Death Mark (Mason Dixon Thrillers Book 2)

by Nick Thacker

  “I’ll do it.”

  I smiled, wider this time. “That’s the right attitude, Fr —”

  “How much does it pay?”

  My mouth was still open, and I left it there, stupidly. I wasn’t sure what to think so I turned and stared at Joey. He had a stupid grin on his face as well, almost as stupid as my own face.

  “Well, boss?” Joey asked. “What’s this little mission pay?”

  I scowled at both of them, then walked into the bridge. “Frey, your first lesson starts right now. We need to get you up to speed with this boat, and then we might be able to talk about compensation.”

  Frey followed me in and took a seat in the tiny chair mounted to the wall up against the corner of the stairwell and the wall. “Honestly, I just want to be able to help you guys out, get Joey’s girl back.” He paused. “And maybe drink for free.”

  I shook my head as I watched the horizon out the front window. “And when we’re done here, I’m going to teach you how to negotiate.”

  He laughed, stepping up to the wheel. “Fair enough. Where are we heading?”

  “We’re turning around,” I said. “Going north.”

  “What’s north?”

  “Well, I’m hoping that we can intercept Elizondo’s ship.”

  “I thought we weren’t trying to get to Elizondo any more?” Frey asked.

  “We’re not, really. But Elizondo is the target for the guys who were sent by my old man. So we get to Elizondo, we get to my dad’s guys.”

  “Got it.”

  “And then we kill them.”

  Frey didn’t speak for a moment, but he did grip the wheel and handle the wide, sweeping turn port-side. I stepped back and handled the throttle until he reached down and grabbed at it. He’s a natural, I thought. Sailing was far different than piloting a 131-foot-long yacht. There were no lines, no tacking or jibing, or any other nautical thing other than talking in terms of knots and port and starboard, and making sure you didn’t crush any tiny fishing boats just off the coast.

  I’d found the Wassamassaw to be a very capable handler, and in no small part to the fact that it was a top-of-the-line craft, completely overhauled and reworked earlier this year, including the pair of brand-new twin C8.7 engines I was told were ‘every bit as capable as the originals, but far more powerful.’ As I said, I knew nothing about engines — I just wanted them to work. These, so far, had worked wonderfully.

  I’d spent so many hours on deck of this vessel that it felt like my own home more than my apartment did. That probably wasn’t a difficult thing, either, since my apartment was the stark contrast to this place: a single-room piece of work in the area just outside the town of Edisto Beach. It was owned by a commercial real estate agent in Charleston, and he had no interest in keeping it up, making it anything different than what it already was, or in answering his phone when I wanted to call. The maintenance that needed to be done I did myself, and the only time I ever heard from him was when the rent needed to increase — invariably every year, on the birthdate of my lease.

  I had no decorations, not much furniture other than a second-hand couch and coffee table, and my dishes consisted of whatever it was I didn’t sell when my late wife died and left our wedding shower gifts behind. In total, I probably owned about $2,000 worth of personal effects, not including my growing weapon inventory. My insurance policy didn’t cover anything that low, so I was paying renter’s insurance on as much as $10,000 of crap I knew I didn’t have.

  The Wassamassaw, on the other hand, was pure luxury. Completely redesigned after the debacle we’d had inside it a few months ago, and paid for by the United States government, I spent as much time as possible inside or on deck. The yacht had been given to me by Hannah herself, after realizing it was too strong a memory of her father, and since she had bailed and ducked out to Europe for some unknown amount of time, I felt no qualms about taking it out as often as I could.

  It was the best boat in the fleet, hands down, especially since the ‘fleet’ consisted of mostly the yacht-club owners down south of us and a few of the lingering rich folks up north who lived around the islands. The Charleston crowd was generally more conservative, since anyone with enough money to make a thirty-million-dollar yacht purchase tended to not live anywhere near Charleston.

