Blood in the Water

by Michael Prescott

  The knife was in his hand now—his left hand, because the right was a bloody mangle. He remembered an old-time hood nicknamed Johnny Three Fingers. If Frank lived, he might acquire that moniker for himself.

  But he wasn’t going to live. He knew that.

  Bodies crowded into the office. Someone switched on a flashlight, blinding him once more as it found his face.

  “Jesus,” the one with the flashlight said in obvious surprise. “It’s fucking Lazzaro.”

  So they hadn’t even known who they were shooting at. That was rich. Over the years, plenty of made men had gone out of their way to try to get rid of him, and they’d all failed. Now some bunch of nobodies had pulled it off without even trying.

  The flashlight shifted, allowing Frank to see their faces. Chinks. Ridiculously young. Fucking kids, for Chrissakes.

  He recognized the leader, holding the flashlight. Patrick Chiu of the Long Fong Boyz.

  It looked like the war had started early.

  “Where’s Parker?” Chiu asked

  Frank liked that question. He liked it because he knew the Boyz would make Parker just as dead as he wanted her to be.

  “Main room.” Each word came with grinding effort. “Tied to a chair.”

  Chiu nodded. “She your gal Friday or some shit?”

  Frank debated how to answer. If he told the truth, they might realize Parker hadn’t taken out Joey Huang, and maybe even let her live. That outcome was unacceptable.

  “Yeah,” he said. “She hit your guy.”

  “On your orders?”

  “Sure.” What the hell, they’d never believe him if he denied it.

  “If Supergirl’s your bitch, what’d you tie her up for?”

  “She’s a loose cannon. A liability. I always planned to take her out.”

  “You were worried about her, but not about throwing down with us?”

  Frank raised himself a few inches, summoning his dignity and his remaining strength. “That’s right, Mr. Moto. I never lost no sleep over you pissant chop suey eaters. My organization ain’t gonna be taken down by some crew of fucking wannabe punks with more tats than brains.”

  Chiu smiled slowly. “Don’t be so sure, Don Corleone. It’s a new world. Our world.”

  “Tell that to your good pal Fuck Face.”

  “Fish Face was his name. Where is he?”

  “In a drum back there”—Frank nodded toward the main room—“swimming in concrete.”

  “Did you kill him yourself?”

  “You know it, slope. One bullet right between his slanty eyes.”

  Chiu’s face, lit from below in the backsplash of the flashlight, showed no reaction. “And Parker? Is she dead too?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Good.”

  Chiu raised his gun and shot Frank twice. The impact knocked him off the chair. He fell on the floor and put his hand on his waist, where he felt a quick pulse of blood.

  Gutshot, and bleeding out. A crappy way to die.

  But Parker would go with him. He drew comfort from that.

  CHAPTER 40

  Chiu couldn’t regret dispatching Lazzaro, not after what he’d done to Cricket and Fish Face. Still, it was too soon. Retribution should have come later, when it could be coordinated with other tactical moves.

  That was a problem for later. Right now they had to move fast. The grenade and the gunfire were sure to draw attention even in a mostly deserted industrial neighborhood.

  Lam had gone to check on the two who’d fallen by the door. He came back, breathing hard. “Mouse and Fire Ant,” he whispered. “Both cold.”

  “We’ll give them a good send-off. Parker’s the deal now.” Chiu’s glance moved from Lam to Eng to Kee. “Last night this girl played me for a fool, and I let her walk. She doesn’t walk this time.”

  His men nodded tensely, their blood up.

  “Remember, we take her alive. We limo her someplace, and make her bleed. We use harsh fucking measures. What the hell, maybe we break out the hatchets, like the boo how doy. Slice and dice. Come on.”

  He led his men forward, through the side door.

  Parker was in the main room, Lazzaro had said. Tied in place like a staked goat. And he and his men were the tigers moving in for the kill.

  He came around the high wall of shelves, his flashlight sweeping the cavernous room. It alighted on a solitary chair in the middle of the floor.

  The chair was empty.

  He slowed his steps, aware that the situation had abruptly turned dangerous.

