by Bill WENHAM
“…or you can not confess and take your chances with us. Believe me, Mr. Cardilli, your decision is really a no brainer, sir,” Lawson said.
Cardilli just glared at him as he struggled in the chair.
Lawson grinned at his partner.
“But before you make your decision, sir, let me show you some excellent and very detailed color photos of someone else who crossed the organization we work for. He was foolish enough to do that without considering the consequences, Mr. Cardilli,” Lawson said. His voice was silky smooth, quiet and polite without even a trace of menace it in.
“The unfortunate man was not given the choice we are offering you, sir. His name was Willoughby, one you are quite familiar with I’m sure.
We were with him only very briefly in Switzerland, Mr. Cardilli. Perhaps you read about it in the press.”
Cardilli had read about it and though it was reported to be horrific, the reporters were not allowed to go into every detail. He stopped struggling and stared, wide eyed at Lawson. He was now sweating profusely.
Lawson picked up one of the photos and held it in front of Cardilli’s face.
“This one is of Willoughby’s girl friend just before she died. She was a very pretty girl once. As you can clearly see, she looked so terribly beaten up that I took pity on her and shot her. My partner here is so very good at what he does but he doesn’t even have an ounce of compassion for his victims.”
Lawson laid the photo back, face down, the table and selected another. He showed it first to Maxwell who gave him a big grin. Then he very slowly showed it to Cardilli. When he saw it, the man’s eyes almost popped out of his head. The terror tactics had begun in earnest but, apart from gagging and restraining him, neither man had laid a finger on him.
“This one was taken right at the beginning of Mr. Willoughby’s dismemberment, sir. But unfortunately you can’t hear his screams in these photographs. If we had only known we would have been here with you today, Mr. Cardilli, we would have taken a video for you.”
Duct tape over his mouth had actually prevented Willoughby from screaming but Cardilli didn’t need to know that. Slowly and deliberately, he replaced the second photo, face down, on the first and selected another. There were still several more in the pile on the table.
“This one is a little more interesting, sir. It was taken about ten minutes into the procedure, Mr. Cardilli. It took that long because we were instructed to only dissect him just a little at a time.”
Cardilli threw his head back and it was obvious he was trying to scream but the duct tape over his mouth prevented it. He was only able to make grunting, moaning sounds. Lawson reached up and gently pulled the sweating man’s head back down to face the photo.
“Of course, he kept passing out on us, sir, just as you will do, but if we’d wanted him to be unconscious, Mr. Cardilli, we would have given him an anesthetic first, wouldn’t we? But that’s not the way our game is played, sir. We’ve always found that wide awake gives us much better results.”
The photo in front of Cardilli was a mass of blood and the partial shot of Willoughby’s naked body. The next shot was the worst, as the enforcers knew it would be. It showed a naked and blood covered Willoughby, alive, wild eyed and with his mouth duct taped over, surrounded by bloodied pieces of his extremities and other body parts.
“Oh, by the way, Mr. Cardilli, just so that there is no misunderstanding at all here, if you do decide not to do as we ask, we will see to your wife, Nellie, first. She is waiting in the next room for your decision, sir.”
Lawson put his own face to no more than an inch or two from Cardilli’s, so close that he could smell the stink of fear emanating from the now terrified man, murderer or not.
“And as a special treat for you, sir, we’ll let you watch. As a preview of your own treatment, you might say.”
Lawson beckoned Maxwell over.
“But I’m being rather selfish here, sir, having all the fun. So, it is time, I think, for my partner to tell you how long it took your friend, Willoughby, to die.”
Maxwell produced a pair of pruning shears from a tote bag on the floor and put them down on the table. Then he sat down on the edge of it.
“What we do, Mr. Cardilli, is done with an almost surgical precision, sir. In order to delay death as long as possible, we must be sure that we do not cut into any major arteries too soon. We are not exactly surgeons, of course, and we don’t have their tools of the trade either.”
