Boomtown

I pop the trunk release and get out of the car. My weapon is in the trunk, Corey, too. She was still pliant when we folded her into a fetal position, but she’s stiff as a board now. At the moment, though, I’m focused on the leather bag next to her feet, the bag and the silenced Sig-Sauer automatic inside. Silencers are now legal in forty-two States, thanks to the NRA. Mine isn’t legal, of course, but once manufacturers began shipping suppressors to gun stores, a certain number inevitably found their way onto the black market. Like the one attached to the .22 caliber Sig-Sauer. The pistol isn’t very powerful. Or very accurate. Beyond twenty yards, in fact, it’s just about worthless. Close in, though, it’s a lot quieter than nine millimeters or forty-fives. Even silenced, guns make noise.

I slide my hands into surgical gloves, also in the bag, and slip a covid mask over my mouth and nose. I’m not trying to prevent infection, only to avoid leaving my DNA at what’s sure to be a crime scene.

There are no lights in the windows that I can see when I turn the corner of a half-demolished house next door. I’m facing the back of Klint’s house, but I can already hear Spike growling as I cross the space between the two homes to squat beneath a window that looks into an empty bedroom. The window’s been raised a few inches, all to the good.

Out front, Spike begins to bark, softly at first, then loud enough to be heard back in New York. The din is impossible to ignore and I wait, pretty much unconcerned, until I hear Klint’s gravelly voice, instantly recognizable.

“Shut the fuck up, shut the fuck up, shut the fuck up.”

I raise the window and slip inside, only to find a mattress on the floor to my left with someone lying on it, a woman or a small man. With the covers pulled up, it’s impossible to be sure.

“Shut the fuck up, goddamn it.”

The bedroom door’s open a bit and I peek through the gap to find Klint standing with his back to me. He’s still yelling and the dog’s still barking, so I’m not worrying about making noise. No, I’m imagining Klint finally closing the door, imagining the look on his face when he turns to me. Will he beg? Attack? Try to run out the door? Will he plead his case, swear eternal fidelity and an ongoing piece of his action?

There was a time in my life, before I learned my lesson, when I would have surrendered to temptation. To look into Klint’s blue eyes when he realized that his empty promises wouldn’t save him, to relish the moment, the power. To hell with the possibility that he’ll attack, that I’ll miss or only wound him, that he’ll get his hands on me. The risk is part of the thrill, maybe the best part.

No more, though. Now it’s all about results. I have a job to do, a simple job, and I do it.

Dominick’s waiting for me right where I left him, but there’s no grave. I’m thinking he changed his mind, that he intends to defy me, but then he scratches at the ground with the blade of the shovel.

“It’s frozen,” he announces.

“What’s frozen?”

“The ground. You wanna open a grave, you’re gonna need dynamite.”

I take the shovel and give it a try. Dom’s not exaggerating. The winters out here are beyond cold and there’s no digging through the frozen ground. Not with a shovel. This is something a better manager might have anticipated. Out here, in deep shade, winter hasn’t let go.

“Let’s make tracks, Dom.”

I don’t have to tell him twice and we drive away seconds later. I have no choice now. I have to get rid of the whore’s body and that means dumping it where it’s likely to be found. I enter Baxter the way I left it, along back streets, until I find a block where the few homes still standing appear to be unoccupied. We have to move fast, but I don’t rush. I can’t anyway, because the whore’s body is jammed and we have to ease her out, a shoulder first, then her feet, finally her head. But once free, she’s no problem and we carry her to a chimney standing by itself a few yards from the car, then drop her. Time to go.

“She was somebody’s kid,” Dominick says out of the blue.

“You don’t think she sprang, full-blown, from the head of Zeus?” I might as well have spoken Martian. Dominick’s eye become dolls’ eyes, blank as buttons. “Do what makes you feel better, Dom, only do it fast.”

I get the blank stare for a few more seconds, then Dom’s lips begin to move. “Hail, Mary, full of grace….”