Shred of Evidence

Coming awake into the darkness of a blindfold was shocking, and not a little disorientating. Jake Burrows could feel his heart pounding right up into his throat, the vibrations of real terror. He swallowed, trying to quell the pulse of it and with several deep breaths its rate did begin to slow.

He caught a grunt of laughter across the floor, and the creak of a chair followed by the heavy movement of someone rising to their feet. A big man, by the sound of it.

“Looks like our guest has finally decided to put in an appearance.”

The big man, undoubtedly, the one who had just stood. A deep timbre to the voice, slightly husky too.

Mental notes might be important.

Another voice then, from another part of the room. Smaller, and sneering almost, but with more authority.

“Shut the hell up, will ya?”

Jake’s kidnappers. Christ, it was coming back slowly, he couldn’t seem to more than half wake; they must really have done a job on him.

Carefully, he tried to move his head. And there it was, the stabbing pain of the blow that had put him out. He fought the wave of it, and at last it passed, leaving him with the wet slickness of an open wound behind his left ear.

Sure, he’d had a few drinks, but he was still a long way from drunk when they got him. Not yet 10 p.m. and right outside his own building. This had been a well planned snatch, no question.

The footsteps of the big man approached, and he could almost feel the touch of that shadow across him. “Well, Mr. big shot Burrows, how much they gonna cough to spring a guy like you, huh?”

And from behind, angered. “Hey, I said to shut up. What the hell’s the matter with you? Just sit down, will ya?”

“I was just trying to be hospitable to the guy. Can’t be easy waking up to this kind of situation, can it?”

Jake had the feeling that the can it? part of the big man’s words were meant for him, and he sighed in a way that he hoped could be taken as answer.

“Yeah, well. Just sit down, you’re making me nervous.”

The big man grunted laughter again. As compromise perhaps, he did return to his seat—Jake could hear the retreating footsteps and then the moan of settling wood—but the compromise didn’t stretch as far as silence.

“You know, Burrows, you’re a pretty lucky guy, really. Not too many people get to find out their actual worth in straight greenback. Most people have to guess their value, if they think about it at all, which I suppose not too many do. Even we have to guess about things like that. Not our own worth, of course, but the people we pick up. And you can rest assured, we wouldn’t waste our time on anything nickel and dime.”

It was a dangerous thing to talk back in these situations. Blindfolded, there was still a chance of getting out of this thing alive, and he knew that he would do well not to antagonise these people. And yet, he couldn’t help himself.

“You’ll never pull this off,” he said, shocked at how distant his own voice sounded. His head felt stuffed with cotton wool. Nevertheless, he persisted. “No one ever gets away with kidnap.”

He was hoping for something from the second man, the smaller guy, the one in charge. Enough that he could fasten onto some individuality which might come in useful later on for identification purposes. But once more it was the big man who had the mouth.

“Don’t worry about us,” he said. “We know what we’re doing.”

“What’s the matter? Don’t you watch the news? Cops’ll have this place covered. There’s no way you’re walking out of this.” That might have been too much, but he couldn’t flinch. Here he was, tied to a chair and blindfolded, his skull open to the world and probably fractured if the darting pains were anything to go by, and these guys, even if they were experts at this kind of thing, had to be nervous just the same. And it was a mortal lock that they were armed and itchy-fingered.

Now, finally, the smaller one did speak. “There won’t be any cops.”

Jake turned in the direction of the voice, hoping even blindfolded that he could exert some kind of influence. “This is kidnap, isn’t it? Of course, there’ll be cops.”

“Not for you there won’t. Like my friend already told you, we know what we’re doing.”

The guy really had the ability to put a snarl into his words.

“What? So, you’ve done this before. Maybe you got lucky.” Even through the stupor of a certain concussion, Jake understood something. They’d kill him if they had to, but if they intended to kill him then he’d be dead already.

“This isn’t about luck.” The big man’s turn again. “We just know to pick the right people, and we know not to price ourselves into that kind of trouble. See, what we do, we look for a ransom, but a realistic one. I mean, say you were a priest or something. Well, then, we’d ask for maybe a few grand. Nothing excessive, that’s the key. Come up with a number that makes it worth our while but is still not so high that it will cause people to take stupid risks. All in the planning, you see.”

