It was ill lit and mostly dark in the office section of Gary Lee Obidowski's Body Shop, Service and Tow in seaside Revere outside of East Boston. The chiaroscuro was a dim paisley of moody shadows and obdurate flames of muted light. A fluorescent tube swung and flickered from the ceiling. Malek “The Mallet” Turbot sat warily at the ancient, scarred wooden desk smoking a cigar and scowling. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, amber visor glasses steamed up, and he was sweating. He was going over accounts on an iPad tablet while oddly checking items off in a little notebook. The tall, craggy button man Franchot was standing before him, looking tired.
“You ain’t heard from him, have you?” Malek sneered.
“Just what I get from those that traffic with the Gangsta Boyz—that he’s coming for you.”
“But no contact? No approach, no wish to make a deal? That makes no sense. He knows I’ll eventually find him and string him up, then get him a set of new rims down at this very fucking garage!”
“Not a peep. He’s a determined fuck.”
“Wildcat fuck’s got a hot million of my meth and is selling it on the street while running a vicious crew that rivals mine. He wants a war without even trying to make terms first? He’s fucking stupid.”
“I don’t know what he wants, Padrone. One thing’s sure—he don’t act like he should.”
“Fucker’s too damn wildcat for his own good.”
“In which case, you should just turn the heat back on, get the bounty back on his ass, and we’ll deliver him back to you in pieces. Simple.”
“I thought sure when he got the word that the heat’s off he’d want to go the amnesty route, talk business, make an accommodation, maybe even give me an apology so we can welcome him into the fold.”
“You mean to slaughter him like a sheep.”
“Well,” said Malek, puffing away intently. “Yes, but I wanted to make him comfortable first. Make him feel all warm and fuzzy.”
“I don’t think he does warm and fuzzy.”
“So you think he’s on his way?”
“For my money, I find it hard to believe he hasn’t gotten here already.”
“If he were here, you’d be dead.”
“Or close to it, Padrone. Maybe we are as things stand and don’t know it.”
“He’s not fucking here.”
“Maybe not yet.”
“So I’ll have to be babysat until you guys find him and kill him. I’ll have to be surrounded by muscle until somebody makes a grease spot of this wildcat zombie fuck!”
“Padrone, there just ain’t no other way. Nobody knows where this mook is and even the Gangsta Boyz are too scared to talk about him, not that they even know.”
“Fine, then you and whatever boys want extra cash’ll be watching over me when I leave.”
“That’s the way it is. Right now, I’ll watch the front entrance and have a couple of guys walk the perimeter and around back until you’re ready to go.”
“You think he’s that good?”
“Seems to be, Padrone.”
“I’ll let you know then,” he said, grabbing up the tablet and working the screen with his finger. “I’m just finishing up.” His cigar puffs were sibilant.
Franchot bowed out and slammed shut the entry door that led to a side service area. His footsteps echoed in the quiet.
Maybe an hour passed. The only sound after that was the buzzing of the flickering fluorescent light tube hanging unevenly over the desk, looking damaged and in need of repair and Malek’s sucking on his cigar. Malek paused from his accounting notation and considered the problem of Null. Just how did this nonentity suddenly emerge as such a problem, even as he realized that Null must have come to the same conclusion that he did?
Simply put, Null had to die.
This was why there was no accommodation—no olive branch translating to a cooperative deal. He’d already reached the endgame.
Malek heard an untoward sound that startled him—a sloppy gushing and splashing.
It jerked him to his core, and he raced up from his ancient wooden swivel desk chair and went to the source of the noise.
It was from a sludge barrel in the back.
Malek stood before the barrel, which was only footsteps away from the area where the muscle of the Ork would work over subjects of their “enhanced interrogations,” being Republicans to the last. It was where the late Filmore Lakeworry plied his trade.
Malek went limp, seeing what he refused to see.
Splashing up from the barrel with a long straw in his mouth, saturated with filthy oil and grease, old blood and unspecified offal was Null, drawing his Glock still covered in a lunch baggie. He spat the straw to the crumbling floor.
