The Price

by Joseph Garraty

  “If I’m in trouble I can call you guys, and you can make sure somebody comes out in time to bag the bodies and mark the crime scene correctly—or maybe I can start finding ways to look after my own.”

  “Don’t do this,” Kit said. “You have no idea what you’re getting into.”

  I crossed my arms.

  “I’m watching you, shithead,” Donnelly said, and he got in the car. Kit looked like she was about to say something, but she turned away, too.

  I went inside.

  * * *

  It was three days before Benedict sent his driver around for me again. I called several times using the prepaid cell phone he’d given me, but nobody answered, and I started to worry that he thought I had something to do with the cops showing up on the doorstep. When I saw the car parked in front of the shop on the third day, I didn’t even try to be cool about it—I ran over and got in. The driver didn’t have anything to say, as usual, and we went directly to Benedict’s place.

  I knocked on the polished wooden door, and Benedict let me in.

  “I didn’t tell them anything,” I began, but Benedict cut me off with a wave.

  “I know,” he said. It didn’t occur to me to ask how he knew—a guy like Benedict must have had a thousand ways of finding stuff like that out. “Sit down. We need to talk about a few things.”

  I sat, and he walked to the liquor cabinet and started pouring himself a drink. “First things first,” he said over his shoulder. “You owe me two thousand dollars.”

  “Huh?”

  “That’s how it works. You’re my guy, I get half of what you earn. Joey the Slob gets half of what I make. The boss in Providence gets half of what the Slob makes. Fish fish fish.”

  “Oh.” I relaxed. That wasn’t anything to get worked up about. I’d have two thousand left, which was still more money than I’d made in my whole life up till then. “How come you didn’t just take it off the top?”

  “You got your fair cut for the job, and it’s up to you to decide what to do with it. You gotta learn one day, so we’ll start now.” He came over and sat down, nursing a couple of fingers of whiskey. “Every Friday, I’ll expect half of what you made for the week—and never less than a thousand.”

  I couldn’t have heard that right. “A thousand? Dollars?”

  “Every Friday.”

  “That’s, uh, that’s a lot of money.”

  He sipped his drink. “It only seems that way. You’ll start getting in on regular jobs, start finding your own, and you’ll be fine. I don’t have to tell you what happens if you don’t pay, or if I find out you’ve been holding out on me, do I?”

  “No, sir.” I didn’t know the details, but a general idea was more than enough.

  “All right,” he said, and he leaned back in his chair, the leather creaking softly under him. “So. You’ve got questions. Go ahead and ask.”

  Boy, did I ever have questions. I wasn’t sure how long his patience would last, though, so I went straight for the one I’d been poking and prodding ever since the job.

  “The cost. You said there was a cost, every time we use magic.”

  “That I did.”

  He had a grim set to his jaw, and I wondered if I really wanted to know. After a moment’s hesitation, though, I pressed ahead. “What is it?”

  Benedict knocked back half of his drink and turned the glass in his hand, contemplating it. Then he knocked back the other half and got up for the bottle. He poured another drink, but he left this one on the table in front of him for now.

  “We were going to get there, eventually,” he said, “but now’s as good a time as any. You and I have talked about ways to control magic, ways to shape the energy, but did you ever think about where that energy comes from?”

  “I thought it was just, you know—magic.” That sounded lame, but it was the truth.

  He reached toward the glass, but before touching it, he let his hand fall to his knee, limp, like a dead thing. “Let me ask it another way. What, exactly, do you think you’re talking to when you convince a lock to open or a cushion to move across the floor?”

  “I dunno. Like, the Force or something.”

  A sour grin turned up the corner of Benedict’s mouth. He shook his head. “I’m going to let you in on a little secret. You’re not going to like it, and you’re not going to want to believe it, but a lot of things will make sense once you accept it.”

  Again, I wondered if I really wanted to know. But it was too late now.

  “You can’t do magic,” Benedict said, and before I could argue, he added, “and neither can I. Nobody can. Not directly. We use . . . intermediaries.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that at all. The room behind me seemed darker than it had, the strange-familiar smells of Benedict’s apartment too strong. “Intermediaries?” I repeated dumbly.

