All Due Respect Issue #1

by Chris F. Holm

  “That’s awful. I’m sorry.”

  Lucas’ razorblade paused on Russo’s neck. “You ought to be. You sold it to him.”

  “Come again?” Worry flashed in Russo’s eyes. Worry, but not fear. He was too confident in the protection his reputation afforded to be afraid. Too sure he was untouchable.

  “Not you personally. One of your street-level hoods. But there’s no way they cut your shit with something that nasty without your consent. So tell me,” he said, holding his blade fast to Russo’s tender flesh, “what’s the profit margin on ten dead junkies?”

  “Listen kid, I’m going to cut you a break because it’s clear you’re hurting—by which I mean I won’t have you strung up by your balls for talking to me the way you did, so long as you come to your senses quick. But you’d best watch your tongue from here on out, or I might just change my mind.”

  “That’s tough talk from a guy who’s got a blade held to his neck.”

  Russo snorted. “Kid, you don’t have the guts. You’re a boy playing a man’s game. Talk tough all you want, but we both know when the time comes, you’ll tap out.”

  Lucas increased the pressure on Russo’s neck. His skin dimpled beneath the blade. His carotid pulsed against its cutting edge. “You sure about that?”

  “You’re goddamn right I’m sure. I’ve seen your type a thousand times. All inked up like some fucking ghetto thug, but beneath the surface, you’re soft. You don’t have what it takes to kill a man. You’re just some two-bit con who didn’t even go down swinging when you got nabbed. You walked out with your hands up like a little bitch—and abandoned your friends in the process. You wanna blame somebody for your buddy’s death—and for your other buddy’s fall—there’s plenty of mirrors in here to choose from. But don’t waste my time pretending like you’ve got what it takes to cut on me.”

  But in spite of his words, Russo wasn’t sure—Lucas could see it in his eyes. There was a flicker of doubt showing through the cracks in his bravado. Lucas dragged the straight razor a fraction of an inch across Russo’s neck, like a violinist coaxing a mournful note from his instrument. A bead of crimson welled glistening from the wound, and was reflected in the gleaming flat of the blade.

  Fear blossomed in Russo’s eyes. His hand shot up to still the razor. His pinkie and ring finger grasped the shank and hinge. His middle and index wrapped around the blade. It sunk bone-deep into his skin. Russo hissed and pulled his hand away as if the razor were an open flame. Lucas dropped the blade as well. It clattered to the floor beside the barber’s chair.

  Russo was out of the chair in a flash, his bleeding hand clamped over his bleeding neck. With his free hand, he fumbled for the handkerchief that no longer resided in the breast pocket of his suit coat. He was red-faced with fury—but for the first time since he’d walked in, his eyes were alight with life. “You little shit,” he spat. “You’ll pay for this, you mark my words. The only reason I’m not going to kill you here myself is I’ve been seen—and unlike you and your punk friends, I’m too smart to take the rap. But understand my people are going to come for you. You’ll burn alive before the week is out. And know that when you do—know that at the very moment you’re in so much goddamn pain your writhing ruptures muscle and snaps tendons and you pray for death to come—I’ll have three dozen witnesses who’ll be able to attest I was eating a porterhouse the size of your fucking head and drinking champagne that costs more than you’ve made in your entire life with women who’d charge you twice that much an hour.”

  Russo yanked open the door and stormed out into the streetlit night, the tarnished bell above it clanging in alarm. Lucas watched until Russo disappeared from sight. Then he closed the blinds and locked the door, and flipped the sign on it to CLOSED. He realized as he did his hands were trembling—not from fear but from adrenaline, from anticipation.

  He never dared hope his encounter with Russo would go so well.

  Every barbershop or hair salon Lucas had ever been in kept nitrile gloves on hand. Lord knows why Sal bothered, since as far as Lucas knew, Sal never dyed his clients’ hair—but as he slipped on a pair he was grateful that Sal stocked them nonetheless. He plucked the bloodied straight razor off the floor, and with the sleeve of his barber’s whites he wiped the handle, tail, and upper blade clean of prints—leaving only those on the shank and lower blade, both left by Russo, as well as Russo’s blood. Then he wiped down the floor where it had landed, and the barber’s chair, too. When he was done, no trace of their scuffle remained.