He picked up the shears again and ran his finger along the edge of the blade to test its sharpness.
“Did you know that there are fifteen finger joints on each hand alone, Mr. Cardilli? That makes thirty in total. Removing those one at a time will be very time consuming.” He smiled at Cardilli. “And then, of course, there are the joints of the toes. Those can be even move fiddly.”
Maxwell paused and waited as Lawson took some more articles from a bag on the floor beside the table. He carefully arranged an electric chain saw and an extension cord, a meat cleaver, a pair of bolt cutters and an already bloodstained hammer on the table.
Cardilli’s eyes bulged even more at the sight of the assortment of tools and Maxwell continued.
“And we haven’t even mentioned the more interesting bits yet. So, as I’m sure you can see, it takes us a very long time to do our job properly. It actually took Willoughby close to an hour before we allowed him to die, screaming all the way into eternity.
Of course, his mouth was taped up as well, just as yours is but he still managed to make a lot of noise. Moaning rather than screaming, sir. Just like you are doing now, in fact and we haven’t even started yet.
Even then, we finally had to shoot him to shut him up. After all, we were in a hotel. Luckily, some of those Swiss hotels have very thick and sound proof walls.”
Lawson took over the narrative.
“In Willoughby’s case, Mr. Cardilli, we were given specific instructions as to what to do and where to do it - slowly and just little bits at a time. We were given a deadline of an hour and a half to do the job and get out again.”
He looked hard into Cardilli’s terrified face.
“In your case, sir, we received no such instruction regarding time, other than to convince you to confess to the murders, as we have already requested. And in your own house there is no one to either see or hear you, except us of course but we don’t count. Believe me, Mr. Cardilli, my partner and I will never be the cavalry coming to save you at the last minute, sir,”
Lawson smiled benignly at Cardilli.
“So, Mr. Cardilli, with no instruction of any kind, my partner and I will be allowed to exercise our full creativity on this job. But, before we go any further, sir, let me ask you a little question.
Have either you or your wife ever experienced really serious pain? I mean excruciating, mind numbing and unending agony from which you know there can be no possible hope of a reprieve? No?”
Both men slipped on plastic surgical gloves to help the unfortunate Cardilli make his decision. The procedure was about to start. Lawson stared into the man’s terrified eyes.
“Mr. Cardilli, those murders of yours were awfully amateurish you know, sir. We, however, are professionals, experts even, you might say. So, would you like to see some more of these photos? We have some in the later stages. No? Okay then, sir, are you ready to make your decision?”
Cardilli was now slumped in his chair but was able to nod. The polite, easy going and conversational tone that both men were using chilled his blood. If the Devil really existed, then he would surely be like one of these two, Cardilli thought helplessly. He knew if he didn’t do exactly as they said, he would be hunted down and slaughtered even more slowly than Willoughby had been. There would be no escape for him.
Lawson realized the decision had been made. He very carefully and gently removed the duct tape from Cardilli’s mouth. Cardilli had expected it to be ripped off but that would leave marks. Very gentle removal would not.
“Your decision,
please, Mr. Cardilli.” Lawson said.
“Cops,” Cardilli gasped. “I’ll take my chances with the cops.”
Cardilli knew he would probably die, either in the electric chair or by lethal injection. He didn’t even know what system Michigan used nor if they even had the death penalty. Whatever the outcome, with this choice, his actual death, when it came, would be quick. It wouldn’t be long and drawn out like these two sadistic bastards had planned for him,
Lawson and Maxwell smiled wickedly at each other. Cardilli, scared shitless, would now confess and that confession would clear Dean Factor of all charges against him or even the suspicion of any. Torrance would be well pleased with the outcome of this day.
He would ensure that Cardilli, if he was not sentenced to die, would go to jail for life and, one way or another he would never come back out.
