The Merry Pranked (4 page)

chapter
FIVE

detective
RAY
Michaels entered the warehouse sure of what he was going to find. He and Detective Bryan Stork had done some digging and discovered the assistant manager at Grant’s Grocery was in fact a piss poor gambler. He was in debt up to his eyeballs with a bookie that everyone in law enforcement knew worked for Morgan Neil. He was the one who had let Morgan’s goons into the back of the grocery store, helping them escort Joe Weldon to the great beyond.

They had tried to get the assistant manager, Dave Strickland, to tell them who had arranged for him to leave the door open, but, surprisingly, Strickland was sticking to his story that it had been an honest mistake, his forgetting to lock the door; the fact killers had used that mistake to murder someone was, in Strickland’s opinion, just one of those weird coincidences that lets you know there’s something greater out there manipulating our lives. No one was buying it, but Strickland was sticking to his story, as ludicrous as it was. As far
as they could figure, he was simply more afraid of Morgan and his henchmen than he was of the police. It was a matter of who was the bigger boogie man in Strickland’s eyes.

As they hadn’t gotten too far on the case of the Mashed-Up Mobster, as he liked to refer to it, when he’d gotten a call this afternoon to respond to a homicide in an abandoned warehouse, he was sure he’d be staring at the body of yet another Morgan associate; one of the other turncoats who had joined Joe in his illfated attempt to overthrow Morgan and was now joining him in the afterlife. He was more than a little surprised to discover that wasn’t the case. He was at the scene of an unrelated homicide, not linked to the city’s underworld, but something a lot more demented than that.

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” said Ray quietly, and to no one in particular. His partner, Bryan was as equally dumbfounded.

“Who found this mess?” asked Bryan.

“Some intended squatters,” offered a uniformed police officer who was one of the original cops called to the scene.

“And you found him this way?” asked Bryan. He knew it was a stupid question. Of course they’d found the body this way. They hadn’t found a perfectly normal homicide victim and doctored him up for him and his partner. It was a stupid question, but one he asked nonetheless. He was buying some time, taking in the scene, trying to figure out what the hell had happened here; or what kind of demented individual had put together this little tableau.

“Haven’t touched a thing,” said the Police Officer, “thought we’d leave it up to you guys.”

“You know something, Bryan,” said Ray. “I’m beginning to miss the good ole days. You know when a homicide was a shooting; maybe a stabbing or strangulation - the oldies but the goodies. Someone wanted to get a little creative; maybe they pulled a Capone and picked up a baseball bat or an ice pick. I mean, what the fuck is all this?”

“I know what you mean,” said Bryan.

The two of them just stood there looking at the body of Leonard Cabot, although neither knew that was the name of the man – or mess – they were currently observing.

The victim was definitely dead; and in doing so he had also become a macabre piece of art. Ray and Bryan took their time taking in the scene; their victim had been crucified on a large wooden cross. The victim’s hands had been tied to both ends of the cross, but the killer had felt that wasn’t enough, and had taken the time to drive large nails through his palms. Other parts of the body were also nailed to the cross, including his feet. The nails were thick and heavy duty, but really didn’t have to hold a lot of the weight, as the body itself had been cut into sections - dissected; the legs separated at the knees and upper thighs; the arms were separated at the elbows and the shoulders. The actual torso of the body was tied to the cross with thick rope, with nails augmenting it to keep it in place. The rope was tied around both the upper and lower torso, leaving enough space for the killer to gut the victim. The killer had actually taken the time to slit open his guts and extract his intestines, which were not only wrapped around the body - only a couple of loops - but trailed down to the floor of the warehouse where they snaked around the victim’s decapitated head. If that weren’t enough, the head rested on the floor, propped up by the intestines, the mouth open in a silent scream and the eye sockets hollow. The eyes themselves were nailed to the top of the cross, along with the victim’s genitalia, his drooping penis giving off the impression of being a nose, and his two hairy balls, a bit of a mustache seeing as they were there directly underneath the eyes – almost a comedic Snuffaluffagus impersonation.

