On The Devil's Side of Heaven

by Roger Peppercorn

  “I’m Jimmy fucking Dix! Shit, I’m a hitman! Ain’t nobody tougher than me!” he screamed into the early morning air. “Fuck you, big fat fucking Max! I ain’t afraid of you! Jimmy Dix ain’t afraid of no man!”

  Jimmy started to become aware something was horribly wrong. The white-hot pain that had electrified him was no longer there. His legs felt like they were encased in iron and the images in front of him were beginning to become dark around the edges. A shadow of a man crossed in front of him and for a moment he thought he could see the outline of a sickle.

  Then the fatigue began to set in. He couldn’t remember a time when he felt so tired. His eyes refused to stay open. Jimmy began to feel his body rising off the ground, the heaviness of his legs fell away and the tightness of his chest loosened.

  The shadow of the man with the sickle materialized into a man of flesh and blood. His face blocked from his view because of the upturned hood. At that moment Jimmy realized too late who the hooded figure was and why he was in front of him.

  “Noooooo, it ain’t my time,” Jimmy wailed inconsolably as the Reaper himself crashed his sickle into the broken and helpless body of Jimmy Dix.

  Chapter 5

  “Hello, Sister Sue! How’s life out on the big ponderosa with Mr. Serial?” I asked.

  I have found that when talking to those who insist on placing their own heads into the maw of a wood chipper, it’s good to remind them of the poor choices they’ve made in life and at the same time, obtain the high moral ground of a freshly minted saint.

  The problem with this philosophy is twofold. First, the ground with which I have staked this on is not one that is made of cement but of soft and shifting sand.

  Second, and more importantly, my stance is one that only serves to belittle and insult others who already have power over my own credibility because of prior bad acts that I have either looked the other way for or stood idly by as they were carried out.

  “Walt, it must really make you feel good about yourself to stand in judgment of others,” Jessica said.

  “Au contraire Jessica, it’s not about making me feel good. More like reminding me of why it is we don’t speak,” I said.

  “Really?” Jessica asked. “And why is that again?”

  This is her favorite tactic and it gets me every time. Had my ex-best friend, who is now her significant other, not gone and killed a man in front of me, who by the way, dearly deserved it, I could have remained on the moral high ground. However, now that she had taken the identity of victim and innocent lamb, I was forced to concede and retreat to firmer ground. If you have a sister, then you know why concession and retreating is the better part of valor.

  “Jessica, you know why. The fact that I took the proverbial bullet for him doesn’t make it any better or you any less innocent,” I growled into the phone.

  I heard her exhale loudly into the phone and then she cast her line with just enough weight on the other end to make sure I would see it, hit it and swallow it.

  “Someone tried to kill us last night,” she said.

  I took the bait and let the hook settle deep inside my gullet, which allowed her to set it good and fast.

  “Are you hurt? And Ronald, is he okay too? What did the police say?” I asked with real concern emanating from deep inside my soul.

  “No. Nobody was hurt. The only damage was done to the TV, windows and walls,” she stated.

  “Glad to hear no one was hurt,” I said.

  Ah, coconuts! She left a couple of details out of her answer. Namely, were the cops involved and had Ronald known who the shooter was. Now I knew why she was really calling. Ronald would never ever call the police. He couldn’t afford to. Because despite what he told her and myself after the last go around, he could never take the chance a hit he had done somewhere in the world wouldn’t come back to haunt him from something as basic as a fingerprint or DNA match.

  “Didn’t call the law, did you?” I asked.

  “Walter, you know he can’t call the police,” she said.

  “So, what, this was just a courtesy call to let me know you’re okay?” I asked with more than just a little heat in my voice. “Does Ronald know you’re calling me?”

  Crickets played across the line.

  “Jess?”

  “Yea, I’m still here,” she said.

  “Well… does Ronald know you are calling me and asking me for help?” I asked again.

  “Well, now that you bring it up I was wondering if you could maybe help us out a little. I mean, if you’re busy or in the middle of something, I would understand.”

