by Joshua Guess
Alan nodded slowly, then kept his head perfectly still. Like a good predator, he knew when not to look aggressive. When the gag hung around his neck, the only change was in his breathing. The guy was smart enough to understand the fragility of his situation.
“Why did you do it?” I asked, the simple question leaving no room for interpretation or hedging in its tone.
Alan worked moisture into his mouth, then swallowed. His gaze fell down and to the left, not meeting my own. “It was an accident. Things got out of hand.”
I shook my head. “No. It wasn’t.”
Alan glanced at me, desperation in his eyes. “You don’t understand, I—”
I surged forward, flipping the knife into my hand as I brought my fist sideways against his skull. The butt of the handle smashed into his temple, splitting the skin and drawing a minor torrent of blood.
“Shut the fuck up,” I said flatly, letting ice flow through the words. “You’re not a serial killer. I know that. You’re not a sociopath. That I could at least understand. No, your wiring works the way it should. You’re just an evil fuck.”
“I’m not!” Alan screeched. “I didn’t mean to kill her!”
The last word cut off abruptly as he realized he’d spoken again. I didn’t bother hitting him a second time. What was the point? “I believe you. I don’t think you set out planning to kill that girl.”
A species of relief washed over his expression, a hybrid look that said that Alan understood the situation he was in perfectly while still thinking that it could somehow resolve in his favor.
“I’ll tell you what else I believe—no. I’ll tell you what I know,” I said. “I know you stalked a girl of sixteen. It was cautious and clever enough to make her parents uneasy without sounding alarm bells until it was too late. I know you somehow convinced her to hop in the car with you, probably cashing in the trust you built during the times you substituted in her classes.” Every piece of data I’d gathered pointed that direction. Certainly he hadn’t dazzled Amy, his victim, with his dashing good looks. Alan could have been a sketch artist’s conception of the middle-aged teacher he was, with his balding head and jowly cheeks. Oh, he could talk up a storm. Convince you he was sincere. He was doing it in front of me, and even knowing what I was looking at, part of me wanted to believe.
“I know you took her somewhere, and honestly I don’t want to know what else you did before you killed her. She’s dead and that’s more than enough for me. You’re going to die, Alan. No question about it. Because whether or not you meant to actually kill her, you did. And you chose to take every step that led you to it. If you were broken over accidentally killing Amy, maybe you wouldn’t have buried her and left her parents to grieve. You killed her and destroyed their lives. You left them without answers. Now they have one.”
I surged forward again, this time with a specific intent. Grasping with a single, fluid motion, I cut him.
Alan cried out, this time in pain and rage. The careful, sobbing mask melted away. Blood ran freely, some spattering on boards I would burn when this was over, more splashing into the water with gentle but persistent little plopping sounds.
“It’ll take about fifteen minutes,” I said. “You’ll be awake and aware for all of it. You get to spend the last quarter hour of your life knowing that once your eyes get heavy and start to close, it’ll be for the last time. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”
I didn’t smile at him. I thought I might, when I’d planned it all out. I couldn’t muster the energy to even fake enjoying the act. Alan deserved it, but I wouldn’t be celebrating. There was no happiness to be found here.
Yet I watched until the very end.
23
Now
Stephen rushed me in what I was sure was a repeat performance of the tackle he’d hit me with before. It wasn’t a bad idea on his part. A reliable way to take an opponent off his feet and take control is never stupid.
Unwise in certain circumstances, though? Sure.
I had no intention of rehashing the same fight over again and no desire to spend more time making noise in this alley than necessary. There was no need to be gentle and question him about how he’d found me. Russey clearly guessed I’d come here and try something. Having someone watch the exit point for the escape route was common sense. It was blind luck that I’d managed to get to the armory before Stephen showed up.
Instead of another bout of ground work, I waited until the last second before setting my feet. Stephen had too much momentum to stop and his rage gave him tunnel vision. He didn’t see me flip the open, dangling handcuff into my hand. If he had, he’d have noticed me bracing the metal crescent between my fingers.
He did flinch as my hand flashed toward his face, but an eyelid will lose to hardened steel every time. The vibrations passing through the makeshift skewer, driven into his right eye socket by his headlong rush, betrayed the telltale scrape of metal against bone.
His scream cut off as my other hand pistoned into his throat as hard as I could manage, crushing his larynx. Stephen’s forward motion turned into a freewheeling stumble that ended with his face slamming into the dirty pavement hard enough to resound with a muffled crack.
I held back my own shriek of pain as I dropped to one knee despite my back’s protests, pressing my weight into Stephen’s neck. It wasn’t enough to break it—human bones and joints are tough as hell—but he was pinned like a butterfly. I took a deep breath to steady myself, then let up just enough to allow him to turn over. It was a predictable move anyone would have made on pure instinct, and he was no different.
Then I drove the knee into his throat and left it there. With no air or blood moving, he was out in no time. After half a minute, I pushed down hard once more and forced myself to stand. Stephen had long since stopped moving. Whether he was dead or just deeply unconscious with probable brain damage, I didn’t know. There was no motion in his chest, but that didn’t preclude the chance his brain still had enough juice to spontaneously fire up again.