  I loved the Wassamassaw, even though I wasn’t terribly fond of the memories I’d made aboard it. I missed Hannah, but it was more out of friendship than love. We’d grown close, as significant life situations tend to force you to do, but the Wassamassaw wasn’t a reminder of her as much as just a reminder of what it was that I did.

  There was no mistaking it: I wasn’t just a bartender. I wasn’t just an upstanding, taxpaying citizen who owned a bar and wanted to pay it off.

  I killed people for a living. It was a good living, and it allowed me to do two things I desperately wanted: to pay off my bar, and to rid the world of the types of people that needed ridding.

  I wasn’t surprised that Frey went silent. Until that moment neither Joey nor I had come clean with him, and until we had it was only speculation and guesswork on his part. We were clean about it, and we were careful. We’d been in a few scrapes together, but we’d always managed to keep things wrapped up tight when it came to the local police. Most of the time the local cops wanted the job done anyway, as we were exterminating the types of people they went home and told their wives and husbands needed to be exterminated, but were otherwise obligated by professional vows and oaths not to exterminate. We operated just below the line of legality, but I felt no remorse whatsoever.

  Anything bigger than local police meant the Feds were involved, and then they were too small for the Feds to really want any part of it. Add to that the fact that I had some history with them and we were typically home-free. Not a care in the world, just doing our job and getting rid of the evidence by ‘fish-baiting’ them in the bay.

  Jonathan Frey, of course, knew none of this. He’d probably made a few intelligent leaps of faith, but there was no way he understood exactly what it was we were into. So I wasn’t surprised that he was surprised. We killed people, and we made a lot of money doing it. That wasn’t something a guy heard terribly often, I would think.

  “How do you do it?” Frey asked.

  “Depends on what they order,” I said.

  27

  THE WASSAMASSAW HAD NEARLY COMPLETED its turn to the north and Frey was coddling the wheel delicately, like a true pilot, measuring the winds and the waves with a single hand while nursing the throttle with the other.

  “What they order?”

  “I’m a bartender,” I answered.

  “So they come in, order a drink, and — what? You just decide to kill them?”

  I shook my head. Didn’t care if he saw it or not. “No, not like that,” I explained. “I work with someone up in Charleston. They spend all the time and money researching, finding the people. Then they give them a little coin. I call it a ‘mark.’”

  “Then they come to the bar, right?”

  “Yeah, exactly. They order a drink or three, and pay for it with this little coin.”

  “So that’s how you know you’re supposed to kill them.”

  I looked over at him. He was shorter than me by a lot, and a bit rounder, but he seemed like a fit guy overall. “Yeah, although I always verify it myself.”

  “How do you do that?”

  “I talk to them.”

  “Really? What do they say?”

  I thought for a moment. “Depends, I guess. I’ve always been good behind the bar, and the secret to bartending isn’t in mixing a perfect drink or knowing what they want to drink, it’s in asking the right questions. You want to get them talking about their own lives without their feeling like you’re prying. If they come in with someone else, that’s even more difficult. A simple question here or there could interrupt their thought process, or worse — it could ignite whatever emotion they were feeling from talking to their date in the moment.”
/>   I’m careful, but I’m not perfect. I’ve been at the receiving end of plenty of verbal blows over the years, and while I do pride myself on being able to pick up on the nuances of coupled attendees, I know I’m very good at prying out the important details from my marks.

  Most the guys — and they’re just about all guys — come in with a chip on their shoulder already. They expect something, and I can read it on their faces like they’re a old-person book with the huge lettering. They want something from me, and they’ve driven a hell of a long way to get it. Most of the time it’s a person — an actual human being, articulately described and requested by these schmucks — and they know that I’m the person who’s going to give it to them.

  Or at least they think that. It’s always my absolute pleasure to explain to them that while I do have what they deserve, I don’t have what they want.

  What I offer them is simple: meet me out back, and I’ll bring you what I think you need.

  Every time, without fail, they follow me through the kitchen, say hello to Joey working his magic at the griddle, and walk outside to the back alley with me.

  And every time, without fail, I give them what they deserve.

