Joe Pitt 5 - My Dead Body (9 page)

By the time my eye has cleared enough for me to get a look at how I did, there’s no point in emptying the gun in his mouth, but, like with Lament, I said I’d do it. Laughing when I get another look at that legend printed on the stock.

LESS LETHAL

But just enough.

Anyway, kind of a shame about emptying the thing. Seeing as it means I don’t have anything lethal or otherwise when I climb off the enforcer’s dead body just as another limo tops the ramp, pulls to a stop, and three more enforcers get out and grab me and hold me down while Dexter Predo exits from the back of the car.

--Pitt.

He takes off his jacket.

--I can’t tell you.

He undoes a button on his white shirt, tucks his tie inside.

--Just how pleased I am.

He undoes his cuffs and rolls his sleeves to his elbows.

--How unequivocally delighted.

He takes a pair of calfskin black gloves from a back pocket and snugs them onto his hands.

--Imagine the odds.

He reaches in the open door of the limo, comes out with a small black doctor’s bag that looks like a prop from an old movie.

--Meeting like this.

He walks over to where I’m pinned, steps across my body and stands over me with a foot on either side of my torso.

--It could only happen through sheerest luck.

He lowers himself and sits on my chest.

A rib end pokes my lung.

--Or if someone were idiot enough to park a known Hood vehicle in a high-surveillance area of Coalition turf.

He sets the bag next to my head and twists open the brass clasps.

--Leaving it there for nearly an hour.

He takes a pair of green-handled shears from the bag.

--While he slips into a bar for a few drinks.

He opens and closes the shears, testing the action.

--How fortunate for me that you are just such an idiot.

He looks at the enforcer holding my left arm and the guy shifts his grip and puts a knee in my shoulder and lifts my hand from the ground and I ball it into as tight a fist as I can.

Predo shows me the shears.

--Through a long process of elimination, over many years, I have found that the compound action of a good pair of hoof rot clippers allows for the easiest and cleanest severance.

He nods and the enforcer starts to pry at my fist.

--Now, we could start small, work our way up, but I feel we’ve covered so much ground already in our relationship. So many threats unfulfilled. At this juncture, I think we can do away with the formality of gradualism and move directly to actions that make a distinct impression. Permanency can be difficult to accomplish in this line. You’ve lost an eye already. And what’s another toe, really? A man of your experience, what can I do that has not already been done?

Trying to open my fist, the enforcer has broken my pinkie and ring fingers to get what he’s really after. But he has it now.

Predo points.

--Do you know what separates us from the animals, Pitt? Our thumbs.

He fits the open shears around the base of mine.

--Our opposable thumbs are what allowed us to become users of tools. And our use of tools is inextricably linked to the development of our brains.

He looks at me.

--But you, Pitt, with your profound and recurring idiocy, you can undoubtedly spare a thumb.

He squeezes.

--Perhaps even two.

The blades pass through the skin and meat and bone in a single smooth snip that proves Predo was right. They really are the best tool for the job.

My thumb on the ground, he decides to change tack for the moment and snip off my broken little finger next. One knuckle at a time.

I manage to stay with the show for the first two knuckles, by the third I’ve blacked out.

Not wondering if I’ll wake, but if there will be anything left of me when I do.

I’m gonna die.

Not a news flash or anything. We all live under the same headline. But I’m gonna die here and now. Soon, anyway. In however much time it takes Predo to whittle me down to dead.

I know I’m right because I’ve felt the same thing so many times before. By now, I know exactly how it feels to know that you’re about to die. And in all that time, it only ever happened once. And that lasted for less than a minute. I’m not saying it makes me feel optimistic about my chances here, but it does make me feel like there may be a play left in my hand.

All I have to do is sell people out.

• • •

I come to.

Count my fingers.

Still got five on the right hand and three on the left.

That’s the good news. Bad news is, Predo’s still on my chest, has the shears fitted at the top knuckle of my left ring finger, and seems to have just been waiting for me to open my eyes.

