I paid for a room with cash, leaving a small deposit I was prepared to never see again. I brought all of my bags into the room and spread the contents on the bed. I opened the food and ate a piece of oily grilled bread while I decided what to do first.
By the time I finished the bread, I was stripped and ready to plug the clippers in. I stood over the sink in the cramped bathroom with the clippers set to the second-lowest setting. Each pass over my head sent hair into the sink in greasy clumps. The dead hair smelled of the boats and fish. The odour was deep in the hair and would never have washed out; it was as much a part of the hair as the colour.
It took ten minutes to cut my hair. Once I was sure I had gotten every spot, I set the clippers down a notch and began trimming my beard. The dark coarse hairs fell like dandelion spores into the sink. I trimmed everything down and began shaving the shortened facial hair into a presentable beard. It wouldn't stand out in the city anymore, but it would obscure a face some people might remember. With my appearance acceptable, I got in the shower.
I unwrapped the motel soap and used half the bar to get the last summer's worth of work on the boat off of me. Each swirl down the drain brought a bit more of me back. I was less the fisherman and more the invisible man with each passing minute under the water.
I quickly towelled off and, without dressing, ate the rest of Yousif's food on the bed. Beads of water dampened the comforter, but I didn't pay the dampness any mind. After my dinner, I threw everything on the bed onto the floor — except the revolver. I propped my head up on the pillows and used my left hand to control the television remote. I watched television in the dark, catching up on reruns and flicking by newer shows I had never heard of. I fell asleep alone in the dark, one hand on the remote, the other reflexively curled around the revolver.
I woke the next afternoon and put on the new clothes. The pants and shirts had fold lines in them, but I was sure they would fade away. I didn't feel bad about the twelve hours' sleep I had; the past few days wound me tight, and the next few would not be any easier.
I retrieved the belt from my old pants and put it on, making sure the knife was concealed behind my back under my shirt. I tried to put the gun into my waistband, but it was too noticeable under the knife, and too bulky under the front of my T-shirt. I had almost given up on carrying the gun on me at all when I remembered the hidden pockets in the pants. The gun fit tight into a concealed thigh pocket. It wasn't good for a quick draw, but it was much better than leaving the gun in the car.
I picked up the toiletries, clippers, old clothes, and garbage and put them all into a pillowcase. I figured the pillowcase was more than a fair trade for my deposit. I had to take everything with me. The takeout containers would lead to Yousif and then to a description of me and Paolo.
I left the room key on the dresser and made it to my car without being noticed. I drove into the next parking lot I saw and emptied the pillowcase into three separate dumpsters. I had to individually force each item under the padlocked chains holding the lids closed. Once everything was gone, I got back in the car and drove towards the mountain access. Upper James led down the mountain, becoming James Street when it left the rocky incline. The road was just as worn and craggy as I remembered and it bounced me around inside the car. I caught sight of my reflection and noticed the change in my appearance. My face was more different, and more the same, than it had been in a long while. A fact that made me smile.
I found the cleaning-supply store that Dom Bombedieri ran his crew out of and spent the next few minutes circling the neighbourhood. There were kids outside hanging out even though it was 1:30 p.m. on a school day. None of the kids was doing anything wrong; they just hung around or played keep-away with basketballs. None of the kids eyed me twice as I circled, so I wrote them off as lookouts. I pulled to the curb two storefronts away from the cleaning-supply store and opened the glovebox. I pulled out the cell phone, mini recorder, and dog bone, then shifted in my seat to load the phone and recorder into a pants pocket concealed near my calf. After that, I reached into the back seat and picked up the jacket.
I got out of the car and put the coat on, leaving it unzipped. The bone fit into a pocket on the side of the jacket, leaving five or six inches hanging out. I didn't care because it didn't appear threatening or stand out. If asked why I was in the neighbourhood, I could say I was looking for a lost dog. The bone would as good as prove what I said to anyone. Everything in place, I locked the car and walked past the store.
The sign just read cleaning supply, and the window displayed several steam cleaners and large floor waxers. There was only one man inside; he was seated behind the counter watching a small TV. I continued down the street before circling the block to get back to the store.
