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Something big and heavy collided with my back, knocking the pistol skidded out of my hands. Then an arm slid around my neck, dragging my head back, while the other pawed at my arm, trying to hook it behind my back.
Dodolzksi.
Resisting the flare of panic as I struggled to breathe through the heady mix of tobacco smoke, onions, and blood, I reached back and grabbed the arm around my throat by the shoulder. Not so much trying to pull it away, but to draw the younger man closer so I could drive my other arm back, jabbing my elbow into his body. He grunted out as the hits made contact once, twice, then thrice, but he held on regardless, stubborn as a Jack Russell dangling from an old sock. And I knew why.
Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed Roy advancing on us. He took his time, letting me see him and know he was coming for me. His pride would sting from his earlier beating, and he wanted revenge. If he was smart, he would have shot me there and then. But a bullet to the head wouldn’t be enough to heal the wounds I’d dealt him.
He wanted true revenge.
This was his chance. I was trapped, restrained, barely able to fight back. Now he could tenderise me. Beat me to a pulp. Then the fun would begin, and he was feeling pretty cocky about it.
So cocky, he ended up walking straight into my kick.
Vinny Jones was right. You really couldn’t underestimate the predictability of stupidity.
That first kick connected with his belly and produced a strangled, almost inaudible groan. My next smashed into the side of his knee and sent him to the floor. That second kick also gave me the brace I needed to drive Dodolzksi backward. No doubt surprised by the sudden jerk, he had no choice but to go with me, his arm loosening just enough for me to smash my head back into whatever was left of his nose.
His agonised scream came out loud and shrill, so close to my ears, but I was already twisting free of his hold, and the pain of my ringing ears only added extra ferocity to the hook as I smashed into the bloody mess of his face. He went down hard, landing atop a table that collapsed beneath the hit. He wouldn’t be getting up from that in a hurry.
There was a noise behind me. A grunt. The rumble of a table grinding across the floor. I looked back in time to see Roy struggle to his feet, one arm braced against the nearest table, the other shoved beneath his jacket.
When his hand came out, it clasped the black shape of a Barretta.
I caught it just before he could bring it to bear, closing my hand around the barrel and twisting it up and away with his finger still on the trigger. Roy hissed out an agonised sound as the guard bent the finger at all the wrong angles. When I twisted it again, he threw his head back, and I brought my knee up to meet the bottom of his jaw. The force pulverised whatever teeth he had left.
No one could say I hadn’t warned him.
“You really are a slow learner, aren’t you?” I mused, more to myself than the mass writhing on the floor as I checked his gun, a fairly beaten up Beretta 92. Ejecting the mag, I quickly pocketed it before stooping down over Roy. “Look at me.”
His eyes were glassy when he looked up and he seemed to struggle to focus through the pain, so I made sure he knew I meant business by stabbing the Barretta’s muzzle into his groin.
I thumbed back the trigger. “I see your face again, and you’ll wish I kept the mag in, crystal?”
He couldn’t speak. Half his teeth were buried in the roof of his mouth. So he just nodded, with more enthusiasm than a man in his line of work should have given his position.
“Good,” I smiled, then a thought occurred to me. “By the way, did you ever chamber the round?” He shook his head, but the movement was so fast, I couldn’t quite tell if that was a no, or a yes. Maybe he didn’t know. “Can’t remember? Oh well, that’s alright. These things happen. Let’s find out.”
His eyes widened, and he opened his mouth to scream as I pulled the trigger. But only the snap of the dead man’s click came out.
“You lucky bastard.” I dropped the gun to the floor between his legs. Out of courtesy, I pretended not to notice the dark stain spreading across his jeans, nor the acrid scent of piss rising from it. “Now get out of here before I change my mind and take your friend over there with you.”
Roy didn’t argue, just rolled over and forced himself to rise. Likewise, the bloodied mess that had been Dodolzksi, who had been watching the show, did as he was told, and together the pair scurried away with their tails between their legs.
I watched them go.
It would probably have been easier to kill them. They were in the underworld. They probably more than had it coming already. But even in that shadowy world of crime, death had a cost, and it was always messy. You couldn’t just kill two people and walk away. In the movies, Keanu Reeves might be able to leave a trail of corpses across New York and not worry about repercussions, but things worked a little differently in real life. Bodies had to be disposed of, the crime scenes cleansed, and any witnesses liquidated. And if that wasn’t an option, a fall guy had to be put in place, because the law would want an answer. That was unavoidable. A body meant the law, and even when they were on the take, they still had to present an answer to the crime to satisfy the public and make it all disappear. Unanswered crimes lived on forever, not only as a file in the cold case office, but as legend. An unsolved crime never went away, but give the public a face, a name, a villain to blame, and it all became just a matter of record.
Don DeCampo had been a master at working such things. He was the puppeteer, and the world danced to his strings, but I wasn’t his man anymore. I couldn’t pull a string, make a man an offer, and have him hold his hands up to multiple murders. I was on my own, and killing them meant I had to kill everyone here, then burn the site down, then kill that girl, as she was the only other person who knew I was here.
That was what it took to get away with murder, and I had never been that kind of man. The girl was innocent. She wasn’t stained by the underworld’s darkness. If I took her life, then I’d be no better than the man that had murdered my parents.
So I let them go, and instead turned back to Mikhail.
He’d managed to get his footing, but his face had turned that dull shade of blue and red you normally only saw on a beetroot as he held on to his necktie with a death grip.
Walking up to him, I pulled out the nearest chair, turned it around and sat down, reverse style, with both hands folded atop the backrest. “Now, while you’re just hanging there, pay attention, there’s a good chap. Because I don’t think anyone really wants what just happened here to get out. I doubt the knowledge that you and your boys got a good hiding twice in one day by the same man will do your business interest's any good. Nod if you agree.”
He didn’t respond, just glared daggers at me, so I stretched out a leg and started tapping my foot against his heel.
