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[b]Some Time Ago[/b]

"....She died of a fever,
And no one could save her,
And that was the end of sweet Molly Malone..."

Thunder clouds haunted the morning horizon when Russell Garcia came into work at Mack and Peter's and the crows came to flock when he began to clean up at the end of his shift. He watched them through the window pick away at roving newspapers and autumn leaves while he mopped away at the linoleum flooring.The empty streets were practically inviting them and Orchard Street was a wasteland right now at this hour. Well, more than usual in Minneenona. Moss-leached hulks of Fords and Cadillacs littered the asphalt, an avalanche of parking tickets flooding their shattered windshields. As he came up to mop the front entrance, he noticed that the rims were missing, probably some desperate car jacker looking for a quick buck or two. The loneliness didn't bother him so much as the cold did. It was near winter now  and a lifetime of living on Dixie farmfields didn't endear him to the tepid chill of Wisconsin. He'd prefer to be inside his apartment, sitting next to his oil lamp and taking drags of some malboros while watching his girls crawl around. Instead, he'd lost a bet last night with the boys at Callahan's and got the closing night shift.

 He dumped the mophead into the pail for the last time, squeezing out the tepid gray water before grabbing both items and storing them in a squat wash cupboard behind the counter. He took another bucket of soapy water he'd already prepared and stopped to stare at his reflection. A smashed nose and black-blue eyes regarded him coldly from under the bucket before he broke it with his hand, fishing out one of the slippery sponges and crushing it dry with a wince. He then began wiping away the dried filth and excrement off a low boy door, pale yellow lye foam cascading down the chrome gray alumminum. Swirling eddies of dried fish blood and guts mixed with bone-white lye froth accumulated under his clogs.

By the time his hands looked wrinkled red, the day had taken its last breath and the night was beginning to wake, the shadows lenghtening behidn every crook and cranny in Mack and Peter's. He took a breather, wiping the sweat from his brow. He flicked on the lights, the incadescent bulbs chittering to life, washing the grime of the store away with false light. He first examined the store counter, rows upon rows of haddocks, trout and salmon staring blankly back at him, a congression of ice around them. The broken register was bolted tight onto the left corner, a keep-over from the prior tenants, and there were only quarters and cobwebs in the old drawer. Garcia stopped for a moment to look at a photo framed in mahogany taken during a group trip to the Merrimac. Pike was in the center of the photograph, bearded face smiling tight, as he cradled a Muskellenge whilst Garcia felt a grin tug his lips when he noticed Muskie, the older of the two brothers, holding Pike's head in a ferocious noogie.

He had just flipped the store sign to the opposite side and was about to lock the door when he heard a dull crush, coming from the back of the store. He signed, looking at the clock and biting his lip. Maybe, one check wouldn't hurt. Couple of minutes. Nothing more. He briefly passed his hand over his right hip to find his .38 and found it, squeezing the barrel for reassurance. Taking a deep breath, he pushed pass the counter door and parted the mouldy plastic flaps leading to the pass through. The door to the back of house room was hidden by a maze of oyster crates, as he took care to shimmy and squeeze past, careful to take each step. There were barely any lights in the cooler room: the only illumination being provided by cracked fluorescent lamps. A brass door handle glinted in the dark and his fingers were an inch away for touching before he began to hear distant murmurs behind the door.

" - killed him. You deal in hardware and you deal in bodies. My business means your business. Don't help me with this and imagine what happens if I go out of town. Yeah, this isn't your usual job but Johnny said you did once or twice for the Jamaicans. Now, I expect you to be professional about this. I get - I get that it's a late notice, you greedy little chink. You gonna keep whining about it to me or are you going to rip my teeth off with whatever cockamine price tag you come up with? You come in the morning, sort the body out for me like we discussed. Yeah, I'm sure I want it to look that way. I know it's going to cost extra and if you say anything about burning again, you can kiss getting your 44. goodbye.  Got your word. Expect you to keep to it. Uh huh. Yeah. Deal's not done until you come in the morning, Chopper. See the mess first before you start talking numbers at me. We good? Alright, then. Yeah, fuck you too."

