by Douglas Jern
“You killed him?”
“You could say that. The whole incident might never have been known if I hadn’t reported it to the police afterward.”
“Why would you do that?”
“To make it known, of course. Get it on record. Now, the news may not have made a lot of fuss about it, but the police records were nice and detailed. There’s an excerpt on page three that I think you’ll find intriguing.”
Giuseppe leafed through to page three of the police report.
“How did you get your hands on all this?” he asked as he read.
“I have my ways. Look at the highlighted section near the bottom.”
She waited as Giuseppe read the short paragraph detailing how the unidentified corpse at the crime scene had been missing an ear. When he looked up from the paper, she reached into her handbag once again, but Giuseppe held up a hand to stop her. She noted with satisfaction that his hand was trembling ever so slightly.
“I believe you,” he said. “You killed him. But what I don’t get is why.”
“For revenge, Mr. Morricone.”
“Revenge? What did Homer do to you?”
“Do you know how Homer Moley killed people?”
“No idea. I don’t care how a job gets done, I just want it done. With all the rumors going around, there’s no telling what’s true and what’s bullshit. Some people said he had demonic powers.” He snorted with derision.
“He did, actually,” said Laura, making a careful adjustment to Giuseppe’s brain to help him accept this fact. “He used his powers to manipulate people, control them, so they would take the fall for his crimes. That’s what happened to my brother. And to me.”
It didn’t take long for Giuseppe to realize the implication of what Laura had just told him. She was impressed by his self-control. Visually, only a faint squaring of the jaw betrayed the rage and grief that welled up within him. Any other observer would be at a loss as to his feelings. But to Laura, Giuseppe’s sorrow was plain as day.
“Homer was behind that? That son of a bitch!” He thumped the armrest with his fist and cursed in Italian. “Why would he do that? How did he dare?” The fury faded as quickly as it had flared up, and Giuseppe sank back into the armchair like a deflated balloon.
“We’ll get to that,” said Laura. “Anyway,” she continued, “After killing your son, Homer killed my brother and ruined my life. If it weren’t for him, Jeffrey would be alive and well, and we’d be having dinner at his place right now, like we used to on Sundays. Homer took that away from me. He took everything from me. I simply returned the favor.”
“So you killed Homer,” said Giuseppe flatly.
“That’s right,” said Laura. “He had it coming.”
“And now you come to tell me this… why, exactly? My Vinnie is dead. No one can bring him back.”
“I just wanted you to know, that’s all.”
“Well, now I suppose I do. And you know what? It doesn’t change a damn thing. I’ve been in this game a long time. I’ve seen my share of revenge. And let me tell you: most of the time, revenge is pointless.”
“I’d say that’s a matter of perspective, Mr. Morricone. But let’s agree to disagree. I didn’t come here for your sake, after all.”
It was time. She tightened her hold on his mind, keeping him sedated. He could bring all the armed guards of the villa down on her in a heartbeat if he wished, and that would be a problem.
“So, we’re back to where we started, then,” said Giuseppe with a wry smile. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m here to get my revenge, Mr. Morricone.”
Giuseppe opened his mouth, closed it, blinked, then opened it again.
“For what?” he said. “You’ve already avenged your brother.”
“My brother, yes. But not myself.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow.”
“Then allow me to explain.”
She paused, ensuring she had his full attention before she continued.
“Like I said, Homer Moley killed my brother and pinned it on me. After tracking him down and killing him, I had to go underground for a while. My face was all over the news for weeks, which is why I had to change it, as you can see. Once that was done and I knew I would no longer be recognized by people in the street, getting by wasn’t really a problem. But I found it horribly unfair that my life had been taken from me. Can you imagine how that feels, Mr. Morricone? To have to change who you are so completely that the person you once were may as well never have existed? Homer Moley killed my brother, and in a way, he killed me too. I know why he did it, and I suppose I can’t blame him. He was trying to cover his tracks, that’s all. I might have done the same thing. But let’s take it a step further. Why did he have to cover his tracks in the first place?”
Here she paused again, letting the silence settle over them like a fog, waiting for Giuseppe to break it. But the old man said nothing.
“It took me a while before I started wondering why Homer killed your son,” she went on. “At first I was so outraged at the injustice of it all that I didn’t even give it a thought. Then I started to think about it. I had access to Homer’s apartment, where he kept records of his business, so I went back there to investigate. He was an organized man, I will give him that. He had a whole shelf dedicated to his recordkeeping: assassination orders, contact lists—I scoured them all, but couldn’t find anything on Vinnie. But one little detail caught my eye. A job he did for you about two years ago. One for which he was never paid.”
A thin plume of despair had begun to rise from Giuseppe’s mind. He understood. Still, she wanted to say it, to drive the point home once and for all.
“Killing Vinnie was itself an act of revenge, Mr. Morricone. If you had paid him what you owed, your son and my brother would still be alive, and I would still have my own face, my own life.”
“Mother of God…” Tears were welling up in the old man’s eyes.
“He sent you a letter, you know. On the day he killed Vinnie. He described, ahead of time, what was going to happen to your son, and then he carried it out. But obviously, you never read it, did you?”
Giuseppe said nothing, but he didn’t have to. He had received the letter but had been in no state of mind to read it. And who could blame him? What parent, overwhelmed with grief at the death of their child, could possibly have the time or energy to read letters, let alone analyze their contents? Laura almost felt pity for him.
Almost.
“Vinnie and Jeffrey. Their blood is on your hands, old man. Time to pay the piper.”
For the last time that day, she reached into the handbag. She handed the item to Giuseppe, who took it without a word. He already knew what to do.
“Farewell, Mr. Morricone.”
Laura left the room. Before the door closed, she caught a glimpse of Giuseppe as he slowly brought the knife toward his stomach. The rest was silence; she had instructed him not to scream, and he obeyed.
When she felt the first stab of pain, she severed the sensory connection to his brain, satisfied that he was suffering as Jeffrey had. She smiled at the goon in the corridor, slipping into his mind without effort. It got easier every time.
“Well, my business here is done,” she said cheerfully. “I’d give Mr. Morricone a few minutes. He’s a little upset. I’ll show myself out, thank you.”
She gave an exaggerated curtsey and started walking down the corridor. After ten steps she stopped and turned around.
“Just one more thing,” she said, doing her best Columbo impression, giddy with the satisfaction of a job well done. And like the TV detective, this last comment was the most important part of today’s job. Revenge was cheap, but good PR was worth its weight in gold.
“What you see when you open that door may shock you. Hell, you might even be sick. But that’s okay. Just promise me one thing. If anyone asks you what happened here today, you tell them Homer Moley came to do her job.”
ABOUT ATMOSPHERE PRESS
Atmosphere Press is an independent, full-service publisher for excellent books in all genres and for all audiences. Learn more about what we do at atmospherepress.com.
We encourage you to check out some of Atmosphere’s latest releases, which are available at Amazon.com and via order from your local bookstore:
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Douglas Jern was born in Lund, Sweden and lives in Nagoya, Japan. After a brief stint as a telephone salesperson and six years working as an in-house translator at an intellectual property law firm, he now makes his living as a freelance technical translator and subtitle creator. He loves reading, writing, playing video games, and watching movies with his wife. Memory Hole is his debut novel.
