Page 16 of One Kill

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“Wussup,Boss?”Shoopipesup from the kitchen where he’s making milkshakes for the crew, barely looking my way when I walk into our clubhouse. His big paws could kill bears, if ever we were attacked by one in the middle of Brooklyn, and yet here he is making the Reapers happy with his ice-cream delight.

“We’ve got a job.” The entire lot of them groan at my news. Not because they’re upset about cleaning up some guy’s guts spread all over his kitchen floor, but because those milkshakes are definitely going to waste tonight. “Shoo, Tab, you’re coming with me. So suit up, it’s a messy one.”

With an “On it, Boss” reply and a grunt or two, they get up from their spots and head to their quarters. It’s Fizz and Binx’s night off, and the shaven-headed pocket rocket of our crew, Flower, is on another job with Crank, our main mechanical man. As I wait for Shoo and Tab to get their shit, I put away some of the trash and empty glasses they’ve left out, mainly out of boredom. We got this house after a job some years ago, when the owner lost his head because he’d gotten himself mixed up with the wrong people.

Literally. It was severed from his body, dumped into a vat of concrete, and thrown into the Hudson. His body was cremated alongside the wood from a house we demolished because of an infestation of rats. Sad, really. The house was nice. Vince Borelli? Not so much. He threatened Marco Mancini’s wife at her place of business. Needless to say, that was the last bad decision he ever made. With him gone and no next of kin to worry about, we took over his five-bedroom house his late mother left him and made it into our headquarters.

Although, most days, it’s just a man cave with the lingering smell of unchecked testosterone.

“Hey, Boss, we takin’ the van or the truck?” Closing the dishwasher, I glance at Tab, who’s always no nonsense and ready to get shit done and done right. He’s a big boy, his head an inch shy of touching the top of the doorway.

“The van. I have a feeling we’re gonna need a shit load of products. Apparently, The Butcher had an ax to grind. Or… a knife to whet?” I shrug then jump at the sound of Shoo belting out a laugh from across the room.

“Holy shit, Boss, did you just make a joke?” Rolling my eyes, I don’t bother answering. Half the time these guys think I lost my heart on the wrong side of the GW Bridge when I first crossed over from New Jersey. Little do they know that, as of late, that heart has been working overtime and it’s all Hallie Gallagher‘s fault.

“Shut the fuck up. Let’s go.”

These guys are like my family and we bust each other’s chops like we’re a brotherhood, but I have to hide my smirk and be the boss they respect or else they’ll be lost little lambs, and nobody wants to see three-hundred-pound lambs razing the city, completely out of control.

Tab and I ride our bikes, one ahead of the van, the other far enough behind that it doesn’t raise any suspicions from the law. It’s late and it’s cold but we’ve got a job that’s best done in the middle of the night when the naïve population sleeps, certain that evil like us doesn’t exist.

We don’t kill the guys… we just clean up the mess. Well, okay, to be completely honest, sometimes I do kill the guys as well, but that’s different.

The van takes a left but I keep going, continuing another two streets down before making my turn. I know where they’re going and if I have eyes on me, it won’t look like I’m following the guys. At midnight, Brooklyn is still alive in certain corners, completely asleep in others. A few errant teens whistle as I pass by, admiring my bike, but my mind is too lost in thoughts of Murphy and that kiss he gave me when I left this morning. How is he not pissed off at me? If the tables were turned, I think I’d be livid. Hell, he’d be fucking dead if I’d thought he’d abandoned our daughter to save his own ass. Just thinking about it makes me grip my handle bars with more force than necessary.

Yet, here he is. Accepting that I’m back in his life after being forced to raise our girl by himself. Either he’s a fucking saint or…

No. I can’t think like that. I cannot constantly decide that everyone has an ulterior motive or a reason to kill me. There’s no fucking way. I know how to read people and Murph loves Hallie more than anything else in the world and hurting me would hurt her.

Saint it is, then.

I suppose opposites attract. Isn’t that what we’re always told? My devilish red to his angelic white? Maybe that was why it was so fucking hard to leave him this morning, the urge to push him back inside the house and sit on his face to see if his eating skills had improved was strong. After all, I was the first pussy he’d ever tasted, and even back then he had quite the talented tongue. I bet he could…

A horn blares through the quiet of the night and right away I realize we’ve crossed over the Brooklyn Bridge and into Manhattan. I flip off the asshole who thinks he owns the fucking street just because his car has a German name, forcing myself not to cut him off and show him my knife collection up close and personal.

I swear, these Lower Manhattan fuckers need to be leashed and whipped into submission.

It takes me another ten minutes to get to our job site. I park behind the building; the alley is as dark as can be expected with a brick wall cutting off access just a few feet away. Pocketing the keys, I take off my helmet and let my gaze follow the straight lines of the brick patterns all around the narrow space. The buildings are about five stories high with only a couple of lights still on, one flashing in rhythm with whatever television show the tenant is watching. In the distance, a dog barks twice, which is the only sound that disturbs the constant humming of the city that never sleeps.

My baby will be fine. Time to get to work.

We’ve all walked in at different times, wearing nondescript clothing just in case we run into anyone. My cover story is something about a boyfriend upstairs. The key is to be vague and if the person asks more questions, just push on through with a “nunya business, lady.” Experience taught me that those who usually ask questions are women over the age of eighty. I hate to offend my elders but a girl’s gotta do her job.

When I get to the apartment, I check around to make sure no one’s watching. Shoo put a black sticker on the peephole across the hall, just in case, but I’d done my research before going to the clubhouse. The guy across the hall was just taken to a medical residence due to his age and progressing cancer. Still, the sticker is reassuring.

By the time I’m inside, the guys are all suited up in black rubber and face masks with their hair in full-on hair nets to avoid getting any DNA in the apartment. As of right now, no one knows this guy’s dead. Marco called me with minimal information. Devon Quinn, Marco’s brother-in-law—or one of three, I guess—was sending a message all the way across the fucking pond to his enemies trying to off him in the New World.

Idiots.

“Looks like The Butcher went all Jackson Pollock on this guy.” We all stop and, like a slow-motion movie, turn to Shoo with matching furrowed brows. It takes him a second to realize we’re not moving before he shrugs like it’s no big deal. “What? I watch documentaries in my down time and I happen to appreciate good art. Sue me.” His thick Brooklyn accent only makes this whole fucking conversation more surreal. “I like to think I’m a cultivated thug.”

If we weren’t in the middle of a job where silence is key, Tab and I would be outright laughing. Fizz is going to be disappointed she missed this.

That said, he’s right. Devon went fucking psycho on this guy. His face is sliced from one side to the other like a pumpkin on Halloween. Trick or treat, indeed. Judging from the various pools of blood, he chopped off one limb after the other; his goal was pain more than anything else. Or maybe he was trying to get information out of him. In any case, our job is cleaning up, not solving the crime by figuring out the motive. Although, after all these years, I’d probably make a great detective. If I survived long enough outside the mob. Which I wouldn’t. Nobody leaves the family alive.

Nobody.

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