Luke pulled the Mustang over next to the hydrant further down the street, these blocks in Manhattan long.
“You and your boys back in Moses,” Dodd had twisted around in the passenger seat, looking back the way they’d come, “you all play tough. None of you ain’t done nothin’ like this though, right?”
“Just do what you got to do man.”
“Oh, I’m a gonna. So you just worry ‘bout what it is you gots to do. You got that money I gave you?” Dodd turned back around, checking the load on the 9mm again. “You better be here when I come out of there you want to see the rest of it. My ass come out of there and I got to take the train home, first person I’m a come see I get back to the Moses is you, Luther.”
“I’ll be here.”
“Right here.”
“Right here.”
“Better be,” Dodd warned him and when Luke didn’t respond the man told him “I said you better be.”
“Aight, aight. I heard you.” Luke scared of the man but also growing frustrated and angry. Who’d this guy think he was, showing him such disrespect? Luke hoping the man would get out of the car so he could take another bump of the ye he had in his pants pocket.
Luke got his wish, Dodd stepping out of the car. The interior light never showed, Dodd having switched it off earlier.
“Yo, Dodd.”
Dodd looked back into the car at him.
“It’s Luke. Not Luther.”
Dodd closed the door and walked off without another word, both handguns tucked into his waist, under his denim jacket, one button of the jacket closed, concealing them. Kid had a set on him, talk to him like that. Had a set on him or was just real stupid.
He walked back up the block, in no great hurry. This part of Manhattan was a whole other world from the Moses houses. Real quiet this time of night too. Cars passed on the green lights, no foot traffic to speak of. Skyscrapers disappearing up into the night on either side of the wide avenue.
A breeze stirred the litter on the sidewalk, a discarded plastic bottle rolling in the gutter.
Dodd glanced into the lobby of the building he’d be coming back to, spying a black doorman in a suit behind a counter in the lobby. Man looked bored. Dodd kept walking.
He was almost to the other corner when the limousine glided past, a white stretch all tinted out. Dodd already turning and retracing his steps, unhooking the one button on his denim jacket, the limo stopped up ahead, its passengers getting out.
Dodd counted six of them as he pulled the ski-mask from his jeans pocket:
his target, all iced out and clutching a bottle;
some big black-Chinese looking bodyguard;
a shorter, slighter black man;
a couple of bitches in short skirts hanging off the man with the bottle;
and the driver.
The driver closing the car door behind the others, getting back in the car as the five entered the lobby, out of Dodd’s sight.
Dodd picked up his pace, the limousine already pulling away from the curb, hired by the record company. He looked up the block, saw the taillights of the Mustang idling at the pump. Dodd entered the lobby with both guns already out and the ski mask over his head, the mouth of the doorman dropping open. Fool behind the counter not even ducking, Dodd passing him, bee-lining for the elevators, the target and his entourage getting into a car.
The black-Chinese or whatever he was good at his job: He saw Dodd first, saw the masked gunman’s hands full of steel. He stepped in front of his employer, reaching for whatever he had on him but it was already too late, Dodd’s arms out, the nine barking.
The bodyguard collapsed, one woman punching the buttons frantically, the other bitch hollering at him in her heels. Dodd straightened both arms in front of him, the door refusing to close on the bodyguard. He put three in the target from the nine, the man slumping.
Bitch screaming down the barrel of the snub nosed, saying she was going to fuckin’ kill him. The revolver cracked and her eyes crossed like she was trying to see the neat little hole that had opened up above the bridge of her nose, her wig coming off her head as she wilted.
The slight man standing there the whole time shaking, not moving, making no attempt to draw down on Dodd. The way Dodd was told it would happen. Dodd didn’t say a word to the man, aimed the .38 at his face and then shifted it—bang!—winging him, the man sliding down the wall, clutching his shoulder.
Dodd took a moment to shoot out the camera mounted in the ceiling.
Abandoning the buttons, the other woman had pressed herself into a corner, crying hysterically.
