No Flesh Shall Be Spared (60 page)

As he approached the automobile, his mind had already begun to move on to the rest of his evening. He was scheduled to have dinner with Claire and then the two of them would rush off for a "meet and greet" that Weber Industries scheduled in order to celebrate the recent jump in
Fight Night
ratings. Word of Cleese’s disappearance had not yet filtered down to any of the affiliates, but Monroe was already putting his spin on that particular ball, for when it did. The official company line was going to be that the man was certifiable—a thug—and, despite the WGF’s stringent filtering processes, he’d gotten through.

Yeah, sorry about that…

And even though Cleese had proven himself to be a good earner, his induction into the League had been a mistake, but one that was being dealt with accordingly. The League had too much invested to risk a dime of it on someone with as much instability as Cleese exhibited. The cold facts were that he’d been behaving erratically lately, even going so far as to attack another fighter in the gym as well as a League official. If any of the affiliates doubted it, Monroe still had bruising he could show them to verify the point.

Monroe arrived at the Jag and looked the car over with loving approval. He’d worked long and hard to procure the trappings of wealth and all his plotting and scheming had finally started to pay off. He’d come up from the poor section of Chicago and had lied, cheated and yes, even stolen to make it this far. In that way, truth be told, he and Cleese were somewhat alike. Growing up poor either made a man ambitious or a hoodlum. Monroe had chosen ambition and affluence for his life’s course. Cleese chose booze, broads and brawling. Monroe lived in a penthouse with a beautiful woman. Cleese was a criminal who did unimaginable things to pocket change. In the end, Monroe was the one who could look himself in the eye in the mirror and still feel a sense of pride and accomplishment. While Cleese on the other hand… what could he see in his reflection other than the face of an outlaw and a gorilla?

Monroe had done what he’d done for very specific reasons and now he was finally living a bit of the good life. This car was just one example of that. Important people in the WGF had already told him that he was destined for great things and he liked the way that sounded.

Damn straight he did.

Reaching into the pocket of his slacks, he found his key ring and hit the button on it to unlock his door. The chirp of the Jag’s alarm disarming echoed through the building. He slid his fingers under the door’s handle like he would into a lover’s blouse and gently pulled it open. With a sigh, he dropped himself into the leather of the car’s driver seat and wriggled into a comfortable position. Once set, he reached over, set his briefcase on the floor in front of the passenger’s seat, and then pulled the door shut behind him. Sliding his key into the ignition, Monroe breathed deep of the air inside the car. God, he loved the smell of this car. It had the rich odor of leather and wood that he’d always equated with money.

And if there was one thing that he liked the smell of, it was money.

Monroe lovingly slid his fingers around the key and gently turned the ignition. The starter caught at once and the engine jumped to life. The car purred softly as he revved the engine. Then, slipping the transmission into gear, he backed carefully out of its space. With a gentle hand, he guided the Jag forward. The car slid across the ground like a python. It moved with barely a sound, only the quiet hissing of its tires on the cement to mark its passing. Its engine’s power growled under his foot, and, God knew, it felt good.

Monroe carefully angled the Jag down the aisle and toward the exit ramp as he had many times before. Just for a second, he worried whether the car would make it through the tight corridor. He jogged the car around and drove up the ramp and into the blackness beyond.

Weber Industries had designed this building to be cutting edge, like a lot of Weber Industries’ holdings. But for the life of him, Monroe couldn’t figure out what kind of incompetent would have designed ramps as tight as these. Who were they for,
Mini Me?

The Jag circled around the ramp and whipped around the last corner before the street. Suddenly, Monroe saw something ahead of him and had to almost stand on the brakes to get the car to stop.

"Ah, hell…" he said, slapping at the leather bound steering wheel.

Parked directly in front of him, blocking any exit, was a beat-up flatbed truck. Its driver had obviously misjudged his departure and gotten the damn thing stuck. Or he’d just stopped, not caring who might be coming up behind him. He leaned his head out his side window and noticed, almost subconsciously, that the flat of the truck’s bed seemed slightly too wide for it to have ever made it into the lot.