Funny thing about life sentences in prison though, with the right kind of incentive to another inmate, a prisoner’s life sentence could be considerably shortened. Sometimes to no more than a couple of days in jail, in fact!
“Good decision, Mr. Cardilli. We’ll release you now and you can go and tidy yourself up a bit. You will then report to the police when you leave here, sir. Do you understand?”
Cardilli nodded and his restraints were cut away. He was breathing heavily but could say nothing. He was still shaking violently.
Lawson said, “We will keep your wife here with us for a while, sir, just in case you decide to have a change of heart. You saw what happened to Cheryl Morton, but this time, sir, we will use your own hammer - the one here on the table, sir. I’m sure you recognize it, don’t you. It wasn’t lost or mislaid after all, was it, sir?
You have until exactly 9a.m. this morning, Mr. Cardilli. At that time, if we are advised you have not done as we have requested, sir, your wife will receive the same treatment as Miss Morton.
Also, at that time, we will be very, very angry with you, Mr. Cardilli, and I’m sure you know by now that you cannot run and you cannot hide from us. We would be angry enough to even drag your dissection out to two hours or more when we caught up with you.”
Lawson gave him one parting shot to strengthen his resolve.
“You would be absolutely astounded at how many parts of you can be removed and for you to still remain alive, Mr. Cardilli. In a tremendous amount of excruciating pain admittedly, but still alive. Just you remember that, sir.”
Fifteen minutes later Cardilli left in his pickup and they were advised he’d turned himself in at 8.45 a.m.
Unfortunately for Cardilli, who should never have believed the word of two thugs anyway, they didn’t do as they said at all. He’d just assumed that if he turned himself in, they would let Nellie go.
The truth was that, shortly after he had left his house, Maxwell had beaten the poor woman to death with Cardilli’s own hammer, the one on the table.
It had been a simple matter for Maxwell to break into Cardilli’s pickup’s toolbox while he was still unconscious from the chloroform. The fool hadn’t even bothered to clean it after bludgeoning Patti Thatcher with it.
When he’d thought he’d lost it, he’d been looking in the wrong toolbox.
The still unconscious Nellie was beaten to death on the side of the road on their way back to Saginaw for their flight to New York. They covered her bloodied head with a plastic bag and she was shoved into the back seat of the car Lawson and Maxwell had stolen especially for this occasion.
Her body and the plastic bag were dumped in a deserted alley in downtown Saginaw. The car was abandoned in the airport packing lot. At most, when checked out by police, it was merely the recovery of a stolen car.
Before Cardilli had even begun his confession at the police station, his wife’s body had already been found. The Dobermans had made sure of that.
They had also made sure that Cardilli’s blood covered hammer was also found nearby. The police pathologist confirmed that Mrs. Cardilli had been killed well before her husband turned himself in.
Cardilli made the mistake of telling the police what had happened at his house and had described the two men. The police didn’t believe a word of it and since he’d already signed his death warrant, his wild and unsubstantiated story to the police just sealed his fate.
The police investigated his home as a matter of course but found nothing disturbed or out of place and certainly nothing to verify his story. That was because nothing physically violent had occurred there recently at all and mental violence leaves no marks!
Cardilli’s murder trial took several months, during which time his house caught fire and burned to the ground, but his actual jail time after sentencing was less than a week. He was found face down in the prison’s showers with a home made shiv in his back. He had apparently been held down until he bled to death.
The prison guards had been well paid to look the other way and once again Torrance was well satisfied with the result. He was a man who couldn’t abide thieves, cheats or murderers, unless they were on his own payroll, and he just hated loose ends or having his boat rocked.
As soon as Cardilli had been sentenced and the slow wheels of justice had begun to turn in his favor, Factor received another visit from Elaine Reid in prison.
“My client has instructed me to advised you that all charges against you have been dropped. You will be advised officially and released later on today. As you have probably realized by now, my client has the power to make many things happen. Amazing things, in fact.