The target was half-sprawled on the floor, his back against the wall. He raised a pointed finger and Dodd hit him with one from the .38, a few more taps of the nine, holes opening up in the man’s chest above the ones already there, the superstar’s oversized shades askew on his face. Dodd aimed about an inch above the sunglasses and fired the revolver.
The woman in the corner had both hands up to her mouth and nose, eye shadow streaked down her face. Dodd shot her in the side of her head.
He walked away from the elevators, back through the lobby. The doorman was still standing behind the counter, this time with a cordless phone to his ear. Seeing Dodd, he lowered the phone. Dodd put the revolver on him and squeezed the trigger, the .38 dry-firing, empty, still the man standing there, looking dumbfounded. Dodd put a nine in him and leaned over the counter, following up with a double-tap to the back of his head for good measure.
He reloaded the pistol before he stepped outside, pocketing the empty mag, jamming a fresh stick up the well. He’d reload the .38 later, in the car.
Dodd stepped outside, his mask back in his pocket, starting purposefully up the block. He walked fast but didn’t run and he could see it from here already: No car at the pump.
Of course.
Thinking maybe he shouldn’t have snatched a Mustang. Put a boy behind the wheel of a Mustang, he was gonna want to drive. Thinking maybe he shouldn’t have persisted in calling the boy Luther, knowing he was irritating the hell out of the kid each time he did.
When he reached the corner, Dodd crossed the street, listening for sirens, knowing the lobby man had been on the phone to the police.
He was halfway down the next block and the Mustang pulled up next to him on the street. Dodd stepped from the sidewalk, crossed between two parked cars, went around the back of the Mustang, got in.
“Had to move it,” Luke said to him.
Dodd didn’t ask for or expect a further explanation. Luke drove away without having to be told, keeping it under the limit.
The kid had the radio on.
Dodd was going to reach out, turn the knob on the stereo, kill that noise. Then he heard what that noise was and he paused.
Gangsta Khan rapping, saying a lot more on the radio than he had back in the elevator.
Smiling, Dodd sat back in his seat, his smile becoming a chuckle as he broke open the .38, spilling the empties into his hand, stuffing them in a pocket of his denim jacket. “Now this,” Dodd was still laughing and Luke was pretty sure he knew why the man was laughing but decided laughing himself wasn’t a good idea. Maybe not until Dodd gave him that other hundred.
“Now this is all right.”
Dodd snapped the cylinder shut on the revolver—“Yeah”—stuffing it back in his jeans. “Yeah, Luke. This all right.”
Behind the wheel of the hot Mustang, Luke smiled.
17.
9:12 P.M.
It was dark outside and the lights were off in the apartment. A breeze from the street caressed the curtains, making the candles flicker throughout the living room. A circle had been drawn on the floor, salt sprinkled around it. Nine feet in diameter, the circle was inscribed with words and names of power, magical symbols. Candles burned at each of the four cardinal points.
Leroi and Warrior sat across from each other, outside the circle, their fore paws stretched out in front of them.
Within the purified space,
dressed in black ceremonial robes and surrounded by the tools of her craft, the heavy woman sat. Olga Coyle, necromancer.
Beside her in the round, a small dog panted on its side.
Sarafina had adopted the dog from a shelter earlier in the week. To the shelter employees she had been an old woman looking for companionship, company in her old age. When they’d asked her for a reference she’d given them Olga’s phone number. The dog was drugged, lying on its side, its eyes glazed.
Olga read from her grimoire, her book of shadows an aged collection of tattered parchment papers. She spoke in a tongue lost to the modern era.
Sarafina did not understand the words of the incantation, but she recognized their import. What they would invoke. She sat beyond the circle, dressed like her friend.
Within the magic circle, Olga was surrounded by her tools and artifacts. A wisp of smoke wafted from the censer. The athame and cup gleamed in the candlelight, both freshly polished. Bowie’s Steelers jersey and t-shirt were folded and stacked one atop the other. Next to them his car key and sneakers.
His corpse and head rested on the plastic of the sofa.
