Misisipi

by Michael Reilly

  “Michael?” the client answered.

  “Are you down yet?”

  “Five minutes ago. This is a bad one, truly one for the ages.”

  “We’re ready this end.”

  “Any problems?”

  Stencek looked at the blood on the floor. “No. But I’d ask you to keep it brief. It’s getting pretty rough here. I’d like to get out while there’s still road to hit the rubber with.”

  “If you hadn’t expended valuable time picking up waifs and strays, you might have a more favorable margin now.”

  Stencek again resisted the urge to look Larry’s way. Sonofabitch.

  “Hold on,” he asked the client, pressing his thumb to the mouthpiece. “Larry, take the full can and gas everything upstairs. Staircase too.”

  “I just lit up.”

  “Live dangerous then, like I give a fuck!”

  As Larry carried the gas can past, Stencek stopped him. “And turn the place over while you’re at it,” Stencek ordered. “No more half-ass til we’re outta here!”

  Larry sauntered past unperturbed and disappeared through the hall door.

  Stencek returned to the client. “I guess you want words now?”

  “Put me on speaker.”

  Stencek changed the audio setting and stood the satphone on the mantle. “You’re on.”

  “Hello Henry,” the client’s voice crackled from the satphone.

  “Frank,” Henry grumbled. “How ya’ll been?”

  “I’ve been fine. If I could just learn to ignore my doctors, I’d feel fine.”

  “I told ya all that clean-living’d been the death of ya.”

  “Hmm. I have missed your unique brand of wisdom, you know.”

  “C’mon over so. We catch up. Lemme get rid of my visitors first. I’m kinda tied up right now.”

  “It was never personal, Henry. I thought we had an understanding.”

  “And what was that again?”

  “You go, never come back. Leave what’s done be.”

  “Mighty convenient when you the one did most of the doing.”

  “They wanted you dead, Henry. I did you a favor.”

  “And Joe? Was you doin him a favor too? Or was that you wantin all you thought owed you?”

  “We’re rotten, Henry, you and I. Doesn’t stop us thinking we can make normal, but I gave up that futile cause a long time ago.”

  “You been with the stiff shirts up north too long now, Frank. You forget yourself.”

  “Maybe not. All those times I’d take up the chase of you, it was just boredom. I had no serious intent, until now.”

  “Til it got personal?”

  “It was always personal. No, until it got… tiresome.”

  “Then I’m disappointed.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t mind going at the hands of my own. You ain’t been from here for a long time.”

  “Here is just a pipe dream, Henry, an outmoded fancy that you matter. You don’t, not up there.”

  “Then you died long before I’m gonna. Least I’ll see her gain soon. Nothin waiting for you, not even yours. God forgive you.”

  “Tell Him I’ll get back to Him on that score. Michael, leave the line open please. You can proceed now. Goodbye Henry.”

  Henry addressed Stencek where Stencek waited at the mantle. “Ready when you are, mouthy man.”

  Stencek turned, unwound a rosary set hung from the arms of the crucifix, and lifted it off.

  “Take these.” He lowered the beads against Henry’s hand. Henry instinctively accepted them and gathered them into his fist.

  “Thank you. You still his Judas, mind,” Henry cursed Stencek, his voice faltering. “Only difference’s you’ll hang from his purse strings after you done this.”

  As Larry re-entered the room, Stencek leaned down close to Henry’s ear. “So you heard it from me, he’s paying me not to kill you.”

  Henry tensed his shoulders like a fighter waiting for the bell, ready to come off the stool. “So tha’s how it is? Let’s get it done then,” he growled at Larry.

  Stencek nodded to Larry, walked out to the kitchen, and shut the connecting door.

  Larry planted his foot on the chair, between Henry’s knees. He lifted his pants leg and pulled the massive M9 bayonet from the scabbard strapped around his calf. He took Henry’s crown in his grip and stroked the saw-tooth side of the seven-inch blade across Henry’s chin, gently plucking the loose folds of his skin with each notch, each one leaving a pinprick bloody tear as it went.

  “So how much they pay you to be the one?” Henry asked.

