by Osborne, Jon
Taken by the New York Yankees with the No. 1 overall pick in the 1994 amateur draft, Randy McMichael had endeared himself to Cleveland fans for all time when he’d told Yankees’ owner and fellow Cleveland boy George Steinbrenner to go fuck himself, that he’d never play for his shitbird team in a million years. Instead, McMichael had sat out the entire season so that his beloved Indians could select him with the first pick the following spring.
For the next seven years, Randy McMichael had continued his charmed life on the baseball diamond. Rookie of the Year in 1995. Most Valuable Player in 1997 and 1999. Winner of the Indians’ “Good Guy” award seven years running. Fifteen hundred hits quicker than anyone else in the history of baseball.
He did all this, of course, while at the same time dating a string of the most eligible starlets around the country. Pop singers and actresses. A classically trained pianist. Even a porn star, once.
Hardworking Clevelanders loved the guy. And who could blame them? He was theirs and they were his. Completely. He was their rock star, their astronaut and their war hero all wrapped up into one glorious, mythical figure. He’d been everything to them, and the sense of pride in the city had never been stronger.
But it had all come to a screeching halt in late September of 2002. A fall match-up with the Yankees and a hard play at the plate that had seen Randy McMichael blow out his right knee while trying to score from second base on a sharply hit single to right field.
To this day, there still existed plenty of Tribe fans around the city who maintained that the Yankees’ catcher that day – Quilvio Hernandez – had intentionally stuck out his leg in a deliberate attempt to injure Randy McMichael. There’d been death threats against Hernandez and his family after that, of course; batteries and racial epithets slung at his head with equal ferocity every time the Yankees came back to town.
That sad day in the history of Indians baseball had marked the end of an era in Cleveland. Randy McMichael would never again return to the field, would never again dazzle them with his athletic prowess that seemed a gift straight from God Himself. His surefire Hall of Fame career had been cut tragically short, and it had all been because of those goddamn Yankees.
He’d been Cleveland’s Babe Ruth, its Lou Gehrig and its Joe DiMaggio all rolled into one. The best any of them had ever seen. Better than Bob Feller. Better than Lou Boudreau. Even better than Omar Vizquel.
And cuter than Grady Sizemore, to boot.
“The very best of all time,” Granny Bernice had told Angel one night back in 2001, proudly wearing his name stitched into the back of her extra-large jersey while they sat together on their front porch listening in awe to McMichael’s heroic exploits over the radio.
“This is it, Angel!” Granny Bernice had squealed happily, clapping her chubby hands together in delicious anticipation. “R-Mac’s really gonna give them goddamn Yankees the what-for tonight! Yes, ma’am! Just you wait and see, girly!”
CHAPTER 52
On a completely breezeless day, Brotherhood operatives Miles O’Reilly and Seth Collins pulled their huge pickup truck with a giant Confederate flag hanging limply from a steel post in the back into the driveway of a tidy little bungalow house five miles outside Cleveland.
Monster tires lifted the vehicle twelve feet into the air, only adding to its already imposing appearance. Whenever O’Reilly and Collins were on the road, people got the fuck out of their way.
Americans by birth and Southerners by the grace of God, both men had served in the armed forces and considered themselves dyed-in-the-wool white supremacists. O’Reilly’s Navy Seal training and Collins’ time spent as an Army Ranger had prepared them very well for their careers as hired guns following their military service – no debating that simple fact. Both still killed people for a living, of course, but now they got paid a hell of a lot more for it. Uncle Sam – tightwad motherfucker that he’d always been – had always compensated his soldiers a lot more like his name was Uncle Scrooge, and the time had finally come to even up the score. Maybe even pick up a little bit of extra pocket change along the way while they were at it.
Hell, they’d earned that much.
O’Reilly was tall and blonde, Collins short and dark. Both were in their mid-thirties now, and each had been around the block more than a few times apiece. By no stretch of the imagination did this mark their first rodeo.
