raised by wolves

It’s coming up on four in the morning. My guts are sloshing around inside me, awash with coffee. I feel all twitchy and fatigued. Gracie went home. She told me to call her if I need her, but I think I’ll be able to handle the rest of this weird god damn night on my own.

Von Tier. What the hell kind of name is that?

I remember the files Lusky gave me. Von Tier is—supposedly—the one who sent the thugs after The Boss. But why?

In a few short hours, I’ll find out.

I refer to the files Lusky gave me and look at the faces of the black boys in the photos. They all have dumb names, Pooky, Suga, Greck, Ceelo, Tiny, and Rabbit. Rabbit’s the one I tossed out the window. Tiny’s next on the list. In the photo, he has a big scar sideways under his left eye. I remember him. He was the driver. The one that pointed out The Boss. An impressive sheet on this one. Older than the others, he’s got a military background, specializing in…what’s this? Demolition. Ha.

Five AM I’m through the door, kicking it right to saw dust. I’m counting on the element of surprise here, but it turns out I don’t need it.

Tiny’s here alright, but he’s not exactly in a state where one can be surprised: unconscious on the floor. I notice beer bottles strewn about the place, a half full one within arm’s reach of the collapsed figure. I step on a creaky floorboard and Tiny stirs ever so slightly. I wonder why they call him Tiny. Looks about average size to me. But it doesn’t matter. Everyone’s tiny next to me.

“Tiny,” I whisper, hunching down by his head. “Wake up, Tiny.”

He groans.

“I said, ‘Wake up, Tiny,’ you fucking pipsqueek,” I say through clenched teeth, voice rising to a roar. That gets him. His eyes pop open and he’s going for the beer bottle, but I stop him by dropping all my weight on his outstretched arm. I hear that old familiar bone-snapping sound, like one big kernel of popcorn. He cries out and says, “Alright, alright!” and I shift off of his arm, onto his back. I hold his face against the floor.

“I’m not going to repeat myself here, Tiny. I want answers and I want them now. Where’s Von Tier?”

“Who?” he says, voice quivering ever-so-slightly. I reach over with my free hand and break his other arm. He cries out again, and again with the “Alright alright.”

“Yeah yeah, Von Tier, fuck man, yeah I know him. I don’t know him know him, but shit man who does? He just some crazy old white motherfucker, lives up north on the water. Collects art and shit. What the fuck you want with him?”

“I’m asking the questions here. A few weeks ago, you and a gang of idiots came up on The Crab and started shooting. You remember. You killed a man, Cosmo Marini, my boss and I want to know why.”

“Man, yeah, shit, I remember. Damn, that was you? I thought you got shot in the head. Fuck, man. Them boys fucked up. Greck started the shooting. Pooky got you. I was just the driver, man, I ain’t do shit. We wasn’t even supposed to shoot nobody. Von Tier told us your boy’d have a body guard though, so we packed. He…He just wanted some necklace. Some old antique shit he said your Boss wasn’t selling but he wanted bad enough to take. He paid us large,” he says, gasping for breath. I ask him where up north does this guy live and he tells me. I ask him what the necklace was.

“I don’t know what it was. I don’t know what for. Some art collection or some shit, man, I don’t know nothing else, I swear!”

“Do you swear?” I ask and he stammers, “Sh-shit yeah, I swear!” then I turn, keeping one knee pressed firmly into his back bone and break one of his legs.

I ask again, “Do you swear?” and he screams, “I swear! I swear! Jesus man, get off me! Please! I swear!” he tries to thrash around a bit, but with two broken arms and one broken leg, he doesn’t have much fight left in him. I get up.

“I’m going to leave you alive to tell the other boys their time’s almost up. After I’m done with Von Tier, I’m coming back and I’m going to kill the rest of you. Enjoy what time you have left.”

And then I stomp on his other leg, right up near the hip. Pop, tear, that hip’s definitely dislocated at the least. He cries out and I leave. The sun is just peeking up over the edge of the city, red beams of fire and orange morning haze. The city stinks. It’s going to be another hot one.

The file on Von Tier himself is rather thin. No picture. No aliases. No sheet. The address is an empty storefront downtown, but that’s not what Tiny told me. I flag down a cab, driven by a sleepy-looking unshaven young man with a big metal bar through his nose. I tell him Von Tier’s address and he nods, then yawns and turns up the radio. It’s a relentless barrage of distorted guitars, brutally fast drums and a howling guttural singer.

“Who is this?” I ask the shaggy kid behind the wheel.

“Skullsplitter,” he tells me. “Some band from the east coast.”

Skullsplitter. That gives me an idea that I’ll save for later. And through the music is fast and loud, I find myself drifting off in the red morning light, the warmth magnified on my skin by the cab windows. I feel like baking in an oven, like a cake. I smile and when I wake up, the driver says, “Here we are. $22.35.”

The place looks like you’d expect some rich yuppie art collector fuck’s house to look. Long drive way, big gate out front, three or four floors, a big deck looking over the water of the Pacific ocean. I hop the gate easy as can be. Right after, I hear a distant electrical buzz and the gate opens. They know I’m here, they just didn’t buzz me in soon enough. Cameras probably everywhere. So, there is some security here. It won’t do them any good.

The front door is open. Well, here goes.

