Shank

by Robert J. Krog

  He held Granger’s hand in both of his, patting it warmly, smiling all the while. Granger’s face paled. Roger smiled at him, laughed appreciatively at the continued applause, and then turned to the audience as the uproar subsided. He released his captive and leaned back against the table. Granger still had his eyes on him, but then turned slowly to the audience.

  “Method—” He had to stop and clear his throat, “Methodius Charn, everyone. I’m sure you know his books. They outsell mine, these days. Um, he’s my guest today, yes, expected actually, a bit in the nature of a surprise for you.” He was recovering his poise nicely. “Actually, for me too. I thought he’d be here toward the end, but here he is, and how nice that is. He’s got an announcement that concerns us both, and I thought I’d, um, let him give it to you himself, since it’s about his upcoming movie project.”

  He stepped back, and Roger stepped forward. “Hi, everybody, I’m Methodius Charn, as Deadrick said. He and I are going to be working on a movie script soon, based on the book Spring Legs, since he’s worked on scripts before, and I haven’t. It’s going to be a fun collaboration, I’m sure, but more than that, we wanted you, our dear readership, to know that, starting with this movie script and hereafter in all our works, we’ll be donating the bulk of our profits to children’s charities.”

  There was an appreciative murmur from the adults present.

  “That’s right, from now on, charities helping expectant mothers keep their babies, feeding hungry children, teaching children to read, housing and clothing children year-round, will all be getting additional funding from us. Every book you buy to entertain your child will also help another child in need somewhere.”

  There was a general murmur of approval as he paused.

  “And Deadrick himself is starting the fund with a generous donation of $1,000,000. I’ll be adding a portion to that, as well.” He turned and gestured for Granger to step forward. The older man did with eyes wide and mouth twitching. He was clearly getting a little emotional. “Isn’t he great, folks? It was all his idea. He loves people. He loves children and realized we can’t just keep going on, getting richer from the love you give us, without finding a way to give more of it back.”

  “This is a little embarrassing, Methodius,” Granger said as more applause ensued.

  “That’s okay, pal. That’s okay.”

  At the back of the audience, Roger saw that Emma was standing there, a curious smile playing across her lips, and her eyes wet, slightly aglow, reflecting the light in the room. He waved at her and pulled Granger close again. “As long as you keep playing along, I won’t have someone come after you, pal. I have a contingency policy in place for my protection, too. If I die from any cause that’s the least bit suspicious, three shooters will be out there, vying to put you in the ground. Do you understand? Two can play this game. The law may never catch you, but I sure will. You keep donating to the right causes and act like a good little boy, or its out and out war between us. You’ll never be so lucky as to catch me unaware again.” He patted his nemesis on the back as he spoke, keeping a jubilant, congratulatory expression on his face. The applause was quite loud.

  When it had died down, Roger said, “Let me take a back seat here, and you get back to your regularly scheduled programming.” He settled into the chair behind the table and watched as Granger, bewildered and nervous, mastered himself and resumed his routine. There was more reading, from another book, done by rote and muscle memory, rather than with the same verve as the first reading, but there was applause. After that, people bought books, if they hadn’t already and lined up to get them signed and have a few words with the author. It was a lengthy line, but no one seemed impatient. To those there, it appeared to be a real event, and that made Roger despise Granger all the more. The people there loved him and his work. He wasn’t suffering because another author was selling more books than him.

  Granger was gracious to all and good with the children. A few parents got copies of Roger’s books, as well, and he ended up signing them. Emma let him be, watching from the back of the audience, and leaving when she had to. While he wasn’t too busy, Roger looked up the charities he’d mentioned and made a list of them for Granger. At the bottom of it, he wrote, “One million now, and 95% donation from all future profits, and Remember the Cold War.” When the line was finally done, and only a few people lingered, Roger presented him with the list, placing it in his grudging hands, patted him on the shoulder, and left.

  “Remember the cold war?” Emma asked him later. “Why?”

