One Hundred Years Of Tanner

by Remington Kane

  O’Connell hung up the pay phone he had used. He left the drugstore, walked to a car parked at the curb, and climbed into the passenger seat.

  O’Connell had recently taught Eloise to drive, and she had driven them into the city.

  “Do you have to work soon?” she asked. She always called what O’Connell did for a living “work” because that was the way he himself referred to it.

  “No, dear, but I do have business to take care of.”

  “It wasn’t just a robbery? Your friend Maloney was murdered?”

  “Yes, by Frank Recti.”

  “I’d ask you to let it go, but I know you too well.”

  O’Connell heard the worry in her voice. He reached over and took her hand. Eloise laid her head on his shoulder.

  “Killing this man, Recti, will it be dangerous?”

  “Yes, because he’ll be well-protected.”

  “Call Michael and ask him to help you.”

  “I can’t do that. He knows nothing about my being Tanner. Besides, it’s not his fight.”

  Eloise turned in her seat and threw her arms around O’Connell’s neck.

  “Promise me that you won’t die. I know it’s silly of me to ask it of you, but I want to hear you say it.”

  O’Connell smiled.

  “I won’t die, but Frank Recti is a dead man.”

  18

  The Disappearing Truck Trick

  WYOMING, PRESENT DAY

  Tanner held up the note Ethan had left behind. It said that Ethan was going to a friend’s house and would be right back.

  “Is this another of the boy’s jokes?” Tanner asked Andrea.

  “No, Tanner. He really left to go to a friend’s house. I told him he was to stay home today... but Ethan is headstrong.”

  Tanner handed Andrea the note.

  “This friend of his he mentions, Marcus, where does he live?”

  Jasmine answered.

  “It’s not far. Marcus and his sisters live at the end of Pine Street, but Ethan would take a shortcut by cutting across the parking lot of the store.”

  “That big store that closed down?” Tanner asked.

  “Mm-hmm,” Jasmine said. “If you want I can walk there and bring him back.”

  “No, I’ll go get him,” Tanner said, while putting on a loose-fitting jacket.

  Tanner and Romeo spoke alone for a few moments, while they were talking, Andrea had made a call.

  “Marcus’s mother told me that Ethan just left their house. He went there to borrow a video game. He should be back in a few minutes.”

  “I’ll still go out to meet him. Romeo will stay here and keep watch.”

  Tanner was opening the front door when Andrea called to him.

  “I know Ethan’s prank annoyed you earlier and that he shouldn’t have gone out without permission, but my son’s a good kid, really.”

  Tanner relaxed and sent her a smile.

  “I was a bigger pain at his age. I’ll find him and bring him right home.”

  “Thank you.”

  The closed Big-Box store sat surrounded by asphalt like a castle surrounded by a moat.

  Tanner came across Ethan in the rear parking lot. The boy appeared confused as he kept leaning over and studying a dumpster that was positioned in front of a brick wall.

  When Tanner called his name, the boy looked startled, in his right hand he gripped the game he had borrowed from his friend.

  “C’mon, kid, and I’ll walk you home.”

  Ethan blinked up at him.

  “I saw a truck disappear.”

  “Right.”

  “No, really Tanner. There was a moving truck in the parking lot headed this way, but when I walked over here it was gone.”

  “Maybe it disappeared like the two men who had been in your room.”

  Ethan shook his head.

  “I’m not lying… not this time. The truck really disappeared. It was a big truck, a white one,” Ethan waved an arm around. “This lot is huge. If the truck drove off I would have seen it.”

  “Or heard it,” Tanner said.

  “Right, and I did hear it. I heard an engine, and it sounded like it was coming from over here.”

  Tanner stared at the boy.

  “You don’t sound like you’re lying.”

  “I’m not.”

  “All right, so it’s a mystery, but let’s go. I promised your mother I’d bring you home.”

  Ethan looked at the dumpster again, shrugged, and turned to walk home. When they reached the front of the store, Tanner saw three men walking out the glass doors of the entrance. The glass was heavily tinted and reflected like a mirror.

  One of the men wore a black clerical shirt with a white tab collar. He waved while smiling, and Tanner stopped to talk with him.

  “Hello there, can we help you?” the man asked.

  “We’re just cutting through the parking lot.”

  “I went to a friend’s house,” Ethan said while pointing. “He lives on the other side of those trees.”

  The man introduced himself as Reverend Smith. The other two men just stared.

  Tanner pointed at the building.

  “Are you turning this into a church?”

  “We hope to, along with a youth center and a homeless shelter.”

  “That sounds like a lot of work,” Tanner said, then he covered his mouth as if to stifle a yawn. When he put his hand down again, it was closer to the gun he wore on his hip. The gun was concealed by his jacket. “I wish you luck, Reverend, but we have to get back home.”

  “God be with you,” Reverend Smith said.

  Tanner placed a hand on Ethan’s shoulder and moved the boy along in the general direction of his house, while doing so, he kept the reverend and his two friends in his peripheral vision.

  In the reflection of the glass doors, Tanner had seen a gun tucked in the rear waistband of the reverend. He had also made out the outline of shoulder rigs on the other men, beneath their windbreakers.