  “Watch it,” he whispered to his guys. “The bitch is loose.”

  She couldn’t have gotten far. The freight door was still closed. She must be hiding somewhere among the rows of shelves, or in her Jeep, parked yards away.

  Time slowed, as it always did when there was danger in the air. Flanked by his men, Chiu approached the spot where Parker had been secured. His flashlight lit up a crate positioned directly behind the chair. On the crate was a small steel cage, and in the cage was a rat.

  The flashlight dipped, revealing streaks in the dusty floor where Parker had pivoted the chair. She’d spun it around so the cage butted up against the rear slat. Around the slat lay a coil of tattered cloth. It looked like a necktie. It must have been used to bind her to the chair.

  Chiu understood then. He knew exactly what Parker had done. With Lazzaro out of the room, she’d maneuvered the chair so the rat could get at the necktie. The animal had shredded the tie with its teeth and claws, setting her free.

  And it had bitten her. There was blood on the tie.

  Blood on the floor too. Teardrop-shaped splotches measled the concrete.

  He raised the flashlight, letting the beam follow the trail. It led to the Jeep. The front passenger door hung open. A disarranged blanket hung halfway out.

  Something had been stowed under that blanket. Something Parker had wanted.

  Chiu pondered that blanket and what it might have concealed. Last night Parker had been carrying a whole bag of goodies.

  What the hell was she carrying tonight?

  “Go back,” Chiu said, his voice smaller than it should have been.

  “What’s that, dai lo?” Eng asked.

  “Go back!”

  - — -

  Under the Jeep, prone on her belly, Bonnie dragged the TEC-9 into position, lining up the shot.

  The Long Fong Boyz were fifteen feet away, their position marked by the flashlight in their leader’s hand.

  And sometimes the figures before her were Patrick Chiu and his gangsta crew, and sometimes they were two men in a farmhouse at the end of a dark corridor.

  It made no difference either way. The outcome was always the same.

  - — -

  Chiu was turning to run when the shooting started.

  Automatic fire. It came from the Jeep—from behind it—no, from underneath. Short, deadly bursts fired from cover at Chiu and his men, who stood exposed in the middle of the room.

  To his left, Chiu saw Eng fall in a mist of blood. To his right, Lam went down.

  Chiu’s flashlight made him an easy target. He threw it away, retreating as the machine gun stuttered again, taking out Benny Kee.

  Nowhere to run. No place to hide. But he had a second flashbang. If he could toss it under the Jeep, it would take Parker out of action long enough for him to finish her off.

  He fumbled the grenade out of his pocket and pulled the pin, and then his legs buckled as hot rounds plowed through his knees.

  He hit the floor screaming. The grenade slipped from his grasp and rolled away. He groped for it in the stroboscopic light of the machine gun’s muzzle flashes. Got his hand on it.

  And it went off—blinding explosion of light, deafening concussive roar, slap of searing heat on his face. The world tilted, the floor sliding away, everything canted at a crazy angle as his sense of balance went haywire, and his face was burning, his eyes—something was wrong with his eyes …

  Another burp of machine
gun fire. Concrete vaporizing around him. Sudden pain in his back, in his side, in his neck.

  Got me, he thought with surreal clarity. Severed the jugular. That’s a lethal hit.

  But if it was lethal, why was he still alive? He didn’t understand. It was a riddle.

  He was still pondering the problem when a last spate of fire took off the top of his skull.

  - — -

  Bonnie stayed under the Jeep for what seemed like a long time after the TEC-9’s magazine was empty. Her ears were clanging. Her vision swam with the afterimages of muzzle flashes and the retinal imprint of the stun grenade’s flash. She smelled dust and cordite, smoke and blood.

  Not her own blood, though. None of the shots had hit her. Virgil had nicked her arm while gnawing through the necktie, but her leather gloves had protected her from most of his bites and scratches.

  Somehow, despite everything, her plan had worked. She’d left the GPS beacon on her Jeep in order to lure the Long Fong Boyz into a trap, and though she hadn’t expected it to play out quite this way, she couldn’t argue with the results.