It’s dark inside, pale light filtering in through closed expensive drapes, casting long funny shadows all over the room.

“Right, stop right there, chap,” a voice says. My blood goes cold. It’s him.

In an easy chair opposite the front door, the man in the ski mask sits looking at me down the length of that big fucking rifle.

“You don’t scare easy, I’ll give you that,” he says with some kind of accent. “I told him to just let me kill you, but no, he wanted you to stay in the game, see how things panned out. And here you are showing up to shit on our doorstep,” he sucks air through his teeth, tsk-tsk. “Oh well. Always a shame when pawns don’t realize their purpose. Maybe we could’ve worked together, if only you’d signed those papers. You could’ve lived a long happy life, you know? That girl of yours maybe could’ve become your wife, you could’ve had a bunch of kids and the whole lot. Your mother could watch them on the weekends while you two went out for drinks. It could’ve been just swell, old chap.”

He smiles, teeth like white razors behind the ski mask.

“Are you gonna talk all day,” I ask him finally. “Or are you gonna start shooting?”

His smile grows. “I thought you’d never ask.”

Even at this range, the rifle is barely audible. Click-tzing! A bullet rips through the air, and then through me. What a moron this limey fuck is. Bullets from a gun like that just pass through the target at this range. It hurts, but he doesn’t hit anything important. In three long steps I’m on him, him still sitting pretty like the hot shit he thinks he is. I grab the gun by the muzzle and he fires again. My hand burns and the smell of sulfur fills my nose, but he missed that time, too.

“You can’t shoot for shit, man,” I tell him, echoing our last meeting.

“No,” he says as my hand closes on his throat. “But who needs to shoot?”

I hear a knife coming out of a hidden sheath and then a knife plunging into soft flesh between ribs. Imagine a really bad bee sting. I look down and see a black leather handle sticking out of my side. In the next instant there are two. Then three.

I grunt through my teeth and tighten my grip on the man in the ski mask’s throat. His eyes look like they’re going to pop out of his head.

“Poison,” he gurgles. “You fuck,” he gurgles. The knives are poisoned which is why I imagine it’s starting to feel like my blood is being replaced with red ants. God damn it.

Before things go black, I lift the man up and pitch him haphazardly towards the door I came in. I don’t see him land.

Stuck down the mineshaft inside my own head, I see Gracie and all I want to do is tell her how sorry I am for being such a fuck up. But she’s baking me a cake. She smiles at me and I smell chocolate and a gas oven. She stands on her tip toes to kiss me, lips made of sugar and gumdrops. We never touch.

I’m starting to come to. My first instinct is to leap to my feet and start killing, but that’s not going to happen. I’m tied down pretty securely with thick, rough rope that cuts into you when you press against it, but that doesn’t stop me from trying. I can’t see anything. There’s a big white circle of radioactive light above me, burning my eyes, driving me crazy. I scream and strain against the ropes, but it’s no good. I feel awful. I hurt all over, especially in my ribs. I give up and close my eyes. I want to sink down that mineshaft again. I’m tired of fighting now. I want to sleep. I want to see Gracie.

Gracie.

That asshole in the ski mask mentioned her. Is she in trouble? Do they know about her? My strength and itch to kill come rushing back to me, but I’m still tied down. I notice a sound, like air escaping a bike tire, but in short little bursts, tss-tss-tss. Laughing.

“That’s our Legs,” says a voice from somewhere I can’t turn my head to look. “Takes a licking and keeps on ticking.”

I know that voice.

“Been a long time, Legs.”

There she is, brown hair full of gold sparks, dripping down over her face, swooping off to one side, covering one of her eyes. She leans forward, close to my face and smiles. I can’t keep my eyes from flicking over to the top button of her low-cut blouse, that low urge to peep at the soft curve of tits whenever possible, no matter the circumstances.

“Natalia,” is about all I can say. Maybe I’m still dreaming.

“Yes, Legs. I see you’re still up to your same old horseshit, ah? I thought I’d fixed you up for the last time. No such luck, ah?” She shakes her head and stands upright. “Too bad.”

She reaches out and touches my forehead with a single finger where the rope has cut into me. She takes it back with red on the tip.

“Natalia, where am I?”

She smiles. “As if it matters? You’re in the basement. This is where Von Tier has me fix up his men when they come back fucked up. It keeps me very busy. Von Tier has a lot more men than old Marini. Pay’s better, too.” She steps out of sight and is silent. For a moment I think she’s left, but then she speaks again.

“They’re planning to kill you, Legs. Don’t believe a word they tell you. I’m sorry I can’t do more for you.”

And then she really is gone. I fall asleep under that awful light. I don’t remember any dreams.

When I come to again, I’m sitting upright with something tapping me on the end of my nose. It’s a small round bit of what looks like dark red glass, tied and hanging from a black bit of cord.

“So much trouble,” says a raspy voice. “All for a tiny bit of stone.”

My eyes begin to focus on the shape of a bent old man with a big white mustache and short-cropped white hair. His skin is full of wrinkles and pits. He wears round, gold-rimmed spectacles. Behind him is the man in the ski mask, still lounging, slouched in a red chair, legs crossed far out in front of him. His rifle is propped against the wall next to him.

