Slay Bells

by Remington Kane

  Giacconi stared at Joe, and then waved him over. Joe left his seat and walked around to stand beside the old man, who reached out and gripped his arm.

  “You’re the best damn man I know, Joey, and when Johnny takes my place I want you to treat him as if he were me, no different, do you understand me?”

  Joe squeezed the old man’s shoulder.

  “Once he’s Don Rossetti, my life is his, just as now it is yours. I’ll protect him, Sam, you have my word.”

  Giacconi released Joe’s arm.

  “Good man, Joey. Now tell me, is my grandson here yet?”

  “Pia said that he’d be here any minute.”

  “Good, send him up when he comes. I need to talk to him as well.”

  “Has he asked to be a part of the family again?”

  Sam laughed.

  “The kid never stopped asking.”

  “He’s not a kid anymore Sam, you know?”

  “I know, but I couldn’t risk losing him, not after I lost his father, but like you say, Sammy’s a man now. I’m going to tell him that he can do what he wants after he finishes college.”

  “He’ll choose The Family.”

  “If he does, keep an eye out for him.”

  “That goes without saying.”

  The sound of a car door opening and closing came from the front of the house, and when Joe looked out the window, he saw Mario driving off in the limo.

  He turned back to Sam and smiled.

  “It looks like Sammy is here.”

  ***

  Wexler was dead.

  Tanner had fulfilled the contract and was leaving the building by the metal staircase at its rear. Although the building was old, it had been maintained, and the stairs gleamed with a fresh coat of black paint.

  The stairs creaked a bit, but there were no loud groans from the metal that would attract attention. Tanner moved down the steps with a pack on his back that he had taken from Wexler’s apartment, along with several other items.

  Back inside, the kiddie porn was in plain view. Tanner left the photos scattered atop Wexler’s corpse, lest anyone finding him felt sorry for the way the man met his fate.

  As a rule, Tanner killed quickly, but he made an exception in Wexler’s case.

  Tanner was about to head back to his car when he decided to make another exception. The shadowy struggle he’d witnessed taking place in the neighboring building had filled him with curiosity.

  He gazed over at the building, which was a twin of Wexler’s, and on impulse he began climbing a second metal staircase, but this time he was going up.

  As Tanner reached the rear of the second floor apartment where the loud thud had come from, he noticed the splotches of blood coating the inside of a window. The window was small and had frosted glass, however Tanner knew blood when he saw it, and the thick dark traces of fluid that marred the window were fresh as well.

  He remembered seeing what appeared to be a knife in the grip of one of the struggling men who had been silhouetted against the front window, and it appeared that the knife had been put to use.

  His curiosity fully piqued, Tanner moved over towards the window and heard a man talking in accented English. The accent sounded Middle Eastern to his educated and much travelled ear, but the words were too faint, and Tanner couldn’t make out very much of what the man was saying.

  The words, “Mass casualties,” caught Tanner’s attention, as did the words “Times Square.” When no one answered the man, Tanner wondered if he were talking on a phone, but no, the man’s cadence sounded as if he were speaking to someone in the room.

  That opinion gained weight a moment later when a muffled cry of agony was heard.

  The sound was a familiar one to Tanner, for he had spent the last hour eliciting similar cries of pain from the late Richard Wexler.

  Someone was being tortured, or rather had been, because the next words out of the torturer’s mouth was the word “Goodbye”, followed by a taunt to his victim about their imminent death.

  Tanner moved over towards a larger window that displayed blue curtains and placed an ear upon it to listen. He was rewarded with the sound of the man conversing with someone, and this time it sounded as if he were talking on the phone.

  The man was speaking English again but talking in what sounded like code. He spoke of starting “A New Fire,” and told his caller that he would have to make “A sacrifice.” Seconds later, the call ended suddenly and Tanner heard a door opening and closing.

  Something serious had gone on inside the apartment, with possibly something disastrous to follow. The phrase, “Mass casualties,” echoed through Tanner’s mind, and he threw caution to the wind, smashed open the window, and entered the apartment.

  CHAPTER 11 – It started with carnations

  Merle and Earl Carter grinned at each other as they held twenty-five grand apiece in their hands.

  It was the biggest score of their criminal lives.

  Since leaving their farm in Arkansas, the boys had scratched and clawed a living from the world with petty crimes and auto theft, but this latest score was the stuff of dreams and they were giddy from just thinking of all the things they’d buy with the cash.

  They were staying in a tenement house on the Lower East Side that had seen better days, and were sitting on the floor between their lumpy twin beds.

  “I’m gonna buy a new suit,” Merle said, “And a new pair of boots to go with them.”

  “Me too, and then I’m gonna go into a fancy restaurant and order champagne.”

  “New Years is comin’, we should get ourselves some dates and paint the town.”

  Earl looked at his brother.

  “Dates? You know two women that will go out with us?”

  Merle thought about it and shook his head.

  “No, but hell, we’ll hire a couple of hookers; that way we know we’ll be gettin’ lucky.”

  Earl laughed loudly, and it caught the attention of one of their fellow tenants.

