Clive
I wouldn’t be honest if I said the big hulking mess of flesh next to me doesn’t smell to high heaven. His names Ward, about six years ago he had the misfortune of being in a house fire, burns to ninety percent of his body, but he still has his eye sight so that’s a blessing. The other guy on my right is Moriarty, don’t know if that’s his real name, he doesn’t talk much. He’s scrawny, and even though he’s wearing a pitch black pea coat he still looks like he weighs the same amount as an anorexic swimsuit model. There’s one distinguishing mark on him and thats the none to subtle scarring along the length of his throat. Maybe he learned to shut up because someone made it a personal trait of his, maybe I should learn by example and get this over with.
The three of us are what you might call a motley crew. We’re the lost and the damned, the misplaced orphans of a criminal empire who no longer had need for us. When you’re worthless to the lowlifes we worked for, then you’re expendable. So its either your dead, burned, cut or broken, or all of the above. I point my arm forward and the blade that’s there where my hand used to be points directly at the son of a bitch we’re here for. He’s scared, as he should be. If I had to face a trio of misfits as ugly as us I’d probably be pissing myself by now. I checked his leg though, no darkened stains on his pants, I’d say he’s holding up pretty well.
“Let’s get this over with.” Ward says, he has a raspy way of talking, and his sentiments reflect my own, but there’s something entertaining with toying with someone who has it coming. Not that we’re heroes, but we are taking out underworld trash. Like Mr. Quaking in My Boots here.
“I’m sorry.” The frightened little so and so says, and I’m sure he is. “I can get the money back to Mr. Valkov, I can.” He thinks we work for the mother of all mafia kingpins, the mad russian called Dmitri Valkov. In a way we all did at one time or another. But not anymore, now its been our goal to disrupt the party, cut down his organization and free this city of the stranglehold he has on it.
“We don’t want the money.” I tell him, but it’d be nice. “You spent a lot of time managing the personal finances of that bastard, and we want the records you’ve no doubt kept.” He pauses a moment and stops quaking, thinking he’s safe if he does what I ask. Then he says something that I didn’t expect.
“Go fuck yourselves.”
I have to hand it to him he’s ballsy, apparently he’s been skimming off a profit for himself on the side, and he thought we were here to “deal” with him, but now that he knows were not he’s grown a backbone, his loyalty to his employer is concrete. Also, he doesn’t consider us a threat.
I’m about to move in on him myself, my blades haven’t done their work in a few days, but Moriarty draws and fires before i’ve taken one step. The man is pissing himself now, you can see it pooling on the floor as he lays there grimmacing through the bullet that pained through his kneecap.
When he wants to Moriarty can speak volumes.
“I won’t hurt him.” Ward tells us. He hangs back why we move forward. Its typical of the big red giant to not want to get involved more than he has to. After all if memory serves he wasn’t directly harmed in his predicament, only discarded.
The man has a gun barrel pressed against his other knee and Moriarty presses it in hard, while I tap the tip of my blade on his open palm so that he’s got the hallways carpet underneath. “The books.” I apply a little pressure. “The books.” I say again with another ounce of pressure, I’ve broken skin.
If he wasn’t annoying me with his silence I’d admire the prick, but as it is I don’t have time to waste with the slow approach. The blood pools around my blade as I poke through to the carpet. Moriarty pulls his trigger. “Do you want your limbs or not? Because I’m okay with you having nothing but a pelvis and torso.”
“He’ll kill me.”
He isn’t wrong.
“Can you protect me?” He asks, there’s a deep seeded fear in his eyes. He has immediate pain, or imminent death to choose from.
I lie. Moriarty shoots a glance at me, but I don’t look back. I do my best look of sympathy and reassurance. I do my best to look heroic while my blade stings at his opened hand. I lie again then remove the blade.
Ward is directly behind me, I can feel his lumbering presence like an elephant, I’m amazed he can even fit inside the building. He’s not happy with my negotiating tatcics. Thinks that being honest makes up for killing lots and lots of people. As if one moral attribute makes up for a platitude of immoral ones. Who am I to say otherwise.
“Under my desk. There’s a flap of loose carpet. The safe combination is 18-24-2.” There’s no time for more promises, before Ward pushes passed me and slams his foot on the poor saps throat. You can hear the bones shatter, and see the breath leave him. The pain is momentary, then he’s still.
“Better this way.” Ward says, he lifts up the poor sod and carries him to the nearby bedroom. The body draped over his burned shoulder. He may not feel physical pain, but the big guys got a soft spot for victims of circumstance. It was a means to an end I suppose but if we hand’t gotten him to fess up the location and combination we would have tortured him. And though he had he still would have been tortured and then murdered. I guess you could say Ward is complacent with our actions, but I think he’s more clean up than anything. Some of these people used to be his friends, he was the closest to Dmitri - between the three of us. He’ll judge me for this, but I can’t do the same to him.
Not sure what Moriarty thinks, he’s already out of the hall and back with the ledger book before I’m standing at the bedroom door watching Ward tuck the corpse of some crooked accountant into his comforter like he was his own child. The guys a conundrum.