“I suppose you represent the estate of Cosmo Marini,” the old man says and they both laugh. “Or what’s left of it. Arthur McGinnis. Legbreaker. My name is Aldebert Von Tier.”

I want to lunge for him but I know I’m tied with that same cutting rope. Like pressing up against a chainsaw.

“Yeah, great,” I say to him. “Why’d you kill my boss? Why’re you trying to kill me now? Who is that woman?” My voice is getting a little frantic here. I decide to stop talking. One thing at a time.

The smug old fucker just chuckles, his ancient shoulders bobbing up and down. I’m surprised there’s no dust falling off of him.

“Oh you poor small man,” he says. “I mean that-er-figuratively of course. There’s so much you don’t even know. I could have guessed you were just an idiot stumbling around in the dark. With how many of Salvatore’s men you took out, I figured you for a psycho, or maybe one of those agents-er…Where was I? Oh yes. Either an idiot or a maniac. Turns out you’re both! A psychotic idiot,” and this he finds hysterical. Ski-mask laughs too.

After a minute, the tremors of humor fade and he takes a deep breath, followed by a sigh of satisfaction. He stands there looking at me down his nose, over the tops of his glasses. His eyes look like those milky green marbles you had when you were little. Just like them. I imagine them clacking together, that thok! sound.

“I was never trying to kill you. I sent,” he nods, his neck crooked as the bend in your elbow, towards Ski-mask. “him just to try to keep you moving. Away from me. But, somehow that stupid Salvatore got you spinning around in circles. Like throwing change at a ceiling fan. I guess it’s just bad luck you landed in my lap now. Just a bit of bad luck. It’s been Sal all this time, you know. He put his men on you the same reason I did. To keep you moving. To keep you from just going and signing those papers. Ha, you didn’t even know. You never got even part of the whole story!

“First and foremost, I’ll tell you that my involvement in the difficulty you’ve experienced recently is minimal at best. Certainly, I hired the men who—unfortunately—killed your boss, Mr. Marini, but murder was not their goal. They were sent simply to acquire this necklace. This necklace, which I’m certain you never even knew Marini wore, did you? Never noticed it there, dangling ‘bout his collar. Of course not. A psychotic fool.

“After that, by sheer coincidence, Salvatore put his own plan into action. The woman is one of his. But she was a failure and needed to be disposed of. Salvatore put her on you, figuring her con wouldn’t get you, but he, ah…overestimated your ability. He wanted you to kill her, and her to put you out running around all night, until ten this morning when the property deeds would default to his name,”

“Who?” I interrupt. All this talking really makes my head hurt. I have no idea what the hell he’s talking about.

“Salvatore. Lusky, you fool. He was Marini’s partner way back when. They had a contract where Lusky was the silent partner, getting a dividend, but not having any say in how the club was run. That was up to Marini. In the contract it’s stipulated that if anything should happen to one of the partners, full control reverts to the remaining partner after thirty days if a next-of-kin doesn’t step forward. The whole bit about you being next-of-kin was something that woman threw in for added flavor. I bet you didn’t even look at the papers she gave you, the so-called ‘DNA evidence.’” he shakes his head and tsk-tsks at me. “Amateur.”

Like I said, I don’t take well to name-calling. I lunge forward in the chair, feeling the rope dig into me, my wrists and forehead and waist. The chair creaks under the force, but doesn’t move. Nailed to the floor. I feel the warm cascade of blood down my face and close my eyes before everything goes red. I have to get it together. I’m going about this all wrong.

Von Tier is laughing across the room. “You think you can break the ropes before bleeding out? Be my guest.”

The man in the ski mask is reading a newspaper. The picture-in-the-dictionary next to “Indifferent.”

I growl and yell like a wild animal. I start seeing big black blobs behind my eyes. I have to stop.

“All finished, Mr. McGinnis?” Von Tier. You’re going to die.

I open my eyes. The black spots are gone. Everything is clear.

Instead of fighting the ropes, I should be fighting the chair. I throw my weight backwards and get another satisfying moan out of the wood. I pull my shoulder blades together and think of an axe chopping down a tree. The skin on my wrists is shredded, but I can almost pull my hands out. I feel the back of the chair snap free from the seat and suddenly I can stand up. I slide my arms backwards down the arms of the chair so the loops of that awful rope simply unravel. The back of the chair falls off and I can move again. I start laughing. I can’t help it.

Von Tier is already running, but I catch him easy.

“All finished, Mr. Von Tier?” I say, yoking him up by his fancy asshole collar. “Where you going? Where you going, huh?” I pull him around in front of me and hold him between me and the man in the ski mask, who by now is looking me in the eye through the scope on his rifle.

He says: “You know I wasn’t trying to hit you before. At this range one shot will tear both of you in half.”

I say: “Yeah, bullshit.”

He says: “You’re dumber than you look. You don’t even know what game you’re attempting to play.”

Von Tier is flailing his arms in front of him, wrinkled little fucker, whimpering: “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!”

“You won’t kill him. If you were going to shoot, you would’ve,” I say.

“We were going to let you live, you moron,” he snarls. “You’re out of your depth but you’re too bloody stupid to realize it.”

He won’t shoot. His gun probably isn’t even loaded. I take off running right for him.

