The Death Panel

by Cheryl Mullenax (Ed)

  And it was. Cerrone was feeling it, too. “You found rats in those crates?”

  But Wade shook his head. “No, just one little baby rat in each box … ain’t that funny? They were big, but that’s what they had to be, something like fetal rats … all pink and pulsing, kind of unformed, just squirming in that dirt with the maggots …”

  Baby-killer … I’ve prepared a place for you.

  Cerrone had to sit down, catch his breath. “You … you sure they were rats?”

  Wade shrugged. “Had to be, right? It was a little dark in the warehouse, but they looked like rats … pink and squirming things. Ugly little bastards, eyes not open yet.”

  “So … you just dumped ’em out with the dirt?”

  “Yeah, we dumped ’em out on the floor.”

  “And that was it?”

  Wade grinned, his eyes shining and his teeth crooked. “Yeah, then we stepped on those ugly little pricks … Arroyo almost ran out of there because they squealed when you stepped on ’em. Awful sound, went right up your spine.”

  Cerrone was shaking again and there were things blooming in his mind, terrible sprouting growths like funeral lilies. He didn’t ask Wade any more questions. The only one left he asked himself:

  If those were babies … then what do they grow up to be?

  9

  Midnight.

  A shattering of glass. A rending sound, something crashing and something else going to fragments. Donny Cerrone came awake and couldn’t honestly say in that moment of racing adrenaline if he’d actually been asleep in the first place. Just sitting in that chair, watching the tube, mind full of crawling things and squirming pink things that would not let his eyes close.

  And now this.

  He came out of the chair, disoriented, foot slipping somehow on the teal shag, barking his knee on the coffee table. That brought some pain which cleared his head and he realized the .38 Smith Airweight was still in his hand. Eyes wide and throat pulled down to a pinhole, he scanned the gun around the room like some kind of half-assed TV cop. He just sat there, knees on the carpet, hearing his own breathing and feeling the graveyard stillness of the apartment. Except, okay, it wasn’t still, not anymore. Maybe it was soundless since that crashing, but it was not still, not exactly, not untenanted … the atmosphere had been violated somehow.

  Listen.

  He was doing that, but it wasn’t telling him much. He could hear his own body—breath in his lungs, blood rushing in his ears—but not much else. His mind raced from room to room, trying to find the point of trespass. Cerrone’s apartment was big: living room, dining room, kitchen, two bedrooms, bathroom. Plenty of places. But that had been a window which meant either his bedroom or the dining room …

  There.

  He could hear footsteps now … gradual, creaking, as if their owner were trying to be stealthy. Which made no sense if you crashed in through a window.

  The dining room. Whatever had come into his apartment in the dead of night was in the dining room. Cerrone could smell them and it made something in his stomach blanch … a filthy, dark smell of buried things and backed-up storm drains.

  Cerrone licked his lips.

  He wondered if he ran full out if he could make the front door, get out into the hallway before … before that thing took hold of him. He figured it wouldn’t happen. Because whatever in the Christ it was, whatever brought its young to term in crates full of black, wormy earth like poison mushrooms, it was capable of incredible feats like tossing a guy thirty feet up into a tree or crashing through a fifth-story window at three a.m.

  Cerrone figured this is where he either shat or got off the pot. Regardless, he had to do something. He had to meet this prick on its own ground and show it the size of his balls. Because he had a real crazy idea that things like that would matter to something like it, the sort of thing that inspired campfire stories.

  But it wasn’t so easy.

  Didn’t seem like there was much Cerrone could do but crouch there with the .38, all the things that made him a man and a player drained right out of him. There was something in his place and it was something insane, something impossible. Something that had come with a chill dankness one might associate with vaults and catacombs.

  Cerrone stood up.

  It had to be done. He had to go to it because it probably wouldn’t come to him, something like that that was used to jumping out of the shadows at people. So Cerrone kept the .38 up, walked into the kitchen. The light was on. All the lights were on. He walked past the stainless steel face of the stove he never used, noticing that the tile near the window was starting to get yellow from the sunlight. And, yes, now he was smelling his visitor … a black sewer-smell of stagnation.

