The Tanner Series - Books 1-11: Tanner - The hit man with a heart

by Remington Kane

  “This is a photo of an American assassin named Tanner. These four men are here to see that today is his last. Once they succeed, we will move forward with our plans.”

  Tanner looked around without being obvious about it and saw that no one was staring at him. The last place they expected the man in the photo to be was standing in their midst.

  Heinz continued. “The Americans, these Mafia toughs, they are afraid of this man and he has killed them with ease, but these four men here will show them what real killers are. Together we will take this city right out of their hands.”

  There were nods and grunts of agreement, and one man even clapped, but stopped as Heinz glared at him. Heinz then removed a stack of the same photo from an envelope and instructed one of his people to pass them around.

  When Tanner received his, he made a sound of derision after reading the height and weight listed.

  “This man is no bigger than me; I thought he would be a giant.”

  The Frenchman who spoke a little German agreed. He was a large man and declared that he could kill Tanner with one hand.

  Tanner slipped away before the hit team boarded the elevator with Heinz, then made his way to the stairwell, where he ran up the five flights without stopping until he reached the top. The conference room was across from the stairway door. Tanner could see through the mesh glass set in the metal door that the men hadn’t entered the room yet. However, when he eased the door open, he heard the elevator chime its arrival.

  Tanner slipped into the hall and entered the men’s room near the end of the corridor, which sat across and to the right of the conference room. Heinz stepped off the elevator while talking to the hit team. He was informing them that he had a call to make, but that he would be joining them shortly in the conference room.

  After putting down the toilet seat inside one of the stalls, Tanner sat atop the toilet tank and waited for his prey to come to him, like a spider waiting inside a web.

  At the rear of the Cabaret Strip Club, Merle and Earl stayed busy by polishing the limo with rags, while they waited for Joe Pullo to appear. They had gotten a call earlier to meet Pullo at the club. Both brothers were anxious and wondered about the purpose of the meeting. However, of the two of them, Earl was by far the most nervous.

  “I’m tellin’ you, he’s comin’ to kill us.”

  Merle shook his head in disagreement. “No, he ain’t. Why would he kill us now? If they were gonna kill us, they’d have done it already.”

  “Okay, then why does he want to see us?”

  “I don’t know, maybe he wants us to do somethin’, and that’s good. If we run a few errands and do things for him, then maybe Pullo will start to like us.”

  Earl frowned. “I don’t care if he ever likes me. I just don’t want him to kill me.”

  The sound of an engine came from the front of the building, where the other gate was. The alley curved out of sight, but they could tell it was a large engine. When they heard the other gate being unlocked, they knew that Pullo had arrived in his Hummer.

  Their assumption was confirmed just moments later, when after driving in and relocking the gate, Pullo drove around the bend and parked by the rear door that led to the office. Merle and Earl watched as Pullo exited his vehicle and walked toward them with purposeful strides.

  “Good morning, Mr. Pullo,” the boys said in stereo, but were greeted with only silence.

  Pullo shifted his eyes toward the rear of the limo and Merle rushed over and opened the door for him.

  “You want us to take you somewhere?” Earl asked.

  Pullo nodded. “Yeah boys, you and I are going for a little ride.”

  Earl looked over at his brother, and by the look on his face, he saw that Merle finally got it. They were dead men.

  252

  Bathroom Break

  The first of the hit team members entered the bathroom. It was the blond man with the buzz cut and baseball cap.

  Through the crack in the stall door, Tanner could spot the man’s back in the long mirror above the sinks, as he lined himself up with one of the urinals.

  The bathroom contained three urinals on the left, with a line of four stalls to their right. Across from the stalls was a row of sinks with the mirror above them, and on the wall beside that was a hot air machine for use in drying hands.

  From his perch inside the second stall, Tanner heard the sound of the man’s zipper going down, followed by the splash of liquid against porcelain.

  That was when Tanner struck, as he came up silently behind the man and plunged the blade of his knife deep into the back of the man’s skull, jamming it directly beneath the adjustable strap at the rear of the ball cap.

  The man grunted in shock as his mouth opened in surprise and then he fell to the floor with a severe spinal injury, but he was still alive. Tanner remedied the latter condition by smashing the lid from a commode on top of the man’s head, which cracked his skull open.

  After dragging the man’s body into the last stall and propping him in the corner, Tanner used the man’s shirt to clean up the spilled blood and piss. He was standing at the same urinal when the next man walked in.

  Tanner wasn’t blond, and he wore boots instead of the bright sneakers worn by the man he had just killed. He was also wearing suit pants and not jeans, but between the black leather jacket and the baseball cap he wore, he fooled the next man long enough to kill him, as the man sidled up to the urinal beside him.

  It was the largest of the men, the one with the shaved head.

  Tanner rammed a boot heel into the back of the man’s knee, causing him to fall forward and bang his face against the steel flush valve at the top of the urinal. The impact broke several of the man’s front teeth and caused him to stumble backwards, where he fell to his knees.

  The man spit out the pieces of his broken teeth, but the pain in the man’s mouth became a secondary consideration when Tanner reached around and sliced the thug’s throat open.