--Ah, there you are, Pitt. Welcome back.

He clips the knuckle, and I lose another fingerprint.

He moves the shears down about an inch.

I sell someone out.

--Digga’s going to backstab you on the treaty!

He doesn’t take the knuckle, but he doesn’t move the shears from the finger either.

His brow furrows.

--I told myself.

He squeezes the shears just enough to break the skin around the knuckle.

--I told myself I’d finish the whole hand first.

A little more pressure and I can feel the blades touch bone, the scrape of steel.

--Before I asked what you could possibly be thinking that would make you do something so monumentally stupid.

He stops squeezing.

--When we both know, truly, that despite your best efforts to prove otherwise, you are not at all stupid. And, Pitt.

He closes his eyes and gives his head a little shake.

--I do not at all appreciate your interjecting here and causing me to rethink my plan of action.

He opens his eyes.

--You understand, yes? I nod.

--Yes sir, Mr. Predo, I understand.

The corners of his mouth crimp.

--Ah, there it is, that air of sarcastic servility.

He snips away the knuckle.

--I’ve so missed that.

He lowers the shears from my hand, and rises, standing over me, looking down.

--And it appears you’ll get one last chance to employ it, won’t you?

He steps away, tilts his chin at the enforcers, and they release me.

I stay where I am, and hold up my mutilated left hand.

Index finger, middle finger, stub of a ring finger.

I show it to Predo.

--Got to thank you, Mr. Predo, you left just enough so I can still tell a guy to read between the lines.

Turns out you need two opposable thumbs to roll a cigarette.

--Are you going to fumble endlessly with your bad habit, Pitt?

I rip another rolling paper and spill more tobacco on the ground.

--I’ll take any help I can get right now, Mr. Predo.

He looks at the three enforcers, they all shrug.

He unfolds his arms, comes away from the limo he’s leaning against, and takes the pouch from my good hand.

--A lost art, it appears.

He tugs a paper from the folder.

--It has been some time for myself.

He settles tobacco into the crease, rolls the paper back and forth around it, shaping a cylinder, pinches lightly and spins it into a tight bundle.

--Ah, like a bicycle.

He licks the glue, seals the edge, and passes the smoke to me.

--And the match?

I dig the pack from my pocket, fold one down and under until the head touches the sandpaper, and give it a snap that brings it to light.

--I got that covered.

He nods.

--Useful, should you live for any time at all.

He drops the tobacco pouch into the tacky glaze of my blood that I’m sitting in.

--Unlikely as that may be.

He walks back to the limo and resumes his posture, leaning against the front fender, arms folded at his chest, ankles crossed.

--About that treaty you mentioned. It does not exist.

My hand has stopped bleeding. Stumps scabbed over, scabs drying and falling away, revealing fresh pink scar tissue. The fingers will never grow back. Something like a slender wart might sprout where my thumb was, but that’s at most. And I’d just as soon it didn’t. Cuts in my face feel all healed over. I can brush the dry blood off and find slightly stippled skin. If I don’t move around too much, the ends of my ribs will finish knitting back together. Feels like a couple of them may end up crooked. I can still taste the pepper juice, I reek of it, but my throat and stomach have stopped burning, so that’s OK.

I wonder what it’s gonna be like to punch someone with a fist made out of two and a half fingers.

--Yeah, the treaty, you’ll be negotiating it pretty soon.

--Details.

--Lament is dead.

He looks at his shoes.

--How. Unfortunate.

I take a drag.

--Yeah, that was my reaction.

He looks up from his shoes, long bangs in his eyes.

--Not that you had anything to do with it, I assume.

--Oh hell yes, I shot him a bunch and then I scalped him. Good night’s work.

He pushes the hair off his forehead.

--I would add the killing of another Coalition officer to your record, but it is more than redundant at this stage.

--I’d hate anyone else to get credit for killing the fucker.

--Noted. I can assure you that when morning comes and you are staked out in the sun it will be included on the list of charges proved against you.

