Weapons

by Matt Rogers

  Gianni went quiet.

  He knew Slater wasn’t bluffing.

  They watched the six men fan out across the street.

  Three went to the opposite sidewalk, and three came close to Slater and Gianni’s position. But they hadn’t narrowed down the source of their troubles. They were looking everywhere at once, keeping their guns low, keenly aware they were in the public arena. It was late — technically the early morning — but there were still drunk socialites trickling out of various establishments. The six men had to keep their weapons inside their jackets to avoid starting a panic. There was no-one in sight right now, but that could change.

  One man spotted bloodstains on the sidewalk, where Slater had beat down the two bodyguards.

  The other pair walked right into the mouth of the alleyway.

  Slater held his breath.

  Then a large silhouette materialised out of the gloom on the opposite side of the road.

  A man, maybe six foot three, maybe two hundred and twenty pounds. Larger than Slater, with the same rock-solid build. Like a battering ram in human form. He’d stepped out from underneath an awning, emerging out of a nook that ran between two shopfronts.

  Slater watched Jason King walk right up to the trio across the road.

  7

  They regarded King warily.

  After all, he wasn’t armed, and they’d never seen him before. They didn’t immediately identify him as a hostile. They were more concerned about where their boss had run off to. They didn’t yet suspect foul play.

  They should have.

  King launched an uppercut underneath the chin of the first guy, crumpling him where he stood. On the way down King stripped the unconscious man of his weapon and used it to pistol whip the second guy in the face. Breaking a nose, or a jaw, or an eye socket. Hard to tell exactly what. He followed that up with a brazen charge, like an angry bull, ploughing straight through the chest of the third man. He connected with a dropped shoulder and took the guy off his feet before he even had a chance to fire his weapon, let alone aim it. As the guy spilled to the ground King stomped down on his wrist, shattering the delicate bones, and the gun spilled from his palm.

  King scooped up all three pistols, and melted back into the shadows.

  It was a shocking hurricane of violence, enacted over four or five seconds in total, and an observer would have seen nothing but a flash of carnage, followed swiftly by the messy aftermath. The three men on Slater’s side of the street saw nothing at all. From the darkness, King watched them twirl around in confusion, their eyes going everywhere and nowhere at the same time. They weren’t tactical. They weren’t measured. They weren’t composed.

  They would be easy work.

  One of them — both the bravest and the dumbest — peeled off from the pack and sprinted across the deserted street. He reached his friends and crouched by their moaning forms like a protective guard dog. With eyes like saucers, he raised his weapon and swept it in a tight arc over the shadows. He covered every alleyway, every hole in the wall, every corner. But he didn’t linger his aim on anything in particular.

  He didn’t see King standing there, biding his time, probing for the first opportunity to strike.

  He didn’t see it coming.

  He was tall and beefy and had a cold gaze, but King could see the fear in his eyes. Even in the lowlight. Finally, the guy became unnerved by the silence and threw a glance over his shoulder, checking to see if his two buddies had followed his lead.

  They were still across the street, frozen.

  Unsure what to do.

  Unsure what the hell was happening to them.

  The guy turned back to his three beaten co-workers, and King was standing right there in front of his face.

  He nearly gasped in surprise.

  But King kicked him square in the face before he had a chance to move.

  The guy went limp almost immediately, even though he wasn’t unconscious. He sprawled out on the dirty sidewalk, then thought better of leaving himself unprotected, so he rolled onto his knees and pressed his forehead to the ground and covered his ears with his hands.

  The classic turtle shell.

  An age-old display of submission.

  The fastest way to say, Please, sir, no more. I’m in pain. I don’t know how bad I’m hurt. I yield.

  King kicked him in the head again, this time behind the ear, helping him along the path to unconsciousness.

  The guy joined his three buddies in defeat.

  King stood over the four of them and gave himself the once-over. He wasn’t hurt. Far from it. He was good as new. Which he damn well expected to be, given what he put himself through on a daily basis to fashion himself into a human weapon.

  He looked up, and noticed the last two wise guys staring at him across the street.

  They had guns in their hands.

  King didn’t.

  But he didn’t react.

  One of them raised his pistol with a shaking hand. ‘Stay right there, you fuckin’ scum.’

  King sighed. ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you.’

  ‘Get on the ground.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I won’t warn you again.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘Then do what I say. The game’s over. Get on the fuckin’ ground and stay there.’

  Silence.

  King didn’t budge.

  He said, ‘What happens now?’

  ‘Where’s our boss?’

  ‘In that alleyway behind you.’

  ‘You think we’re that stupid? You expect us to turn around?’

  ‘You might want to.’

  ‘And why’s that?’

  ‘Because that’s the reason you won’t warn me again. You won’t be able to.’

  Something in his voice told them the truth. Not that it would do them any good. They seemed to put two and two together. They finally figured that there must be a second assailant.

  By the time one of them threw a look over his shoulder, Will Slater was already on them.

  8

  Slater figured Gianni wasn’t going anywhere with two destroyed knees, so he took the gun away from his head as King beat down the three men across the street.

