The Merry Pranked (12 page)

Leslie read on. Emboldened by the heat on the various organized crime elements working in the city, and determined to take no prisoners, apparently Morgan and Mad Dog finally decided to strike and strike hard; according to Walter, they hit their targets with a vengeance, taking no prisoners. Even as the citizens of Lakeview called for the police to stop the almost daily gangland killings; even as the heat was on, Morgan and Mad Dog and their crew attacked. It was possible they had the element of surprise. No one expected them to be so bold at a time when the authorities were paying close attention, but they were and it worked to their advantage. According to Walter’s notes, it was suspected that Mad Dog Marshall killed more than his fair share of mobsters, Italian, Russian, or Asian, although the authorities were never able to pin him with any of them. The killing got to the point where the various crime organizations cut a deal with Morgan and Mad Dog. Rather than continue the fight, they stepped back and allowed them to take over the city; it’d been about a year-and-a-half of street warfare, their ranks were decimated, they realized these young upstarts were willing to fight to the death, and authorities were paying far too close attention to them all, and for Morgan and Mad Dog to run the city, they’d need to buy their drugs and guns from somewhere. A deal was cut, whereby Morgan and Mad Dog would also pay a ten percent stipend to these organized crime families on the various crimes and illegal enterprises they perpetrated in Lakeview. Eventually, Morgan would renege on that promise, setting up another street war, that he eventually won as well, but during Mad Dog’s time, that was how they came to power.

Leslie flipped over the page; the next page had very little writing on it; just a warning from Walter that now was a good time to stop reading, because what followed was his Father’s true legacy in Lakeview; a legacy that many had forgotten with time and one that clearly illustrated the type of man he truly was.

Leslie stared at that page. He had no idea what would follow; he wanted once again to heed Walter’s warning, but couldn’t. What he’d read so far hadn’t pleased him; even the sounds of The Supremes wasn’t as calming as it usually was. He turned the page.

A reproduction of a newspaper article, featuring a black and white photo of his father, trying to duck whatever photographer was taking it, was at the top of the page, along with the headline,
Mad Dog Kills Kid!

Leslie read on. As it turns out, it was one sunny Saturday afternoon when Mad Dog Marshall and a couple members of his crew, that were never identified, decided to take out a Captain in the local Italian crime family. Rather than hit him at the social club where he and a bunch of other mobsters hung out, and where they would be ready for anything, they decided to hit him leaving the nursing home where his mother was committed. They watched him for quite some time, and knew he religiously visited his Mother every Saturday; a stupid move by someone embroiled in a street war, but then again, brain power wasn’t always a qualifier for a criminal.

Mad Dog and his crew knew the time he visited his mother and generally how long he stayed each visit; again a stupid move by the mobster, but good news for Mad Dog. They waited and like clockwork they pounced. As the mobster was leaving the nursing home that Saturday afternoon, they drove by him in a car and riddled him with bullets. Mad Dog had gotten hold of a machine gun, as he wanted the death to be dramatic. While he was sure they couldn’t put as many holes in him as they put in Sonny Corleone in
The Godfather
, he was determined to make it more than your standard one or two. Mad Dog fired and the Italian mobster hit the sidewalk dead, but not before performing a little marionette-like dance as the bullets ripped into his body. What Mad Dog hadn’t counted on were five kids playing in front of the nursing home. They’d obviously been brought there by their parents to meet possibly their grandparents, and because it was a nice day, had been left out front to play in the sun. Seeing how Mad Dog’s eye was on the prize, he didn’t really take note of the kids (although some argued that if he had of seen them it wouldn’t have made a difference to him), and it really didn’t matter, because he opened up firing nonetheless. Three kids were hit in the melee and later at the hospital, seven-year-old Dwayne Turner died of his wounds.

