Chris Mooney - World Without End

A tall and mean-looking brother stood against the side of the van, the dude's skin as dark as the night sky, his hair braided so close to his scalp it looked like a hedge maze.

"You fucked up my ride, bro," the man said, and then cocked his head to the side and smiled, flashing a mouthful of gold teeth. Out of the darkness came two more homies, the pair dressed in Tommy Hilfiger, loud and bright colors. The three punks grinned ear to ear, amused.

The Elf swallowed. Just play it cool.

"Let's be cool, okay? I've got my wallet right here," the Elf said. He reached inside his jacket for the Glock hanging in the shoulder holster.

"Fucking midget's packing," one of the brothers said, and the next thing the Elf felt was a hail of fists that plunged him screaming into darkness.

The apartment made a jail cell look like a resort getaway. Past the front door was a narrow foyer where you barely had enough room to hang your coat; take three steps and you were standing in the common room, with low ceilings and battle-scarred walls with chipped white paint and graffiti. A hallway led down to a bedroom where a mattress lay on the floor, covered by a crumpled white sheet; dirty clothes were balled in a corner.

The place should have been condemned and probably would have been, too, if a building inspector could have entered this neighborhood without fear of his losing his life. It was said that even the police avoided this section of Roxbury.

All the lights inside the dilapidated apartment were turned off. The semidark room was lit up by slivers of the urine-colored streetlights, one of the few that hadn't been shot out. The warm air was packed with the thick, overpowering stench of mold and cigarettes and marijuana smoke mixed with days-old Burger King food and beer cans that were piled high in the uncovered wastebasket from the attached kitchen.

Gang-bangers in their late teens to early twenties, all of them schooled on the street and dressed in expensive street threads and wearing mint baseball caps worn at odd angles, lumbered about the living room, their hard faces boiling with testosterone and rage and itching for the chance to get it on with either of the two white motherfuckers tied down to the cheap kitchen chairs that sat facing a large screen, brand new HDTV.

Conway leaned his back against the kitchen wall, his attention riveted to the center of the common room. The short guy with the black hair and the furry neck Conway recognized from the video. The Elf looked nervous; he kept swallowing and wouldn't look up.

But not Cole. Despite the fact he was bound and immobile, his face cut-up and bruised and bleeding from the beating he had endured outside, the man seemed completely relaxed. His blue eyes tracked each of the gang-bangers who loitered inside the room, their anxious fingers sliding up and down the triggers of their MAC 10s and handguns, and viewed them as if they were nothing more than harmless characters playing in a movie.

A kid no older than sixteen punched Cole across the mouth with a right hook that would have made Mike Tyson proud. Cole, bound to the chair, tumbled against the floor. The kid reached over and pulled Cole back up. His nose was broken; a red river poured out of his nostrils and dribbled onto his chin and chest.

"That's what you get for eye-fucking me, motherfucker," the kid spat.

Cole examined his lap where his blood dripped from his chin and splashed like the steady drops of a summer rain shower, his eyes still, reflective.

"Dude knows how to take a hit," Booker said to Conway. They were alone in the kitchen.

"These two boys from your backyard?"

"The guy who just got clocked is my CIA handler, Jonathan Cole. The other guy is the Elf. He planted the drugs around John Riley's apartment."

"What about the vegetable with the missing ear we found lying in the van?"

"Owen Lee, the Elf's partner. Lee played the part of the skydiving instructor back in Texas. He and the Elf placed the surveillance gear inside Riley's apartment. All three of them work for Bouchard."

"Black ops guys?"

"Something like that. Don't these windows have blinds?"

"Place ain't the Four Seasons, hoss."

"Cole's friends are going to be here soon."

"So let them come. People are out front, watching. We're safe. These boys are the real deal. They don't fuck around."

"You mean these gang-bangers."

"They prefer the more politically correct term of urban relocation specialists." Booker grinned.

"You lucky I got such high connections."

Outside the window and across the street was another tenement building full of dark and mostly broken windows. Conway didn't know what was more frightening: the truth he had discovered on the CD or Angel Eyes's unpredictability. The guy and his men had a knack of materializing out of thin air at exactly the right moment.

Conway checked his watch. 5:40 P.M. In another twenty minutes, the six o'clock news would come on. His eyes shifted over to the common room.

He could feel the comfortable weight of the Clock stuck in the back of his waistband.

"I want to be alone with them."

"What you scheming inside your head?"

"Cole knows where Dixon and Kaufmann are hidden," Conway sainows where Bouchard is staying."

"And you think he's going to give them up?"

Conway looked down at the kitchen floor that had missing squares of linoleum. Someone had brought up one of those Rubbermaid gas cans.

Booker followed Conway's gaze.

"Ain't your style, hoss."

Conway didn't say anything.

"You've always had trouble playing in that zone. You like things nice and clean, black and white. Me, I'm used to the gray areas."

"Move your boys out."

"Once you step over that line, you're a lifetime member."

"You better move your boys outside."

Booker didn't say anything for a moment.

"Going to leave a couple of boys posted outside the door though, to make sure you're protected. Wear this," Booker said and handed over his headset and a new cell phone to Conway.

"Keep this on, I'll call you if anything pops up."

Conway took the gear and put it on. He had already dumped the watch and the phone but hung onto the Palm Pilot. With its Air Taser system and explosives, the device was just too handy to dump.

Booker made a motion to one of the boys and then a moment later everyone left the room. The apartment door shut.

Silence.

Conway stood in the warm semidarkness, not really in the room but inside his head. He saw Major Dixon strapped to a chair, the meat cleaver coming down and severing the finger because he had failed to deliver the decryption code needed for the military suit. And next came the fresh image of John Riley on the floor in his condo, dead from the rat poison injected into his neck. And what about Renee Kaufrnann?

What fate awaited her?

All these people dead, tortured. All because of Raymond Bouchard's orders orders that these men carried out.

Conway glanced over at the TV and thought about what was going to happen next. It wasn't good enough. Bouchard should be tied to a car bumper and dragged around from city to city.

Booker's right. This ain't your style.

And what is my style? Conway wondered. The last six years of his life had been based on the lies and deception manufactured by a man who had pledged ideals and honesty and morals. Conway gazed inward at that untouched private sanctuary deep within himself, the place where he sought refuge and where few people had been allowed entrance. What he pictured was a church ransacked of its sacred items, the space that was once a haven for reflection and retreat now defiled, filled with a cold air charged with the kind of rage that demanded an outlet, a release.

And there, standing in the middle of it all, his satisfaction well hidden as he led the secret pillaging, was Raymond Bouchard.