The housepainters came, and this time there were four of them.
There was Damien “Dimmy” Greco, pocked and swarthy, with darting copper eyes, arms and hands that itched at his sides, stubby fingers flexed and tensed, standing a lopsided six nothing. Then there was Pynchon “Punch” Slothropian, middle-height, middle-weight, middle-aged, middle everything, sandy hair blanching in the bits of frustrated Boston sunlight that came too late and went too quickly.
Some new guy fell in with them for a sixteenth share instead of a quarter, an ace hitter from New York named Coleridge. He wasn't official with the Ork, but enough whisperings from the right wrong corners, social clubs and crack houses gave him the nod. When you've got trouble with muscle, the more muscle you bring on, the better your odds of coming out without a scratch.
Nelson “Nimrod” Stassen brought up the rear, short, squat, rat-faced and squinty, looking like he belonged detailing SUVs on North Washington Street in Allston, where the mark was, the fucking mutts who absconded with a hot million worth of Malek the Mallet's best crystal meth. They were dressed in the type of uniform all housepainters wore; casual looking, but in fact all business. Dark colored, pull-over slip on khaki affairs strapped on with Velcro that could take a good blood spattering and be torn off and dispensed with in one quick hurry.
They looked phony and nondescript, which had been intended.
They were there to deal with the mark.
The mark was a short-haul crew made up of Robicheaux, Kinsella and Millhone. Millhone was trunk music as of last night in the back of Slothropian's Nova, lured out for some private stock of Dallas Dhu on a drunk down at the Kinvara Pub on Harvard Ave., the way drinking pals often go. A few pulls on a long-necked bottle of ketamine cocktail and Millhone practically dove into the trunk of the Nova all by himself. Kinsella took a hot shot in the stall in the little boys room at Avalon and was spirited away by some hunky dance boys in Yankees uniforms, each one duked a hundred cash to drop the mutt in a dumpster down in New Market Square, Boston's unsavory meat district. Junkie-death carcass down in meat-packing land, barely significant enough to make the police blotter, let alone the back page of the Herald. Robicheaux, the muscle of the crew, was left to sit on the stash at a safehouse on North Washington, stupidly waiting for a factotum from the Chicago clan to make the pick-up, pay Robicheaux off pennies on the dollar and get him a berth on the underground express to Canada before they punched his ticket for good.
They stood half a block away, smoking and looking relaxed, like neighborhood guys, sizing up the safe house. The new guy, Coleridge, looked like death; old, tired, gray-skinned and scarred with violence on every bit of visible skin. He must have stood, what, five nine weighing a buck fifty at most? Slothropian hoped he could pull his weight, which wasn't much, but more than most mopes could handle.
He had better.
Being that Robicheaux was muscle and likely sampling the meth he was supposed to sit on, Slothropian had the housepainters split up so as to take four different tacks for entry, each one of them toting Walther PPKs with suppressors, flat black and unobtrusive in proper shoulder holsters, rounds all Teflon-filled for a one-to-two stop shot. For extra measure, Slothropian had a sawed-off shotgun dangling down his back from a thick lanyard under his XXXL warm-up jacket. One close blast and no questions asked.
Muscle on meth was a bad deal and not to be trifled with.
Like deliberate insects, they broke apart and then converged upon the safehouse—an ancient, failed HUD rehab deeded out to Robicheaux’s brother-in-law, a not-so-smart entrepreneurial Newton Jew living off crew scores he shared with his sister.
Slothropian carded himself in through the front door of the clapboard three-family of peeling gun metal gray and faded navy trim. In the foyer, he heard Whitesnake playing cranked and distorted off a boom box, steeped in echo from some mostly empty room somewhere upstairs. Must have run on dying batteries, he thought to himself, with all that distortion. That meant no electricity. No, the hall light worked. It meant something else: Robicheaux was ready to travel.
There was no point in pretending he was Chicago personnel—Robicheaux was clued in enough to insist on knowing who would be doing the meet down to advance pictures and penitentiary pedigree. Wouldn’t even buy him time to change the clip. He was hoping for distraction, triangulation, then killshot, pure and simple. But that was not going to happen. No, this would have to be a straight-up gun battle, no finesse.
He flattened and froze at the soft sound beneath Whitesnake, then blinked.
The piece was up and cocked in a half heartbeat, then slacked down at the end of the now relaxed arm.