His eyes go wide, for a second it looks like they’ll fill the holes of his ski mask entirely. He jumps to his feet, but I’m already swinging Von Tier at him. Von Tier yelps as he collides with the broad side of the humongous rifle, and then again as his face gets ground into the top of the man in the ski mask’s head.

“Wait,” the man in the ski mask says as he drops. Von Tier is out, hanging limply from my outstretched arm. I drop him and pick up the rifle. Then I pick up the man in the ski mask by the front of his shirt. I start to shake him and holler, “Wake up, asshole.”

As his eyes start to open, I rest the rifle against my shoulder, left hand on the trigger, with my right arm holding him out so the barrel rests neatly against his nose.

“Why were you going to let me live? Bringing me here, telling me all this bullshit. This is rotten and I know it. This is just another distraction. And now you’re going to die.”

I pull the trigger and POP no more man in the ski mask, just another stiff without a head. I drop him on the ground next to Von Tier, who is still unconscious. I bend down and grab the necklace, The Boss’s necklace, the hunk of red rock that this whole thing seems to be about. I put it in my pocket and then shoot Von Tier in the head, transforming his brain and skull into a hole in the floor.

It bothers me a little bit that there’s a whole side to this I’ll never understand. But I’m too bloody and sore and tired to care. They’re all dead, and it seems like this whole thing is over without me knowing the truth. The woman—the one who claims she’s my mother—I have no leads on her. I’ll have to wait for her to come to me. If she is a con, her bosses are dead. And Von Tier said Lusky wanted her dead anyway. But Natalia told me not to believe anything they told me. I’ll have to…

Were they lying about having Gracie?

I run out, down the drive and hop the fence. Bloody, my eyes and throat burning, I start running back to town. Luckily, I’m able to flag down an ambulance. They put on their lights and sirens and help me wrap myself in some bandages while we go flying down the country road. Once we’re in the city, I jump out of the back and call “Thanks!” to the two paramedics. They look at me stunned, but before they can react, I’m gone into the mid-day city.

The first payphone I come to, I jam in two quarters and dial Gracie. No answer at her apartment.

Again, I’m off running.

I burst into Gracie’s apartment and find the place trashed. A note conspicuously tacked to the wall opposite the door reads:

5 pm, The Crab.

No sign of Gracie. No sign of anybody. I look at the clock, miraculously still on the wall. 4:24. I can definitely make it to The Crab. In fact, I can get there early.

At 4:49, I’m on the street in front of The Crab. Traffic is heavy this time of day, but there are no cars in the parking lot. I go around back. The husks of the cars I blew up are still there, cordoned off with bright yellow strings of “POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS.” No sign of any bodies. The back door is chained shut and similarly cordoned.

They must not be here yet.

I climb a fire escape up to the roof of the building across the street from the parking lot and wait, lying on my belly, peeking up over the concrete edge. At 4:58 a white sedan pulls into the parking lot and two women get out. The woman and Gracie. The woman has a gun and is dragging Gracie towards the back door of the club. I slide down the fire ladder and right when I hit the bottom, I hear a shot. My blood runs cold until I get across the street and see that the chain holding the back door shut has been shot off. I breathe a sigh of relief and charge in. I see a fire axe on the wall and grab it as I pass. What was that band called?

I find them in the main dining room. They’re screaming hysterically at each other, spastic shrieks like cats in a duffel bag.

“Let her go,” I say too quietly. Neither one hears me over the ruckus they’re making.

“I said, ‘LET HER GO.’” My voice booms over their noise, confounding and silencing them. I think I hear a chandelier rattle.

The woman doesn’t let Gracie go, but instead pulls her closer and shoves the barrel of her gun up under Gracie’s jaw.

“Oh Arthur, why has it come to this?” she pleads. “We could’ve had everything! But you couldn’t even show up in the right place at the right time! We could’ve controlled most of the west coast, Arthur, but you threw it all away. Now Lusky has control and we have nothing,” she sobs.

“Lusky’s dead,” I tell her.

“What?” she gasps, tears drying up. I knew it. I just fucking knew it. And I knew I could do what I’m about to do from the very beginning. I could do it. I will do it.

“Yep. And Von Tier, too. And the guy in the ski mask, and most of their goons, too. Dead as Dillinger.”

I see her face turn red. She bites her bottom lip until she draws blood and begins screaming, “NO! NONONONONO!” and unloading the gun at me, the loudest popcorn kernel exploding you could imagine. Is that a fucking magnum?

“Gracie, hit her!” I yell, overturning and ducking behind a table. Gracie, who’s worked in this city long enough to have picked up a few particularly nasty self-defense moves, whips around and jabs her outstretched fingers into the soft, fleshy front of the woman’s neck. My heart melts a little. The shots stop coming and I stand up, a wide grin on my face.

“Good girl, Gracie! Now duck!”

The woman gasps for air, clutching at her neck with her free hand. The scarf unravels from around her head, her hair falls over her face, and I let the axe fly.

The woman drops, the crescent of the fire axe buried neatly into her forehead, the pointed end protruding from her skull like a backwards shark’s backwards dorsal fin.

Gracie leaps into my arms from halfway across the room. I hold her so tight I worry she might break in half. “You did so well, baby,” I tell her. “You did so well.”

“Legs, I was so scared. I can’t believe you saved me,” she sobs quietly into my neck and I go shhhhh through my teeth and run my grubby fingers through her hair. She inhales sharply and then sighs, slowly regaining her cool. She looks up at me like a baby bird with those big green eyes and we kiss until we hear sirens.