  “The nuclear deterrent of mutually-assured destruction,” he explained.

  “Oh, of course. I guess between blackmail and threat of reciprocal force, you have him by the short hairs.”

  “I believe so. He’s not a brave man, by nature, but a conniver and a coward.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t bash his brains in with the lug wrench.”

  “It was a close thing, my love.”

  “We aren’t playing horseshoes or hand grenades.”

  “True. I think I’ll need to confess Saturday, all the same.”

  “Sure. Want me to go with you?”

  “If you like. You aren’t allowed in the confessional with me.”

  “Not a problem. You’ll go to the…what’s-it-called, after?”

  “Vigil mass, sure.”

  “Okay, we can do that and then have dinner.”

  “I’d like that.”

  Chapter 6

  A First

  “I’ve never been hospitalized before,” Shaw told the middle-aged nurse. “I don’t know anything about it.”

  The nurse regarded him professionally, yet pityingly. “There’s a first time for everything. You’re not too old to learn a new trick or two. You’ll have to take the IV with you when you go to the toilet, is all.” She disengaged him from the machine that was monitoring his pulse.

  He’d never had an IV before, and the last time he’d been to a hospital, it had been to make a hit. He avoided looking at the large bandage covering his right wrist, nor would he look at the blank spot beyond it where his hand had been. He knew it was futile, but he did it anyway. If he didn’t look at it, it wasn’t real. He looked down at the contraption the IV bag hung from. It had wheels at the bottom of it. He nodded, rose carefully from the bed, and started to move.

  “Steady there,” the nurse said. “Lean on me, if you need to.”

  “I’ll be fine,” he told her, shaking her off.

  “As you wish,” she told him. The phrase rang in his ears.

  As I wish? What do I wish?

  He walked slowly to the bathroom door, which stood a little ajar, pushing the IV beside him, reached for the doorknob with his right hand, then used his foot to slam it open when he saw the bandage where the hand had been. The nurse came along behind him and shut the door for him.

  “Just press the call button when you’re done, and I’ll come back and get you hooked up again.”

  He didn’t reply, and she probably didn’t expect him to. He fumbled around with his left hand, realizing he’d never used it for much. He had difficulty with the toilet paper. He had no idea how to wash one hand without the other. The hospital gown was ridiculous, and he’d prided himself on never having worn one. On the other hand, he felt more naked without his Sigs than because of the gown. He wondered if the window would open wide enough for him to crawl out and throw himself off the building.

  Fourth floor? That would do it if I went head-first.

  But he wasn’t ready for that yet. He couldn’t stop thinking about Hooker and what Brenda had said. It had to be a mistake. Charn was dead, a bullet through the chest. He’d drowned in his own blood. There was no way he’d lived through that. It had been real. The pooka couldn’t have fooled him with an illusion; he’d killed it first. When he got back to his bed, he didn’t bother to send for the nurse. Instead, he found his phone and called Brenda.

  “You’ve reached the office of Brenda Askins, LEI Deat
h Broker. Please leave a detailed message, and I’ll get back to you in order of the importance of your message.”

  “Brenda, this is Shaw. I want the details concerning Charn. Who says they saw him alive? Where, when? I know the man is dead; I watched him die. I put the bullet through his lung and watched him choke on his own blood and die. Call me back and give me the details.”

  A few minutes later he received a picture from a local newspaper’s website from her via text. Charn and Granger were sitting together at a table in Poplar Booksellers. The picture had been taken a few hours ago. He stared at the picture; Methodius Charn smiled out of it. Beside him, Granger, looking a little ill, had a stunned expression on his face. The line below the photo read, “Famed children’s author Methodius Charn surprises famed children’s author Deadrick Granger at signing. How much fame can Memphis children take in one day?”

  It can’t be. It doesn’t make sense.

