When Jonesy came to his senses, Clark was carrying him back to the fence over his shoulder. He was still too stunned to do anything but groan and struggle ineffectually. Clark set him on his feet and had to steady him.
“You’re an idiot, and you’re lucky I didn’t call the cops.”
“Traitor.”
“No, I’m a real friend. I’m protecting you from yourself.”
“Go to hell.”
Clark turned him around and steered him toward the fence. Too dazed to fight back yet, Jonesy stumbled along under his roommate’s control. Clark pushed him through the hole in the fence, helping him get his shirt free when it got caught on the sharp edges. He followed after warily, wondering if that was the moment when Jonesy would renew the fight, but he didn’t.
“I’m sorry, I had to do it, and you may never thank me for it, but you won’t go to jail, either,” he said, and looked down distractedly at something odd under his feet. There was a sheet of plastic, like a drop cloth, on the pavement. It hadn’t been there before. “Was this here before?” he asked anyway, looking up at Jonesy who had turned to face him, a confused look on his face.
“No,” Jonesy said and turned his head suddenly toward the boxwood hedge. Clark looked, too. A shadowy figure stepped out and pointed something at him. He only had time to flinch before he heard the muted bang!
Chapter 8
Nervous Pacing and the Phone
Emma had been pacing her apartment for 20 minutes, bedroom to living room and back, talking to herself.
“Just do it. Just call the man. He’s old-fashioned, but he’s not unkind. He won’t mind if you ask him out.” She paused. “He gave you his phone number. Fine, I’ll do it.”
She pulled up the dialer on her phone and dialed quickly before her courage waned. It connected and rang several times before going to voicemail.
“Hi, Methodius, it’s Emma from the con. I want to thank you for the signed copies of The Boy with the Blue Ears for my nieces and nephews. That was very kind of you. May I thank you more tangibly by taking you out to lunch sometime soon? You said you’d be in town some this week. I’m free from noon to one for my lunch breaks most days of the week, or on Saturday at most any time, with a little notice. I work near Stage and Appling. I hope you’re a fan of sandwich shops, because I have a hankering for a Philly cheese steak. So, yeah, give me a call and let me know, please.”
She stood by the living room window, looking out, hardly believing she’d done it, and acutely aware of how loud her own heartbeat sounded in her ears.
Oh, gosh, I sounded like such a little twit. I can’t believe he gave me his number. He was just being nice, and he’s not going to have time for a fat girl like me. I shouldn’t have called. I’m going to shower and go to bed.
Three minutes later, once she had the water running and her phone was on her bed, it rang until her voicemail picked up.
“Emma, this is Methodius Charn. I received your message and would be happy to have lunch with you. I’m free this week on Wednesday and/or Saturday. Let me know which day works for you, if not both. I’ll let it be your treat the first time, but the second will be mine. How about the Philly on Wednesday and then a steakhouse on Saturday?”
Why did I give her my full name? How many men named Methodius could she possibly know? Roger thought after he’d hung up.
Chapter 9
An Acquaintance with Two Parking Lots
Clark’s body fell to the plastic-covered pavement. Jonesy stumbled backward from the sound and away from his roommate’s corpse. The shadowy figure strolled over casually, taking the suppressor off his pistol.
“I’m Shaw,” he explained to the stunned graduate student. “You hired me.”
“I thought it was Shank I hired.”
“That’s me.”
“Oh,” Jonesy said.
Without a change of expression, Shaw knelt, used an app on his phone to scan the corpse for any identity/locator chips, found none, and wrapped it in the plastic. “Some of my clients ask if I need a hand. Some don’t,” Shaw observed casually, “but it makes no difference to me.”
He was efficient. Clark’s corpse was removed to the trunk of a sedan parked in the shadows near the hedge less than two minutes after it had hit the pavement. Jonesy stared at him the whole time, still bleeding from his busted lip and nose.
“In the contract,” Shaw said, closing the trunk, “you said eliminating this fellow would pave the way for you to make a lot of money. I guess he was thwarting you right enough just now. Shouldn’t you go back and do whatever it is he stopped you from doing?”