O’Reilly holstered his Beretta at his side and turned to face the smaller man standing next to him in the cracked driveway. “You go ahead and dig up the money next to the shed in the backyard while I’ll go after Trebblehorn,” he said. “If I’m not out of there in five minutes, come in after me with guns blazing. Terminate any hostiles you encounter with extreme prejudice.”
Collins nodded. “We still taking twenty percent off the top, Miles?”
O’Reilly grinned at his partner. “Goddamn right we are. Baby needs a new pair of shoes.”
Collins nodded again and popped the lock on the tailgate of the huge pickup truck before emerging with a shovel a moment later. “He’ll kill us for sure if he finds out, you know.”
O’Reilly widened his grin into an ax blade. “Fuck him, Seth,” he snapped. “Who the fuck calls himself the Race Master, anyway? Give me a fucking break. Full of yourself much? Anyway, even if that’s the case, at least we’ll die doing something we love, right? Still, I won’t tell if you don’t. That should improve our odds of staying alive quite a bit, wouldn’t you say?”
“Whatever you say, Seth. You’re the boss.”
O’Reilly held the other man’s stare. “Goddamn right I am. And don’t you ever fucking forget it.”
As Collins made his way around to the back of the house to get the money, O’Reilly jimmied the lock on the front door and slipped quietly inside, pausing in the tiny kitchen for a moment to let his ears tune in to their new surroundings.
Then he smiled.
Being very careful to not make even the slightest noise, he followed the sounds of moaning that were coming from the basement. He stopped halfway down the stairs and widened his clear blue eyes in surprise when he saw Trebblehorn pumping his cock in and out of the nigger girl’s mouth less than twenty feet away.
O’Reilly hissed a soft epitaph under his breath. Stupid motherfucker. It was the same shit that had gotten Christopher Johansen torn to shreds by their boss’s vicious dog.
Bane, O’Reilly thought disgustedly. If he ever got even half the chance he’d shoot the fucking mutt right between the eyes and feed the pieces to the chickens on his farm down in Jacksonville for dinner. Frank Perdue he was not. His chickens got whatever the fuck he gave them.
O’Reilly waited until the traitor had finished off in the nigger girl’s mouth and they’d finished their pillow-talk before pulling back his index finger on the trigger from the stairwell. The Beretta coughed once, spraying Trebblehorn’s idiotic brains all over the basement wall.
Surprisingly, there were quite a lot of them.
Stepping from the shadows, he lifted the gun again, pointing it directly at the nigger girl’s head this time. Naked and shivering like a leaf over in the corner, the trembling little slut used a shaking hand to wipe away Trebblehorn’s milky white seed from her quivering lips.
“Word on the street is that you’re pregnant, Sasha,” O’Reilly said, advancing even closer and positioning her forehead dead-center in the Beretta’s crosshairs. “Time for a little back-alley abortion to take care of that problem for you. Only problem is, I don’t quite have my medical license just yet.”
He holstered his gun and slid out a long knife from the leather sheath attached to his belt. “So I guess that means we’ll have to take care of your baby the old-fashioned way.”
Ten feet away, Sasha Diggs forced a smile onto her lips and tried to make her voice sound throaty and seductive. The ugly words tasted like battery acid on her tongue. “I’ll suck that thing so good for you, daddy,” she cooed. “Before you do anything drastic, why don’t you come over here and let me
do what I do best? Everyone else seems to enjoy it.”
Miles O’Reilly paused while he considered the offer.
How long would it take Collins to dig up that fucking money, anyway?
CHAPTER 53
The heartbreaking story of Sara Whitestone’s brutal rape over an altar at St. Anthony’s Catholic Church in the late-1950s – as told to Nathan Stiedowe while he held a sharp knife pressed against Dana’s mother’s throat – crushed Dana’s spirit. For his part, however, Nathan Stiedowe didn’t seem quite so moved. Quite the contrary, as a matter of fact.
Crushing Sara’s slender shoulders beneath his knees with all his weight, he stared down hard into her eyes, freezing her in his swirling cobra gaze. “That’s a real touching story, Mom. Really it is. Still, I’m afraid it’s not quite good enough. Time to pay the piper, cunt. But before I kill you, I think I’ll give you a taste of what it was like for me growing up. How does that sound to you?”
