Ded Reckoning (7 page)

Pisces looks at Bruno, smiles and says warmly in English, "How long have you been working for me?  How long have we been friends?"

Bruno, internally warmed, grins broadly, says in English, "Forever, Bossa.  Forever.  I'm so," then lapses into Italian, "grateful for the chance to work for you.  To be with you."  Twists his head first one way, then the other searching, for Rocco who has moved.  He's behind him but off to one side.  Bruno grins and nods at Rocco, seeking agreement, approval or perhaps subconscious understanding.  He receives only a granite-like stare. Bruno snaps his head to the front as Pisces speaks.

"Then why are you fucking my wife?"  Pisces' eyes are cold and his tone has the feel of dry ice.

Bruno stills, stiffens, eyes shifting in thought but lost for words.  He clears his throat, stammers, "B ... Bo ... Bossa.  Signore Catalano, I  ..."

Pisces raises his hand from his lap like a cobra ready to strike. The "Psssst" of the silencer-equipped pistol, although suppressed, sounds like a cannon in the morgue-like quiet study.  Bruno flops backward onto the tiled floor like a thrown sand bag.  The collapse of the body is loud, magnified by the silence of the room, sounding like a kettle drum crash.  The sandbag quietly pooling blood onto the tile floor.  The last fading violins of the concerto.

Pisces looks at Rocco and hisses, "Get him outta' here.  Without her," nodding his head towards the bedroom, "seeing you.  I will handle everything else."

"Yes, sir."

"And, Rocco.  Let it be a warning. Pisces is life and death.  Pisces giveth and Pisces taketh away. Pisces is life.  To himself, and to those around him.  Make sure all our help understand.  The crew.  Gina ... never mind her."  He pauses, turns the calendar page, "Find us another driver.  Someone older so as not to make a young man's mistake."

"Yes, sir."

"The man in Pisa. Carmen Messina?  He would be good, and he's from here.  Get him, but only if you agree and like him.  Vet him like a good horse."  Pisces laughs.  "And make sure he's a gelding."  Laughs again.  Still with a sly smile on his face, he says, "Rocco, don't make him one.  Just find one."  He pauses. "Should have thought of that sooner, huh?"  

"Yessa, boss."

"Oh, and Rocco.  While there, get rid of Antonio.  I don't trust him.  Make it hurt first, like make him a gelding first if you have time."

"Done."

 

 

Dee strolls out onto the patio.  Hunter has his back to her, looking out over the backyard fence.  The sun is setting.  Clear sky, red and orange.  A wisp of breeze brings the scent of salt air inland sweeping away what's left of the humidity.  It's peaceful yet this is the home where tragedy struck this day.  Catastrophe dwelt here but a few hours ago.  Dee places her hands on Hunter's shoulders.  He leaps out of the chaise lounge, spinning around, dropping his brandy. The snifter shatters on the pool-side cool-crete.  He faces her, his MK22 Mod O in his hand, extended at her forehead in less than an eye blink.  He stops abruptly, his mind and reflexes registering the moment.  He  pauses.  Relaxes.  Drops the weapon to his side.  Exhales.

Time seems suspended until he breaks the silence. "Not a good glass day."  He drops his chin slightly, and looking through the top of his eyes and shaking his head he rebukes, "You should know better."  Raises his head.  "At least so I've been told." His tone is icy and sarcastic.

"I know."  Her complexion pales, cadaver-like.  She stands immobile, tense, like a gunfighter caught without a weapon.  She catches her breath.  "Hunter, relax.  Let's talk."

"Talk? Okay, speak."

"All right.  It's late.  Been a long day." Color returns to her face.  She says lightly, "How about dinner?"

"Dinner?  Dinner?  Jesus!  Are you nuts, Mrs. Columbo?"  He dwells a moment, then blurts mockingly, "Partner."

She slaps his face.  Hard.  Says, "Get your act together, Hunter.    It is what it is.  Now you know.  I know.  We know.  And now you're no longer clueless, Hawk."  She steps back, smiles, turns slowly around as if modeling, tempting some dense sailor.  "I am what I am.  Angelo is dead.  Years now.  I'm back working, only in a different capacity since I have children to care for and a family to worry about and an asset to ... to work with, or for."

"Asset.  Jesus." Hunter slips the Hush Puppy in the rear waist band of his slacks, and sits on one of those fold-out, aluminum, canvas covered chairs.  Every patio has four with an umbrella table.  Less tense, more or less peaceful he says, "Well, hell, where do we go from here?"

She says, "How about some dinner?"

