Devil Creek

by Stephen Mertz

  She suddenly emitted a grunting hai! sound and elbowed him sharply in the abdomen, expelling air from his lungs and loosening his grip enough for her to gain the footing she sought. Then one of his legs was kicked out from under him and her two iron hands clamped around his wrist and twisted, strong and fast. He was drawn forward, to be fulcrummed over her bent back and sent flying until he smashed, upside down, into the nearest tree.

  He assisted gravity, rolling himself into a prone position; he tried to sit up. Things started to swim around his head. She'd walloped him good.

  And then she was leaning over him! Gazing down into what must have been his dazed expression.

  He said, "Carol," and his throat felt choked at the ache of yearning he heard in his voice.

  It was her! Yes. Yes. Looking up into her face from where he lay upon the ground, there could be no denial, no rationalization. The eyes. The lips. The cheekbones. The curve to the tip of her nose that he would tease her about before he'd kiss it.

  Carol was gazing down into his eyes, but the light kept shifting and black spots kept intruding and he wasn't sure of anything except that he smelled her perfume.

  She said, "I'm sorry, Mike. I'm so sorry."

  He forced himself to sit up and he grabbed hold of one of her forearms to check her movement as he felt her start to draw away.

  "No, wait!"

  "I can't," she said in an apologetic voice, as if she would like to stay but couldn't. "Forgive me, Mike. I'm sorry."

  She withdrew her forearm from his grasp easily because his head was still spinning, and for a few seconds all he could do was watch her pivot and run to the waiting car.

  "Wait!" he called. "Talk to me!"

  But his mind was thinking, I felt like a mugger. She felt like she was being mugged. Why shouldn't she react and flee? He called, "Carol, wait . . . please!"

  She gained the Altima, and whipped open the door on the driver's side. She paused for only a heartbeat to send one last look his way. Carol. Wild blonde hair whipping around. Eyes filled with concern, maybe a fear that he could not understand. Then she threw herself into the vehicle. The engine gunned to life like a contented kitten waking from a nap, and dirt was being spat up in its wake, a brown cloud that obscured the license plate from his vision.

  And the Altima was gone, its engine noise receding down the mountainside.

  He stood there, panting. He wiped the sweat and the grime from his forehead with the back of his sleeve. The sound of his own breathing sounded deafeningly loud inside his head.

  An owl hooted, a lonesome sound in this cool, dim world of the forest.

  All that remained of her was the taste of dust parching his throat, and the scent of her perfume that lingered in his nostrils. He said softly, to no one, "Carol—"

  Chapter Fourteen

  A place called Spring Meadow, seven miles north of Sunrise Ridge, overlooked the canyon where its steep, red walls ended below and the forest resumed above. It was a place of grassland and patches of daisies. The sky was low and dark at this elevation. Clouds surged, blustery, gunmetal gray, angry, threatening canyon, meadow and forest with guttural rumblings of displeasure. A wind picked up from the north.

  A twelve-point, white-tailed buck grazed idly at the edge of the meadow, near the tree line, unconcerned with the brewing discontent of the weather. The buck reached seven feet at the tips of his antlers. Occasionally he paused to survey the meadow, ensuring that he was alone.

  Existence was a constant struggle for survival. Let it storm. The search for food. Hunters. Other bucks driven to possess what was his and knowing they must kill or exile him first, and he always emerged victorious. He survived. He had this meadow. He had his does. He ate his grass. Let it storm.

  The crack of thunder was louder than any he had ever heard and frightened him. He reared onto his hind legs and the lightning made him think for an instant that he had died; then he was bounding for the tree line for cover.

  Behind him, the tree smoldered.

  Sparks drifted on the wind into the lovegrass, which was dry and brittle after a summer of sun and wind and no rain in this meadow above the canyon. The wind fanned the glowing red embers.

