by Gareth Spark
"Sorry, Dale," the tall one, Nigel DiLuchi, hard-eyed me from the doorway, one hand thrust out like PC Plod holding off traffic.
"Mr. Hammond says you can't come in."
I squared my shoulders, pulled a cigarette from my jacket and lit up. The other guy, big and black, and new on the circuit. I'd seen him as often as his fuzzy chin saw a razor. He shifted his hands from his pockets and set circling to my left.
"You try to sucker punch me, son," I said through a mouthful of blue smoke.
"It'll be the last time you hit anything, but the deck."
DiLuchi reached for his pal, pulled on the guy's sleeve and shook his head. Wise move.
"Hammond's got my kid in there, Nige. Had his bone heads snatch her from the street."
"I don't want trouble, Dale." He wrote the truth with his eyes, in the way his Adam's apple bobbed.
"We've had five good years between us, Nige," I said.
"It'd be a shame to ruin a strong friendship over something like this."
"I could lose my job, mate."
"You would have lost more than that if I hadn't seen the blade, Nige."
He jerked like I slapped him. Broke eye contact to spit on the floor. I reached a hand to the heavy double door and Pushed it open.
"We're even."
"Yeah," I said, taking a hit off the Stirling and then spinning it to the kerb.
"I guess we are."
DiLuchi checked out his shoes as I walked into the club. I shut the door behind me like a good little stooge. He probably called me every cunt under the sun, behind my back.
Inside, the place stank of sweat and stale beer. Minimal lighting fought to brighten up the empty foyer. Memories of slappers and goons lurked in the shadows. I left them to it, following the voices bleeding through a door to my left.
She sat at an empty bar cradling a can of cola in one hand, her phone in the other. She worked her thumb over her smart phone, doing whatever it is fourteen year olds do with technology. She'd lost the hat, letting her auburn hair spill over her narrow shoulders. My beautiful baby girl had grown up while I wasn't looking.
"Niki," I said, crossing the dance floor with a smile on my face.
She smiled back, stowed her mobile in her bag and began walking over. Two more goons, the boys who'd picked her up judging from their fresh faces and all black attire, crawled out of the shadows and moved to intercept her. My mood dropped about as fast as my hackles shot up.
"Touch her, fellas..." I threatened without breaking my stride.
The two boys shared a look. Quick sneers flicked across arrogant mouths. One of them reached into his breast pocket, slipped an equaliser over his fist. The brass knuckles shone with wicked promise under fluorescent lights.
"Mr. Parker."
"Fuck you, Hammond," I barked, not bothering to throw him a look.
"She's coming with me and there's fuck all you can do about it."
"Really?" He asked, dripping smarm so thick it made the place stink.
"I'm not sure the local constabulary would agree, in fact I think they'd find favour in her soon to be step father protecting her from a violent criminal."
"Prick," I said, spinning on a heel.
"We're not divorced yet."
Martin Hammond, all white teeth and single-breasted pin stripes, grinned from under a shock of perfectly styled white hair. His big brown eyes, smart and barely showing a hint of his fifty five years, gleamed like hot coals in his face.
"Not yet, Mr. Parker, but I know some very good lawyers."
I felt my top lip twist, flashing my nicotine yellowed teeth. I felt my hands ball into fists. I felt my heart kick out the adrenaline rush that still got me into trouble two years shy of my fortieth birthday.
"You son of a bitch," I hissed, chewing up the distance between us with long, hard strides.
"Please, Mr. Parker," he said, hands out and face dripping with arrogance that begged to be wiped off.
"Try to control your barbaric urges. You are in civilised company."
Raging, I cocked a right, pulled it back and opened up. The punch never landed. Strong hands grabbed my bicep and tucked my arm behind my back. Brass knuckles lit fires in my ribs. My head spun. Stomach acid burnt my throat and a hard kick to the ankle sent me to the deck.
