I nodded. He was pissed, but not at me.
“Guess you were right, boss,” Ray said.
“Porca miseria. I told you we shouldn’t trust him, Ray. Lousy dope addicts. Their word isn’t worth a bowl of wet Cheese Doodles. I fucking knew there was somebody on the inside leaking to Ciccarone, that slick shit. Che palle! Really burns my ass.” The boss turned back to me. “Jaworzyn say anything about where he was going? Did he mention Dom Bianchi or the Ciccarones?” I shook my head but before I could speak the boss waved his hand. “Nah, of course not. Why would he say anything to you? Cazzo! Mother Mary, this really burns my ass.”
“Sorry, boss,” Ray said. “I never woulda thought Lester would turn on us. He’s done a lot of good hits for the family. Figured he would take care of Dom too. It just don’t make sense.”
“If he hasn’t betrayed us then where the hell is he? And where the hell is Dom? They ran the fuck off, Ray. Ciccarone’s buying up all our guys—Franco and Paulie, Dom, Jaworzyn.”
The boss took angry puffs of his cigar, holding it in his teeth and crossing his arms over his paunch. Awkward silence thrummed in the room and I sure as hell wasn’t going to break it. The boss pointed at me with the stogie.
“Alright, Ashbrook. From now on, you report to Ray here. He’ll be the one who gives you work. If you hear from Lester Jaworzyn, you let Ray know right the fuck away, you got it?”
I nodded. “Yes, sir. I will.”
“Good.” He gave me a small smile with one side of his mouth. “Ray says you’re a whizz with these messes. You keep up the good work.”
“You bet. Thank you, sir.”
“What about the girl?” Ray asked.
Inside I cringed but I kept a straight face. I was hoping Ray had forgotten about her, having only met her the one time. Had Lester mentioned she was going to be at the warehouse last night? Ray didn’t seem to know her name, and Sage had always said Lester kept her safe, so maybe the mob didn’t know she was his cousin.
“What?” I said.
“She still working with you?” Ray asked.
All eyes fell on me.
“No,” I told them. “Not anymore.”
Ray shrugged. “Uh, that’s too bad. She was a nice piece, uh?” He turned to Abe. “You shoulda seen this babe, maddone.”
“Where’d this girl go?” the boss asked, his eyes dark again.
I held his gaze. “I don’t know. One day she just decided to bow out.”
“Bow out? Nobody gets to bow out once they’re in.”
“That’s just what Lester told me.”
“Well there you go. The prick probably took her along with him to clean up Ciccarone’s messes.”
“Yeah. They seemed pretty tight.”
“I’ll bet,” Ray said, smirking. “I’d be real tight with her too.”
The boss ignored him. “You let us know if you hear from her, Ashbrook. Or Lester, or Dom or anybody else. And if you get tempted to join up with those Ciccarone cocksuckers, you just remember that actions have consequences, understand?”
I nodded. “Yes, sir. I won’t let you down.”
“That’s what I like to hear. You’re the whole clean up team now. You won’t have to split your pay anymore, unless you want to bring on an assistant down the road. That’s a better deal than Ciccarone’s going to give you.”
I nodded again, keeping up the smile.
“Good,” the boss said. “Now go on, get outta here, I’ve got other shit to do.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
After a night a serious drinking, I awoke in bed before dawn, pleasantly surprised to have made it there. Usually I fell asleep in my chair in front of the idiot box, watching the latest miracle knife cut through tin cans as easily as a tomato. I limped to the bathroom to brush my teeth. In the mirror, a haggard old man looked back at me, his bloodshot eyes lost in deep, purple sockets. His gray hair was going somehow grayer, and there was a new mark on his left temple that might have been a liver spot or the beginnings of skin cancer. I spit into the sink.
I went to the window on my way back from taking a piss and gazed out at the cosmos. A veil of gray swallowed the stars but a haunting moon was centered on the skyline. Old snow sat in the branches of the evergreens and I could hear the breeze whistling around the walls of the building. A feeling of peace overtook me. Maybe I’d been right when I’d told Carmen everything was going to be okay.
