Scare Crow

by Julie Hockley

  One night, as a luckily not-quite adult, Spider had accosted Carly’s father after he had gone on a drunken rampage of the house, breaking everything in sight, including Carly’s mother’s jaw. Spider ended up in juvie, and Carly’s father ended up in jail after he was released from the hospital.

  Time was running out until her father was done paying his debt to society and ready to take his revenge on the six women in his life.

  Kids like Spider and me belonged in juvie. It prepared us—people like us—for things to come. First comes juvie, then comes prison. That’s just the way it is for people who come from the same shitholes as us. There’s no sense hoping for anything different. A kid like me should have never been enrolled in Saint Emmanuel, the most prestigious and expensive private school in the eastern Unites States. Hell, a kid like me should have never been enrolled in any kind of school. We were lucky if we finished grade eight.

  And yet I was enrolled in Saint Emmanuel’s Academy. Not because of any kind of Daddy Warbucks selfless rich benefactor. I just happened to be the kid of a con man who needed to put on a show, who found a way to pay Saint Emmanuel’s ridiculous tuition because he knew that it would pay off ten times over if he played his cards right. With an outlandish foreign accent, a sports car, and a kid in prep school, my father was irresistible to any rich old lady.

  When I’d told Spider about Saint Emmanuel, he didn’t believe me at first, until I told him about my con-artist father. Fraud, scams—using innocent people to our advantage—these things were second nature to us. So we started talking about using my so-called good fortune to prey on the rich and reckless. The plan he and I concocted to sell drugs at my private school wasn’t just a way for him and Carly to get out of the slums; it was a way for them to pay her dad enough money to stay away from her mom and sisters forever. Carly’s father left town with a wad of cash and never looked back.

  Now, once in a while, Spider showed up with cash in whatever hole Carly’s father had been lying in. He woke her father up long enough to sign a letter of apology to Carly’s mom and throw money his way. Carly sent the letter to her mother, along with a hefty sum of money. Having it come from her useless husband was the only way Carly’s mom would accept the handout.

  Carly and Spider chose this life so that Carly’s mom and sisters could live a better life.

  Now we were on a plane, heading into another pile of trouble. And Spider was expecting a child with the girl he’d devoted his life to.

  “You know we can’t have this, right?” I told him.

  “I know.”

  “There’s no room for a kid. Especially with all the shit that’s been going on.”

  “I know!” he barked. “I’ll figure something out.”

  Spider went back to the raindrop on the window, and I poured us both a stiff drink.

  We landed at a small airport in Quebec, and a driver took us to downtown Montreal.

  Canada was loaded with ports, with two of the biggest ports in the world located in Montreal and Vancouver. We had established them as our main conduits for everything from guns to drugs to stolen cars to anything else that could put money in our pockets. It had been a profitable relationship. And yet, over the past few months, infighting among the four factions was causing delays in shipments and one major loss in drug cargo. Blood had started spilling into small towns, reporters were starting to dramatize, and the people were looking to the government to stop the violence. Once the government started to turn its limited funds to the issue and got too involved, shipments started to slow down, and we had to spend more money funding temporary measures.

  Unlike the cooperative we had created in America, the Canadian factions still operated independently. This meant that whenever I needed something brought in through Canada, I had to deal with five different groups: the bikers, the First Nations gangs, the three street gangs, the Italian Mafia, and the Asian triad.

  This was inefficient, and it was all about to change. As I had put forward to the American captains a few months before, there was opportunity for us to move in and “help” our Canadian brethren get organized and get richer and safer in the process. By working as one coalition, the Canadians could benefit from the American Coalition’s and each other’s resources and contacts and be better protected from police authorities by working as one unit. After all, a lion is stronger in a pack than he is solitary.

  Of course, once the Canadians were organized, we would be collecting our commission while keeping total control over everything.

  In the end, an American takeover was inevitable, and the Canadian underworld had, with my firmness, finally come to terms with this.