"Niki," the cotton-haired prick commanded.
"Let's get you home to your mother."
I kick flipped to my feet and used the momentum to smash my forehead into a Pretty Boy's nose. I slammed my right knee cap into his knacker sack. Putting my weight on that toe, I pivoted into a spinning back kick that crushed the other goon's jaw.
"She's going nowhere," I barked, soccer punting the second mug's skull into next week.
"Are you, honey?"
My little girl stared, mouth flapping like a hooked fish, eyes already pink and swollen. Her little hands, the ones that had wrapped around my finger so tight as a newborn, tore at her woollen cap. A single tear, more than I'd ever been able to manage, trickled down her cheek and dripped from her chin.
"Honey?"
I choked the word through barbed wire. I held out my hand like I thought she'd take it. The error of my ways was written in bold type in her eyes.
"No," she said.
"Not with you. Martin was wrong, you're not a barbarian. You're the Antichrist."
I staggered from her shotgun blast, paralysed for the second time in one day.
She hot footed it to Martin's side and slipped her hand into his.
"Come on, dad," she said, looking into brown eyes a spectrum away from my grey. "Let's get out of here."
I watched, stone-cold silent, as the usurper of my marital bed walked my heart out the door.
Jim lives in a washed-up, beat down Royal Navy city where inspiration is a lot easier to find than hope and honesty. He's been published here and there. He likes a strong drink.
By Veronica Marie Lewis-Shaw
The pair of thirty eights staring me across the office desk were as every bit as lethal as anything to come out of a Smith & Wesson factory. However, it was the smaller, gleaming .22s gripped tight in each carefully manicured hand and aimed in the general proximity of my heart that had my full and undivided attention. Neither pair boded well for my immediate future.
It was only with considerable effort… every inch of my body throbbed in some manner; the line between good and bad pain had blurred… that I eased myself back down into the chair and looked up into Nina’s eyes.
I didn’t like what I saw there. I didn’t like what I saw there one bit.
While I considered my options, my mind was trying to wrap itself around this…
*
Less than twenty four hours before, the two of us had been sweating up yet another set of sheets… this time, those of the Airport Ramada’s room 347. Nina fucks like Louison Bobet trains for the Tour de France… hard and fast. The first time we were together, she damn near broke my pelvis with her almost brutal pounding, and the bijoux de famille were sore for days. Nina’s orgiastic shrieks were peppered with words that would make a longshoreman blush.
In a nutshell, Nina completely demolished the image of the ‘quiet reserve’ of the English upper class woman. Not that I’ve ever had cause for complaining… until now, that is.
*
“Easy, doll… you don’t want to do something you’re gonna…” My mind raced, trying to think of an out… the murderous look that flashed in her eyes told me I was wasting my breath. She knew then… she knew it all! I realized that my options had just narrowed… considerably.
“You bloody bastard!” Those big brown eyes, the ones that had taken all of three seconds to seduce me, were bright with un-spilled tears and Nina’s red-painted lips were twisted in anger.
Ponder this…
*
Trouble comes from one of two things… money… or broads. That’s always the way of things, isn’t it? When you get right down to it… peel back the layers and the fancy words… the exc
uses… that’s what gets some poor bastard in trouble… every time!
Money, either too much… or not enough… or… a dame… usually someone else’s.
For some folk, one or the other isn’t enough.
~~**~~
I had first met Nina, Johnny’s woman, a couple of years back, when he and I did the Lippman job over in London town. “It’ll be a piece of cake, Eddie… I swear! These limey cops don’t pack heat. We’re in… we’re out… we’re set!” Only problem was… the jewellery store owner did pack heat – isn’t that shit illegal in England? To make a long story short, I took a bullet in the backside just as Johnny and I made it back to the car where Nina waited behind the wheel. We had almost made it back to the little cottage in Lakenheath… middle of bum-fuck-Egypt, you ask me… where we were gonna ‘hole up’ until the heat passed… when the Vauxhall seized up. We hiked the last mile… I guess they call it kilometers over there… with the slug from that old Enfield chewing up my ass.