  There was still the question of Frank Lazzaro. He was probably dead, but with a man like Frank, probably just wasn’t good enough.

  Slowly she emerged from underneath the Jeep. The TEC-9, out of ammo, was useless; she let it slip from her hand.

  The flashlight had broken when Chiu tossed it away, leaving the warehouse utterly dark. She groped for the Jeep’s storage compartment and took out the camcorder, already set to infrared mode. With the power on, the viewfinder gave her a decent view of the area in black and white. She pressed the record button and moved forward.

  Three bodies lay before her. She approached them without emotion. A strange stillness had come over the warehouse, and with it the weird sense that maybe she was dead too and didn’t know it—a ghost haunting this place.

  She had felt this way before. In the farmhouse. No fear, no rage, nothing but the deadly calm at the center of a storm.

  As she passed the fallen, she checked to see if they were dead. One wasn’t—the guy with the MAC-11. He moved feebly, his right hand clenching and unclenching. The hand was decorated in elaborate tats. He must have felt like a big man when he got that ink. He wasn’t so big now.

  She picked up one of the scattered handguns and capped him, one shot through the temple. A simple gesture, thoughtless, routine. Like stepping on a roach.

  Kill or be killed. That was her life.

  She took a closer look at the gun. It was a Glock nine, and it was one of hers. And the grenades—those must have been from her kit, too. The Long Fong Boyz had been trying to off her with gear they’d stolen out of her own stash. Ironic, or something.

  She checked the pistol’s magazine. Six rounds left.

  Chiu lay a few yards from the other two. The flashbang had burned him badly. His face was a scorched mask. His brains had spilled out of his skull in a wet pile.

  The chair had been shot to pieces. The crate was scored with bullet holes. The cage had been knocked to the floor. Virgil, remarkably enough, appeared unhurt. Bonnie wedged the gun in her armpit and retrieved the cage.

  Silently she crossed the room, stepping past the last row of shelves and through the side door into the office, where Frank Lazzaro lay in a corner, armed with only a knife.

  One of his hands was mostly gone, and a bloody puddle was pooling in his lap, but he was still breathing.

  She put down the cage and took a step forward.

  “Gotta hand it to you, Frank,” she said. “You really know how to throw a party.”

  He turned his head, his face swimming into focus in the viewfinder. He stared at her, and something died in his eyes.

  “So you made it,” he whispered, his voice dragging. “You came through.”

  “Looks that way.”

  “The machine gun I heard …”

  “Mine. From the Jeep.”

  “Well.” He lowered his head. “You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?”

  “I have my moments.”

  He squinted at her, frowning. “What is that, a camera? You making a snuff movie or something?”

  “Or something.”

  “You some kind of fucking ghoul?”

  “You’re one to talk.”

  He coughed up a chuckle. “Fair enough. I told you Halloween was coming early.”

  “That you did.”

  “And I made you beg, Parker. You cried like a little bitch. You were scared.”

  She couldn’t deny it. “I was scared.”

  “You’re not as tough as you like to pretend.”

  “Nobody’s as tough as they pretend.” She watched him, her gaze ticking from the video monitor to the ragged shape bleeding in the dark. “You know, sometimes I feel bad about what I do. Guilty, I guess. I forget there are people like you around, and without someone like me, there’s nobody to put you down. Without me, you’ll just go on fucking up everything and everybody that gets in your way. ’Cause that’s just who you are, Frankie.”

  “Don’t call me that,” he muttered sullenly. “I’m not Frankie. Haven’t been for a long time.”

  “You know what you’re like? A hurricane. You’re big and brainless, and you rip up everything, and afterward there’s only darkness. Because darkness is what you are. It’s all you are. And now you’re gonna die here in the dark.”

  “Bite me.”

  “Yeah. That’s the general idea.”

  Bonnie picked up the cage and let him hear the rattling of the chain. She saw his face go through changes as he understood.

  “Get ready for your close-up,” she whispered, “you son of a bitch.”