There was a knock at the door.
***
“Mind if I come in?” asked Lieutenant George Hallahan.
Behind the detective stood a uniformed policewoman. I recognized her as the one who’d been at the Shellby gas station crime scene. It seemed like a lifetime ago.
“Yes, of course,” I said, finally stepping aside.
This is it.They’ve finally come for me.
Maybe it was for the best. I could only hope the charges were simple murder and not defiling the dead. I could live with being known as a mafia grunt, but I didn’t want to be the next Ed Gein.
Christ, what have I done?
They came inside and as I shut the door behind them there was a second where I considered making a break for it, jumping over the ledge of the walkway and hoping my ankles wouldn’t break from the two-story drop.
“I hope we haven’t come by too late . . . or too early,” Hallahan said.
His courtesy confused me. Wasn’t he here to haul me off to the county jail?
I shrugged. “Not at all, detective.”
“This is officer Davis,” he said, introducing her.
She reached out. Surely if I shook her hand she would use the other one to slap a handcuff over my wrist. But I couldn’t leave her hanging there, so I bit my cheek harder and took her hand. Two pumps and she let it go. What the hell is going on?
“I’m sure you’re wondering what we’re doing here,” Hallahan said.
“Yeah, you could say that.”
“Well, I’m afraid I’m not just dropping by to say hello.”
No fucking shit, Hallahan. “Oh. Okay.”
He smiled halfheartedly. “Don’t worry. You’re not in any trouble. We’d just like to ask you some questions. Mind if we sit down?”
He looked around for a place to do so. There was a small card table I sometimes ate meals on. Hallahan took off his trench coat and draped it over the back of a chair before sitting in it. His shoulder holster made me sniff nervously.
“Mike,” he began, “I’m here to talk to you about your old partner, Sage Jaworzyn.”
I was biting my cheek so hard I could taste blood. Beneath the table, I picked at my cuticles.
“Oh?”
“I’m wondering when the last time you saw her was.”
The image of my spurting cock coming out of Sage’s bloody neck flashed across my mind. I shifted in my seat. With the mob, I’d had some time to plan out my lies. But I hadn’t expected this. I was going to have to spin new lies for the cops. Not only did I have no idea what they were looking for, but I also knew they were trained to spot a bullshit artist.
“Oh, gee,” I said, furrowing my brow for show. “I’m not sure of the exact date.”
“Roughly then.”
“Maybe, sometime in late November.”
“Are you still in contact with her?”
So he doesn’t know she’s dead. “No. Not for a while.”
Shit, I thought. They can check phone records. Hopefully they haven’t yet.
“I spoke to your old boss,” Hallahan said. “Harry Ryker. He told me he let Sage go the same time he fired you. November 22nd. Same day as the Shellby Station shootings. He said the two of you had developed an inappropriate relationship and that it was affecting your work.”
If Harry had elaborated any further, I’d probably have been read my rights by now.
“Yes, that’s true.”
Davis scribbled in her notebook.
“So, you were lovers?” Hallahan asked.
“Briefly, yes. It was very cas
ual.”
“She was a good deal younger than you.”
But legal. “Yes, she was.”
“Did she introduce you to any of her friends or family?”
I thought of Lester coming out of Sage’s bedroom, his jeans undone. “Not really. She has a cousin. I think his name is Lecter or something. I only met him once.”
Hallahan and Davis shared a look.
“Tell me about him, Mike.”
“Not much to tell, really. He was tall. Skinny. Thinning blonde hair. Seemed kind of sleazy, to tell you the truth. I only met him the one time.”
“Where?”
“At Sage’s house, when I went to pick her up for a job.”
“Which job? What day was this?”
“I’m not sure which one it was, we had a lot of them.”
Hallahan’s nostrils made a faint whistle. “This cousin you met is a man named Lester Jaworzyn. We’ve connected him to organized crime. We think he was involved in some mob assassinations and have reason to believe Sage was his accomplice in a handful of them.”