  Then one of the trio on Slater’s side ran over to check on his comrades.

  A noble act, but carried out with misplaced judgment.

  Slater watched the dark silhouette emerge once again from the shadows and smash a boot into the young thug’s face. The guy crumpled, and King kicked him again, and he went still.

  Then the oldest scenario of all played out before him.

  The Mexican standoff.

  King stayed right where he was, yet his weapon didn’t materialise. What the remaining pair didn’t know was that King was armed. He had a trick up his sleeve.

  He had Slater.

  A brief conversation played out, but Slater didn’t hear it. He looked down at Gianni and saw the big goon had passed out from the pain again, so he focused all his attention on the pair standing on the sidewalk. They had their backs turned.

  He crept up behind them, holding his Beretta at the ready.

  If it came to it, he would fire a shot.

  But he preferred not to.

  He thought he heard the words, ‘You won’t be able to,’ float across the street.

  He figured that was his cue.

  He smashed the butt of the Beretta into the back of the bigger guy’s head, who pitched forward on wobbly legs. He was the one with his gun pointing at the floor, but that had been a tactical decision from the get-go. If Slater took out the other guy when he had a loaded barrel pointed in King’s direction, there was the risk of an impulsive jerk of the trigger as his lights went out. Slater didn’t want to take the chance. So when he thundered the Beretta into the back of the first guy’s head, the second whirled around on the spot, and his aim swung with it.

  Slater head-butted him in the nose the moment the gun barrel wandered into empty space. />
  Both assailants went down on their knees, and Slater figured he’d wasted enough time. What ordinarily would have been a pair of body kicks ended up slamming home against a pair of foreheads. Bad move to take a knee in front of a seasoned Muay Thai practitioner.

  Their brains rattled around in their skulls like bowling pins and they went right to sleep.

  Slater eyed off King across the street. ‘You hurt?’

  ‘No. You?’

  ‘Not a scratch.’

  ‘What’s the final count?’

  ‘Eight. Plus the boss.’

  ‘Where’s the boss?’

  Slater jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

  ‘Did he tell you what’s in the crates?’ King said.

  ‘Not yet. He will.’

  ‘We can’t linger. Get the keys.’

  ‘What if it turns out to be something real bad? I’d want to know that now. When I’ve got the opportunity to kill him.’

  ‘How badly did you hurt him?’

  ‘I broke both his legs.’

  ‘Then he’s not going anywhere in a hurry, is he?’

  ‘If it’s real bad, I want to make him pay before the cops scoop him up.’

  ‘The cops won’t be able to make anything stick if we take the truck. So he’ll be back out on the street before long. We take the goods, we peek inside, and we come back if we need to. How’s that sound?’

  ‘That works.’

  ‘Get the keys,’ King repeated.

  Slater hustled back into the alleyway. Gianni was awake again, hunched in a ball in a dark alcove, surrounded by trash. He looked deathly pale in the lowlight. Slater crouched over him and said, ‘You’d better tell me what’s in the crates. I’ll give you five seconds.’

  ‘Go fuck yourself.’

  Slater didn’t have time for games. There were injured and semi-conscious wise guys scattered all over the street, and this was the Meatpacking District. There’d be a patrol car cruising by intermittently, and it wouldn’t take long to piece together what had happened. He and King didn’t want to be anywhere near the scene when that went down. And there’d be more witnesses before long, spilling out from the clubs like clockwork. The last survivors, stumbling home inebriated.

  Slater slapped Gianni in the face, then fished around in his inside jacket pockets until he came away with a set of keys.

  He got up and said, ‘You were going to kill those two kids, weren’t you?’

  Gianni didn’t respond.

  Slater said, ‘I should kill you right now.’

  Gianni said nothing.

  Slater said, ‘I’ll be honest — I’m not in a killing mood. You’re too dumb for your own good. I’m going to track you down in a few months. It should take you about that long to recover. If you’re still in the same business, you’re dead. Are we on the same page?’

  Gianni stared up at this strange man that had stripped him of everything.

  Slater thought, The Whelans will probably kill you anyway, for butchering this job.

  That gave him some peace of mind.

  He walked away from the pathetic thug.

  He and King clambered up into the box truck and Slater fired it to life. They pulled away from the sidewalk and trundled down the empty street. Sure enough, within a hundred feet they passed a couple of bars that had turned the main lights on. Civilians were sauntering out into the cold night, frustrated to leave the warmth and the drinks behind. Soon enough, they’d get the shock of their lives. They’d find eight mobsters in various states of disrepair. Some conscious, some not. They’d find blood and broken bones.

  They’d either run, or call the cops.

  Slater didn’t mind either way.

  Neither did King.

  Gianni and his crew were in a world of trouble, no matter what happened to them. They’d be arrested, or vilified by their own employers if they managed to escape scot-free. Neither option seemed appealing.

  But what do I know? Slater thought. I’m not a gangster.

  He turned at the next T-junction and the box truck vanished.

  9

  Dawn broke over New York City, and under the soft glow of the dark blue light, four big Italian men with swollen faces and puffy eyes and purple noses and jaws carried an even larger Italian man into the lobby of an impressive residential building on the Upper East Side.