“He’s dead?” Jonesy stammered.
“He’s as dead as can be, kid.”
“He’s really dead?”
“You seem rattled, kid. I see you just got your ass kicked, which explains why you had to hire me to handle this for you. You’re bruised and confused, but killing is serious business, and if you don’t do whatever he was stopping you from doing, you lose your house. Makes no difference to me, but as a professional courtesy, I advise you to accomplish the deed you set out on. Otherwise, why did you hire a shooter in the first place?”
Jonesy nodded, stumbled over to the fence, and clumsily navigated his way back through the hole.
A few minutes later, Jonesy returned, carrying the ancient artifact gingerly. Shaw was gone. As he set it down in the grass by the fence, he realized he should have retrieved Clark’s keys before letting the hitman leave.
“Damnit!” he said aloud and dug his phone out of his pocket. He sent a message to LEI, asking for Shaw’s return. They asked why, levied an additional charge, and said he’d be back shortly. His fingers hurt from hitting Clark in the head. Two of them were swollen and getting stiff. He wondered if one was broken.
“You can’t be serious!” he shouted at his phone once the call was safely terminated. Fuming, hurting, and nervous, even though what he had done was legal, he waited. What if the university discovered it? They couldn’t have him prosecuted, but he could be kicked out and censured. There would be questions. He could still be charged with theft by the storage company and trafficking in a stolen artifact. It had to be kept secret, and there he was, sitting with the artifact by a hole in the fence beside a self-storage place. That wasn’t suspicious at all. Belatedly, he got up and walked over to Clark’s car, then sat down with the car between him and the restaurant.
“I hate parking lots,” he muttered, looking around the mostly empty asphalt expanse. He scuffed his feet on loose bits of gravel and waited, shivering in the chill air. He wouldn’t be able to relax until he was away from the scene of the theft and Clark’s death. To give himself something to do, he snapped a picture of the cat, and sent it to the buyer. There was no immediate reply, but he knew there would be.
Shortly, Shaw returned and stepped out of his car with a smirk. Jonesy was stiff, sore, and feeling all his bruises by then. It took him a moment to get up. He saw Shaw’s eyes flick over the statue, which was lit dimly by his taillights. Jonesy walked over to him nervously as he opened the trunk. It took a few moments to unwrap the body and get the keys.
“Thanks,” Jonesy muttered.
“Next time, select the option that lets me plan the hit entirely myself. There’s a reason they call me a professional.”
Jonesy looked angrily at the hit man. Shaw raised an eyebrow, and Jonesy realized what he was doing, altered his expression, and nodded in humble acknowledgment of the advice. Shaw slipped back into his car smoothly and pulled out of the parking lot, leaving Jonesy standing beside Clark’s car, breathing a sigh of relief. As he turned to get into the vehicle, he realized there was a man standing outside the store, smoking and talking on his phone. How long he’d been there and how much he’d seen was uncertain. Jonesy unlocked the car, his hands shaking, put the cat on the passenger side floorboard, got in, and drove away.
The shakes eased a bit after a block or two and were gone by the time he was back in his neighborhood. He’d
done it. The possible witness was already forgotten. He pulled up in front of the apartment, then decided against it. He had his contact to sell the cat. He drove past and pulled into a gas station at Highland and Southern. From there, he called his buyer, Charlie Gorley, a guy he knew from his undergraduate days. He couldn’t wait to be rich.
He’d set things up, ditch the car, walk home, and pretend he had no idea what had happened to Clark. Later, once he had the money, he’d drop out of grad school on the pretext that Clark’s disappearance had affected him too much to go on. He sat in the parking lot with dollar signs dancing in front of his eyes. Success had found him at last. He tapped the number into his phone and heard it ring. After several rings, it went to voicemail. Disgusted, he left a message and hung up. He heard a noise next to him and felt a rush of air.