  “Money?” Larry replied. “For this part, nothin. You can’t put a price on this. You’re a freebie. Hell, I’d pay for this privilege.” Larry turned the blade over. “Oops!” He looked at the satphone on the mantle and chuckled. “Think the big boss heard that one?” Then he started pulling the scalpel-sharp side of the bayonet slowly back the other way.

  Stencek fished the Navigator’s keys out and laid them on the kitchen table. Henry’s screams, more urgent now as Larry got into the slice of things on the other side of the door, made it hard to think. He rested his hand on the butt of the Glock on his hip. He was tempted to simply walk back in and deliver two shots—one for each man, the path of least resistance. But Henry deserved this, the sadistic symmetry of this end, if only for the same way he set about the pretty blonde girl on another kitchen table in another time.

  Larry was the more thorny problem. Stencek despised Larry. He’d kept a leash on the guy while there was a job still to do. Now Stencek’s job was almost done. Was Larry’s? A niggledy, almost-there suspicion vexed Stencek now. Larry had spoken to the main man before Stencek’s arrival. The client couldn’t have known Scott was slap-bang-in-the-middle otherwise. Maybe Larry had a new directive. Or maybe the meathead just imagined that the client’s lips to his ear made it so. Maybe Stencek simply itched to be rid of Larry as much as Larry maybe itched to test Stencek’s insurance policy concerning Ma Bergman and perhaps settle up with Scott after. Maybe the client wanted them all scorched, Stencek included. Or maybe the client was just jerking all their chains for his own personal amusement.

  It wouldn’t be the first time the old man had tested Stencek.

  Maybe-Naybe.

  Pat Wiseman had always urged Stencek to trust his gut when all else failed. “But remember, Cek,” Wiseman would add, “your gut’s so full of shit you need to cover your ass when you do. It’s alimentary, Dear Watson!” he’d snort.

  Stencek had taken another item from the Navigator while Scott was occupied finding the hammer. Now he set it on the table beside the keys. Henry’s screams were growing more weakened. Stencek didn’t have much time. The third item on the table was the roll of duct tape Rondell had used to bind Henry to the chair. Stencek needed to have a parley with Larry. He wasn’t about to kill someone on a hunch. He had to be sure. But he was going to cover his ass.

  “No shit, Sherlock,” Stencek whispered. “Don’t hold your breath waiting for me just yet, Patrick.”

  Leaving the keys for last, he grabbed the other two items, wondering how the hell he would make this work.

  When his breathing regained itself, Scott sat back into the passenger seat and leaned his head against the dash. Stencek’s Henry-File was fanned out between his feet. He scooped the papers together and bundled them back between the covers of the orange folder.

  Warily, he flipped past the glossy six-by-eights which had freaked him out on the bridge. Mercifully, the remaining pages were dry procedural reports, xeroxes of lined NOPD sheets dated in the days or weeks after the bloodbath in Henry’s house.

  One particular report caught Scott’s attention. Clipped to it was another scene photo, thankfully less graphic in its depiction of the bad end for its subject. A body lay face-down on the slope of a levee bank where it had been dragged from the water. Two uniformed officers stood flanking, smiles all-round, as though posing with that season’s-best bass catch.
>
  The particulars of the victim were documented in the report sheet, but the clincher for Scott was the third sheet in the clip—a photostat of a newspaper page. Scott stared at the large picture accompanying the article. He scanned the grainy image, more so one aspect of it. He almost knew why it mattered. He had to speak to Stencek, right now, to be sure.

  He turned toward the house to see where Stencek was.

  A blinding flash of light suddenly exploded behind the kitchen windows.

  Henry was dead by now, had to be. The screams had stopped minutes earlier. They had stopped sounding human long before then. Stencek spent the silence listening, waiting to see if Larry emerged. Instead, he heard nothing, no movement at all. He approached the door, loosening the fit of the Glock in his belt holster. Returning his gun arm passively to his side, he twisted the handle and pushed the door slowly open. The living room was now in total darkness, but the bare kitchen bulb behind Stencek threw a shaft of light ahead of him as the gap widened.