  “When you ask a lock to open, you’re really asking another entity to go open the lock. Your language shapes the request and the terms of the contract.”

  The word “contract” bothered me. “When you say ‘entity,’ you’re really talking about—”

  “A demon,” Benedict said. “Magic is little more than a dirty backroom deal with the universe, and demons broker the deals.”

  That’s crazy, I wanted to say. Instead I squeezed my fists in my lap. “You don’t really mean like a demon demon, right? Like, from Hell?”

  Benedict waited a long time before replying. Then he leaned forward, meeting my eyes. “I mean an intrinsically evil entity from a very bad place that is not here. Call it what you like. Every time you do magic, you call forth a demon to do something you can’t, to move something you can’t reach, channel energy you can’t create, or bring you information you couldn’t know otherwise.”

  As soon as he mentioned information, I thought of Mister Bear, and a violent shudder racked my body. My constant childhood companion was—what was it?—I mean, Jesus Christ, I’d slept with that—that thing nightly, and in what crazy fucked-up world did I live that I’d considered it normal, that I’d never stopped to consider what force had animated it?

  I crossed myself, then covered my face with my hands, trying to hide myself from the horror that cackled in my brain.

  “The cost, then—it’s dealing with these . . . demons?”

  “The cost is the price you pay them. They take little bites of your soul for every service rendered, and the bigger the service the bigger the bite. Keep at it long enough, work enough powerful magic, and they will hollow you out, leaving nothing but a thin rind.”

  “What . . . what does that mean?” I asked.

  “It means they will own you, body and soul. Your soul they’ll torment forever, and your body—well, they’ll drive your body like a rental car while you watch.”

  He stopped long enough for his words to sink in. Too long, as the silence swirled like smoke around me.

  “You can do a thousand amazing things with magic,” he continued at last, his voice uncharacteristically warm, “but don’t ever forget the cost.”

  I looked out through my fingers. “Can you kill someone with it?”

  Benedict stared at me for a long time, and for once I didn’t shrink from his gaze. It had a steadying effect on me, and the trembling in my shoulders lessened.

  “Don’t mess with death magic,” Benedict said. “Don’t even think about death magic. The only death magic you ever need is two taps from a twenty-two to the back of somebody’s head. That’s it.”

  I nodded.

  “I’m not fucking kidding, Jimmy,” he said, and the haunted look in his eyes was more than I could bear.

  Chapter 5. Making the Nut

  “Step on it, would ya?” Lazzaro growled. “We’re gonna miss it.”

  The accelerator was already pressed to the floor, and the old boat wasn’t going to move any faster. We’d made it up to ninety, and that was a miracle as far as I was concerned. “I don’t know where you boosted this thing from, but you coulda grabbed something that
wasn’t already half dead. This car is older than I am, for fuck’s sake.”

  “Whatever. Just push it, okay?”

  If he hadn’t been late, if he’d got the car sooner, we wouldn’t have this problem, but I didn’t say anything. It would only piss him off. I knew I ought to just be thankful for the job. It had been almost three weeks since the big score at the pawn shop, and I’d blown through my two grand by paying off Benedict the last couple of Fridays. It was now Thursday night, and I had about three hundred bucks in my pocket from a few small jobs—not enough. When Lazzaro told me he had something lined up, my ears perked right up. When he told me how much, and that it would fuck with the Russians besides, I jumped on it.

  It was quiet out here, only a few cars passing by on the interstate, and none at all on the road below. We were well outside of Boston, but Lazzaro had got the truck’s route from a connection he swore was reliable. It wasn’t a glamorous score or anything—a truckload of stolen suits, from what I’d been told—but we knew a guy who would take them, and we’d make enough off the deal to keep Benedict happy for weeks.

  That reminded me of something that had been bothering me. “Hey Frankie,” I said, “how come Benedict has to pay Joey the Slob? I mean, Benedict’s an important guy, right? Nobody else can do what he does. Why isn’t he one of the boss’s guys?”