  “Huh. Well, now that you mention it, I am in court right now. In fact, I’m a witness and just can’t get away for at least a couple of weeks.” I lied.

  “That’s not what Lori told me five minutes ago.”

  Oh, well played sister, well played. I had always suspected, but never could prove, that my ex and my sister were in cahoots with each other.

  “Why are you talking to my ex? I mean she is my ex, not yours,” I said, now with a lot of heat.

  “I know she is but she is also the mother of my only niece and nephew,” she snapped.

  “Doesn’t matter, I’m not interested and I will be damned if I let Ronald involve me in another sanctioned hit, even if the mark does have it coming.”

  “I promise you, Walt, all he needs help with is the crime-solving piece of it. You won’t be anywhere near foul play. I swear,” she pleaded.

  I knew it was a lie as soon as she had said it. I knew that as soon as Ronald and I started looking for whoever had tried to kill him and my sister, there would be no part of the globe we wouldn’t travel to and there would be no means we wouldn’t use to force others to cough up the 411. Sadly Ronald and I worked really well together and worse still, I had to live with the knowledge that in all the years I had spent with the law, Ronald Jacobs was the best partner I had ever worked with.

  “Jessica, you still haven’t answered me. Does he know you’re doing this or did he put you up to it?” I asked.

  “Well… Walter, I knew if you knew he knew and if you thought he knew…” she trailed off, not finishing her not-quite-coherent answer.

  I sighed into the phone. “I’ll be on the first available flight out in the morning,” I said and then closed the phone.

  I picked up my whiskey and coke and started to throw it back, then noticed all of the ice had melted.

  “Rickets,” I said with a little more venom than I had intended.

  The barkeep who was wiping down tables near the back of the bar looked up from the table he was cleaning. He didn’t say anything because his raised caterpillar unibrow was doing it for him. I waved him off with my watered down drink.

  I put the glass on the bar and stared at a decal someone had glued down for reasons unknown. It held me in place for just a couple of beats. It said: “Cast not others on the devil’s side of heaven, lest you want to be cast with them”. Ah, Rickets.

  Chapter 6

  Gary Snelling (aka Big Max Benson) sat in front of his computer monitor surfing midget porn and waiting for the phone to ring. Jimmy Dix should have called no later than 5 a.m. Mountain Time, which for Gary was 6 a.m. Central Time. Jimmy hadn’t been his first choice for the hit on Ronald Jacobs and his old lady, but Jimmy had been available and had promised to do the job for the least amount. More importantly, Jimmy had never met Ronald. He knew of him but their paths had never crossed and Gary had gone to great pains to make sure Jimmy didn’t know the real identity of the marks.

  Jesus, he still couldn’t believe a contract had been put out for Ronald. What were they thinking? Gary had heard rumors over the past couple of years that Ronald had changed. He knew it had something to do with a contract down in south Florida, but Ronald had never really given him the details and the things he heard would never coagulate in his mind.

  He heard Ronald had been caught red-handed by a cop, but the cop had let him go and Ronald had let the cop live. The contract had
been on Charley Shannon, a city councilman down in Immokalee, Florida who was also a silent majority owner of a fruit packing plant. Shannon had used his position to ensure the migrant workers, most of whom were there illegally, were given low-income housing in the city. At first glance, it had the appearance he was doing a good deed for the impoverished and the unlucky. In reality, he was reclaiming a healthy chunk of the wages they were being paid.

  The rub had come when his partners had discovered Shannon was also using his position as an aphrodisiac for under-aged girls. So they had put together one-hundred-thousand-dollars and went looking for a solution to their problem before it blew up in their faces and the national media got involved.

  Ronald had gotten the contract through another broker, much to Gary’s irritation. Those were the only real facts Gary knew. The rest had come from second and third-hand sources. Apparently, Ronald and this cop knew each other and just as Ronald had been completing the job, this cop had somehow wandered into the middle of it. What Ronald should have done was ice them both then walk away.