"This idiot must have been backing up and hit the building," he said to no one but the empty car seat next to him.

He looked in his rear view mirror to see if he would be able to back up and use another exit, when an old Dodge Dart pulled up just behind him. Frustrated by it all, Monroe honked his horn twice, its tone echoing back through the cavernous structure.

After a moment, the Dart’s driver slowly got out and he walked past the passenger’s side of Monroe’s car. Monroe couldn’t make out the man’s face due to the baseball hat he wore low over his brow, but then again, he didn’t much care. If the guy was able to get the moron in the truck moving, who was he to complain?

Monroe sat for a minute or so and watched as the Dart’s driver crawled over the back of the truck and on toward the left side. The guy peeked into the driver’s side door and then reached into the open window. He took a leisurely glance up and down the street and then crawled back the way he’d come. Once back on solid ground, he came back toward Monroe’s side of the car. He kept his head down as he walked, his face remaining cloaked in the shadow beneath the brim of the hat. As he got closer, Monroe noticed the guy slide his hand into his coat pocket.

Monroe looked into his rear view mirror again and checked behind him. There he saw the Dart still idling, the car door still slightly ajar. Monroe lowered his gaze and prepared to talk to whoever the Dart’s driver was. He briefly took another annoyed look at the truck in front of him. He assumed that whoever this fucker in the truck was, he must have left his vehicle and just run off someplace.

Some people were just so damned inconsiderate.

Monroe glanced at the clock on the dashboard and momentarily thought of calling Claire. If this shit didn’t straighten itself out in short order, he was going to be late for their dinner reservation.

The guy driving the Dart had by now come up to the Jag’s window and knocked once and then once again with the meat of his knuckle. Monroe rolled his window about halfway down, enough so that he could communicate with whoever the guy was, but not so wide as to leave himself vulnerable should this guy decide to start some shit. He may live uptown now, but Monroe had once lived downtown and he still retained
some
of his street smarts.

"So, did this idiot leave his truck or what?" Monroe asked and leaned out a bit to look toward the truck.

"Not quite…" was the grumbled answer.

Monroe was startled a bit when he heard the voice. For some reason, the tone and timbre of it sounded vaguely familiar. Monroe wasn’t sure exactly where he’d heard it before, but he knew the tone from somewhere. Maybe the guy was a maintenance guy in the building or something. Suddenly, he thought he caught the scent of bubble gum on the air.

"Well, what the fuck then…?" he said, pointing toward the flatbed. "How do people just
do
this kind of shit?"

The man outside bent down and stared Monroe full in the face. His eyes flared beneath the shadow of his cap and he smiled. The smile was malicious and shark-like with lips that slid back and exposed teeth that seemed impossibly white.

Monroe’s brain sort of stalled and he felt more than a little bit confused as he abruptly found himself face-to-face with the one thing he thought he would never see again: Cleese.

And yet, here he was… looking smug and lethal and all too real.

"I think that, right now, you have problems far greater than that fuckin’ truck,
Phil.
"

Monroe sat, mentally vapor locked as he tried to sort it all out in his head. A lot of information flitted before his brain in a cascade of images that didn’t seem to make much sense. Despite his best efforts, he just couldn’t make the connections fit.

He’d been on his way home.

He was going to meet Claire.

They were supposed to go have dinner.

There was a truck.

A Dodge Dart.

Some people were inconsiderate.

And now… Cleese?

It took Monroe a second to put it all together, but when he did, the conclusion he reached made his bowels suddenly loosen.

Cleese pulled his hand out of his pocket and drove it straight across the lower part of Monroe’s face. His head was pushed painfully back through the window. The blow rattled Monroe’s jaw pretty severely and he felt his mouth suddenly fill with blood.

"That was for what you did to Monk, you son of a bitch."

Monroe’s head spun from the concussion of the punch and the world sort of tilted on its axis as a result. As he tried to clear his head, he reached over feebly and pushed the button to roll the window up. It was the only thing he could think of to put a barrier between himself and Cleese.

It was all for naught.

