For Nothing (21 page)

The Cleaner lit the material in the trash bin on fire as he flicked a match into the accelerant and walked out of the bathroom. Rafael made his way to the kitchen and placed his hand on the gas dial.

“Where wil you go then?” he asked.

The Cleaner paused for a moment. “Me? I have a cabin up in Canada. I might just stock it with some food, and spend a year fishing.”

“What should I do, if not this?” Rafael looked at the Cleaner, hoping for an answer.

“Fuck, I don’t know Rafael, haven’t you ever been happy? You know, doing something else? I don’t know. I’l tel you what. If you want to leave and can’t think of anything better to do, come here.” The Cleaner handed Rafael a post card with an address in Canada on it. “Hel , it can get lonely fishing by yourself for a whole damned year anyway. But I wil tel you one thing. When we walk out the back doors of this building, I am not looking back. From your apartment, straight to Canada. I won’t look back no matter what.”

With a nod, Rafael flicked the gas switch to

‘on’ and the two of them left the apartment. As they descended the stairs, Rontego thought more about the offer. It seemed like it might be a good idea.

Rafael the fisherman? The assassin chuckled as they reached the back door. He couldn’t believe he was even contemplating it.

The two men paused for a second, bracing to meet the cold Niagara air that was sure to blast them on the other side of the door. Rafael looked at the smal man in front of him.

“Hey Cleaner.”

The slight man turned toward the assassin.

“Are we friends?”

The Cleaner let a smile creep up on his lips.

“Friends? You know men like you and I don’t have friends.”

The Cleaner grabbed the door handle as Rafael started to contemplate why that truest of statements disappointed him so much.

“But then again,” the Cleaner continued, “if we

“But then again,” the Cleaner continued, “if we weren’t, than why would I let you know where to find me?”

With that, the amazing man slung his duffle bag over his shoulder and started walking down the road. Rafael stood there for a minute and smiled. He too opened the door and slung his duffle bag over his shoulder. That is when the smile disappeared from his lips.

As the door closed behind him, Rafael saw a large form, topped with a fedora, fal in step a dozen feet behind the Cleaner. He appeared as if from nowhere, materializing from the shadows, gun held out at a forty-five degree angle from his body.

Rafael knew who it was.

He grabbed a pistol from its holster and fel into step behind the figure, moving as quick as a cat to close the gap between himself and the Cleaner’s would-be pursuer.

It seemed like an eternity. The large silhouette gained a step on the Cleaner for every two steps Rafael closed between himself and his sudden target.

At the corner, at the end of the block, the oblivious Cleaner paused to check for traffic. His heart racing, Rafael thought he would be too late as the form raised his pistol and leveled it the back of the Cleaner’s head.

In ful sprint now, Rafael closed the gap, his own pistol raised and at the ready. The sudden rush of motion, however, alerted the dark form and it whirled around just in time. Just in time to catch a solitary bul et from Rafael Rontego in the side of the head. A solitary shot sent a cloud of bloody smoke onto the icy sidewalk. The form crumpled to the ground.

True to his word, the Cleaner, startled, straightened up, but didn’t look back. He just kept walking across the street as Rafael watched him depart.

Rontego stooped over the motionless form, and rol ed the man over. He avoided looking at Muro’s face while he riffled through the pockets of his jacket. After a moment, he found what he was looking for. He pul ed the smal wooden pawn out, and slipped it into his own pocket. He stood up, stepped over the body at his feet, and took a left across the street at a ninety-degree angle from the Cleaner and continued walking as wel . He holstered his weapon inside the folds of his coat and pul ed a Sobranie cigarette from a pack.

As he paused to light it, he mumbled,

“Goodbye Muro, my old friend.”

*

The three gangsters padded along the corridor. Their footsteps were measured and careful in the insufficient light generated by the low wattage bulb suspended above the narrow staircase. Their shadows elongated below them, casting an eerie shadow along the wooden banister and cascading onto the floor below.

Victor Garducci could hear his heartbeat pulsating in his neck and working its way up to his temples. Sal Pieri and Frankie DeRisio inched along ahead of him, a ful five steps up front. Victor was weighed down by the thoughts assaulting his senses as they crept along towards the door at the second level. How far was he wil ing to go to satiate his vengeance? So far, he was able to straddle the line. If the time came would he be wil ing to break al of the laws he swore to defend? How far was too far in the quest of bloody fulfil ment?

Sal looked down and back at him, an evil grin spread across his face and his eyes danced with a wild fire. As Sal crested the top of the stairwel , there was a sudden ‘pop’ in the distance. It sounded like a car backfired, but it did not matter to the three men so on edge.

As one, they crouched in a defensive posture and sucked in their breath. Frankie’s finger slipped to the trigger of his shotgun and the barrel rose to ward off the noise.

They waited for what seemed like an eternity, but hearing no further sounds, they inched along again. Sal reached the door first. He crept low in front of the door, regarding the lock. His hand went to the door and he turned the knob. The door knob didn’t turn far though, it was locked.

Frankie gave a snort and Victor couldn’t tel whether he scoffed in irritation, or in bemusement.

Sal’s hand slid down the door and came to rest on an almost invisible string tied taut about six inches off of the ground above the doors cracked and eroded weather strip.

eroded weather strip.

“Booby trap,” Frankie said, the alarm crept into his voice and he took a step backward down the stairs.

Sal shook his head, negating the concept.

His voice etched with the stress and excitement of the moment, he wheezed declaring his own theory.

“Warning wire.”

To emphasize his point, he flipped out a smal three inch blade and cut the string in front of the door.

Both Victor and Frankie crept downward another step. Their concern drew a scowl from Sal who motioned for the two to come back up. As much as he wanted his revenge, Victor admitted to himself that he was nervous. If this guy was better than Jack, he was unsure how wel he might fare against such an adversary, even with his band of unlikely al ies.

