Nine
John Cantrell lay on a rotting mattress in a room
walled by cracked plaster, alert to the sound of the gray dusk around
him. Men snored and muttered and stumbled elsewhere in the cheap hotel.
Outside the room’s single window, a cleansing rain fell steadily,
moistening a corner of the ceiling where water had seeped through four
floors and would continue to seep through the deteriorating frame of the
hotel to the basement.
When he heard the car doors slam in the street below,
he knew his half-hearted ploy to hide himself from the face of the city
had failed. Someone had gone to the trouble to track him down. That
someone would be Karl Garko. His face was too well known on the streets.
If Garko was looking for him, he had been found all too easily.
They tapped quietly at the door. John stood in the
shadows. “Yeah,” he muttered. “What is it you want?”
The voice drifted through the heavy wood door.
“Garko wants to see you, Mr. Cantrell.”
John unlocked the door. There were two of them,
walking, talking apes with oversized physiques and underdeveloped
mentalities. The wore dark suits and sunglasses in the dim gray light.
“Where and when?” he said.
“Sally’s bar on forty-third and Rosemere, Mr.
Cantrell. At seven this evening. Mr. Garko said you know the place.”
“Yeah, I know the place.”
The man looked confused. “You’ll be there, right?”
“I’ll be there.”
The spokesman gave him a respectful nod and nudged
his surly partner. They turned away. John closed the door and chained
it, wondering what he had done to transgress. Or was it business as usual
despite the ultimatum he had given Garko after the last contract? Had he
ever really believed that Garko would leave him in peace?
The bar was within walking distance. The only world
he had ever known was a square of the downtown area roughly a mile or two
along each side. He knew every building and back alley within its
perimeter, and most of its unfortunate inhabitants.
The back room at Sally’s bar was empty at seven,
reserved for Garko’s exclusive use. Two diamond-studded women in evening
gowns sauntered away as John entered. They were slim, young women who
eyed him with fear evident in their big brown eyes. If they had never met
John in person, they knew his reputation.
Garko grinned and gestured him forward. The smile
turned to ice during the instant it took to signal the bar’s bouncer that
all was well. The door closed quietly, leaving them alone.
John slipped into the chair across from the man and
shoved an empty shot glass aside.
“You’re not looking well, John.”
“You’ve been persistent,” John said.
Garko chuckled casually. He studied John openly. “I
expected you to leave town. Apparently we’re indigenous to this city, you
and I, attuned to the environment, so to speak. You had enough money to
leave. From what I can see, you haven’t spent any of it.”
John had nothing to say.
“I have an offer, John, a contract. I can’t give it
to my own men. I wouldn’t dare give it to an outsider. It has to be
someone like you. It has to be you, in fact. Specifically.”
John shook his head. “No more contracts, Mr.
Garko.”
Garko gestured helplessness. “Neither of us have a
choice in the matter, John. Even I have people I must answer to.
Important people. This is not something you or I can back away from.
You’re too good, too efficient. And too trustworthy. You’re the man for
this.”
John stared at the man, too numbed with despondency
to respond. At various times in the past he had hated and feared Karl
Garko. Now, he felt nothing but gray apathy.
“I’m not taking advantage of you, John. You’ve got
to get away from this town if you want to live. You have too many enemies
here, too many men who fear and hate you. Maybe you feel you couldn’t get
away on the few grand you have stashed. I’m offering more. We’re not
going to barter on this, John. Fifty grand, up front. It’s not my
money.”
“What’s the job?”
“It starts with a man named Dimitri Carvelli.”
“I know the name.”
“Then you know Dimitri is a sick punk. He did an
unintelligent thing and he’s doing stupid things to cover his tracks.
He’s liable to mess up important business and important men want him
silenced. They want it done quietly and neatly, with nothing left over
for the good guys to pick over. Do you want something to drink, John?”
“No, thank you. Is that it? Just another job? Your
own men could handle a simple deletion, Mr. Garko.”
“My men don’t have your smarts, John. Smarts is what
makes you so dangerous. They make a man self-serving and unpredictable.
You see, there’s an unfortunate complication in this matter. Dimitri
killed a girl, a hooker, but she had a friend with her, so there’s a
witness to deal with. In all honesty, John, the witness is as big a
problem as Dimitri. She’s going to have to go too, you see.”
John grew quickly agitated. “I don’t kill women, Mr.
Garko.”
“Dimitri will kill the girl, John. Find him. Wait
until he does his thing, then return the favor. That’s all I’m asking.
You told me you weren’t going to work for me again, and I respected your
decision, but this is important to us, and you’re being paid very well.
If you do this for us, you needn’t come back. Not ever again.”
John’s guts were knotted with tension. Taking on
Dimitri Carvelli would mean leaving the city. Garko didn’t seem to
understand the problem that posed for him. Or did he?
“You’re a sick man, John. They call it agoraphobia.
This neighborhood has become a self-made prison. If you don’t break free
now, you’ll be dead within the year.”
It hardly seemed to matter. He had died along with
Sasha ages ago. Sasha had been his sister, and brothers weren’t meant to see their
sisters raped and murdered and left sprawled in the bloodied filth of an
alley for the rats to gnaw at. Men weren’t meant to ravage their own kind
as fiercely as he had taken vengeance on the men responsible for her
suffering and death.
Garko had taken advantage of the incident. John had
been used, blackmailed. He had killed as instructed from time to time,
not out of fear of Garko, but because it kept the rent paid and the hits
were inevitably the same kind of men who had killed Sasha.
“John, are you going to talk to me?”
John focused his eyes. “We have nothing to say to
one another, Mr. Garko.”
The man stared at him with the calculating intensity
of a lizard. “Two women have died, John. Dimitri skewered one of them
with an old French rapier. He knifed the other in the heart. He thinks
he’s covering his tracks, which may be the case, but it’s his sick bloodlust
at work. Stop
him and you’ll save the lives of other innocent young women, women who
would perhaps remind you of your own flesh and blood.”
“I’ll kill you if you say her name,” John said
softly.
Karl Garko leaned back in his seat, unaffected by the
threat. “Am I too late? Is there nothing left of your life to salvage?
Nothing at all?”
John had wondered that himself. He had managed to
stop the killing. Would the depression weighing on his soul lift if he
escaped the city? “Where do I find him?” he said, mildly curiosity.
“Moving East. We have a bead on Dimitri. He got
shot up a bit, but he’s still moving, using a VISA card for gas. He’ll find the girl and you’ll be
there when it happens.”
John thought about the offer. Only the deaths
he could prevent meant anything to him.
Garko’s reptilian eyes darted about his face with
calculating interest. Beads of sweat had broken out on his furrowed brow.
“I’ll do it.”
Garko sighed, sat back in his chair, and chuckled
softly to himself. “I thought you were going to give me a nervous
breakdown, John.”