“Fuck this!” muttered Malek.
“Fuck you, I think is the proper response.”
“Hey Rube, get in here! I’ve cornered the fucking mutt!”
“Seems to be your rubric, Malek. You ain’t got nothin’ comin’.”
Null sloshed out from the barrel, dripping indescribably wretched goo onto the broken concrete floor, brackish and tinged with old fetid blood. The Glock hardly moved.
“Hey Rube!” Malek screamed again.
Null just stood there, dripping.
Malek looked toward the door. Null shoved him back with the Glock in his solar plexus.
“They’re not coming, Malek. Haven’t you grasped that by now?”
“What the fuck?”
“A guy I call Do-Rag and a few of his friends did a little clean-up for me around the edges of this place. I don’t think any of them will be coming in here to bother us.”
“How did—?”
“Your guys are detained.”
“You were in that fucking barrel for how long?”
“Maybe a day or two before you came back here. I had to do a lot of counting and there was some wild estimation as to how long the Gangsta Boyz would be waiting for your friends outside, but they tend to be an obedient lot once disciplined.”
He shoved Malek down into the ancient wooden swivel chair by the scarred and equally ancient wooden desk, put the Glock to his forehead.
“So fucking kill me already, because you know if you don’t at the first chance, it’s exactly what I’ll be doing to you.”
The light buzzed and flickered.
“I should kill you, you’re right. But that might be redundant. You’re already post mortem, Malek. The streets are mine.”
“Put down the gun, you fucking faggot, and we’ll see who owns what.”
“That’s dramatic. You watch a lot of movies, Malek. You like the British Crime ones, lots of daring action in those. Very tough stuff.”
“I’ll shove that gun up your motherfucking ass.”
“Is that an invitation?”
Malek stood up. Null placed the Glock on the desk between them and held up his hands. “Go for it,” he stated.
Malek lunged for the Glock and Null belted him hard in the jaw, making him flail backward. Null leapt across the desk, ignoring the gun, grabbing up Malek by the shirt, tossing away his wraparound amber visor and beat him repeatedly in the face to cool him out. Malek struck back hard, but he felt like he was hitting a bird. The blows felt light and insubstantial on contact. He managed to wrench away.
Malek made a low lunge for the gun and Null kicked him in the face with a single easy movement. As he struggled up from the grainy, crumbling floor, Null kicked him back down and actually stomped on him repeatedly with his right foot, then dragged him up and uppercut him just under the jaw.
Malek sagged and Null had to help him back to the wooden swivel chair.
Null dragged him up again and for five long minutes gave him a brutally procedural beating, precise and debilitating, careful not to break his nose. He then let him slump semi-conscious back to the chair. He put the muzzle of the Glock into Malek’s mouth.
There were no sounds other than the buzzing of the light and Malek’s stertorous breathing. Null produced another baggie and looked at his deadman’s phone. “I think they’re still outside, the Gangsta Boyz, waiting for me. Shall I keep them waiting, Malek?”
“Just do it already,” he panted. “You fucking choratsats ookhti poots!” He sprayed flecks of saliva in his defiance.
“No, Malek, I’m not going to kill you. I’m going to give you a gift. I’m going to give you back your humanity.”
“What the fuck?”
“How many guys you have tortured to death here in this garage? How many women beaten, raped, tormented, murdered? Can you even count?”
“What does it fucking matter?”
“They screamed in pain, begged for their lives, but you barely listened and ate a sandwich while Filmore Lakeworry and his friends yanked out a man’s teeth and fingernails, cut him slowly to pieces.”
“It’s what we do when we have to,” spat Malek. “What men do.”
“No, Malek. Men cry. They beg for their lives—they whimper, snivel and beg under great pain and threat of more pain. Their sensitivity makes them vulnerable and prone. They’re like babies, subject to kindness or cruelty, whichever may be imposed. They’re boiled down to the essential value of human feeling, which is what we are at best—sympathetic, empathetic, feeling entities marked by the caring that what we feel others can feel. Our misery can be theirs and vice versa. In this delicacy of sensation, we become careful, respectful even of the suffering of others, it becomes something that matters.”