He thought this over and, though he hated to admit it, the concept made a certain amount of sense. Ask for the earth and the family has to go running to the cops. Nothing else they can do. But ask for the right number and coat it in threat, well, people will weigh up the situation and realise that they can handle it. It did make sense, but there again was another reason why killing the hostage wasn’t advisable. Murder forced the hand of the victim’s family. They had little choice then but to make the call, bring in the law. And that was unnecessary heat. It gave him a little more courage.

“So,” he said, “how much are you asking for me?” He picked an exorbitant figure. “Five million? Ten?”

The big fellow laughed again, and now the other one did too. It was a nice sound to have, a thin sound infiltrated by a little hiccup. Something to remember for later on. “Check the ego on this guy,” he said, and the big one slapped a table in answer. Like everything else about the man, it was a big sound, enough to make Jake jerk in the seat and reawaken the pain in his head again.

“No, we’re not calling for no five million on you. And hell, even the President wouldn’t be worth trying for ten. Your number’s eight hundred K.”

Jake tried to look disappointed. They had fixed him with a character trait and now it was up to him to play on it. “Eight hundred thousand?”

More laughter. It sounded like they were loosening up. A little, anyway. “What’s the matter? Not enough? Hey, let me tell you, pal, any wife that’ll pay eight hundred thousand dollars for her husband sure as hell loves him a whole helluva lot. Been my experience, most of ‘em are glad to let the bad guys do their worst. You’re insured up to the teeth, I’ll betcha. Something was to go wrong with you, likely as not she’ll be on a beach in Barbados, sunning herself out of her grief and having some local Don Juan smearing lotion on her delectable back.”

He was kidding, of course, trying to get a rise out of Jake, anything to pass the time, but Jake shut up and helped himself to fantasies of cutting out that fat tongue with a rusty knife.

The other one, the small guy, stirred, creaking his chair and said, “hey, don’t sweat it, Burrows. She’ll pay up. Otherwise we wouldn’t have picked you. A wasted night for all of us if that were to happen, and what’s the use of that. In this game, we have to be discerning. Like we already told you, it’s all in the preparation, pulling a job like this.”

Better words, but even then, Jake didn’t reply.

“I think I hurt his feelings,” the big guy said, still laughing, but with less certainty now. And talking time was over.

“Stay here,” the smaller one said, ordered. “And leave him alone, for pity’s sake. I got a phone call to make.”

* * *

It was difficult, recalling how it had been. A long evening, and he had eaten a good meal with some people, put away some scotch in the bar afterwards, but the party had broken up pretty early. The arrangement was that he would be home in good time; he was expecting an important call, one that could really make things happen for him as far as business was concerned. Christ, that call. There’d be repercussions to missing that. He had left the others at the restaurant, sat sprawled in the back of the limo reading the back page of the Post and sipping a closing glass of scotch on the rocks through most of the short drive to his apartment. Like so many other nights.

Except this time had been different. The driver was not his usual driver—though still a guy he knew—and he kept touching the rear-view mirror, as though he were afraid that Jake would actually disappear back there. It wasn’t so blatant that he should have picked up on it at the time, and yet he had felt something. Now he recognised his dismissal of such behaviour, and such an uncomfortable feeling, as a big mistake.

When they reached his building, he drained his glass, folded the paper, and opened the door even as the driver was easing the limousine to the curb. 10 p.m., but that might as well have been after midnight in this neighbourhood. Around here, anyone who was coming home at all was usually home by eight. 10 P.M. was the dead time.

He never saw the kidnappers. They had held some doorway until he passed close enough for the snatch. When he heard footsteps he didn’t turn, and that was another mistake. Instead, he reached for his gun. That was habit, more than anything else, an instinctive reaching. But even as his hand made it to his armpit he knew that he was grasping air. He had stowed the gun. It lay safely in the drawer of his bedside locker.