“We got anything here to identify the vic?” asked Ray.

“We found this off to the side in some clothes. A business suit,” offered one of the crime scene officers working the scene. He handed Ray a wallet.

“Leonard Cabot,” said Ray after taking a couple of seconds to look through the wallet. “Who the hell do you think he pissed off?”

“You ever seen anything like this, Detective?” asked the crime scene officer who’d handed him the wallet.

“I don’t think anyone has,” he said. It was time to go to work. “Make sure we have photos of this from every conceivable angle. I don’t want anything moved or dismantled until we’ve photographed, bagged and tagged everything we can get our hands on. I want a thorough job on this one. Nothing missed. Got it?”

The officer nodded his head and went back to work, joining the activity of all the others doing their best to collect evidence and ignore the fact they were in the presence of the work of one seriously fucked up killer.

“What are you thinking?” asked Bryan.

“Was hoping for a Morgan Neil crime scene,” said Ray. “Something straightforward; he definitely doesn’t kill like this.”

Ray moved closer to the body, examining it carefully. “I don’t know. Look at it. The staging. It’s one thing to find the balls to kill someone, but this. The commitment to this crime, the staging of the body, everything, it’s insane.”

“This took effort. Even the location was perfectly picked. A lot of these warehouses in this district have been abandoned for quite some time now. Gave him the opportunity to do his slicing and dicing – set up this little scene at his leisure.”

“Yeah, but why?”

Ray had to ask despite the fact he knew Bryan had no answers for him. He also knew he’d be equally troubled when he finally got the chance to find out why direct from the killer’s mouth; the time it took to do this, and the mess in the warehouse, Ray was sure that somewhere in there was the evidence they’d need to find the bastard.

The Survivor’s meeting the other night had not gone well. Will had lost control of the group and Leslie had been the reason why. And he had made sure Leslie heard about it afterwards. Leslie knew the score, the group was all about healing, not revenge. No one was supposed to bring up those feelings, but that’s how he felt. Will hadn’t exactly kicked him out of the group, but had made it abundantly clear that if he were to return, he expected him to follow the rules. Leslie had no idea whether or not he intended to go back.

“The evening’s edition, Mr. Marshall,” said one of the mail room employees who tossed a copy of the Lakeview Examiner on his desk.

He was working late again; well, not really working, but killing time. He really had nowhere to go now that Donna was out of his life, and his office was as good a place as any to hang out and write. Leslie put his feet up on his desk and started flipping through the news section of the newspaper – the place, many of his colleagues reminded him, where the real journalists lived, not the entertainment section. As far as he was concerned, they could have that. He was comfortable in his world. Why chase ambulances when you could attend cocktail parties?

Leslie had been in the newspaper business long enough, that as he flipped through the pages, it just seemed to be the same old same old. The names of the politicians might be different, but the bullshit they were spouting in the City section, promising or trying to get away with, never seemed to change. The news just seemed like an endless parade of nothing new or exciting, at least until he reached the editorial page. There it was, the one thing in the paper that interested him, Walter Souchak’s column.

Walter was one of the paper’s oldest employees; a throwback to the day and age of the hardboiled reporter who chased stories hard and drank just as hard after doing so; the type of reporter who had no problem rubbing shoulders with the city’s murderers and thugs, if the end result was a story revealing the nefarious action, deeds and dealings by those same murderers and thugs. In Walter’s day, there had been a lot more criminals of the type he liked to report on; the old school mobsters who ran houses of ill-repute and illegal gambling dens. Petty criminals and just plain old murderers; times had changed, and there were a lot more white collar criminals than in the old days, and Leslie knew, that at his advanced age, Walter had no idea how to make heads or tails out of these criminals and their crimes – and, to tell the truth, really didn’t give a damn. Walter was also one of Leslie’s oldest friends at the paper; a so-called
real
reporter who had taken a shine to him when he’d first started, even though he’d always been a part of the paper’s entertainment section.

