Shady Cross

by James Hankins

  Stokes stuck his right hand into his pocket and curled his fingers around the gun he desperately hoped he wouldn’t have to use, but which he fully intended to use if he had to. He squeezed behind the door, which was wide open, and pressed his body against the wall separating him from the office. From where he was he could just see Nickerson’s desk through the crack between the door and the doorjamb.

  He held his breath. His heart slammed. The blood pounded through his aching fingers. If he was really, really unlucky, whoever was out there had to use the toilet and had some strange preference for this particular bathroom out of the ten or so that could likely be found in the house.

  As Stokes watched, one of Nickerson’s identical twin sons, either Chet or Carl—he had no clue which—walked into Stokes’s limited view. The man was wearing pajama bottoms and no shirt and carrying a glass of milk and a plate with a few cookies on it, which, at any other time, Stokes might have found amusing. Nickerson set them down on the desk and took a seat in the chair behind it. He stuffed a cookie into his mouth whole, washed it down with a big gulp of milk, and pulled a cell phone out of the pocket of his pajama bottoms. He pushed a few numbers and waited.

  A moment later, something really bad happened. The cell phone in Stokes’s pocket began to vibrate. He’d remembered to set it to silent mode but hadn’t really considered what that might mean, other than that it wouldn’t audibly ring. Well, it didn’t. But it vibrated. And with Stokes leaning face-first against the wall separating the bathroom from the office, the phone, pressed between his body and the wall, vibrated in short little bursts, the volume of the vibrations amplified by its contact with the wall. The phone kept buzzing and the buzzing carried into the wall and, too late—far too late—Stokes leaned away from the wall. He saw Nickerson look toward the bathroom before pressing a button on the phone, putting an end to the vibrating in Stokes’s pocket. He reached for a desk drawer.

  Stokes knew he was going for a gun. He’d reacted quickly for a guy Stokes had never considered too bright. He had called a man who was supposedly somewhere across town, the phone had buzzed in the bathroom of his home, eight feet away from where he was sitting, and he immediately reached for a gun. No stupid look of puzzlement, no look of dumb shock that would have given Stokes time to come up with a good way to react in this situation. No, Nickerson went right for a gun. Of course it was possible, Stokes thought, that reaching for a gun was his default reaction to anything. Chef overcooked his steak? Reach for a gun. Flat tire? Grab a pistol. Ran out of potato chips? Start shooting. Anyway, Nickerson going for a gun left Stokes no choice. He elbowed the door out of his way and spun past it, into the office, yanking his own gun from his pocket as he moved. He raised the weapon, pointed it at Nickerson’s face, and waited for Nickerson’s hands to rise.

  They didn’t.

  The man’s eyes, the eyes that held that wild, dangerous light, looked back at Stokes’s masked face as he felt around in the drawer, heedless of the unspoken command to stop reaching for the gun and to raise his hands. He looked down into the drawer now and kept digging around, moving papers aside, searching the back of the drawer.

  Finally, Stokes said, “Stop that. Put your hands up.”

  Nickerson closed the drawer and opened another one.

  “I said put your hands up.”

  “Fuck you,” Nickerson said. “I know my dad keeps a gun in this desk somewhere. I’m gonna find it and shoot you in your balls, then ask what you’re doing here.”

  Jesus, the guy was crazy.

  “And then,” Nickerson continued, “I’m gonna really start hurting you.”

  He closed the second drawer and opened a third.

  “Goddamn it,” Stokes said, “close that drawer right now or I’ll blow your head off.”

  Nickerson laughed. The crazy son of a bitch laughed and kept searching for that gun.

  Stokes didn’t want to shoot Nickerson. It would wake other Nickersons. Nickersons with weapons. Nickersons as nuts as this one. Which would ruin any chance there was for this whole thing to turn out all right. But there was more going on here, he was starting to realize. Things had changed with that phone call he’d just missed, the one Nickerson had placed, but Stokes hadn’t had time yet to think it through. All he knew was that he really didn’t want to have to shoot this idiot if he could help it.

  But then Nickerson smiled and brought a gun up from behind the desk.

  “Drop that,” Stokes warned.

