“When you want to attack, you remain calm and quiet, then get the jump on your opponent by attacking suddenly and quickly.”
—Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings
Winter felt over dressed. He wore a gray designer suit with a light blue button-down shirt and tie—not what one expected to see in a gin mill in this part of Roxbury. The suit had set him back almost a grand before the additional tailoring for his shoulder rig, which cost another hundred bucks. He sat at the bar and ordered tonic water with a twist.
He turned on his stool and studied the man sitting beside him. He was grungy, filthy as a street person. His dreadlocks were grimy and matted into a gnarled mess, which didn’t even resemble hair; his knit cap was colored green, black and yellow, the national colors of Jamaica, and was saturated with gel and grit. The whites of his eyes looked brown and he smelled like carrion.
Winter turned back and watched the TV. The Sox were playing a day game and he smiled as he watched Big Papi hit a towering fly ball into the right field grandstand. “He sure can hit.”
The other man glanced at the game then back to his drink.
“I’m Gordon.” Winter held out his hand. The reggae junkie stared at his expensive clothes and ignored the proffered hand.
When the bartender slid the tonic water in front of him, Winter made a point of flashing his large roll of cash. He peeled a ten from it and put it on the bar. The junkie’s eyes locked onto the roll of bills and widened. He didn’t look away until it disappeared into Winter’s pocket.
“Hey,” Winter called to the bartender, “give my friend here a refill on me.”
“I ain’t your friend, cracker.”
“Hey, man, don’t get all bent out of shape, I’m just trying to kill some time before an appointment.”
“An appointment in the hood?” the junkie chuckled. “You got an appointment around here, you either a narc or a pusher.”
“Well, I’m sure as fuck no narc.”
“You selling or buying?”
“Neither, not in here anyway. Is there someplace we can talk in private?”
“There be an alley out back—I meet you there in five minutes.”
Winter finished his drink, paid the tab and walked out into the bright afternoon sun. It took several seconds for his eyes to readjust to the sunlight. His vision restored, Winter turned into the alley and followed it to the rear of the bar. He was walking into a set up and relished the prospect.
Before reaching the end of the alley, he drew a
The man’s eyes crossed as they focused on the gun. His mouth opened and closed but nothing came out.
“Let me guess. I’ll bet you’re Shawnte Armstrong . . . ”
A nod was all the answer he got. Winter backed up a step, grabbed Armstrong by the neck. He spun him around and smashed his face against the wall. Armstrong turned his head at the last second, avoiding a broken nose. “Jimmy O sends you his regards,” Winter said.
“He’s the judge and the jury in the murder case of a thirteen-year-old named Latisha Worthington.”
“What you talking about?”
“You been tried, Shawnte . . . tried and convicted. I’m your executioner. But first, you’re going to tell me where I can find Andrew and Jamaal. . . . ”
O’Leary drank from the ceramic mug and stared at Houston and Anne through a stream of smoke. “Your ass hurt much?”
“Only when I laugh. I never thought a wad of wax and paint could raise a welt that big.”
“Gordon’s very skilled at what he does.”
“Either that or I’m out of practice. Where did he go?”
“I sent him to take care of something for me. I wouldn’t feel too bad about Gordon sneaking up and shooting you in the ass. He’s that good. Hell, Anne and I had no idea where you were until you shot me. Gordon had been watching you for at least five minutes before that.”
“Well, he was trained by some of the best.”
“Take him with you.”
“I can’t. Rosa wants me alone.”
“So drop Gordon off someplace close. That way if you don’t do the job, he can finish business and get Susie off that island.”
“As I said this morning, I’m going too,” Anne said. “Susie knows me—besides I can take Rosa into custody.”
“You mean claim the body, don’t you?” Jimmy said.
Anne glared at him.
Jimmy’s cell phone rang and he answered it. “Yeah?”
He listened for a couple of seconds. “Give me a half hour.”
“Business?” Houston asked.
“Kind of—you guys have a good time. I’ll check in later.” O’Leary turned to Lisa and pointed an index finger at the table. He moved the finger in a circle, indicating that Anne and Houston’s bill was on the house.
“Yeah . . . ”
“Is this another of those situations where the hood is taking care of its own?”
Jimmy backed up, holding his palms out in front of his chest.
“Ask me no questions . . . ”
“Yeah, yeah, go on, get your sorry ass out of here.”
“See you in a few hours.”
O’Leary parked behind Winter’s jet black Lincoln Navigator. Gordon and two other men stood alongside the truck. Jimmy stopped beside them and looked at the tenement across the street from them.
“Sheets in there?” O’Leary asked.
“Yep, he has Jamaal and a couple of his goombahs with him.”
“They packing?”
“They usually are.”
O’Leary turned to Gordon’s companions. “Hey, Billy, Ed, how’s it goin’?”
“Jimmy,” the men replied in unison.
“Ed, you cover the rear.”
“Got it.”
They each took out a pistol and checked it. Assured their weapons were loaded and their actions were in working order, they waited for their boss to give the word for them to go about the business at hand.