I decided to risk going for the car. If he was alive, Stephen wasn’t in any shape to fight. If he wasn’t, he’d still be here when I got back. I couldn’t risk leaving a body with my prints and DNA on it just lying around.
Luckily I’d parked close. After looting the handcuff key and stowing them in a pocket, I managed to make myself halfway presentable and hobbled to Jen’s car. Parking in the alley took a little maneuvering, and getting Stephen in the trunk was a nightmare for my back.
I collapsed into the driver’s seat and pulled the door shut to quiet the chime. Leaning my head back against the rest, I spoke to no one in particular.
“He better be dead back there.” The last thing I wanted was that idiot popping out of the trunk on the way to dumping his body.
I tossed the cuffs into the river half an hour later. Stephen’s corpse was, by that point, being consumed in a flaming oil drum. Russey didn’t have the manpower to guard every place we used for that sort of business, and the first I’d gone to was empty of people.
Then it was on to a McDonald’s, where I first cleaned up in the bathroom before ordering enough calories to kill an elephant. I ate on the road.
As I drove, stuffing my face, a few grim realities began to take hold. I was battered as all hell, for one. Gunshot wound, car crash, being hurled into a dumpster and kidney punched. Those things added up. Despite generally being in great shape, no one is immune to basic physiological truths.
Being hurt isn’t just about pain. Fiction makes it easy for us to forget that people need to eat when they burn a lot of energy. We never stop to think about how tired being injured makes us. A cocktail of hormones and nerve impulses want to force us to sleep, because sleep fosters healing. Combine that with how little real rest I’d been getting, and I was nearly done in.
Yet I couldn’t stop. Russey would be marshaling his forces. Though calling everyone to gather in a few concentrated groups would make them targets, he didn’t have a choi
ce. By now he’d know the cops were after him from his connections in the department. Going to ground was the only move. Unfortunately it also meant I was done thinning the ranks. Even without being injured, the damage I could inflict in straight-up fights alone wasn’t nearly enough.
The places the employees in the organization were likely to hole up in were fortified, at least against anything I could throw at them. I wasn’t in the best shape to start with. I recognized my own hubris at fault on that score; I hadn’t expected to suffer more injuries. Hard as I fought against it, I’d fallen for my own small legend.
Or maybe I had just been lying to myself the entire time. I could attack the infrastructure of the company all I wanted. Hurting Russey’s operation did a lot to push him where I wanted psychologically, and it absolutely cut off his resources at the knees, but in the end it came down to the same thing fights and battles and wars have been won or lost on since man began killing his brothers.
Numbers. He had them and I didn’t.
“Fuck it,” I muttered, and pulled out the last burner phone. I’d already caused a lot of chaos. No reason to hold back from real mayhem. I dialed a number from memory and silently prayed it would be answered.
On the third ring, it was. “Fahey,” the voice said. “Speak.”
I was torn between relief and fear. Fahey was as mercenary as they came. I hadn’t thought of him as a resource because it was impossible to be sure whether he’d sell me out or not.
“Don’t hang up,” I said, followed by a pause to listen for Fahey doing just that.
A sigh. “Goddammit. You know just talking to you could get me killed. Your boss sent word out you’re persona non grata, my friend.”
“I know, man. I know. But I’m kinda fucked and I need your advice.”
“Advice,” Fahey grunted. As an information specialist and coordinator who managed the logistics of jobs, advice was normally something Fahey only gave out with a contract in hand. “You need a lot more than that, but sure. I didn’t want to see my kid grow up, anyway.”
It was his gruff way of telling me to ask, but not to expect help if it would put him in too much danger. “Say I was going to bring some attention down on a few safe houses tonight. Do you think it would be better to tip off the cops, or an angry competitor?”
Another deep sigh. “Jesus Christ, kid. You really are gonna get me killed.”
“Hypothetically,” I assured him, which could not have been a more obvious lie. “I only get one shot.”
Another few beats of silence. “There’s honestly not much advice I can give. You know not everyone uses my services. Chatter right now says your boss is in a very bad mood, though, and I don’t know that even his biggest competition would take a swing at him. As for the cops, well, they don’t have the sort of heavy response you’d want for hitting three buildings at the same time. Not without taking some deep losses.”
I smiled. Neither of us would say it out loud, but Fahey had just handed me a key piece of information. Casually saying Russey was locating his people in three places told me he was using all of the fortified safe houses. It also let me know Russey was actively coordinating with Fahey himself. Probably using him in a the familiar role of a dispatcher to contact Russey’s men individually. Fahey was a useful guy, but I’d never been close with him past sharing a few beers.
Yet I was sure Russey had never done even that.
“So you’re telling me I have no options, then,” I said.
“No,” Fahey said patiently. “You got options. They just range from shitty to suicidal. Like I said, Russey doesn’t have a single competitor who’d make a run at him, and I doubt you could entice everyone you’ve ever pissed off to join up and fight together. That would take some kind of miracle.”
I smiled even wider. “Yeah. You’re probably right. Thanks.”
“Don’t call again,” Fahey said. “At least not until this is over.” The line went dead.