  The fire started almost instantly, and within seconds a living, growing, devouring monster had been born and began eating its way from the meadow, spreading down the flanges of the canyon, turning everything in its path into crackling, searing flame.

  Chapter Fifteen

  His name was Domino.

  He could have come from the bottom-rung economic class of any city. An urban kid of the streets where the gangs ruled turf, same as in "the inner city" and "the barrios." His personal history was so insignificant, even he barely recalled it. Parents divorced before he was five. Latchkey kid. Why work when you could play street corner stakeout for the dealers at ten times what any straight job would pay a kid?

  He killed for the first time when he was nine. A little neighbor girl, a playmate named Kitty something who had turned chicken and started yelping after he had his hand down her pants and she would have told on him and gotten him in a load of trouble. They'd been alone up there on the roof. He had been convincing enough for it to be written off as an accidental fall to the alley pavement four stories below. Although his mother had moved them out of that tenement one month after the incident.

  His only stint behind bars was when he was eighteen, for getting caught behind the wheel of a stolen car after a Circle K holdup, drunk and high on crystal meth and stupid as shit. He'd been lucky the cops hadn't capped him, the old school cats in prison had told him. He had to slug into unconsciousness two big bubbas who had tried to make him theirs in the shower. He'd left the shower tiles splattered with their dissolving blood, rinsing down the drain, and one had died six months later from complications. After that, they left him alone and the old boys who knew everything taught him what they knew.

  And they taught him what not to do. They taught him the mess-ups that had gotten them twenty-to-life.

  Never trust a woman. Never trust anyone. Always figure everyone else is out to put a bullet in the back of your head so they can have what's yours. Live by that code and you will survive.

  Domino was shorter that average, of medium build. He was pale-skinned, almost albino-white. Bright red hair highlighted the whiteness of drawn features, making him appear even whiter. He always dressed in black, whether casual—which was seldom—or more natty, as now, in suit and tie. The red hair was worn in a stark crewcut. He wore wraparound black sunglasses, and his narrow, set features were neutral, revealing nothing of mood, temperament or character.

  His striking appearance had never adversely affected his work, which was killing people. His appearance had no effect on his job performance because there were never witnesses who survived to identify him. Never. Occasionally something went wrong. The unexpected happened. There was the time the wife and twelve-year-old son showed up unexpectedly, returning early from shopping, when he'd been holding Salvatore Galluci's head underwater so it would look like a bathtub accident. And the lawyer in Portland. He was supposed to be alone. The little runaway-turned-hooker street kid turning a trick shouldn't have been there. There had never been a living witness.

  Often a week of planning would be required for a job to be properly executed, taking what information he was supplied with when he arrived on the scene, then tailing and observing the intended target so that the job could be done in a way that left no threads. The perfect murder was when it was not apparent that a murder had been committed. This had been Domino's specialty for years, his preferred method of operation.

  He was the final solution. He was the one who showed up when the hammer fell on someone.

  Above the street level of organized crime, violence is neither encouraged nor condoned. The death of someone with a respectable front, even if they are tied up in illegal activities that result in a hit, is likely to bring the police in to investigate, to satisfy the taxpaying public that something is b
eing done to stop respectable citizens from being blown away. With the state of the art available today, too many loose ends can trip too many wires and result in the takedown of the man in charge, if things are left to chance in the planning of a hit. Thus, the men in charge frown on the use of violence, which can cause this. And when violence is deemed absolutely necessary—when, say, a lesson must be made or a debt in blood collected—then it becomes of the utmost importance that such an action be planned and carried out by a specialist who can insure that there will be no loose ends while the men in charge establish plausible deniability. Any hit deemed necessary must be flawlessly executed.

  That was Domino's job.

  He stood now in the trailer office on the construction site, facing Jeff Lovechio who sat behind at his desk. The door to the outside had been locked, assuring privacy. Sunlight streamed in through smudgy windows. The sounds of construction filtered in from outside. The office was cluttered with blueprints and plans.