The door had no chime, so Uncle Guy didn't look up from the television until I was a few feet away. I had already figured out he was alone in the showroom and spotted the only exit, a closed door ten feet away from Guy behind the counter, when my presence was acknowledged. He snorted loudly and swallowed whatever he moved in his throat before he stood. He was a fat man with huge features. His large nose and heavy cheeks were peppered with blackheads. They were so large I thought I could work them out with needle-nose pliers. He wore a golf shirt with maroon pants that were hiked up high on his waist, making his torso look short and wide. The golf shirt must have once been washed with the pants because it was dyed an uneven light pink. Guy wore it without an undershirt, and the tight top showed every roll, nipple, and imperfection. He looked at me through dirty greasy glasses and spoke. His breath was stale from smoking.
“I'm losing a fucking bundle on AC Milan here.”
I didn't respond so he continued — beginning with another snort. “What can I get for you?”
I looked around the store, making a big production of it so Guy's eyes followed my gaze. “What have you got that takes out blood?”
Guy snapped his eyes back to mine and looked at me, suddenly unsure. “What do you need to take blood out of?”
“Dom told me you're the man to see about cleaning a place right. If you know what I mean.” My voice didn't come out weak or wobbly like a liar's; it came out smooth — a conspirator's voice with just the right amount of malice.
Guy leaned back in close — smiling now. “What the fuck did you get into, hunh? What's the blood on? Wood? Carpet? Concrete?”
I looked down at the dingy brown-carpeted floor. “Carpet,” I said. “Old worn-in carpet.”
“If the carpet's old, you'll have to do the whole floor or else someone will know the one spot was cleaned. How long has the stain been on the floor?”
“Not long,” I said. “Not long at all.”
Guy paused for a wet snort. “I got a couple a steam cleaners that will take anything out as long as it's fresh. The size you need depends on the size of the stain. How much blood is there?”
“There's gonna be a lot of blood, Guy,” I said as the side of my mouth started to move. The grin formed on my face and it did to Guy what it used to do to me when I saw it on my uncle's face. He was unsettled, unsure of what to make of it. It occupied him while my right hand pulled out the rubber bone.
“Gonna? What the fuck you mean gonna? How much blood is there, stunad?”
I didn't answer. I was too busy swinging the bone up from my hip. I swung it like an overhead tennis serve. The bone arced back as I made a split-second pause in midair, and then shot forward with my arm's change in direction. The hard rubber pounded into the fat face, popping the swollen nose like a water balloon. Blood went all over the thin pink shirt and counter. Guy put two bloated hands up to his face. The fingers, thick like rolls of toonies, tried to hold back the sudden gush of blood.
I took a handful of the greasy, thinning hair on the top of his head and pounded the hands with the bone. I beat them away from his face and began swinging at his short, fat, tyrannosaurus arms. Guy's limbs began to writhe over his head, simultaneously trying to protect his head and avoid the blows. I had to climb over the counter to keep a hold on him. I kept swinging, moving up the flailing arms back to his head. His arms soon became too beaten to cover up his head, and there was nothing to protect the dog toy from cleaving skin away from the browbone. The strikes beat him down to the floor behind the counter.
Guy bled into the carpet and began to sob. The sound was like a child crying in the night. They were heavy sobs accompanied by heavy snorts. The sobbing meant I did my job right. He was hurt, bad but not out, or worse, dead. I didn't waste time checking on him; he was a man who had covered up countless beatings and worse. Why did he deserve better than he gave to his customers?
“Help! He's having a heart attack! Someone call an ambulance!” I didn't know if Guy's son Denis was in the store or not, but if he was I had to get him out and keep him off balance. Paolo said Denis never left his dad alone, and I had to rely on Paolo's intel. Sure enough, the door behind the counter opened and a man emerged from the back room. The man was a younger replica of Guy. He was not as fat, not as greasy, but equally ugly.
“What happened?” he yelled as he approached.
I put panic in my voice. “He grabbed his chest and collapsed!”
Denis reached his father. “His face! What happened to his . . .” Staring at his battered father, Denis never saw the bone coming; it hit him in the temple and shut him down.
I patted Denis down and freed a gun from a holster at his back. I also pulled out his wallet and cell phone. I stuffed the wallet and phone into my already full pockets and tucked the gun into the front of my pants.
I left father and son on the floor together while I locked the front door. I pulled the blinds down over the windows, dimming the room. I freed Denis's gun from my waistband and thumbed back the hammer as I moved behind the counter and checked Guy and Denis. Guy still sobbed and gurgled on the floor. His beaten arms tried to rise off the floor to his face but repeatedly failed. Denis was still out, his temple darkening from the impact of the sap.