You remember the demise of your unfortunate former partner, Mr. Willoughby, of course. The solution to your problem required a very similar handling, Mr. Factor.”
She stood up, smiled at him and motioned to the guard that she wished to leave. Factor stared at her departing back.
“Oh, my God,” he thought. “She really is one of them!”
Chapter Twenty Four
Although he had never expected to see him again, Max Torrance was in Factor’s office. Petrov had gone to the airport personally to meet him but had gone to his own office once Torrance was shown into Factor’s.
Torrance gave Factor a long hard look and once again, Factor felt a shiver run down his back. This time Torrance hadn’t requested a meeting. He had just said he was coming and that Factor was to be there. It was not a request, it was an order.
Without any preamble, he said, “We’ve decided to cut you loose, Mr. Factor. The truth of the matter is that we don’t have any need for you any more. So this is the end of the line for you.”
Factor thought for a moment that his heart had stopped. As far as he was aware there was no pension plan in the New Yorkers’ organization. He looked at Torrance, only to find him staring back at him impassively with those black hooded eyes.
“Oh, God,” he thought. “This is it!” His next thought was to wonder exactly how they would do it.
He hung his head for a moment in despair. He’d always felt this moment would come but now it was here, he just didn’t how to handle it. He knew pleading or begging wouldn’t cut any ice with Torrance and so he just sat there.
Suddenly he realized that Torrance was silent. Factor looked up and found Torrance smiling at him.
“Dean, I told you at our last meeting you have nothing to fear from me and that still holds true. You’ll be leaving here but I intend to be very fair with you. I will buy you out very generously and you are already a very wealthy man.
Unfortunately, you are also too honest a man, a very good man and neither of those qualities is at all necessary in my organization.”
He paused momentarily.
“So, my friend, as of today Paul Thatcher will take your place here as President and CEO of the Easy Green Garden World Corporation. But it will be Val who actually runs it. Paul will be the boss in name only, just as you were. He will not know how things are really run and you won’t tell him, will you? Sometimes ignorance can be bliss, you know.”
Factor nodded and Torrance smiled at him.
“I pers
onally guarantee you will never get any trouble from us after you leave here, unless you cause us some, of course. But I think you are way to smart for that, aren’t you?”
Factor nodded again, immensely relieved, but still uncertain where this was all going.
“You see, Dean, in an organization such as ours and with the reputation we have to maintain, this kind of thing never happens and to the eyes of any outsider it hasn’t happened now either. It will also never, ever happen again, if you get my meaning.”
The look he now gave Factor was hard for him to interpret. It was almost kindly. This was going far too well and Factor was waiting for the other boot to drop.
“But, as I’ve told you, I consider you to be like family to us and we always look after our own.
So, Dean, go down south with your lovely cop lady, buy yourselves a nice estate down there and a really big boat. We’ll take your old one and your house as part of a deal our lawyers will tell you about.”
Torrance now grinned at Factor.
“Don’t even bother to ask me what it is because, as we say in our business, its one you can’t refuse anyway. Our deals are never negotiable, I’m sure you know that by now.
So, on behalf of the board and me, we all wish you well. Have yourself a long life and enjoy it. Have some fun, fella, and do try to stay out of trouble down there. You can’t expect me to bail you out forever.”
Torrance then said, grinning. “Not exactly the way you thought this meeting would turn out, eh, Dean but even guys like me can have a sense of humor sometimes, you know.”
“No, Max, I didn’t know, but I’m bloody glad you have and thank you.”
“Before I leave, there’s something else you really need to know and by telling you, I think I’m getting just too bloody soft for this business. Its time I got out as well before someone, somewhere decides to take me out,” Torrance said, but he wasn’t smiling now.
“I’m sure you’ve realized by now that your first meeting with Willoughby wasn’t just by random chance.”
He glanced at Factor, who nodded again. Right now he felt just nodding was far safer than speaking.
