James entered Frank’s room. Although his brother was still hooked up to several tubes, and he looked pale and weak, James felt exhilarated.
He placed a hand on Frank’s arm. “Hey there, bro,” he said, not expecting a response.
Frank’s eyes opened languorously. When his gaze rested on James, he blinked. After a beat, Frank moved his lips and emitted a raspy sound.
James picked up a plastic glass of water with a pink stick-sponge in it. He pressed the sponge on Frank’s lips and watched his brother suck at it.
Frank croaked out an indecipherable sound. He gulped and then rasped, “Help ... Connie ... help.” Then he closed his eyes and began breathing deeply.
James waited in vain for Frank to wake. After an hour, he went out to the nurses’ station and said to the young woman there, “Thanks for everything.”
She smiled.
“You live in Pennsmoor?” he asked as an afterthought
“Yes.”
“I see we’ve got a new police chief. When I left for the Army, Glen Schilling was chief.”
“Yeah, Chief Schilling retired to Florida. Sean Blair’s the chief now.”
“Don’t know him,” James said.
“Wife died of cancer a while back. The chief has two sons who are sure to get big-time football scholarships. Terry and Howie. Real teenage heartthrobs.”
Back home, James checked in with his parents and then went upstairs, lowered the retractable ladder in the hallway leading to the attic, and climbed up. Tipping his father’s footlocker back, he swept out a padlock key from under the right front corner and unlocked the box. He removed the .45 caliber automatic his father had bought at a garage sale a few years ago, still wrapped in an oily rag, its serial number filed away. He tested the slide and trigger mechanisms and found them in good working order. Then he took out a box of ammunition, two empty magazines, and a cleaning kit from the locker. After climbing down from the attic and replacing the ladder, he went to his room, cleaned the weapon, and then dug an old knapsack out of the closet and placed the pistol and now-loaded magazines in it.
CHAPTER 10
Howie Blair took a beer from the refrigerator and plopped down near his brother on the den couch. Terry zapped the television set with the remote, scrolling through the channels. He clicked on a local channel; a beeping sound came from the set and a news alert scrolled across the bottom of the screen: Pennsmoor High School coed commits suicide. Constance Brennan hanged herself in her home last night. Tune to Eyewitness News at 6 for the full story.
“What the hell!” Terry blurted. “Connie Brennan killed herself last night. I thought you said you talked to her this morning?”
“I did,” Howie gasped. “She called me.”
“What did she say?”
“Uh … nothing really.”
“She didn’t say anything?”
“Not a word. But her name showed on my cell when the call came in.”
“It wasn’t her. She was already dead,” Terry shrieked. After a second’s pause, he said, “What did you say?”
Howie shrugged. “I don’t know. I was really pissed. I shouted. Told her I was going to kick her ass. Like we did—”
“Like we did ... what?”
Howie blew out a blast of air and swallowed. “Like we did to her brother.”
“Oh shit! We’ve got to find out who has that cell phone.”
“And do what?” Howie asked.
“Depends on who it is,” Terry said.
“I don’t like this, Terry. We need to get out of this business now.”
Howie stood and started pacing just as the doorbell rang. He looked at his brother and spread his arms in a questioning gesture. “Who the hell’s that?”
“How do I know?”
Howie went to the front door and looked through the side light windows. “Some guy,” he called to Terry. He opened the door and saw the man had a cell phone to his ear. “Yeah?” he said. But then Howie’s phone rang. He snatched the phone from his pocket and looked at the screen: Connie Brennan.
“Hey there, Howie,” the guy on the front steps said, as he pocketed his cell phone. “Had to be sure I had the right guy.”
James stepped into the Blair house and drove his right fist into the much larger Howard Blair’s sternum. Blair fell to the floor as though he’d been poleaxed. James slipped the .45 pistol from the back of his waistband just as a mirror image giant of Howard Blair, fists raised, rushed into the entryway and came at him. But the kid skidded to a stop, the muzzle of the pistol denting his throat.