"Yeah, great idea.  I haven't eaten since ... since this morning, early."  He pauses for a second, then says, "How about Lubach's, or there's a new place, Bully's East?  I'll treat."

Dee looks at him, shakes her head slowly.  "You may be one tough son of a ... gun, but you surely need help.  I mean, everyone tells me how lean and mean you are.  And today, I mean, wow!  But you know what, you just don't seem to think straight all the time.  I know.  I'm babbling again.  That's my weakness.  That's my Babylon.  But, you.  Holy Smokes.  I mean, how can we go out to dinner when you can't even lock your front door?  The windows only have tarps over them.  What's to keep people out?  What's to keep the neighbors, or worse, the press, from poking around and coming inside?  You're the trained agent.  I'm just an out-of-practice assistant handler.  A little ol' landlady and clerk-typist."

Hunter sits and stares.  Focused but yet not.  Studying but wondering.  Fidgeting but not.
  I've heard about her husband's disappearance.  The mystery of it all.  The presumption of death.  Something's not ... well, shoot.
  He nods his head, a smile begins to form, drifts slowly across his face.  Eyes lighten with either a plan or mischief, or both.  He stands.  Looks at his watch, then the darkening sky.  The western reds and oranges vanishing fast and turning to ultramarine, and nightfall.

"Okay, you're right.  I'll fix something and we'll eat here.  Get a fresh start."

"Gee, good thinking, Hawk.  But, how about this for an idea?  I'll get something for us to eat.  You set things up out here. I assume I'm probably a better cook than you and for sure have a better plan.  What d'ya think?"

"Okay.  You fix dinner.  I'll fix us a drink."

"Fine.  Let's see.  I bet you'll have another apricot brandy.  But first, clean up the broken glass so I can go barefoot.  Then, get your brandy, and tell you what.  Pour me a scotch, neat. We'll sip those, then I'll get busy.  And, I'm guessing, you'll want to ask me a lot of questions."

"Yeah, okay, Landlady.  I do have a few."

"Get the drinks.  And turn on the Jacuzzi.  This is going to be an interesting evening to say the least."

Hunter, now on his feet, gazes into Dee's dark eyes.  Smiles form on both their faces.  Then Hunter laughs softly and says, "You know, you pack a heckuva wallop.  A good right hand."

"And that's not all."

Hunter hears a voice reaching from the depths of his brain-housing group.  
Hunter, don't
you do her.
 

Then another from some other depth.  
Do her
.

 

 

Pisces sits at the table on the veranda.  Takes another sip of Chianti.  Gina fidgets with the table settings.  Working to make things right, yet glancing often and shyly at Roberto.  Then, with a rush of air, seemingly more abrupt than a jet launching from a carrier, Signora Catalano bursts onto the tiled veranda.  "Roberto, everything looks so beautiful.  The dinner. The fresh catch of the day. Itsa smells so wonderful.  I, too, will have a glass of the Chianti."  She sits at the table, and waves her hand at Gina to bring some wine.

Anna smiles, leans back, her head sways from side to side with apparent pleasure.  "What a gorgeous evening.  The mountain, she looks so peaceful.  The sea so calm.  Life is good.  Yes?"

"Yes." Pisces pauses. "It is for most of us.  Let's eat." He looks over her head, commands,

"Gina.  Signora Catalano and I wish to start.  Please serve.  And tell Rocco that I wish to see him before he leaves; and you, after supper, in my study.  Yes?"

"Yes, sir, Signore Catalano,"

 

 

An uncomfortable calm settles upon three diverse horizons.  Each with anticipation.  Each for a different reason.  Each with dissimilar colors.  And perhaps, each with a distinctive result.  Perchance those enjoying these horizons don't grasp this, or perhaps they do.  Don't care, or perhaps they do.  The missteps of the ded reckoning process are cumulative so the lapses in the fix feed upon themselves as plotted, growing with time.

Navigators, or in fact predators, will need to check the drift meter or shoot another celestial fix, not forgetting to advance and retard the LOP's so to make a course direction.

Because ... a reckoning, is coming.

 
 

CHAPTER 5

 

"In ten years nobody will remember

the details of caliber, stance, or tactics.  

They will only remember who lived."

A gunfighter's rule

 

 

Coilean Muldoon sent a message to the Shanahan lads to meet him at the Metro Pub in town.  His anglicized name is Colin, the Irish meaning of which is "whelp."  Perhaps as a young boy he was that, however, now he is as ugly as a bulldog, mean as a snake and passes gas more than any three bulldogs.   

