“There are men out back, out front. More on the way. You aren’t leaving here, William.”
William flicked his eyes to the right, over Sabini’s shoulder. “No, maybe not, but I can kill the little bitch standing over there at least.”
Sabini snapped his head behind him to look for Kate and as he did William threw the table up and down on him. Sabini tumbled to the floor, the table hitting him in the guts making him gasp out, cursing in Italian. Crockery shattered and utensils rattled. Gun shots blasted like artillery shells, William ducked and dived towards the red door Kate had disappeared through. The mirrored wall exploded. The piano thumped and splintered. He fired his Webley blindly falling towards the doorway. Kicked the door, splitting it from its lock. Ducked into the bright, peach-colored washroom. The lights burned his eyes, like seeing daylight for the first time.
Kate stood against the marble sink, toying with a long pearl necklace, and chewing at her finger. Modest and shy. All ladylike.
“It wasn’t me, Billy! It wasn’t me,” she cried.
He clocked her hard across the chin with the revolver muzzle and she fell into his arms, a damsel in distress. Choking her in the crook of his left arm, he dragged her back out of the WC and onto the dance floor.
“May I have this last dance, darling,” he hissed into her ear as she gasped, struggling to stay on her feet. Her high heels clattered to the worn marble tiles.
Sabini crouched behind a table, the top of his head, dark eyes and the barrel of his revolver glittering like stars. The two other dago thugs stood closely together, one fat and one thin, brandishing bayonets.
“Looks as though you feeble-minded cunts brought knives to a gun fight, didn’t you?” William laughed, hysterical. The fat thug’s features erupted red, and he fell plummeting backwards onto the floor. The steel blade rattling to the floor. William swung his revolver to the thinner thug, who dived under the nearest table.
“Don’t do anything foolish now, Hughes,” Sabini called out.
Using Kate as a shield, William dragged her past the bar, down a short corridor. He bust open a side door and slid out into a side alley that stank of piss and damp. Another Italian leaning against a wall smoking a rolled-up cigarette went bug eyed and froze. William shot him in the chest. The gun echoed through the Soho streets like an exploding bomb. Kate wailed. Started screaming out. He shoved the revolver back into his pocket, slammed the cunts skull hard against the wall. She collapsed comatose into a pile of broken wooden crates and William ran. Out of the alley. Into civilization. He ran and didn’t stop. His legs burning. Tears flying from his eyes and laughter ragging from his mouth. Not a lot of things in life were a certainty, but William Hughes was always a God damned certainty you could bet on.
South Boston, USA
Tuesday, February 19th, 1946
A few bored beat cops loitered around Dorchester Street. A half-assed roadblock. Fat man Leary sweeping shattered glass and soapy blood into the gutter.
Ben skidded, swerving his Cadillac up onto the sidewalk. Jumped out. The Irish pouring from the club at the sounds of screeching rubber, their hands shoved in their jackets. Spotting Ben, their shoulders slumped, and they fell into a cursing cluster, standing around, numb, dumbstruck. Ben pushed through the group, “Stevie?! Stevie?!”
Leary didn’t even look up. A sponge lay in a puddle of pooled blood. Leary swept. Ben snatched the broom out of his hand, tossed it away. It clattered into the street making an empty, lonesome noise that Ben felt in his bones.
“Where’s Stevie?” he croaked, grasping at his aching throat.
Leary’s eyes were very small, and a raw kind of cold when he finally glanced into Ben’s face. Seeing something there he didn’t like, he looked away again, towards the broom laying in the street. Muttered. “He’s gone. The meat wagon carted him off not two hours before.”
“Gone where?”
“Gone. It doesn’t matter where, now. The morgue. He’s fucking gone. Let me tell you something, those cocksuckers shot him down like a dog in the street. Like a fucking dog, Ben. It’s not fucking right. Not fucking right at all.”
“He’s gone?”
“Yeah, I just said he’s fucking gone. He was dead before he even hit the ground, English. Where the fuck have you been anyhow? You should’ve been here. Should’ve been here.”
Ben opened his mouth to answer but gagged on any words that might’ve come.
