I Kill Monsters: The Revenants (Book 2) (35 page)

“Hungry, yo.”

“His name is Barry.”

“Wonder what kind of shit that nigga seen
livin’ out here,” Marquis said philosophically.

“Werd,” Terry agreed.

Terry thought he was dreaming when the next
form materialized out of the night. The man wore some kind of black
robe over a dark suit with a white shirt and a big-assed fur hat,
looked like a tire on his head. Bearded with side-locks, he had
something looked like a space gun strapped over his back.

Terry rubbed his eyes. When he opened them,
the man was approaching them.

Looked like one of them niggas from
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, some kind of Jewish.

Terry rubbed his eyes again and this time
when he opened them the man was standing right there, looking him
and his friends over. The man wore black-rimmed glasses with thick
lenses, gave him a look like his eyes were swimming in his
head.

Fred was giggling to himself, giggling and
pointing one hand lazily.

Ronald’s head was slumped on his chest and he
was snoring, a line of drool hanging from his lip.

The man peered into each of their faces,
searching for something there.

Terry couldn’t see the space gun on the man’s
back, not with the way the man was standing, but he saw the
big-assed pistol holstered under the man ‘s jacket and the
submachine gun hanging by a strap under the man’s robe just
fine.

Marquis spoke: “You ain’t in Kansas,
Dorothy.”

Nodding, the man said something neither boy
understood and walked off, slipping into the shadows of the
quad.

“I just seen that?”

“I seen what you seen,” Terry told Marquis,
“but I don’t know what I seen.” His fingers felt warm, and when he
looked he saw he was holding the bone, the joint burnt down to
little more than a roach between his thumb and index finger.
“What’s in this shit?” Terry flicked it away, watching the glow arc
off in the night.

Fred giggled.

Dickie assured Maryann he was fine once more
before hanging up. He saw how they were looking at him, trying to
act like they weren’t, the other men at the pay phones. A few of
them greeted him, even the brothers, seemed sincere about it.

“Boss,” Bianchi fell in beside him, the two
traversing the cell block. Bianchi with his elbow in a compression
bandage, one hand kept going to it, touching at it.

“How’s your elbow?”

“I look like fuckin’ Popeye. These fuckin’
doctors. What’s a guy gotta do to get some proper medical attention
around here?”

“What’s the word on Cheeks?”

“He’s gonna be laid up in the infirmary for
awhile, but he’ll be okay. They don’t come tougher than Cheeks
Carlucci.”

“No they don’t. And Scal?”

“The Scal’s an old man. He’s resting.”

Dickie smiled, thinking of Jimmy Scal holding
his own in the scuffle, the Scal pinning the fat guy’s legs while
Cheeks finished him. The Scal probably lying back on his bunk now,
Dickie picturing him in his tinted glasses with the gold
frames.

“The fuck…?” Bianchi’s voice trailing off,
cries sounding up ahead, men excited, convicts rushing past them in
the hall.

Dickie gave Bianchi a look and Bianchi
shrugged.

“Probably a coupla the spics made a move on
one another.”

A crowd of prisoners were pressed together
ahead in the corridor, hooting and gawking. Heat pulsated at the
t-junction where they gathered, a cell at the end of the hall
engulfed in fire, the flames licking out between the bars. C.O.s
with fire extinguishers were trying to get through the press of
bodies, screws with batons yelling at prisoners to
move
!,
get back to their cells. Above it all a preternatural shrieking,
sounded like an animal being tortured, something locked inside that
cell burning.

Dickie and Bianchi paused to look over the
heads of the others, smoke billowing along the top of the cell
block.

Werner was standing there, back behind
everyone else, watching Dickie and Bianchi, the hack shaking his
head.

“Come on, boss.” Bianchi took his hand off
his elbow, hustling Dickie away from the scene, the shrieks
diminishing behind them.

Dickie looked over his shoulder once, saw
Werner still looking at them. “That was us?”

Bianchi shrugged, but it was the way he
shrugged and the amused look on his face. “Guess someone needed to
talk to someone,” he said, “‘bout somethin’,” he suppressed a
laugh. “Guess it wasn’t a good time, huh?”

“If it was,” Dickie looked back again but
Werner was lost to them, “it ain’t now.”