  The first few times it was a bit messy, as I was newer to the game and a bit out of practice. But I got it done, no matter what they ordered at the bar. A Screwdriver? Sure, I’ve got one of those, and it seems to fit right there, just beneath your eye and straight through the anterior cranial fossa into the frontal lobe.

  A Whiskey Smash? I’d always pour them my worst bourbon — which was better than the best bourbon you’d find at a lesser establishment, I might add — muddle out some fresh mint, and add enough crushed ice to make the drink look valuable and my profit margin to soar. Then I’d take them out back and beat them to death with an empty bottle. People don’t realize that Hollywood movie bottles are very different than real bottles. Thanks to shrinkage policies developed by professional whiskey manufacturing distributors, modern-day glass booze bottles are very thick, and therefore very hard to break. Sure, you can drop them from a staircase at a cheap motel and they’ll shatter to pieces, but humans — including their skulls — are far softer, and you’re far weaker than gravity from a second-story building.

  It takes a lot of beating and a lot of effort to mash in a human skull using nothing but a booze bottle, but that’s my job. A Whiskey Smash is ordered by a mark, and a Whiskey Smash is what they get.

  Probably my favorite method was the Irish Car Bomb. A simple shot, nothing but Guinness and Irish cream and whiskey. Again, the cheapest I’ve got, but with a twist — I let the guy pour the whiskey himself, as sort of a ‘last meal’ ritual.

  Then, with no fanfare or festivities, I walk them out back, get them into their own car — I drive, as it’s all part of the experience — and take them down to the beach. There’s a place I really like, as it only takes about fifteen minutes of driving south to get to it, it’s far away from even the small towns like Edisto Beach, and it gives me the time needed to verify the mark. When we arrive, there’s a dock with a concrete gangway out to the water I can drive up to, get the mark excited about the rendezvous, and get everything ready.

  They stay in the car, exuberantly awaiting that thing they ‘deserve.’ I walk around to the back, pull out a bottle of whiskey (Irish, as it’s a much better fit for this sort of work), and bring it to them. We talk, they take a few shots, and I pour it over their head and light it on fire.

  Simple, effective, and gets them going. Never in my experience have they had the foresight to unbuckle their seatbelt first, so they fumble around for a bit until they realize what’s happening, but by then I’ve made it back around and have dumbed the lit match into the open gas tank. A lit match won’t do a dang thing against a full tank of liquid, most of the time. The secret is to make sure you hold the match out to the fumes coming out of the tank — you have to let it really catch. It’s a bit nerve-wracking, but it’s very satisfying.

  It’s not an explosion really, not at first. It’s more of an impressive slow-burn consumption, sort of like watching a fireworks finale in slow motion. Gives me plenty of time to get away.

  I stand back, finish the handle of Irish whiskey, and watch as my mark is ‘marked.’ It’s satisfying and sad, all at the same time. That person could have been a useful member of society, I sometimes think. But what’s the point? Why waste the money and the time and the effort to rehabilitate? I push the car over the ledge, usually when it’s still burning. The job’s done, I make it out to my drop point, collect the money, and I’m done.

  Easy.

  “So you decide that they’re worth killing and you just… kill them?”

  I nodded. “Pretty much, yeah. Based on the drink they order.”

  “Okay,” he said. “What about a Sidecar?”

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “If I was a ‘mark,’ and I ordered a Sidecar. How would you do it?”

  I thought about it a moment. “Okay, I like this game. Cognac, orange liqueur, and lemon? Easy. I’d bash their head in with a bottle of VOSP next to their car.”

  “Very Superior Old Pale?” he asked. “Very specific.”

  I laughed. “VS isn’t worth the bottle it’s put in, and XO and Hors d’ge is way to fancy to be breaking it over people’s heads.”

  Frey frowned. “Really? That seems a bit… brutal. And too easy.”

  “Okay, smartass. Sidecar — directly named after the motorcycle attachment — one part each Cognac, orange liqueur, and lemon juice. I’m an Embury fan, so his recipe is eight parts Cognac to two parts orange to one part lemon. That means I'd do it the right way, the proper way.”