Cleese grabbed the window by its uppermost edge and, in a series of quick, back and forth yanks, he pulled at the pane of glass. The first tug rattled the glass in its frame. The second sprouted a spider web pattern that radiated out from the top down. The third shattered the window, sending nuggets of glazed glass cascading into Monroe’s rapidly dampening lap.

Suddenly, there were thick hands at Monroe’s throat and he was unceremoniously hauled from beneath the steering column and out through the broken window. Chunks of the still remaining window scratched his back and legs deeply, allowing blood to flow and soak the material of his pants. Once clear of the window frame, Cleese hoisted Monroe into the air and then slammed him heavily into the cement wall. The force of the impact rattled Monroe’s teeth in his jaw and shook his eyeballs in his head.

Again and again, Monroe felt his back and skull crash into the cement. His already dizzy world was further clouded and the black fog of unconsciousness slowly crept in. As his mind fought for some avenue of escape, two uppercuts plowed into his lower abdomen, kicking the wind from his lungs. Then, he felt his body arc through the air and pound onto the hood of the Jag.

Yeah… that’s definitely gonna scratch the paint.

Out of the corner of his eye, Monroe saw Cleese pull something dark and hard and round from his pocket. He clenched the ball tightly in his fist, his knuckles white from the exertion of holding it so tightly.

Then, the hailstorm of punches commenced.

Monroe only felt the first few as Cleese repeatedly pounded the heavy ball into his face and chest. Far off, Monroe heard the sound of his nose crack. Then, his cheekbones splinter. Small, hard chunks of enamel were torn from his gums and fell like pebbles to the back of his throat. The snapping of his collarbone took the breath from his lungs. His sternum ached from the repeated bludgeoning.

Out at the far borders of his perception, Cleese’s voice echoed in a stream of profanities.

And then, just as suddenly as it began, the beating stopped.

Monroe made a thick gurgling sound as he fought to catch a breath through the decimated anatomy of his face. So much for that "unique skill set."

As he lay there, Monroe wasn’t sure how severely Cleese had hurt him, but he knew it was bad. Blood flowed freely down his throat and he did all he could to either spit it out or swallow it. He tried as best he could to turn his head to keep himself from drowning. The thing was… he was only barely able to keep up with the flow.

Abruptly, Monroe once again felt himself being hoisted slightly off the car hood. Cleese had him by the lapels of his jacket with one hand and by the belt with the other. For some unfathomable reason, he felt his attacker pulling on the front of his pants. An unexpected and extremely localized pain suddenly erupted at his crotch.

Fighting for breath, he realized that Cleese had let him go. He fell back, splayed across the hood of the Jag. He lay there and groaned, alone with the pain in his face and a sudden weight in his groin. At first, Monroe thought Cleese might have stabbed him or cut him in some way.

Jesus… no!

Still trying to catch air, Monroe reached down into the front of his pants and felt around. Shoving his hand under his beltline, he discovered the small, round object Cleese had been hitting him with stuffed down deep into his shorts. The thing now snuggled against his balls like a purring cat. He reached down and got a hold of it by pressing the object deeper between his legs. Whatever the thing was, it felt like a metal apple with what appeared to be a fat stem sticking out of the top of it.

He turned his head and looked back down the ramp through the growing haze. Cleese stood a ways away, back beyond the Dart and just around the corner. His middle finger was raised defiantly.

"And
that
… is for Chikara!" he shouted, his voice echoing dully as he disappeared around the bend. The sound of his receding footsteps echoed in the darkness.

Monroe barely felt a thing as the fragmentation grenade exploded in his lap.

Solemnities

The sun burned overhead like an indifferent parent on the day Masterson visited Philip Monroe’s grave. It had been a little over three weeks since the funeral and this was the first time he’d been able to come and pay his respects.

For obvious reasons, he didn’t go to the service. He’d been advised by the police as well as League Security that it wouldn’t be safe; wouldn’t be "prudent." There were still no official suspects in what was being called a deliberate incident. However, if the person who bombed Monroe’s car was who Masterson thought it was, he prayed for Monroe’s soul and for his own.