FIGHT (18 page)

Seeing that he was being approached by the four hacky sack kickers and unsure what to do next (since the dealer still hadn’t spoken), Billy said all that came to mind:

“So, you’re a drug dealer, right?”

For all his technical street smarts, having the common someone not to ask if someone was a drug dealer wasn’t part of his resume, at least not when he was nervous about impressing Victor on his first major job.

The dealer stayed quiet, kept his hands in his pockets, looked away from him, and, from the looks on the faces of the approaching guys, made significant eye contact with them.

Unique started his van and pulled away from the curb, the same one Billy had planned on meeting him at.  Unique almost felt bad to lose him.  He was a warm body, and he could’ve been handy for something.  Unique dropped his window a half an inch to ash his cigarette.  The monitor on the dash displayed the sounds of Billy’s demise, though Unique never bothered to watch.  He was driving, and it was dangerous to take your eyes off the road.  The monitor filled the van with the last seconds of Billy’s life:

Uuummph!    

“God! What are you doing?” Billy screamed.

Uuummph!

Whatever it was, the cheeky bastards did it again
, Unique thought.  At the next stop light, he’d turn off the monitor.  He didn’t want the final words of Billy Mulkin distracting his driving.  He headed home to rest.  He was going to have a busy morning tomorrow.

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The nondescript car cruised to a stop, next to the curb.  The driver didn’t get out.  He sat there, bobbing a toothpick up and down in his mouth, scoping out the scene from his car’s mirrors and windows.  He was all eyes and ears on this mission.  The .22 Walther was loaded, silenced, and ready on the passenger’s seat, hidden underneath a newspaper.  He kept his noise to a minimum.  The radio was off.  He barely stirred. 

It was 6:45 a.m., time for work.  Andrew Baker would be leaving his rented Cambridge townhouse any minute now, to make it to work by 7.  Charlie Unique waited in his car.  A school bus went by, stalled at a stop sign a few yards down from his place on the side of the curb, then it rolled by.  Everything was happening on schedule.  There was an occasional jogger, a few stray cats.  Baker lived in a typical middle-class neighborhood.  Unique watched an elderly couple dressed for tennis walk out of the townhouse adjoining Baker’s place.  The two were obviously early risers, eager to get as much out of life as what little life they had left would permit.  He watched them buckle themselves into their foreign hybrid and pull out of their driveway.  Seeing them leave, he began a mental checklist of other neighbors who might witness his task, waiting for them to also leave.  He’d checked out the neighborhood thoroughly in the past couple of days.  First, he’d driven through it several times, using different cars to avoid suspicion.  Second, he’d jogged through it yesterday, going right by Baker’s home.  Baker hadn’t recognized him, because Victor made it a point not to introduce Unique, his most trusted hitman, to other employees.  Third, he’d made a secret delivery to Baker’s car last night.

Six-fifty a.m.  A mom marched out two defiant adolescents towards their minivan and carted them off to school. 
The Martins.  Check
.  He’d learned the names of Baker’s neighbors by reading their mailbox labels, all of which proudly announced each home’s surname.  Roughly a minute later, a guy with a doughnut hanging from his mouth fought with the keys he held in the same hand that he clutched a briefcase with, while he made confirming “uh huh” noises into the phone he held with his left hand.  A few moments later, he was gone too. 
Jones.  Check
.  Baker’s neighbors had left now, and any moment Baker would leave for his three minute morning drive to work.  Waiting, Unique scanned the headlines on today’s paper, the one concealing his pistol.
Mideast Peace Talks Stall as Border Controversy Rages.  House Approves Budget Deadline Extension. 
Skimming some of the text in the articles, he heard a door open.  Without turning his head, he threw a keen eye at his driver’s side mirror and spied Baker leaving. 

Baker looked tired, listless.  His crinkled face spoke of a sleepless night, and he spit a wad of throated snot onto the pavement next to his cruiser.  Decked out in his state trooper’s uniform, he begrudgingly accepted a new day’s work.  He yawned, leaned to pop his back, and spat again.  Pounding his chest and burping breakfast, he opened his car door and situated himself in his well worn driver’s seat. 