  ***

  In the room that sat to the left of Merle and Earl’s, Ricky Horton stood up on his bed, and then climbed atop his headboard to look through an old metal heat vent cover that hadn’t worked in years.

  However, the vent did allow Ricky to see into the room next to him, a fact that filled him with glee back when two young singers named Savannah and Hanna once rented the room.

  Those young ladies had moved out years ago, and since then, none of the new occupants of the room were worth peeping at, especially Merle and Earl. However, Earl’s gleeful laugh had made Ricky curious.

  Ricky was twenty-six and had lived in his tiny apartment since his mother kicked him out of her home when he turned eighteen. Other than a short prison sentence, the tenement house had been his home as an adult.

  A very tall man, Ricky was covered in tattoos on his back, chest, and arms. He never had much education, and like Merle and Earl he sought to get through life without expending too much effort.

  When Ricky looked down from the vent and saw the brothers sitting cross-legged on the floor between the beds, he thought that they were playing a board game of some sort, that is, until he spotted the stacks of money.

  The sight of so much cash sent a shiver through Ricky. When the top of the narrow headboard made the soles of his bare feet ache, he lowered himself back onto the bed.

  He then sat on the side of it and tried to think of a way to relieve the Carter brothers of their windfall. Having been a sneak thief and an opportunist for most of his life, it didn’t take Ricky long to come up with a simple plan.

  ***

  Sara arrived at a bar in midtown and took a seat on a stool. She was wearing the skirt and blouse she had worn during the raid, but had pinned a white carnation to the right lapel of her winter coat.

  The carnation was there so that her contact could identify her. The man had called the tip hotline days earlier. He said that he had info about an organization formed around the criminal underworld and unscrupulous bus
iness executives and Wall Street types.

  Such a rumor had been floating around for at least a year, but Sara had never given it much credence. If such a marriage between corporate and criminal ever took place, the corporate side wouldn’t survive.

  Given time, the criminals would take over, that is, unless someone on the corporate side was even more devious and coldblooded. In any event, it was worth checking out and there was always the chance that it could lead to something that would help her climb the ladder within the Bureau.

  Sara Blake planned to be the first female Director of the FBI and nothing was going to stand in her way.

  “Pardon me, but is this seat taken?”

  Sara turned her head to look at the man who had spoken. He was wearing a red carnation, signifying that he was her contact. He was also one gorgeous hunk of man. He wasn’t male model perfect like Jake Garner, but there was something about him that made Sara’s heart flutter.

  “No one is sitting there,” Sara said, and the man settled beside her, while pointing at her carnation.

  “Well, I’m here, but I have to tell you, I am nervous.”

  “Don’t be, I’m not going to press you to tell me anything, but if you have information that could save lives I do hope that you’ll share it.”

  The man smiled and Sara nearly melted. She hadn’t been so smitten over anyone since she was a girl.

  “I don’t know about saving lives,” the man said, “But there is a lot of corruption going on.”

  Sara smiled back at the man.

  “I’m FBI Agent Sara Blake and anything you tell me will be kept in confidence. You don’t have to worry about being compromised.”

  “That’s good to know, but I’m not sure where to begin.”

  “Why don’t you start by telling me your name?”

  The young man offered his hand, as he smiled once more.

  “How do you do, Sara Blake, my name is Brian Ames.”

  CHAPTER 12 – Fourteen Marker Street

  Tanner let his gun lead the way as he stepped over the broken window glass and into the apartment.

  He was in a bedroom, but the odor of blood hit him as he moved out into the apartment’s short hallway.

  He noticed that a coffee table had been tipped over in the living room and that there was a bloodstain on the carpet. The stain was near the front window, through which, Tanner had earlier seen a struggle take place.

  Tanner headed towards the bathroom on the left, where the Middle Eastern man had been talking to his victim. When he reached the doorway he stared in at the blood-spattered room.

  The man was gone, but his victim remained, and his wounds told Tanner that he had been killed with a knife.

  No, not killed, not quite, as the man’s chest hitched with a feeble attempt at drawing in a breath. He was a young white man who had been in good shape, and had curly blonde hair.

  He had been stripped naked and bound at the wrist and ankles with duct tape. Another strip of tape was across his mouth.

  On the floor, in front of the window, was a balled-up shower curtain that the torturer had used as a crude poncho to keep the blood off his clothing. A hole was cut in its center that was big enough to fit a head through.

  Before entering the bathroom, Tanner leaned in and grabbed a towel off a shelf that sat beside the door. Then, he tossed the towel atop the floor so that he wouldn’t tread in the blood. Once inside the room, he reached down and gripped a corner of the tape covering the man’s mouth, then gently peeled it back.

  Whoever had wielded the knife was a pro, and vicious. The things that had been done to the man lying in the tub made the punishment Tanner inflicted on Wexler look tame by comparison.

  There seemed to be no place on the man’s body that the blade hadn’t touched, including his genitals, and when the man opened his eyes, Tanner saw that he had been blinded as well.

  “Can you hear me?” Tanner asked as he leaned closer. “The man who did this to you, who is he?”

  The man twitched, opened his mouth, and blood poured forth. He was bleeding internally and would soon be dead.

  Tanner was about to straighten up when the man attempted to speak again.