“Outta the car, honky.” His door was suddenly open. A hand reached in and grabbed a fistful of his hair. He shrieked in surprise, but he had no time to react before his face and forehead met the rough, cold pavement of the parking lot. “Gimme your wallet and don’t move, or I’ll shoot you in your white ass.”
Too stunned by the pain in his head to move, he couldn’t resist as he was relieved of his wallet and his phone. Distantly, he heard the phone ring as the carjacker settled into his seat.
“Yeah?” the carjacker answered Jonesy’s phone.
“My phone and my statue, please,” Jonesy begged, trying to rise.
There was a pistol pointing out of the open car door at him. He froze, half turned on his knees and elbows.
“Yeah,” the carjacker said, “Sure I got it. Let me see where I put it. Oh, here it is. A statue of a cat. Yep, I got it. No, I’m not no Jonesy, but I’m working for him. If you payin’, I’m deliverin’.”
“Please,” Jonesy begged. The gun was pointed steadily at him. The carjacker grinned at him happily.
“Harbor Town, 20 minutes. You betcha. I’ll see you there.”
“No!” Jonesy said.
The carjacker ended the call, shut the door, and rolled the window down. As he drove away, he shouted out the window, “Thanks, honky. I needed a payday.”
Jonesy sank to the pavement in disbelief. King Tut’s cat was gone from his grasp, and he had no way to get it back. If he reported the carjacking, it would implicate him in the initial theft. As he lay on the pebbly pavement, the smell of oil, gas, and who knew what else filling his nostrils, he recalled that LEI now owned his only inheritance, his grandmother’s run-down house on East Parkway. The lot was worth a lot more than the house, and selling it one day had been his last-ditch backup plan. Could he qualify for unemployment or maybe disability? Grad school was no longer an option. His study buddy was dead. Real tears flowed from his eyes. He lay in the parking lot and cried. A car pulled in and narrowly avoided running over him. Maybe the next one would hit him. He might be able to sue if he survived. If not, would he want to survive? He didn’t bother getting up.
Book 2: The Penny Fever
Chapter 1
Out on a Hike
When the cold weather hit, a freak snowstorm blanketed Memphis with two inches. Southerners can’t drive in snow, and Memphis was famous for bad drivers, anyway, so Shaw relaxed in his apartment, unconcerned. He suspected he’d get to play extra backgammon with Father Darren for a day or two. Other than that, his life wouldn’t be disrupted much. He had plenty of supplies and wouldn’t even need to go out for groceries.
He’d just been paid well for an easy hit on two very unsuspecting targets. It had been an odd hit for him. The client had gained nothing but revenge and hadn’t been happy when it was done. That was nothing to him, yet he sat thinking about it in his silent apartment, no music playing, no television going, no hobby occupying him.
“Make him suffer. Make them both suffer,” were her instructions.
“As you wish. Is there any particular mode of suffering you prefer?”
“Just use your imagination,” she’d told him.
“I don’t actually go in for torture, miss. It’s not part of my personal aesthetic, and my professional aesthetic requires a little guidance. What did,” he glanced at his notes, “Mr. Donato do to hurt you? Maybe that’ll inspire your choice of punishment for him.”
She colored and looked away. She was a moderately attractive woman, perhaps, when she wore makeup and was smiling, but she looked plain and unhappy talking to Shaw about the demise of Mr. Donato.
She took a deep breath and said, “I quit college to plan our wedding. I converted to his religion, pissing off my entire family and most of my friends. I quit smoking for him. I quit sex for him because we were waiting for marriage.” She spat out the last two sacrifices vehemently, her voice cracking. “I rearranged my entire life and lost everything I cared about because of him, and he jilted me to join the damned priesthood.”
Shaw raised his eyebrows slightly at that last bit. She fumed while he thought it over.
“You gave up your life, and he’s losing his. That seems equitable enough to me, but if you want him to suffer more, which takes extra time that I will be charging you for, how should I prolong it?”
“I don’t know. I thought you’d know.”
After a further moment of reflection, he suggested, “I could castrate him before I kill him, if that suits you.”