  Lazzaro looked at me like I was about ten bullets short of a clip. “Benedict’s Irish. Can’t get made if you’re not Italian. Come on, I thought you was supposed to be smart or something.”

  “Well, yeah, I knew that. I thought maybe there’d be an exception for Benedict, though. It’s Benedict, you know?”

  “No exceptions. Benedict’s gone as far as he’s gonna go,” Lazzaro said. He grinned at me. “You and me, though—we’re gonna move up. One day, Benedict’s gonna be payin’ me.” He pointed out the window. “Here,” he said. “Up here.” I turned under an overpass and pulled the car up an I-90 exit ramp the wrong way.

  “I hope you’re right about this,” I said, stopping the car.

  “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll wave when they’re coming.” He got out and went up to the top of the ramp.

  I didn’t have to wait long. Lazzaro waved both arms over his head and then ducked off the side of the road, scrambling over the dead grass next to the ramp. I drove the car a few feet forward, parking it across the road. I’ll say one thing for those old boats—they’re fucking huge. If the truck driver didn’t want to stop, he’d have to drive the truck through the car, because there was no way it could get around, not without jumping the rail.

  The hot white glare of headlights raked across my face and lit up the interior of the car. I got out as the truck was slowing, and I started to move toward the passenger side.

  The truck driver was no fool. The instant the truck stopped, he dropped it in reverse, throwing white light over the pavement behind the vehicle.

  Not fast enough. Lazzaro was already there. A few words and a quick gesture from him unlocked the door, and then he was hauling the driver bodily out of the truck. The guy hit the pavement and skidded.

  I didn’t have time to watch the rest. I ran up to the passenger side and pulled that door open. A sledgehammer disguised as a fist launched itself at my head and connected with a crack so loud I thought for one frantic second that the blow had broken my neck. Then I hit the ground, wondering how come I had to get pounded so fucking often.

  The guy wasted no time coming after me, three hundred pounds of sloppy suet clambering down from the truck, intent on smashing my skull to paste. He was fat but ungodly strong, and I could attest to the fact that he wasn’t as slow as he looked, either. He got to me way more quickly than he should have, and a size-fourteen work boot slammed into my side. I think I’d rather have been hit by the truck.

  Two loud bangs—gunshots—sounded from the other side of the truck.

  “Al?” the fat guy called, even as he pulled a gun out from the back of his pants.

  Oh, fuck.

  The pain in my side was miraculously gone, and I scrabbled backward as fast as my legs and arms could carry me.

  The fat guy hesitated, looking behind him and then back at me, and that’s when Lazzaro came around the front of the truck. The first shot took the fat guy in the side of the face, sending a shower of blood and teeth into the air. The guy made a strangled squawk and fumbled his gun, and Lazzaro shot him three more times, in the belly and chest. He crumpled vertically, like a demolished building, bending at the knees, then the waist, then slumping to the road.

  I got up, wincing at the pain in my side, and wiped away the blood running from my forehead.

  The fat guy made another of those strangled noises. He had no jaw to speak of and blood was pouring out of fist-sized holes in his back, but his wide, white eyes still darted around, and he wouldn’t stop making that noise. I thought I saw what was left of his tongue wriggling in the wet black hole of his mouth.

  “Oh, Christ,” I said, and then I was hunched over by the side of the road, stomach spasming, my dinner mixing with the blood spattered on my shoes.

  Behind me, two more shots.

  The strangled noise came to an abrupt end.

  “Come on,” Lazzaro said, pulling at my shoulder. “We gotta move.”

  “What the fuck did you do that for? I thought we were just gonna rough them up and take the truck!”

  Lazzaro smiled. He actually fucking smiled. “I didn’t think that was such a hot idea, once we got started. What if they could identify us?”

  “What if they—” I stopped. What if they could identify us? To who? Their bosses wouldn’t take long to figure out who was responsible, and they sure weren’t gonna go to the cops. It didn’t matter if they could identify us or not.

