Page 13 of Master of Lies

“I don’t have a girlfriend,” I said savagely.

“Aw, Jimmy boy, don’t lie to Uncle Darryl. Sure you do. We know the guy at the post office. The one who opens the mail. We know about those dirty pictures she sends you.”

Cody lunged at me, and I was a split second late in my countermove, barely jerking back in time, sliding and pinwheeling on the wet floor. “Don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

Darryl cackled. “Asshole. Love makes you weak. Too bad I didn’t get to see that blonde bitch myself. Everyone was talking. Blonde, pink hair, pointy tits, all painted up, dressed to bend over a car and get fucked in a parking lot. Super young. Dirty boy.”

“I don’t know the girl who came today,” I said. “She’s nothing to me. And she’s a fucking idiot. She came here on a dare. I made sure she won’t come back.”

Darryl clucked his tongue. “Well, bless her little heart. I’ll pass that info on up the food chain, but ya gotta understand, Jimmy. When she came on to you, she caught the big guy’s attention. Now he wants some. So if this bitch likes boning crooks, she’ll be in hog heaven soon enough. They’ll come for her tonight. That’s what I heard.”

“What big guy?” I demanded. “Who’s coming for her?”

“Figure it out, shit-stain,” Darryl snarled. “The one who hates your guts. The one who wants you dead. I imagine they’ll treat your little bitch about like we treated your fuckboy, after they’re done with her. She has that to look forward to.”

“Where the fuck is Mickey?” I yelled. “What did you do to him?”

Darryl shook his head, grinning. Cody swung again. I let my rage take over. Block and grab, twist and spin.Crunch, I rammed the guy’s head into the top of a urinal, leaving a big red splotch on the white porcelain.

I let go, and faced Bobby, the fourth guy, as Cody hit the floor. He was a tall, bald dude, sunken eyes, big yellow teeth, with face tats made him look like a skull. He lunged at me with a shard of broken glass.

A block, a stab to his eyes, a knee into his balls, and Bobby flew, hitting the floor with a wet slap. I followed up with some organ-rupturing kicks to the lower back, and he was curled into the fetal position, gasping for breath.

Darryl backed away as the water got near his feet. The men on the floor whimpered and moaned. I was ready to snap necks indiscriminately, but that motherfucker Darryl had to die first. I leaped for him, grabbed his throat, and slammed him up to the wall, squeezing his meaty throat.

Darryl clawed at my hands, but I couldn’t feel it. I just squeezed harder, until his eyes were bulging, tongue protruding, face going purple—

An alarm started squealing. I heard faraway yells. Crashing.

Aw, fuck. The riot.Mickey.

I flung Darryl away, and splashed through the flooded room, toward the tongue.

Mickey lay in the last shower stall, inches deep in water, naked. Ah, fuck, no.

My brain refused to process all the things they had done to him. He was covered in blood. They’d cut many pieces off. I fell to my knees next to him.

He still had eyes, and he stared up at me, weeping blood from his broken capillaries. His chin and chest were slick with blood from his mouth. His jaw was shattered. His teeth were everywhere.

He reached with a trembling hand as I dropped to my knees in the water beneath him. “Mickey,” I forced out. “Buddy. I’m sorry. I should have been protecting you.”

Mickey grasped my wrist with a sticky, claw-like hand, coughing helplessly. He was choking on blood, spraying it on me with every desperate, mewling sound he made.

“Don’t try to talk,” I urged, sliding my hands beneath his shuddering body. “I’ll take you to the infirmary. You need a doctor. A trauma surgeon, a transfusion.”

Again, the wordless howl, the burst of blood from his mouth, and he twisted away from my grasp, touched his hand to his bloodied chin and hit the filthy tile wall, leaving a smeared handprint. Then he began to scrawl, in a loose sprawling script, in blood.Joe Grifo OR.At least I thought that the last symbols were O and R. He looked at me, and then made a swirling gesture in front of his face with his stiff, shaking fingers. He made the swirling gesture again, and again, staring with wild intensity, like I should understand what he meant. Like I’d be an idiot not to.

But I didn’t. Not a fucking clue. And as I watched, the desperate entreaty in his eyes faded, replaced by emptiness.

His skinny, blood-soaked chest stopped moving. Blood stopped foaming and spattering out of the corners of his mouth. The bloody letters he had scribbled had dripped down the wall in the condensation like the title font of a horror movie, no longer decipherable. I felt for his pulse. Nothing.

Mickey was gone. The mission was gone.

What the fuck did I do now? The squealing alarm penetrated my consciousness again as if from miles away.

The riot. My window. I staggered to my feet. Stumbled out, waterlogged. Numb.

Keep to the plan. Go-go-go.If I didn’t leave tonight, they would regroup and kill me as they’d killed Mickey. Even if they didn’t get me tonight, chances were I would take the blame for this clusterfuck. I looked guilty. Like I’d taken a bath in blood.

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