O’Leary tossed his cigarette in the gutter. Thunder rolled, lightning flashed, and rain suddenly cascaded on them. “Looks like it might rain all night.”
“Yup, can’t ask for better weather for an ass-kicking.”
Lightning streaked across the sky and when O’Leary smiled, his teeth shone phosphorescent in the electric flash. “Which apartment?”
“They’re on the first floor, first door on the right.”
“Well, let’s get to it. Ed, we’ll give you five minutes to get in position.”
“Only need a couple. Sheets feels safe in there—won’t be any lookouts.”
“He never was the sharpest crayon in the box, was he?” O’Leary said.
Ed crossed the street, entered the shadows beside the triple-decker and disappeared from sight. The rain increased, becoming a steady downpour. O’Leary turned his collar up. “Let’s go, this keeps up—I’m so sweet, I might melt.”
Winter stepped off the curb. “Boss, you might be a lot of things, but I never would have thought sweet was one of them.”
“There goes your Christmas bonus.”
They entered the front door and paused before the apartment door. The hallway was dark, lit by a single bare lightbulb. The building was falling apart. Worn linoleum covered the floor and patches of paint hung from the walls. It reminded O’Leary of the dump where he had lived while growing up. The heady odors of marijuana, cooking oil, and fried fish filled the hall. Upstairs a TV blasted, trying to overpower the heavy thumping beat of rap music. “Another wonderful day in the neighborhood.”
“Just like coming home,” Winter said.
O’Leary nodded. He raised his handgun. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
Winter stepped back and seemed to coil like an overtorqued spring. He burst forward, slammed into the door with his shoulder and when it banged open, stormed into the apartment with Billy on his heels. There was a shot, followed by shouting. After a few seconds, the noise ceased and O’Leary heard Winter say, “Evening, Andrew. What’s happening?”
“What for you bust in my place, asshole?”
“Just following orders, Andrew.”
“Who give you that order?”
“I did.” Jimmy O walked into the apartment and nodded at the body on the floor beside the couch. “Who’s that?”
Gordon squatted over the body and grasped its face with his free hand. He rotated the head until it faced the ceiling. “Jamaal.”
O’Leary nodded, and then without a word he checked the apartment, circling the room, holding his pistol against his side. He looked around and decided that business in the hood must be on the decline. The furniture was curbside pickup, broken springs and frayed upholstery. The only thing of value was the entertainment center, which boasted a fifty-six-inch HDTV, equipped with a serious mega-watt amplifier and speakers to match. The kitchen was filthy; wallpaper hung in shreds and the sink overflowed with dirty pots, pans and dishes. The bedroom décor was early-nineteenth-century flophouse, sagging bed with no linen and greasy mattress and pillows. He opted not to see what state the bathroom was in. He returned to the living room and Andrew Sheets.
“You got no fucking right to come barging in here, shootin’ people,” Sheets protested.
“Jermaine Watts told me I should look you up,” O’Leary said.
“Jermaine? That candy-ass motherfucker—he be dead.”
“I know that. We took him for a swim in the harbor.”
“You saying you kill him?”
“Yeah, I’m saying I made him dead . . . Armstrong too.” O’Leary glanced at the body on the floor. “Now that Jamaal has departed us, that only leaves you to be dealt with.”
Fear-induced sweat dripped from Sheets’s ebony face and he smiled a wide, over exaggerated smile. His large teeth looked larger than a horse’s. “You be shittin’ me, right?”
“I wouldn’t shit you, Andrew . . . you’re my bas-turd. I’m here to settle accounts.”
“What I owe you for?”
“Latisha Worthington.”
Sheets bolted from the couch and ran through the kitchen and to the back door. He took one step onto the back porch and Ed’s fist slammed into his face. His feet flew parallel to the decking and he slammed down onto his back. O’Leary and his men watched as the gangbanger tried to regain his feet and slipped on the wet wood. Trying to regain his breath, Sheets gasped, then rose up on his arms and saw a body lying against the railing.
“Som-bitch came charging out the door when you guys busted in. He ran right into my knife,” Ed said.
Sheets saw a Bowie knife in Ed’s hand; blood dripped from the blade.
Winter turned the body over. “Looks like his throat slid right along the edge.”
Andrew curled up and covered his head with his hands. “I don’t know nothing—never saw a thing. You let me go and I be in Bee-more by morning.”
Jimmy knelt beside Sheets and pulled his hands away from his head. “I can guarantee you’ll be someplace in the morning, but it’s gonna be a lot hotter than Baltimore.” He lit a cigarette and stared through the torrent of water that poured off the roof as he inhaled. After several seconds, during which the only sounds were the splash of run-off and Sheets’s heavy breathing, he said, “Ain’t it a crime how you can never find a cop when you need one, Andrew?” He nodded at his men. “Take out the garbage. Don’t forget to bring the other two shitheads along.”
They bound Sheets’s hands and feet with heavy plastic tie-wraps and half-carried, half-dragged him to the back of Winter’s SUV. Winter spread a waterproof tarp across the back of the truck and pressed the muzzle of his .357 against Sheets’s nose. “You make so much as a squeak and I won’t wait to pop a cap in your worthless fuckin’ head.”