The citizens of Lakeview were tired of gangsters killing one another and wanted an end put to the madness; now that several children had been caught in the crossfire, and one of them had died, they were livid. It took approximately two months, but eventually Mad Dog was arrested for the murder of young Dwayne Turner. He was paraded in front of the press, and made headline news, but the case against him fell apart. Even to avenge an innocent child, when push came to shove, no one wanted to go up against Morgan or Mad Dog. If they had no qualms about gunning down a seven-year-old child, any adult witnesses who could be found, or their loved ones, definitely posed no problems for these killers. Fear once again won the day, and Mad Dog Marshall was released from custody, taking the time to stand on the courtroom steps with his lawyer, proclaiming, “I’m not a child killer.”

It was during this time that the city really took note of Dan “Mad Dog” Marshall, so much so that he was being credited as being the leader of the Morgan-Mad Dog gang. And while the authorities couldn’t find justice for young Dwayne Turner, apparently Morgan Neil decided he should. According to Walter’s thoughts on the matter, Morgan’s decision to take out his Father probably consisted of many things; first, he didn’t like the fact the citizenry at large considered Mad Dog to be the man in charge; if Morgan had one thing going for him, it was definitely a large ego, and Walter knew that wouldn’t have sat well with him. Secondly, Morgan was probably a greedy bastard. Why split the spoils two ways, when he could have it all for himself. Walter made sure to point out to Leslie in this write-up that no doubt the same thought had crossed Mad Dog’s mind; Morgan just beat him to it. Finally, Mad Dog’s actions in killing an innocent young boy while taking out one of their enemies had drawn a lot of heat; they had made sure that Mad Dog hadn’t paid for the crime and that was the problem. The public wanted revenge; they desperately wanted someone to pay for Dwayne’s murder. Mad Dog’s actions put their crew under a microscope, the authorities equally as pissed that no one was going to jail. The killing in Lakeview and the crime of murdering a child had even caught the attention of the President of the United States, who in one of his addresses to the nation, declared a war on organized crime, a disease affecting the streets of many cities, although he singled out Lakeview specifically as a particularly troublesome place where it needed to be stopped. The way Walter saw it, in his analysis of the early days of the Morgan and Mad Dog gang, Morgan had decided to kill Mad Dog, hoping that with him dead, even at the hands of other killers, the public’s thirst for revenge would be satiated. Everything could go back to normal. As long as Mad Dog was alive, however, the heat would be on, the authorities determined to bring him to justice for something, and that was bad for business.

Why Morgan had decided to take out Mad Dog’s entire family, Walter didn’t know. What he did know was that after the crime was committed, surprisingly, nobody seemed all that upset by the murders. There was almost a feeling that everyone deserved what they got, because they were Mad Dog’s family; live with a killer and psychopath and die at the hands of killers and psychopaths. While there was some sympathy for Leslie’s younger brother and sister, for the most part, many in the city felt justice had been done; it was karma and karma was a bitch. Sure there was another psychopath out there, who had no qualms about killing innocent women and children, but they could ignore that for the time being, seeing how young Dwayne Turner had finally been avenged and in this scenario he was a true innocent.

Leslie came to the end of Walter’s notes. Walter had enclosed details on where in the Examiner’s files he could go to read up on the killing of Dwayne Turner and his Father’s involvement. Seeing how Leslie had been taken out of town after the killing of his family, he’d never heard any of this, and had had no reason to look for information on his Father in newspaper files or otherwise. He’d been living in the dark, and any old timers at the newspaper, like Walter, who knew the truth, had kept their mouths shut. Maybe they figured he was such a nice guy, nothing like his Father, so why say anything?

“This can’t be so,” he said quietly. If he were to believe it, his father was a monster.

Leslie got up from the couch and moved to the bar. This information definitely rated a double. He poured himself some more scotch and moved to one of the bookshelves in the living room. The once soothing sounds of The Supremes were long forgotten - background noise that was no longer registering with his mind. He pulled out a photo album, and moved to the couch. He opened it and flipped to one of his favorite photos, a posed shot of him with his parents and siblings. His Father stood on one end, his Mother beside his Father, and the three kids in order of birth, starting with him, the oldest, beside his Mother. He and his siblings were dressed in some tacky matching outfits his Mother had bought for the photo shoot;
you just never looked cool as a kid.
It had been a day when his Father had paid a photographer to come to their house and shoot the family; in a lot of the photos his little sister was pouting; he couldn’t recall what her problem was, but she definitely wasn’t up to posing for photos, and if he recalled correctly, his parents were having a hell of a time coaxing a smile out of her. He particularly liked this photo because everyone had on a big smile, and his sister, who was normally pouting, had at least the hint of a smile on her face. They looked like one big happy family. There were no Mad Dogs in this photo.