  Of course, it would have to smell bad. Because whatever in the hell it is, it’s vile from head to toe. The sort of nightmare that plants its children like seeds in maggoty soil.

  Cerrone stepped into the dining room and there was glass all over the place … shards sprayed over the oak table like crushed ice. And standing there, just inside the window that was blowing in the hot, salty Atlantic City air, was a man. Or maybe something like one.

  Cerrone swallowed.

  Not, on second thought, it was not a man.

  It had wings … or at least one of them, a great black and membranous wing shot through with pink vein networking that was attached to the underside of its left arm. As Cerrone saw this, saw that webbing of sticky diaphanous flesh over narrow spines of bone, the wing folded up. And it was a real good trick, because with those wings folded down like that, it looked like the guy just had some long dark coat on made of oily leather. The only thing that gave it away was that the bottom of the “coat” was jagged like the wing of a bat or the outer edge of an umbrella.

  Cerrone stared, something inside of him rapidly drying up like a pond.

  He looked at the thing.

  It looked at him.

  And he thought: I don’t stand a chance in hell.

  It stepped forward and Cerrone saw that beneath those spreading, enveloping wings it wore a black suit with a wine-colored tie and a gold watch chain of all things. On its head was a wide-brimmed black hat of the sort a Mormon might wear. A study in contrasts. And the face … well, Cerrone wasn’t ready to call it a face. It was white as chalk or quicklime, flaking and fissured, elongated in shape, flattened-out, the lower jaw jutting forth giving it a vulpine look. Its nose was a skullish cavity and its eyes were wet and red and bulging like fresh cherries, completely without pupils.

  When it spoke, its voice was aged and rasping. “Mr. Cerrone … I said I would come and here I am.” It drew in a few sharp breaths, then exhaled with a cold stink of tombs.

  Sure, it talked. It had talked on the phone, too, and maybe that was the most obscene thing about it … it looked like some bizarre bastard offspring between man and bat, yet it was intelligent and well-spoken. There was something very shocking about that—like being expelled from the womb. Donny knew there was simply no turning back now. Not after seeing this thing and hearing it speak.

  “You’re … you’re not human,” he finally said.

  The thing laughed, cackled really, and it was an awful, mocking sound echoing out. “Not quite,” it said. “But human or not, I do not kill children. I will not lower myself to killing children … can you say the same, Mr. Cerrone?”

  Cerrone couldn’t say anything. He had a gun in his hand, he could feel it there, but the idea of shooting this thing … no, he was afraid of the idea. Afraid that if it didn’t kill this monster, it might do something worse: piss it off.

  And then Cerrone was talking, his brain functioning completely on auto and telling his mouth what to say. “I wasn’t there … I wasn’t in on that business … it was those three guys … they didn’t know, Jesus, how could they know? They … they thought those things were rats …”

  Those garish red eyes blinked, blinked again. Though that face was not remotely human, Cerrone could see the rage settling into
it. The fissures deepening, that exaggerated skull beneath the flaking skin pressing forward like it wanted out. The thing exhaled with a groaning, growling sound, lips snarling back from yellow teeth that were long and thin like knitting needles. “Vermin? Vermin? My children were vermin?” It reached out towards Cerrone with a hand that was grotesque, exaggerated, the spindly fingers tapering into black talons that looked incredibly sharp … the tips needle-fine and probably capable of the very finest manipulation and dexterity. Then it drew back, closed the fingers into a fist and shook it. “So your friends … killed my children, did they? Because they were vermin? Unfit to live?”

  Those red eyes were larger than ever, wide and moist and electric red, drilling holes right through Cerrone.

  And all he could say was: “They didn’t know.”

