I Kill Monsters: The Revenants (Book 2) (29 page)

It’d been a slow night and there were few
patrons in the diner this early in the morning. The waitress
counted on her tips and today,
well
, looked like today that
wasn’t going to happen. Hopefully things would pick up around
lunch. They usually did.

A man had hurriedly entered moments earlier,
joining three already seated in a booth at the back. “Somebody tell
me what the fuck is going on?” she’d heard him demand of the
others, shushed by his friends as she approached. She smiled as she
walked over, doing her job, not interested in their business, their
business their business, the coffee carafe in her hand.

The fourth man—almost six foot with a stomach
on him, probably in his forties and not a pleasant guy to look
at—put his hand on his overturned coffee cup, not interested.

“Please.” The oldest guy at the table held up
his mug. The waitress put him at maybe fifty. His face was pocked
from acne scars, probably counted against him when he was younger
but lent him a certain air today. Kind enough looking guy. Whether
he was truly a kind guy, or the kind of guy who only looked it,
that would be revealed when he laid the tip down later.

She filled his cup and he thanked her as she
walked away.

“The matter, Hank?” Jerry, the kind looking
man, raised his mug to his lips, detected the coffee was too hot
and lowered it. “You don’t want to have a cup of coffee with the
rest of us?”

“They
know
.” Hank ignored him. “Just
tell me,” Hank had palmed his overturned coffee cup and was tapping
it against the saucer beneath, “Spasso knows, don’t he?”

“Spasso knows.” Tom, in his early thirties,
was the youngest of the four. He wore a sports jacket over jeans
and a t-shirt. Under the tee his stomach was churning, nerves.

“Peter tell him?”

“No.” Jerry sipped at his coffee. “Peter says
he didn’t tell him.”

“The fuck you mean then—
Johnny
knows
? What happened to the other guys?”

“Be quiet, Hank.” Gaby hadn’t touched his
coffee the whole time. Gaby was tall and heavy, but he carried the
weight well. You met Gaby, your first impression wasn’t
oh
here’s
a
fat
guy
. “You want this whole
diner to know our business?”

“Fuck this diner.” Hank looked around, “Fuck
these people,” but he quieted as he continued. “And fuck me,”
almost whispering this last part. “The fuck was I thinking?

“You were thinking you were going to get
rich.” Jerry set his mug down, deciding he’d give it a few minutes
to cool. “You stay calm, it’s still going to happen.” Smiled at
Hank, reassuring him.

Hank looked doubtful. “What about the other
guys?”

“Gooch thinks Heinlein knows it was us,” Tom
said, leaving the
know
-
it
-
was
-
us
-
that
-
robbed
-
him
unspoken. His stomach was turning over on him, threatening to do
terrible things. He
felt
as anxious as Hank sounded. Felt
like he needed to go to the bathroom again. “We haven’t heard from
the other guys.”

“How does the Hiney know?” Hank was livid and
tapping his coffee cup down harder. “What’d somebody get guilty and
tell him? You fuckin’ guys. The man doesn’t know us from shit, if
we passed him on the street—”

“No,” Jerry assured him, “nobody yapped.”

“Thank Christ for that.” Hank took a look
around, eyeing the other patrons, the waitress minding her own
business over behind the counter. “You know what,” he turned the
cup over in his hand, “I
could
use a cup of coffee,” raised
it up in the air. The waitress either didn’t see him or was
ignoring him.

“I think Gooch is just real nervous.” Tom
tried to think it out. “I mean, fuck, I’m nervous.” He was
clenching his buttocks as he spoke, afraid that if he broke wind
he’d ruin his pants. “And I don’t have to work with Heinlein
every
day.”

“So? I don’t get it—” Hank stopped trying to
get the waitress’ attention. Bitch was ignoring him. “Why’s he
nervous?”

Jerry had his hands tented on the tabletop in
front of him. “Says the Hineys been looking at him funny the past
week or so.”

“That cocksucker. I knew we should have—”

“No, Hank,” Jerry corrected him, his hands
still on the table. Gaby was looking at Jerry, looking at him
concerned about Hank. “We shouldn’t have. Okay?” The look Gaby gave
Jerry was completely lost on Hank who, restless in the booth next
to Gaby, was now tapping his coffee mug with a spoon.

Chink
-
chink
-
chink
.

