Killer Instincts v5 (24 page)

Back to Donnie. I watched him shut off the engine and open the car door, and I couldn't help but notice how utterly massive a creature he was. I knew Donnie was six foot four, well into the mid two-hundreds, with hands like slabs of concrete and a closely shaved, bullet-like skull. A man of Donnie's size can kill a person with a single punch, crushing ribs and causing internal bleeding with a body blow, or delivering a depressed skull fracture with a fist to the head. That is, of course, if the punch doesn't just break the victim’s neck. I had to force myself to breathe deep and pull in the air I'd need when I settled in for the shot. I tried to ignore the mental movie playing in my brain, showing Donnie knocking my sister and mother around my mother's bedroom, like a child might slap and punch a couple of insolent dolls during playtime. My teeth clenched so hard, I could hear them creaking though my skull.

Donnie finally extracted himself from the confines of the Mercedes and stood to his full height, turning away from me as he closed the door of his car. I tried to time the shot so it would coincide with the metallic thump of a heavy car door being slammed shut. As the door closed, I saw the puff of fabric in the middle of Donnie's broad back, as the bullet tore a hole in his tent-sized polo shirt.

Donnie's body didn't even rock from the impact of the subsonic .45 caliber hollowpoint. For a second or two I wondered if Donnie wore some kind of concealable body armor under his shirt, something that had absorbed the impact of the bullet and kept Donnie upright. But by the glow of the streetlamp a few meters from my target, I could see the dark stain spreading between Donnie's shoulder blades, and I knew I'd got him. But still, Donnie stood.

I fired another shot. My hands had cycled the bolt automatically the moment I fired my first round. The second bullet struck Donnie square in the right shoulder blade, landing a little off-target as he turned slightly, his body coming around to look behind him, his movements as sluggish as an oil tanker at sea. That shot caused him to rock back against the side of his Mercedes, but Donnie remained on his feet, one massive paw extended out to steady himself on the car. Donnie didn’t shout or cry out or move to cover. At that point I realized he was probably drunk as a skunk, having been out with his wrecking crew for the last couple of hours.

Fuck this, I decided. Working with assembly-line speed and economy of motion, I fired off four more .45 caliber slugs. In the indistinct light of the streetlamp, Donnie's pale yellow polo shirt began to look like blooming sunflowers, as one by one, dark blotches flowered across his chest.

And yet, Donne didn't die. With six bullets in him, Donnie remained upright, though brought to his knees, clinging to the side of his car. Donnie kept himself from collapsing into death by sheer drunken stubbornness and his immense physique. The gleaming bullet head was raised, looking for the source of the gunfire but staring into the shadows of doorways and down the street, not up at the rooftop where I sat, invisible and silent, raining down death.

I realized now why Richard had suggested, when we talked over the phone two nights ago, that I kill Donnie from a distance with the suppressed carbine. If I had attempted to kill him up close and personal, using the Glock or even the shotgun, I might have panicked when confronted with Donnie’s sheer intimidating physicality. If I had shot him, and he didn't drop, I might have paused just long enough for Donnie to cave in the side of my skull with one of his wrecking-ball sized fists. Sniping at him from the rooftop, his intimidation factor went away, and I could kill him without experiencing the fear that close proximity would have created.

Richard, you are one crafty motherfucker.

No man, not even Donnie, was going to live through the punishment I'd delivered. On the other hand, I had no idea how long it would take for his body to finally accept the fact that it was going to stop functioning. Already I could hear shouts, and I saw someone down the street hurrying over to Donnie, mistakenly assuming he was having a heart attack or some other ailment. With my mental countdown ticking away, I centered the crosshairs on Donnie's forehead and sent him my last bullet, just before a concerned citizen reached him to see if he needed help. The bullet caught Donnie just above his right eye, dropping him face-down on the pavement like a felled ox. The hole in the back of his head was big enough to hide a billiards ball. The concerned citizen, a paunchy fellow in his late 40's, promptly turned and puked, then scrambled away from Donnie as if his body was about to explode.

That was the end of Donnie the Dick-Kicker.