The footsteps, and then the touch of a strap, and somewhere far away he was falling to his knees, his head down and already numbed from the blow. Down, into a soft sleep. None of it was even about pain, not then. Pain was for later. Hands taking his weight, the grunt of breath on his left as one half of the attack struggled with his weight. Pulling him along, into the back seat of a car. He had snatches of it still, the sweat stench of the vinyl upholstery, the engine turning over once, and a frustrated voice hissing, damn! Trying to open his eyes without success, or maybe he had opened them and it was just so dark back there that it felt like sleep. Another try and the engine catching this time.

Nothing else after that. It was probably good that he hadn’t seen them; he understood that now if not at the time. Good because he wasn’t forcing them into any new territory. Best for these things to run smoothly, if they have to happen at all.

* * *

He could hear the big man in the room with him, at the table but silent apart from a slight labour to his breath. Not bronchial, but a tell-tale sign of something. By the silence, the guy was probably reading. He tried to listen for the sound of pages turning—a newspaper was more likely but wouldn’t that make more noise than a book?—but it was all academic, since there was nothing to hear.

The waiting was hard, and being blindfolded made the time immeasurable beyond compare. He tried things, like a man who can’t sleep, counting sheep, trying to remember the words to songs he liked. Nothing helped.

“Hey,” he said.

No answer from the man at the table. But he had heard, because Jake caught the twinge of the chair creaking at the shift of weight.

“Hey. I could really use a smoke.”

There was a moment when the kidnapper seemed to think it over, but perhaps he was bored too, or tired of waiting, because he muttered, “yeah, all right,” and crossed the floor.

Jake felt the cigarette stubbing his mouth and he parted his lips to take it. It hung there slightly left of centre, and its substance felt good, reassuring. By the sense and sound of movement he could judge when it was lit, and he drew on it, carefully. He didn’t usually smoke; he’d had a habit once years ago but had long since given it up as a bad job. Now he told people around him foolish enough to still imbibe that what they were sucking into their lungs was Death Row. Suicide, he said, but without any of the relief.

Now though, there was relief. He took it slow and the first few drags made him light headed and dizzy. He had to expel breath from his nostrils, his hands being bound behind the chair. It came to him that a lot of the pleasure back when he had been a smoker was the touch of the thing in his fingers. That pleasure was denied him, for now anyway, but he made a vow that if he got out of this thing alive, the first thing he’d do would be to sit and smoke himself a pack of Luckys. Then he could fondle them all he wanted. Well, maybe not the whole pack, and maybe it wouldn’t be the first thing he’d do, but he would do it.

“How’s that?” The big voice.

Jake felt his mouth turning into a smile. It didn’t go deep but there was something nice about its surface touch. And, he thought, it probably fit the cigarette well. “Feels good,” he said. “Better than I remembered. I’d given up.”

“Yeah. I figured. I thought that first pull was gonna take you on out of here.”

“Almost did.”

“Well, it’ll all be over soon enough now.”

“You reckon?”

“Sure I do. Like we already told you, we’ve done this before.”

“Christ, time can be a hard thing to kill. How long does it take to make a phone call, anyway? Your pal’s been gone an age. You got the time?”

“It’s coming on for five.”

“And what time did he leave to make the call?”

A pause. “About two.”

“Three hours, huh.” He wanted to laugh but held the urge back. The seeds of doubt were pretty well set in his captor’s mind, that much was evidenced by the pause. Laughing could push him into a corner, make him dangerous. He settled for smoking the cigarette. It was amazing how quickly it all came back, the ease of dealing with it, a cancer stick. “Maybe there’s a good reason for it taking so long. Probably my wife is having trouble making up the cash.”

“Yeah, or maybe she’s holding out, figuring a way to get shot of you, like Charlie said.”

Charlie. Did the guy know what he just done? The thing, of course, was not to dwell on it. He tried to look offended by what the big man had said, though inside, his heart was beating hard again.

“My wife will pay,” he said. “It’s just, well, eight hundred thousand is a lot of money. Not too many people have that kind of cash under the mattress. If you had pulled this thing during the daytime, she could have got the money pretty quickly. But the middle of the night …”

“The money’s there,” the big guy said. “We done our homework, and we know that you got that safe in your room with probably double that number in neat stacks. What is it, tax dodge, something like that?”

Jake inclined his head. The pain from the wound was pretty bad, but he kept the smile in place. “Yeah, something like that, I guess. Just my little nest egg.”