  Nickerson ejected the magazine, checked to see that it was loaded, and slammed it back into place.

  Stokes took a step toward the desk.

  “Put that thing down right now,” he said. “Last warning.”

  Nickerson laughed, clicked off the safety, and raised the gun.

  TWENTY-SIX

  1:02 A.M.

  AS THE GUN ROSE, ITS muzzle turning toward Stokes’s crotch, thoughts ricocheted chaotically around inside his head. Though he didn’t know the reason, the adrenaline coursing through his system caused a surreal slowdown of events and, in the heat of the moment, with only a split second to act, he was able to make sense of some of the thoughts careening through his mind.

  He had no doubt that the crazy son of a bitch would shoot him. Still, Stokes didn’t want to have to shoot Nickerson if he could avoid it. And he obviously couldn’t let himself get shot. So he charged toward the desk. As he did, he threw his gun at Nickerson, whose wild eyes grew wilder as the weapon bounced off his forehead, snapping his head back on his neck. Thankfully, the gun didn’t discharge. Nickerson’s gun was pointing off to Stokes’s left now as Stokes kept coming. Another step and he launched himself across the desk, crashing into Nickerson, setting the wheeled chair spinning and rolling.

  Stokes wasn’t a small guy, and when his 190 pounds slammed into Nickerson, he was gratified to hear the other guy’s breath explode out of him. The chair snagged on the area rug and over it went. Nickerson tumbled out of it with Stokes on top of him.

  Stokes concentrated first on Nickerson’s gun. While Nickerson fought to regain his breath, Stokes punched him hard in the face with his gloved right hand, then knelt on the wrist just below the hand that held the gun. The hand opened and Stokes knocked the weapon a few feet away. He punched Nickerson a second time. Without thinking, he punched the asshole yet again, this time with his left hand, slamming his broken fingers into Nickerson’s cheekbone. He stifled a scream and saw white spots blooming on the edges of his vision.

  Nickerson was big and strong, and even though Stokes had surprised him and initially got the better of him, he was capable of putting up a good fight. And he did. A real good one. Lying on his back, he swung up at Stokes again and again, and Stokes, regaining his senses and kneeling over Nickerson, swung back. A jab knocked off Stokes’s mask, and Nickerson looked surprised to see Stokes’s face, but that didn’t slow down even one of the bastard’s punches.

  Both men’s fists were covered with the other’s blood. Stokes’s good right hand began to throb as badly as his damaged left one. Still, he kept throwing punches at Nickerson’s eyes, his nose, his throat, all the while trying to dodge the blows from two fists flying at his face. He was surprised at the force Nickerson was able to generate while lying on his back. He was even more surprised when a sudden surge of movement and twist of body bucked him to the side and Nickerson was able to scramble out from under him and lurch to his feet. Stokes did the same.

  They were just three feet apart, breathing hard, staring at each other. Nickerson’s homicidal eyes, always scary, were wide and white and staring from that mask of slick blood, which made them even more frightening than usual.

  In a flash Stokes understood something terrible: one of them would die tonight. If, incredibly, Stokes somehow won without killing Nickerson, he’d have to kill the guy anyway before he left, now that his mask had come off. There was no way someone like him would take a beating lik
e this and forget about it. He was too arrogant, too violent, too crazy for that. No matter where Stokes went, no matter how many miles he put between them, Nickerson would hunt for him. It would never end until one of them was dead. He sighed. He wasn’t looking forward to killing Nickerson, if he could. He’d never wanted to kill anyone intentionally. But he had no choice. He knew that. And he could bring himself to do it, if he got the chance. Maybe he couldn’t have before, but he could tonight. He knew that, too. He was even more certain that if Nickerson prevailed, he’d kill Stokes, probably slowly, certainly painfully . . . and he’d enjoy it. And with Stokes having only one truly useful hand, the smart money wasn’t on him to be the one to survive.