“Listen, Hank,” Jerry’s voice was low. “We
got the money. We got away with it…”

Chink
-
chink
-
chink
.

“…The old man’s gone away. Now we lie low.
All we got to do.”

“Lie low,” Hank mused.
Chink
-
chink
. “Lie low.” He looked right at Tom.
“Uncle Anthony know about this?”

“Yeah.” Tom thought about the way he felt and
the way Hank sounded and wondered how Jerry was able to sit there
like that with his fingers tented together not shaking, Jerry all
steady. “Yeah, I talked to him.”

“And?”

Chink
-
chink
-
chink
.

“He’s not happy.” Tom told them the truth.
“But if we need him he’ll help us.”

“Dickie have
any
idea?”

“Yeah, Hank. Gooch thinks so.”

“Great. Fantastic. Hey—” Hank called, too
loud, rude “—I get some coffee over here?”

“Be right with you,” the waitress called
back, all smiles.

“Wake my ass up out of bed this early in the
morning for this shit.” Hank tapped his mug a last time and
replaced his spoon on the napkin where it’d set.

Jerry said it as friendly as he could, in
that diplomatic way he had about him: “Calm down, Hank.”

“Leave me alone, Jerry. Let me handle this my
own way.”

“Let’s talk.” Tom visibly uncomfortable now,
his stomach welling up on him.

“What do you think we’ve been doing?” Hank
asked derisively, not knowing the other three had been talking
about him before he’d come in. About how he could get. How he was
now.

Tom ignored Hank, ignored his stomach. “If
Dickie knows—”

“Dickie don’t know yet,” Gaby said it like he
knew it for a fact. “If Dickie knew…”

“How you know?” Hank looked like he wanted to
rip the table from its mooring and toss it across the diner. “What
do you got a direct line to Dickie in the pen?”

“
If
he knew,” the way Gaby said it,
firm without raising his voice, silencing Hank, “We wouldn’t be
sitting here right now. And, Hank, might I add, I don’t like your
tone.”

“You don’t like my tone?”

“I know you think you’re big man with the
badge and all that, but if we go away behind this? Guess who’s
going to have the toughest time on the Inside?”

That shut Hank up for a few.

Gaby was right.

If Dickie knew they’d robbed the Hiney, it
wouldn’t have been Jerry on the phone calling him and inviting him
to a diner. They would have called him up and invited him some
place nice and quiet. Hank would have arrived to find himself the
only guy there and before he would have been able to compute all
that someone like Johnny Spasso or that Sully fuck would have
stepped up behind him and—“Okay,” he agreed, “so he don’t
know.”

That other thing Gaby was alluding to, their
getting caught and going to prison? Hank wouldn’t even countenance
it.

“No, he don’t know,” Gaby saw Hank saw,
adding, “
Yet
,” because there was no denying this last
part.

The waitress set three plates of food down in
front of Jerry, Hank and Tom, refilling coffee mugs that needed
refilling, pouring one for Hank, remarking, “I didn’t think you
wanted any, hon.”

“I changed my mind.”

“May I have a glass of ice, please?” Tom
sounded like a little boy.

“Sweetheart—” Hank said and the waitress
looked at him, the man all rude before, now with the
sweetheart
“—can you leave the pot?”

She left the carafe on the table and went
back to whatever she’d been doing.

Tom resumed their conversation. “If Heinlein
thinks for a minute that Gooch, his own employee—”

“Heinlein don’t know, not yet.” Gaby stuffed
a forkful of sausage in his mouth, spoke around it. “But Gooch
isn’t going to hold up.”

“Yeah.” Tom exhaled and looked down at his
food. “I know.”

“Where is Gooch?” As if Hank had just noticed
the fifth man wasn’t here now.

“Should be at home.” Jerry bit down into his
wheat toast.

“You woke my tired ass out of bed to meet you
guys here but Gooch is at home counting sheep. That makes no sense.
Prick bastard is probably counting our money. And where the hell is
the money anyway. Don’t tell me—Gooch’s place, right?”

Jerry told him he was right.

“I hate to say it.” Hank looked at each man
at the table. “We should have bumped him.”

“Bumped him?”
This
was exactly why Tom
hadn’t wanted to bring Hank in from the start. “The hell is
this—
Goodfellas
?”

“I’ll give you your
Goodfellas
, Tom.
Dickie finds out about this,
whoa
, that motherfucker,” Hank
gave a little chuckle devoid of mirth, “he’s going to come to your
place and kill you in front of your landlady.”