“Point is, she’s got the bread. So why’s she holding out?”

“I don’t know,” Jake admitted. “Maybe she’s hoping you guys don’t know about the safe.” Or maybe she paid already, and maybe your little pal is half-way to Mexico by now. That was the thought that he knew was already in the other man’s head. Already there, or soon to break.

They finished their cigarettes and it seemed talking time was done. Well, that was just fine with Jake. He listened to the footsteps take the big man back and forth across the floor, restless in the extreme, to the window sometimes, Jake guessed, and to the table. Now at times there was the rustle of pages, and it was a newspaper. The growing tension was a palpable thing in the room.

“I don’t suppose you’ve got any aspirin,” Jake asked once. “My head feels like it’s cracked open.”

It was a request that went unacknowledged, and that was just fine too.

* * *

By 9 a.m., Jake chanced another word. This was risky, but he was not exactly a stranger to risks. “Face it, pal,” he said. “Your buddy’s not coming back.” He braced himself for rough stuff, another blow to the head, or maybe even a bullet. That wouldn’t have made any sense, but sense didn’t count for much when the situation had taken this kind of turn. He all but held his breath, but seconds passed and nothing more came than the slight rasp of the other man’s sigh.

“Could be that something’s gone wrong. Maybe my wife did call the police, after all, or called someone, and they could have taken out your friend at the baggage drop, hit him or taken him in. If that’s the case then he’s either dead or he’ll be spilling his guts about everything. Maybe if it’s the cops that got him you’ll still have a chance. But you do know who I am, right? I mean, you said that this was a well planned job, carefully staked out. You knew about the safe, and if you had that much then you’ll also know what kind of friends I keep. At least if it’s cops, and I don’t think either of us really believe that my wife would bring in the law, but at least if it is them then they will be bound by certain rules. You ever seen anybody tortured, big man? Ever seen what a guy can do with a blow torch or a straight razor if he really knows his tools? Nobody can keep from talking under that kind of persuasion.”

He lapsed into silence for a moment, allowing all that he had said to sink in. This was the dangerous time; the kidnapper with his back firmly to the wall and trying to weigh up the quickly diminishing options.

“Of course,” Jake said, a gently as he could, “that is the worst case scenario. As likely as not, my wife just made the drop. Eight hundred thousand isn’t all that much, I mean really, when you think about it, or not when you weigh it against the threat. And if that was how it played out then it means that your pal decided he had enough of sharing. He’d taken the real risk, after all, the danger in these situations is always going to collect the cash, that’s where all the nasty surprises live. Maybe he was planning it this way all along, one solid score and he’d retire, take it way down south. A guy could live pretty big on that kind of money if he went to the right places.”

The big man said nothing, but Jake could hear that rustle of breathing and he knew his words were making sense.

“However this thing went down, it’s been a lot of hours now, which I guess makes it a pretty safe bet that he won’t be coming back.”

And here it was, the crux of the matter. The big man knew it and Jake knew it too. He listened to the floor groan beneath the weight of the approaching footsteps and as before, he fancied that he could actually feel the cold touch of shadow as it spilled over him.

“You got a helluva mouth to be talking like that.”

Jake said nothing. The guy was looking for a trigger, any excuse now to lash out. Doubt was gone; now he had the situation right in his mind. Either he’d been double-crossed, or he was a sitting duck.

In the distance they both heard the humming approach of a car’s engine. This was obviously some backwoods place that they had chosen to lay low. The worst thing now, Jake thought, was that this be Charlie, returning from a smooth operation, laden down with cash. That would be it for certain, the big man was close to snapping, and all that pent-up fear and anger would have to go somewhere. Jake knew that it would be to him that it would go, and in the shape of a bullet or something just as deadly. Money brings confidence to a lot of guys.

They listened to the car but it seemed to come only so far. Then the engine was cut, or the car simply took a different turn.

Cops! Jake thought, an instant before he said it. They had found the place and were staking it out. Now it would get bad.

He raised his head, still going for calm but to his own ears not quite succeeding. There was a high-toned quality to his voice, unfamiliar.

“It’s the police. Your pal must’ve broke.”

“Shut up!” Right in his face then, hushed but ferocious. “Just shut the hell up, all right? I gotta think a minute about this.”