I moved through the doorway into the next room; it was lit by too many fluorescent lights, and the aggressive glare hurt my eyes. The room had huge crates and boxes along the wall connected to the storefront. The crates and boxes were labelled with different brand names that I'd heard of before. The boxes looked heavy and likely dampened all sound coming in and out of the room. Denis probably had no idea anyone was out front with his father until he heard me yell. The rest of the room didn't belong at all. There was a flat-screen TV with surround sound set up around two huge leather couches. Behind the couches sat a large desk with a computer terminal. The TV was tuned to the same soccer game as the TV behind the counter. A darkened bathroom was through a doorway beside the desk. A quick check showed me that the bathroom got none of the expensive upgrades that the other room got. It was white, or it once had been. There was piss on the floor, and the seat was up. I backed out of the empty bathroom, careful not to touch anything.
All in all the back room was small, but it looked like what it was — a comfy clubhouse for thugs. I turned off the television and walked back out front into the dimmed sales area. Both father and son were still down on the floor together. I walked past them to the first vacuum I saw — a huge industrial model. I pulled the power cord out of a large retractable spool on the back. The cord came out and retracted with a loud snap when I let it go. I tucked Denis's gun back in my pants, freed my knife, and unwound the cord until there was none left. I cut the power cord into three-foot sections and threw them over my shoulder. When I finished I had six sections in all.
I righted Guy's chair and yanked Denis up to his feet. He surprised me, surging up with the momentum of my pull. He rammed me hard into the counter and tried to drive me over it. I lowered my body and forced him back. I didn't bother pushing his shoulders. I put two hands on his face and shoved — making sure to dig my thumbs into his eyes. His head lurched away, but his arms kept pushing against my body. I drove forward harder with my thumbs and felt his arms start to slacken. His hands stopped trying to shove me over the counter and began to pull at my thumbs. His rage and anger about what I did to his father made his bulky body impossible to hold. He shook his head free from my grip, moving it back and forth like a dog shaking a rat. With my hands loose, he stepped back, maximizing the four feet of space between us.
His eyes looked red and livid, and his wild right hook proved what they were telling me. Denis was fighting for his life, but his sloppy style and heavy breathing let me know he had lost his head and was just running on rage. I wasn't like him. My chest rose and fell evenly; the surprise of his playing possum had long worn off. I stepped into his wild hook, making the fist no real threat at all. The hook turned into a grab once it couldn't hurt me with bone-on-bone blunt force. Denis pulled my body closer, forcing me into a headlock. He was surprisingly strong for someone who looked so out of shape. My neck compressed under his damp armpit. The pressure wasn't immediately threatening because my right hand guarded my throat, but the choke would eventually slow me down. My fist punched repeatedly back and forth like a piston, battering Denis's ribs, but the folds of flesh and his loss of sanity made everything I did ineffective. He cranked harder on my neck and rested more of his weight on my frame. He was screaming in my ear as he tried to wrestle me down like a steer.
The pressure, combined with the hot, smelly air under Denis's arm, began to make it hard to breathe. I gave up punching and grabbed a fistful of his right pant leg. Holding his leg in place, I moved my right hand away from protecting my neck. The pressure surged higher without my arm pushing against the choke, and my vision began to dim around the edges as the air was forced out of my throat. With the last seconds of consciousness I had left, I pulled Denis's gun from my waistband. In one motion, I cocked the hammer back and put the barrel of the small revolver against his shin bone, right between knee and ankle. I pulled the trigger and felt the smelly vise release my neck. Denis was still screaming, but the pitch was higher now that he was on the floor with his shin bone splintered.
The sound of Denis's screams gave his father strength, and Guy surged off his back onto his hands and knees. Before he could get any higher I cut him off, pistol-whipping him on the top of his head. The greasy hair on his scalp offered no protection, and his body slammed to the floor.
Denis still screamed while he clawed at his leg. He tried to cradle his leg, but each time he attempted to touch his shin his hands flinched away as though he was touching fire. I walked past him and righted the chair. I looked at it for a few seconds and realized two things: the chair would no longer help me do what I needed to do, and I had to shut Denis up. In this neighbourhood most people would ignore screaming, especially those who knew what really went on in the back room of the store. But if I let Denis do enough yelling, eventually someone would call for help, either from the cops or from the boss, Dom the Bomb. I picked up one of the pieces of extension cord and walked back to Denis. I flipped him over and looped the cord around his face like he was a horse. I put my foot in the centre of his back and pulled with two hands. The cord fought against his strained lips and teeth until it gave up a little slack as it slid into his mouth. I choked up on the cord and held it in my left hand as I pulled Denis's left arm behind his back. I stepped on the wrist with my heavy boot and heard him whimper a little louder against his gag. With the one hand immobilized, I turned back to his bit and tied it off behind his head. Once it was tied, he could no longer scream — he was only able to grunt through his bit as I finished tying him up.
