Fist First

by Nigel Mustard

  Lowenstein and Stoker embraced.

  ‘He was a good man’ said Lowenstein, referring to the dead old man who had previously been the Police Chief of the City.

  ‘No. He was the best man, Reuben. He was the best man.’ Said Frank Stoker, still referring to the same man.

  Magnelli hissed. ‘This is all bullshit anyway. Von Klatt is on his way here and you’re both dead – you and that bitch downstairs. Kill me if you have to. I ain’t afraid of dying.’

  Lowenstein turned back to Magnelli.

  ‘Oh, my dear Thomas. How can you be… so… naïve? Do you still ponder that I was telephoning Mr Von Klatt from the limousine automobile? I was discoursing with my contact at the FBI, who within a handful of minutes will be at this particular location, apprehending you.’

  Magnelli’s turned a deathly pale. He vomited down his silk blouse and over his nice trousers. Urine dribbled down his leg as he turned to Stoker, with tears in his eyes.

  ‘Just remember, that once I’m gone, someone else will just take my place. Kill me now, you fucking prick. Just kill me.’

  Stoker shook his head.

  ‘I’d like nothing more, you sack of shit. But that would be too easy for you. You’ll be tried by a legal court of law, and sent down till you’re old and grey. And life in prison for a Mafiaman is hell. It ain’t like in some damn movie where you’ll be protected and spend your days making pasta in a comfortable room. I just wanted to say that to remove any absence of doubt for the reader.’

  Stoker really helped to clear things up.

  Lowenstein kept the gun trained on Magnelli as Stoker tied him up with thick rope, crafted by delicate but diligent hands in a sweat shop in South America. They then both fastened Magnelli to the chair, and Stoker slammed him in the head with the butt of the gun, knocking him out.

  Lowenstein looked up at Stoker.

  ‘What now then, Frank?’

  Stoker shrugged.

  ‘I don’t rightly know, Reuben. All I know is that I gotta get out of here. The evidence you’ve compiled might be enough to exonerate me eventually – but I don’t fancy being chewed up and spat out by the legal system in the meantime.’ He stretched and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘I’m going to leave New York.’

  ‘That would be my counsel. I will appropriate the lady Chloe and traffic her personage to a safe haven for a period, until events die down and the Federal Bureau of Investigations have talked to the NYPD. And I declare to you, I will take the boy Michael Janney’s carcass back to his parents’ home. It’s the least he deserves.’ Lowenstein paused. ‘He was a good kid, Frank.’

  ‘No, Reuben… he was the best kid. He was the best kid.’

  Stoker and Lowenstein embraced again.

  ‘What are your plans for the imminent future Frank? Where will you go? You should come with us. I might still have an advocate who can facilitate your vanishment.’

  ‘Thanks, pal, but I need to disappear, tonight.’

  They embraced again and Stoker helped Lowenstein load the corpse of the deceased Michael Janney and the corpse of the living Chloe Crawford into the back of the limo.

  Stoker heard the sound of distant helicopter blades and ordered Lowenstein to step on it.

  The Limo sped down the road and into the darkness.

  Stoker took one last look back at the dead body of Hitoshi, and the splintered door to Magnelli’s office. He thought of Rooster, Moe and Kowalski. Lastly he thought of Michael Janney, and broke down in tears.

  He had made the decision to leave the city a couple of days ago. He had given everything to New York, nearly his whole damn life, but he knew that Magnelli was right. Somebody else would just take his place.

  What the hell was he fighting for?

  By the time the FBI-branded helicopters landed around the factory, and the FBI-branded black saloon cars screamed to the front entrance, they found a dead samurai, a gagged and bound crime boss and a manila envelope with a cover letter by Reuben Lowenstein, attorney at law.

  Frank Stoker was nowhere to be seen.

  Chapter 53

  Lowenstein gripped the wheel tight as he drove through Manhattan. Chloe tried to make conversation with him, but his intellectuality prevented any meaningful conversation with her; owing, frankly, to her lack of intelligence.

  They sat in silence, Lowenstein smiling quietly, Chloe’s eyeholes more like cryholes to be honest.

  The lights of the city flashed by as the Limo purred sexily and stimulatingly through the streets.

  There was no sound in the car at all… until there was. A sound poked up from the back seat.

  The sound of spluttering.

  The sound of coughing.

  And then, the sweetest sound Chloe had ever heard.

  ‘Hoo-ray. Hoo-FUCKIN-ray….’ Michael Janney sat up and put his right and left hands on the right and left shoulders respectively of Lowenstein and Chloe respectively.

  ‘Michael! Oh my darling Michael! You’re alive!’ Chloe leapt from her seat and jumped back onto Michael.

  ‘Too true, babe – don’t think that a few minutes under water can kill a United States Marine! What the hell happened? Why is Lowenstein driving us?’ Janney jabbed his finger at Lowenstein accusatorily but understandably given the circumstances.

  Chloe pouted. ‘Don’t you worry about that baby. Not right now.'

