David Jackson - Marked

‘If I do this? What then?’

Bartok strolls back toward the gruesome seated corpse. ‘You scratch my back, I scratch yours. I get my ring, you get the wop. You want, you can dig the slugs out yourself. I’ll make sure he’s nice and defrosted for you. You got till eight o’clock on Sunday morning. Drop it in on your way to church.’

‘Sunday? It’s already Thursday. No dice, Lucas. I need longer.’

‘Sunday morning. After that, I get rid of the body before it starts to smell. I’ll tie a ribbon around it and leave it outside police headquarters, somewhere like that, and you can start looking forward to your jail time.’

Doyle looks at the sad spectacle of Sonny Rocca. Sitting there, all hunched up, with four bullets in his chest, a length of steel in his brain, and every cell in his body turned to ice. Could the guy be any more dead?

Doyle sighs. ‘How do I get in touch?’

‘Sven will give you a number. You don’t call, then he comes looking for you. Don’t make him have to do that, Doyle.’

Doyle stands. ‘You better keep your side of this, Lucas.’

Bartok returns to the chair at his desk. ‘I told you. You scratch my back, I scratch yours. Just make sure Ruger don’t scratch you first.’

The four meatheads escort Doyle out of there then. It’s a relief to be away from Bartok, but he could do without this new mission.

As he clatters back down the iron staircase he thinks, Don’t I have enough on my plate already? Now I have to go on a quest for a damn ring.

Now I’m Bilbo fucking Baggins.

Stanley Francis Proust sits at his table and stares at the man opposite.

He doesn’t like bringing people back here, into his living quarters. The shop, fine. He can keep things professional out there. He can be in charge. But here, the presence of others always makes him feel defensive.

He wonders what the man thinks of his home. There is nothing expensive here — Proust doesn’t make a lot of money and hey, we’re talking Manhattan rental here. The furniture is old and battered. The wallpaper is peeling in several places. The paintwork is faded and scratched. Proust has done his best to liven things up with some pictures and photographs and arty curios from charity stores, but he always feels that visitors can see through to the cheapness and nastiness that lurks beneath.

The man’s name is Ed Gowerson. Other people may call him Eddie or Edward, but Proust will stick with the name that was given in the introduction. He doesn’t want to risk causing offense.

Gowerson is one of those men who shave their head completely to hide their premature baldness. Proust guesses he can’t be much older than thirty. He is wearing a black sports jacket and a blue striped shirt, open at the collar to reveal a silver chain around his neck. He has incredibly square teeth, like a row of Chiclets. Unlike his head, his lower jaw is darkened by a pall of stubble that threatens to erupt from his face at any moment. If Proust were to make a tattoo of Gowerson, or even just a sketch, he would focus on that darkness and make a feature of it. He would echo it in the blackness of the man’s eyes. That is how he sees this man: a figure of intense shadow.

Proust clears his throat, then wishes he hadn’t because it makes him sound nervous. Which he is.

‘You, uh, you want a coffee or something?’

Gowerson shakes his head. ‘No, I’m good.’

‘A soda, maybe?’

Gowerson leans forward and places his arms on the scarred wooden table. His shoulders strain against the fabric of his jacket. He is not a large man, but Proust guesses that there is a mass of muscle tissue rippling beneath that jacket. Proust glances at Gowerson’s hands, now lightly clasped together. There are no rings on his fingers, but his wrist bears a huge watch with lots of dials on it. Like one of those diver’s watches. Proust can imagine this guy at the bottom of the sea, pounding the shit out of a Great White.

‘Mr Proust, why did you call me?’

Mr Proust. So formal. It seems anomalous in the circumstances.

He clears his throat again. How to put this? How to be clear in such an unusual request?

‘You. . I mean, I heard you were good at this kind of thing.’

‘What kind of thing would that be?’

‘Hurting people.’

There, thinks Proust. It’s out there. In the open. We both know what we’re talking about here.

Gowerson stares for a while. ‘Yes. Yes, I am good at hurting people. But what I often find is that those who employ me don’t truly understand the nature of my work.’

Proust wants to say, You beat the crap out of people. What is there to understand? It ain’t exactly splitting the atom. But he doesn’t.

‘I. . I’m not sure I get you.’

‘What I’m trying to say to you is that it’s not like on TV or the movies. You’ve seen those fights they have, where they go back and forth, back and forth, smacking each other hundreds of times until one falls unconscious and then the other one walks away with no more than a cut lip and a bruise? Well, it’s not like that. What I do is brutal and messy and it hurts. And sometimes people never get up again after I’m finished with them.’

‘I’m not asking you to kill anyone. Jesus, why are you saying all this? This isn’t what we discussed on the-’

Gowerson holds up the palm of his hand. ‘All I’m trying to do is make sure you know what you’re getting into, okay? There’s nothing that pisses me off more than when a client starts bleating afterwards about how they didn’t know what they were buying from me. I will do exactly what we agreed. I won’t go beyond the boundaries you mentioned. Occasionally, however, things don’t always go as planned. A guy might have a weak heart or something wrong with his brain. It’s like there’s a bomb in there, and all it takes to make it go boom is something as small as a light tap to the chin.’

‘You’re saying there are risks involved.’

Gowerson nods. ‘Is what I’m saying. You need to be aware of those risks. You also need to be aware that there will be blood and there will be pain. Now, are you still certain you want me to go through with this?’

Proust wishes he hadn’t been asked this. He doesn’t want to be confronted with all this doubt and uncertainty. He doesn’t want to think about risks and ramifications. He thought he would just meet the guy, pay him, and the job would get done. Clean and simple.

And so the upshot now is that he’s having second thoughts. Does he really want this to happen? Does he really want to unleash this Rottweiler of a man?

And yet what choice has Doyle left him? Doyle will never let up. He has made that crystal clear. The man is obsessed. He needs to be taught that he can’t keep harassing people like that.

‘I’m certain,’ says Proust.

Gowerson watches him for what seems like an age. Proust can feel himself withering under the man’s gaze.

‘All right,’ says Gowerson. ‘Then there’s just the little matter of payment for my services.’

Proust gets up from the table, glad to be moving away from this man, if only for a few seconds. He goes over to a low bookcase and pulls out an envelope that he previously secreted between two science fiction novels. When he turns around again, he sees that Gowerson is on his feet. He is not tall, but he is imposing, and Proust suddenly wishes he could pass the envelope across on the end of a long fishing rod. His steps toward Gowerson are tentative, and his arm has a discernible tremble to it when he presents the envelope.

‘Once I take the money,’ says Gowerson, ‘that’s it. Our agreement is binding. There’s no going back, no calling me off. Think of me as a cruise missile. Once you launch me, you can’t pull me back in. You cool with that?’