  On his way out the back door, he grabbed the bottle of Russo’s favorite Sambuca he’d bought in anticipation of their meeting from the stockroom shelf, and three bottles of rubbing alcohol as well. Then flicked off the lights, and stepped out into the darkened alley.

  The panel van was so goddamn nondescript—neither ancient nor late-model, neither tricked-out nor run-down, with SMITH’S FLOWERS emblazoned on the side—its license plates may as well have read FBI. Thankfully, the alley dead-ended, so no one but Lucas even realized it was back here—Sal hadn’t once taken his own trash out since he’d hired Lucas, and the other businesses that backed up on it closed hours ago. Lucas didn’t bother knocking on the van’s side door, instead setting down the bottles he was carrying and sliding it open himself; though Redfield and Lange were both inside, they weren’t in any condition to answer him. They greeted him with smiles ear to ear—made slightly less welcoming by the fact those blood-smeared crescents stretched well below their chins, exposing cartilage and gristle.

  Redfield was positively giddy when he texted Lucas that afternoon to tell him Russo was on his way to Sal’s. He and Lange hauled ass across town to beat him here so they could listen in. Lucas slit their throats just moments before Russo arrived, while they were trying to wire him up for sound. Thankfully, the van walls got the worst of it; he’d tried his damnest to direct the spray away from him. His barber’s coat—which, as now, he’d left hanging just inside the back door before he ducked out to meet with them under the pretense of having a smoke—hid the rest.

  Lucas climbed into the van and closed the door behind him. He grabbed Lange’s cold right hand and held it tight to the van floor, palm up. Then he rested the bloodied edge of his already gore-streaked straight razor against the crease at the base of Lange’s index finger. With the meat of each gloved palm against the flat top of the blade, he guillotined down hard, and Lange’s finger came off with a crunch. White bone glistened in the darkness. Blood oozed black and thick, but didn’t pour.

  He did the same to Redfield’s finger. Then he collected both and climbed out of the van, tossing them to the ground beside the van’s front tire. They landed parallel, and looked to Lucas like a gruesome equal sign. He thought maybe that was Jamie’s way of telling him they were square.

  Lucas set the razorblade covered in Russo’s prints and blood beside the severed fingers, and emptied all three bottles of rubbing alcohol onto Lange and Redfield’s corpses. Then he cracked open the Sambuca and removed Russo’s handkerchief—plain white and monogrammed—from his back pocket. He’d swiped it while Russo dozed, face full of hot towels. Lucas doused it with the anise-flavored liquor, and stuffed one end into the bottleneck.

  Lucas knew he’d have to disappear. Knew the Feds and Russo would both be after him. But he also knew the Feds wouldn’t doubt his motives for vanishing—all evidence would indicate he’d been outed as a snitch by Russo and his men, so they’d figure he just went to ground. And even if the crime scene looked a little too good to be true, Lucas was confident Uncle Sam was smart enough not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

  “Let’s see who’s too smart to take the rap this time, asshole,” he said as he struck his Zippo and lit Russo’s booze-soaked handkerchief. He threw the bottle into the van with all he had. As it shattered, the dingy alley came alive with sudden color, blue flames fading to yellow at their edges, and the ghost-green afterimages they left behind with every blink.

  Lucas watched until h
e was sure the bodies caught, and then he turned and walked away.

  * * *

  Chris F. Holm was born in Syracuse, New York to a mother from a cop family and a father from a long line of fantasy and sci-fi geeks. He wrote his first story at the age of six. It got him sent to the principal’s office. Since then, his work has fared better, appearing in such publications as Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Needle: A Magazine of Noir, and The Best American Mystery Stories 2011. He’s been longlisted for a Stoker Award and nominated for an Anthony, a Derringer, a Silver Falchion, and a pair of Spinetinglers (one of which he won). His Collector novels recast the battle between heaven and hell as old-fashioned crime pulp. Chris lives on the coast of Maine with his lovely wife, crime-fiction reviewer Katrina Niidas Holm. No, she hasn’t reviewed his books.