“Get your piece-of-shit brother off the floor and move into that room,” James ordered, pointing toward the den.
When the twins were seated on the couch, James looked from one to the other, his gun hand and gaze moving in synchronous sweeps.
“Okay, guys,” he said in a calm, reasonable voice. “I know you put Frank Brennan in the hospital and did something to Connie Brennan. Now you’re going to tell me what’s going on.”
Terry Blair’s eyes widened; Howie was groaning with each shallow breath. But neither brother said a word.
“One more chance, fellows.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Terry said. “Who the hell are you?”
James stepped forward and kicked Terry’s right shin so hard the kid fell off the couch, clutching his leg and screaming. James grabbed Terry’s long blond hair, flipped him onto his stomach, and placed a foot on the back of the kid’s thick neck.
James eyed Howie, made sure he was in place on the couch, and then bent over and pressed the muzzle of the .45 into the back of Terry’s neck and cocked the hammer.
“Please,” Howie rasped, “don’t hurt my brother. I’ll tell you.”
James straightened. He waved his gun hand in a come-hither motion and Howie opened up like a broken faucet. When the kid finished telling his story, James’s anger had escalated to a napalm-hot level, icy madness trying to seize control of his mind.
Connie’s suffering and shame.
Frank’s pain.
His parents’ worry and now inconsolable grief.
He forced himself to put a damper on his fury and, a sharp edge to his voice, asked why they beat up Frank.
“He found out Connie was sneaking out at night to meet us. He confronted us at a party later. Threatened to tell his parents. That’s when we—”
“How did you keep Connie from saying anything?” James asked.
Howie seemed to go cross-eyed, staring at the pistol in James’s hand. His face turned beet-red. “We—we had video of her. Pictures of her … having sex with men.”
“How many men?” James demanded.
The color drained from Howie’s face. He swallowed hard. “Lots of men.”
“And ...”
“We told her if she talked ... we’d kill her whole family.”
“You gave her drugs, too, didn’t you?”
Howie nodded, now looking sick enough to puke. “Meth.”
James felt blood lust vie with reason. He shook his head to try to clear it. In a husky, feral voice, he said, “I know you geniuses didn’t put this thing together yourselves. Who are you working for?”
“Nobody!” Terry said.
James pressed down harder with his boot, causing Terry to moan.
“Nick Carpesi,” Howie said. “Mob guy out of Philly.”
“And where do I find this Carpesi?”
“You’re crazy,” Howie moaned. “He’ll kill you. Then he’ll kill us. The guy’s a psycho.”
“What do you think I am?” James asked.
Howie just shook his head as though confused.
“Where are the pictures and videos you took?” James demanded.
Now looking down at his lap, Howie said, “On the computer on the kitchen counter and on my cell.”
“What about your brother? He have a cell?”
“Yeah,” Howie said, “but it doesn’t take pictures or video.”
CHA
PTER 11
Nick Carpesi was closing up shop for the day when he saw the Blairs’ Dodge pull up outside. The brothers and a third man got out of the car. “Damn! What now?” he muttered as he moved out of his workshop to his office and sat behind his desk. He removed a .9 mm Glock pistol from his desk drawer and placed it on his blotter, beneath a newspaper. He watched the Blairs and the third man, who wore gloves and a knapsack, enter his office. The Blairs looked frightened. The stranger closed the door and turned the lock.
“What’s up, boys?” Carpesi asked.
“This guy is—”
The stranger punched Terry in the kidney and growled, “Shut up!” Terry dropped to the floor. His brother, Howie, in front of the stranger, had tears in his eyes.
Carpesi grinned.
The stranger stepped around Howie and pulled a pistol from behind his back, aiming it at Carpesi. He then took a cell phone from his ski jacket pocket and said, “What do you think about me calling the police and telling them about your sex ring?”
“What are you playing at?” Carpesi demanded. “Who are you?”