I tapped the phone against my lips as I drove. The bit about the miracle was an inside joke. Fahey had mentioned during one of our few bar trips that some people thought my nickname, the Saint, had been given to me because I worked miracles. I told him that working out solid deals by appealing to people’s self-interest and common sense wasn’t miraculous, and he told me that to people without those features it sure as hell looked like magic.
Anyone listening to our conversation with even a scrap of brains would know he’d handed me the idea and how to make it happen. But no one would since Fahey used a setup secure enough to keep even Amanda away. Since he’d helped me when I needed it with no upside for him, I’d keep my lips sealed. Unto death if necessary.
I had to stop and dig out my tiny address book from my go bag. Yeah, it was analog, but when you went through as many phones as I did, it paid to keep a physical copy of contact information even if you had to decode it every time you wanted to call someone.
In this case I called eight someones. My entire job had been to smooth things out, and that involved occasionally setting meetings with rivals. Every one of them tried to hire me away at one point or another, so they were willing to listen. Criminals are famously unbound by the punching of time clocks, so I didn’t have to wait long at the meeting place for everyone to show up.
Surviving the meeting would by itself be a feather in my cap.
None of the eight men standing in a semicircle in the open field had jobs precisely like my own, but they were as close as I would get. On the low end was an older man named Calvin, whose own crew ran copious amounts of marijuana from the hills of eastern Kentucky, using Louisville as a distribution hub. My call to him was as much desperation as courtesy since they rarely had more than a handful of guys in town and avoided conflict like the plague.
On the other side of the spectrum stood Hector Garcia, a neatly-dressed man who towered over me. Louisville was big enough to merit the existence of a criminal class, but too small for the sort of massive underworld cartels like his thrived within. Yet Jefferson county was a larger playground, and its sprawling suburbs offered an opportunity for Hector and his people to store and ship product, mostly stolen pills. Hector was second in command, and smart enough to stay out of Russey territory.
“Heard you’re in a bit of trouble,” said a man named Richard, who ran a group of interstate hijacking crews. “There’s a bounty on your ass, if you didn’t know.”
I swept my eyes across the group, noting that most of them looked as relaxed as I did. “Anyone have ideas about trying to collect?” That got a few smirks.
“You said you had an opportunity for us,” Hector said. “You’ve always been a reasonable man, Carter. I came here because of that. Russey wants your head. Did you, or are you, making a play for his operation?”
The question sent a wave of subtle reaction through the crowd. They’d all dealt with me as Russey’s lieutenant, a man carrying out policy from the top. Competently, creatively, but in the end doing as I was told. That I had no greater ambition was widely accepted as true, and I have to think given my effectiveness that the thought was also comforting. Hector and a few of the others were smart enough to be wary of me under normal circumstances. If they thought I was moving to seize power, they’d get unpredictable at best.
“No,” I said honestly. “Just the opposite, actually. Tomorrow I’m meeting with Russey, and one of us won’t be walking away from it. He’s probably at home ignoring calls from his lawyer, but I have it on good authority the majority of his crew are holed up in our safe houses. Sitting ducks, really.”
Hector, never one to give away what he was feeling, fractionally raised an eyebrow. “If only someone who knew their locations would share that information, something might be done about them.”
I let the corner of my mouth twitch. “If only.”
24
I had to make some promises that would come back to haunt me, assuming I lived long enough to be haunted. Russey’s operation was designed around distributed architecture—my i
dea—so that each aspect was located and worked in isolation from every other. That way a mistake or leak from, say, a site where we distributed stolen goods wouldn’t blow back on our information gathering services. Long gone are the dumb old days where a handful of middle-aged fat guys in track suits run everything from the back of a seedy bar.
I had to offer up everything. Warehouses full of stuff, or the equivalent to it. I didn’t care about giving all that up by itself, but I knew that once the dust settled at least three of those guys would discover goods we’d stolen from them. That would be a fun day.
“You just have to keep them penned up,” I reminded the group before we got in our cars. “I told you where the bolt holes are, so they won’t be able to leave.”
“Yeah, we fuckin’ heard you,” Calvin said. “Keep ’em there until noon tomorrow.”
It would have to do. These men were all ambitious to one degree or another, but none of them were wastefully stupid. They wouldn’t openly attack unless fired at. For them it was low risk and high reward. Just keeping Russey’s people holed up would allow me a shot at cutting the head from the beast, and no one but me and Amanda had the knowledge to take over. I wasn’t going to, and Amanda wasn’t leaving her hospital bed for a long time. Without Russey, the whole thing fell apart.
After parting ways with my reluctant new allies, I drove toward the south end. I pulled off the road and into the mostly empty parking lot of a big box store. Killing the engine, I set an alarm on my phone and reclined the driver’s seat.
The original plan, which in retrospect was hilariously arrogant, centered on me staying mobile. After I hit the armory I was going to pick off Russey’s teams as they moved to secure assets. Stephen being sent to watch the escape route for the armory changed the game. It showed that Russey had predicted me flawlessly. He was the last and most involved of my many teachers, so that shouldn’t have surprised me as much as it did.
