All Due Respect Issue 2 (9 page)

Once I was done fuming, I opened up the file and found the part about George King. Fifty-eight, King called himself the “Grand Wizard” or some shit. Guess that made him kinda like the don. I’ve never personally tried to whack a boss, but I know it wouldn’t be easy, so I skipped over him and went on to Larry Smith.

Ol’ Smithy, it said, owned an auto shop outside town. Since it was hardly five, I decided to try there first.

The drive took twice as long as it should have because downtown Louisa was closed. You’d think they’d never had a murder before.

So, I had to take a detour. It was getting dark by the time I pulled into Smith’s Auto Service.

The place was closed, kinda like I expected it to be. After I looked up Smith’s address, I shot out a window and left.

Smith lived in a little house in a field of little houses. I parked across the street and killed the engine.

I watched the place for maybe an hour, until the ugly blue paint got on my nerves. I was about to drive off and call it a day when the garage door opened, and some asshole kid, maybe sixteen or seventeen, started backing a motorbike out. Behind him was an older guy pushing a lawn mower.

The kid took off and the father disappeared around the side of the house. I picked my gun up off the passenger seat and slipped it into my waistband.

I got out and crossed the street. I was just about to round the corner of the garage when the lawn mower man appeared, almost like he forgot something and was going back to get it.

We startled each other.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

“Name’s Merlino,” I said, and grabbed him by the back of his head.

“Hey!” he screamed, and then the gun was in his mouth.

I looked around. To the right, another house. The only window in view was covered. To the left, wall. Behind us, the street stood empty and sun-dappled; dusk was drawing on.

“Look, motherfucker,” I said, “do yourself a favor and tell me the truth.”

His eyes widened.

“Okay?”

He nodded.

“Where’d you bury those kids?”

He said something, but the gun was in the way. I pulled it out and jammed it against his temple.

“Miller’s Quarry,” he stammered, “just past a chain-link fence and under a weeping willow tree.”

“Show me.”

I marched his ass across the street and forced him into the car. Just as I was climbing behind the wheel, Smith’s front door opened and a woman in a house dress came onto the porch, wiping her hands with a dish towel.

“Tell her you’ll be right back,” I said, jabbing him with the gun.

“I’ll be right back, Margret!” he called. “They need me at the club!”

“Okay!” she called.

I toed the gas, and away we went.

“Who are you, anyway?” Smith asked. We were almost to the quarry, or so he said.

“None of your business,” I said.

“I…”

“Shut the fuck up or I’ll blow your brains out.”

“Turn right.”

We took a narrow little dirt road, and followed it for about two miles through the woods before he told me to stop.

“We walk from here. It’s a quarter mile.”

I got out of the car and let him lead the way. Quarter mile my ass. It was more like a mile and a half. Finally, we came to a rusted fence with a man-sized hole in the center.

“Through here,” he said.

“Ladies first,” I said.

He glared at me.

So I punched him.

“Go on!”

He led me through hole, and a few feet later, we came to the willow. The earth below it was freshly turned.

“There.”

“What’d you do to ’em?” I asked.

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Yeah?” I asked. “Well, who did?”

He didn’t reply.

“Sheriff Parker and George King?”

A bird cried somewhere. Smithy looked scared.

“What happened?”

“Roscoe picked ’em up on the road,” he said at length, “brought ’em back to the club and tied ’em up. George helped. From what they told me, they beat ’em and shot ’em. Cut the nigger’s dick off. They were dead by the time I showed up.”

I shot him.

Back at the motel, I called Jackson and told them what I’d found. The director said he was gonna send some guys to check it out. If it was them, he wanted me to drive down to Jackson, pick up my pay, and then “Get your ass back to New York.”

I hopped in the shower at around ten. When I got out, I threw on a pair of briefs and climbed into bed to watch a little TV. Just as I was getting comfy, the window by the door shattered into a million pieces.

Knowing a gunshot when I heard it, I threw myself onto the floor and grabbed my piece.

I heard someone scream.

Another shot, this one slamming into the wall.

A motor revved. Another shot. I jumped up and squeezed off a few “fuck you” shots.

The motor faded. I ran to the door and peered through the hole. Taillights, glowing red, speeding into the night.

“Motherfuckers!”

Of course, some asshole called the cops, cops in this case being the sheriff and his deputy.

Sheriff Parker stood about six feet tall and looked like a farmer, with deep blue eyes and a weather-beaten face. He took down my account, grinning all the while, and promised he’d catch the “travelin’ nigger” who was responsible.

I called the feds and told them what happened.

“How did he know it was you?” the director asked.

“Fuck if I know. If he had any solid evidence I killed that Delmar dick, he’d have taken me in. Right?”

“I don’t know. This wasn’t the police, though; this was the Klan.”

“Yeah, well, they shot at the wrong motherfucker.”

“Don’t do anything!”

The next day I left Mississippi. In Tampa, I met with a guy I knew through the Larazas and bought a machine gun, some ammo, and a few grenades. I was back in town by midnight, just as the news was starting to break: The three missing civil rights workers had been found buried in a shallow grave under a willow tree.

I checked out of the motel the next afternoon and drove down to Jackson to get my pay.

After promising the director to leave right away, I went back to Louisa and parked across from the Hunt and Fish club on Pine Street.
POKER THURSDAY NIGHT. MEMBERS ONLY.

Good thing it was Thursday.

Around five, guys started showing up. There was Larry King. Oh, and the sheriff in plainclothes.

I waited.

Once it looked like the gang was all there, I got my carbine and walked across the street, right in front of an oncoming car.

The doors were unlocked. Inside was a long hallway terminating in a set of stairs. I heard voices.

At the top of the stairs was a set of double doors. Beyond was a little meeting hall or something; some asshole was standing behind a podium talking about niggers and kikes and commies.

He must have heard me coming, because he turned and looked at me.

I blew him away.

Before he had even fallen, I leapt through the door, guns blazing like a cowboy or something. There were ten guys in folding chairs. I shot all of them like sheep.

Except Parker. I must have missed him somehow, because the next thing I know, he’s shooting back, and I’m falling against the wall, my guts on fire.

He was on the floor now, crawling away. I opened up, hitting empty chairs and dead bodies. Parker got to his feet and bolted through a door.

I threw myself back into the hall, and there he was, limping away. So I did hit him.

I raised the gun and fired.

Click-click
.

Fuck. Jammed. I threw it aside and whipped out the pistol.

Parker was already firing again. He hit me twice, once in the leg and once in the head, taking my ear clean off.

I don’t remember much after that. I vaguely recall being on top of the dick and strangling him, but I don’t remember how I got there. I
do
remember pulling the pin of a grenade and shoving it into Parker’s mouth, breaking teeth.

How I made it away I’ll never know, but I recall staggering out the front door just as the hall behind me went up.

The next memory I have is being in the hospital, feds hovering over me. They talked a big game about putting me away for life, but the director himself thanked me for taking out the scumbags. All they did was fine me.

They explained the shooting away by saying there was a civil war in the Klan or something. I don’t know. As soon as I was well enough to travel, they took me back home and left me in bed.

Joseph Rubas
has been featured in a number of ’zines and hardcopy publications, including
[Nameless], The Horror Zine, The Storyteller, Eschatology Journal, Infective Ink, Strange, Weird, and Wonderful,
and
Horror Bound Online.

T
HE
I
CE-
C
OLD
A
LIBI

B
Y
E
RIC
B
EETNER