Leslie read the headline of Walter’s column. “Son-of-a-bitch,” he said, as he got up from his desk and rushed out of his office.

“I was wondering how long it would take you to get down here,” said Walter as Leslie appeared at his office door. Walter hadn’t even looked up; just saw the shadow of someone crossing his desk and instinctively knew who it was.

Morgan Neil Up to Old Tricks...You’ve Got to Give Him a Hand
, said Leslie, throwing the newspaper, opened to his column, down on Walter’s desk. Walter picked it up and took a look at it.

“Not a bad headline, huh?” he said. “Do you know what the best headline I ever read was?”

Leslie just looked at Walter. Walter knew he wanted to talk about Morgan, but had decided he wasn’t going to make it easy on him. Leslie knew that because they’d been down this road before.

“I believe it was a New York paper,” said Walter. “It was when Ike Turner died. You remember Ike and Tina Turner?
Ain’t No Mountain High Enough
? Stuff like that. Well, I believe the headline read, ‘Ike Beats Tina to Death.’”

Walter chuckled. “I don’t know if it was in good taste or not, but I tell you, it caught my attention. Some headline writer had himself, or herself, one hell of a day with that one, wouldn’t you say?”

Walter looked at Leslie, who was still standing in the door just looking back at him.

“You going to come in and have a drink, or just stand there with that dumb look on your face?” asked Walter.

Leslie moved to the chair in front of Walter’s desk, as the old newspaperman, now probably pushing his mid-seventies, but still as sharp as a tack, reached into his desk drawer and pulled out two glasses and a bottle of bourbon. Drinking on the job was generally not allowed, although when it came to Walter Souchak, a living institution at the newspaper, everyone looked the other way. Leslie figured back in Walter’s day, there were probably enough hidden bottles of liquor lying around the Lakeview Examiner to float the Queen Mary.

“It really isn’t even big news,” said Walter as he began pouring them both a snort. “One sleaze bag taking out another. What was it Bugsy Siegel said? ‘We only kill each other.’ One crook takes out another, who cares, right? I guess it was just the nature of this killing that caught my eye. Also a slow news day. You know how daunting it can get with that deadline looming.”

Walter finished pouring the drinks and moved one to the edge of the desk near Leslie.

“So what, Joe Weldon one of them?” he asked.

“No. He wasn’t one of them,” Leslie said picking up the bourbon.

“His empire has grown, although Joe is one of the old guard. So, Morgan’s killed again. It was bound to happen. Gonna happen again sometime, I assume. City like this will always have crime and crime bosses. But if you’re familiar with the history of organized crime, Leslie you know that not many crime bosses die peacefully in their sleep. Morgan’s bound to go out at the business end of somebody’s hatred; sooner or later. In the meantime, you’re an entertainment writer and novelist. That’s safe. Stick to that. Seen any good movies lately?”

“What if he’s one of the exceptions?” asked Leslie.

“What if he is,” said Walter. “Although I wouldn’t bet on it. The secret to life my young friend, you could say the reason I’m still sitting here, is you have to know when to let things go. Does no good having things chewing you up on the inside.”

“Would you let it go, Walter?”

“What are you going to do about it Leslie? Morgan is a sadistic killer. He’s climbed up the chain of command to the top spot, but he’s still a sadistic killer. You can polish a turd, but it’s still a turd. If the authorities can’t take him down, and obviously, based on Joe’s murder, those within his organization can’t take him down, what do you expect to do?”

Leslie said nothing. He took a sip of his bourbon; a chance to buy some time to think. He had no answers for Walter’s questions.

“Refresh my memory,” said Walter, “how old were you again?”

“Ten.”

“That was a long time ago, Leslie.”