He stared at it, looking closer and closer at his Father and his smile. He almost wished he could crawl into the photo and confront his Father; ask him if all this nonsense Walter had given him was true. All he saw was the loving face of a man who was proud of his family; a man he remembered fondly and admired. Not a man whose choices in life led to his family being gunned down in cold blood.

Leslie looked closely at the photo, and tears formed in his eyes. He was the son of a Mad Dog.

chapter
TWELVE

one
OF
the aspects Gail liked about being an artist, especially a successful artist, was the free time it afforded her. Other than the party for the Press and an official Opening Night, she really wasn’t expected to spend much time at the art gallery. If the gallery owners knew they had a big spender coming in to check out her work, they might ask her to be on hand to help the sale along; big spenders liked the personal touch, and someone with her charm was always effective in getting them to open up their wallets and spend. This particular gallery show was expected to last for a month, before she moved on to another city. By the time she finished her tour, most of the paintings will have been sold (those who bought early would have the paintings they purchased delivered to them after the final gallery show, so as to keep the collection complete until after the tour was over), and she would be that much wealthier. She enjoyed that fact; she and her Daddy really never had much, so it was nice to see how the other half lived. She just wished her Daddy were still around to share in her success; he had taught her a lot and she owed him for that. He had taught her the world wasn’t fair and the only way to survive was to make things happen for yourself; the minute you started relying too much on others, you were dead in the water.

Her Daddy had been a smart man, although others hadn’t seen it that way; she knew they were blind, as was everyone; her Daddy had shown her how to see the truth or at least pointed her in the right direction of doing so; it was a lost art and they feared him because of it.

Gail scanned through the archives of the local newspaper; she’d all ready spent more than a couple of hours at the library, but was determined to find what she had come here looking for. It was often tedious, but she had been taught that patience was a virtue; you had to put in the time and effort, if you wanted rewards. It’d been good advice.

Finally the headline she’d been looking for spread across the screen: M
AD DOG AND FAMILY FOUND MURDERED.
Gail picked up the piece of paper that was sitting beside the computer and looked at it. She’d printed it off Leslie’s laptop; it was a pyramid chart of Morgan Neil’s gang, with four guys, including Morgan, circled in red. She figured this chart and the four members circled played a part in Leslie’s past – his reason for attending Survivor’s meetings. It took some digging, but Morgan had led to some character named Dan “Mad Dog” Marshall, and that had eventually led to a news story about his demise; but he hadn’t died alone, no, he went to the great beyond hand-in-hand with his wife and two kids; Gail smiled as she read that his oldest son, Leslie had survived; lover Leslie, the one who didn’t mind getting a little bloodied.

She was intrigued.

To the average person, Leslie seemed to be just another regular guy; nothing special or dramatic about him, although she had sensed a darkness. She knew from his presence at the meeting that he had survived something traumatic, but hadn’t anticipated his lineage. She took pride in that, as she took pride in her own lineage. He wasn’t just another average guy; he was the son of Mad Dog Marshall, a stone cold killer. According to articles she read in the newspaper, Mad Dog was so determined to take out one victim that he hadn’t minded killing a kid and wounding a couple of others. Now that was commitment to a kill; you just didn’t see that anymore in today’s killers.

How much of Mad Dog resides in Leslie?
she wondered.

This was the question that really intrigued her. From what little she had found regarding his father, he had been a real piece of work – a killer, not unlike her own Daddy. They killed for different reasons, but killed nonetheless. That excited her. Whatever killing gene Mad Dog possessed had probably been passed down to his son, especially his oldest son. Somehow, and possibly because Leslie hadn’t been nurtured by his father like her Daddy had nurtured her, he had managed to suppress it. Buried deep within him was the desire to kill; she knew that. It had been buried for a long time and was finally trying to find its way to the surface. Wasn’t that why he was talking about revenge at the meeting?

