The Devil's Graveyard

by AnonYMous

  Elvis put a hand up to cover his face and stepped to one side where he couldn’t be seen from the corridor. Then he whispered urgently to Sanchez, ‘Press for ground. We gotta get outta here.’

  Sanchez heard the instruction but was so busy staring at the security guards that he paid little attention to which button he was reaching for on the keypad.

  All four guards looked back to see who was staring at them from the elevator. What they saw was Sanchez reach for the keypad to press the button for the ground floor. And miss it. Instead, he prodded his finger into the open eye of the dead Otis Redding impersonator. The shock of prodding something cold and elastic made him leap back. His action had more disastrous effects, however. The corpse slid from its position against the wall and fell to the elevator floor in front of Sanchez, visible to the four men in the corridor.

  ‘Oh shit.’ Sanchez recovered his senses, located the ground-floor button and pressed it quickly. He was too late. The guards had seen the body and were focusing on it, and on Sanchez. Elvis’s face was safely tucked away out of their line of vision, but the sleeve of his gold suit was poking out past the elevator doors.

  ‘Hey, you. Freeze!’ yelled the nearest member of the security team. He had drawn a handgun with impressive speed and was aiming it at the elevator.

  Elvis reached across and shoved Sanchez to the side. ‘Get back up against the wall,’ he hissed. ‘Don’t let ’em get a good look at you!’

  With horrible slowness the elevator doors began to close as the four security guards came charging down the corridor.

  Fifteen

  Johnny Cash – or his impersonator, at least – had well over an hour to wait before his audition. He’d been hanging backstage with the other singers, and had impressed everyone with his cool, unflappable confidence. Little did they guess that underneath the laid-back exterior he was shitting himself. A million bucks was at stake. There was nothing for the runner-up, not a cent. It didn’t matter how well he had coped with pressure in his career up to now, this was a whole different ball game.

  The backstage waiting room was a hive of activity, chock-full of hopefuls dressed as their favourite dead singers. There were comfortable sofas, chairs and beanbags scattered around, and a table laden with drinks and snacks had been set up against each of the four walls. None of which seemed to be helping to calm anyone down. There was more nervous energy and tension in this one room than the rest of the hotel put together.

  The person Johnny most envied was Luther, the Otis Redding performer. Lucky bastard. His audition was done and dusted, and now he was off somewhere relaxing, knowing that he was almost certain to make the final. Johnny wished he could do the same, but needed a pick-me-up, a kind of confidence-booster to get him through the agonizing wait before performing. He also wanted to be sure that the other contestants backstage were really as nervous as he was. Not just faking it.

  He looked around at the other performers still waiting to audition and picked out his target. Sure enough, Kurt Cobain looked edgy and uneasy from all the waiting, too. He was standing on his own by the exit to the corridor out back, sucking at a tepid can of Sprite through a straw. Aw, what the fuck, thought Johnny and headed over to him.

  ‘Yo, Cobain! How goes it, man?’ he asked, offering a confident smile that belied his own nervousness.

  The ratty-looking singer smiled back, snorting a little Sprite out of his nose. Didn’t look like he was used to people approaching him in a friendly manner, and he was in any case probably wary of Johnny’s intentions. Kurt looked like an outsider, and appeared to be doing nothing particularly to fit in.

  ‘Be honest, I’m shittin’ myself,’ he responded honestly.

  ‘Yeah? Well, I may have somethin’ that can help with that.’

  ‘For real?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Kurt eyed him suspiciously. ‘You ain’t gonna try to sell me on Jesus an’ the Power of Prayer, are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Nah,’ Johnny grinned. Ignoring the other’s powerful body odour, he leaned in and whispered in his ear, ‘Wanna do a line of coke?’

  ‘You got some?’

  Jeez-uss, this guy was somethin’ else, thought Johnny. ‘No, I was just offering,’ he said with heavy sarcasm, before adding, ‘’Course I got some. You in?’

  ‘Yo! Show me the way, buddy.’