  Lovechio was cleaning his nails with a pocketknife. "You can have a seat."

  Domino said, "I'll stand."

  "Suit yourself. That went well." He had just finished filling Domino in on his conversation with Mike Landware and the Chief of Police.

  "You think so?" said Domino. "That was a mistake, goading the editor in front of the cop when he and the cop are friends."

  "No harm done."

  "Maybe. Maybe not. Those two are tenacious types."

  "The main thing," said Lovechio, "is that you got Olson out of the way like I told you to, and I'm stone free on that one. Good work."

  Domino said, "I always do good work. It was a rush job. I didn't like that. But it went okay."

  He had intended to lay low during the daylight hours, then leave town. He would check with New York, and find where he was to be sent next. He needed to return to an urban environment—any city would do—the sooner the better. These western outdoor landscapes gave him the creeps, and there was something else that he wasn't used to. He could feel a queasy sense of foreboding in his bones when he walked across this construction site, even when stepping through the sunshine. Clouds were encroaching from the south, beginning to haze over the mountain peaks in that direction, and thunder could be heard in the distance. But the sunshine he'd walked through at Lovechio's summons had not warmed him. He had been born and raised in the heart of a city and that was all he wanted to know. He needed pavement under his feet, walls and the camouflaged concealment of becoming lost in the masses, rather than out here where they'd sent him, putting him under Lovechio's command with instructions to take care of the local problem as Lovechio instructed, until he was instructed by a higher authority to do otherwise.

  "Which leaves us free to move on to the next order of business."

  Domino frowned severely. "What order of business? I'm finished here. Olson was the job I was sent here to do. I shouldn't even be seen walking around this site. I'm out of here as soon as the sun goes down. Driving to Albuquerque and catching me a plane back to civilization."

  Lovechio's eyelids lowered. "Like Olson."

  Domino's expression returned to an expressionless mask of stone. Pale, white stone.

  "If you're trying to intimidate me with that remark, I'd advise you to cease and desist at once. You're missing a lesson here. Olson was sitting in that chair you're in twenty-four hours ago, thinking he was the boss."

  Lovechio back stiffened. "I don't think the men we work for would appreciate your show of disrespect."

  "They'd tell you the same thing," said Domino. "People like you do not fuck with people like me, friend. I'm the person that fucks things up for you if those men we work for tell me to. As it is, I'm waiting on a connection from New York to tell me what's next. Be glad to get rid of me."

  "A real soldier."

  "That's right. Now, are you going to mess with me or leave me alone?"

  "Neither." Lovechio seemed to be still thinking things through as he spoke slowly. "Would it make any difference if I were to offer you a personal profit incentive?"

  Domino replied without hesitation. "It would help. Is that what you're doing?"

  "Ten thousand dollars," said Lovechio crisply, "for an afternoon's work."

  "Doing what?"

  Lovechio's eyes remained lowered, giving them the glitter of reptilian eyes. "Are you in or out?"

  "Doing what?"

  Lovechio waved a hand irritably. "Okay, okay. I want to screw up that son of a bitch Landware's life so bad that he'll never unscrew it."

  Domino knew everything about his man's private life. He had been supplied this information as part of the intel package when he was sent here. He said, "Hate like that can ruin a man."

  Another curt, waving gesture. "An example has to be made. I cannot command respect in Chicago if it's known that people can steal from me and piss on me and I take it and let them get away with it."

  "What has been stolen from you?"

  Lovechio leaned forward, his elbows on the desk. "Whose side are you on exactly?"

  "My side," said Domino. "I'm trying to decide whether or not to take your ten grand."

  "I see." Lovechio nodded. "Okay. When that bitch took my boy and split to out here in the middle of nowhere, she ruined my chances of ever getting elected to a city council seat I could have had, because the guy who holds it is an upstanding, sanctimonious prick and I would have looked like a cheap land swindler who chased tail instead of keeping his family together."