  Word had already spread among the factions that we were now ready to establish a single leader for the Canadian underworld. And they were all chomping at the bit, ready to pounce on the top job. After deliberations from the American captains, only the triad and Mafia bosses remained in the running. I was in Montreal to make the final decision and promote an underling. Spider was there to make sure I didn’t get murdered in the process.

  Montreal was Italian Mafia territory and had been since the 1920s. They controlled its ports, unions, and anything deemed entertainment—booze, drugs, guns, gambling, girls. Two years ago, Ignazio had taken the reins of the Mafia after the former boss had been shot down in his driveway while he was in his pajamas taking out the garbage.

  Our driver stopped in front of a janitorial services building, and we were ushered in by a couple of Ignazio’s men. We were taken through corridors and into a janitor’s closet. Apparently even a janitorial services company needed janitorial services. A shelf was pushed aside, revealing a dummy hidden passage. We made our way down through a tunnel and then another until we reached double metal doors. When the doors were opened from inside, a waft of air stifled with the smell of cognac and cigars hit my nose.

  Ignazio was ready to greet Spider and me with a fervent handshake as soon as we walked in. He was dressed humbly in jeans and a sports jacket but still well-manicured, perfectly tailored. The room was meant as a restaurant for Ignazio’s elite. A shark tank behind a bar adorned one wall, while a twenty-foot-high wine rack adorned the other. Two tables had been set up in the middle of the room: one for the bosses and one for their seconds-in-command.

  It seemed we were the last ones to arrive and all had been waiting for Spider and me to show, though based on the ridiculous grins spread across the faces, they hadn’t been bored.

  I felt as though I had walked into a New Year’s Eve bash. There were more girls in small sparkly dresses than there were men in overpriced suits. The music was louder than my own thoughts.

  As soon as Spider and I were shown to our respective heads of table, the music subsided, the beautiful girls disappeared, and Ignazio called for a toast as Italian waiters refilled glasses.

  “There is a time for business and a time for play. A travola non si invecchia. At the table with good friends and family, you do not become old. Tonight you are my guests. Tonight we play. Salud!”

  Ignazio raised his glass to me, and everyone at our table and the second table followed suit.

  We had expected to be wooed, but the lavishness Ignazio showered was unprecedented.

  He personally went around refilling glasses with whatever booze of choice, clapping men on the back, making small talk, making jokes. Ensuring that no one was left wanting. Plates were brought out at Ignazio’s click of fingers, exotic foods were served, and a brick of cocaine was thrown in front of every patron. There were smiles all around, except on the faces of Seetoo and Zhongshu, triad boss and his underboss. Which was exactly why Ignazio insisted on having them there.

  Unlike Ignazio’s recent rise to leadership, Seetoo had been triad boss for almost twenty years. His ascension had been steady but slow, as had been his gang’s fortunes. The Mafia had been making more money than the triad, but this had come with the price of constant struggles for power and messy, high-profile killings.

  Seetoo was on en
emy territory, and by the glower of his face, he wasn’t happy about it. I had decided that the bosses should all suffer together, given that they had a lifetime—some shorter than others—to work together. Besides, his turn to woo would come soon enough, but for now, he was forced to watch Ignazio make his pitch to me.

  With his attention to needs and details, Ignazio obviously knew what we were looking for in a leader—someone who knew how to make money; someone who knew how to bring all these gangs together to form one collective.

  I grabbed my steak knife and slit the cocaine package. I stuck my finger in the powder and licked it. It was perfect, pure. Bolivian cocaine. As the rest of the table tested the merchandise, a sense of awe spread around the tables. Seetoo leaned back in his chair and watched me. We both knew I had made my decision.

  It wasn’t the first time I had come across such purity, but the stuff was definitely hard to come by. Ignazio wasn’t just a great host … he had great connections.