He got into town and decided he’d head over
to the Social Club and get that out of the way. Two old men were
sitting outside in lawn chairs, looked like they’d always been
there. The one had a cane, his age-spotted hand squeezing it as
Cassidy walked up to them on the street.

Buonasera
, speaking to them in their
own language, the old man with the cane shaking and Cassidy
couldn’t place it: Parkinsons or anger? A chance he knew him,
though Cassidy didn’t recognize the guy.

Through a nondescript screen door into a
small vestibule and out into a vast room with a pool table and a
bar, a couple of fans spinning slowly overhead. Cigarette and cigar
smoke heavy in the room. A bunch of wiseguys standing around,
stopping whatever they were doing to look at him, none of them too
happy to see him, some almost immediately looking away.

“Johnny Spasso.” Cassidy spying the man at
the bar.

Cassidy walked towards Spasso, passing men he
knew or knew of, cataloging them in his head, thinking who had to
go down first if things got hot.

Joe Deuce, standing there with a pool stick
in his hand. Had a brother they called Frankie Nickles before
Cassidy took him out in—what was that? Back in ’88 maybe? Joe
Deuce’s hand red on the pool stick, shaking he was holding it so
tight like the old man with the cane outside. Next to him, Benny
Aulisi, better known as Benny the Bum. The Bum had a cousin used to
go by Fast Ronnie. Fast Ronnie got in the car and went for a drive
with Cassidy one night, never come back. In the moment of truth
Fast Ronnie hadn’t lived up to his name, Cassidy beating him to the
draw.

Pete “Yabo” DelaRosa laying his pool stick on
the table. Yabo had a couple cousins weren’t around anymore thanks
to the Genesse family, Cassidy’s employers.

Seated at a table with take-out in front of
him, Amerigo “Skinny Boy” Petacci. Nothing skinny about him, so fat
he looked Asian in the face, the buttons of his sauce-stained shirt
straining against his flesh. His brother Vito had been the exact
opposite, thin as a rail, they used to call him Fat Vic as a joke.
Called him that until Anthony Genesse popped him in Jersey,
disposed of Fat Vic’s skinny body in a Staten Island landfill.
Cassidy had been in on that.

The Mick, Canahan, standing there at the pool
table, one of the few to smile at Cassidy, say
hi
, say “I
didn’t think they let your kind in here,” Cassidy saying “Well, if
they’re serving the Irish now…” saying it with a straight face,
walking past.

Clutching a cigar, Anthony Vella stared at
Cassidy like Jesus Christ or someone a whole lot worse had just
entered the premises. Ant Vella, known as Sausage, rumor had it
because of his preferred method of disposing of bodies. That or the
fact that his family owned a meat market. There were some more cats
Cassidy recognized—Peter Gooch and Joey Fab, Dave Pasquale and Mike
Vicario—and some he didn’t. The ones he didn’t were younger guys,
quicker to look away, out of respect or fear.

Cassidy close to the bar now, entering the
Dickie Nicolie inner circle. Nunz the Wop, imported Stateside years
ago for some wet work, never went back to Cambria or wherever he
was from. Gaetano, another shooter come over from the old country a
decade ago and stayed. They called him Guy. Sully with his
toothpick in his mouth, Sully one of the ones definitely not happy
to see Cassidy here. Next to him, Carmine in his slacks and
collared shirt, business casual, his face giving nothing away.

Bartender behind the bar, guy in his sixties
maybe, wiping his bar down with a rag, ignoring Cassidy.

“Cassidy.” Sully chewed on his toothpick,
working his jaw.

“Sully.”

“Sul.” Johnny Spasso gestured as he exhaled a
plume of smoke, dismissing the soldier. Sully had a way of saying
things that pissed people off, better to place him out of the
immediate vicinity. Spasso leaned with his back against the bar,
rain coat open, not trying to hide the nines under each arm. Spasso
wearing a Fu-Manchu as only he could.

The younger guy next to him, facing the bar,
hadn’t turned. Kid was thin, wore a button down rayon shirt, some
kind of tattoo on one arm, enough mousse or gel in his hair to
spike it up and give him a few extra inches. Chewing gum.

“Dooles,” Johnny saying to the bar keep. “Get
our friend a Glenlivet. It’s still Scotch, right?”