The new guy, Coleridge, standing before him.
Slothropian gestured wildly for the new guy to get back to his agreed-upon approach from the parlor, get ready to take Robicheaux out on the floor above with shots coming up in a cluster from under the floorboards. He made a mental note to rip this guy a new one after it was all over.
What was funny was that instead, the new guy clipped him a good one to the left temple, then grabbed the Walther from his limp right hand.
“Are you fucked? Now numbnuts knows we’re here!”
“That’s the point.”
“You’re in the shit now, my friend, and make no mistake. When we get out of this—”
“Who said anything about we?” He placed a shot from the Walther straight into Slothropian’s stomach. The housepainter sank to the warped floor by the rotted banister of the staircase, grunting and squealing.
“Motherfucker!” He went off on a coughing jag. “Mother-fucker. Your ass—is gonna be served up—on a—platter!” Slothropian cupped his hands where the blood pooled, gagged hard with a discordant growling whine.
“Maybe,” said the new guy, “but you won’t be doing the serving.”
Slothropian rocked back and forth in a vain effort to contain the pain.
“You’re—dead!”
“Is it that obvious? Oh well. Tell me, by the way, do you know anything about Jimmy The Broom?”
“What the fuck?”
“Jimmy The Broom. You heard of him?”
“Hey, rube!” Slothropian screamed, crying for help before the new guy casually put another one in his gut. “Ruuuuuuuuube!” he screamed again, his voice flirting with white noise.
“Jimmy the Broom,” he said again. “Just tell me you knew him.”
“Fucking dead bum from twenty-five years ago, I don’t know! Christ almighty, I’m dyin’ here!”
“That’s the right answer,” the new guy said, knelt down as if to be helpful, then coolly blew the housepainter’s brains out. The back of his head was like a ripe tomato smashed against the wall, and then the rest of him went over on its side like a crash test dummy.
He barely had time to grope Slothropian for the sawed-off and sling it under his coat before cocking the Walther again.
A guy came screaming towards him from the back end of the hallway, thick-set, stubbled with a gut and squeezing off wild shots from a semi-automatic in a lazy spray. Coleridge spun about and shot off both his kneecaps without breathing hard. He walked over to the assailant who was now too agonized a writhing heap on the floor to even think about his relinquished gun, which the new guy kicked away.
“You’re Robicheaux, right?”
“Fuck off and kill me already, shitbag!”
“Not today. You get a pass. I don’t want you—not that I really want anything, anyway.”
“Just fucking do it and stop trying to jerk me off to death. Kill me fucking clean!”
“No, you're not on the list. And I don't think you'll be getting up and putting yourself on the list any time soon.” He seemed queerly distracted and at ease, not that this was apparent to Robicheaux, whose mind had been fully commandeered by agony. “They got warrants out on you, Robicheaux?”
“No, goddamnit, I'm fucking dying!”
“Oh no you're not. Not this time. You may even walk again someday. You're a lucky boy, Robicheaux. No death, no jail. But we can still turn that around if you don't answer the next question correctly.”
“Fuck you!” Robicheaux whined, squirming and heaving in agony, holding both knees up to his chest and curling into the fetal position on the filthy splintered floor.
The new guy knelt down to him and put the gun straight into his eye-socket, pressing the cornea under the lid. “Let's try anyway, okay?”
“Just kill me!”
“You don't mean that. You've got everything to live for. Not like me. So, tell me where it is.”
“Where what is?”
The new guy pistol-whipped him in the side of the head with the butt of the gun, then replaced it in its former position. “Next stupid answer costs you the eye.” He cocked the Walther and pressed it to the socket of his left eye.
Robicheaux whispered the answer and the new guy, Coleridge—the housepainter who was emphatically not there to paint houses for Malek the Mallet—nodded, got up and left him there, taking the trouble to pick up the discarded clip from his gun on his way.
The new guy made it to the crash room where Robicheaux had been waiting and shut off the boom box. He heard a groan from the far corner of the room. He went over and kicked Dimmy Greco in the side of the head.
“Fuck—Coleridge!—why'd you freakin' conk me and let the shitbird get away? Are you fucking crazy?”
“Clinically.”
“Your life is gonna mean less than a pap smear when Malek figures this out, pussy boy.”
“Tell me, Dimmy, just how smart is it to insult the guy with a gun to your head?”