  But it did. It was kaval. The pooka had possessed other magic he hadn’t been warned about. That had to be it. He’d been cheated by magic. Impotent rage coursed fruitlessly through him. He’d kill them all, but with what? He couldn’t shoot worth a damn with his left hand. That fact hit him, and his breath left him. He kept trying to breathe, and couldn’t, just short little gasps that did nothing. His heart was pounding; he could feel it in his ears as if he were sprinting. He began to sweat.

  Where are my Sigs?

  But he knew. Hooker had them. He was naked and unemployed. The sweat didn’t stop, and his breathing got worse. Desperate, he hit the button for the nurse. She came quickly and found him trying to rise from the bed, his feet moving toward the floor, but fighting the shakes and about to fall.

  “Mr. Shaw, let me help you. You’ve had a shock, and you’re only beginning to recover.”

  She took hold of his left arm, and he let her put him back in the bed. Once she’d hooked everything up again, he was calmer, embarrassed, and angry.

  “Will I get a prosthesis?” he asked.

  “Presumably,” she answered. “It depends on your insurance, of course.”

  That hit him, too. Did he have insurance anymore? No matter, he had money.

  I’m rich, he reminded himself. I can pay outright, or just get my own insurance. Who needs LEI?

  “Poor man,” she said, looking at his pulse rate easing on the monitor, “it’s been awfully hard on you.”

  “Yeah,” he muttered savagely, “you should see the other guy.” But that cliché, always expressing a truth before, was hollow. Hooker was alive and unharmed. He forged ahead. “When will I see a doctor about that prosthesis?”

  “You need to heal some first. I’ll mention to your doctor that you want to know.”

  He had vague memories of seeing a doctor, but the anesthesia hadn’t worn off yet.

  “What’s my doctor’s name?”

  “Sobhowski. Shall I turn on the TV for you?”

  He grunted. She turned it on, patted his arm, and left the room. At some point, he fell asleep, staring at the screen.

  He dreamed about the painting in Hooker’s little gallery, the one with the man clawing his way out of his skin and walking away across the desolate landscape, his flayed form leaving bloody footprints on the ground behind him. He crouched beneath it, holding his gun in his right hand. But no, the hand was gone; just a bloody stump remained. He cried out, cradled the stump to his chest, and tried to get to safety, but he was inside the painting, crawling along behind the distant flayed figure, putting his good hand in the bloody footprints.

  Later, the dream fading and leaving him merely confused, he awoke to a different nurse in the room checking on him. His window showed it was night outside. A newscast was on the screen, the highlight showing clipped security cam footage of a man getting his hand chopped off, being escorted out the door of a posh residence, then being loaded into an ambulance. It took him a little while to realize it was him.

  The nurse noticed, too. “I’d say you got your ass handed to you, and you’re lucky to be alive. Ever think about going into honest work?”

  He really looked at her for the first time. She was black, thickset, and middle-aged. She regarded him frankly.

  He said, “I’m the best. I’ll get a prosthetic hand and be back on the job in a few months. That asshole you saw go at me got lucky. He won’t survive our next encounter.”

  “Do you believe in Hell, Mr. Shaw? That’s where you’re going if you keep living like this. The Bible is pretty clear about murder.”

  He looked back to the screen, where the footage was playing again. “The Bible? Get out and don’t come back. I want the other nurse in here from now on.”

  “She’s off duty, sir, but I’ll find you someone else, who’ll think just like I do, but won’t say it. Make no mistake, none of us like you; we all pity you.” She left.

  A couple of hours later, Johns walked into his room.

  “Damn, buddy. How ya doin? You look like shit.”

  Shaw was too stunned by the sight of him to say anything.

  “Buddy?” Johns repeated, stopping at the side of the bed.

  Shaw tried to hide the stump at the end of his arm.

  “It’s okay, stumpy,” Johns said. “No need to be ashamed.”

  “Go to Hell, Johns. I got taken down by a guy with a knife.”

  “Let’s call that a sword, and everybody has an off day. The important thing is, you lived to fight another day, right?”

  “He cut off my damn hand.”