“We need to get gone, baby.”

She nods and closes her eyes. I put her down and she takes one of my hands in two of hers. We hurry out the back and down the street where we hail a cab back to her place. We fall into bed and sleep the next two days away.

Sometime later, I’m sitting at the kitchen table with the remains of breakfast between me and Gracie. Not only is she beautiful and sweet, she is an amazing cook. She knows exactly how to cook the bacon so all the fat turns to delicious bits that crunch but are still juicy. She’s perfect. She sips her coffee, a hollowed out half of a cantaloupe on the table in front of her and smiles at me.

“So it’s over, yeah?” she says, bending over to reach into her purse and grab her cigarettes.

“Yeah, I think it is.”

“What about those other guys? The ones who killed your boss?”

I shrug my shoulders. “I doubt they’ll come after us—I doubt they even know where to look. But I don’t have any plans this week. I still have the files Lusky gave me. I’d almost forgot about them.”

A long moment and then: “Are you going to kill them?” she asks meekly. I think for another long moment about what to tell her. I decide any good relationship must be based on honesty.

“Yes,” I tell her, looking her in the minty oceans of her eyes without flinching.

There is a strange spark there, one I have seen before and remember being confused by, but I can’t recall when. It’s something…

“Can I come with you?” she asks, barely a whisper.

Perfect.

My heart overflows with joy and she is an ocean in which I would not mind drowning.

The End.

Wester’s is an all night diner. A different one on every corner it seems. This town has a lot of night owls. It sits, squat and vaguely ovoid in a dark corner. More neon signs. The walk leaves me sore. Gracie’s already there. Her blonde hair is disheveled and matted but looks as good as anything, just like it always does. She’s all wrapped up in a big black coat and a scarf around her neck. I can’t help but smile when I see her under the fluorescent lights. She looks at me and says, “Legs, you look like hell.”

“I always look like hell,” I tell her and collapse like a building being demolished into the seat across from her in the booth.

She takes a short sharp breath and reaches across the table and takes my hands in hers.

“Legs, what’d they do to you? What’s happened?”

Like flood gates, the whole story comes out. At the end my face is buried in my hands because some of it sounds like the craziest nonsense when you’re telling it out loud. I tell her everything. About my “mother,” about Lusky, about The Boss, my “father,” and even about the disappearing man in the ski mask. At the end she just sits, undoubtedly horrified, mouth slightly agape, eyes wide. The silence becomes a corporeal thing, like a terrible invisible octopus that wraps it’s suckers around your neck and chokes the life out of you, simply because it can. I feel tentacles down my throat. I want to puke.

“I don’t know what to do, Gracie,” I tell her finally. “This is the first time I don’t know an easy solution to a problem.”

Silence, crushing silence. I can’t feel my toes. My hands are freezing.

Eventually I begin to stutter some sort of excuse or apology, but to my great surprise, Gracie cuts me off.

“Von Tier,” she says. “Who is he? A rival of Lusky? Have you ever heard of him before?”

Her hands are pressed flat on the table. Her nails are painted a dark brown that reminds me of dried blood. There is something of an animal in Gracie at times. This is one of them. Her eyes have turned hungry. She’s asking questions. Right. Questions need answers.

“Never. I can only guess…What—why do you ask?”

“He’s the biggest piece of the puzzle. If this woman—this woman who claims to be your mother—works for Von Tier, taking him out will take her out, too. How bad could he be? He was a rival of Lusky and it sounded like you dealt with him pretty handily…”

The hunger in her eyes has bled into her voice. She clears her throat.

“Think about it, Legs…I mean, really. What have you got to lose here? You’ve gone your whole life with nothing but the head on your shoulders. And now, suddenly, you got a family, or part of a family…something you’ve never had before. Who is this guy Von Tier to stand between you and that? If what Lusky said is true, finding Von Tier will solve two of your problems. Von Tier was the name in the files of the men who killed your boss, right? But why would Von Tier want your boss dead? And why would he send a con woman after you to pose as your mother? Who sent the hit squad? Easiest way to find out is to ask the man who knows all the answers. Von Tier.”

There is a glow in her eyes that gives me a warmth in my stomach. She’s holding my hands tighter than a vise-grip. She’s licking her lips. She leans back as far as she can, but doesn’t let go of my hands.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I don’t know…why I was talking like that. This is all crazy, isn’t it? Oh, Legs, I don’t know what to tell you to do. How do I know you aren’t making all this up? I want to believe you. But what about the man in the ski mask? Did you really see him? Are you seeing things because of stress? I can understand…How long has it been since you slept?”

“No,” I tell her. “Don’t be sorry. I am tired. I’m hungry. I might have been seeing things, it’s true. Maybe I am crazy and making it up. But it feels real. The other ones I killed were real. I saw them. I felt them. If it’s not real, it’s not worth telling the difference, because I can’t shake it.”

Once again we lapsed into a long, heavy silence.

“I don’t care if you’re crazy, Legs,” she said at last with a tone of firm finality. Once again I found myself unable to prevent myself from smiling at her.

“Thank you,” I tell her. “This is all I needed. If there’s just one person who doesn’t care if I’m just crazy, it’s all worth it. I’d kiss you if you’d let me.”