He whipped Malek across the face with the butt of the Glock abruptly.
“What are you gonna do?” heaved Malek. “Put me out of my misery?”
“No, Malek. I think you need to get better acquainted with it. Your misery.”
Malek grunted and gurgled spittle in his throat. “No need to acquaint me with pain,” he announced. “We’re old friends. Pain is my enforcer. Pain obeys me, not the other way around! So, go ahead, finish me already! But stop trying to bore me to death!”
“No, Malek, I’m not going to kill you.”
“Then, what then?”
“You have to live. That way, I still control the streets. I don’t want to have to break in a new replacement for you and have to break him all over again the way I broke you.”
“Pussy. You haven’t broken me yet, pally!”
“Give it time, Malek. I’m not done.”
Then he paced back and forth in front of Malek, practically inviting him to make a move, but Malek just sat there in a slump, wheezing and bleeding. Null spied an old wooden-handled axe propped up in the corner of the room by the exit to the main garage and he stepped over to pick it up. He tested it for weight and balance, then strode back to the desk quickly. He was expecting something from Malek, waiting for him to draw some hidden pistol or to make some other pathetic move that he would have to put down hard.
None came.
Null took a breath. “I’m going to restore your humanity to you now, Malek,” he said. “One day you’ll thank me, I think. It’s a great gift, you know, the understanding of being human. The basic feeling that one human being can have for another. The knowledge and understanding of sensitivity and vulnerability—how weak and fragile we are. So easy to hurt.”
“Oh? And what’s this great gift going to cost me, pray tell? An arm and a leg?
“As a matter of fact—!” said Null, hefting the axe.
He took the right leg, and the left arm off cleanly, with a modicum of mess, called 911 and went outside looking for the Gangsta Boyz who were still lying in wait for him as if he were their master.
Rudy was screaming.
Boyd was giving the boy a bath in her florally decorated pink bathroom, and he was splashing water everywhere. Red faced and squalling, he struggled in vain. Boyd held him close into her, soaping his head. She didn’t care about his resistance; she was determined to get him clean and hugged him tight in his defiance, though it sopped water through her clothes. She wasn’t sure whether she could ever love this foundling boy, but for now his need for someone like her was paramount and somehow his need, as Null had pointed out, fulfilled a need of her own.
She drugged him to get to sleep, using her own prescription for trazodone to do so.
Watching him in her bed, tucked in with clean sheets and bedding, made her feel at peace, under control and purposeful.
She got herself a different gun.
It was a clean piece with a taped-up handle and the serial number filed off—completely illegal despite her living in the land with the most permissive gun laws on earth, though admittedly Boston took a hard line on guns with a hardass one-year mandatory sentence for possession of a firearm without a license. She had clipped it earlier that day from the evidence room down at District A-1 and A-15 by Government Center and no one batted an eye, though she did it clumsily enough to be seen.
She accepted that it would be brought up again, then buried in return for a favor. She was prepared for that. No one stopped her. No one said a word.
It was almost a half hour drive to the old Edwardian house in Arlington deeded on the books to one Freddy “Boom Boom” Cannon. She didn’t have to break in, as the front door had yet to be repaired from the onslaught of the police battering ram. Lights were on and there were faint sounds of movement coming from upstairs. She went up the steep staircase to the second floor, moved open a door left ajar and heard a yelping scream.
Benway.
He stood there under the light, frozen for a moment and very much slack-jawed. His upper lip was covered with sweat and his frizzy hair was wilder than usual.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” Benway sighed. “Didn’t you already search this place and come up empty?”
“It’s a cliché about returning to the scene of the crime.”
“This is my mother’s house. We don’t commit no crimes here.”
“But you and Lumpy did. You wrapped up the gum.”
“The gum’s not illegal. It should be, but it isn’t. So, packing up legal recreational gum’s about as illegal as bath salts or flakka.”