  But he was going to go down fighting. He still couldn’t have Nickerson yelling for reinforcements. Though their battle had been noisy, the house was huge and there was a chance that no one had heard the commotion. But they’d certainly hear Nickerson yelling, if he chose to call out. Stokes could still feel the second gun he’d taken from the antique dealers pressing against the small of his back, but he didn’t bother pulling it because Nickerson had already shown no fear of guns and Stokes had no intention of shooting him, at least not yet. So Stokes quickly attacked again before Nickerson had the chance to call out if he wanted to do so.

  They punched and gouged, clawed and choked, doing anything they could to get the better of the other. Stokes was so past caring about pain that he was even landing blows with his damaged hand. It was brutal and ugly, and, after a few moments, Stokes knew he was losing. It was the pepper spray that finally ended it. Stokes was able to sneak his good hand into the front right pocket of his jeans and close his fingers around the canister he’d taken from the cop. He twisted his broken fingers into Nickerson’s hair, yanked the asshole’s head back, and shot him right in the eyes with the chemical. Nickerson cried out and pulled his head away and Stokes drove his forehead straight into Nickerson’s nose. Something caved in with a sickening crunch and Nickerson dropped like someone had blown out both his knees with a shotgun.

  Well, maybe it was the head butt more than the pepper spray that finally ended it, but the spray sure came in handy.

  Stokes fell back against the desk, breathing hard. He hurt everywhere. And he was bleeding everywhere. Mostly from his nose, it seemed, but other places, too. His broken fingers made him want to scream. He wiped his nose with his sleeve, grimacing at the pain he felt from the pressure. He looked down at Chet or Carl Nickerson, who was stunned but conscious. The guy coughed and blood spurted from his mouth. Stokes wondered briefly if he’d damaged some vital organ, but figured the blood was more likely from Nickerson’s ruined nose. And it was ruined. Stokes winced looking at it.

  As he watched Nickerson wheezing, spitting out blood every few seconds, his crazy eyes dull now as they rolled stupidly in their sockets, Stokes listened for voices or footsteps. He heard nothing, just Nickerson’s wet wheezes. But he still had to make sure Nickerson didn’t cry out, which he was far more likely to do now that he realized he wasn’t invincible—that he had actually lost the fight. So Stokes knelt down, ignoring a pain in his knee where Nickerson must have kicked him, and yanked off one of Nickerson’s socks. He leaned over and stuffed it into the asshole’s mouth. He was a little worried that, with nowhere else to go, all the blood would back up in there and Nickerson would drown in it. He wasn’t all that concerned about the guy dying, seeing as he’d already figured that Nickerson would have to die anyway tonight, but he didn’t want him dying before Stokes got some answers, so he watched the man for signs of true distress, and for signs that he was coming back to his senses, as he searched for something with which to tie him up.

  He found fancy ropes of some kind, braided red and gold with fringed tassels at both ends, tying back the heavy drapes on the windows. With one hand he worked them free. He rolled Nickerson around as he used one of the ropes to tie his hands behind his back, which was hard as hell with one good hand and only his thumb and index finger on the other. After that, he tied Nickerson’s feet. Nickerson coughed a little, then more violently, and Stokes pulled the sock from his mouth. Nickerson coughed again and blood erupted from between his swelling lips. He gasped for breath. When no more blood came, Stokes shoved the bloody sock back in. Nickerson’s eyes were clearing as he started to recover whatever senses he normally had. He struggled against his bonds.

  “Cut that out,” Stokes said.

  Nickerson kept struggling, so Stokes leaned over, put his thumb against Nickerson’s wrecked nose, and gave a little push. Nickerson grunted savagely into the sock in his mouth and stopped struggling. The look in his eyes was the stuff of nightmares.

  Stokes listened to the house again but heard nothing to alarm him. He pulled the wooden doors quietly closed and dragged Nickerson over in front of a leather wing chair—one facing the doors—and sat down. He took a deep breath. It hurt when he did. Bruises on his chest, maybe his ribs. He looked down at Nickerson, and blood dripped from his nose as he did. He wiped it on his sleeve.

  He looked at his watch: 1:07. Holy shit. The entire fight had lasted only five minutes. Felt like twenty to Stokes.