I swear it just slipped out.

I feel myself turning red, but she’s smiling.

“Oh Legs,” she says, and I see she’s getting red in the cheeks, too. “You can kiss me any time you please.”

And so I do. I know it’s only for a moment, but I can feel my soul stretching out in every direction, every dimension, turning me into a wavy line in time, a leaf down a stream. Her lips are so small and taste delicious. They remind me of tiny pink orange slices, like those jelly candies from the local markets.

A breath passes between our lips like a gust of wind on an empty ocean.

When I open my eyes, she’s still there.

“I don’t care if you’re crazy,” she whispers, her eyes still closed, her head still tilted back with her candied lips just barely parted. I kiss her again. It might be the best thing I’ve ever felt. Better than pancakes. Better than fast cars. Better than flying. Better than breaking legs. I kiss her again.

I grab the woman by the arm when she doesn’t get to her feet quick enough. I put the gun back in my waistband. I’ll need to be quiet here. I could punch a hole clean through this woman at this range. This woman, I think. Who might be my mother.

Could I do it?

I can’t do this right now.

My head needs to be clear.

I take a deep breath.

We creep into the cave-like darkness of the back hallway. I look for something heavy. Something nasty. I remember there was a work crew here some weeks back, tearing up the concrete floor with pickaxes to get at the plumbing. It would be too good to find a pickaxe right now.

I hear the groaning of the smashed back door. They’re inside. As many as ten of them, assuming there aren’t more cars on the way. Could’ve waited. Got carried away.

My foot bumps something that sounds like metal on the concrete and tile. I grope for it and find a wooden shaft, about waist-high. I pick it up and tentatively touch the end of it. A shovel. But it will do just fine.

Around the corner that leads to the kitchen in the back of the restaurant, I press the woman against the wall. Barely audible, I tell her if she moves from this spot before I tell her to, she will die. She doesn’t have time to think about it before I’m gone. This will be easy.

Framed in dim silhouette, I see four figures, four distinct shapes moving, darkness on darkness. More outside. I can do this.

“Frankie, I can’t see a god damn thing,” says one of the shapes.

“Shut up,” says a second shape.

“Someone hit the lights, would ya?” says the first voice again, a nasal bleating. “I can’t see a god damn thing.”

“Shut up, Teddy,” says the second voice. “Or I’ll—”

“Or you’ll what?”

None of them noticed the muffled sound of wood on Frankie’s spine.

“Come on, tough guy,” the shape called Teddy says. “You wanna square up with me in a dark hallway and me carrying a machine gun, be my friggin’ guest.”

“Would you both shut up?” demanded a third voice. “I’m trying to find the god damn light switch, alright?”

The light switch is right in front of me.

There’s that familiar click and suddenly, the lights are all on. Three of them still standing. Frankie, presumably dead on the floor.

Before any of them can register what’s happening, I’m swinging the business end of the shovel like I’m getting paid for it. One, two, three squashed-melon heads later, and the only sound any of them make is the thud of a cadaver hitting the floor.

I turn the lights off.

I wonder who has this much firepower to waste on something like this. Two of the four had machine pistols. The other two had AK’s. I thought I spotted a grenade before the light went off, clipped to one of their belts.

I creep back to the spot where I left the woman, but she isn’t there.

I punch the wall where she was standing. I could do it.

Even if she’s telling the truth?

I could do it.

I pluck the grenade off of the third man’s belt. It’s the kind that detonates on impact. The fun kind.

“Lou, Frankie,” says the fourth voice of the fifth man. “What the hell are you morons doing in there? Turn the lights on!”

I pick this fifth man up by the head and toss him back the way he came, right through the door. He lands between the two cars. I toss the grenade after him, a nice underhand throw with a little hang time on it. The grenade lands gently in his lap. It still blows up, taking the man, his crotch and both cars with it into the great cindery beyond.

There’s even a lovely secondary explosion when the cars gas tanks ignite.

The last one left, a charred barbeque-smelling husk, is too deep in shock to answer any questions I might have and so I put my boot through his still-smoldering face. I didn’t have any questions anyway. You don’t need to know why someone is trying to kill you. You just have to know how to kill them first.

Now, I think, is a good time to tell you a little bit about my past.

My earliest memory is of looking up from a small bed, bundled up in foul smelling blankets at a man with a bald head and thin silver spectacles. This was the priest at a church-run orphanage far away on the outskirts of town. That is where I was raised. I tried my best to do good by the priest and the nuns who brought me up, but it always seemed as though the path of sin was one I was predisposed to. The priest would beat me frequently for my transgressions. He would tell me that it was in my blood to do wrong, that nothing more could be expected from the abandoned son of a whore.

When my growth spurt hit, the priest realized he would not be able to control me with beatings any more and turned me out into the world to make my way on my own. I’d like to think that I figured things out pretty quickly. A lot of it was because I was lucky enough to have met The Boss. He found me one December night, cold, thin, hungry, robbing a sandwich cart. He took me in and let me run errands for him. A few years later I started doing proper work for him. A few years later, well…Here we are.

I never knew my parents, and I never much cared to. And now, this woman is telling me she’s my mother, and my head is spinning. It feels like someone has stabbed me in the heart with a giant corkscrew and just keeps twisting. My mouth goes dry. My ears start to ring.