  The night receptionist looked the other way. He knew who the men were, and who they associated with. He’d been paid to keep his mouth shut, no matter what tomfoolery he witnessed.

  And he’d be damn sure he stayed true to his word, or he’d find himself at the bottom of the Hudson for his troubles.

  The four big thugs hauled Gianni into the elevator and hit the button for the ninth floor. There was no-one around at five-thirty in the morning. The nine-to-fivers had a couple more hours sleep to manage. But the night owls roamed, and the man they were paying a visit to would be awake.

  The Whelans were professionals, after all.

  Gianni moaned and protested and opened and closed his eyes with dizzying frequency.

  ‘Hospital,’ he muttered. ‘Get me to a fuckin’ hospital.’

  They gave him another pain pill to shut him up. They’d loaded him with enough OxyContin to sedate a horse, but Gianni was a tough son-of-a-bitch, and they’d never disobeyed the man directly. They were also in pain themselves, so overall they weren’t exactly the calmest bunch of small-timers in the world. They were none too happy about drugging their boss and bringing him to meet the man who was most likely to punish him for fucking up the job.

  The request had come down the chain of command and ended up at their feet, as soon as they’d let the Whelans know they’d lost the package.

  Despite the oxycodone coursing through his system, Gianni became lucid as soon as the elevator arrived on the ninth floor.

  He recognised the walls.

  He started to squirm.

  Then he groaned, because trying to resist had aggravated his broken legs. The pain would be unbearable. All four wise guys winced, but one of them clamped a hand over Gianni’s mouth, so he didn’t wake the other residents.

  The Whelans lived comfortably amidst civilisation, because what was the point of having all that money if they became social outcasts in the process.

  They carried Gianni to a nondescript black wooden door and knocked softly.

  It opened a couple of seconds later.

  Tommy Whelan stood there in his trademark wool suit.

  He was furious.

  ‘Get inside,’ he said.

  Gianni sure looked like a sight for sore eyes then. He went pale and started thrashing, but when the four thugs carried him over the threshold he quietened right down. He probably realised there was no use resisting once he was inside. It was futile now. He was in Tommy Whelan’s den. Granted, looking around, none of the thugs thought the Upper East Side apartment compared to the magnificent penthouse the Whelans used to reside in. But after an incident involving the very man who’d ambushed them tonight, they’d figured it would prove more discreet to spread out across the district instead of condensing into one single location.

  Hence the downgrade.

  The four thugs dumped Gianni onto an expensive leather couch, and stood at attention as Tommy Whelan followed them. The ceiling stretched out far above their heads. The space echoed. They could hear the soles of Whelan’s shoes scuffing against the marble floor. Everything was white. The sun came up over the horizon as they stood there, and they squinted against the glare.

  Tommy Whelan said, ‘Go wait on the balcony, and close the door behind you. I need to have a private chat with your boss.’

  They went right away. They didn’t protest. They didn’t even give their employer a second look.

  Self-preservation was more important than loyalty. No matter what Gianni had done for them.

  There was no goodwill in this game.

  Silence descended over the room, and Whelan thought he heard Gianni sob. Whoever h
ad assaulted them must have done a number on them. Gianni wasn’t the type to complain about anything.

  Not even a pair of shattered knees.

  The old Gianni would have sucked it up and barely let it register on his face, no matter how bad it affected him, no matter how likely it was to kill him.

  Now, he was demoralised.

  And Whelan started to get uncomfortable. Because he’d felt the same sensation, about a year earlier. That total, utter defeat at the hands of another man. There were rumours floating around that it had been a single guy.

  It stirred a sinister déjà vu in his chest.

  Gianni fought back the pain. Through clenched teeth he muttered, ‘The guy said his name was Will Slater. He said he had history with your family.’

  Whelan didn’t react.

  Inside, he screamed.

  Whelan said, ‘You sure?’

  ‘Positive.’

  ‘Describe him.’

  ‘Big black guy. Well, not that big. Shorter than me. Maybe six feet tall. But built like a pro sprinter. And I … I couldn’t touch him. He ran right through me. No-one’s ever done that to me.’

  Me neither, Whelan thought.

  He recalled his own run-in with Slater — the incident that had left six of his family in the hospital with life-threatening injuries and derailed their family’s trajectory to the top of the underworld.

  He missed that penthouse…

  Whelan bowed his head, because he now knew what he needed to do.

  Regarding Gianni’s pathetic form sprawled out on the couch, he said, ‘You know what must happen, right?’

  ‘What?’ Gianni said. ‘You want me to track him down for you?’

  Whelan managed a harsh laugh. ‘What are you going to do with two mangled legs? You’ll be in a wheelchair for months.’

  ‘I can heal up fast. I promise.’

  ‘And what are you going to do in the meantime?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I know you, Gianni. We’ve been keeping a close eye on you for a long time. You think this job offer was the first we’d heard of you? Your reputation precedes you. You were hired for your effectiveness and your ability to get the job done without fail.’