Roughly flipping Sara onto her stomach, he yanked down her satin panties around her knees and slapped her hard on her bare buttocks, a stinging blow that turned her backside red. “‘For this you know – no fornicator, unclean person nor covetous man who is an idolater has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God!’ Ephesians, chapter 5, verse 5.”
The monster slapped Sara again, even harder this time.
“‘Let the people turn from their wicked deeds! Let them banish from their minds the very thought of doing wrong! Let them turn to the Lord that He may have mercy on them! Yes, turn to our God, for He will abundantly pardon!’ Book of Isaiah, chapter 55, verse 7.”
Nathan Stiedowe flipped Dana’s mother back over and pinned her shoulders beneath his weight again. Running the sharp knife lightly over her throat left a superficial but very painful cut in its wake. Even in the darkness, Dana could easily make out the stark contrast between the bright red blood and the pale white skin at her mother’s throat.
Just then, Sara Whitestone’s panicked blue eyes suddenly widened in horror at the sight of something over Nathan Stiedowe’s left shoulder. The monster turned and followed her gaze to the doorway of the bedroom. Dana did the same. Two feet away and dressed in his pajamas, Bradley held a teddy bear in one tiny hand and shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other as though he needed to go to the bathroom.
“Mommy, what’s happening?” the little boy asked, his small voice quiet and shy. “You’re scaring me. Who’s that man on top of you? Where’s my daddy?”
Nathan Stiedowe locked gazes with the little boy, paralyzing Bradley in his stare. The monster never took his eyes off the boy as he whipped the sharp blade across Sara Whitestone’s slender neck again, this time cutting all the way to the bone.
Jolted out of his stupor, the little boy screamed so loudly that it nearly drowned out the watery gurgling sounds Sara Whitestone was making as she choked to death on her own blood. Springing off the bed in a black flash of movement, the monster leapt toward the doorway, passing directly through Dana’s body again.
The little boy’s enormous blue eyes widened in terror as Nathan Stiedowe yanked the sharp knife overhead and wet droplets of Sara Whitestone’s freshly drawn blood slid down the blade before plopping onto the boy’s tiny, upturned face.
That was when the front door slammed open with a violent bang.
“Sara? James? What the hell’s going on in here? It’s Ralph Wilson from next door. Nancy and I heard screaming and called the police. Is everything all right?”
Undisguised hatred flashed across Nathan Stiedowe’s handsome face as he bolted past the now-catatonic little boy and dashed into Dana’s bedroom before pulling himself up through the window, streaking across the backyard and disappearing into the pitch-black night. From the corner of her eye, Dana watched a dark circle of urine soak into the front of the little boy’s pajama bottoms. The accusing glare in his wounded eyes was impossible to misinterpret.
How could you let this happen to me again? the little boy’s look asked her. You were supposed to protect me. Now because of you I have to die in that plane crash.
CHAPTER 54
Randy McMichael’s house – or, more accurately, his mansion – was located a twenty-five minute drive from the Dunkin’ Donuts downtown. The security guard at the front gate waved Angel through without a second look when she flashed the old Cleveland PD badge at him. Worked like a charm every time.
Weaving her way through a few streets lined with million-dollar homes with the windows rolled down, Angel breathed in the smell of money that was hanging in the air right next to the smell of freshly cut grass. Pulling into Randy McMichael’s long, winding driveway three minutes later, she lifted her eyebrows halfway up her forehead, duly impressed. She put the vehicle into park mode and hopped out before looking around a little more, taking in the sights. So this was how the other half lived.
Not a bad gig if you could find the work.
McMichael’s place was impressive even when compared to the other luxurious residences surrounding it. It loomed up higher, more magnificent than the rest. A huge arched entranceway lined with blood red roses pointed out the front door to visitors.
Angel walked past a Bentley and Rolls Royce that were parked in the driveway, painfully aware of just how badly her old beater stuck out like a sore thumb around here. Twelve years old and more than a hundred thousand miles on the odometer.