  Though Henry was still secured to his chair, his back to Stencek, his eyes looked directly Stencek’s way. Larry had all but severed Henry’s spine and Henry’s head was flipped upside-down in almost total reversal of all that was Godly. It probably helped that the hilt of Larry’s bayonet protruded from Henry’s mouth, the blade buried in the back of the chair. Beneath the chair, Henry’s eight fingers floated in a rich red sickening stew of his own blood.

  “Someone shot him.”

  The comment snapped Stencek from his fixation on Henry. “Huh?” He widened the door and let the light find Larry standing in the far corner. As Larry drew a cigarette to his lips, Stencek saw the crimson coating Larry’s arm, almost to the elbow, like a lady’s satin scarlet glove. Larry was awash with blood. Beneath his tanned face and sunburned neck, his naked pallid torso was streaked, splattered, and smeared with the war paint of Henry’s butchering.

  “In the hand,” Larry explained. “Lemme show you.”

  Larry walked to Henry and, with one last pull, considered the cigarette. “Better be careful where I toss this now we got the place all gassed up.” He stubbed the cigarette out in Henry’s headless neck. It made a nasty hissing popping sound which to Stencek was worse than the sight of the act.

  “I think I’ll stay put,” Stencek declared.

  “That’s cool. Got it right here.” Larry reached in Henry’s lap and lifted the severed stump of Henry’s right hand. The lone thumb stood erect in a macabre A-Ok salute as Larry held it against the light and stubbed his own pinkie through a hole in Henry’s palm for Stencek to see. “You think Rondell went all sick little Black Panther puppy before we arrived?”

  The shaft of light now revealed Larry to be totally naked. His legs were equally bloodied. Only one part of him was unmarked—the full erection rising from between his barrel-broad thighs.

  “Not interested?” he asked Stencek.

  “You ok, Larry?”

  “Fair nuff.” Larry dropped the hand back in Henry’s lap, walked to the couch, and contemplated the neat fold of his own clothes there. He wiped his palms on the cushions, scooped one hand under, and lifted them, laying his other hand across the top of the pile.

  “Maybe you oughta wash down before you get dressed,” Stencek suggested.

  “Yeah. Maybe.”

  Larry looked at Henry’s front—a sight Stencek chose to merely imagine by remaining in the doorway—and a giddy thrill goosed him.

  “Whoa! This is way fucked-up, right?’ Larry blurted. “Didn’t see that coming.”

  “Him or you?”

  “He had it coming. You said so. You land him, I gut him. Was always the plan.”

  “You did good, Larry. Time to go home.” Stencek looked at the satphone still stood on the mantle. “Is the line still live?” he asked Larry.

  “Home sounds good. Cept…” Larry tsked, “we’re still humping heavy.”

  “Huh?”

  “Romeo.”

  “Scott’s my problem. Ain’t a concern of yours.”

  “You dragged him in the boat, Mike. Made him everyone’s concern.”

  “And just who might ‘everyone’ be?

  “Where’s the little snotrag now?”

  “Locked in the car, cooling his heels. Best he had no part of this.”

  “You got the keys?”

  “Yup. He’s not going anywhere.”

  “Give them to me.”

  “What?”

  “Give me the keys and I’ll take care of him.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Stencek stiffened and put his hands on his hips, jacket tails pulled back revealing the Glock readied.

  “Oh boy,” Larry whoo-hooed, “You gonna draw on me, Mike?”

  “Fuck no. You asked nicely. But the answer’s ‘No’. Leave it at that and we can forget—”

  The bullet was in Stencek’s right shoulder before he heard it coming. One second, there was a flash from the bundle of clothing between Larry’s hands, a thunderbolt boomed; the next, Stencek was spinning back into the kitchen, jarring against the table edge and crashing to the floor. He grabbed for his Glock. His mind demanded but his hand lay limp, his gun arm dead.

  Larry came through the door and towered over him. He set his clothes on the kitchen table, keeping his pistol—now revealed—in his grip.

  Stencek pumped his heels, worming his way under the table toward the other side. His shoulder blistered with agony as he reached his left hand across himself and extracted the Glock, uselessly upside-down, from his holster. He tried to jam his finger into the trigger guard as he lifted the weapon in Larry’s direction.