I kept my foot on his left arm and pulled his right hard behind his back. I put a knee on his spine, brought Denis's hands together, and tied them with extension cord, feeling no remorse for his predicament. His feet followed without a fight. Any movement of his feet would have meant excruciating pain for his damaged shin. Once he was restrained, I flipped him over and looked at the gunshot wound. Blood leaked through the hole the bullet made, and the fabric of his pants tented on jagged shards of bone that were pushing out from around the wound. I took another piece of cord and tied a tourniquet around Denis's leg four inches below the knee. The knot was tight, and within a minute the blood loss was already tapering off. I used the rest of the cords to tie up Guy; his battered, unconscious body offered no resistance.
The situation was a disgrace. I spent years meticulously planning jobs to go off without a hitch, and here I was knee-deep in a father-son massacre. What I had done inside the cleaning-supply store was everything I wasn't; it was crude, blunt, and out of control. I was being used and it was only the beginning. I let the anger wash over me for ten seconds before forcing it back down. I had to force my teeth to unclench when I noticed the grinding was an audible sound inside my head. Inside I knew that the state of Denis and his father was not because of me. I had no real intel on either man or their boss. All I had was some names on a slip of paper. Paper provided by a man who was teetering on the edge. Paolo forced me to move on two men I had never seen at a pace he knew to be reckless. He was not the calculating man I had known anymore; he was a grief-stricken uncle and a vindictive mob boss. Both sides of his personality were pushing me hard to find out who took Army and Nicky. When I did, I wasn't sure who would be taking revenge. As bad as the situation was, it would only get worse unless I became the one controlling the chaos. I had to make sure this clusterfuck never came back to bite me or Paolo, because if it did, it would bite Steve and Sandra too.
With his father still out, Denis had nowhere to look except up from the floor at me. I pulled the recorder from my pocket and turned it on.
His sweaty, pale-white head began to shake back and forth. “No,” was the message I got.
“I'm going to take off the gag and we're going to talk,” I said.
His head shook harder, pleading with me to leave the gag on. He grunted at me and bucked on the floor. His teeth gnashed at the cord in his mouth as though he was trying to hold it in place. I used two hands to roll him onto his front. Denis squirmed harder, trying to move farther away from the counter — farther away from me. I grabbed the cord tied around his head and pulled his skull from the floor with it. His body arced up in an armless upward-facing dog while I slid the knife in sideways between the cord and his hair. The knife was razor sharp, but I still had to saw at the cord for a couple of seconds to get it off. The sudden release and lack of hands sent his head straight to the floor. His skull impacted like a melon falling in the produce aisle. The sound was flesh, bone, and teeth breaking and bruising.
Denis moaned into the floor until I rolled him again.
“No!” His word came as a loud mumble. He was not afraid of me. He was afraid of his boss. Paolo said Bombedieri was still working — just under the radar. Whatever he did, it scared Denis more than being tied up with a hole in his leg. He wouldn't talk into the tape recorder. He wouldn't unless I became the scariest thing in his universe.
“We need to talk,” I said.
He shook his head hard, almost banging both sides of his face on the floor with the frantic side-to-side motion.
“Denis, talk to me and I leave. Don't, and I stay here with you and Dad. I don't like soccer, Denis, so I'll have nothing to do here but work on you. I just want you to tell me a few things so I can leave.”
He stopped shaking his head and looked me in the eyes. “No,” he said.
I stared back at him and said nothing. I grinned at his smashed face. He looked at my face and he found in it something unsettling because he stopped staring at me and began to strain his neck in the direction of his father, looking for help that would never come.
I stepped past the bodies into the sales area. I walked past the different floor cleaners until I came to a display of bleach, the bottles stacked in a pyramid on the floor. I hefted one of the bottles off the top of the pyramid and checked the label. It was concentrated bleach. I turned the bottle further and looked at the warning label. Words like “severe” and “damage” popped out at me. The label also warned of sensitization if the bleach hit damaged or broken skin.
