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  VESPERS

  By Tom Piccirilli

  A Macabre Ink Novel

  Macabre Ink is an imprint of Crossroad Press

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  Digital Edition Copyright 2014 / Tom Piccirilli

  Partial cover image courtesy of:

  fantasystock.deviantart.com

  stiks-1969.deviantart.com

  LICENSE NOTES

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Meet the Author

  Marilyn Stasio of The New York Times Book Review called THE LAST KIND WORDS, “A caustic thriller…the characters have strong voices and bristle with funny quirks.” New York Times bestselling thriller writer Lee Child said of Tom’s work, “Perfect crime fiction…a convincing world, a cast of compelling characters, and above all a great story.” And Publishers Weekly extols, "Piccirilli’s mastery of the hard-boiled idiom is pitch perfect, particularly in the repartee between his characters, while the picture he paints of the criminal corruption conjoining the innocent and guilty in a small Long Island community is as persuasive as it is seamy. Readers who like a bleak streak in their crime fiction will enjoy this well-wrought novel.” Keir Graff of Booklist wrote, “There's more life in Piccirilli's THE LAST KIND WORDS (and more heartache, action, and deliverance) than any other novel I've read in the past couple of years." And Kirkus states, “Consigning most of the violence to the past allows Piccirilli (The Fever Kill, 2007, etc.) to dial down the gore while imparting a soulful, shivery edge to this tale of an unhappy family that’s assuredly unhappy in its own special way.”

  Book List:

  NOVELS:

  A Choir of Ill Children

  A Lower Deep: A Self Novel

  Coffin Blues

  Cold Comforts

  Dark Father

  Grave Men

  Headstone City

  Hexes

  Nightjack

  November Mourns

  Shadow Season

  Shards

  Sorrow's Crown – A Felicity Grove Mystery

  The Cold Spot

  The Coldest Mile

  The Dead Letters

  The Dead Past – A Felicity Grove Mystery

  The Deceased

  The Fever Kill

  The Last Kind Words

  The Last Whisper in the Dark

  The Midnight Road

  The Night Class

  NOVELLAS:

  All You Despise

  Cast in Dark Waters (with Ed Gorman)

  Clown in the Moonlight

  Frayed

  Fuckin' Lie Down Already

  Loss

  Pale Preachers

  Short Ride to Nowhere

  The Last Deep Breath

  The Nobody

  Thrust

  Vespers

  You'd Better Watch Out

  COLLECTIONS:

  Futile Efforts

  Pentacle – A Self Collection

  Tales From the Crossroad, Vol 1

  UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOKS:

  All You Despise – Narrated by Brett Barry

  Loss – Narrated by Chris Patton

  Nightjack – Narrated by Chet Williamson

  The Fever Kill – Narrated by Scott Slocum

  www.tompiccirilli.com

  www.thecoldspot.blogspot.com

  DISCOVER CROSSROAD PRESS

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  VESPERS

  Inside the corrugated metal shack in back of the construction site down by the river, they had Vivian Perry naked and spread-eagled, bound to a metal-frame bed with a grimy mattress streaked with blood, urine, and sweat. Her face had been battered some. Both eyes were swollen and she was having trouble breathing through her broken nose. Her trim belly and muscular thighs were covered with welts, bruises, burns, and slashes. The wounds didn’t group near any major nerve clusters which proved they didn’t know what they were doing. Blood trickled from both of Viv’s nostrils and soaked into the thick chamois cloth they were using as a gag.

  Above her left ear was a bullet graze that parted her thick brown hair and showed three inches of scorched bone. Her beautiful large breasts had been tweaked, slapped, and scratched. She’d been raped multiple times. They’d only been having fun with her so far. A little whipping, cutting, even a touch of branding, but nothing too serious yet. Except that her left pinky had been cut off with gardening shears.

  They had a large variety of sharp implements and tools laid out side by side on a long metal tray. They didn’t have much imagination. There was the usual array of items: fishing blade, Bowie knife, blow torch, pincers, clamps. An old-fashioned leather strop, the kind my grandfather used to sharpen his straight-razor on. Also a couple of boxes of condoms, some bandages, and a bottle of lubricant made primarily of aloe.

  Viv was too well-trained to react when she saw me enter the room. We’d spent some time together in Karbala and even enjoyed a spirited weekend fooling around in a luxury hotel full of religious Iranian tourists. She’d been imaginative, eager, enthusiastic, and extremely fit. We hadn’t stayed in touch but I found myself thinking of her often.

  The three mooks in charge of making Vivian Perry talk huddled around me, shoulder to shoulder, grinning with gravestone teeth. They introduced themselves, but I didn’t bother listening. They were always named Feech, Joey Two-toes, and Lorenzo anyway. They surveyed their work and grunted in admiration. They stank of ignorance and aloe. They were exactly the kind of men that Freddy Finn, the head of the Chi syndicate, would send to torture a woman. Three stupid sexual psychopaths with a terror of their own latent homosexual tendencies who stretched the questioning out over three or four days just because they were scared of women in the first place.