  Domino said nothing.

  "Politics is where the graft is," said Lovechio with a confidence bordering on enthusiasm, "especially at the local level. With my connections, I could have made a fortune in kickbacks and gotten all the inside dope I'd ever need on land speculation if I'd won that seat. But Robin had to make sure that didn't happen. And she stole my son. I'm a careful man, Domino. I look ahead. You know how us Italians are. A man needs his son, hopefully many sons, to keep his empire strong as his twilight years approach. She stole that from me, too."

  "Sounds like it's her you should be pissed off at," said Domino evenly, "not the schlub who married her after she got here."

  The man behind the desk grimaced. "I won't do anything to hurt my son's mother, much as the bitch deserves it. But I can't take his mother from him. That leaves that punk ass newspaper editor. An example needs to be made, and that's what I'll pay you ten grand for."

  "For capping the editor? I don't know. He's small town bush league, but he is media. You never hit the media. That really draws the heat from them and the cops. Those men we work for would not be happy."

  "I know. That's not what I have in mind." Lovechio's sneer became sly. "I didn't say I wanted Landware dead. I said I wanted to screw up his life royally and irreparably. That should do for a settling of the score for everything that bitch Robin did to me, because her life will be screwed up right along with his."

  Domino said, "And that's worth ten grand to you?"

  "There's more," said Lovechio. "I've been thinking. There is a loose end, and it's in both our best interests to deal with it. I plan to use that to mess up Mr. Landware."

  "Tell me about this loose end," said Domino.

  "Some loser who drives a roach coach." Lovechio replied promptly. "You know, one of those lunch wagons that come every lunch hour for the workers. I don't know the driver's name, but we can find out easy enough. He drives for one of the restaurants in town."

  "What about him?"

  "I reviewed the security camera footage this morning, and yesterday he was nosing around where Olson had his Mexican building materials stashed before we moved them out."

  "Why's that a problem to me?" Domino's voice was cool as chipped ice. "Have one of your security guys break this guy's leg for being a snoop. I'm high tech."

  Lovechio avoided direct eye contact. "I, uh, had lunch with Olson at that lunch wagon yesterday. It was Olson's idea. He wanted to get out of the office. He knew why I was there and maybe he felt safer out in the open where lots of
people were around so I couldn't get him." He chuckled, but it sounded forced. "Guess he thought I was going to pull out a machine gun and mow him down like it was The Godfather or something." When Domino reacted with nothing but uncomfortable silence, Lovechio cleared his throat. "Anyway, maybe the driver overheard me and Olson saying something. That's why he went snooping."

  "You're right," said Domino. "That is a loose end."

  "Better safe than sorry, right? So, are you in or out?"

  "You still haven't told me what I do to earn ten thousand."

  "Here," said Lovechio, "is what I have in mind."

  Chapter Sixteen

  Dani reached across the table and touched him lightly on the wrist. "Paul, what's the matter? Is something wrong?"

  He leaned back in his chair from the homework spread out across the tabletop between them.

  "I don't know. I just, I guess I don't feel so good." His voice sounded to him as if his ears were stuffed with cotton, as if someone else was speaking to him whom he could hardly hear.

  They were in the rec room of the small house where Dani lived with her mom and her little brother.

  The room was a comfortable place. A pair of couches and armchairs fronted a fireplace that was cold this time of year, and a modest home entertainment unit, which Dani said her mother didn't allow in use until homework was done.

  They sat at a table that was just inside the archway leading to the dining room, where Dani's mother sat working at the dining room table, going through the monthly bills and writing checks. They couldn't see her. Terri Ordway was leaving them some privacy to study for the history exam their class was scheduled to take the following morning, but Dani's mom was well aware that Paul and Dani liked each other, that they had been spending a lot of time together lately—even if it was always in the presence of other kids and a chaperone—and she wasn't taking any chances. She could monitor their conversation if she chose to, and could walk in on them at any time.