“I want those fucking greasers dead! Every single fucking one of the dirty cocksuckers! Dead. You hear me, English. Fucking dead! Dead! Those wop cunts, Buccola and Lombardo. All of them,” Leary growled out the words through clenched teeth. Coughed, spluttering.
Ben fell-sat down hard on the curb; his shoulders slumped.
Staring at the filthy, cracked ground. Shaking his head, no, no, no. Blood-clotted hair hanging greasy and limp into his face.
Fingers pinching, pinching, pinching at the creases of his slacks.
He sensed Leary shuffling his large frame to pick up the broom again.
Head spinning.
Dizzy.
Vertigo. As though he’d ingested a bad batch of opium. As though he was a child again gripping at the pure white porcelain edge of the bathtub as his father’s razor strop slashed into his back and legs. Counting one to seven in his head. Seven slashes. Lucky seven. His mother trying to soothe him. Naked flesh under white sheets. Li Yu.
He vomited into the gutter. Watched the foamy bile mix bubbling with the blood and dirty water there. A blowfly bucked and twisted in the bodily fluids. Drowning in its greed. The stink of iron, copper, eye watering. Stevie’s blood still so damn red, reflecting the sunset of a dying day. Too bright.
Ben heaved. Vomited again. Guts empty and raw.
Stood shakily, slowly, wiping at his mouth with a new handkerchief. The Irish eye fucked a passing automobile, nodded to Leary then fell back inside the club muttering.
“I want to know what the fuck happened to you, anyhow?” Leary said standing on the almost vacant street, leaning his weight onto the broom, eyeing Ben’s throat and gashed bloody forehead.
“The Italians happened. They moved on me, as well. Moved on me. Moved on me. Me too,” Ben bit into his tongue again. Focused on the pain, cutting off all the stuttering shit before it got truly started.
“They moved on you? A fucking cop? That’s suicide and they damn well know it. Why’d they go and do something as foolish as that?”
“I don’t know,” Ben lied, “I don’t know.”
“They know your history with Stevie. Know you’re our in to The Department,” Leary massaged the nubs of his missing fingers, grimacing as though in pain.
“That’s all inconsequential now. It no longer matters,” Ben spat blood.
“How’s that? What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I want you to get word to Paul, right away.”
“Paul The Negro?”
Ben glanced around to make sure none of the cops had slithered into earshot. “Yes, if we’re going to kill those fucking Italians, we need slightly more than revolvers and pistols. Set up a meet with Paul. We’ll hit them all the day after we bury Stevie. The sooner we finish it, the better. Get Stevie buried quick. Grease the right palms. Deborah wouldn’t want him in some locker on ice down at the morgue being cut up by some sick fuck. As soon as possible. Bury the Italian fucks the day after. They won’t be expecting such a quick retaliation. They’ll think there’s safety in numbers. We’ll kill them all together. Like dropping boiled water on an ants nest.”
“That’s music to my fucking ears, English.”
“And after it’s done, we’re going to Salt Lake City for a couple of days. So tell the others to pack their toothbrushes. Toothbrushes. Pack their toothbrushes. Fuck! This weekend.”
Leary squinted, “Salt Lake City? There are better places to lam it to, English.”
Ben swallowed blood. Gagged. Enunciated each word, taking it slow. “Someone very important has made me an off
er. It’ll be good for all of us. A good earner for everyone. Legit. I’ll explain it all later,” he said, fingering the wedding ring in his pocket with bloody fingertips. “In the meantime, I’ve something very important that I need to do now.”
“You’re leaving now? What could be more important than this?” Leary motioned to the small diamonds of glass and puddles of blood staining the sidewalk.
“I’ve already lost Stevie today. I’m not going to lose anyone else. I refuse to,” Ben said, holding back tears. He’d never let Leary see him cry. The fat fuck would see it as a sign of weakness. They all would. As his father had. His mother, too, finally. Her voice echoing up from the damp, depths of his memory. “Big boys don’t cry, Benny. They don’t cry. I need you to be a man. Be a man for your mother, Benny.” He wasn’t a boy anymore. He was a man. A broken, ruined, fucking nothing of a man.