The two Shanahan lads enter, look around and see the old man, Colin Muldoon, at a far corner table, and he is accompanied by his eldest son, Conor.  One would have thought that the father would have wanted a Coilean Junior, however he did breed a whelp and raised him into a Pit Bull...like those originally bred in Ireland and used as "catch dogs" for semi-wild hogs.  The dogs can be family companions, as Conor perhaps once was, but now more likely he's renowned for his fighting prowess and nickname, "Pit".  A brutish lad with a notable short Irish temper, Popeye-like arms, his stout neck and shoulders melded as one, and a zit-ridden mug of an English Bull, not a Pit.

Both he and his father are hunched over inhaling fine pub grub.  The Metro is known for many things, most positive, but its food is of the finest in the city, certainly within the walls of the old city.  Danny and Sean Shanahan wind their way through other seated pub customers to the Muldoon table waving both hands to wish away the dense bluish-gray haze of smokers.  The lads stand tableside until Colin Muldoon nods.  Then they sit. The brutish son, Conor, glances up and sneers at them allowing a string of gravy to dribble on his chin.  The elder Muldoon grumbles, "Have a pint?"

Danny Shanahan answers for himself and his younger brother, Sean.  "That would be good.  The task is over and done with.  Not a soul spotted us."  He pauses, waiting for a reaction.

Colin grunts, "Tis on me then."

That settled, Danny continues making eye contact with only the elder one of the two.  "What is it you wish this night, Master Muldoon, sire?"

Colin raises his ham-like hand with his finger extended and with the other hand shovels another load of fine Irish stew into his mouth.  Puts his soup spoon down and swipes his mouth with his sleeve.  Watches the waitress, a perky, auburn-haired young lass, leap away with the pint order as his son, Conor, pats her soccer ball shaped butt.  She yelps and with a playful grin screeches, "Keep your paws to yourself you overgrown ape and tell your father he's smellin' up this space with his rear-ended belches."   The Pit Bull ignores the remark and shovels in another spoonful of gravy-dripping stew into his grinning mouth.

The elder Muldoon, beet red from the remarks but ignores it nonetheless, says to the Shanahan lads, "When she brings your pints, and is gone, we'll talk.  That be the way of it.  And it will be in the Irish.  I'm told you understand."

"Aye.  Do you have word of Paddy?"

"We'll talk when the lass returns and is gone."

"So it'll be."  They remove their caps and lay them on the table still with a grip on them with twisting hands.  They wait, eyes flicking about for the perky barmaid to return. A dryness comes to their mouths at the same time, much like identical twins might experience.  Heads twist and turn together, syncopated eyes dart about as one.  They look at one another, then for the auburn-haired barmaid again.  To Muldoon's eyes. And back.  They sense.  It is not a good word they'll be hearing.  All this while listening to Conor, the zit, slurp his meal, gravy still on his chin and more on the table.  The checkered tablecloth beneath the Pit Bull's bowl looks as though he has strained the stew up through the cloth.  Mrs. Shanahan, the boys' feisty mother, would slap them silly if they were to eat like that at home.  Or have 'em eat out of a bowl on the floor to teach them table manners, which she had done once or thrice when they were young.

The wait is excruciating for the Shanahan lads.  Their breaths grow short and their jaws tighten with glum anticipation.

 

 

When Pisces and Anna finish dinner, Gina hastens to clear away the dishes nearly dropping one, and does let a fork clatter to the tile.  Anna inhales sharply, shaking her head and hisses in Italian, "Inept peasant."

Gina drops another.  Utters,
"Scusa!"
 

Anna flicks her hand toward Gina as if brushing unwanted crumbs from the table.

The supposed-to-be house mouse retrieves the forks and backs away muttering,
"Mi dispiase."
  Then repeats herself in English to please Pisces.  "I'm sorry."

Pisces nods not wholly imperceptibly, smiles and says, "No mess.  Not to worry.  Bruno made worse," and he chuckles.

Rocco makes an unintentional topic changing entrance with a tray holding a snifter and a short fine crystal drink glass.  The snifter filled with an apricot brandy from a small family winery in Tuscany.  It is their Chianti that Pisces also drinks.  The glass has but a splash of
Macallan
fine oak 12 year scotch whiskey on the rocks for the Signora.  Pisces more often than not complains about her drinking the fine whiskey on ice, but not tonight.  This is whiskey imported by
Rinaldi
and sent to Anna.  Rocco serves both and then places a new, unopened box of cigars on the table.  As is customary, Pisces opens the fresh box of his
Joya De Nicaragua
cigars, wrapped in their stunningly beautiful Rosado-colored
Nicaraguan Habana Criollo
wrappers.  Pisces removes one, and the wrapper.  Fingers and feels it carefully.  As should be it feels substantial, no bumps, no soft spots.