There was the click of a receiver from the other side of the door. Chopper? He didn't know any Chopper that Pike or Muskie told him about. He slowly unholstered his .38. Pike called it a 'police action' when he gave it to him a month ago for his birthday.  He flipped over the cylinder to check it was loaded, the brass casing glinting in the faint light, before pushing the door open slowly. He'd never went through here before now, where the merchandise was handled. He could taste Pike's work in the air, the scent of gun oil and iron cloying on his tongue. A single bulb illuminated the room, dancing on a string thin wire like a spider. The guts of guns strewn and spread about on top-heavy steel workbenches. At the opposite end of the wall was a trenchcoated figure, head hidden by the hem of his jacket, standing over something laid on the bench in front of him. The figure shifted his gait slightly, shaking his head as if in deep thought, and Garcia's blood ran cold.

It was Muskie's face, eyes blank and skin puckered around a red crater in his forehead. He could see the bone, god, there was bone.

Garcia yelped and the trenchcoated man jumped, knocking himself against the workbench. The single bulb swung on its wire, sending the shadows sprinting and dancing. His knuckles were hard agains the grip of his pistol, heart beating, eyes blinking, trying to get a bead. The trenchcoated man was still in the throes of shock, spinning around with the silver glint of iron in his outstretched hand. He pulled and heard a pained shout - his or the stranger, couldn't tell - and the man was flung off his feet, going to the floor in a black heap of limbs. The bulb stood still. He wobbled on his feet, breathing. Strange. He felt more tired than usual. He ran his hand down his chest, stopping when he felt something sticky. Sweat, maybe, he tried to tell himself. Then, a wetness gushed out of his throat, flooding down into his lungs and caging his throat still. The jacketed man caught him before he fell. He can only focus on the light above.

A bearded face looks over him, haunted. The man's mouth moves to the beat of his fading heart and that's all he can hear. Apology, threat, it doesn't really matter now.

He manages one last word, forcing in the last dregs. He uses the memory of the cattle fields, the heat of a steel brand, that pain, to push him through.

"Daughters."

Something wet landed on his cheek, trailing down his cold skin.

His last breath came a moment after.

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[b] The Present Day
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It must be have near three now. Pike flipped his wrist to glance at the cheap dollar-store quartz and frowned further. Scratch that, past three. The bastard was 15 minutes late. He scratched his head, swatting off woodlouses that had climbed onto his arm. He stood up from the moldy half-cut wine barrel he was sitting on and stretched his arms. The meeting spot was located at a rundown section of the Blue Hook, a block of it cordoned off to act as Minnenoona's temporary shipyard. It was more like a graveyard now from Pike's point of view, a remnant of Mineenona's glorious past or failed dream depending on your perspective. He could see sparrows dotting the cavernous wrecks of old cruisers that had been left behind twenty, thirty years ago, pus-colored day oozing through the holes. He fished for a cigarette in his jacket, just about to light it until he heard the sound of crunching dirt echoing inside the ship. The buyer found their way inside the ship and Pike looked up to regard them.

The man looked more like a grill cook at your highway greasy spoon than a part-time house cleaner. Raul 'The Cook' Pulawnski was a squat heavyset man, jowls thick with decades, with a unshaven beard and beady eyes to compliment his fine, dashing looks. He could spy the collar of his chef blouse peeking out from under the pea-green jacket, the once pure white discolored with grease and sweat. Pike had done business with him a couple of times in the past year. The man wasn't regular enough to be a regular but appeared enough that you wouldn't confuse his name with somebody elses. Raul stuck out his right palm to shake his. Pike's hand moved over to shook when he paused, noticing the fact that the upper knuckle of Raul's thumb was missing, a lumpy hill of white scar tissue where flesh once was.

"Alley job two months ago. Bitch put up more of a fight than I thought for a whore," Raul explained bashfully, wiggling the cut thumb as he did so,"So, got the goods?"

Without a word, Pike kicked away the barrel he was standing off, the rotten wood tipping over to reveal a chunky styrofoam box peeling off at the edges. Muskie would have done it with more flair, gabbed more about the weather or about his escapades but Pike didn't have time for all that shit. He lifted the box and placed it hard at Raul's feet, taking off the cover to reveal a grab-bag assortment of pistols laid face down on crimped cardboard with boxes and magazines of ammo piled to the right.

Pike had taken out his lighter, flicking the flint and letting the flame blacken a Marlboro stuck in his lips while Raul browsed the box like a kid at a candy store. The hitman made an offhand comment, taking out a small Webley and thumbing the trigger.

" Smaller selection. Where's the Smith and Wessons?"

" ATF's got interstate routes tied up, It'll go back to normal in a couple of weeks. Everything you see here is local."

