“Jeff’s, Ma. It’s at Jeff’s.”
Finally she left the room, swearing about storage fees as she put on her coat. The door slammed as I sat up.
This time I didn’t even have underwear on, but hell, it’s just family, and I knew where to find some. After all, I’d grown up here.
20
Clothed in fresh jeans and a well-less-than-fresh Rush “Roll the Bones” T-shirt, I took stock of what I thought I knew:
One: the wererats had tried to kill me.
Two: they worked for Carl Murray.
Taken together, that meant they thought they had some way of making it stick, because otherwise why bother?
But …
Three: Naomi knew about the rats, and the girls. And me.
Four: Carl Murray’s goons had tried very hard to take me alive.
Which means maybe point one wasn’t true.
So if not, what’s the game?
I don’t blame Naomi for selling out an old flame, especially not to her meal ticket. I just wonder what she thought she knew about me that the wolves would care about. I mean, they couldn’t care that I’m an exterminator. The last baron I’d killed was a clean hit, and if I hadn’t have taken the job, someone else would have—no way Murray held that against me.
But they sure wanted a piece of me.
I laughed in spite of myself, right there at mom’s kitchen table. They had to know they couldn’t torture a guy like me, not for anything but fun. So was it fun? Or did he have some other boil on his ass?
And how much did that matter?
The girls. That had to be Naomi. She knew I’d never let innocent kids rot in a basement. Had my number like an old Catholic lady on Bingo night, and I stamped those fucking cards like a Sunday-morning chump.
But just because they were bait didn’t mean they weren’t in danger.
Shit.
21
If you ever have to sleep on a bench, cover your feet in newspaper. Unless it’s the Olympics, nobody pays attention to the homeless, and if you’re asleep on a bench with newspaper covering your feet, then you’re something less than human, less than worthy of a human’s attention.
That sucks. But it’s also an opportunity.
The man in the suit passed me without a second glance.
I got up and shuffled after him, and nobody paid me any notice. Five-ten, dudebro haircut, he walked with his head held high, buoyed with self-worth, yet he trucked along with the frantic pace of a man who served impatient masters. But in this kind of crowd, nobody went all that fast, and crazy-eyed when it suited me, even the douchiest of douchebag tourists gave me a wide berth.
Suit-boy walked from Murray’s credit union into the Klassy Kitty—a boil on the city’s ass but not a place the bouncers would let me through, not in jeans and a T-shirt—and came out three minutes later, sans briefcase. A mule, and too cocky to leave with an identical case.
No surprise. If a cop saw such an obvious move, in this town, they’d be more likely to shake you down for a cut than to turn you in.
Fine, then. The hard way.
It’s tough to balance the amount of blunt-force trauma necessary to knock a dude senseless without knocking the senses right out of him, but I counted myself somewhat of an expert on the matter. Suit-boy folded under the sap—a can of dog food wrapped in a sock—and I dragged him into an alley.
22
“Wake up,” I said, slapping the kid on the face opposite the soup-can shiner. Jeez, I was turning into my mother.
Kid. Yeah. Early twenties, maybe, just scruffy enough to prove he could grow some scruff, with soft hands and the soft cheeks of someone who’d been hitting the sauce too hard—the spaghetti sauce. He half-kneeled against a dumpster behind the hardware store, ankles hog-tied behind his back to a loop around his neck, arms spread to either side with his wrists tied to the dumpster’s feet.
His eyes opened, revealing bloodshot sclera, the left flecked with blood from the can I’d bashed into his temple. Glazed, confused, they widened suddenly and his body flopped against his restraints.
“It’s eighth-inch steel wire, kid. You’re wasting your time.” Five thirty-secondths, but who’s counting? “You’ll cut your own throat before you break a strand.”
“Do you know who I am?”
I kneeled on his left hand, splaying his fingers out against the pavement, and brought the hammer down on his pinky. A wet ‘splorch’ softened the impact, and blood splattered across my jeans.
As he screamed, I stuffed his jacket sleeve into his mouth—I had his tie and cufflinks in my pocket, both very nice. When he stopped writhing enough so I figure he could understand, I pushed his head back against the cold metal and looked him straight in the frantic, pained eyes.
“Rule number one: I ask the questions. Clear?”
His eyes fluttered, so I hefted the hammer.
“Are we clear?”
He nodded, slow at first and then with some enthusiasm while I tested my grip on the wooden haft, turning the head to catch the metal in the yellow-orange halogen streetlight.
“Rule number two: you get to decide how often I use this. I’d rather not use it again, rather not kill you, either, but figure I’ve got nineteen tries before I run out of things you can live without. Are we clear?”
Another nod.
“Good. Now I have some questions ….”
23
The kid didn’t know much.
I sent him home with a bandaged pinky and damaged pride and advice to run, very fast and very far. A risk? Sure. But I’m a big softie. Murray’s people would kill him for squealing to me, even if he ratted me out, and maybe he’d stand a chance on the lam … not that wolves enjoyed a hunt or nothing, but despite what they thought, they hadn’t been the apex predator hereabouts for a long, long time.