The thought seemed to make her ill. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“There’s a typical way that is perhaps less gruesome. I could shoot him in all his major joints before finishing him off.”
“Yes. No. Nevermind. Just make sure he knows I’m the one who hired you, and I don’t mind going to Hell for it. You tell Michael Donato that before he dies. As to his friend who talked him into leaving me for his stinking Jesus, you tell Joseph Cunningham the same thing, okay? That’ll hurt them more than anything.”
“Write that down for me, please?”
“Okay.”
She wrote it in neat, sharp print and handed it to him. “Tell them this, then come back and tell me how they died.”
“As you wish.”
And so he had. He’d followed Donato and Cunningham out to the hiking trails in Shelby Forest and come upon them under a water oak tree not far from the river. The men had turned around to see him walking up behind them from around a bend in the trail. They were dressed for a day’s hike, with light packs on their backs, and sticks in their hands. Their greetings had died on their lips as he’d pointed his Sig Sauer P226 at them. He stood about 10 feet away, holding them at gunpoint.
“I’m not holding you up, gentlemen. I’m here to deliver a message.”
Confusion on their part tied their tongues. He pulled a notecard out of his jacket pocket.
“Anita says, ‘I hate you both. I want you to die. I don’t care if I go to Hell for it. How dare you make me give up my whole life for you and then jilt me?’”
Donato gave a start of surprise. “Anita sent you? I haven’t heard from her in three months, not since I decided to go into the seminary.”
“Yes, well, I’ve delivered her message, and now I’m going to shoot you both.”
He drew a bead on Cunningham and shot him in the head, not quite between the eyes, the 9mm round making a neat hole. The sound of the shot made Donato jump, and he stared at his friend, lying dead at his feet, then slowly looked at Shaw. His face was white. His eyes were wide.
“Why?” he asked Shaw.
Shaw referred to the card. “She hates you for jilting her, Mr. Donato. I thought I made that quite clear. Also, and she laid great stress on this, she doesn’t care if she goes to Hell for it.”
“Oh, Anita,” he said, his eyes straying back to Cunningham’s corpse laid out on the trail beside him.
“Yes, that’s the response she was looking for from you, I gather. Now it’s your turn.”
Donato fell to his knees, crossing himself and looking up to heaven.
“Oh, God, forgive this assassin, and forgive Anita. Grant eternal rest to Joseph Cunningham. Oh, Jesus, fo
rgive us our sins. Save us from the fires of Hell. Lead all souls to Heaven, especially those most in need of thy Mercy. Our Father, who art in—”
Shaw shot him in the head, and he fell over, dead. He regarded the fallen men a moment, nodded his head in satisfaction, and left. It was a pleasant day. He’d done his work efficiently, and he’d be paid appropriately for it. He felt like whistling, and he did so as he hiked back toward his vehicle. He met a uniformed, bearded park ranger halfway there.
“Did you hear shots up that way, sir?” the ranger asked.
“Sure did.”
“See anyone with a gun?”
“Just me.”
The officer went for his piece. Shaw let him.
“I need you to let me see your weapon slowly and carefully, sir,” the officer said, pointing a Smith and Wesson .44 Magnum revolver at him.
“How about I just show you my card instead, Ranger Rick?”
“Card?”
“LEI.”
“Oh, shit. You’re one of those guys? You’re a shooter?”
“That’s right,” Shaw said, smiling, which he knew would infuriate the ranger. On top of a job well done and great weather, this was icing on the cake.
“Show me, but do it real slow like.”
“As you wish.” Using his left hand, he opened his jacket and showed the ranger where one of his guns was strapped under an armpit, another Sig Sauer P226. “The card is in this pocket. Mind if I reach and get it? Your trigger finger will be much faster than my hand.”
“Not yet. Take your gun out carefully and set it on the ground, too. You can have it back if this checks out.”
“I’m not required—”
“Am I holding a pistol on you?”
Shaw smiled that same smile, only broader. “Point taken.” He started, slowly, to reach for his piece.
Shank Page 6
