big black O stare her straight in the face. Seeing it again now, Karen pointing, okay, the .44 at Rossi – except Karen’d never loaded the .44, was basically holding a busted flush….

  ‘Why’d you do it, Ray?’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Stop a bullet for Madge.’

  He tried to grin. ‘That wasn’t part of the plan.’

  ‘No, but you knew going up there he was packing.’ She waited. ‘You didn’t have to do it, Ray. Not for me.’

  Ray closed his eyes. ‘Can you keep a secret?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘From Madge?’

  ‘Madge? Why Madge? Ray?’ His eyelids were flickering now, the shock setting in. ‘Can you hear me? Ray?’

  ‘Call me,’ he said so softly she wasn’t sure she heard him, ‘Israel.’

  It took a moment or two before it sank it, but when it did Karen’s mouth opened into a wide O that knocked the barrel of Rossi’s gun into a cocked hat.

  ‘Stay with me, Ray,’ she urged, squeezing his hand fiercely. ‘Don’t go losing me now.’

  His whisper was the faintest of breaths.

  ‘Okay by me,’ he said.

  Anna

  In her dream Anna was chest-deep in soft snow. She struggled to free her hind legs, knowing she would die in the drift if she didn’t, but that sent the pain searing through her skull. Unable to breathe, she panicked and tried to howl, all the while subsiding deeper into the drift that seemed, somehow, to be giving way beneath her.

  She was cold, and she had never known cold before. It wasn’t the snow, because her coat was too thick; but still it came, from somewhere inside her, marbling her lungs even as she tried to breathe. Spreading from there up through her throat into her head to mingle with the pain that swirled around behind the three-inch-thick plate of bone that was her forehead.

  Then another strange sensation: the desire to sleep even though she couldn’t breathe, the craving to relax, to settle down in the subsiding drift, even though that desire ran contrary to the faint impulse still ebbing through her veins. She was dimly aware of noises from beyond – the wind high in the pines, the sound of Karen’s murmuring. She could feel, too, at some distance, the hands that reached through the drift to pat her ribs. But those things only had the effect of pushing Anna farther away, deeper into the drift, to somewhere she hoped would be warm and quiet and empty of pain.

  Then she could hear no more.

  Slipping away, Anna opened her nostrils to scent for one last time the sharp pine smell of her home from so long ago. Home? Yes – she was going home. Except there was something else on the breeze: a thick, sweet stench that stirred a memory deep in the darkness of Anna’s dying. The thick, sweet stench that meant pain beyond endurance….

  Her good eye flickered.

  Rossi

  The first thing he needed to do when he made the main road, Rossi decided, was pull in and get rid of the clanking fucking paint pots. Every time the Transit slid sideways, or hit some muddy ruts, the pots rattled and banged, jangling his nerves. Rossi trundling along at four miles a fortnight.

  He turned up the stereo, Springsteen, thinking how Ray’d want to freshen up his tunes. Like, seriously – Springsteen? With all the saxophone crap? One time the sax wailed real loud, giving Rossi the willies, sounding a lot like Stalin’s howl. Rossi instinctively checked the rear-view, then caught himself doing it, leaned in to wink at his reflection.

  He flicked ash from the joint, luxuriating in the sweet aroma of good herb, the smell that always smelled like he was coming home….

  He thought about the .44, sunk in the lake and lost forever; maybe it was the toke, but Rossi wasn’t convinced that that was such a bad thing. If he’d caught Ray with the .44, in the arm or anywhere else, the guy’d be dead or dying right now, from shock or septicaemia, no one
stops a .44 slug and goes dancing any waltzes after. It’d hurt to do it, it was a good looking rod, but in the end Rossi’d chucked away the Glock too.

  The .22, though, snug in his pocket – that was another matter. Sure, if you needed to be lethal it could do the business, put a man away for keeps. But if you were only looking to put someone down, the .22 was the thinking man’s option. Plus it was an easy one to hide; just tuck it away, maybe down at the ankle, who’s looking for a bulge down there?

  Rossi was wondering about where he’d go looking for an ankle-holster in Italian leather when he came over the brow of the hill and saw the Merc at the bottom of the gully. He pulled in and had a good look, but he couldn’t be certain Sleeps was actually behind the wheel. He checked the rear-view, the side mirrors, then wound down the window.

  ‘Sleeps? Sleeps, man – you there?’

  A voice wafted faintly up out of the gully. ‘Rossi?’

  ‘It’s me, Sleeps. Hold on.’

  Rossi was laying the joint in the ashtray when Stalin came crashing through the passenger window in a snarling, feral explosion of glass, the splinters raking Rossi’s face. The engine was still running, so he jammed the Transit into first gear and floored it. Stalin’s shoulders were too wide to get all the way in the passenger window, but when she surged again her weight caused the van to slide off the narrow track. It plunged into the gully, glancing off the bole of a fat pine to slam grille-first into another.

  Rossi rocked back in his seat, stunned by the impact. Stalin surged forward again, slavering, her facial hair thick with matted blood. This time she got head and shoulders into the cab, her nails clickering on the metal door as she scrabbled for leverage. Rossi shied away, fumbling for his pocket, the .22 – then remember it was empty.