All Due Respect Issue #2

by Owen Laukkanen

  “Mr. Merlino,” the director said, cutting me off, “you are being paid to collect intelligence, not to blow people away.”

  “Oh, they find him already?”

  “Yes, they did.”

  “Well, you can’t expect me to ‘collect intelligence’ right if I leave a neat little trail of witnesses behind me. You know as well as I do that he would have called the cops and his butt buddies too, and this little spy and chase shit would be over.”

  “Did you at least get him to talk first?”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Said the guys who did it are Sheriff Parker, George Smith, and Larry King.”

  “You mean Larry Smith and George King?”

  “Whatever.”

  “Did he say anything about bodies? There are bodies, right? They’re not being held somewhere?”

  “Nah. They’re dead. He didn’t know where they put ’em. Only the Three Stooges there know that little sweetheart.”

  “Well, we’re gonna need you to find that out for us.”

  “And then what, let the assholes get away? ‘Oh, don’t kill ’em; that’s awful.’ What do you want me to do? I beat one of ’em up, get him to tell me where they buried the bodies, and then I let him go and he tells his buddies and…what?”

  “Don’t worry about that. It’s not your problem.”

  “Fine. Fuck you.”

  I hung up.

  Once I was done fuming, I opened up the file and found the part about George King. Fifty-eight, King called himself the “Grand Wizard” or some shit. Guess that made him kinda like the don. I’ve never personally tried to whack a boss, but I know it wouldn’t be easy, so I skipped over him and went on to Larry Smith.

  Ol’ Smithy, it said, owned an auto shop outside town. Since it was hardly five, I decided to try there first.

  The drive took twice as long as it should have because downtown Louisa was closed. You’d think they’d never had a murder before.

  So, I had to take a detour. It was getting dark by the time I pulled into Smith’s Auto Service.

  The place was closed, kinda like I expected it to be. After I looked up Smith’s address, I shot out a window and left.

  Smith lived in a little house in a field of little houses. I parked across the street and killed the engine.

  I watched the place for maybe an hour, until the ugly blue paint got on my nerves. I was about to drive off and call it a day when the garage door opened, and some asshole kid, maybe sixteen or seventeen, started backing a motorbike out. Behind him was an older guy pushing a lawn mower.

  The kid took off and the father disappeared around the side of the house. I picked my gun up off the passenger seat and slipped it into my waistband.

  I got out and crossed the street. I was just about to round the corner of the garage when the lawn mower man appeared, almost like he forgot something and was going back to get it.

  We startled each other.

  “Who are you?” he demanded.

  “Name’s Merlino,” I said, and grabbed him by the back of his head.

  “Hey!” he screamed, and then the gun was in his mouth.

  I looked around. To the right, another house. The only window in view was covered. To the left, wall. Behind us, the street stood empty and sun-dappled; dusk was drawing on.

  “Look, motherfucker,” I said, “do yourself a favor and tell me the truth.”

  His eyes widened.

  “Okay?”

  He nodded.

  “Where’d you bury those kids?”

  He said something, but the gun was in the way. I pulled it out and jammed it against his temple.

  “Miller’s Quarry,” he stammered, “just past a chain-link fence and under a weeping willow tree.”

  “Show me.”

  I marched his ass across the street and forced him into the car. Just as I was climbing behind the wheel, Smith’s front door opened and a woman in a house dress came onto the porch, wiping her hands with a dish towel.

  “Tell her you’ll be right back,” I said, jabbing him with the gun.

  “I’ll be right back, Margret!” he called. “They need me at the club!”

  “Okay!” she called.

  I toed the gas, and away we went.

  “Who are you, anyway?” Smith asked. We were almost to the quarry, or so he said.

  “None of your business,” I said.

  “I…”

  “Shut the fuck up or I’ll blow your brains out.”

  “Turn right.”

  We took a narrow little dirt road, and followed it for about two miles through the woods before he told me to stop.