You don’t have time for thinking, Jake thought. Because what if it’s not the law. What if it’s the men I told you about. The craftsmen. He thought all of this, but he didn’t say it. Not yet.

Not until the big man had crossed the floor again to the window could he risk speaking once more. He kept it soft then, and tried, with his tone as much as his words, to show the guy a door out of this mess.

“Listen,” he said. “I guess, we’re both nervous about how things will turn out. For my part, I don’t want to get killed. In fact, I’ll do just about anything I can to prevent that from happening. And you, well, I think the way things have turned that you’d be all right with just getting away clean. I understand that you are gonna be coming out of this a bit light in the pocket, especially given what you had been expecting by now had things turned out differently. I got about eight hundred bucks in my wallet, and it’s yours, just take it, you’re more than welcome to it. That way, at least the night won’t have been a total wash-out. And you’ll live to fight another day.

“And also, why kill me? Kidnap’s one thing, carries some pretty hefty jail time, I won’t deny it. But murder and you’re talking the injection. They’ll stick you, sure as anything, can’t be seen to spare a kidnapper-slash-murderer, even if the victim is mob-handed. Now, I’ve been blindfolded the entire time, right? I haven’t seen you or your partner. If the cops have him I guess your chances of getting away clean are halved at least, but there’s still a chance, right? They’ll have him so they may not feel the need to shake the world upside down trying to find you. You can run for the border.”

“I could kill you and do all that anyway,” the guy said. “You know my voice, probably could finger me on that alone. And it’s dollars to donuts that you’ll come after me big time. I’ll be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my days.”

Jake had the sense that he was still looking out of the window. It was still early and, for winter, it would be only coming on for light outside. He’d be watching for anything, but whether it was cops or hitmen, they’d have to advertise their presence in order for him to see anything.

“I could just put a cap in you, shut you up for once and all. Probably that’s what I’ll do anyway, soon as I think it through.”

“Killing puts a different complexion on things. They’ll hunt you down to the ends of the earth for that, because this will be big news then. And it won’t be half a rap either, because your companion is no longer in the picture.

“Besides, if they are cops out there and they hear a shot, they’ll leave this whole place as nothing but sawdust. I’m afraid, I don’t mind telling you. A guy like me has a lot of enemies. In my business, even close friends can turn bad on you in an instant. And the cops, well, they wouldn’t exactly be queuing up to offer me much in the way of help. I get shot, they’ll figure what the hell, you know, I deserved it about a thousand times over. Thing is though, they won’t be making it a priority to decorate you with any medals either. Murder is still murder. Let me tell you, the guys outside, I’m hoping they’re my friends, but only just. I stand a better chance with them, if only just. And for you, I guess it won’t make too much difference one way or the other. Because they hear a shot, anything that happens after that is self-defence. Come to that, they won’t even need to hear the shot.”

“Yeah, well, they won’t. Because if I decide to pin you it’ll be a slow carve. I ain’t much looking forward to the mess of it, but as you say, what the hell, you know. You do what you’re good at, and I’m pretty good with a knife. So, there’ll be no shot. At worst, they’ll hear you scream.”

Jake sighed. It hurt still to nod his head, but he did so anyway. “Well, it’s like that, is it? I’m a dead man, no matter what I do or say.”

“I ain’t made up my mind on it, yet, not a hunnert percent. But that’s where I’d be laying my chips if I was the kind given to gambling.”

“So I take it that you wouldn’t be open to a deal?”

It had gone pretty quiet outside, enough to make him start thinking that maybe that earlier car had been nothing at all, nothing more than a stray or just some guy on his way to do a spot of fishing. But the big man was fixed to the window.

“If you gotta waste your breath with talk, that’d be as good a direction as any to send it, I guess.”

That made Jake laugh, but it was a sound that had nothing to do with happiness. It was the laugh of a man who had seen and done hard things. Once he had watched a man fed to pigs.

“Why don’t you just do it then, prove you got more guts that I’d give you credit for. And while you’re at it, take this goddamn blindfold off of me. Always try to see the eyes when you kill someone.”

“Don’t push me or I’ll do it. So help me, I’ll do it.”