The thing about gangsters you don’t really get from TV and movies is just how godawful stupid they are. Their power comes from their brutality, their willingness to inflict pain and suffering and damage beyond what most people could bear, and somewhere in that equation they get cocky and start thinking they’re special, that the rules of the universe don’t apply to them, that they can buy or fight or kill their way out of anything.
Murray wasn’t even alpha wolf, just a high-up enforcer who put the screws to the right bankers and investors to make the pack a whole lot of money—and that made him richer and more successful than most, but still not the king. A king, sure, of pseudo-rich tract housing, complete with his own queen. And some pet rats. And girls in his basement. Girls he’d gotten explicitly to bait me.
According to the kid, those girls had come from the Klassy Kitty, rented by the day against their will from the owner and pimp, a real piece of work named Johnny Honest. Johnny had a few mainstay dancers, but they were just for show. Mostly he liked to trawl schoolyards with his bad-boy good looks, finding young flesh and hooking them on heroin, then hooking them on hooking to pay for the next hit.
He left work most nights at three a.m., with an escort of goons courtesy of his boss to make sure he got home okay. They’d sling him up the highway to his house, let him through the front door, and wish him a good night.
When his keys fumbled in the lock I sat up on the edge of his bed and picked up his shotgun, loaded with silver and pelletized holy water—something told me he didn’t quite trust his bosses.
24
It took Johnny ten minutes of dicking around before he made it to the bedroom—putting away dishes, taking out the trash, taking a leak, rubbing one out …. Finally, he walked in, in just his underwear, and flicked on the light. His eyes bugged out when they met the gun barrel.
They were dark brown, and a little too close together. If he was a wolf, he was a mongrel. More likely just a human running with the wrong pack. Either way, the ammo would do the job.
His head shook, but his nervous little eyes didn’t believe him, either.
“Try again.”
“You gonna shoot me, Szymanski?”
My shoulders twitched, the barest hint of a shrug. “Maybe. Whether or not it’s fatally depends on how forthcoming you are.”
“Ain’t no hits on me right now. Why you even here?”
“This is a pet project. Now spill.”
He tried to man-up, but couldn’t keep his eyes off the barrel.
“Whaddya wanna know?”
“The girls you sold Murray, he tell you why he needed them?”
“Yep. Bait.”
“For me.”
He nodded.
“And how long do they have them?”
He shrugged. “Long as they want. They’s bought and paid for.”
“What happens to them when the wolves are done with them?”
He shrugged and grunted something that might have, in some iteration of the English language, sounded something not utterly unlike “I don’t know.”
My finger tightened on the trigger.
“Try again.”
“They’s just girls, man. A million more like ’em every day.”
“So the plan is to kill them?”
“Not my plan.”
“But the plan.”
Another shrug. At least he had the decency to look constipated.
“Why do they want me?”
“I have no fucking idea.”
I sighed, long and dramatic. “Look, if I have to say ‘try again’ one more time, I’m going to blow your brains across that wall.”
“They … want what you have.”
“And they think they can take it?”
“They do. Got some machine or something to suck it right out of ya.”
“That’s ridiculous. Ma’s a way easier target.”
“Too old or something.”
I grunted. If that was their problem, they had no idea what they were doing, but if it kept them off Mom’s back, it kept them off Mom’s back.
“So it’s got to be me. And you’re in on the take.”
“Hell yeah. You’d be, too, if you wasn’t you.”
“Yeah, living forever’s a fucking picnic. You should try it sometime.”
“Anyone who ain’t you would kill for it. You can’t tell me otherwise.”
“So you’re in. What about the Bianchis?”
He snorted. “Nah, man. The rats don’t know shit. Just in it for the crash pad. Think they’s living the life.”
“Call them. Tell them you got a job for them at Eighth and Barclay.”
“What’s at Eighth and Barclay?”
“Just make the fucking call.”
“And then you’ll let me go?”
“Sure.”
He made the call, and hung up.
The blast took off most of his skull above his right eye, as you’d think a shotgun at point-blank range would do. I wiped my prints off the gun and dropped it on the floor next to his steaming corpse.
His bowels let go in a flatulent burst as I walked out, perhaps the prettiest thing about his whole damned life.
25
You know what’s at the T-intersection of Eighth and Barclay? Not a damned thing. Two vacant lots bulldozed years ago as part of some de-shittification project then left to the weeds, what hardscrabble nonsense could grow amid the cracked asphalt and decaying remains of cinderblocks. Across the street stood a gas station abandoned some time before Eisenhower died, too run down to renovate and too toxic to bulldoze.
A rusty-ass van rolled up across the gas station, tires crackling on gravel. Tim and Danny hopped out, leaving Gina in the driver’s seat. Most of these low-level douchebags wouldn’t know a woman’s value to a job if it bit them on the nuts, and relegated them to getaway driver. Gina was kind of cute for a rat, and Johnny Honest thought with his dick, so maybe she could have helped with the transaction they thought they were about to make. But no, they left her in the van with the keys in the ignition, picking her nails and listening to the radio way too loud.