  He looked down at Nickerson, who glared up at Stokes with cold, hard fury. Stokes thought for a moment. He didn’t get it. Nancy Filoso said she’d borrowed the money from Leo Grote. She’d even accurately identified Iron Mike and Danny DeMarco as the guys she’d cut her deal with, the ones she’d hatched her kidnapping plan with. Was she lying? If so, how would she know what those guys looked like?

  “Gotta ask you some questions,” he said to Nickerson. His words sounded a little strange to him. His lips felt funny. He realized they were swollen.

  Nickerson said something that sounded a lot like “Fuck you,” only Stokes couldn’t be sure with the sock stuffed in his mouth.

  “This isn’t a good time to play tough guy. Which are you, by the way, Carl or Chet?”

  Nickerson replied the same way again and Stokes leaned down, put his thumb against Nickerson’s nose again, but before he could apply any pressure Nickerson shook his head urgently and grunted something that didn’t sound like “Fuck you.”

  “What was that?” Stokes asked. “Did you say you’re Carl?”

  Nickerson nodded.

  “OK, Carl, I gotta ask you some questions. You know Iron Mike, don’t you? I don’t know what his last name is. And Danny DeMarco? They work for Leo Grote. You know them, right?”

  Carl hesitated. Stokes shook his head sadly and reached for the mess that used to be the bastard’s nose. Carl thrashed his head violently back and forth.

  “You saying you don’t know them?”

  Another shake of his head.

  “Oh, you were telling me not to push on your nose. Gotcha. So, you know them?”

  After a brief hesitation, Carl nodded.

  “They work for your father?”

  Carl shook his head.

  “Are you sure?”

  Carl nodded.

  “They still work for Grote, right?”

  Carl nodded again. This didn’t make sense.

  “You lying to me?”

  He reached down toward Carl’s face and Carl shook his head emphatically. Stokes believed him.

  He just didn’t get it. If Grote was behind the kidnapping, which clearly seemed to be the case, why was Carl Nickerson, the son of Grote’s biggest professional rival, making the phone calls?

  He needed more thorough answers than he could get from a mouth with a sock in it.

  “Listen, Carl,” he began, “you’re not gonna kill me, at least not tonight. I think you can see that. But I’m not gonna kill you, either. I don’t want the heat from that, not from the cops, and even more, not from your family.”

  He was telling the truth about not wanting the heat, but he was lying about not killing Carl. With any luck—which nothing in his experience led him to believe he’d have, bu
t he still had to hope for it—no one would ever know it was Stokes who’d broken in tonight, who had killed Carl.

  “So you see,” he continued, still lying, “you can come out of this OK, except for a few bumps and bruises. Maybe you need a nose job, I don’t know. Either that or you gotta break Chet’s nose, too, so you guys can keep up that identical twin alibi bullshit. But all in all, you wouldn’t be too bad off. But you have to answer my questions. Otherwise I might just say ‘Screw it’ and let you choke to death on your own blood the next time you start coughing. Or if you don’t, I could step on your throat until you choke to death that way. Whatever it takes. You hear me?”

  Carl nodded. He looked confused. Maybe he was confused about how Stokes could have beaten him in a fight. He was probably more confused, though, about why Stokes was in his house and what the hell he was doing with the phone that Paul Jenkins was supposed to have. In other words, while Stokes was baffled about Carl’s involvement in all this, Carl was probably equally puzzled about Stokes’s. Fortunately for Stokes, he was the one asking the questions.

  “So,” he said, “you can come out of this all right if you want to. All you have to do is answer my questions. I’ll take that sock out of your mouth and ask you what I want to know. You yell for help and I stomp on your face, you got it? It’ll hurt like crazy, maybe even kill you. And if it doesn’t kill you, I’ll kill you some other way before I run like hell. And if I don’t have time to run like hell, I’ll start shooting the second that door opens. Who knows? Maybe I’ll end up killing all of you fucking Nickersons, get a medal from the mayor, maybe the key to the city. So do we understand each other?”

  Carl looked up, burning with rage, and nodded. Stokes reached down and pulled the sock from his mouth. It was bloody and it stuck to his lips as it came free. Stokes was ready to jam it back in if Carl started yelling, but he didn’t have to. Carl glared at him silently for a moment. “You’re gonna die, Stokes.”