That was when the rattling began.

Midway through buckling in, Baker’s eyes widened in ungodly panic, as the gaping mouth of a golden brown rattlesnake sprang up from his floorboard and bit him three inches below his crotch on his left thigh, latching on long enough to release a pulsing dose of hemotoxic venom. 

“Holy shit!” he screamed in terror.  “Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy shit!”

He grabbed the snake with both hands and tore it free, swapping flesh for fangs from the sudden yank.  From his passenger’s seat, another rattler sprang and bit him in the right arm, just above his fraternity tattoo.  A third struck him in the back of the neck.  He screamed, more from fear than pain.  His many nightmares had come true.  His phobia of snakes had materialized into three large venomous diamondbacks.  He pulled the snakes off and threw them wildly.  The snakes writhed against each other, as they landed in a spaghetti collection on the front passenger’s seat.  Warm blood darkened his newly starched uniform, and he sprang from the car, slamming the door behind him to make sure the snakes didn’t escape.  In his panicked exit, he caught the wire of his two way radio in the closing car door and accidentally disconnected the unit from the mouthpiece attached near his shirt collar.  He now had to rush to his townhouse to use his land line.  That’s when he saw Unique waiting for him on his doorstep.  Baker caught sight of a guy grinning like he’d just witnessed a comedy, a guy who Baker didn’t recognize leaning with one arm against the home’s front door and carrying a rolled up newspaper with his other hand. 

“How’s it going, Andy?  You look a little pale.”

“I’ve been bit!  I’ve been bit! I’ve been bit!” he repeated, not caring that he was screaming at a complete stranger.

“Let me help you with those,” Unique said calmly, taking the key ring that Baker was fumbling with from his trembling hands.  He found the key to Baker’s home and let them both inside.  Baker immediately rushed to his telephone, but, before he could call for help, a kick to his back knocked him down face first to the kitchen floor.  Before he could react, he felt his sidearm being lifted from its belted holster. 

“I don’t think so, pal,” Unique said.  “A phone call is not the way this ends.  This,” (uncovering his Walther pistol and its silencer from the newspaper), “is how it ends.”

Baker, who’d turned over on his ass, stared up incredulously at Unique.  He saw Unique had stolen his service auto and stood sighting him with the barrel of the Walther, rolling it in a small circular motion like it was a laser pointer.  He also saw that the guy had ripped his landline out of its phone jack.

Baker remembered he was wearing his state issued Kevlar vest, one that could easily absorb shots from the small caliber gun Unique threatened him with.  He resolved to throw all 268 pounds of his massive frame against Unique’s much trimmer frame, disarm him, shoot him, and then reconnect his phone for a quick call to the paramedics.  As Baker crouched to his haunches to spring to tackle him, Unique laughed knowingly:

“That’s right, big guy.  Go ahead and wrestle this gun away from me.  That’ll just get your heart pumping even faster and your blood flowing even quicker.  The venom will kill you sooner.”

Baker froze on his derriere, uncertain of what to do.  The guy was right.  Any effort at overpowering him would require strenuous activity, and that would speed up the poison’s flow to his heart.  Negotiating was his last hope.

“Okay, fine.  What do you want?” Baker asked with desperation in his voice.

“I want you to take this gun,” Unique said, indicating the Walther, “and kill yourself.”

“Not going to happen.  What else do you want?”

“It’s going to happen, and that’s all I want.  I want your prints on this gun.  So you need to put it to your heard and pull the trigger.”

Baker felt the room start to spin, his head go light, and his temperature rise.  If he was going to make it out of this, he had to think quick:

“What’s this all about?”

“You’ve been fired by Victor Adelaide.”

Suddenly, the gravity of the situation was clear.  This guy wasn’t here to rob him, to scare him, or because he had an axe to grind with guys in uniform.  This guy was here to kill him because he’d written Gabe a speeding ticket, and he wouldn’t leave until there was one less Statie in Massachusetts.

“I’m sorry.  Let me talk to Vic.  He’s a reasonable guy.  We can work this out.”