“In that case, I guess you should be on your way then. I’ll talk to the lads. Smooth things over temporary like. Put a rein on them all.” Leary nodded at him, shuffled into the club. The door closed slow, pushing a backdraft of the bar into Ben’s face, bringing back Stevie’s grinning pug face back from the dead for as long as it took the warm picture to fade. The grey sky tore open and a heavy dark rain washed the blood into the sewers, as Ben stumbled back to his Cadillac letting the tears that had been bucking to be released flow freely, disguised by the rainfall.
Concentrating his mind like the muzzle of a gun.
focusing on China Town.
Thinking of Li Yu.
He knew something was wrong as soon as he entered Li’s teahouse. The old man, cigar store Indian, hadn’t been outside. He was inside seated at the table with the old women sipping tea, yapping deep in conversation. Strange as hell.
They all started squawking and waving their hands around in the air when they glanced up to see Ben standing there in the entranceway. Dripping wet. Soaked through from the downpour. His eyes bloody slits from tears. The women’s eyes bulged like dumbstruck fish. The old man startled. The guy in the waiter’s coat still smoking on the stairs was the only thing that remained consistent. He stood up slow and held a hand out to Ben in a halting gesture, the other he stuck inside his white waiter’s jacket to the heavy shape concealed underneath his armpit.
“No. No, Yu no here. You leave now!” he snapped, like an annoying little mutt.
“What the fuck do you mean? I need to see her, right now! It’s imperative that I see her!” Ben said making his way further into the tearoom, dodging tables and chairs.
“Yu gone. She no here.”
“Where is she?”
“She gone. We tell you, we tell other police, Li Yu gone. You leave now.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? What other police?” Ben said, going to push past to the stairs, the waiter stepped in front of him blocking his path.
“You leave! You leave, no more police fucks!”
Ben eyeballed the smooth, ugly face and sneered. “As you can see from the present state of myself at this moment in time, I’m having a rather unpleasant and stressful day. You’re currently contributing to that stress. Now, I’m just going to ask this one more time, where is Li? I really need to see her. It’s imperative.”
“You leave!”
Ben clenched his jaw. Bit down hard on his bottom lip. Ripped the badge from his pocket and held it aloft, above his head, flashing it around the dining room, “I am Boston Police Detective Benjamin Hughes, and this is a raid!” he screamed. Throat burning. He coughed and spat phlegm onto the floor.
The old ladies squawking tripled in decibels. Gibbering towards the waiter. Waving him away. Ben feeling a migraine like a winter wind in his skull. He pushed the badge hard into the man’s eye socket. The man stared defiantly with his one good eye.
“You see the fucking badge now, don’t you? Now move out of my way, you fucking filthy little savage.”
The waiter moved. Ben grabbed him by the lapels, shoved him hard towards the other Chinese, jumped up the stairs in two bounds.
Li Yu’s door.
The secret knock.
No answer. Nothing.
He banged on the door.
Nothing.
Called her name through the wooden frame.
Nothing.
Blood crusty hair hanging in his face, he stepped back and kicked the door off its hinges. Pine snapped and split. The door hung crooked. He pushed it out of his way.
Moonlight spilling through the window settling like a fine dust across the floorboards. The room bare.
Nothing.
Stripped of color. Stripped of life. The disemboweled corpse of what Li Yu’s bedroom had been before.
Ben pulled open empty drawers and empty cupboards.
Nothing.
The rainy-day fund gone. Three coat hangers hung dead from the curtain rail. His smoking set placed in the center of the bare floor.
No Li Yu.
No opium.
Nothing.
Ben dropped to his knees. Screamed until his voice gave out and his throat burned. Coughed, gagged, heaved, breathless, he stood, staggered, sat down heavily on the naked mattress. More tears ran down his pale face making tracks and lines through the dried blood. He pulled the revolver from his shoulder holster and popped the chamber, spinning it. “Upon the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there… upon the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there… wasn’t there… upon, upon, upon the stair…”
He stood up shakily, woozy, dry heaved and walked out of the room he and Li had shared hours of love together in. The bitterest tears stinging his eyes, could barely see a thing. Images and echoes crashed together in his mind.