  The thing started forward, those eyes gleaming in gray-shadowed sockets. The teeth slid out again and then retreated. It stood there, breathing with a ragged, hollow sound. A voice in Cerrone’s head kept telling him to shoot it, shoot that ugly motherfucker already. But he ignored it because, as horrible as that monster was, it was intelligent. And there was something about that wizened face that seemed almost, well, sympathetic.

  “Your end will come, Mr. Cerrone,” it promised him. “But not today, not when you’re expecting it. I’ve prepared a place for you and at an hour of my choosing, I will take you there.”

  With that, it simply turned on its heel and dove out the window with a chill gust. Cerrone heard the flap of those great wings like the high shrouds of an old brig filling with air and that was all.

  It was gone.

  Cerrone dropped to his knees, feeling drunk and empty and just about out of his head. After a time, he said, “Holy shit …”

  10

  The next morning, wired and wasted from too much black coffee and Dexedrine, Cerrone was confronted by Archie Mann outside the pawnshop on Mississippi.

  “You look like shit, Donny,” he said.

  Cerrone laughed. After what he’d been through, this guy couldn’t have been more non-threatening if he had floppy shoes on and was riding a unicycle while he pumped a horn. “You always look like shit, Mann. Must be all the donuts and frustration that your life has been a fucking waste.”

  Mann just looked at him. “A little surly today, Donny?”

  “Yeah, I didn’t get much sleep.”

  “I bet you didn’t.” Mann lit a cigarette. “I thought I might drop by and tell you some good news.”

  “You’re retiring?”

  “No, not just yet. But your hijacking pal, Pauly Wade, is dead.”

  Cerrone felt the air bleed out of him. He leaned back against the brick fa?ade of his shop. Dead? Is that what this prick said? Sure, sure. And why not? Pauly Wade had to be dead. Probably why that ugly bastard didn’t kill me last night, its belly was already full. Cerrone sighed. “Dead, you say?”

  “That’s what I say. You have breakfast yet?”

  “No, I don’t do breakfast.”

  “Good, because I wouldn’t want to ruin your appetite.” He pulled off his cigarette, his hard cop’s face unreadable. Either he was enjoying this or sick to his stomach … it was really hard to tell. “They found Pauly Wade over on the South Side up on top of some church they’re putting a new roof on. Yeah, he was up there, busted-up and bloodless, Donny, kind of tangled up in a ball. You know why?”

  Cerrone just waited for it like an inmate in the chair waiting for the first kiss of electricity. “No, but you’re gonna tell me.”

  “This one’s funny, Donny. It’ll really have you laughing. He was tangled up because somebody, some wiseass, tried to shove his head up his own asshole. Almost did it, too. What do you think of that?”

  “Fucking hilarious shit, Mann. You got any others?”

  Mann tossed his cigarette. “One more. See, this whole bit is funny. Because last night, I put a couple men on Wade. One down on the street watching the front door and one out in the alley watching the back. Funny thing is, thing that’s gonna have you rolling, is that Wade never came out either of those doors … looks like he left through the window. Isn’t that just a fucking knee-slapper, Donny?”

  Cerrone turned away, his belly full of enough shit for one morning. “You’re killing me, Mann, but I got a business to run.”

  “Donny? It doesn’t matter to me at this point what you and those three hoods were up to. Doesn’t matter one bit. But I think you’re next and if you’re smart, you’ll let me put you somewhere where our friend can’t get at you.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind,” Cerrone said, then shut the door in Mann’s face.

  11

  That afternoon, Archie Mann was in an alley just off Magellan and thinking that, Jesus, it was some kind of job, some kind of life he had here. Looking at corpses just about every day and never a simple shooting or stabbing or trunk job like in the old days. Now it was always this exotic shit that looked like it had been cooked up by some Hollywood FX guy.

  Perno was there at his side, saying, “Celia Ann Bishop, twenty-three, prostitute. She had a thing going with Pauly Wade if her friends can be believed … and I’m guessing they can.”