  First mistake, you didn’t gag somebody you were trying to get information out of. Despite the pain, I could see a hint of amusement in Viv’s eyes over that one as she worked her teeth on the chamois. She seemed to be smiling. In some ways, the scene was reminiscent of our weekend together.

  “You Tommy Flowers?” Feech asked. “The specialist that the Ganooch sent?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Tell me what happened.”

  “What happened?” Joey Two-toes put in, talking with his hands, his fingers fluttering. “You know what happened. They got a bookkeeper who’s gonna testify against Freddy, and we can’t allow that to happen. The feds got him under wraps. She’s in charge of the case. We found out when they were moving him and went in. We nearly smoked him but she covered for him while he made a run for it. She capped three of our boys before I winged her with a lucky shot.”

  Stupid as he was, he was smart enough to realize he’d gotten lucky. I met Viv’s eyes again and I could read her embarrassment over being nabbed by morons who worked for the likes of Freddy Finn.

  “She’ll know where he is,” Lorenzo said.

  It was typical mook thinking. They never would’ve thought that the bookkeeper would’ve been moved from one safe house to another by now. Passwords had been changed, cell phone numbers, keypad codes.

  “How’d you find out when they were moving him?” I asked.

  “We were told.”

  “By who?”

  “We got
an Assistant D.A. with a gambling addiction on the payroll.”

  I nodded. “Whitfield.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t really need to know that. That’s our side of the equation. Yours is just to help us break her. We’ve had her four days and not so much as a whimper.”

  “This bitch is made of iron,” Feech said.

  “All bitches are,” Joey Two-toes added, and they chuckled.

  Even their guttural laughter was tired. I could see by their expressions that they were exhausted. She’d worn them down both physically and mentally. They’d never admit it, but they were scared of her. Their infliction of minor cruelty and abuse hadn’t done a thing to weaken her. It only weakened them.

  I walked to the bed frame and sat beside her. Her blood strengthened me.

  “Freddy Finn gave you the green light to kidnap and torture a woman?”

  “You’ve obviously never met Freddy, or you wouldn’t be asking.”

  The three assholes chortled at that. Guys like this always liked burying bodies because they thought they were getting rid of all their sins and secrets with the faces of the dead.

  Lorenzo was especially anxious to see me get to work on her. A powerful woman like Viv could make a man hate her guts without her ever saying a word to him or giving him a glance. The mooks had issues. Their strong-willed mothers and grandmothers, attending church and wearing black for years on end had bent them in ways they never could guess at while they confessed their lesser transgressions to self-righteous priests.

  Feech moved the rolling tray of devices closer to me. “Whattya specialize in?” he asked, grinning, letting his brain twist around his ugliest expectations and most vicious fantasies.

  “Interrogation. And deep cover infiltration.”

  I grabbed the Bowie knife, the weight of it comfortable in my hand, and in a wide whipping arc brought it around and slammed it through the center of his sternum. I enjoyed the brutal feel of the breastbone splintering with such force. It wasn’t an instant killing blow. I’d missed the heart completely. It would take him a few minutes of brain-burning agony to croak. I continued spinning and slipped the fishing blade into my left hand while I reached for the blowtorch in my right. Even as I found a perfect fluid rhythm a part of my mind was focused on the box of condoms. Picturing them taking turns with Viv, watching one another, mouths watering, enjoying her degradation, but so very careful about STDs the way their mamas always told them to be.

  Lorenzo and Joey Two-toes still didn’t know what was happening. Surprise had barely started to register in their expressions. I wanted to toy with them and make them suffer, but I had Johnny Tormino waiting for me outside and I was worried he’d grow impatient and come crashing in.

  I split the difference. I slid the fishing blade into Lorenzo’s throat, tugging hard and severing a thick portion of his tracheal tract. I left the blade sticking out of his neck as he gurgled and, horrified, touched the handle and didn’t know what he should do with it. He opened his mouth and tried to scream, but his lungs were already filling. His eyes swirled with the black and perfect dreadful understanding of a man drowning in his own blood.

  I slipped in close to Joey Two-toes and rammed my palm up into his nose, crushing the cartilage. Joey’s eyes started to roll up into his head and I shook him hard and hissed, “You don’t get to sleep through your own murder, Joey Toes.”

  Technically, the blowtorch was in reality a handheld butane blowlamp. I jammed the nozzle of into his mouth, smashing teeth and letting him taste the acrid metal. When I withdrew it, the sharp wrenching motion opened the valve and butane began to whisper against his face. I reached out for the spark lighter, grabbed it, sparked it, got the flame going, and then made Joey Two-toes swallow it. His body flailed, but I held him tight by the throat and watched his head boil and melt from inside out. It only took ten seconds before his eyes bubbled down his cheeks. He died half a minute afterwards. I loosened my hold on him and his corpse collapsed without a sound.

  It had all been a silent, flawless, supple killing spree. My trainers would’ve been proud. But despite venting some small amount of my rage, I didn’t feel gratified in the slightest.