Stevie sprawled dead in the street, blood and cockroaches spreading across the sidewalk like a rippling sheet of oncoming night.
The faces of Lombardo and Buccola, masks of razorblade hate.
The thump, thump, thump of his knees hitting the underside of the table in the café.
Li Yu shuddering to climax underneath him. Whispering his name. Her eyes passing over his face fleetingly and then gone. Gone.
Mrs. Goodman’s hands on his hips pulling him desperately deeper inside her.
His mother’s lips upon his face.
The razor strop cutting into his back.
His father’s yells echoing throughout the house.
His mother’s face so close to his. Her breath on his face.
The Beetle Man looming over his soiled bed.
A naked, screaming child consumed by ants and cockroaches.
He stumbled back down the stairs and into the dining room. Thunder crashed on the street outside. Rain assaulted the windows. The old Chinese man stood arguing with the three old women in a language that sounded like river water crashing against rocks. The waiter smoking another cigarette by the front doors. His eyes vicious little black slits in Ben’s direction.
“You go, now. We don’t want no trouble. We tell other policeman Jones. You go to fuck,” he shrieked, waving his hands around.
Jones’ name was a jab to Ben’s guts, but he smiled at the waiter and pointed out of the window towards the street. The waiter turned to peer out through the grimy glass and Ben stabbed the revolver’s muzzle into the back of his head, behind the left ear and squeezed down on the trigger. The side of the Hong Kong Pistol Champion’s face exploded, chips of skull and teeth burying themselves into the nearest wall with a red wine splash.
Ben reached down into the crumpled corpse’s jacket and wrenched a Japanese pistol from the body. Turning the barrels of both weapons on the group of elderly Chinese, a grin so tight on his face it felt as though his flesh would rip itself apart. He spoke through gritted teeth.
“Must everything I care about be stolen from me today? Is that it? Like fucking Job am I? A wager between the fucking devil and God? My soul a gamble?” The last words came out in hysterical screams. He stood panting, scratching at his chest with the muzzle of the .38. He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself. “I us
ually don’t shoot people in the head, but like I said earlier, I’m having quite the bad fucking day and it seems my self-imposed rules have gone out of the fucking window. Out of the window. Window. Out of the window. Now, now, now, now. Now. No, I want you to tell me why that fat fuck Jones has been sniffing around here and I want you to tell me where Li is. I want to know where she is. I need to know where she is. She. Where? Tell me. Tell me, now. I want to know where Li is. Tell me now.”
The old man grabbed at one of the women by the arm, shaking her, shouting in Cantonese as she bellowed back at him.
Ben exhausted, consumed by fever and shakes, sighed heavily, shot one of the women through the face. Her body flew over a table backwards, crashing into a set of china teacups and tumbling to the floor. Her dress flew up showing flabby, veiny thighs. Porcelain smashed. Ben clucked his tongue and used the revolver’s barrel to sweep the blood-stiff hair out of his face.
The most overweight of the elderly women whimpered, tried to edge her way slowly towards the kitchen. Ben let her have it in the lower back as she turned to run. She collapsed, thrashed around, moaning on the floor like an insect on its back. A cockroach sprayed with bug killer. He aimed carefully, pulled the trigger again, taking the top of her skull away.
He remembered the way his mother would cut the tops off boiled eggs so he could dip thin slices of toast into the yolk. Dipping into the yolk. Telling him to say the special words.
He swallowed bile.
His mother’s skull visible as she chattered away to him from morphine dreams. Her hospital bed reeking of piss and shit. She hadn’t been clean enough, she whispered. She was a dirty girl. She’d been a dirty, filthy girl. She wanted him to forgive her. Ben squeezed his eyes shut. Shook his head violently side to side.
The atmosphere in the teahouse alive with smoke and gunpowder.
The old couple’s wailing and crying giving Ben a migraine.
A basement door flung open.
Naked, filthy, skin and bone bodies scrambled out stupefied, dreamingly moaning.
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