  “We walk from here. It’s a quarter mile.”

  I got out of the car and let him lead the way. Quarter mile my ass. It was more like a mile and a half. Finally, we came to a rusted fence with a man-sized hole in the center.

  “Through here,” he said.

  “Ladies first,” I said.

  He glared at me.

  So I punched him.

  “Go on!”

  He led me through hole, and a few feet later, we came to the willow. The earth below it was freshly turned.

  “There.”

  “What’d you do to ’em?” I asked.

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “Yeah?” I asked. “Well, who did?”

  He didn’t reply.

  “Sheriff Parker and George King?”

  A bird cried somewhere. Smithy looked scared.

  “What happened?”

  “Roscoe picked ’em up on the road,” he said at length, “brought ’em back to the club and tied ’em up. George helped. From what they told me, they beat ’em and shot ’em. Cut the nigger’s dick off. They were dead by the time I showed up.”

  I shot him.

  Back at the motel, I called Jackson and told them what I’d found. The director said he was gonna send some guys to check it out. If it was them, he wanted me to drive down to Jackson, pick up my pay, and then “Get your ass back to New York.”

  I hopped in the shower at around ten. When I got out, I threw on a pair of briefs and climbed into bed to watch a little TV. Just as I was getting comfy, the window by the door shattered into a million pieces.

  Knowing a gunshot when I heard it, I threw myself onto the floor and grabbed my piece.

  I heard someone scream.

  Another shot, this one slamming into the wall.

  A motor revved. Another shot. I jumped up and squeezed off a few “fuck you” shots.

  The motor faded. I ran to the door and peered through the hole. Taillights, glowing red, speeding into the night.

  “Motherfuckers!”

  Of course, some asshole called the cops, cops in this case being the sheriff and his deputy.

  Sheriff Parker stood about six feet tall and looked like a farmer, with deep blue eyes and a weather-beaten face. He took down my account, grinning all the while, and promised he’d catch the “travelin’ nigger” who was responsible.

  I called the feds and told them what happened.

  “How did he know it was you?” the director asked.

  “Fuck if I know. If he had any solid evidence I killed that Delmar dick, he’d have taken me in. Right?”

  “I don’t know. This wasn’t the police, though; this was the Klan.”

  “Yeah, well, they shot at the wrong motherfucker.”

  “Don’t do anything!”

  The next day I left Mississippi. In Tampa, I met with a guy I knew through the Larazas and bought a machine gun, some ammo, and a few grenades. I was back in town by midnight, just as the news was starting to break: The three missing civil rights workers had been found buried in a shallow grave under a willow tree.

  I checked out of the motel the next afternoon and drove down to Jackson to get my pay.

  After promising the director to leave right away, I went back to Louisa and parked across from the Hunt and Fish club on Pine Street. PO
KER THURSDAY NIGHT. MEMBERS ONLY.

  Good thing it was Thursday.

  Around five, guys started showing up. There was Larry King. Oh, and the sheriff in plainclothes.

  I waited.

  Once it looked like the gang was all there, I got my carbine and walked across the street, right in front of an oncoming car.

  The doors were unlocked. Inside was a long hallway terminating in a set of stairs. I heard voices.

  At the top of the stairs was a set of double doors. Beyond was a little meeting hall or something; some asshole was standing behind a podium talking about niggers and kikes and commies.

  He must have heard me coming, because he turned and looked at me.

  I blew him away.

  Before he had even fallen, I leapt through the door, guns blazing like a cowboy or something. There were ten guys in folding chairs. I shot all of them like sheep.

  Except Parker. I must have missed him somehow, because the next thing I know, he’s shooting back, and I’m falling against the wall, my guts on fire.

  He was on the floor now, crawling away. I opened up, hitting empty chairs and dead bodies. Parker got to his feet and bolted through a door.

  I threw myself back into the hall, and there he was, limping away. So I did hit him.

  I raised the gun and fired.