  “And that is?”

  “I’d smash his head in with a bottle of VOSP. Hoping for eight times to do the trick.”

  Frey smiled, then laughed. “Okay, fair enough. Eight times the charm. And what do you do with the bodies?”

  “Easy. Fishbait.”

  28

  “FISHBAIT?”

  “FISHBAIT. JOEY OR I will take them to the bay, dump them in, let nature take care of the rest. We bleach the bodies, but it’s really about just letting time and nature do its thing.”

  “And do you have time?”

  “Sure. The local cops don’t care, and the Feds are happy that I’m taking care of it.”

  “You have their word on that?”

  “Nope.”

  I waited for Frey to make a face, or to give me any impression that this arrangement wasn’t proper. Instead, he stared at the horizon, a proper sea dog already, knowing that he was in over his head and not caring, or realizing that it didn’t matter.

  Or, I guess, maybe he agreed with it. On some level I wasn’t sure how anyone could disagree with it, really. Frey seemed like the kind of guy who stayed out of the way, stayed to himself, tried to make himself useful but not so useful he was noticed.

  It was odd he was here, so ready to jump aboard our little harebrained mission. He was nice enough, for sure, but it seemed strange to me the juxtaposition between his desire to help us in something so utterly dangerous it was near suicide and his levelheaded, stay-out-of-the-way mentality.

  I liked having the help, but something about him didn’t fit.

  “Frey,” I said. He turned and looked at me. “Who are you? Really?”

  He frowned. “You’ve known me for a year now, Dixon. What do you mean?”

  “You’ve known Joey, but I haven’t really ever talked to you. What’s your thing? What makes you tick?”

  He struggled for a moment, silently chewing something while staring out to sea. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m a distributor, been doing that for some time.”

  “Some time?”

  “Enough years that I’ve forgotten most of them,” he replied.

  “You like it?”

  He nodded, then shrugged. “Sure, yeah. Well enough, I guess. It’s a job.”

  “But never exciting enough for you? You had to
come down and ask us to recruit you for whatever you want to call this?”

  “Yeah. I like the job, but my life’s… boring, I guess. Joey always talks about you like you’re some secret vigilante or something. Like Batman.”

  “Like Batman?”

  “My word, not his.”

  “What did he tell you about me?” I was started to feel suspicious all over again, but I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. I didn’t want to fishbait the guy.

  “That’s the thing,” he said. “Not much. Really, very little. Just said you were a good boss, liked whiskey, knew your stuff, etcetera.”

  “So why assume this kind of thing is what we do?”

  “Because of what he wouldn’t tell me about you. I’d always ask about you, how the bar was doing and everything, and he’d essentially shut down. Just try to change the subject.”

  “So you jump to the conclusion that I’m Batman.”

  “Well, you know… it always seemed so mysterious. Both you guys. Your bar’s always closing at random times, on random days, for weird hours. I’ve made a couple runs down to you this year and have had to come back later. Then there was that report about old Marley’s place. Seemed weird.”

  I waited for his explanation. Old Marley’s place was a bed and breakfast off the main strip here in town, and had been the site of a pair of grisly murders earlier this year. Marley himself had been shot, and a younger man staying with his sister in one of the upstairs room had been found brutally murdered, a phone number etched onto his bleeding skin.

  The papers and news reports kept things simple, surprisingly, only stating that the murder seemed to be one of vengeance, targeting the younger man only, and Marley had just happened to be in the wrong place at the very wrong time.

  The full story was a bit more nuanced, and while it was still raw in my mind, it had ended well enough for those of us who had lived through it. The man who was murdered had a sister: Hannah. Joey and I had gotten into quite a scrape trying to save her from the same guys who had killed her brother, and though it was all over now, the spoils of war had given me a boat that served as a constant reminder of that past and had given Hannah the desire to escape everything and spend some time overseas.