  GOOD DOGS

  TODD ROBINSON

  THE ICE SCRAPER SLIPPED from Albert’s fingers again, his knuckles rapping painfully on the frozen-over windshield of his ’98 Civic. The gloves could only do so much in a cold this ferocious, just as the scraper could only do so much against the ice.

  Albert shook the pain and chill from his hands, and started scoring the windshield once more. He thought about using hot water again, but only for a second. He remembered what happened last year, when he poured boiling water across the windshield in an attempt to remove the sheet of ice. He thought it was a very smart idea.

  Albert thought of himself as somebody who knew a lot about a few things, not a lot about most things, and absolutely nothing about a couple things. But not somebody who had many smart ideas. One of the things that Albert knew nothing about was physics—specifically temperature expansion. When he poured the hot water onto the thick ice, it immediately began making a crackling sound. Albert remembered feeling immensely pleased with himself right until the windshield made a muffled pop and imploded.

  Albert wracked his brain to come up with another idea to clear his windshield other than scraping it—one that wouldn’t force him to drive to work with no windshield this time, with pebbles of safety glass poking his rear. Especially since the man on the radio said that 195 was shut down due to an overturned tractor trailer. If he had to take Route 6 all the way in? Albert’s heart sank. He was going to barely make it into work on time as it was.

  He doubled his efforts, scrabbling against the ice like the time his cat Bossy shat in the bathtub and feverishly scratched against the porcelain in her vain attempt to bury the turd. He worked himself into a thick sweat under his parka by the time he cleared enough from the driver’s side where he thought he could drive.

  Breathing heavily from the effort, he started the engine and pulled out of the driveway. Instead of his usual route to the highway, he cut up Cottonwood Drive. Albert wasn’t sure that the thickly wooded road connected to Route 6, but it was the right direction. He started to worry after about two miles, but finally saw a road sign for the upcoming route.

  Albert was humming along with the radio when a gray dart shot in front of his car from tall pines. Albert jammed the brakes and cut the wheel away from whatever it was that he nearly hit. At least he didn’t think he hit it. He hadn’t heard anything impact the bumper, but he might have simply driven over the poor creature.

  He was driving carefully enough where the skid was manageable, the car only sliding a couple of feet to his right. The bigger problem was the old car’s engine, which coughed itself to death on the side of the road as it slowed to a full stop.

  Albert stepped out of the car and looked back down the road. No carcass littered the street. He looked at the bumper, his tires, no sign of a recently departed animal brought to its maker courtesy of Honda.

  Albert sighed with relief. One night, he’d hit a raccoon on Padanarum Road and cried over the animal’s body until he vomited.

  Reaching to the side of his seat, Albert popped both the hood and the trunk. This wasn’t a new issue with his car. Albert had owned it long enough to know what the issue was and how to correct it.

  Albert rummaged through the detritus in his trunk. Under the old sun-faded cooler, next to the oil-stained Red Sox sweatshirt, he found the ball-peen hammer. He shut the trunk, hearing a high whine as he did. Albert looked around, dismissing the whine as just another aging component of his old car, something else in his life that he’d have to oil, tighten, duct-tape, WD 40…

  Under the hood, Albert gave the manifold a couple good whacks with the hammer to open the fused fan. On the second hit, he heard the whine again, not unlike the echo of sound made from the striking of metal on metal.

  Movement to his left startled Albert, his foot skidding on the slick road before gravity pulled him down onto his rear end. Three feet from his face stood a pit bull bitch, her grey-mottled fur pulled tight over a heartbreakingly prominent ribcage. Her swollen teats swayed as she sidestepped back and forth, taking Albert’s measure and whimpering.

  “Hey girl,” Albert said, taking his own measure of the dog. He’d known many mean dogs over the years. It seemed like every other yard in Riverford had a dog that had been abused into vicious sentries, especially those in yards attached to the houses that seemed to have the least number of reasons to attract thieves. This dog had a collar, so she wasn’t feral, and there was no sign of the fury that burned in a mean dog’s eyes.