  Click-click.

  Fuck. Jammed. I threw it aside and whipped out the pistol.

  Parker was already firing again. He hit me twice, once in the leg and once in the head, taking my ear clean off.

  I don’t remember much after that. I vaguely recall being on top of the dick and strangling him, but I don’t remember how I got there. I do remember pulling the pin of a grenade and shoving it into Parker’s mouth, breaking teeth.

  How I made it away I’ll never know, but I recall staggering out the front door just as the hall behind me went up.

  The next memory I have is being in the hospital, feds hovering over me. They talked a big game about putting me away for life, but the director himself thanked me for taking out the scumbags. All they did was fine me.

  They explained the shooting away by saying there was a civil war in the Klan or something. I don’t know. As soon as I was well enough to travel, they took me back home and left me in bed.

  * * *

  Joseph Rubas has been featured in a number of ’zines and hardcopy publications, including [Nameless], The Horror Zine, The Storyteller, Eschatology Journal, Infective Ink, Strange, Weird, and Wonderful, and Horror Bound Online.

  The Ice-Cold Alibi

  By Eric Beetner

  Des Moines, 1947

  1.

  DOTTIE LOOKED DOWN AT the blood on her husband’s hands, then up to his face, wet with tears.

  “You finally went and did it, huh?” She shook her head and clucked her tongue at him. All Roger could do was sob. He wiped his nose with the back of one bloody hand and smeared a red streak across his left cheek.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

  She put an arm around him and pushed him inside, clear of the door. She peeked out into the hallway in both directions to make sure there were no busybodies like Mrs. Eastway in the hall.

  It had been a good fifteen minutes since Roger came home. She’d bathed him, bundled his bloodstained clothes and wrapped them in twine, refilled his brandy glass and given him what she thought to be ample time to calm down.

  “So, what happened, Roger?”

  He began crying all over again.

  Dottie put her palm over her eyes. Weak. The man she’d married was weak. Even killing another man was no act of strength or bravery. It was weakness. Roger couldn’t take the way Mr. Zucco treated him down at the market, so he’d taken the coward’s way out.

  Dottie admitted it had to be tempting—to spend all day with a meat cleaver in your hand thinking murderous thoughts about your boss and not take action.

  He gathered himself enough to tell a rambling, sob-wracked recounting of one insult too many, one extra joke about his being Polish, one final inappropriate comment about Dottie.

  She hated when Roger tried to defend her “honor.” She could damn well defend herself if she needed it, and her honor was too far gone to need defending anywhere but at the pearly gates. Dottie had never met a good time that didn’t like her right back.

  Roger knew it when he married her. Everyone else in town knew it well before then.

  But it drove Roger crazy. The things Mr. Zucco would say about her, about her past, about what she might do for the right amount. And him with a perfectly attractive wife of his own. The cleaver finally did what Roger had been thinking of doing for months.

  Now I have to clean it up, Dottie thought.

  It wasn’t even that she was against him killing Zucco. The bastard deserved it, sure enough. She felt his eyes on her, heard the whispers. But Dottie didn’t trust Roger as far as she could throw him on matters of even small importance. Covering up a murder? That was a tall order.

  “What did you do with the body?” she asked.

  “I left him there.”

  Dottie rolled her eyes. “Did you at least take the cleaver and dump it somewhere?”

  Roger shook his head like a scolded child.

  “Roger,” she said, “tell me it’s not still in him.”

  He stared at his socks, his shoes bundled with the rest of the blood-spoiled outfit.

  Dottie sighed as she stood. “I’ll be right back.”

  The scene was as Roger described. Zucco lay on the floor of the butcher shop’s back room. She’d used Roger’s key to enter after business hours. The cleaver leaned at an angle with a corner of the blade wedged into Zucco’s sternum. Only a sliver of white could be seen on his butcher’s apron, his own blood mixing with the day’s usual flotsam of butchered meat juices. Other tears in the fabric of his shirt showed there were several blows before the cleaver got stuck in the bone.