I needed to get moving. I folded up the bipod and the stock of the DeLisle carbine, then slipped the weapon into my backpack. Walking in a crouch to the rear of the building, I double-checked the line I'd looped around a rooftop ventilation pipe. The old iron was still strong, without any wiggle or sag that might suggest it had rusted out of its fittings over the years. I'd looped a rappelling rope around the base of the pipe, locked to itself with a carabiner. I snapped the line into my own rappelling ring, having put my clothes on over the harness. Hiding the repelling rig this way wasn't comfortable, but it did prevent stares and questions.

Holding onto the line, I stepped to the edge of the rooftop and dropped into space, letting the line slip through my gloved fingers as fast as I dared, feet skipping and skimming along the side of the building so I didn't bounce or flail about in space. In three seconds, I was on the ground in the alleyway behind the brownstone, unsnapping the line from my harness.

To retrieve the rope, I used a little trick Richard had taught me involving a fly-fishing reel and some line. I reeled down the carabiner securing the line around the pipe on the rooftop. Once in hand, I unclipped the line from itself, then pulled the line up and over the pipe, letting it go slack and drop from the roof. All in all, the process took about thirty seconds. Once I stuffed the line in my pack, I walked out of the alley and assumed a leisurely gait, hearing the first wailing sirens as police cars responded to reports of Donnie's shooting.

Scratch one off the list, I thought to myself.

A short walk to the B-line and one T ride later, I was back at my apartment. Without really thinking about it, I broke down the DeLisle, cleaned it, oiled it, and stowed it away before I did anything else. Next was a scaldingly hot shower, where I vigorously scrubbed my arms, hands, and face. I knew that gunshot residue tests could still find evidence even after a shower, but I wanted to be sure as little evidence as possible remained. Once I was out of the shower, I threw the clothes I had worn into my kitchen garbage, dumped in a few broken eggs and some lunch meat, and took the trash out to the dumpster, making sure the bag was buried as deeply as possible.

Back in the apartment, I went to the fridge, grabbed a beer, flopped on the couch, and drank the entire bottle in about thirty seconds while just staring off into space. The killing of Donnie couldn’t have gone better, and although I had discussed a few of the details with Richard, ultimately the job had been mine, start to finish. No Richard, no Jamie, just me. I had taken the first step on the road to revenge, and it felt
great
.

I got up off the couch and went into the bedroom. Opening my closet, I dressed in my black suit and slick shoes, foregoing a tie. I dug out my spending money and pocketed two thousand dollars in a silver money clip. I grabbed my keys and my “white” identity wallet, and I went out the door.

One cab ride later, I was downtown. I spent a few minutes wandering the mostly deserted streets until I found a nightclub that seemed to have some action going on. There was a bouncer all in black, wearing a suit and an ear piece. There was a velvet rope across the entrance, and a half dozen men and women looking to get inside, all of them well-dressed and looking to party. I played it cool and soon enough, I found myself past the velvet rope, making a beeline for the bar. The music was shockingly loud, a deep techno dance beat that I could feel in my diaphragm. I elbowed my way through the milling crowd, and although I received a couple of dirty looks from the posturing males I bumped along the way, none of them took it any further after I returned their looks with a flat, don’t-fuck-with-me stare. That night, there was an aura about me, an almost sexual afterglow, that marked me as an alpha predator.

I made it to the bar and scanned the top shelf liquor. I had a tumbler of eighteen year-old Scotch in my hand a few moments later, and I surveyed the crowd, not sure of what I was looking for, only that I’d know it when I found it.

She was blonde, built tight, and already half in the bag by the time we made eye contact. A wispy black dress that barely covered her ass, no hint of a bra or panties anywhere to be found. Black fuck-me pumps and gold hoop earrings, bubblegum-pink lipstick and long, come-hither eyelashes. I bought her a drink, there was about three minutes of small talk, and we were all over each other before we made it into the cab.

At this point I was operating purely on adrenaline-fueled hormones, so I directed the cabbie to make for the nearest, nicest hotel he knew. The concierge gave us the stink-eye the moment we walked into the lobby, but I handed him my credit card and tipped him the cost of the room in cash. Suddenly, but not surprisingly, we were the best of friends and the most valued of guests. Funny how that works.