  The blood left the man’s body with such force that it painted the mirrors above the sinks red, while filling the room with its coppery scent.

  Tanner let the man drop, stepped out in the hallway and came face-to-face with another member of the hit team, the man with the dark crew cut.

  The man had been headed into the bathroom while talking on the phone. Tanner shot him twice in the face, with one bullet entering his open mouth.

  He then followed the man to the floor to lay half in and half out of the bathroom, with his face turned away and the gun tucked out of sight.

  “Hans!” the last man cried out, the one with the ponytail, as he sprinted from the conference room in reaction to hearing the shots.

  The man cursed loudly in Dutch when he saw his friend’s body, then Tanner felt a gentle hand touch his shoulder.

  “Seth, where is the shooter?”

  “I’m right here,” Tanner said while turning over. He shot the man three times in the stomach. The man fell backwards to the carpet, dying, and soon to be dead. Tanner claimed his gun, a Beretta FS92, and took aim at Bruno Heinz. Heinz was standing in the doorway of the conference room with eyes made large from astonishment.

  “Tanner?”

  Tanner fired an instant after Heinz was yanked backwards into the conference room. His shot passed through the doorway and struck a picture on the wall.

  “Tanner! Is that you?”

  Tanner thought the voice sounded familiar, but he couldn’t place it.

  “My name is Vance, Tanner. Unlike those four fools with the matching jackets, I’m man enough to kill you, and I’m going to do just that.”

  Tanner could hear Heinz yelling into a phone. That meant that more men would be coming. He had to get by the conference room to access either the stairway or the elevators, which meant he had to get past Vance.

  Johnny Rossetti was paying him a small fortune to take down Heinz. Tanner realized that he was going to have to earn every cent of it.

  253

  Co
ld Sweat

  Merle’s hands were gripped tightly upon the steering wheel of the limo, as he and Earl headed for the George Washington Bridge.

  Pullo had yet to tell them their destination, but simply said to take the bridge into New Jersey, a state where the Giacconi Family often dumped their victims’ bodies.

  Pullo had instructed the boys to leave the partition open while they drove. The two brothers couldn’t talk freely, but each one knew by the other’s expression that they were both fearful.

  Earl shook his head slightly as he thought of Tanner and cursed the day he and Merle had met the man. They had been threatened with death several times since entering Tanner’s orbit and it looked like their luck was about to run out.

  “Damn Tanner,” he muttered.

  Merle heard the whispered curse and nodded his head in agreement.

  Pullo sat in the rear of the limo in a somber mood. While he was angry that the Carter brothers hadn’t told them Tanner was alive when they believed he was dead, he held no real animosity toward the men.

  Killing them was a precautionary measure, nothing more and nothing less, and he would take no pleasure in the act. His phone rang. It was Laurel.

  “What’s up, Beautiful?”

  “Can you come by the clinic? I need to see you.”

  “Right now, or can it wait a few hours?”

  “Now would be better. Why, are you out of the area?”

  “No, but I was headed into Jersey, but hold on a second.” Pullo covered the phone with his hand and spoke to Merle. “We have to make a detour, boys. Turn around and head to West 26th and 10th Avenue.”

  Merle acknowledged the request with an accompanying sigh of relief, and Pullo spoke to Laurel again.

  “I’ll be there soon, but what’s up?”

  “I’d rather tell you in person, but don’t worry, it’s not serious.”

  “Okay,” Pullo said, while not liking the note of dread he heard in her voice. He decided to push it aside and not dwell on it. He and Laurel spoke for another minute, before ending the call.

  “Hey, you two?”

  Merle looked at Pullo in the mirror, while Earl turned around in his seat.

  “Yes sir,” the boys said together.

  “You don’t have wives or girlfriends, do you?”

  “No, women only seem to like us in small doses,” Earl said.

  Pullo laughed. “You’re lucky; they’re a lot of work sometimes.”

  Merle caught Pullo’s eye in the mirror. “Are we really lucky?”

  The humor left Pullo’s face. “No, maybe not.”

  And the way Pullo said it made both brothers break out in a cold sweat.

  254

  The Best

  Tanner dragged the man with the ponytail into the bathroom and checked to see if he was dead yet. He was, and Tanner went to work cutting off the ponytail.

  With that done, he set a roll of toilet paper on fire and held it up to the sprinkler head in the ceiling, while hoping that the renovation hadn’t disabled the fire control system.

  The system was still functional, and within seconds the sprinkler activated, showering him with water, but more importantly, it triggered the fire alarm. With the fire alarm operative, the safety controls in the elevator would refuse to send the car up and would let out all passengers onto lower floors. With the reinforcements delayed, Tanner exited the bathroom while firing toward the conference room.

  Vance had ventured out into the hallway. Tanner’s bold advance surprised him and caused him to dive back into the conference room.

  Tanner kept coming. He had little leeway for doing anything else, or he risked being trapped. Vance fired at Tanner as he opened the door to the stairway and Tanner cried out in pain as a bullet sliced open his side, just beneath the left ribs. The pain of the wound weakened him. After rushing into the stairwell, he nearly tumbled down the steps, but he caught hold of the railing just in time to halt his momentum.

