A Favor Repaid

         His green eyes burned with rage as he stared at me. Eyes filled with hatred and fear.
         “You’re a fucking coward,” he screamed, spittle flying from his lips. “You’re gonna kill me while I’m tied up like this. You fucking pussy! You better be glad I’m not loose, I’d mop the floor with your ass.”
         I’d seen it before. Sometimes they raged, sometimes they begged, sometimes they cried. Sometimes they did it all. He was a ragger though. Had raged since the moment he had woken up from the knockout blow, here, tied to a dolly in the middle of a gray room, a drain in the floor under his feet. He was trying to handle the situation he was in, trying to impress upon me that he was in control.
         “Is that what you think? That you’d take me?”
         “You know I would cocksucker. I’d stomp a mudhole in your ass and walk it dry.”
         I didn’t say anything. He stared at me for a long time, trying, a little too desperately, to show me that he wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t impressed.
         “Fuck you, pussy. You’re too much of a coward. That’s why you sucker punched me. You know I’d kill you with my bare hands.”
         He thought he could bluff me. He was actually thinking that I would be insulted by him and want to prove that I was tougher. I could see it in his eyes. He was hoping for that chance, as small as he thought it would be he knew it would be his only one. I’d seen it before, even entertained it a time or too, depending on the situation. I wasn’t going to do that here. So I fucked with him.
         “Well I don’t think you’re tougher than me, asshole. I think you’re a fat, middle aged, piece of shit, who has to rape young girls to get his little, limp, dick hard.”
His face turned red with his rage and he spit. I wasn’t expecting it, but it didn’t surprise me.
I wiped his greasy spit off my cheek with my hand and wiped it on his shirt. He was smiling.
Whatever.
“Let me go, asshole, and I’ll show you how limp I am. I’ll beat your ass to bloody pulp. Better that for you than my crew finds you. They’re gonna kill your whole fucking family for this.” He was staring at me, waiting for me to show fear. He would be waiting awhile.
         I pulled the only chair that was in the room up in front of him and sat down. “We both know your crew is useless with you, much less if you were dead. Now, if you spit on me again, I’m going to bust all your toes, one-by-one with a hammer. We clear?”
         He stared at me but didn’t spit.
         “So here’s what you need to know. I know you’re wife’s name is Marie, and your son’s name is James, and everybody calls him Jimmy. I know that the security code to get into your house is twenty, zero, four, eight, seventeen. Your son’s birthday backwards, sorta. Really uncrackable, by the way. I’m going to ask you questions and you’re going to answer them. I’m not going to threaten you with bodily harm, but what I will tell you is this; If for one second I don’t believe what you’re telling me, I will go there. You can use your imagination about what will happen.”
         I could literally see him thinking.
         “Tell me again why you’re doing this,” he said.
         “I already told you.”
         “Yeah, and I had just woken up from being knocked out, I’m clearer now. Who put you up to this and why?”
         I looked at him for a long moment. “The girl, the one that was raped and beaten, then dumped in a dumpster behind the restaurant she worked at. Tell me about her.”
         “Guess you wouldn’t believe me if I said I had nothing to do with that.”
         I recited his security code again.
         “Fine, she was just a means to an end, that’s all. Her old man ripped us off. He’s a nobody. We wanted to send a message to some of the other nobody’s he knows is all. It was all sanctioned by Big Sal, you do anything here and you’ll have to answer to him. You know that don’t you?”
         I of course knew that. You didn’t clip one of Big Sal’s guys without his approval. The problem for this guy was that he wasn’t one of Big Sal’s guys. This guy was a small time guy that wanted to be big time and would lick the boots of the big boys to get to play along. The ripping off he had spoken of had occurred on his part, not the part of the girl’s father, and an even bigger problem for him was that the girl’s father was closer to Big Sal than he was. Hence the present situation.
         “Yeah, I think I’ve heard of him,” I said. “A mobster right?” I had thought about asking who had signed off on the girl, but didn’t really care if any of Sal’s guys had or not. Sal might have known but didn’t tell me, so I figured it’d be better not to know.
         “Well you’re gonna get to know him, in a bad way if you don’t let me go, man. Sal won’t stand for one of his guys going down like this.”