He puts a hand on top of the clippers he set earlier on the hood of the limo.

--And this treaty that does not exist, you foresee it for what reason?

I pick more scab from my finger stumps.

--Lament is dead. All his enforcers are dead. The Hood have cleared out the top of the rock. They got nothing distracting them up there anymore. No threat from inside their own border. Digga’s going to clean house. Anyone on opposition. Papa Doc, that mouthpiece you keep up there, I expect Digga already executed him by now. He’s done fucking around. By morning he’ll have a unified front. And he’ll be looking at One Ten, ready to get serious about war. Especially if it will force you to broker an agreement. Official cease-fire, and a resumption of trade.

He touches the tip of one of the shears’ blades.

--They are starving.

--Sure. So they can either fight it out with you and try to expand their borders and their hunting ground, or they can settle and start buying your blood again.

He removes his finger from the blade.

--Digga made it clear he is not interested in our blood.

He looks at me.

--Having learned where it comes from.

My smoke is down to a nubbin. Knowing how hard it’s going to be to get another one rolled, I pinch it like a roach and try to eke a last couple drags.

--We going to cry over spilt milk?

He picks up the shears.

--No. We are not.

He moves from the limo.

--So, you are telling me that Lament is dead, the top of the rock has fallen, Digga is assassinating his opposition in order to prepare for aggressive action along the border, but he is open to negotiating a treaty that he will then break at the earliest convenience.

One of the enforcers slaps the remains of my cigarette from my hand and the others close and I’m pinned again.

Predo cleans some of my dry blood from the blades of the shears.

--All terribly shocking to me. Indeed, how could it be that I did not already know the single most disputed piece of real estate in Manhattan had changed hands? Being only the head of Coalition intelligence, how could that bit of information have slipped past me? Ah, yes, but of course. Because it did not.

He snaps the shears open and closed.

--Truly, Pitt, is that your bid? As if I would not know. As if I could not surmise the rest. Of course we will negotiate a treaty. Of course Digga will plan to break it. But not before we break it first. There are machinations at play, Pitt. Upon whom would you care to place your bet, D.J. Grave Digga or myself?

He makes certain his tie has not become untucked from his shirt.

--Now, regarding that other thumb.

I wrap the fingers of my right hand around my thumb.

--The girl with the baby is inside the Cure house.

He’s at my feet, looking down at the shears in his hand.

--Yes.

He turns away.

--That would give us something of value to talk about.

They keep coming.

SUVs and vans full of them.

Enforcers filling the top level of the garage.

I don’t have nearly enough fingers to count them all. Even very recently I didn’t have enough fingers to count them. Dozens. Over a hundred maybe. The full force. Fewer of the stylish black suits. More coveralls. Black slacks and windbreakers. Sweats. I see four dressed in police uniforms. A team of six in black tactical outfits including body armor, coiling ropes, snapping open carbon-fiber grappling hooks.

Sitting in the corner where they stuck me when the vehicles started rolling up the ramp, I remember something. I remember from the time I was on the Upper East a year ago, when I first came to the Cure house, I remember the parking garage just a few addresses west on the same block.

Lydia’s sense of what the Coalition will or will not shoot up on their own turf appears to be for shit.

I think about that some. Mostly I think about mastering the one-hand cigarette roll, but I think about a shoot-up some as well. There are just too many guns not to think about it a little. Still, the cigarette roll is pretty all consuming. The tobacco I keep spilling isn’t that big a deal, I just scoop it up and try again, but I’ve ripped a lot of papers trying to get this right. Those I’m running low on. Truthfully, it’s not a one-hand roll, it’s more a seven-finger roll. And after about ten shots at it I end up with something I can stick in my face and light on fire. It looks like a crooked Tootsie Roll more than a cigarette, but I can live with it.

I’m making do with that smoke when Predo comes over. He’s still in shirtsleeves, but he’s untucked his tie and gotten rid of the gloves. For now. I’m sure he could be ready to get back to work on my digits at a moment’s notice.