Outside there was the sound of movement. Not much, just a footfall, lumbering on a patch of dry ground.

“They’re here, pal. Time’s a ticking and you’ve been hung out to dry. Your partner’s gone, whatever way you figure it, either he ditched you or they’ve already got him. Now if I was you I’d be saying my prayers, hoping to whatever almighty there is that it’s only the cops.”

“I told you already, shut the hell up.”

But Jake didn’t shut up. Rather, he began to shout, nonsense vowels, not really words at all, only desperate sounds. Not screaming, because he was Jake Burrows and men like him didn’t tend to scream. He wasn’t even afraid, not really. He had often wondered how his death would come, and how he would deal with it when it finally did arrive, but now that it seemed to be here a lot of the dread seemed unimportant. He shouted, hollered really, and he felt good about it, even with the pain threatening to split open his head and even more so when he felt the big man cross the floor at a run and bring something hard down across his brow. The blow had the effect of pitching him sideways to the floor and on impact he felt his bracing shoulder jar loose from its socket. But he kept roaring, even with the air like blades now slicing up his lungs. A part of him was listening for the click of a weapon being readied but if that happened then he missed it.

The movement outside was unmistakable now, the sound of running, and even blindfolded he knew that the big man was behind him, using him as a kind of shield and with his gun set fast to the door.

* * *

Charlie, the partner, should have called out first. Probably he thought that Jake’s men had found the place and that the shouts were the effect of some torturous touches from well-trained hands. It wouldn’t be cops because there were no cars, or none that he could see at first glance, and entry didn’t appear to have been forced. He should have called out that he was back, that everything had gone well and that they were on their way to Mexico with a nice little nest egg, but he probably didn’t want to warn whoever was inside doing whatever nasty thing to his partner and his pal. So he kicked in the door, his mind full of heroic thoughts or maybe full of nothing at all except protective instinct.

The big man shot him four times before realising his mistake. Four shots that stood him up, pocked fatal holes in the guy’s chest and face, and pitched him backward out again into the dirt.

For Jake the gunshots seemed huge, echoing around the small room. He waited for his end, waited for his counting of the shots to cease. They did, at four, but he didn’t feel anything more than what he had already been feeling, which was the dislocated shoulder and the fractured skull. He had been set for the heat of a bullet, his body as well as his mind—he’d been shot before, twice, once in the leg and once in the back, and he knew how they felt when they didn’t kill you—and when the barking of the shots began at last to fade he wondered if he was, in fact, dead. It was dark still from the binding of the blindfold, and quiet apart from the sound of breathing made almost mute with shock, but maybe that was what death would be like for a man like him, one who had lived a life strewn with terrible acts. Maybe this was Hell, a black nothing paralysis of endless pain. Except that he knew even as he had the thought that this wasn’t Hell, that he had not been hit by any bullets and that he was still very much alive.

The same though, couldn’t be said for the one who’d stormed the place.

Quite when he knew the dead man to be Charlie he couldn’t have said; it seemed to him that he was already somehow aware of it when the big man grunted the name as a moan of anguish. On some level he had known right from the patter of the running footsteps who it was. But he felt nothing, neither happiness nor sadness. It was just how this thing had chosen to play itself out.

From where he lay, tipped over on his side, still bound to the chair by the duck tape and the several loops of rope, and with all of his body weight pressing down onto his dislocated shoulder, all he could do was guess at what was happening. He tried hard to fix on sounds but for a long time there was nothing more than the husk of the big man’s typically laboured breath pulling and sighing, pulling and sighing.

It came to him that maybe the invading partner had managed to get off a shot of his own before he was gunned down—surely he wouldn’t venture in to Christ only knew what kind of situation without a firearm at the ready and his heart and his mind set for action—but that possibility was dismissed pretty quickly. All four fired shots had come from behind him, he was certain of that, could actually feel their vibrations in his gums as they cracked free. No, the big man wasn’t shot, but he seemed broken, just the same. What had cut him down was the grief of a wild act; his partner had not betrayed him after all. Charlie had always been as good as his word, but he had let some punk talk him into believing otherwise. He hated himself for having fallen for the devil’s soothing words, but Jake knew that such hatred would soon enough find a new outlet. That was when he’d die; when enough of the shock had washed away for the big man to realise who was really at fault here.