  Johnny nodded towards the exit and Kurt followed him out into the corridor. They made for the men’s washroom on the right and, after a quick look around, Johnny ducked in through the door with Kurt close behind.

  The washroom was empty and they headed straight for the second stall. The place was antiseptically clean, and the white-tiled floor looked as if it had recently been mopped. Checking for a final time that they hadn’t been followed in, Johnny’s eyes darted round the room before he bolted the door shut behind them. The toilet in the stall they had chosen was as clean as the floor outside. Not so much as a drop of piss on the shiny white seat.

  Kurt pulled the toilet-seat lid down and stepped aside to allow his companion to do his bit. Johnny produced a small bag of cocaine from one of the front pockets in his pants. He had hoped not to have to resort to the stuff, because he had wanted to perform with a completely clear head, but he had known full well when he slipped the bag of white powder into his pants pocket that morning that he would end up using it.

  He opened the bag and watched Kurt’s eyes light up, then poured a little of the powder on to the toilet lid. Next, he pulled a straight razor from the breast pocket in his black shirt. He used the blade to divide the powder into four lines each about four inches long. It took him less than thirty seconds, and he could tell his partner in crime was impressed.

  ‘You wanna go first?’ he asked.

  The answer was an emphatic yes. Kurt was already holding a short red-and-white-striped plastic straw in his hand, ready to go. Minutes earlier, he had been sucking Sprite through the straw. He hadn’t dared hope that he would find a much stronger stimulant.

  ‘Step aside, my good man,’ he said, with mock formality. Then, crouching down on the tiled floor, he held the end of the straw to one nostril, pressed the other closed with one finger, and quickly set about snorting up the nearest line. He inhaled it in one long sniff, all of it, then sat back on his haunches and blinked a few times. He wiped the end of his nose with the back of his hand and sniffed hard to drag up any remnants of powder that might be loitering at the end of his nostril.

  ‘That is good shit, Mister Cash. Oh yeah. Very good shit!’ he said. Then he held the straw up to Johnny, who took it and, crouching, leaned over to snort up the line nearest to him.

  Outside, someone opened the main door to the men’s washroom. Johnny heard footsteps walk in, boots clacking on the tiles. He’d just finished snorting up his first line and was blinking furiously while trying to control the urge to shout about how good the coke was.

  The person outside walked slowly across the tiled floor of the washroom. Johnny peered under the bottom of the locked door and saw a pair of scuffed black boots walking past the first stall. The boots stopped outside the door behind which he and Kurt Cobain were crouching, like two schoolboys with a tit mag. He glanced at Kurt, who looked as concerned as he was. Being caught by security taking illegal drugs on the premises would result in disqualification from the competition, so it went without saying that they should both stay absolutely quiet. Kurt obviously understood.

  Johnny watched with considerable paranoia as the toes of the boots visible in the gap under the door turned to face them. A horrible pause followed. Then there was a gentle thud as the person outside pushed at the door, only to find it locked. Johnny looked over at Kurt who had his hand over the end of his nose, no doubt trying his damnedest not to sniff.

  The boots stepped backwards, first the left one, then the right. Johnny had to lean down further to see them as they retreated out of his sight. A second after he lowered his head the door crashed open, its lock busting with a loud crack. It hit Johnny ac
ross the forehead and knocked him back. He landed on his ass on the floor beside the toilet. Terrified, both he and Kurt looked up to see a man dressed all in black staring down at them. He was wearing dark sunglasses and had a black hood pulled up over his head.

  Kurt spoke up first. ‘Hey, man, d’you mind?’ he said in an aggrieved whine. ‘We coulda been takin’ a shit in here!’

  The intruder responded in a gravelly voice. ‘Yeah? Both of you?’

  ‘Well, no.’

  ‘Look, man,’ said Johnny, rubbing his forehead where the door had hit him. ‘There’s plenty of other free stalls, ’kay?’

  ‘Are you Johnny Cash?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And Kurt Cobain?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s him.’ Johnny pointed at Kurt.

  ‘Good.’