“Kill, kill, kill.” Tom tried to sound a way
he didn’t feel, hadn’t touched his food. “Listen, Hank. Just be
quiet.”

“Here’s that ice.” The waitress set it down
and Tom thanked her. “Your food alright, hon?”

Tom assured her it was fine, Hank trying to
light a cigarette, the waitress telling him, “You can’t smoke in
here.”

“The fuck not?”

“It’s the law.”

“I’m the law, sweetheart.” Hank pulled his
wallet out of his jacket and flipped it open to his detective
shield, laid it facing up on the table. The waitress stood there
looking at the badge, looking at him, thinking about how she was
going to say what she was going to say next.

“Not in here you aren’t,” Jerry reminded Hank
before she could say anything to him.

Hank scoffed, set his lighter and smokes
down, shoed the waitress away with a nod and the flick of two
fingers.

“Okay, listen,” Tom poked at his meal with
his fork, still made no move to put it in his mouth. “We got to
keep Gooch quiet. Keep him quiet and we can get away with it.”

Jerry put it out there for them all: “Gooch
is a nervous fucking wreck—”

“Like this guy,” Gaby nodded to Hank, Hank
raising his coffee cup to salute him.

“—I mean,” Jerry continuing, “We robbed
Heinlein what? A week ago. And Gooch’s got to get up and go to work
alongside him every day since then. You know Dickie brought Gooch
along for his ride upstate?”

Tom said what was on all their minds. “As
long as he don’t talk.”

“He’ll talk.” Gaby pushed his plate away,
done. “One day he’ll break down and burst out crying. Or
Heinlein’ll come up behind him, go
boo
and Gooch will spill
the beans. Or Dickie’ll get wise, have Spasso or someone visit
him.”

Hank thought about it and shook his head,
looked at Gaby sitting there with his empty plate. “You done with
that already?” Ignored Gaby when the tall, heavy man said “I was
hungry,” saying, “The fuck is Gooch going to do Johnny Spasso shows
up to talk to him?”

“Okay.” Jerry mopped up his eggs with another
piece of toast. “So, what do we do.” It wasn’t a question. “And,
Tom, why are you putting ice cubes in your coffee?”

“It’s too hot.”

“You wanted ice coffee you should have
ordered iced-coffee.”

“I didn’t want iced-coffee, Jerry.”

“We’re going to have to kill the Hiney,” said
Hank.

“What?” Tom’s spoon froze over his mug, an
ice cube on it.

Jerry asked how.

“Does it matter?”

“You’re a cop,” Jerry reminded him. “Maybe
you can…arrange something.”

“This ain’t the turn of the century, Jere. I
can’t just haul his ass to the basement of the police station.”

“Yeah? What about Rodney King?”

“He’s got a point there.” Gaby held up a
finger.

“Those guys are in jail,” Hank dismissed the
both of them. “So are we we get caught. What was that you were
saying about cops in prison?”

“Dickie’s people catch us,” Gaby fingered the
edge of his plate longingly, “we’re never going to see the inside
of a jail.”

“Be quiet, Gaby. I don’t see you coming up
with any brilliant ideas.”

“You are a cop.” Gaby’s brilliant idea. “Get
us another gun. A few of them.”

“What for?”

“Get us guns,” Gaby told him. “Like when we
robbed Heinlein. You can still do that, can’t you?”

“Damn right I can do that.” Hank thought
about the storage locker in his precinct. “I can have a goddamned
machine gun here tomorrow afternoon I want. Get you guys as many
guns we need.”

“Wait a second.” Tom was sitting up ramrod
straight in his chair, close to losing the battle with his
spinchter. “This sound like it might be going maybe just a little
too far to anyone else?”

“We’re gonna kill Heinlein, right?” Jerry all
matter-of-fact.

“Yeah,” confirmed Gaby.

“Understand something, you guys.” Hank was
much calmer now than he had been ten minutes ago when he’d come in
the diner. Hank was always calm when he was planning or executing
violence. It was the times in between that the man couldn’t control
himself. “We
don’t
kill the Hiney,
we
die. It’s us or
him. Now, it won’t be all that bad. We just keep quiet for
awhile—it’s like Jerry said—then we can start spending.”

“I’ve got to be honest,” Tom clutched his
stomach, “none of this is turning out the way I’d thought.”