The Muddy Charles was a modest former “no tell” motel built in the fifties located on a large traffic island right on Soldier’s Field Road between Market Street in Brighton and the Eliot Bridge in Cambridge. The sounds of swishing traffic were nonstop, unabated either by the hour of the day or routine catastrophe in the street. It was a sound indifferent to the human suffering contained within it, and certainly indifferent to the human suffering that took place within the precincts and rooms of the Muddy Charles.
The Muddy Charles used to be a Best Western Hotel, a Comfort and then a Red Roof Inn, but all the franchising failed due to its obnoxious location. And there were only so many daylight assignations to be had. So now, it was the tacky, slightly grimy Muddy Charles. Named with the type of outré irony that had fallen from fashion long ago. It didn’t seem that too many people actually stayed there. The parking lot was never full.
But the Muddy Charles nevertheless stayed in business.
And the lot was empty by the time the ancient boat pulled up.
Null was dropped off at the registration entrance by a flat black painted Buick LeSabre. He made it to the front desk, revealing a slight limp to his gait.
A portly, jolly man obviously watching TV in an adjoining room answered Null’s single push of the call button on the wall without delay, with twinkling eyes and a broad, white smile. Null spoke first. He put both his hands on the counter and leaned forward to address Null.
Null spoke before he could say anything.
“Show me a room. I’d like to see a room.”
“I’m sorry, sir. But we’re full up.”
“I’m sure you are.” Null paused, looking through the clerk as if he weren’t there. The clerk frowned. “Show me anyway.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but our residents need privacy.”
“No, I’m sorry. They won’t be needing it anymore. You know who I am, right?”
The white-haired, cherubic man behind the counter frowned and sputtered.
Null interrupted him.
“No need to pretend otherwise. Right now, you’re pressing a panic button on your cell phone in your pocket to alert the gunsels upstairs to come down heavy. You don’t have to say yes.”
The clerk backed away.
“They won’t be coming down.”
“Fuck you!”
“Don’t be afraid. It’s too late. Fear won’t help you now. Neither will god. No doubt god made his decision about you long ago. If he exists. I’m betting he doesn’t. And you are a chip sitting on the red.”
The man fumbled for something in his desk.
Null shot him twice center chest with a dismissive shrug. The clerk gagged on the floor. Null cooled him out with a single shot to the neck, then quickly snapped the deathly grimace with his cell phone camera.
The man sputtered and gagged.
Ronald burst in through the door behind him, Smith and Wesson standard thirty-eight drawn. Several of the Gangsta Boyz were filing in behind him. They had to stand and wait in the coffee area where the continental breakfast was to be served daily. That matinal event hadn’t happened since the nineties. Null recognized the faces of Ronald, Desi and Jo-jo.
“They comin’ down or what?” Ronald asked, as if boasting. “Cocked and locked.”
“No, we’re going up. Dominic and the others go up to the emergency exits?”
“My green light on the walkies?”
“Don’t tell them yet. Not until we’ve looked in a room or two.”
“What if they in the motherfuckin’ hall?”
“Jo-jo’s going to play canary in the coal mine. You hear him yell and fire shots, you give the signal. Meanwhile, we have three floors to cover.”
“Why ain’t they comin’ down yet? If they know you’re here?”
“Because they know I’m here.”
Jo-jo nodded and took the elevator up one flight, his Ruger forty-five drawn. Null and the others crept up steps. It was quiet all the way up. Jo-jo met them at the landing. None of them spoke. Jo-jo nodded and led the way. Null followed with the others seeming entirely unconcerned. Everyone else was jumpy but Jo-jo. It seemed he was getting off on the moment. He exchanged looks with Null, nodded at the first door. Null nodded back. Jo-jo kicked it in awkwardly, taking four tries to finally get it.
A shirtless teenaged boy smoking a cigarette stood in the center of the room, looking vaguely surprised, but more resigned than anything else.
“All you had to do was knock,” he said quietly.
Ronald was impatient. “Got thirty rooms up in this bitch—we gonna have the bus driver kick ‘em all in or what?”
“You have a point. Signal Dominic and whoever else is with him to pile in and start hard on the second level. Kick in all the doors, get ready for a firefight. Greenlight the pervs.”
Ronald spoke the order through the phone.
The rest of the Gangsa Boyz each took a door on the first floor and kicked them in, so far with no shots fired and the only sonic responses being wailing and yelling. Null went back downstairs and let himself in behind the counter where the clerk lay dying on the floor. He located the master pass key card on the clerk’s desk that was marked as such by the antique computer dominating it and stood over the clerk for a moment as he lay begging for help, uncannily still alive and noisy. Null stared at him for a long minute, then sprayed a line of fire across his body with the Heckler.
“There. That ought to help matters.”