  The guy didn’t appear to be in any rush to move to another stall and the situation was becoming a little awkward. Johnny decided to make a peace offering.

  ‘You want some of this coke? We got two lines left.’

  ‘No.’

  There was an uncomfortable pause as they waited to see what his next move would be. He just stared down at them from behind his sunglasses. Kurt was still on his knees on the floor on one side of the toilet and Johnny was still sitting on his ass on the other.

  The coke had entered Johnny’s bloodstream, and it felt like liquid confidence rushing through his veins. He was fucking invincible. Time to get rid of this asshole.

  ‘You don’t want any, then d’ya mind closin’ the fuckin’ door?’

  The man ignored him and pointed at Kurt Cobain. ‘Come here,’ he grated. The voice was frighteningly cold, devoid of any emotion.

  Kurt struggled to his feet and frowned. ‘Whadda ya wa—’

  CRACK!

  Without any warning, the man punched Kurt on the end of the nose. The punch was a solid straight jab with his right fist, and it hit with sickening force. The singer’s nose exploded in a fountain of blood and he collapsed back on to the floor, banging his head on the toilet lid as he went down.

  Johnny watched on in horror as his scruffily dressed buddy fell. Then he looked back up at the intruder in their stall. The man leaned down, grabbed him by his greasy hair and pulled him to his feet, drawing him right up to eye level.

  ‘Whadda ya want?’ Johnny stammered, echoing his companion. He was close enough to his unwelcome guest to see his own reflection in the man’s sunglasses. His confidence had evaporated in an instant. He looked terrified.

  With his hand still in Johnny’s hair, the man twisted his head around slowly and pointed it down at the toilet.

  ‘Sniff up the rest of your shit.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Sniff it up.’

  As he spoke, he released his grip on Johnny’s hair and pushed him down towards the toilet seat. Johnny did as he’d been instructed and got back down on his knees to snort up the two remaining lines of coke. He picked up the red-and-white-striped straw, which was lying where it had fallen on the floor beside the toilet, and placed it at the near end of one of the lines of white powder. His hands were shaking. He had a horrible feeling that the man behind him was going to smash his head down on to the toilet seat cover as soon as he bent down to start vacuuming up the coke.

  But shit, what fuckin’ option did he have?

  He leaned forward slowly and slipped one end of the straw into his left nostril. At that moment, just as he expected, the intruder slammed down hard on the back of his head. The crushing impact of the blow drove the straw right up his nostril and into his skull. He only felt the cold pain of it for a millisecond. Then his nose hit the toilet lid and bone splinters smashed up into his brain, killing him instantly.

  Sixteen

  Invincible Angus was an angry-looking guy at the best of times. This was not one of those times. His face twitched with rage upon hearing that his room had been given to someone else. On top of that, the receptionist had given him an envelope addressed to him in his guise as Mr Claude Balls, which someone had handed in. That should have lightened his mood, but when she passed it to him, he saw right away that it had been tampered with. Nor was anyone in reception owning up to having opened it. They claimed that the person who had taken his room had handed it to them in that condition.

  Now Angus had tortured a great many people in his time. Sometimes for fun, it was true, but quite often to extract information, and through this experience he had learned how to tell when someone was bullshitting him. And the reception staff at the hotel were too damn scared of him to be lying. He was one hundred per cent confident of that. The fact remained, however, that the envelope still contained the photos and the list of names of his targets. It was just the cash that had gone.

  Stephie the receptionist nervously informed him that there were no vacancies left and suggested that he head to the nearest bar for a drink – on the house, naturally – while she did what she could to find him a new room. He could tell she was going to do her best because he’d done a damn good job of scaring the shit out of her and the other staff, including the security guys. After all, it was not often that a six-feet-five-inch-tall hitman walked into the hotel to find that the room he’d reserved had been given to someone else.