After some time of listening only to that voice and to the shuffle of his own beating heart, Jake heard the clear sound of his lone remaining captor pulling himself upright from his spill and crossing to the door. Jake fancied that he could almost see the man, leaning against the doorway’s frame and maybe crying for what he had done. Imagining a wash of white light, the glow of a morning holding rain, and that big head bowed over unsteady breath as tears crawled from slatted eyes. Maybe it was the first time the man had killed, or the first time he had killed someone close. Jake remembered how both of those things felt, some memories found it hard to fade. Killing was a thing that became easier with practice, but the scars from that first touch with mortality were deep and slow to heal.

He had to strain to hear the words the big man muttered. There was a breeze outside and it tore the sense from the utterances, but from the little that he caught, Jake could make out that the words made up the mantra of prayer. An Act of Contrition;

Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee…

The sob, when it followed, was expected, but the fifth gunshot wasn’t. It startled Jake, jerked him hard from his concentration of small things. A muffled sound, but immense in the blindfolded darkness. Fighting hard to understand what had occurred, he realised that he knew the sound, knew that such muffled strength was a gun’s barrel pushed against flesh, and lit.

“Big man? Hey, how about sitting me up over here.” His words rang out small after the gunshots but the way they hung in the air hinted at an immense emptiness. The desperately thin sound of a man left all alone.

* * *

Detective Pete Mackinaw looked around again. It was a scene that made him only want to shake his head. That was what he did these days, when faced with such scenes. Just shook his head, where once he might have been sick.

The theory that came to mind was as good as any, he supposed, and so he scratched it down in his small pocketbook. The pencil needed sharpening, but it was kind of right that the notes should be blurred and hard to read. That said as much about this thing as any words he could use.

It just had to be some kind of kidnapping job. Nothing else made any sense. Not that this made much sense either but at least it managed to tie up the loose ends in a way that would satisfy the guys upstairs. A kidnap that seemed to go without a hitch, which made it about as rare as a nutritious Big Mac. And of course, the hostage being who he was, well, that just made it all the more intriguing.

As best as he, or any of the guys, could figure it, one of the kidnappers had gone to make the pick-up while the other stayed behind to watch over their prisoner. A prisoner who happened to be Jake Burrows, and Burrows, much as he might have liked to deny it, was locked down as Consiglieri to one of the biggest crime organisations in the U.S. mob scene, the Farelli family. He was bad people, no question, and either these guys who had snatched him—nothing surfaced yet as to connections or records or even identities—well, either they were very smart or very goddamn insane. There’d have been no cop involvement, but Mackinaw considered as he scratched down his notes that he’d rather have the whole of the force on his back than some of the creatures that Gino Farelli held on strangling leashes.

Burrows was what he was, the cops knew it and the Feds were in the process of building a case on it, one of those big TV movie type get-togethers that would blow organised crime wide open. Like in the old days. Except Burrows would have had to be made talk, and that was a task that had grown just a little more difficult with the passing of these last few hours.

In a way, Mackinaw was glad about it; he hated those sons of bitches for the way they lived, strutting around down on Mulberry until it became so that innocent citizens were afraid to take a wrong turn. They were punks, all of them, but he was glad because his hatred for them was swamped by what he felt for the Feds. Christ, those guys were the real menaces to society. Not all of them, probably, but it was a job that seemed invariably to draw applications from the gene pool of the maniacally paranoid and the God-complex egotists, and that significant percentage of borderline cases was enough, in his mind anyway, to tarnish them all with the one sticky brush.

The kidnap job, either foolish or daring, must have gone well, because here the bagman was, with a bundle of unmarked, non sequential cash—they were still counting, but it looked like the big part of something like a million bucks. And that was where the mystery set in. Because the other guy, the big guy with little over half a skull remaining, must have been working out some kind of double-cross. Either that or Burrows had put some kind of poison in his mind. It wouldn’t be threatening talk, not exactly, not in such a situation where a fellow needed to thread very carefully so as not to trigger anything irreversible.