I blinked. “Sage is a hit man?”
Hallahan smirked. “I know it may be hard to believe that a young woman like her could be involved in this sort of thing, but her cousin Lester has deep ties to large crime syndicates. I looked up Sage and it turns out the two of them have a long criminal history together, going back to their childhood—theft, robbery, arson, drug dealing, you name it. If not for their family’s wealth they both would be in prison by now, but big money buys the best lawyers. The rich rarely do time.
“Anyway, we believe Sage was helping her cousin clean up after these killings. I think that’s why she took the job with Ryker in the first place, to learn from you how to make sure there’s no DNA left on a scene. Why else would a woman with that much money take such a lowly job—er, um, no offense.”
“None taken.”
“You still doing your own clean up business?”
“Here and there.”
“Mmm. Have to build up a reputation to get the jobs, huh?”
“Yeah. You know.”
Davis continued to scribble, never looking up from her pad. She was inhumanly stoic, a cyborg. Hallahan sat back in his chair.
“Did Sage do any work for you on the side?” he asked.
I decided it was best to distance myself from her as much as possible, to shorten the timeline of our relationship.
“No. After Ryker let us go, that was that.”
Hallahan squinted again. “Can you think of anything Sage might’ve said or done that we should know about?”
I pretended to mull it over before shaking my head. “Not off hand.”
He leaned in. “Last question, Mike. Sage and Lester seem to have vanished without a trace. Any thoughts as to where they might be?”
My mind flashed on cold, icy dirt being thrown on bleached bones.
“Sorry,” I said. “I have no idea.”
Hallahan looked to Davis and it took everything I had to keep from biting my nails. My breath was trapped inside of me and my lungs felt ready to burst. The detective nodded. Davis snapped her folder closed.
“Fair enough,” Hallahan said. He took his wallet out and produced a business card. “Contact me if you think of anything at all, no matter how small it may seem.” He sighed. “Somehow I feel like something will come to you.” He said this as if to say you know something you’re not telling me. “Listen, I know how scary it sounds when I say things like organized crime and assassinations. I don’t want you to be too afraid to talk to me. This is a big case, Mike. We’ll protect you if you become an informant. Bringing in the Jaworzyn cousins could be the first step in breaking down two major crime syndicates in Connecticut. I’d personally see to it that you and your family were placed in witness protection and relocated.”
The police officers stood up in unison and I rose and shook his hand when he extended it.
“See if you can think of anything,” Hallahan said. He wore the same friendly smile he’d had on at the hardware store, warm and genuine. “Okay?”
“Sure thing, detective. I want to help if I can.”
Then they were out the door.
I locked it behind them and went back to the table, flicking Hallahan’s card with my fingers. I put my face into my hands to block out the world and took long, deep breaths to slow my accelerated heart.
I thought about the Endrizzi family, and of Ray, Abe and the boss. Witness protection sounded pretty good. If I spun things correctly, I could not only connect the dots for Hallahan when it came to Sage and Lester’s involvement with the Endrizzi mob, but I might also be able to pin the murders I’d committed on the mob too. Given the boss’s suspicions about Sage and Lester betraying them for their rival, it would seem logical that they had put a hit out on the cousins. Even if I had to confess to cleaning up a few times, I could probably bargain for immunity if I told the police what they wanted to hear and fingered the Endrizzi clan. I would get out of organized crime for good and wouldn’t have to constantly worry that the boss would find out what had really happened at the warehouse or that Hallahan would discover I’d been just as involved with Lester as Sage had. That kind of peace of mind was a tempting.
If I could handle the stress of all that had happened, I figured I could deal with the courts and the testimony, and I could handle starting over somewhere new, just as I had when my family had moved when I was a kid, helping me escape my role as Mike Ass-brook. This time there would be no Mike at all. I would be John or Bill or Hank or Damian. A whole new me in a whole new place—maybe Phoenix, Chicago or San Francisco. For once I would welcome change.