“Like it fucking makes a difference when we both know you’re here to kill me.”
“Well, not you per se, but why not you in the bargain?”
“Fuckin’ A, why not? After that, we both know you're dead, anyways.”
“Yeah, but I'm the kind of dead that kills.”
“I can pay.”
“Can't we all?”
He stood with a bit of a flinch, expecting to be hit, but no blow came. “So do it already and don't talk my ear off. Stop barking like a bitch in heat and bite like a dog, for Christ's sake.”
His answer was to shoot Greco in the groin, which brought him down hard in shock and tears amid a deep chasm between a scream and a sob.
“Now,” said Coleridge. “Tell me about Jimmy the Broom. Tell it all and tell it right.”
“He was just a bum,” Greco squalled. “Just a bum! We did him for fun. It wasn't like he was really alive! He was barely even human, for god's sake! Don't tell me this is about Jimmy-the-Fucking-Broom!”
The new guy shot him in the crotch again, right through the metacarpals of the protective hand. “But it is,” the new guy said.
“Fuck you, Coleridge! Your life is done, do you fucking get that? Kiss your ass good-bye, cocksucker, because your life is over!”
“I know,” he said. “We have that in common.”
Writhing in pain, dirt, blood and tears, Greco tried to make a play. His throat knotted with strain. “Coleridge, come on, be reasonable—”
“It's Null,” he said. “Call me Null, and I am nothing if not reasonable.”
“Null then, whatever the fuck you call yourself. You can walk out of this—”
“Very true,” Null said, lowered the Walther gently, seemingly lost in thought, then shot Greco straight in the heart, almost as an afterthought, which caused him to make a little burping sound right when he laid back flat on the floor and stopped breathing. “But you can't.”
Null went back down to the basement where Nimrod was waiting with a black expression on a face tanned from one trip to Florida too many, lined with the short creases of an habitual impatience. “What the fuck took you so long?”
“I'm not very spontaneous,” Null said, turning on the light. “I have to think things out before I do them.”
“Well, think this one out, you fucking mutt. The Ork is gonna splatter bits of your ass all across Boston Harbor, you keep doin' what you're doin'.”
“If I keep doing what I'm doing, there won't be enough of them left to make the effort.”
“Turn on the fucking light already so I can gaze at your pitiful mug.”
Null obliged, and an icy tube of clinical fluorescent light fluttered on, making moth-like shadows about the space, revealing Nimrod trussed up by a rusted-out washer dryer like a pupating caterpillar. He struggled vainly, folding up and out, the blood crusting off his face and hands, cursing in a series of grunts. It was no go. Null had done too studied and conscientious a job of tying Nimrod's restraints. “You're still fucking ugly, cocksucker.”
“No reason not to be,” said Null.
“You're the guy—the one that took out the whole freakin' Family minus a crew. Fuck me runnin'. I thought you'd be bigger.”
“I'm big as I need to be for what I've got to do.”
“What do I got to do to get out of these ropes and leave here in one piece?”
“Tell me a story.”
“That's it?”
“That's it.”
“You're lying.”
“I don't lie. I don't have any reason to. I want you dead, you're dead.”
“Sure. Why not? Buys me time, anyway, I guess.”
“Just a little. More if you make it good.”
“So what story you want?”
“The one about Jimmy the Broom.”
Nimrod's face crumpled and contracted as if beset by a wave of pain. But for knuckle scrapes, some few bruises and one new bump that rose like an old wen at the crest of his forehead, he was uninjured. His face mugged and contorted as if in a struggle with a tricky concept overtaking him out of nowhere, yet he couldn't apprehend what it was. It betrayed that whatever he was struggling with was just too ephemeral to be fully grasped. He couldn't get it. “This is a gag, just to fuck with me before we get to the point.”
“No. It is the point.”
“This—all this shit—four other fucking deaths—for one combustible bum?”
“Three. Robicheaux gets a walk.”
“That mook takes off Malek for a mill and change of street-ready crystal and you give him a walk? He's a rat bastard what turns his back on his own. He gets the pass.”
“Points in his favor, in my world. If it makes you feel any better, though, I shot off both his knees. He'll be a long time in rehab if he ever walks again.”