  It was about then that I started to wonder if Frankie Lazzaro was out of his fucking mind.

  “Come on,” he repeated. “Let’s throw these guys in the back of the truck and get outta here.”

  I grabbed the fat guy’s legs, and Lazzaro took his arms. I revised my estimate of the guy’s weight upward considerably. We took him, with some difficulty, around to the back. The doors were locked with a heavy padlock, and we didn’t have time to dick around, so I popped it open with a quick little spell. That familiar, almost sexual thrill raced through my body, but it was tinged with a dark, sour aftertaste as I thought of Benedict’s words. They take little bites of your soul. . . .

  I tossed the padlock aside, and Lazzaro pulled the doors open.

  “What the fuck?” he said, even as the same words formed on my lips.

  “This ain’t a bunch of suits, Frankie.”

  “No shit. But what the fuck is it?” It was cold, whatever it was. Metal cylinders, coated with frost, lined the walls of the truck. There were maybe fifty of them, each about a foot high, and hoses ran from each one to a series of tanks toward the front. I climbed into the back of the truck and pulled a little keychain flashlight from my pocket.

  “Oxygen,” I said, looking at the tanks. “And something else. God knows what. Refrigerant, maybe?”

  A dirty metal strongbox about the size of a toolbox sat near the front of the truck, looking as out of place as an old tire on an operating table. Unlike everything else, it wasn’t gleaming stainless steel. It was made of rusted metal, covered in flaking green paint and weird symbols. I didn’t know what the symbols were offhand, but I’d seen things like them in my studies with Benedict, and I felt the little hairs on the back of my neck prickle. I was dying to know what was in the box, but I couldn’t forget the safe at the pawn shop, and I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to mess with it.

  I heard a hissing sound behind me, and I turned. Lazzaro was kneeling in front of one of the metal things, fiddling with it. “Christ, Frankie, don’t—”

  He popped a second seal and opened the container. The top swiveled up on a hinge in the back. I couldn’t see inside from where I stood, but Lazzaro’s face changed from puzzlement to recognition to more puzzlement.r />
  Against my better judgment, I walked over to have a look. I shone my light down on a red lump with an all too familiar shape. It was cradled in some kind of plastic or clear rubber webbing that obscured it some, but you don’t grow up in a butcher shop without picking up a few basics.

  “Is that—”

  “That’s a kidney,” Lazzaro said, looking up at me with an expression of bewilderment so extreme it was comical. “Jimmy, I don’t know how to fence a kidney.”

  Crazy, warbling laughter spilled out of me, and I clapped a hand over my mouth. A moment later, when I thought I had control of myself again, I spoke. “Shut that thing, Frankie. We need to get the fuck out of here.”

  “We can’t leave the bodies,” he said, “and our prints are all over the truck. We’ll load up and drive back, and we’ll find somewhere to get rid of the truck later.”

  We heaved the two bodies into the back in record time. The next day I’d wake up with the worst back pain I’d ever had, but right then I couldn’t have cared less.

  “Here,” Lazzaro said, and he tossed me the keys to the truck.

  “Oh hell no. I ain’t driving this thing.”

  “You can wait here with it then, cuz I ain’t drivin’ it either.”

  In that diplomatic fashion, we settled the issue of who got stuck driving the truck. The forty minutes back to Southie stretched my nerve to the breaking point, and maybe a little beyond. Anything that looked vaguely like a cop car caused gallons of acid to shoot into my stomach, and the back of my mouth tasted like vomit the whole trip. I was driving a stolen truck with two corpses in the back, to say nothing of the fifty or so canisters of miscellaneous human organs. Try explaining that to—well, anyone. If I got pulled over, I would be the most fucked truck driver in the history of fucked truck drivers. I’d get a spot in the record books. They’d make me an honorary Teamster or something.

  On the plus side, Lazzaro and I found three thousand bucks in rolled-up hundred-dollar bills in the pockets of the dead guys. I could pay Benedict for another week. I’d also found a scrap of paper covered with semi-literate directions to somewhere in upstate New York. I put that in my pocket without saying anything.