He bounded upstairs to join the Gangsta Boyz on level one. The Gangsta Boyz stood back as Null opened all the remaining doors that had stubbornly refused to kick in and joined Dominic and the others, opening the doors for them as well.
Each room had a teenaged boy in it, each one emaciated, some in a state of undress, some dressed in fetish leathers, harnesses and several in kiddie pajamas. They were all submissive and compliant when revealed from behind a kicked-in door, so no further shots were fired by anyone. Dominic looked perplexed at the second level. Null spoke softly, as if pointing out some minor architectural flaw of the building.
“They’re all up on the third level. No second guessing. Just go up there and start shooting.”
“Where you go’n’ be?”
“I’m taking the roof. The gunsels are playing cute up there. I’m going to play cute too—see just how cute I can be.”
“Sounds like fun, dawg.”
“I’ll take your word for it. I wouldn’t know.”
“You wearin’ a vest?”
“Of course. I’m the one who expects to get shot.”
“We need ‘em too.”
“Time was an issue. I’ll see about it for the next run. Meanwhile, I believe you have some killing to do.”
“Clowns blew up Edgar.”
“They did. Make ‘em laugh.”
“I’m your vampire, homes.”
Null gave Dominic the master room key card and backed out a window at the end of the hall that led to the fire escape that led to the roof. He paused while climbing to listen to the gun shots and the attendant shouting and screams. He noted that he’d have to climb back down again and make sure that any surviving gunsels wouldn’t stay that way for too long, and he had to snap their pictures with his cell phone and send the images off to Brother Ray to stuff them directly into the faces of the users of the dark web.
Plus the kids.
Always the kids.
What to do with the kids?
He was about to heft himself onto the tar roof of the Muddy Charles, the fingers of his hands holding firmly to the metal ledge, but brash impact and a white-hot flash forced him back down and he all but lost his grip, nearly entering an awkward plummet down to the empty parking lot below.
He had just been pistol-whipped in the face.
“Zombie Fuck Null, die already!”
Four gunsels on the roof, Null guessed, dizziness and shadows obscuring his vision. A booted foot was coming fast at his face. Null pulled a move. With one hand free, he yanked the boot and its owner off the roof, smashing him down to the tarmac. With the other, he came up on the roof in a high vault, rolled low when he hit the tar, shooting until the Heckler was spent.
Two rounds grazed his right side near the broken ribs just skirting the flak jacket, which cut his breathing shallow.
Two of the three gunsels left had sunk down to the tar. The one left standing held an outsized pistol, a Browning Hi Power single-action, semi-automatic nine-millimeter. Null stood, his left leg seeming to buckle, pocketed the empty Heckler and raised up both hands.
“That ho check wasn’t no thing to you, was it?”
“All the same to me.”
“You’re a creepy little fucker, Null.”
“No doubt. You going to insult me to death?”
“Real talk, motherfucker. I’m takin’ you to see Legere. He go’n’ party wit’ yo ass.”
“He’s going to fuck me?”
“He go’n’ fuck you up!”
“Doesn’t he just want you to kill me? Why the elegant plan? What am I, Batman?”
“You a J-Cat motherfucker. You a lame duck fuck.”
“So, mow me the fuck down already.” The reports off a few different pistols in the middle distance broke the pause of the stolid silence. “Or do you intend to bore me to death?”
“Da fuck?”
“Hear that? That’s the sound of your buddies getting blipped off by my crew. You’re molly whopped.”
“The GB’s your motherfuckin’ crew? Shit, they a fuckin’ laugh! Punk ass d-boys slingin’ gak is all.”
“Today they’re slinging lead.”
“Meth king of Boston!” The gunsel laughed. “They say zombie fuck Null’s a chatted-out motherfucker. Fifty-one-fifty shit. They got you and that’s a fact. Yeah, Legere and everybody pretty much want you chilled off. I get a fat bonus if I make you die. I get a even fatter bonus I bring your punk ass down for Legere to party with. And that dude likes to par-tay.”
“Good with that gat, are you? A trip-wire trigger finger, the Browning all condition zero and everything? Cocked and locked?”
“You talk way too fuckin’ much for a dead motherfucker.”
“I hear that a lot.”
“I bet you do!”
“Usually I hear it just before death, which comes at you hard like a wrecking ball, knocks you flat on your ass and humiliates you while you pathetically question life, which all the time was the actual answer. But you never got it.”
“Tell it to Legere, zombie Null fuck.”
“Greed killed you. Ultimately does in the end.”
“I’m still alive, chatted-out punk!”
In a seamlessly easy series of quick moves, Null shucked off his coat, brought up the Bushmaster 90291 and made a crater in the gunsel’s chest, the force of which caused the Browning to fly off useless to the side and put the gunsel’s back up against the brick of some roof utility before he sagged down slowly to the roof tar. His mouth remained open though: a gaping black hole of hopelessness, clearly discernable even against the shadows and darkness of the night.