But how ever it happened, it looked like the big one lay in wait and pumped four of the best into his partner. Maybe he figured one could disappear more easily than two, and also that twice the share of the money would provide a little extra comfort for the nights to come down in Mexico or where ever it was they had planned to go. Four caps, plenty to make certain of the job. The problem was that he obviously turned the gun on himself then, put the barrel in his mouth and cut a new .38 calibre channel to freedom.

Grief over what he had done? Maybe, but doubtful that it would rise so quickly to the surface, not if he had intended to kill his partner for a chunky share of cash. Understandable enough if he was found some weeks down the line, given over to guilt. But this was odds on that the pathologist would reckon time of death at just about the same.

By that reckoning it must have been an accident, gunning down the partner. Probably he was pretty wired, given the situation. The job had gone to plan so they must have researched the details, and that being the case it would be hard to blame him for being a bit jumpy, knowing the kind of men that could come through the door, men who would laugh at their victim’s screams and do deplorable things just for the hell of it. Mackinaw could almost hear Burrows, goading gently, knowing of the line not to be crossed but probably going toes up to it anyway. Why the four shots though, if it was all just a terrible accident? Panic maybe, or maybe not.

It was the suicide part of the deal that done it for all concerned. Because Burrows—who had, by the looks of things, taken a pretty bad beating—lay on his side in the middle of the bare floor. Pushed over in the furore, no doubt. Well, there was doubt, but without anything concrete in the way of answers that was best left go. And to lay there for twenty days. It was hard to say he deserved that, even though Mackinaw had been around long enough to know that the bastard deserved it all, and more besides.

They say of course that a man can’t live more than a few days without water, though in recent times there have been medical experts putting forward theories that the body is even more resourceful than had ever been expected and that it was conceivable that such survival time could be doubled or even tripled, depending on the man. Even tripled though—and again, the pathologist would have the final shout on that—it would have merely served to prolong the agony.

Twenty days, until a passing angler, on his way to a little-known and rarely used trout fishing hole, had happened upon the scene of carnage. Actually, from the cops’ point of view, it was lucky that the guy had been alone; had there been two or three of them, things often had a habit of taking wrong turns. A briefcase full of money might have been a temptation too sweet to resist, and maybe, in order to earn the cash, or to feel like they had earned it, they might have dug graves and buried the dead, figuring it was the least they could do and persuading each other that it was the kind of cash that wouldn’t be showing up on anyone’s tax returns. Drugs or guns; that’s what it would be. And couldn’t they all find good use for it? Yes sir, they had come out this day with trout in mind, but they had somehow snagged a bigger fish.

But since it was only one, Mackinaw’s experience was that the guy generally tended to do the right thing. And that was how it went on this occasion. Actually, this guy had been pretty shocked, though not so shocked that he had failed to notice the slab of cash and to make repeated inquiries about a reward. Mackinaw was waiting for the count to come back with some crazy tally, you know, some odd figure that would never turn up as a ransom request. That way they’d be pretty certain that the guy, the good citizen, had taken just a little dip, had pawed enough for a down payment on a boat or on his kid’s college fees. Well, who could blame him if he did, but the law would toast him for it, just the same.

Christ though, the Burrows way was one unenviable way to go. Lack of water, probably old Jake was out of his head delirious by the end. As it was now, the body was pretty chewed up, a lot of critters out here. Mackinaw didn’t want to let his mind make tracks in that particular direction, but the question of whether or not the rats had waited for him to die before starting in on him, well, that just nagged and nagged.

He must have lain there all that time, screaming at first, probably until he had no voice left, and he was tied fast with rope and tape to that chair, no possibilities of escape except for rescue. A rescue that came far too late. Blindfolded too. It was a safe bet to assume that he thought the blindfold would save his life, that they’d let him live because he hadn’t seen them and therefore couldn’t identify them to anyone. But that was a bad way to die. Days and nights of the same never-ending blackness, time meaning nothing except a deepening of the thirst. And it wasn’t until the rats ate through it for the soft sweetness of the eyes that he would have caught a last glimpse of light. Unless of course, they had made that particular breakthrough during the night hours.

Poor bastard, Mackinaw thought to himself as he folded his notebook and returned it to his jacket’s inside pocket. It was a thought that he had never expected to have, not for a man like Jake Burrows anyway.