David Jackson - Pariah

‘A little exercise will soon warm you up. Start digging, Cal.’

Doyle looks down at the ground. With the tip of the spade he scrapes a hole in the carpet of dead leaves, then taps the hard soil beneath.

‘This ground’s frozen, Mo, and I’m not in the best of shape right now.’

‘I’ll do it myself if I have to, Cal. But only after I’ve put a bullet in you.’

‘Never mind. I’ve just remembered how much I like digging.’

He puts his foot on the edge of the spade’s head and transfers his weight onto it. He’s surprised at how easily the blade sinks into the soil once it breaks through the top crust.

Which means that this isn’t going to drag on as long as I hoped, he thinks. Great.

He throws out a few mounds of earth, wincing against the pain in his side with each swing.

Franklin says, ‘Hurry it up, Cal. I’ll be arriving home soon, crying out at the sight of my poor murdered wife.’ He pauses for a second. ‘Or maybe I had too much work to do and decided to stay in my Manhattan apartment. Hmm, I’ll have to think that one over.’

Doyle continues to dig. Sweat trickles from his brow, and now his whole ribcage seems to be throbbing with the pain.

He pauses for breath, one hand resting on the end of the spade, the other pressed to his side.

‘What’s the matter, Cal? Young guy like you shouldn’t have any trouble doing this.’

Doyle doesn’t answer. He sniffs again, smells the resin from the trees surrounding him. He looks hard at those trees. Looks for a way out of this. Looks for some hope. Finally, he puts his hands down and faces Franklin. The upright spade topples and falls to the ground.

‘What are you doing, Cal? That’s not nearly deep enough.’

‘It’s over, Mo.’

Franklin raises his gun and points it at Doyle. ‘It’s over when I say it is. Now keep digging or I’ll shoot you. Makes no difference to me whether I kill you now or when you’re done. Just thought you’d appreciate a few more minutes to make your peace with the Lord. You’re a Catholic, aren’t you?’

‘Lapsed. I got the feeling He wasn’t listening to me. Somebody else has been, though.’

Franklin says nothing for a few seconds. Doyle senses the alarm creeping into the man’s bony frame.

‘What? What the fuck are you talking about?’

‘Back at the house. I wasn’t the only one listening in to that microphone strapped to Nadine. You may have got my recorder and my tape, but the wire was still running, Mo. Still pumping it out to another machine. All that stuff you said after you brought me into the house. It’s all been recorded. You’re finished, Mo.’

Franklin stands up on the rock. His gun is still aimed at Doyle, but his eyes scan the woods nervously.

‘Don’t try to mind-fuck me, Cal. As an attempt to save your ass, it’s pretty pathetic. You’re the loneliest man on the planet. You dropped off the face of the earth, and even if you hadn’t, there isn’t another cop who’ll knowingly come within a mile of you.’

‘Who said anything about cops?’ Doyle asks.

The crack of the gunshot sounds like a huge branch snapping off one of the trees. Doyle’s whole body jumps.

But he’s not the one who’s been shot.

Franklin’s gun hand jerks to his left, the Glock flying from it and clattering onto the rocks. The woods are suddenly alive with the sounds of animals and birds scampering and flapping in panic. Franklin clutches his arm, looks down at it in disbelief and agony.

Then, from behind Franklin, another figure appears and steps up onto the rock. He walks casually, a sniper rifle with telescopic night sights in his hands. Franklin whirls on the intruder.

‘Who the fuck are you?’ he asks.

The man’s response is to slam the butt of his rifle into Franklin’s face. Franklin spins away and drops heavily from the rock. Without hurry, and seemingly without emotion, the man follows Franklin down and aims his rifle at him.

Another man comes into view from around the rock. He’s not holding a gun, but Doyle knows that he is definitely the most dangerous man here.

He steps over to where Franklin is lying on the ground.

‘Stand up.’

Franklin staggers to his feet.

The man says, ‘You know who I am?’

Franklin rubs his injured face. ‘You’re Lucas Bartok.’

Bartok nods. ‘And you’re the man who had my brother killed.’

Franklin hesitates. He knows it’s the end, Doyle thinks. He hopes his boss will choose to go out like a man.

‘Your brother was a stinking piece of shit,’ Franklin says. ‘And you’re a stinking piece of shit who can’t even see straight ’cause he jerks off too much. Get it over with, Squinty.’

Like a man, then, Doyle thinks.

Bartok doesn’t argue and doesn’t wait for a second invitation. His arm shoots out into Franklin’s face, and for a brief moment Doyle wonders why he leaves it there.

And then he remembers something about Bartok.

He remembers that he likes to use a meat hook.

And right now that hook is embedded in Franklin’s left cheek like he’s a fish.

With a roar of anger, Bartok yanks Franklin toward him, spins him right around, and then flings him toward the rock. As Franklin goes one way, Bartok wrenches the hook in the other direction. Franklin’s cheek explodes as he hurtles back against the rock.

Doyle takes a step forward, but Bartok’s henchman raises his rifle, smiles, and shakes his head.

Bartok advances on Franklin, and again his arm whips out. This time the tip of the hook sinks into Franklin’s eye.

Franklin’s high-pitched scream scythes through the night air. He claws frantically at the metal thing protruding from his skull as Bartok drags him away. They disappear behind the rock, and even though they are now out of his sight, Doyle finds that he has to fix his eyes on the ground. He has to stare into the hole he has been digging and concentrate on that blackness to shut out the images. He tells himself that the noises he hears are wild animals fighting and calling to one another. It’s nature, that’s all. Just the animals. They sound like that sometimes. Almost human.

When it ends, Doyle feels faint with relief. The clearing is so chillingly silent he wonders if his fervent desire to cut out the screams has made him go deaf.

Bartok reappears looking like something from a zombie movie. In the moonlight, the blood that covers him from head to toe looks black. He walks toward Doyle, panting with the effort of his labors.

‘Talk about cutting it fine,’ Doyle says.

Bartok’s arm lashes out again. Doyle starts to dodge, but isn’t quick enough to avoid the cold steel connecting with his face. He drops to the ground, rolls to get away from Bartok’s onslaught. But when he looks up at Bartok, he sees that the man is no longer carrying his meat hook. What he struck with was Doyle’s own Glock.

Doyle touches his cheek. He feels warm blood there, but nothing as bad as he expected.

‘That’s for when you arrested me and my brother,’ Bartok says.

Doyle can sense he’s not done, though. When Bartok’s foot comes up, Doyle is ready to block it, grab it and push upward and back, knocking Bartok off balance.

But he doesn’t.

He doesn’t because that would mean his death. It would mean a salvo of bullets piercing his body within a split-second of any reaction against Bartok.

And so he takes the lesson, lets Bartok get it out of his system. Allows Bartok’s shoe to collide with his face, splitting open his lip.

‘And that’s for being a wise-ass.’

Doyle gets to his knees, tastes the blood gushing into his mouth. He spits it out onto the ground.

‘You done?’ he asks. ‘We finally quits now?’