  I untied Vivian, found her clothes, and helped her get dressed. It was slow going. I hadn’t been able to assess the damage done to her back and buttocks before. It was bad. The mooks had been much worse to her from the rear, probably because when they flipped her over they didn’t have to see her eyes. I bandaged her where I could. There was no running water in the shack but there was a half-bottle of whiskey on a corner table. I poured her a glass and watched her sip it slowly. I sniffed her pinky stump. No infection. When she was able to move again, I helped to her feet.

  She rasped, “Whitfield. I always knew that little prick was twitchy.”

  “I never liked him either.”

  I had two 9mms, a Beretta and a Browning. I held them both out to her and she chose the Beretta.

  She had a higher clearance than I did. Despite the fact that the two of us were still fucking around with this syndicate shit and trying to make RICO cases, we both knew it probably wasn’t going to matter for much longer. It probably never had. The agency just wanted to make cases on the mob to use drug money to help finance more wars. It had always been a joke.

  The seams of society were breaking apart a little more widely every day. The government was losing control. The local police weren’t certain who to arrest anymore. The reports coming in were insane. The president showed up on television every night and spoke calmly and assured the country we were all going to be all right. Most of us didn’t believe it but we continued living our lives the way we always had before, because nobody wanted to think about the alternative.

  She glanced around the room. “You were messy as hell,” she critiqued.

  “I wanted to make a point. So that Freddy Finn’s people might learn a lesson when they finally come looking.”

  “Doubtful. They’re all morons.” She held the gun pointed at the door and took a proper shooting stance. For a few seconds her knees trembled as if her knees might buckle, but then she stood straight and firm, ready for anything. “Who’s out there waiting for you?”

  “Johnny Tormino.”

  She thought about it. “So what do I do now? Am I supposed to play dead? Or did Nicky Ganucci send you so he could leverage the FBI for a favor and make himself look like a local hero?”

  “Nicky is too sick to do anything.”

  “How did it happen?” she asked.

  “At evening mass. One of the altar boys bit him.”

  “Bit him?”

  I nodded. “In the face, while he was kneeling there getting ready to take communion. The kid flipped and took a hunk out of him.”

  “Christ.”

  “He went to the hospital and they gave him a shot and antibiotics then sent him home. But nothing’s helping. Now Johnny’s taken over the family for the time being.”

  “How did you wind up here?”

  “We heard Freddy’s people were in town handling a problem. Johnny said he’d help and offered my services, but he really just wanted to see what the Chi mob was up to down here in Brooklyn.”

  “So you didn’t show up specifically to save me?”

  “I didn’t even know you were here.”

  I thought again of how strong she was on so many levels. Maybe she’d cry later, alone in the shower, or in the arms of a lover or members of her family, but I didn’t think so. I imagined her taking the worst memories of her life and squeezing them down, down, down into diamonds that she locked in a small safe and never opened again except to place more ten-carat rings of solid pain inside.

  “You should kill Johnny,” she said. “It’ll move you up in rank, right?”

  “Yes.”

  She relaxed her pose, gripped me by the chin with her mutilated hand, and got in my face, pulling me forward so we were nose to nose. I thought she was going to kiss me, but she was just reading my eyes, the same way I’d d
one to her. She knew that deep cover agents like me often went native. And me, I already was native. I understood the goombahs because I was one. I’d known Johnny since I was five years old. We’d been to Catholic school together. We made our confirmation side by side. Along with Nick Ganucci we’d shot dice in the back of Mr. Dagostino’s candy shop when we were twelve, spent time in reformatory school learning about life the hard way. I’d spent a lot of Christmases at the Ganucci house, earing baked ziti made by his mother, before Nick bought out the whole block and turned his corner of the neighborhood into a compound.

  It’s what made me the perfect operative. It’s also what kept my handlers and fellow agents wondering if I was trustworthy or if I’d gone back to my roots.

  “You want me to do it for you?” she asked.

  Even after four days of torture and humiliation I knew she could more than handle Johnny. She wouldn’t even need the Beretta. One quick chop across his windpipe and I could have the case wrapped up in a week and catch the next flight back to DC and go home to the life I’d built after I’d gotten out of Brooklyn. I was sick of being Tommy Flowers again.

  She understood I wasn’t going to answer. She gave me a hard glance and said, “What else has been happening while these morons have kept me on ice?”

  “More rioting and looting. Washington says it’s all under control.”

  “Lying fuckers. I’ve got to get back to Quantico.”

  The corrugated shack really didn’t have windows, just these slots about ten feet off the ground. I climbed a chair and checked outside. Johnny Tormino’s black Lincoln was still parked behind a warehouse next door down by the docks, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t skulking around.

  I turned and Viv was staring at me with a heavy, thoughtful expression. I cocked my head at her trying to register it. She moved in quickly and brought her lips roughly to mine for a moment. It was a good kiss at a bad time.

  “Thank you,” she said. “For the timely arrival.”