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Not that I wanted to get into anything so involved, or bloody. In my other two hits I’d done my damnedest to get in and get out. A bullet or two and I’m gone. I don’t need to be hanging around doing butcher’s work.
And if you do it once, they expect it going forward. These early jobs become your M.O. If the big man wants a job done a certain way, he’ll call you up.
“Get me that Cameron kid, the one who cuts off their balls and stuffs them in their cheeks like a squirrel eating peanuts. We need this guy to know he can’t keep eating from the company feedbag, capisce?”
Shit like that. I don’t want to be the balls in the mouth guy.
So, okay, I decided—it’s a home job. Hit him where he’s vulnerable. And invading the sanctity of a man’s home sends a message. He’s less likely t
o be armed, too. I mean, he’s a cop. I catch him at work and he’s definitely got a gun on him. Taser too. A Kevlar vest.
So, yeah. Home it was.
I checked the clock. 8:16. I could do it that same night. Pack my bag and get in the car and be done with it in time to come home and catch The Tonight Show.
Kinda quick, I thought. Don’t want to jump the gun. It may need planning.
Then again, if I come back quick with a job well done it’s gonna look good. I show up the next day to Mikey and say, “What else you got?”
That’s gotta instill confidence.
I sat and thought about it, the pros and cons. I smelled Leo’s smoke in my couch cushions. Bastard. At the very least I needed to get out and grab something to eat. I’d have time to think, time to plan.
I took the envelope, dug my gun out of the side table—a Springfield XD-S. I never liked wearing a holster so I like something small enough to conceal. It holds seven in the clip so unless Officer Harbin is a cat with nine lives, I had my first gold star coming from Mikey in the morning.
If I decided to do it that night. A burger, a beer and my mind would be made.
Back to TOC
Here’s a sample from John Shepphird’s Kill the Shill.
Chapter 1
The heavyset jailer was different. Jane had never seen the woman before. She led her from the exercise yard of the Twin Towers Correctional Facility and through corridors she’d never been. They went up flights of stairs, and Jane wondered if this hulking guard had confused her with another inmate. She led her into the small anteroom, mumbled “wait here,” and closed the door.
It smelled like disinfectant. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. Jane paced for what seemed like an eternity. She called out, but nobody came.
The room fell into darkness.
The masked man came in from the other door. A pillow case was yanked over her head, and Jane screamed. He slammed her to the concrete floor. He was strong, pulled her arms back and drove a knee into her vertebrae.
The next sensation was the pillow case pulled tight at the nape of her neck. Something slipped over her head then cinched around her throat—a noose of some kind, cutting into her windpipe.
She screamed and fought with all her might. His hand reached around to muffle her, so she bit hard. He tried to free his fingers locked in her teeth, punching her head, so she bit even harder.
Something cracked in her mouth.
She heard him grunt, knew it hurt him, and bit even harder.
She bucked, rolled, tried to pull off the pillow case but the snug garrote made it impossible. Next came the kicks to her ribs. It knocked the wind out of her. She gagged, gasped for air, and was certain she was going to die. She felt him tighten the garrote around her neck again, then she heard the door slam, and Jane was alone.
Her cry of anguish came from somewhere deep, a dark and primal place she’d never been before. By the time the staff came to her rescue she was shivering, adrenaline spent, teeth clattering. They consoled her, snipped off the band around her neck and removed the bloody pillow case.
Only then did Jane realize the noose was a flex-cuff. On television she’d seen cops use these plastic strips in lieu of handcuffs—zip-ties impossible to loosen. She figured the prison guards probably have drawers of these things, as common as ballpoint pens or the mace they carry on their belts.
Jane got the picture—no need to smuggle this murder weapon into the jail.
She swallowed through the mucus and it hurt like hell. An inch tighter would have been certain strangulation.