  That was it then, that was what tore apart Mann’s stomach in an eruption of ulcers. This had to happen and he’d been waiting for it ever since they found Wade’s mangled corpse on top of that church and his girlfriend couldn’t be located. Last night had been a twofer … Wade and his old lady. Now wasn’t that fucking rich?

  Celia Ann Bishop had been jammed down between the brick wall of a foundry and a green metal bank of transformers about the size of a small train car. There was less than fourteen inches of space in between them and yet she had been wedged in there, all the way down. Her ass was touching the ground, her legs sticking straight up, both her arms missing. She was crushed and flattened like a boulder had been dropped on her. Looking in there at her, Mann thought she looked like she’d been caught in a downpour last night and the sky had been pissing red. It had stained her like ink, crusted her distorted face, and looped her body like ropes. The CSI people were trying to pull her out of there and it was like trying to yank ten pounds of hamburger out through a mail slot.

  Good luck.

  “Only Donny Cerrone now,” Mann heard himself say.

  “He won’t cooperate, eh?” Perno said.

  “No, not a guy like him. He’s an old school hood … you can’t shake those guys.”

  “Maybe we could charge him with something,” Perno suggested. “Pull him in, rattle him about the murders, put him on the box maybe.”

  But Mann shook his head. “He’d never sit still for a lie detector and he can smell bullshit a mile off.”

  “What then?”

  “We wait,” Mann said. “We wait until it’s time to bag him. Because it’s going to happen and we both know it.”

  12

  Then one day, you just got sick of it.

  You got sick and tired of the whole game you’d been playing day in and day out for so many years now. You got sick of fencing swag, moving hot securities and stolen stocks, running a sportsbook and squeezing gamblers and drug dealers for their shy money. You got sick of dealing with blowheads and lunatic mob enforcers, psychopaths like Jimmy Jack Furnari and Franky Geddaro, running scams and hijacking trucks and trying to stay out of prison, always looking for the angle, trying to see where they met and hoping they didn’t come together and take your head off.

  That was the life you led.

  Always looking for the light at the end of the tunnel which you could never seem to find. And maybe more so, you got sick of parasitic cops and gamblers and thieves and racketeers and maybe the town itself … wall-to-wall crooks and petty criminals, grind joints and whores and hot slots, backroom monte games and paying street tax to the mob.

  The day finally came like you knew it would, so you packed up what you could in your sky blue Crown Vic and got the fuck out of Dodge. And maybe it was all those things boiling in your brain and
maybe it was something just a little bit worse. Regardless, you felt like you were zipped up in a body bag slowly suffocating, so you did what came natural to the beast: you ran.

  And that’s exactly how it was for Donny Cerrone.

  The walls were closing in, it was coming from too many directions, and there was nothing left to do but flee. Archie Mann wanted to help him (he claimed) and Jimmy Jack Furnari was on his ass about the murders and then there was that other thing, that winged-nightmare right out of some evil fairy tale or a horror comic.

  Cerrone had over a hundred grand in a hardshell case, some clothes and personals, a full tank of gas and two guns on the seat next to him: his .38 Smith Airweight and a sawed-off 12-gauge Marlin pump with a pistol grip. If that spook took him, then it was going to be war to the knife.

  But the farther Cerrone got away from Atlantic City, the better he felt. And he started telling himself that maybe leaving would be enough and after awhile he honestly started believing it. By midnight, he’d crossed the state line into Maryland and he already had a motel picked out, was going to be coming up on it in the next ten or fifteen minutes.

  It was going to work.

  It was going to happen.

  And then something hit the roof of the Crown Vic. Hit it and then hit it again. Cerrone cried out and tried to keep on the road because it wasn’t much farther and he’d be on the turnpike and—

  The roof was struck again and struck hard, so hard in fact that Cerrone saw the dents popping just above his head like a wrecking ball was dropping. Bam, bam, bam. The car swerved and Cerrone, just full of fire and ice, wasn’t sure if it was him doing it or the impact of … whatever it was.