But then I thought about Carmen and Fay, and how they’d felt when I’d shown up at the house the other day, demanding they drop everything. They’d been so upset, so hurt by my inconsideration. They weren’t little kids anymore, ready to go anywhere Mommy and Daddy wanted to go. They were becoming young women now. They had their own lives and friends. They had school and plays and ice-skating. There was a sense of community for them here, a sense of home. Their parents’ separation had done enough damage to that. Uprooting them now and taking them someplace they’d never been—stripping them of everything, including their names—was an act so cruel I wouldn’t blame them if they never forgave me, for I would never be able to forgive myself. There was still so much patching to do with the girls. If I did this, it would tear the remaining shreds to pieces too small to repair.
I shredded Hallahan’s card to pieces instead.
I was staying here.
I would stay on with the Endrizzis, cleaning up blood and guts and grossness for the mafia, keeping my nose down and my mouth shut. It would keep my girls here and happy, bringing in enough money to give them all the things they wanted and needed, making me a good father on his way to being great one. And if I was eventually whacked or arrested, that would simply be my fate and I would bear it on my own. I wasn’t going to protect my own ass by sacrificing the happiness of my daughters.
Besides, the work wasn’t so bad. I was good at it too. And with Sage gone, I probably wouldn’t be tempted to do any of the vile, disgusting things I’d indulged in before. I mean, if I ended up alone with a good-looking dead girl who wasn’t too mutilated—one of the syndicate’s pretty hookers or young dope dealers or sexy trophy girls—I might get a little hot under the collar, knowing what I know, understanding how giving they can be, how cathartic the touch of a fresh cadaver can feel. But that didn’t exactly mean I would give in to that fever.
Although, it does get lonely when you’re a single dad in his forties. And nude, young women are hard to resist when they never tell you to stop, no matter what dirty things you’re doing to them.
Still, I figured I could probably control myself. It’s not like I was some deviant the way Sage was. She had rubbed off on me, but only a little. Not enough to make me just like her, right? I’d just seen an opportunity to fulfill a fantasy or two, and I’d taken it. Sure it was
wrong, but who hasn’t done something they’re ashamed of when it comes to sex? Who hasn’t fucked someone who was beneath them, someone fat or ugly or lower class? Who hasn’t used sex to get ahead socially or to get revenge on an ex? Everyone has their dirty little secrets. When it comes to our sexual desires, we all slip up sometimes. People do crazy things when they’re horny. And yes, the thought of getting a call for another secret cleanup of a dead stripper or teenage drug dealer did get my dick hard even without the pill. But I would okay. I had control of myself now, right?
Probably.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to my readers, first and foremost. I have such a deep love you all. Your appreciation for what I do makes my heart swell up.
Much praise to Marc Ciccarone and Joe Spagnola for making this one shine. There’s a reason I keep working with you guys. Additional praise to the beta-readers and John McGuiggan. You helped me turn a sick rough draft into an even sicker final product.
Thanks to my truly supportive and talented friends Josh Doherty, C.V. Hunt, Gregg Kirby, Chad Stroup, John Wayne Comunale, Andersen Prunty and my best buddy Bear.
Huge hugs to my lady friend Tangie Silva for over twenty years of being a cheerleader for my writing, for always showing enthusiasm and making me feel so intensely special so effortlessly.
And the biggest of thanks to Tom Mumme—always.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kristopher Triana is the author of the novels Full Brutal, Body Art, The Ruin Season, Shepherd of the Black Sheep and Toxic Love, as well as the novella The Detained and the short story collection Growing Dark.
His fiction has appeared in many anthologies, magazines and audiobooks, including Chiral Mad 4, Year’s Best Hardcore Horror, Stiff Things, and Blood Bound Book’s DOA series, to name a few. He’s drawn praise from Cemetery Dance, Rue Morgue Magazine, Scream Magazine, Publisher’s Weekly, and the late, great Jack Ketchum. In addition, his work has been translated to multiple languages.
He lives in Connecticut.
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