A trio of pickaninny statuettes in the circle—Sarafina had found them in the dollar store—stood in as effigies for the curse.
The preparations had taken days.
Olga read with her eyes closed, the fingers of her chubby hands running over the page of her black book. Her voice seemed to come from some place deep inside. As she spoke, the curtains billowed and the candles wavered, casting shadows upon the walls and ceiling.
The hair was standing up on the backs of both cats, and Warrior yowled.
Shadows danced on the walls and ceiling. Sarafina had accompanied Olga in black magic before. They stood on the threshold of a world unseen, a world whose inhabitants were here with them now. Sarafina knew whatever happened she must not enter the circle.
A pinpoint of light flashed to life in midair and expanded, drawn like a line, unzipping. As the portal widened a hellish glow emanated from its depths. The curtains had fallen still, and yet a cold breeze filled the room. Warrior and Leroi ran from the circle’s perimeter, disappearing elsewhere in the apartment. Olga continued to chant, her eyes clenched shut, one hand reaching from the book to the ceremonial knife at her side.
Sarafina listened to Olga’s incantation and watched her friend do what she did to the three statues, having some idea of the maleficia that was being thrown upon those boys in this world.
Olga raised the athame and brought it down into the dog, the animal’s eyes widening, closing again. Laying her grimoire aside, Olga put the chalice to the dying animal’s side, collecting the blood that coursed through the canine’s hair.
Olga brought the cup to her lips to drink—
The candles flickered and Sarafina saw clearly what inhabited the shadows. The Nameless One, queen of the night. Hers a cold, terrible beauty. Sarafina looked away quickly.
—and Olga lowered the chalice.
The body on the couch stirred. A hand reached up to where its neck ended, fingers exploring the stump. A leg lifted from the couch, the foot dropping awkwardly to the floor. The remaining eye blinked.
The portal burned steadily above them.
“Eddie—” Olga wanted nothing more than to go to her boy, but she forced herself to finish what she’d started. She sawed at the dog’s body with the knife, the double bladed Athame not really made to slice, sawing until she was able to tear a hunk of flesh from the dog’s body.
Olga left the circle and went to her boy, kneeling beside him on the couch. She reached out, running a hand over his chest, taking his head in her hands, pressing it to her bosom. Dog blood covered them both.
“My baby, oh my baby…”
The head worked its mouth but made no sound. A deep, guttural moan emanated from the body itself: Huhhhhh
“Soon enough, my baby.” Olga cooed to it, running her hand over its scalp. The mouth chewed uncertainly at the dog flesh, all motor functions severely impaired. “Mommy will make everything right. Soon enough.”
The portal had closed, the candles burning steadily. The shadows were empty once more. Outside it was dark.
Sarafina exhaled.
Mrrrwow? Leroi stood in the living room doorway.
“Sarafina.” Olga looked up from her boy to her friend, tears of joy in her eyes. “Get me my sewing kit, would you please.”
Sunday
18 October 1998
18.
2:14 P.M.
“Big Duke, huh?”
They sat in a dark blue Lincoln Town Car a block from Enfermo’s nest: Boone, the man he knew as Damian, and a black man who went by Big Duke. Damian, a bartender at the Hellfire Club in the meatpacking district, wore a black t-shirt with STAFF emblazoned across the back. Tall and broad shouldered, a lot of blonde hair—a surfer transplant without his board in this city—and a gleam in his eye.
Crazy eye, Boone recognized it when he saw it.
Gossitch had described the man as a psycho once.
“Yeah,” the black man with the cowboy hat behind the wheel affirmed. “Big Duke.”
Big Duke wore boots to match the hat and jeans, a flannel shirt tucked in under an oversized belt buckle. A small decorative band circled the crown of the hat. Middle aged and going soft in the middle, his stomach spilled over his belt buckle, the seated position not helping.
“You some kind of black cowboy?” Boone looked the man over again from the passenger seat. Damian sat in the back of the car, silent.