I carried two bottles behind the counter and set them on the countertop. Denis had shimmied himself past his father to the doorway leading to the back office. I grabbed him by the leg and dragged him back beside his father. I put one heavy boot on his ankle and stood on it with my full weight. For a second I felt his bones move and crack; it was like standing on thin ice. He screamed even after the cracking stopped. I contemplated gagging him again, but the screams stopped when I began unscrewing the bleach bottle.
“No, no, what are you going to do?”
I didn't answer. I pulled the safety seal and hefted the bottle up with my left arm. My work in the city had once left the arm useless, but I had worked to make it strong again. The months of work it took were hell, and once I finally became whole again I got dragged back to the city so the whole process could start over again. Denis wasn't responsible for that, but he was part of the machine that was. He could point me in the direction of the people who set the wheels in motion. A fact that made it easy to tilt the bottle.
The milky liquid fell from the mouth of the bottle to the ruined pant leg. At once, the cotton fabric of the pants began changing colour, becoming lighter and whiter with each splash. The liquid soaked the pants and flooded in the hole left by the bullet. Denis's legs shook hard trying to move away, but his ankle was pinned under me. His restraints made any momentum he could have gained impossible. All he could do was scream as a half bottle of bleach hit his legs as though it were some sort of chemical waterfall.
His screams woke his father, and the old man looked on in horror while he struggled against his restraints. Denis's eyes were wide in his ugly face. The bleach burned the skin, but worse than that, it made the wound more sensitive. The bottle had not lied about sensitization — every nerve ending in the wound was on fire because of the bleach.
I put the bottle down and looked at the newly pale pant leg I had created. Denis was all screamed out; his mouth just silently opened and closed. His face had gone more pale, and his bloodshot eyes bulged out, unblinking. I was now the terrible centre of his universe. Bombedieri no longer existed. I was all he could see.
I picked the bottle up again with my left hand and the recorder with my right. I tilted the bottle halfway and felt the liquid settle at the edge of the mouth.
“Tell me about what Bombedieri is into, Denis.”
“Oh, God. Oh, God.”
There was still some residual fear of Bombedieri in Denis's mind. I let a little more liquid hit his leg to wipe it away.
Denis screamed before he started talking in fast, rambling sentences. “He runs the neighbourhood. He controls everything: drugs, gambling, girls. He even pays off the cops.”
“More,” I said. “What has he done recently?”
“He killed those bikers. He shot them. Him, and Tony, and Phil, and me. We shot those guys in their car and left them there in the field. No one knows it was us, but we did it.”
I didn't know anything about bikers, but the information was important. Information could be used more places than MasterCard. It also proved that Denis was involved with everything his boss did. Denis didn't sit on his hands in the back room all day, he was a player. If Bombedieri was involved with Army and Nicky, Denis would know.
“What about kidnapping?” I said.
“What? No. We don't do that. There's no money in it. Oh God, my leg is on fire. It's burning.”
I splashed more bleach on the leg, and Denis screamed through every octave. I shut the recorder off and asked my last question.
“Bombedieri take Armando and Nicola? Is he working an angle?”
The pain moved to the back of Denis's mind for a second as he looked up at me. He realized he had no idea who I was or why I was there. He probably thought I worked for the bikers he crossed until I asked about Army and Nicky.
I splashed more bleach and asked again. “Did your boss do something to Armando and Nicola?”
“No! Jesus, no! He hated those two, but when we told him we wanted to hit them for all that shit they pulled he said no. He said we couldn't do it now. That it would fuck up our operations in the neighbourhood. He said they were off limits.”
“You sure?” I said as another splash hit the pale pant leg.
“We didn't touch them, I swear. We were too busy with the bikers to deal with those fucks. Please, no more. Please. Please!”
I cued up the tape and played it back. As the tape played, I stopped being the centre of Denis's universe. I was slowly eclipsed by Bombedieri. “You're going to run,” I said. “I'm gonna pass this tape on, and you don't want to be here for the fallout. You and your dad need to get out of here and never look back. You gave up your boss, and there's no way he'll let you off for that. Especially after the bikers get their copy.”
“I'm dead, then,” he said, exhausted.
“Your life here is over, but you're not dead. Not yet anyway. You two need to go, and go far.”
I wiped the bottle with my sleeve and left out the front door. Denis didn't move as I walked away from him. He just lay silent on the floor, letting shock set in, temporarily taking him away from his death sentence.