My hands were under her dress and hers were down my pants before we even got off the elevator, and I dropped the key card twice on the way to the room. Inside, I practically threw the girl - her name was Staci - onto the king-sized bed, and thirty seconds later, no one was wearing any clothes and her fingers were raking my back. While the sex I’d had with Sophia was violent, scary, and sometimes downright disturbing, Staci and I just fucked like champs. I had never considered myself a loser in the sack, but that night, I was a sexual dynamo. At one point, I found myself looking into the mirror over the bureau, and I posed for myself while maintaining my rhythm just like Christian Bale in
American Psycho
.

Some interminable time later, we were both collapsed in the tangle of bedsheets, and I stared out the window, looking over the nighttime Boston skyline with an exhausted smile on my face. Tonight I’d killed a man in cold blood, and without skipping a beat, I’d gone out afterward and scooped a ten off the dance floor, thrown several hundred dollars at a hotel clerk just for the hell of it, and fucked until I was fairly certain any more sexual activity would result in permanent damage to my nether regions. I felt no fear, no regret, no remorse for what I’d done, and zero trepidation about doing it again.

Truth be told, I could get used to this.

SEVENTEEN

Three weeks after Donnie met his end face-down in a Brighton street, my sights were set on the reason for all my miseries, the rapist and murderer Pauly Paggiano. The first night we met, Sophia had provided me with Pauly's schedule, and I was able to find a small but practical window of opportunity, during which he would be vulnerable. I made sure to confirm my hunch for two weeks straight before deciding it was the right move to make. After a lot of leg work and a lot of unobtrusive observations from here and there, I confirmed that on Thursdays, Pauly would treat himself to the lunch special at Gianouli's, an Italian seafood restaurant tucked back into Boston's North End that was "protected" by his family, and of course, that meant Pauly ate for free. Thursday was the day Gianouli's offered their seafood pasta lunch special, and whatever was in it, it kept Pauly coming back for more. He apparently liked to get there right as they opened for lunch at 11:30, and he'd stay there until roughly 1:00, after which his mother hens would bustle him into his Cadillac and they'd depart for the day's business.

I was sitting at a little coffee shop four doors down across the street from Gianouli's, sipping a decaf latte and keeping an eye out the window. Whenever Pauly was done with lunch, his driver would go and fetch the Cadillac and bring it around, so Pauly didn't have to walk to his ride. I'd seen this little routine twice now, and it didn't vary. The driver always parked the Caddy in a "reserved" parking space a block further down the street, and from the time he left to fetch the car to the time he pulled up, it always took between four and a half and five minutes.

Once the car was out front, one of Pauly's two bodyguards would step outside, give the sidewalk a brief look-over, and then open the rear door, at which point Pauly and his remaining bodyguard would exit Gianouli's. Pauly would get in the back and sit behind the front passenger seat, while the second bodyguard would walk around and get in behind the driver. Once everyone was in the Cadillac, the first bodyguard would get into the front passenger seat, and the car would pull away. It was a good arrangement; the principal was out in the open for perhaps four seconds, flanked the whole time by his two bodyguards, and once in the vehicle there was a guard in the front and in the back, one to the right watching the sidewalk both ahead and behind through the side-view mirror, one to the left on the street side keeping an eye out for anyone attempting to cross the street or make a drive-by.

And this is why my timing had to be spot-on. I wanted them all trapped in the vehicle, where bringing their guns into play would be that much more difficult and I had a small, target-rich environment to fire on. But once they were all in the vehicle, I only had a second or two before the Cadillac pulled away and I was out of luck. It was a very small amount of time in which to do the maximum amount of hurt, and I needed to get to that window without alarming Pauly's bodyguards and giving away the game.

At 12:53, the driver emerged from Gianouli's and began walking up the street towards the parking spot. Clock ticking, I finished my latte, collected my red-and-white striped gym bag from the floor next to my chair, slipped the cup into a side pocket of my bag, and stepped out of the coffee shop. I turned left and walked away from my target, towards Commercial Street and downtown. I walked up to the end of the block, waited patiently for the light to change, crossed at a leisurely pace, and turned right, now facing the restaurant and walking back into the North End. I’d walked this little roundabout path a dozen times over the last two weeks, timing myself at various speeds and trying to mentally judge where the car would be at any one time. Because of this, I put myself on a path towards Gianouli's just as I saw the Cadillac approaching the restaurant.