Sal took a lock pick from a chain around his neck and began fumbling with it in search of the right tool. This brought another grunt from Frankie, who lifted his shotgun again and jerked it in the direction of the dead bolt.

Another grin from Sal declared the capo’s approval and it was his turn to take a step back from the door. His submachine gun came around and pointed at the front of the door. Victor decided now was as good of a time as any to bring his own firearm to bear and held the Beretta out in front of him at eye height, but due to his positioning on the stairwel , he was not aiming much higher than Sal and Frankie’s waists.

Another pause ensued while the trio took a steadying breath, then with a nod from his leader; Frankie leveled his shotgun at the door lock and blasted a hole through the door about a foot in diameter.

The force of the blast shoved Frankie’s arms upward and sent pieces of wood and metal flying into the apartment. With a kick, Sal flung the door ajar, and took half a dozen running strides into the room. Frankie took a step inside and brought his shotgun around the door, first left, then right.

Sal, frantic, looked around the empty apartment. He looked for any sign of his target in the immediate room. Not seeing Rafael Rontego in the living room, he began to creep towards the bedroom, to the right of the apartment’s entrance.

Stil maintaining the il usion of stealth despite the noisy entry, Sal crouched as he walked, when a low hiss came from Frankie.

“You smel that?” Frankie’s forehead was scrunched up and he was sniffing the air.

“I don’t smel nothing,” Sal said.

Victor watched the two men and paused where he was, inside of the door frame, his back to the hal way. Sal pushed open a door on the side of the room, and a smal bil ow of smoke escaped the previously shuttered room behind.

“Holy shit!” Sal coughed as he took a few steps backward away from the haze.

Frankie shifted his weight and glanced at Victor, perplexed. Sal looked at the two of them as if he were about to say something when an explosion rocked the room and a large firebal shot forward from the blaze in the room.

The

flame

seemed

to

jerk

forward,

encompassing Sal Pieri and catching his clothing on fire. The window behind him exploded outward, showering the street with glass and flaming material from the interior of the apartment.

Sal let out a shriek of surprise that soon became one of excruciating pain. At the same instance, the force of the initial blast sent Frankie DeRisio airborne over Victor and launched Victor off his feet and backward.

For a moment, the entire world slowed down and Victor could see al of this play out before him.

As Frankie’s airborne body flew over him, he could see that the blast ripped the skin from the man’s face and singed the edge of the wounds.

Then everything sped up in double time as if time had to catch up with itself and Victor flew into the wal behind him. Frankie tumbled down on top of him and their bodies crashed together on the floor.

For a moment, everything went black as Victor Garducci struggled to maintain consciousness.

A gash along his forehead burned with an odd sting and wetness which Victor understood to be his own blood fal ing down his face. He could barely breathe. His breath crashed out from his lungs as he col ided with the wal and the weight of Frankie’s smoldering body on top of him impeded his lungs even further.

Victor pushed Frankie off of him and rol ed over onto his side. His jacket was on fire in several over onto his side. His jacket was on fire in several places and he rol ed around on the floor extinguishing the flames relying purely on instinct.

What the hell happened?

Sal

continued

screaming

inside

the

apartment and an unbelievable stench assaulted Victor’s nostrils. The stench of burning flesh was something Victor was unaccustomed to. Unable to stand, he began crawling forward; his thought was to get to Sal and to do something, anything to help the tortured man.

Sal, too, was crawling and thrashing on the ground and his hair was burned, leaving scorched scalp and blistering skin as the unrelenting flames licked around his body in its pursuit to consume him as fuel.

Sal’s lidless eyes flicked toward Garducci and his lipless mouth shrieked the most awful thing Victor heard in his life, “Shoot me! Shoot me! Shoot me!”

Thrashing and begging for mercy, Sal’s voice came out in harsh screams, gaining pace with the urgency of his pain.

Victor pul ed his gun from the scorched doorway, and pointed it at Sal’s charred and screaming face.

Sal, unable to find the strength to move, fel forward despite the obvious pain of fal ing on burned limbs. He flopped to his stomach. His strength was leaving him or the sinews of the limbs that would support his weight burned and melted through, Victor could not discern which.

Pleading with his last breaths, he whispered,

“Shoot me.”

Victor, his face set with the determination of going forward with an impossible situation, closed his eyes.

One last shriek blasted forth, and then there echoed the solitary pop of a wel aimed bul et.

It flew straight and true, merciful; it found its way into the trapped and tortured brain of Sal Pieri, releasing his soul to whatever awaited it on the other side. Victor, knowing that if an afterlife existed, hoped that whatever God existed gave Sal Pieri, the last of the Pieri line, some credit for time already served in the fires of hel .

Rafael Rontego kept his eyes straight ahead and continued walking, his pace fast and purposeful, for several blocks before ducking into an al ey with a distant view of his apartment building. Once more showing off his agility, he leapt atop a dumpster and then scaled a ladder leading to the low building’s roof. Stepping onto the gravel rooftop, the assassin lit yet another Sobranie. The nicotine comforted his nerves.

Nerves
.

Rafael could not remember the last time he felt anything in his chosen line of work. Rontego took a deep drag off the familiar brand just as an explosion rocked the building and flames leapt out of his window.

He took another long drag and watched the myriad of orange speckles alight in the sky as scattered debris succumbed to the intensity of the heat that launched it into the night air.

He expected the explosion. His keen ears picked up the sound of screaming in the distance, or maybe it was a siren, Rontego couldn’t be sure. He wasn’t sure, until he heard a solitary pop rattle across the distance fol owed by abrupt silence.