Null climbed back down the fire escape, hitting the rungs with tentative steps to account for a possible concussion.
He had a harder time maneuvering his body through the open window at the end of the third level hallway and fumbled into Desi, who almost went down as he went in.
“Yo homes, I ain’t no diaper sniper.”
Null dusted himself off, though there was no dust to be seen. There were gunsels splayed out in the hall, some of them in the half-open rooms. Blood had soaked the gray carpeting in numerous spots. He quickly took each one’s picture.
“Anybody we care about dead?”
“No, cuz,” volunteered Ronald. “No injuries even. These guys was playin’ on ass.”
“Where are the kids?”
“They on the second level. Punks every single one.”
“Any of them dead?”
“No homes. We alls know ‘bout dat. You gots da keys. Nobody here interested in dyin’.”
“Not today, anyway. There’ll come a time, though I’m sure.”
“Wallpaper says no.”
“You’re an optimist, Ronald. An excellent quality that can get you well and truly killed.”
* * *
“You’re not a john, are you?”
“Are you kidding? I’m not one of them.”
“One of them. You mean like your friends? The ones dead on the floor?”
“Yeah, obviously, I’m not one of them. I look at you and your friends and I could say the same about you. You’re not one of them.”
“Appearances can be deceiving. I assure you, I am exactly one of them. I’m one of them more than I’m one of anything else.”
“Who dies next, homes? Which one dese ofay motherfuckers goes?” asked Ronald with alacrity.
“Not me. Oh, no. I’m not going anywhere but home. I’m too important. You need me for whatever it is you’re doing you ugly fucking piece of shit.”
“You were found anally raping a teenaged boy in a hotel room. Who really needs you for anything?”
“I can pay you.”
“I don’t need your money. What’s your name? What is it that you call a mope like this, Ronald?”
“He a diaper sniper.”
“Thank you. You know, Ronald, I think you’re developing a taste for this. I’m not sure that’s a good thing.”
“Adapt or die, homes. Adapt or die.”
“True enough, Ronald.”
Null turned to the man and eyed him hard. He was big, wearing a cable-knit, maroon-colored sweater and khakis, florid faced, gray-haired, blue-eyed and overweight. He looked bored and on the verge of yawning.
“Alright, diaper sniper, what do I call you before you I kill you?”
“You been punched in the face once too often, you know that?”
“Name?”
“Hal. Everyone calls me Hal. I’m popular. Even you’re going to like me, because you’re going to need me. You need me right now, in point of fact. I’m one of the people owns this smorgasbord.”
Null scanned the hall. It was a crowded, stifling scene: Bodies of older men mixed in with younger hired gunsels, some from Roxbury, some from Mattapan, maybe one or two from Andover, all unmasked with lolling cartoon faces. Twink boys huddled in every room, afraid of what was in the hall. Gangsta Boyz dominated the dead and soon-to-be dead. The older men were there for a party. Hal and four others still alive were zip-tied on their knees on the bloody gray carpeting while Null, Do-rag, Dominic and Ronald stood over them. The rest of the crew either sat on the steps or loomed, lurking at the far end of the hall. Two sat carefully on sections of unbloodied carpeting.
“This bitch do, Edgar?” Dominic wasn’t hiding his anger. He pointed at Hal.
“No, Dominic, I don’t think so. Not that he didn’t play a part in it.”
“I’ll blip him off anyway, dawg.”
“Not yet. Let’s see what Hal has to tell us, or should I say, sell us.”
“You da shot caller.”
“Try again, Hal. I don’t remember seeing your name on the list I got from Finnerty the day I stabbed him in the heart, nor did I get any data from Franking before I blew the back of his head out through his eyes. I also was given the idea Hebe group was run as a business—no allowance for staff or equity partners sampling the goodies.”
“Yeah, well, I’m the exception that proves the rule. I dote on the goodies.”
“I can see that. You have a taste for raping young boys.”
“My flaws don’t define me. Besides, I pay in just like any john. Although the cameras are all off when I pay for a room. Our dark web end users don’t really want the privilege of seeing me in flagrante delicto with a boy of my choosing.”
“What have you got for me, Hal?”
“I’ll serve you Legere on a platter, for one, then I’ll tell you about all the other silent equity partners you don’t know about, and a guy so high up on the totem pole you can’t begin to touch him. But at least you’ll know. How does that sit with you, your sty-ness?”
“That was funny, Hal, I bet. Any of you think that was funny?”
“Ain’t no one laughin’, homes.”
Hal spat at Null. “Now, untie me, shit-for-brains, and I’ll tell you everything you need to know so I can blow this popsicle stand permanently.”