The stranger just glared at him.
Carpesi knew he couldn’t let the cops question the Blair brothers. Even their father couldn’t protect them. They’d roll over like two-bit whores. And then there were the drugs hidden in the body shop.
“Let’s think this through,” he said reasonably. “Why don’t you tell me who you are?”
“James Brennan,” the stranger said. “Ring a bell?”
Carpesi suddenly knew with absolute certainty the cops were the least of his problems. He swiveled slightly in his chair, hoping to distract the man, and then snatched the Glock from under the newspaper, firing shot after shot after shot.
James felt red-hot heat in his left arm as the cell phone slipped from his hand. He returned fire with the .45, dropping and rolling to his right. As he came back to his feet, he saw a fan of blood and brain matter had painted the wall behind Carpesi. The mobster had reacted exactly as James had expected ... and as he’d hoped he would. The Blairs were lying on the floor. A neat hole had been punched in Terry’s forehead; blood seeped from the back of his head, forming an ever-growing pool. Howie was on his side, the left part of his chest covered in blood. Terry couldn’t have survived his head wound. James removed a glove and checked for a pulse at Howie’s neck. Gone, too.
James replaced the glove and put the .45 in Howie Blair’s right hand, raised his arm, and fired a shot in Carpesi’s direction, ensuring gunshot residue would be found on the kid. He let the pistol fall to the floor and then picked up Connie’s cell phone and put it in his jacket pocket. He left through the office’s back door.
CHAPTER 12
James found an alley a couple blocks from the body shop and shrugged out of the pack and his jacket. He ripped a piece from the bottom of his shirt and wrapped it around his left forearm where Carpesi’s bullet had knicked him. He removed Howie Blair’s laptop computer and cell phone from the knapsack and his sister’s cell from his pocket, stomped them to plastic and metal pieces, and dumped the wreckage, along with his gloves and the box of ammunition, in a sewer loudly running with snow melt. He put the jacket and knapsack back on and walked through back alleys toward the vacant lot where he’d left Frank’s Honda, two blocks from the Blair home.
The walk took fifteen minutes, allowing time for the heat in James’s gut to dissipate and the ice in his brain to melt, coming down from the adrenaline high of battle. The itching of the scar on the inside of his right leg suddenly started again. James tried to ignore it, but the scar tissue was like a spoiled child demanding attention. He rubbed the spot through his pants, feeling the six-inch groove in his flesh so close to his femoral artery.
He drove home and found his father pacing outside in the cold.
“Where you been?” Vince asked.
“Taking care of business, Dad.”
MADAME
BY DOUG BLAKESLEE
Now
Patience. Always a matter of patience. All jobs came down to waiting for the right moment, the perfect time to strike. Patience.
Henri looked over the list of names in the dim reflected light from his vantage point. One hundred guests. Three targets.
The client had given him the choice of whom to eliminate. None of the guests was innocent, a who’s who of the criminal underworld. Henri was to deliver a stark and brutal message.
He stretched his legs with care, avoiding rustling the bushes that concealed his presence. A low fog rolled across the mansion grounds, quickening the guards’ pace as they patrolled.
Patience.
Then
“Henri, do you know what day this is?” The portly man ran a hand through his thin, salt-and-pepper hair, then tugged at the neatly waxed mustache.
Henri sat in the straight-backed chair, watching his uncle pace about the small study. The man paused in front of one of the many shelves of books that lined the walls. In the hearth, a small fire crackled and spat, chasing off the edge of the cool, winter’s evening that had deposited snow outside the sole window. The young man put down the crystal wine glass before speaking. “It is my eighteenth birthday, Uncle Andre.”
The elderly man tugged at his black smoking jacket, smoothing out the wrinkles. He reached up to a large, leather-bound journal. On the spine, in neat gold printing, was embossed 1795. “You are now officially the Heir. All rights, privileges, and responsibilities of the Deibler family.”
