DEREK AWOKE. Consciousness struck him with the car-crash dislocation of deep sleep interrupted, its impact hurdling him through the years and miles. His arm flapped vaguely at the impediment lodged against the crux of his shoulder. He was nine years old and sleeping off a night of Nintendo and off-brand cola at Michael Rothstein’s house. He was sixteen and late for another Saturday morning shift at FreshCo, his mother’s voice wheedling through the nappy drywall. He was twenty-one and passed out on his girlfriend’s couch, the remnants of a mickey of Jack Daniels evaporating into a sticky film on his shirt. He was twenty-eight in Montreal, dozing semi-conscious in a hotel on St Viateur after completing the biggest job of his life, Miguel Santiago’s gangster blood drying beneath his fingernails.
The pressure on his shoulder, vibrating savagely. His perceptions snapped into focus with a mucusy snort. He was thirty-one years old, sleeping off the jagged edge of a hangover in a shitty apartment in downtown Niagara Falls. And Luka Volchyin was standing over him, his face split in a madman’s grin.
“Mornin’, Matchbook. Thought I’d let myself in.”
“Of course. Mi casa es su casa and all that shit.” Of its own accord, Derek’s hand drifted casually to beneath the bed’s second pillow, where his Governor lay snug against the sheets, safetied but loaded. He thought of the way Luka had cut his own wrist with his thumbnail, how the skin had stitched itself back together as quickly as it had torn. Could his brain tissue do the same thing? Derek noticed an ugly weal of discoloured flesh bracketing the gap between Luka’s nose and mouth. That didn’t heal up quite so fast. Why is that?
“You read yesterday’s paper?” asked Luka.
“Yeah. Fuckin’ Leafs blew it again, eh?”
Luka’s grin lost some of its width, but none of its intensity. “Funny guy. I was thinkin’ of a more local story.”
Derek said nothing. He’d read the story, of course. Had, in fact, bought about six different papers and read each account, then logged onto the library computers and read half a dozen more. Even to a professional killer, that kind of brazen balls-out recklessness was unthinkable. Almost awe inspiring, in a freak show, see-a-man-eat-a-tire sort of way.
“You could say thanks,” suggested Luka. “But I know that’s not really your style. So no worries, bro. That’s the way things roll when you’re part of the pack.”
“Thanks for what, exactly? It seems like butcherin’ people is its own reward for you.”
“Hey, you take what you can get. You said those two homicide cops were tyin’ you down, keepin’ you from hittin’ back at Ballaro. I took care of ‘em for you.”
“The fat old one, yeah,” said Derek. “And good work to you there. But the younger guy’s just in the hospital.”
“Yeah well, things went south a bit. It’s no big deal. He’s outta commission, is the important thing.”
“Not as out of commission as he could be.”
“Hey, back off, okay? The asshole nailed me.” Luka pointed to the gash on his left cheek. It carved a naked slash into his beard, its skin pink and puckered.
“Yeah, I noticed. You gonna make it?”
“You’re pushin’ your luck, McCulloch,” Luka whispered. Derek checked the man’s eyes and decided he was overplaying his hand a little. He raised his arms, palms out.
“Hey, man, I hear you. I’m sorry, okay? I guess I’m just a little wound up. You did me a major solid, and I appreciate it.”
The flinty edge fell from Luka’s gaze. “No worries, bro. Truth is, I shoulda ended that fuckin’ cop. But the light.” He closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t think so straight when I’m ridin’ the moon. Things feel, I dunno, lower.”
“Sounds pretty intense.”
Luka grinned. “It’s a trip, bro. Now you best get dressed. You’re runnin’ with the big dogs now. I think it’s time you meet the rest of the pack.”