“There’s nothing to work out.”

Baker’s vision began a slow, grey fade.  Things blurred into a single object of colorless television fuzz.  Unique became a hazy extension of the townhouse’s furnishings, the borders between them growing unclear.  From his squatting position, Baker felt his head being pressed against the floor by what felt like the guy’s foot.  He then felt another foot pumping up and down on his abdomen to speed up the snake juice in his veins.  He was dying, his training fled him, and cold animal panic set in:

“No!  Dear, God, no!”

“I know it’s all a bit much,” Unique whispered, stepping off him and crouching next to him.  “You don’t want all these snakes inside you, do you?”

“No,” he whimpered with delusion.

“Then we’ve got to get the snakes out.”

Unique took Baker’s hand and wrapped it around the loaded Walther, steadying Baker’s arm so that the gun was pointed towards Baker’s right temple. 

“Whenever you want to get the snakes out, just squeeze your right hand.”

Baker was now totally blind, but his mind’s eye projected the horrifying image of his veins becoming snakes, tearing themselves out of his organs, growing gaping mouths with razor fangs, and lunging for his face.  The dying man was no match for his phobia turned motion picture.

Baker screamed.

“Just squeeze your right hand, and the snakes will go away,” Unique cooed in his ear, like a father beckoning his daughter from a nightmare.

Baker squeezed his right hand and felt a split second’s worth of heat race behind his eyeballs, followed by a slight itch between his ears which was followed by nothing.  The .22 slug saved him from the snakes in his head. 

With a gloved hand, Unique checked Baker’s pulse and confirmed he was dead.  With that same gloved hand, he plugged the phone back into its wall jack.  The autopsy would show a man who went insane due to snake venom and took his own life.  Baker’s phobia of snakes was well known among his colleagues, so the story would sell.  Unique left the Walther in the dead man’s hand, glad that the gun’s silencer had concealed the shot’s sound from any neighbors who might’ve unexpectedly returned to their homes.

He showed himself to the front door, locking it before he closed it.  Outside, he went to the patrol car, opened the driver’s door, and, from a safe distance, he watched the snakes slither out.  Closing the Crown Victoria’s door, he got back into his own car and drove away.  Baker was dead, the facts would show nothing that could be traced to the Adelaides, and Unique was hungry.  A job well done always made him hungry. 

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Victor downed his third glass of single malt scotch before 10:00 a.m.  It was shaping up to be a rough morning.  He’d watched Unique’s footage of Billy’s botched drug purchase yesterday afternoon, and he was deeply troubled.  The footage confirmed his fear. The Filippos’ muscle outnumbered the Adelaides’ muscle.  He also suspected Gabe was right to think the Filippos had been the ones who’d broken into his apartment.  If that was the case, then the Filippos were looking for blood, trying to kill the Adelaides’ heir apparent. 

He cursed, swore, and threw his now empty glass against a wall, watching it shatter.  No matter, he’d drink straight from the bottle.  The hell with pretenses.  He cursed again, at no one in particular, though he deeply wished someone was in the office with him to curse at.

He’d embraced Gabe’s idea of paying for the D.A.’s surgery, knowing that sometimes an enemy could be bought, or at least have his energy diverted with a peace offering.  Victor was no idealist, and he wasn’t looking for friendship.  All he needed was for Bruce Hudson to hate him slightly less than he hated Donatello Filippo.  If paying for Bruce’s surgery would put some social capital in his pocket, he’d gladly fork over the money.  He needed the D.A. to ruthlessly pursue prosecutions against the Filippos, and a little “nice money” might steer the D.A.’s line of sight towards Watertown.  He swallowed a final gulp of scotch and called Bruce’s office.  He was immediately put through to Bruce.

“Mr. Hudson, I don’t believe we’ve ever spoken.”

“No, we haven’t.” 

Bruce had been shocked to learn who was on the line waiting for him, and he wasn’t saying anymore than he needed to.  Both men were taping the call.

“I want you to know that I’m aware my son is paying for your surgery, and he is doing so with my blessing.”