         I waited. Acted like I was thinking. He tried to press the advantage. “I won’t tell anybody about this, man. The girl’s father put you up to this, didn’t he? I promise, you let me go and none of this will come back on you. It’ll all be taken out on the girl’s father. I won’t even ask him your name, just in case he knows it. Nobody will know about this but me, and I promise I won’t be telling anyone. You walk away scot-free from one of the biggest mistakes of your life, bro.”
         I nodded. Pushed my chair back and stood up. I moved around behind him on the dolly, undid my knife, the click of the blade echoing through the small empty room. I crouched down and sliced the zip ties holding his legs to the dolly.
         “You’re making the right decision, man. Nobody will even know we were here.”
         I stood up and grabbed his hair through the dolly, jerked his head back hard. I slit his throat with my right hand, pushing hard to cut through the veins and the tendons, going wide to make sure I got the artery. He started to scream, but it quickly died in his throat, replaced by a disgusting gurgling sound. It takes much longer than any movie would show for someone to die of a slit throat, so I figured I had time to make my point. I stepped around to face him, his head already sagging onto his chest, eyes rolling, his feet kicking out.
         “You raped and murdered that girl, and then you and your two boys stuffed her in a dumpster like trash. Well I want you to know, before you die, that’s exactly where you’ll end up. In the trash. I’ve already put the other two there. And yes, the girl’s father wanted this.”
         I watched and listen to him die slowly. It didn’t bother me. It never does.

         I walked into Sal’s office and sat in one of the leather chairs in front of his desk. Sal was staring at his large computer screen, his face obscured from my view.
         “You want something to drink? Danny get him something,” Sal said. Danny, the big burly ex-football player looked at me, sorta hoping I wouldn’t want anything from the look on his face.
         “Captain and coke,” I said. Danny turned a walked out.
         “You’ve always like the rum, more than anything else.”
         “Gotta get used to it for when I retire in the Caribbean.”
         I’d say Sal scoffed, but it was more like a chocking sound.
         We sat in silence till Danny came back, handed me my drink and exited the room quickly. “They don’t like me, do they?”
         “No, they don’t. But can you blame them.” It wasn’t really a question. “But who cares, not you for sure, and besides, fear of someone is sometimes greater than respect.”
         I drained my drink quickly. “Yeah, maybe.”
         Sal turned off his computer screen and adjusted it so we could see each other. He stared at me for a few seconds. “So… the three guys? Everything went smoothly?”
         “Sure, if you call killing three guys smooth. No problems though.”
         “You talked to them? You always like to talk to them before the end.”
         “Just the one, the leader. One of the crew guys wanted to talk, guy woulda told me he stole bubble gum in the third grade if I had let him, I don’t think he did anything to the girl, but ride with outlaws, die with the outlaws, right? I talked to the leader some, let him know the father wanted it done, that was it. He told me you were gonna be pissed about it.”
         Sal made his noise again. “These guys, they all think they are under my protection, even when they are on their own. But it’s rare your side business overlaps with our business. Guess that’s to be expected when dealing with people who have had dealings with me.” Sal slide a brown envelope across the desk to me.
         I put the envelope in my jacket pocket. Definitely no need to count it. “Yeah well, I hope it doesn’t happen again. I don’t like killing guys your guys know, even if they don’t like them or agree with what they did. Some of your guys knew the two crew guys on first name basis. I really don’t like that.”
         Sal waved his hand. “They understand. They understand me and what I will and will not tolerate. That’s good enough.” Sal was still looking at me, which was pretty unusual. Generally, once he gave me the money, the sentiment was don’t let the door hit you where the good lord spilt you.
         “Anything else?’ I asked.
         “You said the guy talked. Did he mention who put him up to it, who wanted pressure on the girl’s father?” I wasn’t sure how I felt about his question. I knew Sal had owed the girl’s father a favor of some kind, killing the guys that killed her was that favor repaid. I didn’t want to know the details or the why, and I’m pretty sure Sal didn’t want me to either.
         “It crossed my mind for a second to ask,” I said. “But then I knew better, whatever’s going on has nothing to do with me.”
         Sal looked at me and nodded. “Good.”
         I got up and walked out.