The pack, it turned out, were sitting in his living room, making short work of the beer he’d bought himself the night before. Derek recognized many of them. There was Salvador Aguilar, an Ecuadorian grifter who used to pull three-card monte down by the falls. Beside him was Bear, a Quebecois juggernaut who spoke little English and communicated mostly through grunts. Nails stood in the corner, his earlobes tattered much as Bugs had described them. Derek counted nine, including Luka: eight men and only one woman—a rangy, sallow-skinned thing, all elbows and stringy brown hair, her eyes drowning in thick gobs of eyeliner. She had ugly, mannish hands made uglier by the fake green nails adorning them, though the rest of her wasn’t bad. Her gaze met Derek’s and flicked away, unimpressed. He placed her as the one-time girlfriend of Johnny Hall, head of the Hells Angels chapter that attempted to start up in town, much to Ballaro’s distaste.
As he put names to faces and rap sheets to names, Derek realised the common thread: every single one of them had stepped on Frank Ballaro’s toes and paid the price. Though not afraid to waste bullets and burlap sacks to make a point, Ballaro often relied on other forms of punishment to keep the city’s underbelly in line. His restraint kept the body count down and the cops off his back, but it also made him a lot of enemies. Outcasts flung to the city’s fringes, they’d clung to Luka as some hirsute Robin Hood, an outlaw keen to strike back at the establishment—even though said establishment was itself technically outlawed. They studied Derek darkly, their faces ranging from amused curiosity to contempt.
How many of their friends did I kill? he wondered. And how many more of them were told to kneel down and kiss Ballaro’s ring or wake up one morning to find Matchbook McCulloch’s smiling face overhead? He honestly couldn’t say. Regardless of the exact figures, he didn’t expect to find many friends here. His right hand itched for the comforting heft of the Governor, still sleeping peacefully beneath his pillow.
Luka wrapped his arm around Derek’s shoulders. Derek could feel the muscles of the bigger man’s bicep tight against his neck, full of dormant strength he had no interest in awakening. “Boys,” he said, tipping the woman a wink, “I want you to welcome Matchbook McCulloch to the pack.”
A rumbling of discontent roiled through the crowd.
“I dunno ‘bout this, Luka.”
“That guy’s in Ballaro’s pocket, man. How we supposed to trust him?”
“He iced my fuckin’ brother-in-law!”
“Yeah, and Stitch, too. Blew the poor SOB’s brains out while he was takin’ a shit!”
“He’s no good, Luka!”
“Shit and brains everywhere!”
Luka quieted the din with a raised hand. “We’ve all got our pasts. Every one of us has stepped on some toes, done some dirt, caused some hurt to someone else in the room. Today we leave all that shit behind us. You can fight against a man in a war and admire the grit he fights with, even if you hate the flag he’s fightin’ under. Grit is grit. Matchbook did what he did ‘cause it was his job. He was smart. He was tough. And he was loyal. And what’d all those years of loyalty buy him? Two goons in his room at midnight, ready to give him a one-way trip on the lead express. But ol’ Matchbook was too quick for ‘em, and Ballaro’s loss is our gain. This is forgive and forget time. Whatever beef you thought you had, that wasn’t with the guy standin’ in front of you now. All that bad shit, you lay it straight at Ballaro’s door. It’s him who needs to pay for what he’s done, and with Matchbook here as my number two, I’m ready to make it happen.”
The looks Derek caught from the crowd didn’t seem to embrace the forgive-and-forget attitude Luka was promoting. Luka himself might have sensed this, for he continued his speech to end on a different note.
“Ballaro’s been callin’ himself king of this shithole for a long time. He’s gotten fat, and he’s gotten greedy. He don’t run things fairly. That’s all about to change, thanks to us. There’s a new family gonna run the Falls, and the ties that bind it are thicker than blood!”
They let out a cheer that dissolved into a hoarse melee of catcalls and interlocking chatter. Derek saw Bear conclude an exchange by grabbing another man by the beard and slamming his head into the man’s nose. The crunch of cartilage ricocheted through the room. The first man wiped his face, laughed, and broke the seal on another beer.
What the hell was he getting himself into?