“Nice try, lady. Now give me one good reason not to shoot you for trespassing.”

I draw the hammer back on the gun and the woman yelps.

“Arthur, no! Please, you’ve got to believe me! Please! Here, look!” she motions frantically towards the shattered picture frame on the floor. “The picture, please, Arthur, look at it.”

Her eyes are wide and scared and bloodshot and desperate. I look at the picture frame, then back at those bloodshot gray eyes. I tell her to pick it up. Slowly.

“And stop calling me Arthur. My name is Legs.”

She swallows hard and bends down, very, very slowly to pick up the picture frame. She plucks the photo out of the shattered glass. Very, very slowly, she puts her hand out to me with the photo between her first two fingers. I take it and move back. I keep my gun trained on her. I look at the photo.

In it is a young couple, a man and a woman. The woman is holding an ugly baby. The man has slicked-back, greasy looking black hair. The woman is wearing big dark sunglasses and a scarf around her head. The baby is drooling like an imbecile.

It’s her. The woman in the photo is the woman behind the desk, but I would guess roughly twenty five years ago. The man is The Boss. The baby is me.

I drop the photo.

“You see?” the woman whimpers. “Oh, Arthur, I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry. I know you can’t forgive me…I don’t expect you to. What I’ve done is terrible, what has happened to you is terrible…Oh, Arthur, I know you won’t ever forgive me, but you’ve got to let me try!”

I really might throw up. The coffee isn’t sitting well.

“Shut up,” I say. It’s not a request. “If you open your mouth again without me telling you to, I’m going to shoot you. Do you understand?”

Her lips tremble. She covers her mouth with her hand and nods. I bend down and pick up the photo. I sit down across from her at the desk. I force myself to look at the photo again. It could be a fake. That drooling baby could be anyone. But I know. The way when you hear a bell ring, like a big church bell, loud and strong and solid and beautiful and true, the way you can feel it like a physical force, like a wave washing over you at the beach. I know it’s real. I know it’s me and The Boss and this woman who claims she’s my mother. But I can’t be certain.

“What are you doing here?” I ask her finally. “Keep it short,” I add. I crumple the photo up and put it in my jacket’s inside pocket. I lift the gun up, reminding her I’ve got it pointed at her when she hesitates before answering. “Today,” I tell her. She swallows hard.

“I…I don’t know what I’m doing here. I came to find you, I suppose. I don’t know why I thought you’d be here. Woman’s intuition, I guess.”

She’s lying.

“How did you know where my key was?” I ask and all the color goes out of her again. She’s thinking.

“I—I’ve been watching you. Since the funeral. I saw you at the funeral and I saw you talking to that dog, Lusky, and I knew something was wrong. I followed you. I saw you reach up and grab the key one night and then I came here tonight. I used one of the trash cans around the back to reach it. I’m sorry. It’s there, on the desk,” she says and points. There’s my key on the corner of the desk. I reach over and put it in my pocket, then sit back in the chair, which creaks unabashedly under my weight.

My head is starting to clear.

“Nice try,” I tell her. “Lying to me is not a good way to keep yourself from getting shot. I haven’t been here since the night The Boss got shot. You didn’t follow me anywhere after the funeral. If you’ve been watching me, it’s since before The Boss got shot. So, how long?”

It’s a lovely feeling, making someone’s lie come falling down all around them. She looks like she’s trapped behind a crumbling dam.

“Arthur, please, I just—” she starts.

“Stop calling me Arthur,” I interrupt. “You don’t know me. You don’t get to say my name like it doesn’t matter. Now how long?”

She swallows hard and says: “Not long. Two weeks, maybe.”

“What are you actually doing here?”

She hesitates. The wheels are spinning.

“The truth,” I tell her. “Or I shoot you. I ain’t had a mother in twenty five years. You’re just more mess to clean up to me, no matter who you claim to be.”

“I know about the deal you made with Lusky, and I know about the deal Lusky made with Cosmo. I came to tell you that you’re walking into a trap. The deal isn’t like Lusky said. And I know you have problems with things like reading, especially legal documents, so I know you never would have found it on your own. The deal’s bad. There are bi-lines and sub-clauses. By declaring yourself the next of kin under the false name Lusky got you, you’re also signing a waiver stating that if anything should happen to you, Lusky is named as the sole benefactor. He gets you to sign the papers, then he snuffs you and takes over. You’re going to be signing over everything Cosmo worked for for the last three decades if you go to that office tomorrow morning and sign those papers. I came to convince you not to do it, because you can do it without Lusky.”

I’m not quite sure what she means.

“You are the next of kin, Arthur. You’re Cosmo’s son. You’re my son. I have the DNA tests to prove it. You don’t need the fake papers Lusky gave you to claim the inheritance. All you need to do is show up.”

A chill runs up my spine. I have to remind myself to breathe. I look at this woman, claiming to be my mother. I’ve never had to deal with this kind of a situation before. I feel my head getting clouded.

On a small array of video screens, the closed-circuit surveillance system wired into The Boss’s office, I see movement. Two cars have just pulled up around the back. I remember that I left the back door wide open. I can’t believe how dumb I am.

I’m on my feet.