  Dottie went to the row of three lockers on the back wall and took out a clean apron, tied it on, and began to clean up.

  An hour later, she returned to their tiny apartment above the shop.

  Roger was there, hugging his knees to his chest and crying. A small swirl of brandy spun at the bottom of his glass as he rocked forward and back, but she noticed the bottle on the windowsill was empty.

  He’s not going to make it, she thought. He’s going to crack up.

  She walked past him into the kitchen and got down the bottle of whiskey. There were about three fingers left and she poured all three.

  “Roger?” she said from the kitchen. She heard only his quiet sobs. She took a drink. “Roger,” she said a little louder. He didn’t respond.

  Dottie downed the drink in a gulp, pushed through the swinging kitchen doors and marched up to Roger who was staring out their window at the red neon letters of Zucco’s Meats that blazed into their bedroom night after night.

  She slapped Roger across the face. “You’ve got to keep it together or we’ll never get away with this.”

  His tears stopped, but now he looked hurt. He hugged his knees tighter. Dottie huffed and went out to sleep on the couch.

  2.

  DOTTIE GRABBED ROGER BY both shoulders and shook. “Come on, wake up!”

  He grunted and grabbed his temples—clearly hungover.

  “You’ve got to make it to work,” she said. “You’ve got to act like everything is normal.”

  Roger let out a long groan and kept his eyes shut.

  Disgusted, Dottie stood and went to the kitchen to check on the coffee. She poured herself a cup and poured a mug for Roger as well. She had the same sinking thought as the night before: He’s going to screw this up.

  If Roger got sent away, she’d have to get a job again. Her only trade wasn’t one she was anxious to return to. Since she had quit entertaining gentlemen for a living, Dottie had put on almost ten pounds, and she liked the way it looked on her. A little fat on a lady showed she led a life of ease. It was the skinn
y ones you knew were hard up for a crust of bread. The ones who would do anything. The ones so easily taken advantage of.

  That wasn’t Dottie anymore. Not if she could help it.

  So she didn’t marry a Rockefeller. Roger gave her a warm bed, all the meat she could cook, and puppy dog devotion. Only after they were married for a few months did she realize his spine was soft as uncooked dough.

  Dottie brought Roger his coffee, shook him until he got out of bed and explained to him his new predicament as he got dressed.

  “If you don’t want everyone in town to know you offed Zucco, then you better act just as surprised as anyone that he’s missing. You don’t know anything, you didn’t see anything.”

  “Did you…?” He looked at Dottie with bloodshot eyes. “Where is he?”

  “The less you know, the better.” She checked the clock. “Now, you’ve got about five minutes to make it down and open up for the day. Zucco’s been late before so it’s nothing new. Treat this like any other day, you hear me?”

  “But, Dot,” he said, on the verge of tears again. “What am I gonna do?”

  “I just told you what you’re gonna do. I can’t do it for you.” She tossed a freshly laundered apron at him. “You want to hit a guy with a cleaver five or six times, you deal with the consequences.”

  Dottie stood over him until he was ready to go.

  3.

  SHE BROUGHT HIM LUNCH at noon. He looked a mess, but that could easily be shrugged off on the hangover.

  Mrs. Eastway was giving her order at the counter when Dottie walked in.

  “And trim the fat, but not all the way. You need a little bit of fat in your diet you know.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Eastway,” Roger said. Even his voice was weak.

  “Hello Mrs. Eastway,” Dottie said.

  “Oh, hello.”

  “Roger, dear. I brought lunch.” She held up a sandwich wrapped in wax paper.

  Roger smiled weakly and nodded to her. He cut Mrs. Eastway’s beef with a long knife. When he reached the bone he leaned both hands on the blade, trying to force it through. Dottie noticed the meat cleaver still hung on the rack where she returned it last night after she plucked it from Zucco’s chest and cleaned it.