She knew he was trying to find himself. It was a terrible thing to suppress your true nature, or at least she believed it was. Luckily, she hadn’t had to do that. Her Daddy indulged himself, and she did the same, the only difference being that she approached her desires with a lot more finesse than her Daddy. What had kept him in the game as long as it did was the fact he and Gail moved around a lot; if you never stayed in one place too long, it becomes hard for people to get a bead on you and your true nature. Her Daddy was also a charismatic man, who had a winning smile, at least for him – it worked to his advantage, especially in procuring victims for the kill. Add to all this the fact he was a single father travelling the countryside with his cute little daughter, and no one suspected anything untoward was going on.

Earlier she had scanned the headlines regarding the deaths of Leonard Cabot and Anthony Whyte. The newspapers had managed to link the two deaths, even though, as far as she could tell, based on the reporting, the police hadn’t released much information to them. The nature of their deaths, the artistic way she had arranged the bodies, had gone unreported. That was too bad, because she had actually put some effort into their kills. Art is always in the eye of the beholder; she imagined there just weren’t that many art lovers on the force.

After reading the articles she took some time to stare at the photos of the two men she’d killed. During the hunt one didn’t get the necessary time to truly stop and appreciate the little things; there was always work that needed to be completed. Leonard looked like a kind man; the photo the newspaper had acquired was flattering; he looked like the quintessential middle-aged dad; someone who should be married with a couple of kids and a pretty little house. He looked sweet, but he hadn’t been, had he? No, this sweet man, whom everyone probably believed didn’t deserve his fate, was anything but sweet. She had seen the truth on his face; she had seen the evil he’d tried to hide and knew he offered nothing in life of any value to anyone.

He had left the bar that night thinking he was going to take advantage of a young woman to satisfy his own pleasure and had discovered that wasn’t the case. Gail’s Daddy had warned her about such men; they were only after one thing – that pleasure palace that had developed between her legs. Her Daddy had warned her that many men would come looking to put their nasty pointy thingys between her legs and would say anything it took to convince her to let them. He also warned her that some of them wouldn’t ask to put that thingy between her legs, but try and do it forcibly, taking it for themselves, even if she didn’t want to give it up. He’d explained to her that in those cases, if she couldn’t protect her own treasures, then they had every right to take it; that was why he raised her to be tough; he wasn’t going to make it easy for anyone to take from her what she didn’t want to give.

It wasn’t that sex was all bad. Throughout their years of wandering, her Daddy had taken the pleasure palace of many women. In these cases, he explained to her, he was just giving them what they rightly deserved. These women were like her Mother, vile and disgusting. They too would leave their loved ones and disappear if her Daddy didn’t deal with them. At first it had looked positively ridiculous what her Daddy was doing to them; she didn’t fully understand; often she was just distracted by their crying, attempts at yelling through duct tape, or the blood; many of them didn’t let her Daddy discipline them without putting up a fight. It was always useless and futile, but they did. Daddy always won.

Her Daddy liked sticking his thingy in these women and then after that taking his knife and sticking it in other parts of their bodies; sometimes after that he’d stick his thingy in them again, but usually at this time, they were quieter, more accepting. They’d just lay still, their eyes sometimes open in a blank stare. Daddy said they had to pay the price for what Mommy had done; as far as she was concerned, Daddy knew best.

Her Daddy knew a lot and taught her everything he knew. While the women he stuck his thingy in seemed to dislike it, he showed her, once she got older, that in some cases it didn’t hurt, but instead could provide pleasure. She thought back to that moment, her awakening as a woman; her Daddy had been so proud of her.