Ed and Billy checked the corpses for anything that Sheets might use to free himself. Satisfied they were clean of weapons and cutting tools, they threw the bodies onto the tarp, tossed Andrew on top of them and slammed the hatch closed.
When Jimmy O turned to get into his own Lincoln, a woman stepped out of a dark doorway and walked around the vehicle and stood in front of it, barring his exit.
“Marian?” O’Leary asked. “What are you doing here?”
“I been watching this punk’s crib all day.”
The rain fell harder and O’Leary glanced skyward. “Well, you can stop watching and go home. We’ll deal with him.”
“He alive?”
“Yeah, he’s alive—the others aren’t.”
“I want to go with you and see he gets what he got coming.”
“Marian, you don’t want to do that . . . ”
“Yes, I do. I got the right, Jimmy. It was my baby them motherfuckers raped and killed.”
O’Leary peered through the downpour and asked Winter. “What you think?”
“She’s got a point, boss. If anyone has the right to see this piece of shit get what he has coming to him, she does. Hell, I’ll hold the bastard while she does him if she wants.”
“Get in the car, Marian.” O’Leary held the door open for her.
They drove to a saltwater marsh on the outskirts of Quincy. Winter got out of his SUV, cursed and raised the hatch. “Either the asshole shit himself or one of them corpses did. I had to open all the windows. It better not be on my truck.”
Winter pulled Andrew out of the Lincoln, letting him drop into the mud. Andrew’s eyes were as big as pie plates as he watched O’Leary’s men grab the edge of the tarp and pull it, dumping the bodies of his men onto the ground. He finally accepted the fate that awaited him and he began crying. “Don’t be doing this, man. I didn’t hurt the girl. It was Jermaine and Shawnte what done most of it.”
“Were you there?” O’Leary asked. “Don’t fucking lie to us; we’ll know.”
“Yeah, I was there.”
“Did you try and stop them?”
Andrew shook his head. “She was just a horny little bitch from the hood, always hitting on Jermaine . . . ”
Marian stepped around the car and charged at Sheets like an enraged pitbull. She punched him so hard his head turned and he shut up. “Mothah fuckah, don’t you be calling my baby no horny little bitch!” She clenched her fists and hit Sheets again and again. Her arms windmilling as she rained slaps and punches on his head. “You just a fuckin’ coward, got no idea what it mean to try and make a living in the hood wit’ no husband.”
Blood dripped from Sheets’s nose. He spat a wad of spit and blood at Marian. She rubbed the bloody spittle into her blouse. “I be keepin’ that to ‘member yo by.”
“You better hope they kill me, bitch, ‘cause I be coming for you next.”
“I don’t think she has to worry about that,” Winter said.
When Sheets surveyed the grim faces of the people who surrounded him, he lost his air of bravado. He began to blubber and plead for his life again.
“It never ceases to amaze me how these assholes are such babies once you get them away from their pack,” O’Leary nodded at Winter and Ed. “Do it quietly. We don’t want to wake up the neighborhood. Better muffle his mouth . . . he’s the type who will squeal like a pig in a slaughter-house.”
Winter reached in the truck and grabbed the filthy rag he used to check his oil and a roll of duct tape. He shoved the rag in Andrew’s mouth and secured it with tape. Once the gag was finished, he stepped away and held a hand out toward Ed. The Bowie knife suddenly appeared. Lightning flashed and reflected from the blade.
Andrew saw the twelve-inch blade and began to scream into his gag. Winter took the knife, flipped it, caught it by the blade and offered it, handle first, to Marian.
“You want the honor of having the first slice?”
Marian took the knife. “I want all the slices.” The huge knife looked like a scimitar in her small hand as she stepped forward and drove the blade deep into Andrew’s stomach. She drove it home with such force that her small fist touched his stomach and the tip of the Bowie knife broke through his back—it was visible when lightning flashed. Andrew doubled over and they heard him puke, so Winter ripped the gag from his mouth. Blood covered Marian’s hand and dripped onto the gangbanger’s white shoes, where it mixed with the driving rain and washed away. When she pulled the knife out of his midsection, Andrew slumped to the ground and curled into the fetal position.
“Hey. Hey, Marian,” O’Leary said. “Take it easy—make it last.” He repositioned her grip on the knife. “Be careful, you don’t want to cut yourself.”
Thunder rolled and lightning flashed again making the scene look like a collection of still photographs. Sheets lay on his side. They listened to him inhaling loudly through his nose.
“Sounds like a damned beached whale.” Gordon ripped a piece of duct tape from the roll and pressed it over Sheets face, cutting off the airway. “That’s better.”
For a minute or two, they watched Andrew struggle for air.
“I got twenty bucks that says he either suffocates or drowns in his own puke before he bleeds out,” Billy said.
“I’ll take some of that action,” Ed replied.
Andrew died slow and Billy won the bet.
O’Leary guided Marian to his car and helped her in. He turned to Winter. “Dump ‘em in the marsh. After that you guys can go home. We’re finished for tonight.”