  I don’t mind reporting that they had full sex, right there and then, on the back seat, as Lowenstein, who is mainly designed to be an asexual character, kept his eyes (mainly) on the road and his hands (entirely) on the wheel.

  At the apex of his orgasm, Janney whooped the Marine’s clarion call one more time.

  ‘Hoo-ray! I love you Chloe Crawford.’

  ‘Oh Michael… I love you too.’

  Janney ran his hands through his silken blonde hair and asked what ‘the hell’ (his words) had happened back at the factory.

  Lowenstein filled them in on the details, and provided useful explanations as to what had happened which really helped to round off the story.

  ‘Well, my youthful companions, I should first clarify that I have been quite deceptive in my dealings for the preceding five years. I was indeed in cahoots with the Chief of The Police of the City Josef Kowalski. I had been recounting evidence to him about the nefarious dealings of the ne’er-do-well and racketeer Thomas Magnelli. Mr Magnelli had no idea, of course, he was a cretin compared to my unparalleled intellect. Mr Kowalski and I had been lining up the arrest of Mr Magnelli for months – it is just an indignity that the arrival of the diabolical Johnny Spang meant that Kowalski was killed before he could suckle on the sweet fruits of our hard work. But suckle I shall. Nobody can stop that now.’

  Janney ran his hands through his hair again and looked out of the window. There was nothing there, but it served as a useful paragraph break in Lowenstein’s monologue.

  ‘Frank Stoker became unwittingly entwined at the heart of this whole affair when he intercepted your attackers on the train in the first chapter, Miss Crawford. He was merely a pawn to Magnelli and Spang, but proved to be a rather hard-core pawn for them to crack. Once Spang’s army was out of the picture, Magnelli would have controlled the entire city, using Von Klatt to control the police force. That is, if Stoker had been killed by Johnny Spang or Lenny Thunder and therefore not arrived and bested the monster Hitoshi in hand to hand combat. Yes, indeed, that would have been an exceedingly dissimilar yarn, and one that could not be followed by a profitable sequel.’

  Janney rubbed his chin and flicked his fingers at his fringe. He shook his head whilst exhaling through his nose and smiling in the way that can be extremely annoying when some men do it, senior managers who have been promoted above their ability level and the like, but in this case it was really quite charming.

  ‘Heck, Frank kicked the crap out of Hitoshi? I thought that sea monster might have been too big - even for Stoker.’

  Lowenstein looked back at Janney.

  ‘He didn’t just k
ick the crap out of him kid, he killed him.’

  Janney raised a glass of champagne (which he had poured from the Limousine mini bar earlier but it wasn’t important to describe it then) at the sky and whispered.

  ‘Hoo-fucking-ray, Stoker. Hoo-fucking-ray, you tough old bastard.’

  A tear rolled down his cheek and fell into the champagne glass, corrupting the finely balanced taste structure of the priceless Hungarian Champagne. Did Michael Janney care? He didn’t give a shit.

  ‘So Stoker killed Hitoshi – and I bet he put his fist through the brain of that slippery cockroach Magnelli? Oh boy I’d pay to watch that!’

  Janney rubbed his palms together and licked his lips and tapped his left foot on the floor and made pistol shooting sign with his left hand and made a swinging gesture with his right arm with a cocked right elbow. He was excited.

  Lowenstein brought him back to earth.

  ‘Oh Cont Rare my friend. Oh Cont Rare. Tomasso Xavier Magnelli is currently in his office and trussed like a fish with his hands and legs behind his back. And I can report that he is very much alive.’

  Janney was so shocked that he would have spit his champagne everywhere inside the Limo if he had been prone to the sort of attention seeking episodes normally reserved for unpleasant first wives who want to embarrass their husbands at their neighbour’s New Year’s Eve party. Instead he just replied, in the normal way:

  ‘You left Magnelli alive?’

  Chloe rolled her eyes by keeping them in the same place, but moving her head.

  Lowenstein continued.

  ‘Yes. And as we converse, the Federal Bureau of Interrogation will be detaining him up at any moment. Him, and the dossier of evidence that I conveniently left next to him. Refusing to kill him as Stoker’s masterstroke. Death would have been easy. Instead, Magnelli will spend the rest of his life in a maximum security prison. The only thorn in my side is that the maniac Clarence Von Klatt remains at large and in a job. However, I believe once the Feds plough through my dossier, they won’t take long to put the pieces together.’

  Chloe huffed and puffed.

  Janney tapped Lowenstein on the shoulder again.

  ‘Well well, Mr Lowenstein, looks like all the loose ends have been wrapped up and explained quite conveniently.’

  Lowenstein turned round and winked at the camera.

  ‘Not all of them, Michael. I do declare that there’s still one more question. Where the hell will Frank Stoker go?’

  Epilogue. Three Days Later.

  Rain poured down from clouds that were in the sky. New York cried as one of her most precious sons was buried.

  The funeral of Josef Kowalski (which is what this is epilogue about) was a typically dour Catholic affair. The weather was appalling, which to be fair cannot be blamed on the religious denomination of the deceased.