A sawed off double barreled shotgun rested across Big Duke’s thighs. The fact that the barrels were aimed in Boone’s general direction didn’t seem to bother him.
“Big Duke like John Wayne.” The man looked out the windshield.
A bandolier of shells lay atop the console between the Big Duke and Boone.
“Like John Wayne, huh?”
“Greatest goddamn western hero ever.”
“Ain’t that somethin’.”
The street they were parked on was deserted, the houses boarded up. No one had come in or out of the house they were watching, and no one would. The whole thing reminded Boone too much of the stakeout with Gossitch a few weeks ago. Which had led to all of the bullshit he found himself in now. Feeling decidedly agitated, he was ready for action.
“You’re antsy,” Big Duke remarked. “I can tell.”
“Yo, D,” Boone turned to the man behind them. “You holdin’?”
Damian produced a baggy of marijuana from his black cargo pants. Big Duke raised an eyebrow.
“Somethin’ stronger?” asked Boone.
A small package of powder appeared from another of Damian’s pants pockets.
Boone felt better already. “That coke?”
“It’s meth.” Big Duke answered like he knew.
“Shit.” Boone smiled. “Now that’s what I’m talkin’ ‘bout. Let me see that, D.”
Boone looked around the car for something. “Man, I wish we could smoke this.” Damian handed him a rolled dollar bill over the seat. “Thanks, D. What ‘bout you, cowboy?” Big Duke shook his head and said no—“You partake?”—but Boone wasn’t listening. He’d taken his first snort and his brain lit up, his pupils dilating, Boone already twitching after only one hit. He took another and one after that and fuck if he didn’t feel better than before.
And he said as much. “Fuck if I don’t feel better now.”
Big Duke was giving him a look, Boone he didn’t particularly like. Pass judgment on me, Boone thought, and when the other man started to answer—“I’m just saying”—it was like he’d heard every single word Boone had thought—“I’m a do a job with a man, I need that man’s head to be straight.”
“Don’t worry about my head.” Boone said it aloud, wondering if maybe he’d said the other thing out loud too.
“You ain’t the only one I got concerns for.” Big Duke glanced at Damian in the rear view mirror.
“Make you feel any bett
er,” Boone was preening himself in the sun visor mirror, checking out his gums, “you wait outside with the car.”
“Yeah. Think I’ll do that.”
“Need a man’s head to be straight,” Boone mimicked the driver.
“Yeah, that’s right.”
Fuckin’ nigger, Boone mentally dismissed the cowboy-wanna-be.
“Now why’d you go and have to say that? You just met me and you—”
“I didn’t say shit.” Boone looked at the man with new interest. Big Duke. Pass judgment on me. You look like some kind of two- bit pimp.
Big Duke had turned and was looking out the windshield again.
Don the Magic Wand here. Juan motherfucker—
“Show some respect.” Big Duke wasn’t looking at him, but his voice was all serious.
“I meant wand,” Boone pushed the sun visor back into place, “and motherfuck yourself. You read minds, that it? That your secret power or somethin’? That why you here?”
The black man ignored him.
“Let me ask you somethin’, Big Duke.” Boone lowered his head, took another hit. “You ride a horse? Drive a bike?” Big Duke’s face remained impassive. “Huh? A chopper? Nah, man calls himself John Wayne—” something on the side of Big Duke’s face twitched “—doesn’t even ride an iron horse. Kind of bullshit is that?”
“What you saying?” The shotgun was still resting on Duke’s lap, the barrels pointed in Boone’s direction.
“I’m just sayin’.” Boone flicked the visor down again, looked at himself in it. “Big Duke. Okay. But I’m thinkin’ more like Isaac Hayes, you know? The Duke? Escape from New York?”
“You’re fucking with me.”
“We should have some chandeliers on this car is all I’m—”
“Yes you are. I can tell what you’re thinking, so don’t try and lie. Believe me, I don’t want to be here. Son of a bitch. You just met me and you—”
I Kill Monsters: The Revenants (Book 2) Page 10