She sighed, cursing her often small and always irregular paychecks since leaving the police force. Maybe in her next lifetime she’d drive a set of wheels that she didn’t need to constantly feel embarrassed of.
One could always hope.
Angel shook her head to chase away the self-pitying thought. Making an honest living certainly wasn’t anything to be ashamed about. Besides, she knew there were a hell of a lot of people out there who had things a lot worse than she did.
Properly chastised in her own mind, she took a deep breath through her nostrils and made her way past the intricate landscaping lining both sides of the stone walkway and all the way up to the front door of her grandmother’s No. 1 hero.
Taking in another deep breath and letting out the air again forcefully enough to deflate her chest like a leaky balloon, she lifted a shaking hand and knocked on the door before she had a chance to change her mind.
This was it. Do or die time. No turning back now.
After all, Granny Bernice wouldn’t have expected anything less from her.
CHAPTER 55
The Race Master swiveled in his comfortable leather chair and snipped off the tip from an enormous Cuban cigar while the energizing sounds of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 filled his den.
He looked across the massive desk at the young man seated on the other side and lit up the cigar before snapping shut the gold Zippo again with a loud metallic click! that made the young man jump. Blowing out a huge cloud of fragrant smoke and waving the cigar in his left hand, he said, “Recite ‘The Fourteen Words’ for me, Richard.”
Dressed in an exquisite Italian suit, Richard Patton cleared his throat nervously and did as instructed.
“We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children.”
The Race Master blew out a second huge cloud of smoke and nodded. “Very good, Richard. Now, who first spoke these vital words?”
Patton adjusted the cuffs on his crisp white dress shirt, pleased with himself for knowing the answer. “David Lane, sir.”
“And what happened to David Lane, Richard?”
“He was unfairly jailed, sir.”
“On what charges?”
Patton shifted uneasily in his chair, then looked down at his expensive leather shoes. The shoes had probably cost a thousand dollars, if not more. He wouldn’t know. He hadn’t paid for them. Not in any monetary sense, at least.
After a moment or two of uncomfortable silence, he lifted up his gaze and admitted, “I don’t know, sir.”
The Race Master stubbed out his huge cigar in the ivory ashtray on hi
s enormous desk and rose to his feet. He paced the room as he spoke. “He was jailed for resisting the genocide of his people, Richard. David Lane was sentenced to a hundred and ninety years in prison for his so-called ‘crimes’. He died in prison for those crimes – crimes that the United States government commits every single day. Tell me, Richard, do you find that fair?”
Patton shook his head emphatically. “No, sir. I sure as hell don’t.”
“Do you find it fair that my only brother is locked away in a cold German prison cell for much the same thing?”
Patton shook his head again. “No, sir. I most certainly don’t.”
The Race Master crouched down and ran a hand across the top of Bane’s massive head before looking back up at Patton. “Are you willing to die for our cause, Richard? Are you willing to give up your own life in service of the greater good?”
Patton didn’t hesitate with his answer. He knew it marked the only acceptable one. “Yes, sir. I am.”
The Race Master nodded and rose to his feet. Sliding open a drawer, he handed Patton the Walther 7.65 mm pistol across the desk. “Good. That’s exactly what I wanted to hear, Richard. Now put the gun to your head and pull the trigger.”
Rising to his own feet and taking the gun, Patton froze dead in his tracks as his confused brain tried desperately to process the Race Master’s instructions. “Sir?”
“I said put the gun to your head and pull the trigger, Richard. Just like Adolf Hitler did in 1945. Do it now.”
Patton swallowed dryly. He’d had his suspicions before, but now he was absolutely convinced of it. The Race Master was truly mad.
Patton’s jumbled thoughts went briefly to his predecessor and to the gruesome fate that had befallen poor Christopher Johansen. Both Sullivan and Johansen had served the cause faithfully for more than twenty years, and look what had become of them.
His pulse quickened in his wrists. What to do? He could kill the crazy bastard right now, but then the enormous dog would surely attack. He doubted he’d have enough time to squeeze off a second shot before the filthy cur tore open his throat with its powerful jaws.