  “You’ll get a quality prosthetic and learn to shoot better with your left.”

  He stared hard at his friend before asking, “In all our years of knowing each other, did I ever strike you as the sort who needed cheering up?”

  “I don’t know,” Johns replied with a grin and a shrug. “You were never down until now.”

  “I’m not. What do you want?”

  Johns took a seat in the chair near the window and lowered the blinds. “Listen, buddy, you’re out. Witherbot is furious that you failed to take out Charn and then got taken out by Hooker. Sorry,” he said, seeing the expression on Shaw’s face. “This doesn’t happen a lot, and people are talking. There’s more, though. There’s a hit out on you. Some asshole down in the minor leagues accepted it. I don’t know who took it out, and I’m not sure which death broker handled it, or which contractor accepted it, but someone did.”

  “A Murder, Inc. slob?”

  “Worse, 187A, but regardless.”

  “Not scared, I can take a hack from 187A with my left hand.”

  “A lot of talented guys started at the bottom, and some even went on to do mysterious business for people at the top.”

  “Are you talking about those rumored second-class licenses?” Shaw scoffed, though he remembered the conversation with Brenda not so long ago, when she’d loaned him equipment he wasn’t supposed to know existed. Why should Johns get confirmation he was right?

  “I am.”

  “You believe in that Trashman BS?”

  “You don’t? Okay, a lot of guys started down at the bottom and got to your level. We did. You should be wary.”

  “Bring it on. I can’t wait.” He was sweating, though. The memory of his last trip to the range and the target he’d only hit half the time with his left hand came back to him sharply. His heart was pounding again. His guns, he needed his guns. He looked at the bandaged stump of his right wrist.

  Johns said, “You saved my life more than once back in the day, buddy. I’m setting a couple of my guys on you until you get back on your feet, okay? No charge.”

  “I’ve never had a babysitter before. I don’t need one now.”

  “That’s good,” Johns said cheerfully. “Now you’ve got two.”

  Chapter 7

  Weariness and Progress

  Augusta sat at Susan’s mother’s kitchen table, late in the evening, past the children’s bedtime. She ought to get home, herself. Her mother was no doubt tired, sitting on the couch, falling asl
eep with an Agatha Christie novel in her hands, ready to go home. Augusta was tired, too, but there was Susan, unmoved, recalcitrant, staring at the boob tube where the news was playing rather than listening to Augusta’s pitch to get her to take the hit off Gordon Shaw, the shooter.

  “It’s revenge,” she said again, fingers tracing the tacky old designs on the worn tablecloth, “and that’s a sin. It won’t bring George back. It won’t right any wrong; it will only add wrong to the sum total, which is already too large.”

  “Is it revenge?” Susan snapped, still not facing her. “Maybe it’s the only justice we have, the kind we make ourselves when immoral deeds are legal. Did you ever think of that?”

  “Of course I thought of it, and I nearly did it myself, but it’s wrong all around. It just piles up. If you went yourself and tried to stop Shaw from harming others, not to give a wound for a wound, maybe it would be right, but you’re using another murderer to kill him, helping another person down the path to Hell, and that’s wrong. The ends don’t justify the means. We have to be better than this.”

  “No, I don’t. I’ll use whatever means are available, and Shaw will be punished. He pulled the damn trigger, and he’ll pay. Everyone else got off, but by God, someone’s going to pay, and it’s going to be him. I don’t even blame the people who hire the murderers that much. It’s legal, isn’t it? I blame the shooters themselves.”

  Augusta sat silently for a bit, watching Susan ignore her fiercely, eyes riveted to the TV for no other reason than that it was the opposite direction from Augusta. Susan had been worn thin by stress in the last several months since Augusta had met her. She ate too little and either slept too much or not enough. She dressed smartly and kept her mouse-brown hair stylish, but she looked as unhappy as a woman could, angry, discontented, always on edge. Augusta knew she herself had lost weight and added worry lines to her own face.