Nimrod's dry lips went slack for a moment. He blinked both eyes fast, as if to reset his brain. “Okay, Pally, you want the four-one-one on Jimmy The Broom, you got it.” When someone's not playing with a full deck, there's always a chance you can deal yourself out of the game, and therefore from losing, entirely. Meanwhile, talking gave him time to try to work himself free from the ropes.
“Tell it slow and tell it right,” said Null, training the Glock he had in his pocket on the creased forehead and single eyebrow of Nimrod's compressed, rodentine head. “Tell it right, or I'll keep shooting pieces off of you until you do.”
“No need to get nasty.”
“Every need with those like you—nothing personal. Just nasty business.”
Nimrod chuckled. “Okay, okay. You know Park Street Station on the T?”
“Get to the point.”
“Different place 30 years ago—older, colder, hadn't been rehabbed since the 30s. Broom? He was the joke of the place; a bum so dirty, so trashed and wrecked that you couldn't tell where the piss-soaked newspaper and rags he wore began and the fuckin' guy himself ended. Staked out his own little corner on the Lechmere side of the Green Line and no one bugged him but maybe to toss him a butt or a few bits. Fucker smelled like a compost heap in the back of a slaughterhouse.”
“That's the guy.”
“Fuckin' A.”
Null took a pack of Pall Mall straights he lifted off Slothropian from his pocket, lit one and positioned it between the whitened, drying lips of Nimrod Stassen, a bundle of thwarted muscle on the floor. He sucked the smoke in deeply and let it puff out in a disordered gout as he spoke. “Now ya see? That was the human thing to do.”
“Tell me more about the human thing to do.”
“There's nothing to tell. It was one of those nights when the cold is like an evil God crushing the whole town. You know, when your skin is on fire with the cold and any exposed part of you feels like it’s being chewed off in a dark vacuum. We were three young punks up off Dot Ave, pullin' cheapie scores the way kids do, enjoying the power of being immortal and unstoppable, out on the prowl, all of us ejected for the usual attitude and mostly because it was what was done—when you're seventeen, bingo, you're out. You think you're fucking immortal at that age. Invincible. Like bein' drunk and high when you ain't even had nothin'. That's how it happened, you know. It was too cold to hang on the corner or hit the Saxon Diner where the johns congregate, perfect pickin's for a little float and roll, you know? So, anyways there we was at Park Street Station.”
“Bored.”
“Like the way you get that age. Okay, lemme snap it up. The place was just about dead empty, trains had stopped runnin'. We're killin' time, rankin' on each other and shit, and it occurs to me that Broom is really stinking the place up—really outrageous. He's like a freakin' pile of living, human feces, for god's sake. Looked just like the Swamp Thing when he shifted his position or tried to wave his arms and get a drink from another fuckin' bum. You know, just connect with another human for a little change, a smoke? So I think to myself, when a pile of feces stinks this bad, whaddaya do with it?”
“You burn it.”
“Exactamundo, chief! So we touch off all his trailing newspaper, and he goes up like a Christmas Tree, dancin' frantic across all of Park Street Station like Swamp Thing meets Fred Astaire across an old-time ballroom. Waltz of doom! Funny as shit, too. A homeless bro' goin' out in a true blaze of glory. It went beyond the beyond!”
“And then you did what kids like you do.”
“Right on, brother. We got righteous stoned right then and there and watched that freakin' thing die, amazed. It was one of the most beautiful things I ever seen. We hung out, sucked on the pipe and watched till the cops and firemen finally got in there and hustled us out. They didn't think it was us. Punk kids, what did we know from anything especially when some bum finally lights himself onto his last suicide fire? What did we know from anything? We was too busy being immortal and invincible and laughing our asses off.”
“Wears off fast, don't it?”
“Like you have to ask?”
“And that's it?”
“That's it.”
“So what the fuck does all this got to do with Jimmy The Broom?”
“What this has to do with Jimmy the Broom, is Mrs. Jimmy The Broom.”
“Jimmy the Broom had a wife? Well fuck all. Guess we did her a favor then.”
“It's a point, but I don't think she sees it that way.”
Nimrod spat the smoldering filter-less end of the Pall Mall out of his mouth so it bounced across the floor cascading sparks. “She's probably dead too, been so fucking long. What I don't get is your involvement. What is a class A housepainter like you doin' wastin' your very marketable talents on a dead bum?”
“Good question.”