  The rain fell from up above and fell into small rivers, dripping into the gaping grave where Kowalski’s corpse was about to be ceremonially unloaded.

  Molly McGee (memory aid: plump, red head, six out of ten receptionist from the Police Station) held a silk tissue to her eye and wept. Her portly frame was not quite yet unattractive, and her black clothes were slimming anyway.

  The priest wailed on, tediously, yet softly and fittingly.

  Behind him, the gravedigger held a huge shovel in one hand. He had a scarf pulled up round his face to protect him from the wind and rain.

  Chloe Crawford looked over at the recently dug grave of her father, who had been buried the day before. His funeral had been a lie, of course, just like his life. He’d been declared a hero. She shook her head and squeezed the arm of her fiancée Michael Janney, who stood with three new Marine Bravery Badges pinned to his chest.

  The gravedigger bowed his head. His hat was black and greased, and the rain dripped from it and fell to the floor like some kid’s broken dreams.

  Clarence Von Klatt stood, pale and erect in his bright white trenchcoat. His beady eyes flickered around the crowd, as if he knew there were Federal Interrogators after him. His small posse of corrupt cops had shrunk (in numbers, not in height -which should be obvious), and now only three loyal scumbags stood by his side.

  The coffin was lowered in by four thick necked, bald, stout Polish men who were presumably relatives of Kowalski. It really doesn’t matter whether they were. But for the absence of doubt, let’s say yes, they were, four nephews, imported to America from a Polish city of no note, which was actually called Wroclaw.

  The priest continued his sermon and ordered a minutes silence to remember the fallen.

  The gravedigger laid his shovel on the ground, strode over to the coffin, knelt down and threw a single red rose atop the coffin.

  Pools of raindrops collected in every petal.

  The gravedigger rose to his feet, and strode round the grave, and in front of the group of onlookers. The brim of his hat was pulled down over his face.

  He seemed to pause in front of Von Klatt, and turn to face him for a moment. Figuratively, time stopped.

  But in another moment, he was gone, stomping through the gravestones as the priest droned to the end of the service.

  He walked over the graves of the dead and dying respectfully, before climbing into a waiting banana-yellow New York taxicab.

  The taxi flanked the city, through the lashing rain, and finally stopped at New York Docks.

  The gravedigger got out, handed the driver a hundred dollar note, tipped his hat, and continued walking through the dockyard.

  The clouds were swirling and the sky was dark.

  He walked halfway up the dockyard, before nodding at a bearded dockerman who was about to close the gangway leading onto an idling container ship.

  The dockerman nodded back, and accepted the bundle of cash that the gravedigger thrust into his hands.

  ‘No questions?’

  ‘No questions.’

  The gravedigger boarded the ship and walked to the front of the ship as it roared out to sea.

  He held onto the railing and breathed the sea air.

  The Atlantic Ocean was calling him.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder and spun round.

  Two hulking men stood in front of him. They wore soccer shirts and had pale skin.

  ‘We don’t appreciate stowaways on this ship, mate. You’re gonna fight us, or pay us, but either way we’ll be happy.’

  The sea breeze blew in, and the ship sailed out towards the blue sky. Full steam ahead.

  The gravedigger ran his hands through his long, black hair.

  He smiled, and clenched his fists.

  ---THE END---

  Acknowledgments

  It is oft wrote in the acknowledgements section by the author that he is keen to attribute any factual or chronological errors to himself, and ensure that any of his acknowledges sources is devoid of any blame. I am sure that none of my named sources will mind me telling you that given the sheer amount of hours I devote to my craft, it is unlikely that any errors are the author’s own, and it would be churlish to assume that.

  Kindly suggest that if you discover any mistakes in the text – first ‘get a life’ – and second please pick up with the relevant person below who will presumably be happy to help, apologise and/or correct you.

  Thanks to Sergeant Len Drinkwater of Leicester Constabulary for his guidance on appropriate levels of force. Whilst I wouldn’t call you a friend, you have been helpful.

  New York! What a city! Thanks to my Uncle Norman, whose detailed reminiscing about New York of the 1970s provided the author with a realistic picture of ‘The Big Apple’. Crunch!

  Thanks also to Iris Beale of South Leicester library. You were a rock – not only always emotionally available, you made the overly complex printing process as easy as pie. x

  I couldn’t have written this without being made redundant – so thanks to Christian Cooper of AVASCO Pharm. Your morally repugnant stance on culling talented middle management has just likely made me a millionaire. I wis
h you only the worst Christian.

  No thanks to my ex-wife Joan. You underestimated how high I can fly. I hope you regret that forever.

  I hope you regret it forever.

  Connect with Nigel Mustard

  Email: nigelmustardauthor@gmail.com

  I respond to every e-mail received although I do not respond to pornographic material or Left Wing Propaganda

  Twitter: @NigelMustard

  Internet: http://nigelmustard.wix.com/hello

  PLEASE NO TIME WASTERS AND STRICTLY NO MORE PYRAMID SCHEME PUSHERS – I WILL NO LONGER FALL FOR IT