  Gary had never gotten the cop’s name or what had happened to him. It didn’t matter though, as some very powerful men then decided Ronald was no longer needed and should be retired as soon as possible. After they had come to that conclusion, what was he supposed to do? Tell them no?

  His first choice was a button man out of Boston that would only answer to the handle “Freeze,” as in “Deep Freeze”. For fuck’s sake, he didn’t understand hitmen. Most were mental midgets who had not had the privilege of being formed properly in the womb; instead of traveling through the birth canal they had been plucked out of a mound of feces and then formed into the shape of a human being.

  The upshot was they had not been given a high moral character. Instead, they had been equipped with a lack of empathy or conscience. Many were cheap and sloppy. A few had a keen intellect, lacked any moral compass and would, if the mood struck, whack their entire families without either a second thought or any remorse afterward. These few were highly sought after, highly paid and very effective for permanently silencing witnesses or problematic issues which might show up down the line.

  Then, like everything else you had the group in the middle. These paid killers, for the most part, lacked a moral compass, which was good. They had an above average IQ which was also good. However, they lacked the real meaty attention to detail any paid homicide requires. But they had enough throughput to get the job done and didn’t charge the high rates the true psycho killers charged.

  Gary had all three types on retainer. For the hit down in western Colorado, Gary had decided to go with Jimmy, who fell into a category all to himself. Jimmy had the moral compass of the second group but the intellect and record of the first group. As such, he could only charge the rates of the first group. However, the good thing was he had no connection with Ronald himself. But at 8 a.m. Central Time, Jimmy still hadn’t called in.

  Big Max closed out of the midget porn and began to troll the news outlets for Loma, CO. After a half hour of searching, he hadn’t found any report about a double homicide or an attempted double homicide. He checked his burner phone again–still no call. Max thought about calling Jimmy on the burner he had given him but then changed his mind. He decided right then that the contract he had given to Jimmy was still open. Max powered down the phone, pulled the back off, and removed the battery and the SIM card. Then he broke the SIM card into several pieces and just to make sure it was truly untraceable, he broke out his butane torch and burned not only the SIM card but the phone also.

  Afterwards, he leaned his chair all the way back until the front feet started to come off the floor. Then in the same motion, he put his feet up on the desk and reached into his hooded sweatshirt, pulling out a half-smoked joint and lighting up, breathing deeply into his chest and then holding the smoke until the grass had worked its way completely through every last cell in his brain. Only then did he exhale slowly, letting the smoke climb lazily upwards to the ceiling.

  He smiled at the random thoughts that now seeped through his head. The TV in the corner was playing reruns of an 80s sitcom. Gary Snelling hated his given Christian name. The kids growing up had a field day with it. So shortly after high school, Gary Snelling had ceased to exist and Big Max Benson was born. Gary had taken his surname from his favorite show and the “Max” had come from the Mad Max movies. Except Gary had big plans and even bigger dreams, so “Mad” became “Big” and now he was Big Max Benson. When people heard his name they automatically assumed he was largesse, even grandiose in nature. In reality, Big Max was diminutive in size and motion.

  Rising no higher than 5’ 8” and weighing a very modest 150lbs, Max never reached the towering heights of the images his name evoked but that was just fine by him. If his name in the criminal world commanded fear and respect instead of the disrespect and bullying he had endured through his formative years, well so be it. He wasn’t going to complain.

  He let the thoughts of Jimmy and Ronald roam around his conscience for a bit longer. He had to assume Jimmy was either dead or Ronald was questioning him right at this moment. Max shuddered at the thought of Ronald subjecting anyone to his style of interrogation. Which brought up another problem – if Jimmy had been captured then Max’s existence was going to be in question.

  Shit! What to do? What to do? He could either run or move to his backup site. What he couldn’t do is give the people who hired him time to question whether or not he should be retired. Max looked around the 900 sq. ft. condo he used as both his office and his home. The good news was no one knew the name he kept the condo under or for that matter, any of his other expenses.