Nimrod laughed, relieved. He was beginning to get it. This guy was angling for a gig with Malek. It was a smart play. If the Mallet respected anything at all, he respected brutality; he would rather have the mutt who took out two of his best crew working for him than whack him out as street PR. If he was good enough to get through his own, then he should own him. And if that inspired fear and distrust, all the better. Malek lived for fear and distrust.
“Okay, Pally, you made your point. Let's get these ropes offa me and go have a sit-down with the man you want to see. But first we gotta pick up the meth and squash the bug rolling around downstairs.”
“I already have the meth.” He placed a bundle on top of the rusted out washing machine to emphasize this. “And I'm having that sit-down with the man I want to see right now.”
“I don't get it.”
“Sure, you do, Nimrod. I'm here on a job. Just like you.”
“A job? For who for Christ's sake?”
“I thought I made that clear.” Null took a flat can of starter fluid from the pocket of his windbreaker, removed the red cap, squirted it all over Nimrod, then lit him ablaze.
“Fuck no! No!” Nimrod screamed, struggling with the ropes, plastic ties and nylon fasteners, rolling about frantically. He shrieked, “You said I'd get out of these ropes, you'd let me outta here in one piece!” The flames spread and he rolled about in a panicked caroming like a grub dropped on the roof of a car on a hot summer afternoon.
“No, those ropes will burn off soon enough, and when you're done burning, you'll be all in one piece, at least until your corpse is disturbed. They tend to retain their integrity, after charring, you know, corpses.”
“You—inhuman—mother—fucker!”
“On the money. I'm inhuman. I get no sadness or joy out of it. Nothing, not even disgust. No, not very human of me at all. You learn to work with what you have, or don't have. I lack humanity, so I go with it.”
“Not—fair!” His screams were worse than those of an un-anesthetized woman in full labor. “It's—not—fair!”
“But it is fair—down to the bone. It's exactly what Mrs. Broom paid me for: Fairness. I see that you get just as much chance as Jimmy the Broom got, though his bondage was drunkenness, TB and old-age. Yours just happens to be ropes and nylon sliding ties. You should be able to move better than Jimmy could as soon as the ropes burn off and the nylon ties melt into your skin. No, it's almost exactly fair. Like handicapping the ponies.”
Nimrod continued wailing and shrieking as Null went up the steps carrying the bundle of meth. He turned to face the dying grub in flames on the floor, blinked once, possibly due to the gathering smoke, and emptied the rest of the charcoal starter fluid onto the steps and basement floor, tossing the tin down into the flames. He left, closing the door behind him.
On his way out, Null kicked Robicheaux pointedly in the spleen to get his attention. He had apparently blacked out from the pain. Null recalled dimly that there was no more painful spot to get shot in than in the knees; it was old time wise guy legend that rang true. He kicked him again and Robicheaux curled up, whining.
“Listen, Robicheaux, you're not going to die yet, but it won't be easy. There's a fire in the basement. You've got maybe a good half hour before it spreads up here and consumes the house, the housepainters, you, everything in it. The only thing you can do about it is crawl out of here on your hands and what's left of your knees just as fast as you fucking can. You can try dragging yourself by your arms on your belly if you want, but that might take too long. This time, the most painful way is probably going to be the only way. Got that?”
Robicheaux was slow in responding so he kicked him again. “Got that?” he repeated.
“Fuck, why aren't I dead?”
“Because nobody wants you dead right now, at least nobody who counts. But that's all going to change soon enough. Next thing you've got to do after you get out of here is find a way to get out of the northeast period before they get a fix on you. Got that? Otherwise I should just put one in the back of your head right. For efficiency's sake.”
“Fuck no,” Robicheaux grunted, struggling hard to get up on all fours, and falling hard like a foal.
“Good,” said Null, and went out the door.
Null waited, breathing calmly the dank spring air in front of the house, watching smoke pour out the door and flames licking up through the foundation. No one called it in yet; this was Boston, and Boston being Boston, a 911 call was always made a shade too late, just to make certain the caller wouldn't be thought a narc or a fool.
When at last he saw Robicheaux's agony-distorted face and bloodied arms appear in the smoke-blurred doorway, he took off as if he were some uninvolved party passing yet another dilapidated three-family clapboard house that held no interest for him. Just another one of those old-time white-bread neighborhood guys so emaciated he seemed swallowed up by his clothes carrying a bundle of some worthless junk tight under his arm — as if it mattered.