  Once they were out of the parking lot and approaching the house, Tanner stopped and looked at Ethan carefully.

  “Did a truck really disappear back there?”

  Ethan nodded emphatically.

  “Yeah. I’m not lying, Tanner. I saw this white truck go around the side of the building, then I still heard it. But when I walked around to that side, it was just gone, and it couldn’t have left the parking lot that fast.”

  “Okay, I believe you,” Tanner said, but he had no idea what to make of it, or the men with the guns.

  Tricks was in the shower when the Greene brothers arrived.

  Several hours had passed since Spenser received the call saying that the men were headed their way, and Tricks began to believe that they had gone elsewhere.

  “It’s been five years, Spenser, and if they kill me the cops will know they did it.”

  “They were your partners. Do you remember them being the forgiving type, or giving a damn about the law?”

  Tricks had said nothing to that, then insisted he needed a shower.

  “Not a good idea. If they show up while you’re in the shower, you’ll be a sitting duck.”

  “I’ll take my chances, man. I need a new bottle and I have to get clean.”

  “Fine, but when they show up, follow the plan. If you do anything else I may not be able to protect you.”

  “The plan, right, I know. Shit, we rehearsed it six times.”

  Just minutes later, Tricks heard the engine of the Greene brothers’ car and leapt from the shower to look out a front window.

  He was naked, covered in soap, and so scared that his knees shook.

  “Spenser?”

  No answer, but then Spenser’s words echoed in his head.

  “Follow the plan.”

  Tricks nodded as if Spenser was standing before him.

  He had to get outside to put the plan in play. The trouble was, there was only one door leading out of the trailer.

  A voice boomed from
outside. It was Daryl Greene.

  “Come on out, Tricks. It’s us, Daryl and Kevin. We got out of prison and figured we’d look you up. You know, let bygones be bygones and all that shit. We just want to talk to you, no lie.”

  “Yeah, man,” Kevin Greene said. “We got a sweet deal in the works down in Mexico and we want to cut you in on it.”

  Tricks knew they were lying. He ran toward the rear of the trailer with a towel wrapped around his waist.

  There was a rear window in the bedroom. It was damn small, but Tricks hoped he could squeeze through it. He eased it open without a sound, then stuck his head out of it.

  With an effort, he squeezed his shoulders through, then he gripped the top edge of the aluminum window frame to get leverage.

  The metal hurt his already blistered hands, and Tricks worried about the noise that the flexing of the aluminum window frame made.

  His worry turned to panic when he heard the trailer door being kicked in. Tricks tried wiggling his hips to get them through the window, but the opening was too small.

  “Where are you hiding you little shit?” Daryl Greene shouted.

  Tricks heard the man’s booming voice and his effort to escape became a frenzy of activity. His hips passed through the narrow gap as the window frame bent to accommodate them, but he lost his towel and landed outside naked among weeds.

  “The plan. The plan,” Tricks said as he sprinted away from the trailer. He was repeating the words like a mantra.

  He looked back over his shoulder and saw nothing. There were no faces in the window he’d fallen out of and the Greene brothers were nowhere in sight. Several seconds later, he looked back again, and released a sound of horror as he saw Daryl and Kevin running after him with a speed he could never attain.

  The two brothers looked huge, massive, and had obviously been hitting the weights while in prison. They wouldn’t need to shoot him, Tricks thought, they could each grab an end and pull him apart like a chicken wing.

  Tricks damned Spenser once more for not allowing him to run and hide.

  He stumbled twice after stepping on rocks and opened up cuts on the soles of his bare feet, but he maintained his balance and kept running.

  There was a copse of trees near the spot where he moved the stones. Tricks ran behind them and knew that he was out of view of Daryl and Kevin, just as he was meant to be. Then, according to the plan, he moved into position, then stopped, even though his natural instincts were telling him to keep running.

  Tricks stood there, feet bleeding, naked, his chest heaving from his exertion, and watched as the Greene brothers slowed upon seeing him.

  They stared, as they saw Tricks standing behind a low camp fire with billowing smoke rising from the unseasoned wood it burned.

  The hatred in their eyes was palpable, but Tricks attempted to smile.

  “Hey, Daryl, Kev. Did… did you really just come here to talk?”

  Daryl Greene smirked.

  “What do you think, asshole?”

  The Greene brothers took out guns and began firing.

  19

  What Sort Of Man Be Ye?

  CHICAGO 1938

  O’Connell stole a car from the parking lot at the train station and drove toward the construction company owned by Frank Recti.

  The construction company had grown over the years. Recti had moved his headquarters in 1932 after erecting a five-story office building in a different section of the city.

  The top four floors were rented out, although being the Depression, most of the offices were empty, and none of the tenants were around at night.

  Recti Construction on the bottom floor showed signs of life, as O’Connell had expected it would. There were lights on in the front windows, although the green roller blinds were lowered, blocking the view inside.

  O’Connell remembered that Frank Recti always worked late, or rather, the man had nowhere else to be. Recti had never been married, had no children, and cared only about his construction business and making money.

