David Jackson - Pariah

But as they get nearer to him they slow down. He tries to make out their precise nature, but only when all of them come to rest at his feet is he able to see them for what they are.

Human heads. With faces he recognizes. There’s Joe Parlatti, staring at him with uncomprehending eyes and an open mouth. There’s Tony Alvarez, and there’s Spinner, and there’s. .

He decides to get out of there when the heads begin to scream at him.

They let out unpunctuated wails of torment and pain. Long drawn-out cries that can snap hearts and break minds. Doyle scrambles for the door, manages to squeeze himself through the gap as he did before. He pulls the door shut, muting the hellish sounds beyond. Resting his head against the cracked panel, he tries to regain his breath, his composure. He counts to ten, slowly turns.

Then, like Ebenezer Scrooge, he encounters the final ghost — the one he dreads most.

She is facing him, her arms out to him, pleading. Tears are running down her cheeks. She wants to know why.

But Doyle has no answers. All he can do is stare right through the ragged hole in Laura Marino’s chest. .

And scream.

He sits upright in bed, knowing that he has just screamed himself awake.

He’s drenched in sweat. Shaky from the nightmare he has just lived. Laura Marino’s heart-rending face is still imprinted on his brain.

‘It was moving,’ he mutters to himself in the blackness. ‘The fucking door was moving.’

He swings his legs out of bed, then pads naked to the bathroom. He fumbles for the light. Steps through onto the cool tiles. He squints at himself in the mirror over the sink. Not a pretty sight. He doesn’t know what time it is, but he hasn’t slept nearly enough to get the alcohol out of his system.

He moves over to the toilet, takes a pee that seems even to him to last forever, then goes back to the sink and fills it with lukewarm water. He splashes handfuls of it onto his face, his hands rasping against the roughness of his stubble. He dries himself on the fluffy hotel towel, then steps back into the main room, turning off the light as he enters.

He doesn’t know what it is — a sound, an odor, a flash of movement just before he doused the light — but he suddenly realizes that he’s not alone in this room.

He tries to act as though he hasn’t noticed a thing. He knows he’s at a disadvantage for several reasons. First of all, he’s still under the influence of numerous pints of Guinness. Second, he has just blinded himself with the lights in the bathroom, while the intruder’s eyes, on the other hand, are presumably fully accustomed to the darkness. Third, he cannot remember precisely where he put his gun when he got undressed. Last, but not least, he is as naked as the day he was born, which leaves him feeling kind of defenseless.

Straining to build a mental map of the room in front of him, he stumbles his way back to the bed and tries to make up his mind as to what to do now.

The gun, or the light switch?

His best guess is that his Glock is in the drawer of the bed table. But he could be wrong about that. And even if he’s right, he can’t see well enough to shoot anything.

So, he thinks, It’s the light then. But what’s the point in that? It might blind the guy for all of two seconds, but I still don’t have a weapon, and he might just decide to start blasting away.

Final decision — the gun first. He reaches into the drawer, acting all nonchalant like looking for tissues or some such, then dives for the light switch, hoping to get the drop on the guy. Okay, it’s not exactly the most foolproof plan in the world, but hey, I don’t have many options here.

Of course, if he’s mistaken, and there’s nobody else in the room, then he’s going to feel such a dick.

He sits on the edge of the bed, puts his head in his hands and lets out a groan.

‘God, my head,’ he mutters. ‘I so need a painkiller for this.’

He stretches for the drawer, slides it open, dips his hand inside.

Nothing. Except a Gideon Bible. Which in his experience doesn’t make the best of weapons.

‘Jesus, Mr Doyle, you are the world’s worst actor. I hope they never send you undercover on any narco busts, that’s the best you can do.’

Doyle turns toward the voice coming from the corner of the room. A lamp flares into life, and he squints to make out the figure seated next to the circular writing table.

‘I guess you’re looking for this,’ the man says, waving Doyle’s Glock in the air. ‘Boy, do you sleep heavy. I should have put the TV on while I was waiting, all the difference it’d make to you.’

Doyle blinks a few times at the familiar face. Tries to match it up with a name in his mental record book. The guy is big. Looks like he hits the weights. He has a wide jaw and dimples in his cheeks. His thick black hair has a pronounced widow’s peak.

‘I think you were having a bad dream there, buddy. Something about a door? What’s that about? You get stuck in a revolving door one time?’

Then it clicks. ‘Sonny Rocca.’

The man smiles. A big white grin. Perfect teeth.

‘I’m flattered. You remember me. I didn’t realize I’d left such a lasting impression. I’m touched, really.’

‘I like to take a mental snapshot of those people I’m gonna have to visit again someday.’

‘You planning to come see me again? That’s nice. Please, drop in anytime. I’ll make you some cannoli. My grandmother’s recipe.’ He touches forefinger and thumb to his lips, kisses them away. ‘Perfetto.’

‘You still running errands for Tweedledum and Tweedledee?’

Doyle watches Rocca’s face cloud over, and he knows he’s stung him.

‘If you mean am I still in the employ of Mr Bartok and his brother, then the answer’s yes.’

Doyle nods thoughtfully. ‘So they still won’t have you, huh?’

Sonny Rocca grew up in Little Italy, that area of Manhattan north of Chinatown that has been home to Italian-Americans since the immigrant influx of the late nineteenth century. As a teenager Rocca ran with gangs, got involved with petty crime and auto thefts. His one avowed ambition in life was to become a true mobster, a made man, a goodfella, a wiseguy.

The problem was that not one of the families would take him into its bosom. For one thing, his mother wasn’t Italian; she was Norwegian — as blond and fair-skinned and non-Mediterranean-looking as they come. It’s one of the reasons that Rocca has always overplayed the Italian side of his heritage, sometimes to the extent of sounding like a stereotype in a badly written play.

These days, as others have proved, full Italian blood isn’t the essential ingredient it used to be, but Rocca has other baggage too. Three years ago he became engaged to a girl who was the beloved niece of a high-ranking mobster. Naturally, his actions were purely tactical: he never really loved the girl, as he frequently proved through his bedding of other women. All was fine until she found out about his infidelity and called off the engagement, at which point Rocca found his ladder of success hauled away and some very mean individuals put in its place.

Schooled as he was in the ways of organized crime, Rocca settled for the next best thing. A family partnership that was willing to accept him with open arms. The Bartok brothers.

Lucas and Kurt Bartok are not Italian; like their composer namesake they are of Hungarian descent. As such, they don’t give a rat’s ass for the Cosa Nostra or its codes of conduct. They work alone, and they have carved out quite a comfortable niche for themselves, thank you very much. Occasionally they resort to acts of violence, and when they do it can be so extreme as to make even the Italian mobs balk. The elder brother in particular, Lucas, has a penchant for disemboweling people with a meat hook. Legend has it that Lucas once used his butchery skills to carve an enemy into many pieces before having the choicest cuts delivered to the victim’s family members as Thanksgiving presents.