It was in a cheap motel they were staying at – they really didn’t stay at any other type of motel. She was about thirteen; her breasts had started to develop and she had gotten her period; she assumed that had made her a woman, but her Daddy had explained to her that that was only one step along the way. She wasn’t yet a real woman, but he’d see to it that she would be. That night in the motel, he asked her to take her clothes off and lie on the bed. That wasn’t any big deal; they’d been traveling alone together for quite some time, and in that time had often been naked around one another. She had seen her Daddy’s thingy that just seemed to hang there limp and unimpressive most of the time; it wasn’t like it was when he was punishing one of those women, where it was long, hard and seemed to stand up on its own. She wondered how he made it do that.

Gail undressed and got on the bed. She lay there in silence watching as her Daddy took off his clothes. She knew what was going to happen; her Daddy was going to turn her into a woman; he was going to take his thingy and he was going to put it between her legs, like he had done to those other women. He’d told her this would be different; that this wasn’t punishment, but something for them; to prove their love for one another. Nonetheless, she was nervous, as she watched her Daddy’s thingy go from limp and droopy to hard. She had seen him stab many women with it, and wondered if it hurt them so much, how could it possibly not hurt her? Daddy wouldn’t hurt her. She believed that, so she had to trust him.

It had hurt, at least that first time, but got better after that. She had cried out in pain the first time he put his thingy into her; it hurt like the dickens. He just looked at her and told her it was her duty to deal with the pain; it wouldn’t always be there, but now that it was, he didn’t expect any daughter of his to be that soft. She wanted to please him, so she refrained from crying, and as he continued to move his thingy in and out of her, it got better and better. She watched as eventually he spasmed and grunted; she could feel something being shot into her. When her Daddy finally rolled off of her, she examined herself. She’d dealt with blood before, but this time there was a sticky white substance oozing out of her; she had no idea what to make of it. Her Daddy explained to her that that was normal; if they were lucky that sticky white ooze would make a baby inside of her and they wouldn’t be alone anymore; their family would grow. That sounded reasonable enough, and she liked the idea of having a little brother or sister, so she really didn’t mind it whenever her Daddy decided to put his thingy inside her and fill her with his baby-making stuff, although she never did understand why a baby never came from it.

She had discovered the dual nature of sex – the pleasure and the pain. She knew that night at the bar, when she had picked up Leonard, that all he wanted to do to her was inflict pain. She could see it in his eyes, and she had taken care of him; if it wasn’t her he was going to stick his nasty thingy in and cause pain, it was going to be some other woman, and she wasn’t going to let that happen. Let everyone else be fooled by his picture - she knew his true nature.

Anthony had been easier to read; he thought a little too much of himself. He actually had the nerve to act like his willingness to go home with her and have sex with her was a gift to her; of all the women in the bar that night, he had decided to fuck her and she was a lucky girl. The evil he tried to hide from the world was much easier to see. He was younger than Leonard and probably hadn’t discovered yet how to hide his true nature. She had enjoyed killing him more than Leonard. She’d enjoyed it all and she had been careful. Still, it almost felt anti-climatic. If the police weren’t going to tell the world of her artistic kills, were they still art? As far as she was concerned they were evolving art. If the police just let them be, the bodies would decompose and change over time. Eventually they would reach a state they would stay in for quite some time, but until then, anyone who purchased her
murder art
would get a piece that was ever evolving; she could continue on, but she had another idea.

“Reviews have been good,” said Leslie.

Gail looked up from her meal and smiled.

“Surprisingly,” she said. “I don’t really read reviews. Find them a waste of time.”

Leslie smiled. He shouldn’t have been surprised. Why would Gail read her own reviews?

“So you didn’t read mine?” he asked.

“Wasn’t interested,” she said.

Leslie laughed. She was definitely refreshing in her approach to life. They continued eating.

Leslie had been surprised when she called. He hadn’t anticipated hearing from her again. Somehow he figured their little get together had been a onetime thing. She didn’t seem like the kind of woman to put up with anyone for too long. In actual fact, she intimidated him; one of the reasons why he hadn’t picked up the phone and called her. He really didn’t want to deal with the rejection.

“I was at the library today,” said Gail after a little while.

“That’s good,” he said. “Never hurts to expand one’s mind.”

“I was doing some research.”

“Some ideas for your art?” he asked.