  On his way to the bar, Angus opened the envelope and flicked through the photos, then took a look at the names of the targets on the slip of paper. He had survived as long as he had because he had good instincts, and those instincts had told him from the get-go that this job was all wrong for him. True, most of his employers were assholes – that was a pitfall of his chosen career – but the guy offering this particular assignment was the worst kind. He claimed his name was Julius, but even that was in doubt.

  Even by the standards of the murky world of the professional hitman, this Julius came over as being especially untrustworthy. Angus had seen it in his face as soon as they’d met. He oozed deceit, and more than likely he was withholding information. On top of that, he seemed to be of the type that would give the job to more than one hitman, just to ensure the hit was successful. That kind of guy was always bad for business. It meant other hitmen sniffing around, often taking each other out as well as the primary target. And only the last man standing would be paid for the job. That is, assuming he didn’t get double-crossed, Angus thought angrily. He would normally have turned down an assignment based on these factors, but he had hit a rocky patch financially, so in this case he figured the reward was worth the risk. Yet, since he’d taken the job he’d been struck by a run of bad luck, something that almost always happened when he took on an assignment he didn’t like.

  But he was convinced of one thing: Julius was slippery, and his motives were unclear. Angus had only agreed to work for him on the condition that he receive a down payment of twenty thousand dollars. He was confident he could carry out the job, but on the off chance that anything went wrong, that twenty grand would pay off a debt he owed to some seriously unpleasant gangland bosses. Successfully completing the hit would bring him another thirty thousand, but without a down payment there was a distinct chance of not getting paid at all. It wasn’t a risk he was willing to take.

  The other thing that was really playing on his mind, and which had convinced him that this job was either jinxed or a set-up, was the news that the room he’d booked had been given to a guy named Sanchez Garcia. Just ’cause he, Angus, had been a tad late arriving. It was this man who had allegedly returned the envelope to reception. It seemed likely that he now had the cash deposit and knew all the details of the hit. Maybe he was another contract killer?

  Turning these things over in his mind, Angus arrived at the bar badly in need of a drink and in a really foul and frustrated frame of mind. And that was when his luck looked like it might be about to change. Sitting at a table in the far corner of the lounge was a small black guy in a purple suit. Angus recognized him right away: Julius, the shifty bastard who had hired him in the first place. A bald-headed little fella who avoided eye contact whenever he wa
s asked a question. Maybe he could explain what the hell was going on, exactly. Or at the very least, cough up another twenty grand.

  Angus walked up to Julius’s table. On his way he called over to the barmaid, ‘Hey, bitch, get me a double Scotch and ice and bring it over.’

  Valerie, thoroughly outraged, looked him up and down, having to crane her neck to do so. Her mouth dropped open in a surprised ‘oh’ when she saw the size of him. Like most people of whom he made demands, she suddenly decided just to do as he asked.

  Angus took a chair opposite Julius at the table and sat down heavily. At first, the James Brown impersonator looked surprised to see him but the look passed all too quickly. He picked up a bottle of Shitting Monkey beer from the table and took a sip. Lots of folks did that, tried to look nonchalant when Angus intimidated them. He took vicious pleasure in knowing that despite appearances, Julius was probably about to shit his pants.

  The hitman threw the brown envelope containing the photos and hit list on to the table and sat back in his chair staring Julius out, his facial features tense with anger. ‘Where’s the fuckin’ twenty grand?’ he snarled. His red goatee quivered as he spoke.

  Julius placed his beer back down on the table and swallowed. ‘You’re late,’ he said. If he was intimidated, he didn’t show it. ‘I’ve given the job to someone else.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You didn’t show up on time. Someone else now has the contract. Maybe you should have listened to me when I stressed the importance of being on time.’

  ‘I ain’t barely listenin’ to you now, you boring fuck.’

  ‘Well, that’s your problem.’

  Angus was clenching his fists in frustration. ‘Muthafucker,’ he rumbled, staring hard at the singer.

  ‘Sorry, man. You snooze, you lose.’

  Angus leaned over the table and right into Julius’s personal space. ‘You know, I ain’t all the way convinced that you are who you say you are anyway. So watch how you speak to me, asshole.’