“You’re splitting hairs, Benway.”
“Did you get him?” he asked, wide eyed.
“Get who?”
“Lumpy. I served him up to you on a platter, and your criminalist, too.”
“I didn’t get Lumpy. Your science project did.”
“Null arrested him? I didn’t know he could do that.”
“Don’t be funny. You knew what would happen. You played it great. Manipulated Lumpy right into the ground.”
“He was headed there, anyway. I just helped him along.”
“You set it up for him to go after Null.”
“Sure. Everybody did. Have the two negatives cancel each other out.”
“Null is the one doing the canceling.”
“You see? All’s well that ends well.”
“I’m placing you under arrest.” She took out her Smith and Wesson handcuffs, ready to secure Benway. He demurred and drew back toward the closet where he had been removing and packing clothes.
“What for? What are you really going to charge me with I won’t be out in twenty-four hours or less on once I lawyer up?”
“Suspicion of kidnapping—”
“Are you kidding?” Benway suddenly looked relaxed, good humored. “Lumpy kidnapped me. I was doing his bidding under threat of bodily harm, and I informed on him and where you could find the victim. I fucking saved the day and you’re going to charge me? Try again, twinkle toes.”
“Malicious mischief and mayhem in the matter of Joseph Xavier Null. impersonating a physician, distribution of harmful drugs.”
“Good luck proving the malicious mischief and mayhem. Do you think Null will testify, sign affidavits? I bet not. Seems a reach, Lieutenant.” He paced back and forth nonchalantly, eying his suitcase. “Impersonating a physician? That’s a hummer too. No traction there. I’ll get a slap on the wrist, maybe. Probation if I stay around for it. And what harmful drugs, for God’s sake? The stuff’s not illegal nor medically proven to cause harm. Maybe in a few years it will be, but until then, I was just giving the kids a good time. How was I to know there was anything amiss with the goodies? Besides, I was kidnapped and doing Lumpy’s bidding. He called the shots, I was just a slave. I doubt I’d make accomplice—it’s a case of Stockholm Syndrome. I’ll beat it.”
“Creating a disturbance,” she said, lowering her arm and jingling the cuffs nervously.
“You’re joking.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Well, whether or not you are, I’m headed to Montreal. The scene’s a bit more forgiving there.”
“You’re going nowhere.”
“You’re going to shoot me—really?”
“The thought had occurred.”
“Forget it. How will you justify it? And you’re guilt-ridden enough as it is. You’d never shoot an unarmed man who really isn’t clearly guilty of anything.”
“You murdered Filmore Lakeworry and I don’t know how many died at the clubs.”
“Prove it.”
“You destroyed Joseph Xavier Null.”
“No, I brought him back from a psychotic catatonic break he would have never have recovered from otherwise. I did him a favor, and I didn’t charge a dime for it. I’m a fucking good Samaritan.”
“No, you’re something else.”
“Temper, temper, Lieutenant.”
“You made him a monster.”
“He doesn’t care. He gave me a pass. Even that wildcat fuck knows I’m a hero. Hell, he’s gangster number one in Boston as things stand. I don’t think he’d say a word against me.” Benway went over to the suitcase with a nervous grace and continued packing items from the closet. “Now if you’ll excuse me, Lieutenant, I got a hot bus to catch to get to Montreal. I don’t know how they handle a late check-in there.”
Boyd slumped her shoulders a bit, lowered the gun, then looked up at Benway, her eyes narrowed, her nostrils flaring. If the iris of the eye could truly burn, both of hers would have. “Well, Null did teach me something—something you’re going to want to know, Benway.”
“Yeah? Well, what is it?”
“He taught me one thing. Just one thing.”
Boyd moved quickly.
“So, tell me what it is, for fuck’s sake!”
She said it in her loudest whisper, and the sound of the word was drowned out by the blast, which was louder than she had thought, and Benway didn’t even know that he had heard it at the exact moment when the back of his head was blown out and its contents splattered against the closet’s back wall:
“This!”
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