" Fucking feds. Why did that commie fuck have to waste that pinko president in the first place?"

"So, anything catch your eye?" Pike asked, impatient. Raul placed down the Colt and Pike saw that glint in his eye, the familiar hungry look of lust for things that were too good for them to fully appreciate. A second of rifling later and a Belgian was in Raul's hands. The barrel

" Browning HGP. 17 round capacity. 9 millimiter. Serial number's filed off as usual. I took care of the hammer bite with a swap from a CZ. Shaves a second off the fire as well. "

" Heavy for a semi-auto."

" Comes with the magazine size. Don't need to worry about running out but you can't really tell the difference from another semi auto. You'll get maybe 3 more seconds of fire than the M1911."

" Feels like a Fleetwood. Got anything lighter?"

Raul reminded Pike of the time when he watched a pig eat out of a through at some country fair Muskie brought him to, rubbing his grubby mitts all over hardware that was worth the man's life ten times over. Pike made an effort to stare elsewhere in the distance as Raul made comments and asked questions about the hardware. He went through the motions as usual, answering questions about caliber, making reassurances about how he'd cleaned it, this and that all over again for the twentieth or thirteenth time. There was no flavor in the conversations. The stories, the badgering were a dash in color in Mineenoona but now, there was nothing.

" This one looks familiar. Like the feel of this one."

" Colt Police Action. 6 rounds. Double action. Used by cops all over the country. Grip's a little different than all the other wheel guns you're used. Hard to come by geniune hardwood here. Won't fail you."

Garcia's gaunt face flashed by for a moment and it took another drag to shut out the image. Pike shook his head and when he came to, the cigarette he had been holding had dropped to the ground , still smouldering.

" Won't fail you ever. You know how a wheel gun rolls. I've shortened the barrel too. Better for concealment if that's the nature of your next job. "

" Looks like a .38. You sure it's good enough?"

" You're acting like it's a .22. You're not planning on robbing Fort Knox with this, are you? 6 shots is plenty. You need any more firepower and you're gonna start attracting the National Guard."

"Fine, the 38. then."

" Low grain or high grain?"

"Give me a box of the low."

" That'll be about half a grand all together. Let me clean the gun before you go."

Pike took a greased rag out of his pocket, carefully rubbing the cloth through every nook and cranny. Raul coughed to catch his attention.

"Hey, Pike. Just to let you know, I feel for what's been happening to you these past months. Your brother's death and all."

"Appreciate it."

" I seen the way most of the others at the Callahan's, Uncle Chev's talk about you.  Don't even have the guts -"

"It's just words," Pike shrugged, wiping the handle of the gun now.

"The hell they know about you?," Raul was now inspecting another one, a black Colt Cobra with a whorled oak handle. He'd have to clean that one later. "Ain't none of them ever had the courage to kill their own brother."

Pike paused in the middle of cleaning out the barrel with a piece of wire and replied back.

"What."

" Look, way I see it, family's just kind of a-" Raul's face scrunched up, tongue rolling in between his teeth. "- Label in this line of business, ya know? Too many soft-dick punks that act tough on the outside, okay with stabbing some pregnant whore or robbing a store but too much of a pussy to kill a brother or sister. All that bullshit about 'standards' and 'moral code. Pah. You got heart for making the hard decision."

Pike could feel the beginnings of a frown but didn't let it show. Even if he was, Raul didn't notice it, still in the middle of continuing his tirade.

" Trust me, when you get married, you'll be glad that you don't have to worry about finding your brother fucking your - "

Raul stumbled back as Pike roughly shoved the pistol and the box of ammunition into his arms.

" Here's your gun. Pleasure doing business with you."

Pike waited until Raul was a speck on the distance before he tilted his head back, closing his eyes, exhaling out. Maybe, the visit to the Soiree would do him some good after all.

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[i]
Fall. Fourth week of November. 

Had a cannibal and an old fashioned today for stakeout.

Another suicide on the town paper. Longshoremen caught the male in a net. Body stripped to the ribs by bass, maybe a pike. A 44. hooked in his tongue. This city's drowned already. Drowned by the iron, the bullet, the trigger. I know I'm not here to save the city. I'm here to hunt.

Three years of searching. Two if I hadn't wasted those months in Florida. I know he's here. He has to be here.

Nearly caught me in the park yesterday. Doesn't suspect he's being followed.

Yet.

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