  The table disappeared above Stencek as Larry flipped it across the kitchen. He wrapped his hand around the Glock, prizing it from Stencek’s feeble grasp. “I didn’t blow your head off, Mike. That’s me asking nicely.” He put his foot against Stencek’s crotch and rammed Stencek on his back the rest of the way to the kitchen unit behind him. Stencek’s head cracked against the bottom edge of a cupboard door. Stars exploded in his vision to join the tears already sprung from the brute force shove to his balls.

  Larry set the Glock on the counter above Stencek and kneeled down. “Don’t have no illusions, mind. That part’s coming.” He patted Stencek down for the car keys.

  Stencek grimaced. “Figures you’d have to be sneaky with it. Didn’t rate yourself in a fair draw, huh?”

  Larry straightened on his knees. “Guess we’ll never know, now your shooting hand is fucked.” He blew out. “Ok, where’d you stow the keys?”

  Stencek smiled. “Gimme the Glock and let’s go again. You need me shooting southpaw anyway to make it a fair contest.”

  “Contest’s over.” Larry grabbed Stencek’s bloody shoulder. “I shot first. You lost.” He squeezed the wound.

  Stencek grimaced. The kitchen light began to dim as his consciousness ebbed.

  Larry released his grip. “I can do this all night, Mike. Is he worth it?”

  Stencek managed a pained laugh. “I’m game. No one’s going anywhere. Less you have a bazooka in that wazooka, you’re staying out and he’s staying in.

  Dark fury spread over Larry’s face. “Fine! I’ll take the fartmobile.”

  “I gassed it. You better hope the ignition doesn’t spark.”

  Larry hammered his fist into the cupboard door behind Stencek’s head, splitting the panel. “Tell me where the fucking keys are!”

  “Just get it over with, Fuckwit,” Stencek spat. “Feel free to spend all night tearing this place apart. Just spare me listening to you hissyfit with it.”

  Larry stood, a towering rage above Stencek. He snatched out the kitchen drawers in quick succession, tossing each as it came up empty.

  “You been out here the whole time,” he muttered. “Gotta be close.”

  “Wow,” Stencek snorted. “It thinks.”

  Larry put his foot on Stencek’s wound and drove his full weight down. Stencek squirmed against the spearing pain.

  “Hmmm,” Larr
y mused as he considered the overhead cupboards. “Could it be Door Number One?”

  He switched the large gun to his left hand and whipped open the first cupboard door. As he scooped the dishes from the shelves behind it, they crashed and shattered all around Stencek.

  “Nope,” Larry decided, using his foot’s pressure on Stencek’s chest to drag Stencek along with him to the next cupboard.

  “Door Number Two?” Larry whipped it open.

  Stencek closed his eyes.

  The sprung metal clip arced through the air in front of Larry’s face. He made an instinctive grab for it with his free hand, knew what it was before he even had it, knew where to look for the stun grenade from which it had popped. The sneaky bastard had taped the aerosol-shaped device to the inside edge of the cupboard door, pulled the pin, and carefully closed the door so as to brace the detonation clip against the corner.

  Larry lashed his gun toward it, to smash it away befo—

  The flying clip landed in Larry’s open right hand

  just as the point-blank concussion blast blew the gun from his left

  and the magnesium million-candle flash fury tore the sight from his eyes, blinding Larry for life.

  Stencek dared open his own eyes, in time to see Larry stumble backward, hands clasped over his face and its muffled screams. Stencek thrust his leg out and Larry tripped over it and onto his back.

  Stencek grabbed the fallen Desert Eagle pistol and scrambled to his feet to where Larry wailed like a stuck pig.

  “Lemme give you the real-world skinny on the whole gunfight thing, Larry,” Stencek growled. He prodded the weapon through its owner’s protective fingers to the nuked eyes behind them. “It ain’t ever who shoots first.”

  Stencek pulled the trigger.

  “It’s who shoots last.”

  Minutes after the flash, Scott watched the fire begin somewhere in the center of the house. Within seconds, the upstairs windows were smoked black from the furnace licking behind them.

  A tall figure emerged on the porch, a shimmery silhouette against the raging inferno.

  Scott pulled at the door handle frantically.

  He glanced again. The shape was gone. He held the handle in his whitening fists.