  “Mar... Marker...”

  “Marker? Is that the name of the man who did this?”

  The man gave his head a tiny shake and spoke again.

  “He kept asking me... about... 14 Marker Street. Stop them... stop... stop—”

  The man’s body went rigid, but it only lasted an instant before he slumped deeper into the tub. He was gone.

  Tanner looked about the bloody room and saw that the man’s clothes hung on a hook behind the bathroom door. He found the dead man’s wallet in a back pocket of the suit pants, but the man’s credentials had been kept in his jacket, along with a badge.

  The dead man had been a cop with the New York Department of Sanitation, and his name was Michael O’Leary.

  ***

  After looking about the apartment’s small living room and shoebox size kitchen, Tanner returned to the bedroom. A quick check of the clothes in the closet told him that the apartment was occupied by a man who was young, but not into trends.

  There were no T-shirts with catchy sayings on them, but then, the wardrobe was rather limited. It consisted of one stylish black suit, while several pairs of jeans and chinos sat atop a shelf beside shirts that were conservative in style, but colorful.

  No pictures or posters decorated the walls, but Tanner found a photo in a bedside drawer that showed a light-skinned Arab man in an embrace with a blonde. The photo was taken in bright daylight in front of the Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park, and was probably the result of asking a kind stranger to take the photo.

  On the back of the photo and written in English were the words, ME AND JENNY, NOVEMBER 20, 2013.

  The young couple looked very happy. Due to glare from the bright sunlight across her face, Tanner couldn’t see details of the girl’s features, such as eye color, and most of her blond hair was tucked beneath a knit cap. Still, Tanner thought he would recognize her if he saw her in person.

  Also in the drawer was a statement from the electric company that was for a Sharad Jones. Tanner doubted that this Sharad was the man who had tortured Officer O’Leary, because that man had sounded older than the youth in the picture.

  Fourteen Marker Street, Tanner thought, and he stepped back through the broken window and headed down the metal stairs.

  CHAPTER 13 – Mugged by Santa

  Merle opened the door to his room and received a face full of pepper spray.

  Before the spray incapacitated him, he’d caught a glimpse of a tall man in a Santa suit. It was his neighbor, Ricky Horton, but he was unrecognizable behind all the fake white whiskers.

  Earl rushed over to help his brother. Merle was screaming and had dropped to his knees, and Earl was headed towards the man who had hurt him, to push him away.

  His raised hands saved him from getting as bad a blast of the pepper spray as Merle had received. It was still enough to send him into a coughing fit while irritating his eyes, and like his brother, Earl fell to his knees.

  The pepper spraying Santa rushed into the room and grabbed a red velvet bag. It was the same bag the brothers had used to carry the cash away from the home of Francis Nash, and it was a perfect match for the costume of the Santa who attacked them.

  Santa shoved the bundles of cash into the sack and was headed back out the door when Earl lunged and grabbed the man’s ankle. Santa kicked at Earl to free himself, and as the boot came at his face, Earl saw that there was a splotch of white paint on the bottom of the boot. In fact, he saw it three times. On the third kick to his chin, Earl released his grip and Santa sprinted away with their ill-gotten gains.

  Then came the sound of Santa’s pounding footsteps going down the stairs, followed by the creaking of a door opening and closing, as the man left the building.

  After flexing his jaw and finding that it still worked, Earl helpe
d his brother into the bathroom down the hall from their room. Merle was still coughing, as he had inhaled some of the spray.

  Earl led him to the sink and Merle gargled with warm water. After that, he washed the pepper spray off his skin as well as he could; Earl did the same while leaning over the tub.

  When he could finally talk, Merle looked over at his brother with red-rimmed eyes.

  “That bastard took our money, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah, and that fancy red bag too.”

  Merle sat on the closed toilet bowl seat and moaned.

  “All that money, but hey, do you think it was the same fella we stole the money from? He did have a Santa suit.”

  “It weren’t him,” Earl said, as he sat on the lip of the tub.

  “How do you know? All the Santas look alike.”

  “I know because I got a look at the bottom of his right boot. There was white paint on it, and it weren’t all that old either. Plus, this dude was tall and skinny.”

  “Damn, we’ll never find him.”

  “I think it was someone that lives in the building, you know, because of that paint on his boot.”

  Merle looked at his brother with a blank expression, but then he got it.

  “The fat guy on the fourth floor, he spilled that paint outside the other day when he dropped the can.”

  “Yup, right by the bottom step,” Earl said. “And that means whoever took that money probably lives here.”

  “Yeah, but who?”

  Earl stood and headed for the door.

  “Let’s go talk to Miss Mary; she knows everyone who lives in this building.”

  Merle hesitated. Miss Mary did know everyone because she owned the building; she could also talk your ear off.

  Earl beckoned his brother to follow.

  “C’mon now, the sooner we talk to Miss Mary, the sooner we get that money back.”

  “I guess, but Lordy that woman does go on a spell.”

  “She makes them good oatmeal raisin cookies though, remember?”

  Merle did remember. The one time they visited the old woman she had talked them to death, but she had also fed them homemade cookies that reminded Merle of the ones their mother used to make for them.