  I turned to Spider’s table and noticed that he had already checked the merchandise and was deep in conversation with Feleti, Ignazio’s second-in-command.

  Seetoo and Zhongshu left before the flaming desserts were served.

  When the plates were practically licked clean and the girls came back, I pushed my chair back and met Spider at the door.

  Ignazio was midsentence with the biker boss when he spotted us leaving. He left the bar to come say good-bye. He and I looked each other in the eyes as we shook hands and parted.

  ****

  “I need you to arrange meetings,” I told Spider after we were dropped off in downtown Montreal.

  “I know,” he grumbled, and we parted ways without another word.

  While Spider got people together, I had someone to see.

  Gabrielle—my Montreal girl. She was a dark-haired beauty I’d met some time ago. I was at a meeting, and she was the eye candy. She now had an apartment in the entertainment district. It was a small place but expensive, and at least it wasn’t the shithole she lived in when we met.

  I used my key to open the door and prayed she was out or asleep. I stepped through the door and listened in the dark. All was quiet.

  As I made my way around her oversized furniture, the room lit solely by the glow of streetlights through the window, I noticed for the first time some of her pictures spread across her tiny little living room. They could have been pictures of her family, her friends, her world. Who knew? We had never done much talking.

  “Keith,” I heard Gabrielle call out from her bedroom. She had heard me come in. Shit.

  Gabrielle knew me as Keith because that was what I was drinking the night we had hooked up.

  I placed an envelope on her kitchen counter and left. The elevator doors closed just as she was opening her apartment door. She depended on the money I left her every time, but I couldn’t stay.

  I couldn’t just go back to the way things were, to the man I had once been.

  All I could think about was how every time Emmy fell asleep on me, she would dig her fist into my stomach and clench my shirt so tight that it stretched the material. As if she were afraid of waking up alone.

  Someday, it would be someone else’s T-shirt that she would ruin. She wouldn’t wake up alone forever.

  But I would.

  A taste of Emmy, and everything else tasted like sand.

  I left Gabrielle enough money so that she would leave her crappy apartment, disappear, and never have to depend on guys like me again.

  ****

  By the time all the bosses were gathered together again, it was the next night, and we were well outside the city. They were all seated around a table, while the underbosses waited in another room. Spider sat by the wall, a few feet behind me. He had been able to find us an empty windshield factory to stage our meeting. It was common ground for all tonight.

  Ignazio and Seetoo flanked me as the room quietly awaited my decision.

  Ignazio grinned, while Seetoo gazed ahead stone-faced.

  “Everyone around this table is going to make more money this year than you have in your whole lifetime. But the only way that will happen is if you all work together. From this day on, everyone is now a captain in this Coalition except for one of you, who will lead and report directly to me. My decision is final and is upheld by the American captains.”

  I got up and stood behind Ignazio, placing my hands on his shoulders.

  I slid my hand to my waistband, grabbed the steak knife from his restaurant, and plunged it into his neck, severing his carotid artery. Spider held Ignazio down while he bled out, and I took my seat.

  “All profit must be handed to the leader of the Coalition for distribution,” I continued, my hands splayed over the table.

  Seetoo threw a brick of cocaine—the party favor from Ignazio’s merrymaking—on the table. Pure, perfect cocaine.

  Bolivian cocaine was indeed difficult to obtain, and I had specifically ordered this shipment from Peru before it had apparently gone missing on its way to the Port of Montreal. Ignazio had reported that Somalian pirates had captured the missing ship, seizing the pure, perfect cocaine.

  Bolivian cocaine had been Ignazio’s mistake. I would have recognized that purity anywhere, as would Spider and Seetoo. Seetoo knew he had captured leadership before Ignazio had even ordered the desserts to be brought out.

  Ignazio slumped to the floor, and Spider moved him over. I took my time, looking each captain in the eye. No one moved.

  “If you steal, if you take anything from the Coalition, you will be replaced. If you lie, you will be replaced. If you fall out of line, you will be replaced.”