For all her proper ‘English airs’, Nina was one hot little bitch, and I’d a given anything for just a little time alone with her. Judging by the looks she was giving me, I wasn’t the only one with that desire. Johnny must have sensed something though, as he never left the two of us alone. ‘Course, it could have been the fact my tongue got hard every time Nina walked in the room and I couldn’t hardly talk.
Three weeks later, we parted company at Heathrow… the two of them heading for Rome and me back to the West Coast and my own little ‘enterprises’.
~*~
A couple years later when I needed a good tunnel man for a bank job I was lining up. I knew just who to call… my old schoolmate, Johnny. Two reasons. One… what Johnny didn’t know about tunnelling through a city’s underground wasn’t worth knowing.
And two… I did mention that Nina was one hot little bitch, didn’t I?
If I had known then how fucked up everything was going to turn out, I would have never made that call.
~**~
Pulling back the edge of the heavy drapes, I looked out the window again, into the night. The rain was still coming down hard and heavy. Save for a lone taxi cab, its bright yellow reflecting off the wet pavement as it cruised the dark avenues of the city, the street below was deserted of both man and machine.
I turned and walked across the darkened hotel room to the bureau and poured another three fingers of Kentucky’s finest in the chipped glass tumbler the Royal Westbrook provided its guests. Settling back into the big over stuffed chair facing the door… glass in one hand and bottle in the other… I considered what lay ahead for me.
I didn’t like what I was about to do, but I liked the idea of not breathing even less and while I’m not a big fan of growing old… thirty-five was just too damn young to die.
I didn’t start this, but I sure as hell was going to finish it!
Tossing back another slug of whiskey, I let its heat feed the fire building in my gut.
~*~
Looking back, I’m not sure when exactly it was that I decided to kill Johnny. The plan – mine, not the one the five of us had worked out earlier - had been to give Frankie and Ethan their slice of the pie and leave a note for Johnny. Sorry, old pal… you see how it is though… Nina’s a class girl and she deserves better… you think too small… that’s always been your problem, Johnny… no hard feelings, mate? The plan was that by the time Johnny picked up his share of the loot from the locker at Union Station, Nina and I would be long gone.
But, you know what they say about plans, right?
~~**~~
Three days after the heist, fishermen found Frankie floating in the middle of the harbor… the seagulls pecking at his eyeballs and bits of several toes gone to the fish. The police speculated that he must have been drunk and fell off the pier. Bad luck, eh? Shit happens?
I didn’t think much more of it… Frankie had never been one of those ‘good luck’ guys … until Ethan turned up dead a few days after the flotsam that was left of Frankie surfaced… parts of the small man hanging off the underside of the speeding Buick 8 the poor bastard had been unlucky enough to step out in front of.
That’s when I realized that somebody was taking out the gang. It hit me that either someone was seriously pissed – supposing that had been mob money in the bank? Or, someone was seriously greedy and figured on keeping that ten million all for himself.
Thing was… and I could be wrong here… I didn’t think it was the mob. You can usually smell when they’re around, if you know what I mean… greasy little bastards. So, if it wasn’t the mob…
There were only five people who knew about the job… three now… and I’d been with Nina when both Frankie and Ethan bought it. Damn!
I’ve known Johnny ever since we were kids back at P.S. 26 in Brooklyn. He liked a good scrap every now and then sure,… and he could get up a temper… but cold-blooded murder?
What really iced it though was the gas stove exploding in my apartment, two days after Ethan got his ticket punched. If I hadn’t woke up just when I did…as it was, the jump out the window damn near killed me anyway. That pile of garbage bags had looked a lot softer from two stories up. But I suppose a couple busted ribs and a twisted ankle is a fair trade off for still breathing… although, with those broken ribs, breathing didn’t have the same appeal it used to.