  Better for him was that nobody knew where the condo was. Max used a variety of electronic measures to keep both his existence a secret and more importantly, where his base of operations was located. All of his emails, text messages and phone conversations were encrypted with the best that money could buy.

  To further insulate himself, Max had taken to using a body double for any face-to-face meets. His body double looked nothing like him. Furthermore, the words his double spoke were Max’s words because Max made sure his double wore an earbud that was tied directly to him. Max was never anywhere near physical meet locations.

  So he should be safe except with the people he employed; he never knew for sure if they had ever tried to find him or not.

  He took his feet off the desk and put his chair back on the floor, snubbing the joint out in the ashtray. Standing up, he walked from the home office into the kitchen, stretching his back as he went. Big Max needed a drink and some food. Plus, it gave him a distraction for a few minutes while he worked on his problem. Max could hire Tommy Bones, aka Freeze, out of Boston. The problem with that solution was that Freeze knew Ronald. They had worked together in Kansas a few years ago. He got the impression Freeze and Ronald hadn’t really seen eye-to-eye as far as the project had been concerned, but that they were somewhat friendly if they weren’t working together.

  There was also the possibility Freeze would not take kindly to Max hiring him to retire a fellow comrade in arms, as it were. Fucking Jimmy!

  Max checked his watch. Just after 9:00 a.m. Central Time, which made it 10:00 a.m. where his employers were located. They would be expecting to hear something from him very soon as to the disposition of Ronald and his wife.

  Max stood in front of the fridge looking at the contents, which wasn’t a lot. He was due for an influx of groceries but hadn’t taken the time to arrange for them to be dropped off. He closed the door to the fridge and checked the freezer. Not a lot in there either. Ugh. He really wasn’t that hungry anyway.

  Closing the freezer he had an epiphany. What if he told Freeze that Ronald had been compromised and in order to keep his wife safe, he had agreed to talk about all of the projects he had worked on? Yeah, this could work. He turned the thought over in his mind, looking at it from different angles and then rolling it around, playing with the pros and the cons.

/>   There were a few cons that were pretty big. Like what if Freeze decided he had to look him in the eye and then they got talking and it all fell apart? Then he would have both of those psychos looking for him. Or Freeze turned the job down and word got out? Well, he actually thought that might not be the worst thing that could happen.

  This could work. The longer he thought about it, the longer the legs of this idea grew. But first he would have to placate his employers. This probably meant he was going to have to give some of the money back; not a good option but it beat the alternative.

  He turned and walked back into his home office. Sitting down, he picked up the phone and dialed Tommy Bones in Boston.

  Chapter 7

  I told Jessica I would be there right away. I meant the next day, but in reality it was three days later. I’m marginally employed and financially challenged, I can’t just pick up and go whenever I want to. The sad truth is, my ‘marginally’ was being generous with the term marginally.

  Wired Connections is not exactly what you would expect from an insurance company. They started out as a third tier contractor in the telecom business. However, when the bubble burst and work became scarce, Bill Eggers and his partner/wife Karen branched out into the dog-eat-dog world of high-end luxury insurance. Somehow they had wormed their way into the good graces of several high-end society types. From there, I’m not sure of the how to and the what for, but suffice to say they held a couple of dozen policies that allowed them to keep the lights on and pay yours truly a decent salary on time. But that is not to say I could just pick up and take off whenever I needed to. There actually were a few cases I really needed to work on but was short on the drive to do so. Most of my cases didn’t involve a lot of frontal lobe activity. Things like ‘Little Jimmy wrecked dad’s sports car, but daddy is determined to capitalize more on the policy than what he is really entitled to’. So I burn a few hours trolling through the high society pages and talking to the help around town to get the real skinny. It generally only takes a few hours and usually no more than a few days to sort out the real story from what was relayed to the locals or Bill and Karen.