I knocked on the window with my newest pistol, other finger to my lips.
She looked up, rolled her eyes, and got out of the van as I motioned her to do so.
“Don’t say a word,” I whispered.
“What—”
Suppressed and subsonic but at two feet away, the bullet entered her left temple at a downward angle, spraying a narrow jot of brains and bits of skull across the side of the vehicle. The idiots leaning against the other side didn’t even move as I dragged her out and dumped her behind the rusty pumps, just smoked their cigarettes and talked under the music.
I waited three minutes until their complaints about Johnny’s lateness got loud enough to hear over what passed for music, then rounded the corner and double-tapped Danny in the face. As he collapsed, I turned the pistol on Tim, but held my fire.
“Hey, Tim. Sorry ’bout your brother. You want to see your sister again?”
26
Hands at two and ten, Tim Bianchi made the last turn into Murray’s cul-de-sac. I looked like shit and smelled worse in his brother’s clothes, but with the baseball cap maybe whoever watched the cameras wouldn’t notice until far too late. Maybe.
“Where’s Gina?” Tim asked.
I rolled my eyes. “She’s safe. And if you want her to stay that way you’ll shut the fuck up and do what you’re told.”
“I don’t even know what you want.”
“And you’re not going to.” He’d already told me they’d been paid to kidnap me, at least somewhat verifying Johnny Honest’s story. “Just pull in the drive and run cover like I told you, and when you get inside I’ll get you to your sister.”
“You promise she’s alive.”
“I promise. I’m lots of things, but not a liar. Integrity is everything in this business.”
We got out of the van and I kept my head low, followed Tim to the door. He punched in a code and turned the handle as the alarm blipped safe. One hand on his back, I followed him inside and shot him through both lungs in the foyer. He fell on his side, then rolled to his back, mouth opening and closing like a fish.
I fucking hate floppers.
He twitched and spasmed, eyes wide in uncomprehending outrage at my betrayal, chest filling with blood even as it pooled ever-wider across the floor.
I know, I know. I’m a terrible person.
Well, “person.”
27
A pair of bolt cutters made short work of the lock on the basement door. I flicked the light and creaked my way down the stairs, nose crinkled against the horrible stench of sickness, piss, and shit. Way too familiar.
“Hey, ladies. You want to get out of here?”
They stared at me with starvation-blackened eyes, young, innocent, uncomprehending. Even after I cut the chain holding them to the radiator, they didn’t move, probably fearing some kind of trick.
“There’s a van outside. I’m going to take you up there, and we’re going to leave.” It took two minutes of unbelieved reassurances before I gave up and ordered them upstairs with the gun, barking like a drill sergeant. At the top of the stairs one looked from Tim Bianchi’s body to me with the first dawning of hope, and I winked at her.
Her eyes fell, too distrusting of anything remotely human.
We left the cul de sac at seventy miles an hour, but not before I’d doused Murray’s house with sixteen gallons of kerosene I’d found in Bianchi’s garage, with trails to both propane tanks at the houses to either side. The flames had just started to flicker over the intervening streets by the time we hit the highway. The way reporting goes in this town, I still don’t know if the tanks ignited. I’d like to think so. I’d like to
think Murray and his goon squad had arrived to see it happen.
“Where are you taking us?” Her voice came out a whisper, cowed and terrified. “Do you have any food?”
I shook my head; born in this kind of starvation, I knew a stop at McDonald’s would kill them. “Sorry, toots. You’re going to a hospital, and they’re going to decide what you eat, and when.” A look of alarm crossed her face, so I put my hand on hers, all skin and bones. “I know these people, they’re good folks. They’ll take good care of you.”
“That’s what Johnny said,” another muttered.
“Yeah, well, Johnny’s dead and you’re not.”
“Really?” All four of them reared back in disbelief.
“Killed him myself, with his own shotgun. Now be quiet.”
They didn’t say another word except to thank me when the nurses wheeled them away.
Maybe they’d live. Maybe they’d get clean—best I could offer was another chance.
Same as it’s always been.
28
I sucked on the cigar and blew a smoke ring out over my bare feet, where it surrounded the sun setting over the rooftops.
“Nasty habit, Johnny,” Ma said.
“It’s just a cigar.”
“Not that, ya putz. I been smoking cigars since Columbus. You think your mother doesn’t know a good cigar? You got your feets on the furniture again. You trying to give me pinworms or what? Even an idiot would know better.”
“Can we even get pinworms?”
“That’s not the point, Mikey. It’s just gross.”
“Sure, Ma.” I put my feet on the floor, thereby increasing my chances of getting pinworms, and downed the rest of my scotch, every bit as hideous as the first time, but it warmed the belly.
In the Garden of Rusting Gods Page 10