You know… when you’re flat on your back in a dark, filthy alley, staring up at flames shooting out of your apartment window, there’s a certain clarity that comes over you.
Ponder this…
*
One… I’d only been in that apartment a couple of weeks and the fingers of one hand were too many to count how many people knew about my new digs. Johnny was one of those.
Two… I had turned the gas off on the kitchen stove just after I moved in. I don’t cook and one of the burners leaked. The last thing I needed was to blow myself to kingdom come while lighting up a cigarette.
*
So… when was it I decided to kill Johnny, instead of just taking the money and his broad?
Lying flat on my back in that alley… clothing soaked from the rain washed tarmac… sharp stabbing pain in my chest… ankle throbbing from the wrenching it just took… watching all of my possessions going up in flames.
That’s when.
Bruised, battered, pissed and homeless… not a good time to be on my bad side.
~*~
And now I’m holed up in this rat hole that has pretentions of being a hotel room… thinking… drinking… and thinking some more.
My mind goes back…
~*~
“Christ! Do you have to smoke those rat-shit cigars?” I fanned my hand across the space between us in a vain attempt to dispel the foul cloud emanating from the smoldering object clenched between Johnny’s nicotine-stained teeth.
“I’ll have you know, these are imported… Costa Rica’s finest tobaccos, hand-rolled by…”
“Yeah… yeah… ‘little black men’…” I waved my hand impatiently having heard this all before.
The two of us are huddled across from each other in a back booth at Delancey’s two days after Johnny and Nina flew in from England. If everything goes according to plan, by this time tomorrow we’ll be divvying up ten million dollars. Split four ways… a cool two and a half million each. With that kind of scratch, a man could start over just about anywhere.
“Okay… one more time. The armored car makes its delivery at nine sharp. The bank manager and guard move the money to the vault. The truck leaves. The manager goes back to his office. We got half an hour to finish breaking through the floor, get the money and get the hell out of there before the rest of the bank staff shows up...”
~**~
Midnight… I made my way through the dark alley, stopping just short of the sidewalk and the bright spill from the streetlight. Jamming the fedora down low on my forehead and pulling the collar of my trench coat up against the rain, I leaned against the brick wall and waited… and watched.
I didn’t have long to wait.
*
I’d only been there about twenty minutes when a battered Packard pulled up to the curb in front of Delancey’s and my soon-to-be-ex partner spilled out, making a clumsy dash for the red door. A thread of music from the old Seeburg inside the tavern floated across the rain swept street and then Johnny was gone from sight.
I figured I’d give him a few minutes to get a couple of drinks in him… let his guard down.
~*~
Vince, the bartender, scowled as I made my way down the length of the bar, its surface scarred with cigarette burns.
“You’re trackin’ up the place… didn’t your mother teach you no better?”
“If she’d taught me better, I wouldn’t be in this dive, now would I?”
“Shit… you wouldn’t know a ‘class’ joint if it bit you on the ass!”
Casting a quick glance toward the back, I leaned over the bar.
“Hey… Vince,” lowering my voice, “Why don’t you run over to Maude’s and get yourself a burger…” I paused. “And… take your time.”
“Aww… Channing… dammit! I still got holes in the wall from the last time you sent me out for a burger!” Vince whispered, the pained look on his face not much of an improvement to what time and circumstance had carved on the big man’s features. Not that his puss was ever going to grace the pages of the Hollywood Reporter. I whispered back…
“Just a little hole, right behind the ear… unless he flinches on me. You’re welcome to stay here and distract him if…” I leave the sentence unfinished.
“Fuck, no! I ain’t never seen a damn thing and I ain’t about to start now!” Vince threw the bar towel into the sink and headed for the front door, grabbing his coat on the way out. I locked the door behind Vince and then went behind the counter for a bottle of Jack and a clean glass… no ice.