  CHAPTER 41

  Looking back, she realized she must have hurried to leave the warehouse as the police sirens closed in. But at the time she had no sense of urgency. She’d gathered up the remaining weaponry, including Mama Blessing’s TEC-9, and her watch cap, which contained hair samples of possible value to the CSI techs. She’d raised the freight door by hand, struggling with the weight, working hard, and steered the Jeep into the alley, proceeding toward the back of the building and exiting via a rear street just as the first cop cars arrived at the front. She’d left them with a big mystery—both the Lazzaro and Chiu gangs decapitated in one night.

  A close run thing, all around. There were plenty of ways it could have gone south. But apparently it hadn’t been her day to die. Tomorrow, maybe. But not today.

  She sorted things out as she drove. Frank had kept his vendetta personal. There was no reason anyone in his organization would be aware of her connection with him.

  That left the Long Fong Boyz. There must be a few of them left; the whole crew hadn’t been at the warehouse. But with their leader dead, the remaining soldiers would probably scatter. They’d be running from the police and worried about retaliation by Frank’s people. They would have neither the time nor the inclination to deal with her.

  No physical evidence or witnesses could link her to the warehouse. She’d worn gloves and hadn’t left any prints. No one alive had seen her enter or leave.

  It looked like she would be okay.

  She didn’t get on the phone until she was safely out of Jersey City. Then she used a burner from her glove box to call Victoria Lazzaro.

  “Oh my God, is it really you?” Victoria sounded like she’d been crying for a long time.

  “Big as life. I’m still in the picture. And your husband … isn’t.”

  “He’s dead?”

  Bonnie flashed on her last sight of Frank Lazzaro. “By now he is.”

  “Thank you, oh, thank you …”

  “No need. I don’t get any karma points. I was just saving my own ass.”

  “Well, you saved me too. And my babies. You’re a miracle worker. You’re a saint.”

  Bonnie almost choked on the cig she was smoking. “Yeah, well, I don’t expect to be fitted with a halo anytime soon. Look, the police are gonna have a lot of questions for you.”
>
  “I won’t tell them anything.”

  “Lady, you don’t have to sell me. I saw how you held up to Frank’s style of interrogation. If you can handle that, you can handle anything the cops throw at you. Just be prepared to act all shocked and grief-stricken when they give you the news.”

  “Of course.”

  “That voodoo altar in the bedroom—it raises too many questions. You might wanna get rid of it.”

  “With pleasure. I’ll use a hammer on the goddamned thing and burn the pieces in the fireplace. Then I’ll move out of this house forever. My babies—they cried all the time in this house. They knew it was an evil place. They’ve been crying all night.”

  “Well,” Bonnie said, “it sounds like they’ve stopped now.”

  Victoria paused. “That’s true,” she said. “They’re asleep. It must have been about five minutes ago when they calmed down. Was that when Frank …? When he …?”

  “I don’t go in for that Twilight Zone stuff,” Bonnie said with a shade more assurance than she felt. “Just enjoy the silence.”

  “Thank you, Bonnie. Thank you so much. I’m so glad it ended the way it did.”

  “You’re not the only one.”

  But it wasn’t over yet. There was still a gun shop owner in Ohio to deal with.

  And there was Des. Yeah.

  Him too.

  CHAPTER 42

  Bonnie made it home at dawn, breezing through the Brighton Cove checkpoint because Maguire was nowhere in evidence. The power was still out, and according to the radio it would probably stay out for a week. Which was a giant pain, but still not as bad as having a rat give her a facial peel. All in all, she wasn’t complaining.

  It was time to deal with the Ohio problem and put the kibosh on Danny boy’s little witch hunt. Funny thing. She remembered thinking, just a couple days ago, that maybe she would let Maguire go ahead with it, let him put her away. But she couldn’t remember why she’d ever felt like that. Right now it was the furthest thing from her mind.

  In her duplex, she booted up her laptop, which still had some juice in the battery, then connected it to Sparky’s camcorder via the cable he’d so thoughtfully, albeit grudgingly, supplied. As promised, it was easy enough to transfer the forty seconds of video she’d shot to the laptop’s hard drive. After that, uploading it to her phone was a cinch.