“Are they yours?” I ask the woman, gesturing at the small monitor with my gun. She whirls around and looks at the screen, then back at me and shakes her head. I nod.

“We should leave.”

I find the first of them downtown. The files Lusky gave me are some real professional work. I look right to the addresses. It’s still early. Thugs only go out at night. I hail a cab.

I knock on the door and the thug who blasted The Boss opens the door. He’s still got a length of bandage around his hand where The Boss got him with his straight razor. His numb eyes go wide when he recognizes me.

“You!” is all he manages to utter before I’m driving my fist into his face. It makes a sound like two steaks slapping together while porcelain breaks in the background. His head snaps back and there’s a spray of blood with teeth in it. This gets on my shirt, which is one I just washed. I bend down and hoist him back to his feet. He’s out cold. His eyes are rolled back into his head and his tongue droops out of the corner of his mouth. I punch him again and let him fall to the ground with a sound like fruit falling down the stairs.

I close the door and lock it, then I light a cigarette.

I don’t give him a chance to talk. I torture him, break his fingers, then his knees, then his elbows and then his toes. I stuff a sock in his mouth and duct tape it there to keep him from screaming. After the second knee, he’s bawling like a baby. I spend the afternoon kicking him around the apartment. I find a cabinet full of wrenches and screwdrivers and pliers and then I use those on him, too. He looks at me so pathetically.

I finish him off by picking him up by the neck and pitching him like a baseball out the window. He falls five stories and lands on a parked car. A woman screams, just like in a movie. I leave the apartment fast, but calm, before anyone thinks to even look up. On the ground, there’s a small crowd gathered around the trashed car and the trashed thug.

I don’t believe it, but he’s still gurgling. Someone is screaming to call an ambulance. I step close to the thug and lean in close.

“You got it easy,” I whisper in his ear. I reach into my waistband and pull my gun. “The others won’t be so lucky.”

I pull the trigger. I pull it again to make sure. The small crowd is growing, and now there’s more people screaming. I hail a cab.

I’m gone.

It’s about 7 pm when I’m through. This leaves me with fifteen hours to find out what’s so important to Lusky about the shares. It’s going to be a long night.

I tell the cabbie to drop me somewhere with cheap coffee. None of that chain crap. I like my coffee with a layer of grease on top, from a pot that hasn’t had more than a light rinsing between brews in years.

He lets me out on a corner and I pay him. It’s a little diner, Maura’s. I drink two pots straight and leave a big tip.

I arrive, once again by taxi, at the corner closest to The Crab. The lights are all out and it doesn’t look like there’s anyone inside. It’s been closed ever since The Boss went. I wait for the cab to pull away, then walk around to the back door, the staff entrance. I reach up to the top of a light fixture over the back door to grab my key. I figure it’s easier to leave it here, and no one could reach up there without bringing a step stool. And besides, who would want to break into The Crab?

My key is missing.

I lunge for the door, but it’s locked. I reach up and check again for the key, but it’s really not there. Frantically, I check my pockets. I grab ahold of the door knob, almost reflexively, and give it a good yank. It pops right out, the lock inside snapping clean from its fittings. The door swings gently open.

I pull my gun from my waistband and step cautiously inside. It’s dark.

Moving in the dark through this hallway is easy. I feel like a bat, navigating by sonar. I listen. I move as quietly as I can towards The Boss’s office. When he was alive, I would never have dreamed of going into his office without permission. But The Boss is gone. He would understand.

The first sign of anything amiss is a thin line of light projecting from the crack under the door of The Boss’s office. Someone is here. I can almost smell them.

I press close to the door. There is a soft, trembling sound, almost like coughing coming from the other side. Whoever it is, isn’t moving around. They aren’t moving anything else, either. Sleeping? Waiting? How many? These and other questions flood my mind, but my body knows what to do. I should always remember to listen to my gut. My head gets clouded so easily. Lugs like me should always listen to their guts.

I kick the door to splinters and get ready to make a mess.

Sitting in The Boss’s old chair behind his heavy oak desk is a woman with a scarf wrapped around her head. A pair of dark sunglasses are on the desk in front of her. She’s holding a small square wooden object. A picture frame. She screams and drops it, and the glass shatters.

“Don’t shoot!” she shrieks. “Please don’t shoot!”

I don’t. But I keep the gun trained on her. She knows the drill. She puts her hands up. She looks at me and I see her lips tremble. She’s older. I can see the wrinkles at the corners of her glassy gray eyes and her thin mouth. She’s been crying. That was the coughing sound, I realize. Buy why?

I stand silently, utterly still. I see her bloodshot eyes down the barrel of my gun and I decide whether to waste her or not.

“Who are you?” I demand, finally breaking the silence.

She replies by bursting into tears.

I haven’t got time for this.

“Who are you?” I say again, louder, more forcefully and she drops her arms. She covers her face with her hands and sobs like a fire hydrant in the summer.

“So you really don’t know?” she manages to squeak out between sobs. “You really don’t know?”

There is a look of utter defeat on her face. The color has all gone out of her, the way The Boss looked all done up in the hospital. She sobs.

“Don’t know what? Lady, what are you talking about?”

“Oh, Arthur,” she sobs. The hair stands up on the back of my neck. My name is Arthur. My real name is Arthur.

“Oh, Arthur, don’t you recognize your own mother?”