  O’Connell had seen the man’s picture in the paper recently. It had been taken at the grand opening of a movie theater that had been built by Recti Construction.

  O’Connell read in the papers that Frank Recti’s construction company was doing well despite the downturn in the economy, no doubt with the help of bribes and coercion. The man still had that head of wild hair, only the hair had grayed.

  O’Connell thought about his own hair, which was streaked with strands of white. Neither he nor Recti were young men anymore.

  There was a car parked outside the front doors of Recti’s building with two men sitting inside it. They were Recti’s bodyguard and driver.

  The sight puzzled O’Connell. He had expected to see a hoard of men guarding Recti. He had assumed the man knew him well enough to know that he would come to kill him and would have prepared for an attempt on his life.

  O’Connell drove past the building with a hat pulled down over his eyes. It was a Sunday night and the shops were closed, what few remained open that is. Eloise still owned the dress shop, but more and more she sat in it alone, without a single customer coming in. There was just no money for store-bought dresses.

  Despite the massive government spending to fund New Deal projects, unemployment was high, and getting worse.

  People were cutting up old tires to patch their worn shoes, while apartments meant for two to four people were housing up to a dozen desperate family members.

  Many of the businesses around Eloise’s shop had closed, victims of the bad economy. O’Connell, a student of history, had bought up the properties for pennies on the dollar. He understood that economic depression, no matter how great, never lasted. When the economy recovered, he and Eloise would be sitting pretty.

  He checked his watch. The Amos ‘n’ Andy program was on and most people were glued to their radios, looking for a laugh during the bleak times. There were few cars on the road, particularly in the business section where Frank Recti’s building sat. O’Connell thought that a vehicle might give chase after he drove by, but no, he was not followed.

  After driving several blocks, he pulled to the curb, stepped out of the car, and gazed back toward Recti Construction while leaning on the car’s trunk.

  The man had to know he was coming, had to expect it, and thus, had to be ready for him.

  If he stepped one foot inside that building, there was every chance he would never walk out again.

  There was another factor to consider as well. Frank Recti was what The Chicago Outfit referred to as a Made Man.

  That meant that he was untouchable. Made Men weren’t to be harmed or killed unless permission had been granted by The Chicago Outfit’s council. If a Made Man was slain without the council sanctioning it, then the perpetrator would be hunted down and killed, and likely tortured in the process.

  O’Connell remembered hearing about one such man. He was found living in Nevada, years after committing the transgression. The story goes that he was taken out in the desert and tortured for over a week before dying.

  The man’s wife and children also went missing, although no one knew if they had gone into hiding or been buried in the desert.

  The bottom line was that killing Frank Recti meant trouble. O’Connell had to decide if Recti was worth it.

  Thinking about it dispassionately brought only one answer. No. Frank Recti wasn’t worth losing a night’s sleep over, much less the ruining of one’s life.

  And what had Jimmy Maloney been to O’Connell anyway? Although friendly, they certainly had never been friends. Jimmy Maloney had been a conduit used for obtaining work. He had been well-paid for his trouble as well.

  O’Connell owed the man nothing. And hadn’t he advised Maloney to leave town for a while? Yes, he had.

  Killing Frank Recti wouldn’t bring Maloney back. It would only bring a world of grief to O’Connell.

  With a sigh and a shrug, O’Connell turned to get back in the car, but then froze.

&n
bsp; Why had Frank Recti killed Jimmy Maloney? He had done so in an attempt to locate Tanner.

  Recti hated Tanner.

  He had hated Tanner ever since Tanner had stood up to him and refused to kill innocents.

  Although Frank Recti’s stature had grown over the years, so had Tanner’s reputation.

  Recti saw Tanner as an obstacle in his plans to own the assassination trade. Recti wanted to be the go-to-guy for hits in the Chicago area. However, as efficient and deadly as his mob soldiers were, they were still just that, mobsters.

  They were men with records, with mugshots, with a string of bad deeds and victims behind them. Tanner was a ghost, a quasi-legend, who killed and then disappeared.

  No one outside of Eloise knew that Tanner was actually a man named Keane O’Connell.

  Yes, Tanner was a man, not a ghost. He was a man, and men bled, men died. And men, no matter how brave, experienced fear.

  O’Connell was fifty-three. Although in excellent condition, he was not a young man. He was slowing down, and the leg that had been wounded in the war sometimes ached for no reason.

  He had been taking less jobs and traveling more with Eloise at his side. His was a good life. During a time when many men were standing in bread lines for their next meal, O’Connell lived in a beautiful home which was surrounded by picturesque acreage.

  A scholar by nature, he often spent hours in his home library enjoying his books, and fate had been kind enough to give him a beautiful woman to share it all with.

  Yes, Tanner was a man, and that man was Keane O’Connell, but what sort of man ran from a fight?

  O’Connell shook his head.

  It would be madness to risk himself and all he had to live for. However, Frank Recti had killed Jimmy Maloney in part as a lure, as a dare for Tanner.

  Recti believed that Maloney was Tanner’s friend, and he had killed the man anyway.

  It was his way of telling Tanner that he didn’t fear him, although Recti knew full well that Tanner was someone to fear.