“Permanently? You mean, like, you’ll be giving up your equity stake in the Hebe Group partnership also? That kind of permanently?”
“It’s not like it was such a great moneymaker after you came along to fuck things up. Took you to mess up a good thing. You know what you are, scumbag? You’re a category killer. That’s you.”
“Not a good use of the term. I don’t specialize in the rape of children, teenage boys and girls. No, I do one thing. Just one thing.”
“Like I care, fucknuts. Just untie me and let me get my pale white ass on the road.”
“I see,” Null said, somewhat animated. To look at him, you might have even said he was cheery. Unless you knew him. If you knew him, you wouldn’t know what to say. “Cut his zip ties and get him up on his feet, Do-rag, if you will.”
Do-rag did so and helped the man up.
“I knew you’d see it my way, fucking punk. Everyone does sooner or later, and you’re nothing special. You’re actually nothing at all. Just like your name.”
“Now, Hal, as far as I’m concerned, your little insults have no effect on me. I don’t really mind them at all. They’re an interesting show of character. But now you’ve put me in a kind of a predicament. A dilemma, really. You see, in my line of work, I’m what they call the shot caller of this crew. If I were to just let you go now, my crew might start thinking that I’m getting to be too weak to be the shot caller. I mean, allowing myself to be insulted by such a punk ass monkey mouth piece of shit like you wouldn’t be a strong show of leadership, now would it? If I just let that go and let you walk out of here untouched, free as a bird, even if you happen to give me valid, useful information, I’d likely have a fight on my hands anyway or at the very least a chin check. Maybe even a ho check. It could get positively violent. We can’t have that, can we?”
“You’re telling me that you actually run this circus of niggers?”
“Hal, you’re not really helping yourself.”
“Tough shit if you lose face. That’s your problem.”
“No, Hal, now it’s your problem.”
Dominic moved his bulk to stand directly in Hal’s path. “This bitch don’t move till da man wit’ da keys say he move.” His face smoldered, far darker than the pitch of his skin.
“Hal, you weigh, what, a pot-bellied, somewhat out-of-shape two-sixty-something? Athlete in college?”
“Started cornerback at Colgate.”
“See? What did I tell you? Now, take me. I’m, what? A buck-seventy-eight, maybe? Not really what you would call a team sports kind of guy.”
“Like I care.”
“Goes to your advantage, Hal. You see, you and I are going to settle things, right here, right now and, most importantly, right in front of the Gangsta Boyz on this bloody carpet amid all the corpses.”
“Fine, if that’s what you want, I’ll cream you. I’ll kick your fucking ass right into next week.”
“That’s the spirit, Hal! That’s what we all want to hear.”
“Tell your goon to back off and we can start pronto.”
“Don’t you want to hear what’s in it for me first?”
“Why would I give a shit about anything you want, you sick, pathetic fuck?”
“Of course you wouldn’t give a shit. No one in their right mind would expect you to. Perfectly reasonable. But, for the sake of manners, indulge me anyway?”
“Whatever.”
Null’s tone of voice became so matter-of-fact and soothing as to be almost affable. “Well, just for you, Hal, and the guys behind me, I plan to beat you to death. I’m going to beat you blind, but not deaf nor dumb. Oh, no. I’m going to require that you’ll be able to tell me everything I need to know, clearly, concisely, accurately. And believe me, you’ll beg me to let you tell me, plead with me to let you tell me. Do you have any idea why you’ll be begging and pleading so badly? Any idea at all?”
“You’re really out of your fucking mind, you know that?” Hal was sweating, disquieted. He swallowed hard.
“You’re quite right about that, Hal. No use arguing the point. Right on the money, to be sure.”
Null relieved himself of his coat and all its weaponry, the Browning Hi Power he took off the gunsel on the roof, falling to the rug with a thud, making a couple of Gangsta-Boyz jump back, worried it might go off. He unshouldered the Bushmaster 90291 and removed the machete hanging around his neck from a lanyard, handing them gingerly to a very twitchy Do-rag. He gave his porkpie hat to Ronald, who held it respectfully.
He left the flak jacket on.
“Okay, you got toys. So, what? Big fucking deal. Why would a prick like you think I’d ever beg you for anything anyway?”
“Why? So I can kill you, of course.”
Hal made a disgusted face, like a drunk in a bar gulping a watered-down drink of cheap whiskey. He shook his head as if to clear the cobwebs. “I thought we had a deal.”
“We did. This is something else. This is heart-check territory.”
“I just want to check the fuck out of here.”
“Sure. You’ll check out. Oh, you’re going to want me to kill you, alright. You’ll beg for it. And I’ll oblige you, but any way you slice it, it’s going to seem like forever when I do it.”
“You mean like this conversation?”
“No. Like the collective screams of all the young boys you abused and anally raped.”