  The dog seemed both fearful and in need to gain Albert’s attention. Albert pulled the glove off his right hand and extended it for the dog to get his scent. The dog craned its neck toward Albert’s truncated fingers and sniffed the air, body tensed for retreat the whole time. Her tongue flicked on his fingertips, her tail twitching in a way that was almost a short spasm rather than a wag.

  Albert stood slowly so as not to spook the dog and walked back to the driver’s side. The dog yipped, started back toward a dirt road that Albert hadn’t even noticed as he drove by.

  Albert opened the door and stretched over the seat to his lunch pail sitting on the passenger seat. He opened the aluminum lid and took out one of the two turkey sandwiches that he’d prepared for his lunch. He tossed half of the sandwich in front of the dog. She jumped back initially, wary that Albert may be throwing something at her that would cause hurt. Again, she sniffed tentatively at the food, then lunged forward, gulping down the sandwich half in two big bites. Her stomach contracted almost immediately, like she might vomit the food right back up.

  Jeez. How long has it been since this dog’s eaten? Albert tore the second half of the sandwich into smaller pieces before he gave it to the dog. Once she’d eaten the scraps, she went right back to the back-and-forth jump/pacing toward the road that she’d been doing earlier.

  It was then that Albert recognized the behavior. The dog was trying to get him to follow her. Bossy did the same motions when she wanted to lead Albert back to her food bowl.

  Albert took a step toward her, and the dog shot down the path. Long reedy grass crisscrossed a sand and gravel pathway that looked barely wide enough for a compact car. The dog skittered back onto the road, its whining intensified to full-on barking now that it felt it had Albert’s attention.

  Albert followed the dog, unease creeping into his gut. What if somebody needed help? What if someone was hurt, or even dead? His breath quickened, short plumes of frozen vapor condensed onto his thick glasses.

  The dog stopped at the base of a rotted pine, its barking once again pulled in, an internalized cry filled with more human-sounding desperation than Albert had ever heard from an animal. Slowly, Albert knelt at the dry black hollow, terrified that it would be full of body parts, a skeletal hand reaching from the dead frozen leaves for him.

  He didn’t see anything.

  At first.

  With his gloved hand, he swept away the brittle leaves covered in frost.

  Three puppies were underneath. Stiff and cold, the breeze ruffled their thin newborn fur.

  The dog paced back and forth next to Albert, eyes darting from her babies to him, imploring him: Do some
thing.

  Albert dusted the ice and dirt from the knees of his work pants and looked around. The road had to lead somewhere. The dog had to come from somewhere. Another fifty yards down the road, he saw the end of a low chain-link fence. Albert undid his belt, looped it through the dog’s collar and led her toward the fence, hoping there was a home on the other side of it. The dog resisted for only a moment, unwilling to leave her pups again.

  A house sat inside the gated yard, a dilapidated ranch with a low-hanging porch that looked like one more snowstorm would provide enough weight to shatter the beams and collapse the entire house.

  Albert led the dog to the open gate, holding his pants up with the other hand. The rusted fence door was off the hinge at an angle. Albert led the dog into the yard and slipped the belt off her collar. After re-adjusting his pants, he lifted the gate back onto the pin. The fence resisted, having warped slightly from sitting at the broken angle for too long.

  With a little torque, Albert managed to get the gate shut and latched, although he doubted that the fence was high enough to keep the dog in if it really wanted out. But even that small act of fixing sent a pleasant warmth into Albert’s belly. It wasn’t much, but he was able to Do Something.

  To Fix Something.

  To Help.

  The dog ran over to a dirty set of food bowls, and snuffled them both until they flipped over, empty.

  Albert walked carefully up the steps, each footfall crackling the ice that seamed the weathered wood. Two of the front windows were covered with tinfoil on the inside, the third with thick layers of silver duct tape over a spider-webbed crack. Albert hesitated before he rang the doorbell. Images of ghosts and crones invaded his mind’s eye—all the things that his little boy self imagined lived in a house like that.