“As is expected of me,” Henri said, running a pale hand through his short, trimmed black hair. He eyed the book. “Another history lesson?”
“As the Heir, you are entitled to know one last piece of family history.” Andre Deibler set the book on a wooden reading stand and gestured to his nephew to join him. He opened the book to a marker and pointed at the reproduction of a woodcut. “This is the first drawing of our family’s long and industrious lineage.”
The young man followed his uncle’s finger. A hooded man with an ax, larger than his body, stood next to a chopping block with a pile of heads on the ground in front of it. Another stack, this one of bodies, sat in the background. The artists had colored in the blood at the base of the block, on the bodies, and on the blade of the ax. A crowd of peasants surrounded the raised executioner’s platform.
“Jacques Marc Deibler was named the King’s Headsman in 1462 by Louis XI. The family served for over three hundred years as dozens of our sons, and a few daughters, were inducted into the tradition. Our line spread throughout Europe.” His uncle carefully flipped the pages as he spoke. “England. Belgium. Italy. Spain. Sometimes with an ax. Other times, with a sword.”
“We are no longer the king’s headsmen,” Henri said. Not in an age of chemical death.
“No. The French Revolution saw the last of the Deiblers leave France. By then, the guillotine had become the instrument of choice. Our family had drifted into other professions by then, expanding to become morticians, funeral directors, grave diggers, and ...” He paused and turned to another bookmarked page, “... assassins.” The page was a full-sized portrait of a middle-aged man, balding, with a thin and pointed nose, narrow eyes, and a puckered frown. “This is our founder, Daniel Nicholas Deibler.”
“His portrait hangs in the front hall, underneath the grand stairs with all the former patriarchs of the family. Why did he leave France?”
“Daniel chose his allies poorly and upon the conclusion of the revolution was forced to flee. He chose the newly created America to settle. That is not the important part of this tale. When he fled, Madame went with him. She was the Deibler family legacy from the very beginning.” Andre turned the page.
“That is Madame?” Henri’s brows furrowed at the picture. He turned to his uncle.
“She was the first and the last. There is none other like her, before or since. Without such reminders, the Deibler family has no connection to our proud heritage.” His face darkened. “Each Heir gains the responsibility for Madame. She was lo
st for a time, but we have recovered her. She is yours now, Henri. Treat her well and she will always see you through any difficulty.”
“She is a useless relic of an older time,” said a sharp, female voice.
Now
He observed the couple, laughing drunkenly, exit the basement door. The older man wore a tuxedo, tailored to fit just him. Her dress was a full-length outfit, complete with lace and satin highlights. In the dim lighting, it shone brightly. She pressed close to her companion.
“It is a beastly night. Why do you insist on this walk?”
“The night hides us from prying eyes, my love.” The man wrapped a hand around the small of his companion’s back, pulling her even closer, as their lips pressed together.
“You’re a bad man, Mister King.” She giggled. “What would your wife say?”
“She will never know. There’s a nice young man who is keeping her attention.” He looked around furtively. “They will be busy for some time. Long enough that we can enjoy each other’s company thoroughly.” The couple moved off toward the back of the house.
Henri smiled to himself, pulled up the hood, and affixed the mask to cover his face. Death with anonymity. He moved across the lawn toward the basement door. A check showed it to be still unlocked. Patience. Now to get to work. He would enter like a ghost and leave like the passing of a hurricane.
From above, voices laughing and chatting filtered down through the air vents. Strains of a Mozart waltz competed with chatter, each trying to outdo the other. Wine racks filled the basement proper, bottles of Chardonnay, Syrah, Bordeaux, Champagne, and other vintages. Henri paused to examine one of the racks and bottles. No dust. Interesting. The stock is recent. Skulking through the racks, he knew there were no cameras in this section. Security had focused on the exterior and there were gaps in the coverage. It might be a trap, but that’s easily fixed. On the far wall was a mains box; thick cables extended into the floors above and into the concrete floor below.
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