“It is.”

“One thing you got, Cassidy,” the kid with
the spiked hair hadn’t turned yet, “you got balls.”

“Don’t think I know you.”

“Name’s Katonah.” The kid took a drink of
whatever he had, cool as ice or trying to seem to be. “Tony
Katonah.”

Cassidy nodded. Never heard of him.

“Tone’s got a point. Maybe you should have
called before you stopped by?”

“Hey, Johnny, I got a question about the old
man outside.” Cassidy thanked the bartender when the man finished
pouring his Scotch, the bartender not acknowledging him.

“Which one?”

“Guy with the cane.”

“Tommy Sanelli.”

Tommy
Sanelli
. It took Cassidy
a few seconds at the bar, the glass of Scotch in his hand.
Tomasino
Sanelli
. Greg “Butch” Sanelli’s father. Had
to be. Cassidy and Anthony Genesse had taken the son out must have
been a dozen years ago, maybe more. Done some work on him for
awhile first. Cassidy shook his glass, watching the ice cubes
circle. No wonder the old man was shaking looking at him.

“You killed his son,” Tony Katonah told
Cassidy what he already knew, and then he told him something he
didn’t: “Was my second cousin.”

“Yeah.” Cassidy sipped his Scotch, and placed
the glass back on the bar. “You know what,” he turned his body away
from the bar, facing Katonah. “I think I remember hearing something
about that.” If the kid was going to spin around and draw on him,
Cassidy didn’t want his body blocked by the bar, wanted to get his
.45s out fast as possible. Because once the shooting started in
this place, Cassidy didn’t think it was going to end with this one
Italian.

And Johnny Spasso’d be the first guy he’d
have to hit, even before he addressed the kid.

“Tony,” Spasso was still leaning back on the
bar, reminded the hot head, “Cassidy’s here to work with us.”

“Yeah, I know that.”

“Hey Tony,” Carmine spoke up. “Whyn’t you
take a walk with me, uh? Come on kid.”

Cassidy waited for them to walk away before
saying to Johnny, “I’m sorry to hear Dickie went away,” meaning it
as he said it, Johnny knowing he meant it, Johnny saying
“Yeah.”

Cassidy took another sip of his Scotch, put
it down. “I don’t think that young man likes me.”

“Ah. There’s a few of them in here.” Johnny
took a drag of his cigarette, tapped out the ash. “Never thought I
would have seen the day,” he remarked, meaning him and Cassidy
together at the bar like this, working together again.

“Yeah. Funny how things work.”

“Funny but you’re not laughing.”

“Not that kind of funny.”

“So you ready to talk?”

“Finish your drink, Johnny. We got time.”

“Wake up, fool.”

Boone opened his eyes. Big Mike stood over
him in the cargo plane’s fuselage, a menacing shadow against the
muted glow of the interior lights. His fangs glistened plainly in
his mouth.

“Feelin’ randy?” Boone asked him.

“Time to jump,” the vampire yelled over the
thrum of the plane’s engines in the enclosed space. Around them
movement as men readied themselves, last minute equipment checks,
making certain everything was where it should be.

Boone rose off the bench, straightening his
legs under his jump suit and the various gear strapped to his body.
His parachute container was in place, thick shoulder and leg
straps. He pulled his helmet over his head and secured it.

They were queuing up, six of them. Boone was
third in line, behind Colson and Kane. Big Mike was directly behind
him and Boone could live with that. What was the vamp going to do?
Push him out of the plane? The jump master—a vampire Boone had
never seen before this flight—opened the fuselage door and the
noise in the plane kicked up a few more notches. Boone pulled his
goggles down.

They waited, Colson standing in the door over
thousands of feet of open space. The jump master stood beside him
and waited for the light above the door to go from red to
green.

Kane turned around and gave Boone a thumbs
up, a ghastly smile beneath his goggles and helmet. In addition to
the submachine guns, pistols and other weapons they all carried,
the Wrath had two swords scabbarded and tied down to his body.
He
really
is
looking
forward
to
this
, Boone thought, nodding back at the man.
Damian
too
.

He’d love to see them all jump before him,
preferably without their chutes.

Whatever they were jumping into on the
ground, it wasn’t going to be pretty and no way it would be
easy.