  He was on the landing when the door opened above, and he fired a shot that drove Vance back beyond the door. Tanner headed down the stairs and was on the landing between the fourth and fifth floors when he heard Vance enter the stairwell again.

  When the door on the fourth floor opened and three men with guns entered the stairway, Tanner pointed up. “The man named Vance has gone mad. Kill him!”

  The men all looked at him. Tanner was still wearing the black leather jacket of the hit team along with the baseball cap, while hanging down his back was a ponytail. After cutting it off the dead man in the bathroom, Tanner had tied the ponytail to the rear of the cap.

  Everything about him said he was a team member, so the men ran past him and headed up the stairs. When they ran into Vance, a firefight ensued.

  Tanner kept moving, his one objective was now aimed at escaping. When he reached the door that led to the second floor, he leaned against it, resting for a moment, as the wound in his side sapped his strength and turned the white shirt beneath the jacket blood red.

  “Tanner!”

  It was Vance. He had won the firefight against the three men in an impressively short space of time. From the sound of his voice, Vance was still two flights away. Tanner knew that translated to a very narrow gap of time.

  He found no one as he entered the second-floor hallway and ran toward the rear of the building. At the end of the hall was a large window. Tanner fired at the glass before he reached it. With the glass gone, he stepped up onto the windowsill, bent his knees and jumped, to land on the dumpster in the back.

  He was in his car and driving away when he spotted Vance in his rearview mirror, as the man left the alley and ran into the street. Vance stomped his foot in frustration while keeping his gun hidden, not daring to risk taking a shot, as several other cars and pedestrians were about.

  The last glimpse Tanner had of the man, he saw that he was pointing in his direction, in essence saying, there will be a next time.

  Tanner agreed, but next time, only one of them would be walking away.

  Pullo stepped out of the limo in front of Laurel’s clinic and Merle and Earl gave him a puzzled look. The clinic was in the rear of a squat building. It was surrounded by a high fence that had an antiques shop in the front, and its entrance, an old rusty metal door, sat below a tattered green awning.

  “Are you buyin’ antiques, boss?” Merle asked.

  “No, now stay with the limo and I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  Merle and Earl watched as Pullo input a code into a control pad near the door and entered the building.

  With Pullo out of sight, both men breathed a sigh of relief.

  “You still think he don’t want to kill us?” Earl said.

  “I don’t know. For a while there I thought that was where we were headin’, but if that was true, why leave us alone?”

  Earl thought about that and became confused, after being certain that Pullo wanted them dead.

  “Damn! I like this job. Rossetti treats us right, we get to wear suits, look at hot women, and don’t have to work hard.”

  “What? Are you startin’ to think that Pullo doesn’t want us dead?”

  “I don’t know, but I get the willies every time he looks at me.”

  Merle scratched his head, as he tried to figure out what to do. “If we run and they don’t want to kill us, then they might start thinkin’ that we did somethin’ and send somebody to kill us.”

  Earl slapped the dashboard. “Why can’t life be simple?”

  “It is simple. If they want to kill us, we’ll be dead soon, if not, we keep this sweet job, but simple don’t make it easy.”

  “What do we do, Merle?”

  Merle looked over at his brother. “I’m thinkin’.”

  Earl leaned back in his seat. When Merle thought about something, it could take a long time.

  Inside the clinic, Laurel separated from Pullo after sharing a kiss, then she took the piece of paper from her pocket that Tanner had given her.

  “W
hat’s that?” Pullo said.

  “Tanner gave it to me last night at the house.”

  Pullo’s expression hardened. “He came by to see you? And what happened?”

  “Nothing. I swear. And I don’t think he was expecting anything to either, but he gave me this number where I could reach him. He said that the Giacconi Family was going to war and he wanted me to be able to reach him in case I needed him… needed him in case of trouble.”

  Joe looked down at the paper and then back into Laurel’s eyes. “Did you want something to happen? I know you still love him.”

  Laurel hugged Joe. “Tanner is a part of my past. I’m with you now, and the reason I’m telling you about this is, well, I don’t want any secrets between us.”

  Joe tilted her head back and stared into her eyes. “I care about you, Laurel. These last few weeks, they’ve been the best of my life.”

  Laurel smiled. “We’re just getting started.”

  They kissed again, and when they separated, Pullo pointed at the number Tanner had given her.

  “Keep that. Tanner was right, there’s trouble coming, and if it comes here, between the two of us, we’ll stop it.”

  Laurel shook her head. “No one would attack the clinic. We’re like the Red Cross.”

  Joe took her by the hand and began walking toward the door. “I have to get going, but I’ll be back in town in time for dinner, so why don’t we go out?”

  “That sounds great, but where do you want to go?”

  “Anywhere is good for me, baby, as long as I’m with you.”

  Pullo opened the door and stepped outside. The first thing he saw was the empty limousine, but then he spotted Merle and Earl. They were at the rear of the vehicle and headed for the fence.