  I nodded at Spider, and he opened the door. Feleti, Ignazio’s underboss, walked in, looking ahead as he stepped over Ignazio’s body and calmly took his place at the table. After Feleti had willingly shared Ignazio’s betrayal following Spider’s prodding, it had been decided that he would live to take Ignazio’s place as captain.

  Seetoo’s underboss then came through the door, carrying a couple of clear plastic garbage bags with almost as many heads as there were men around the table. At this sight, there was a slight gasp from the captains. All of their underbosses—they each had one—had been shot through the head and beheaded. The bags were thrown on the table.

  “Your leader is Seetoo. How you do business, how you make money, who you’re allied to, this will all change from now on.” I pointed to the bags on the table. “Seetoo has made his first decision as leader. I will leave him to tell you how he will help you become richer than you could imagine.”

  Spider and I left behind a dead, silent room and left Seetoo to take the reins as leader of the Canadian underworld. We walked through the factory as headless bodies were being fed to the giant glass ovens by Seetoo’s men.

  “You think Seetoo can do it?” Spider asked me as we were on our way to dinner.

  I shrugged. “If he doesn’t, it’s his head.”

  Ignazio was the fifteenth man I killed.

  ****

  I flew back to Callister, leaving Spider to iron out the details with Seetoo and get my drug shipment back from the Mafia.

  The last place I wanted to be was Callister because I knew that being so close to Emmy and not being able to see her would be more painful than getting my fingernails yanked out one by one. But Carly was now refusing to fly or travel anywhere, and I had to talk to her about the money.

  By the time I drove up to our Callister hideout, I was fuming. It wasn’t the fact that Carly didn’t want to travel when she was barely pregnant or the fact that I’d had to reschedule a meeting because I had to make an extra stop in Callister; it was the fact that she was making me come back to Callister, forcing me to be so close to Emmy, dangling a damn carrot in front of my face—and it was the fact that she was doing this to me because she was pregnant, because she wanted to be pregnant, because she thought it was okay for us to act like we were normal people who could have families and love and be loved unconditionally.

>   By the time I raced into our private parking lot, punched the elevator button, and stomped down our carpeted hallway, I could feel every clenched muscle in my body.

  Tiny was sitting on the couch watching TV.

  “Where’s Carly?” I asked him.

  “Lying down.” He thumbed toward Carly’s bedroom.

  Of course she was. Because that was what normal pregnant people did. They lay down in the middle of the day.

  I stormed into my room and felt like flinging my bag against the wall. But I didn’t. I set it down calmly, rationally, like the leader of the underworld ought to behave.

  And then I saw the bed where Emmy had woken up after Rocco had hit her over the head in the cemetery. And then I saw the chair in the corner from where I had watched her sleep, worried over her, worried about how I was going to handle everything. Carly was torturing me, practically pushing me to the brink of my emotions.

  I slumped on the chair and sank my head into my hands. I turned my head and watched over the city, my eyes making their way toward the direction of Emily’s slum of a neighborhood.

  I didn’t know how long I’d been staring out the window when I heard the door open.

  “I’m sorry I made you come here to meet me.” She was blanched and struggled to make it to the bed to sit. I thought pregnant women were supposed to glow.

  “I didn’t tell Spider about the money you asked me to get,” she told me.

  “Thanks.”

  “It’s not like Spider and I talk much these days,” she said. “I was able to get a good amount of your money released.”

  I turned my eyes back to the city.

  “Are you going to tell me what you’re planning to do with all that money?” Carly asked.

  I didn’t answer her.

  The only sound came from whatever show Tiny was watching on TV.

  But Carly finally ripped through the silence. “It feels like we’re falling apart, Cam. You and Spider. You and me. Spider and me. We hardly speak anymore. And you’ve been so secretive. It’s like you’re trying to shut us out of everything, and I don’t know why.”