The New Hero: Volume 1 Page 4

  Squad scaled the ladder, giving Cragg shit all the way up.

  *

  ‘Ouch!’ complained Jerzy Polowski, again, as Squad shoved the barrel of his .45 into the mobster’s head a second time.

  Jerzy was sitting at a desk in a back room of the warehouse, both of his hands in the air. Sneaking past Jerzy’s muscle had been an exercise in embarrassing ease.

  ‘Is he really gonna make you say it again, boss?’

  ‘Can the commentary while the chief’s working, specialist.’

  ‘Her name is Becky,’ said Squad slowly and clearly, ‘and if you don’t leave her alone, everything that’s written here on this piece of paper is going to get really, widely, publicly public. Are you hearing me? If Becky should happen to catch so much as a half-waft of the B.O. drifting off one of your goon’s overripe asses, the newspaper and the city attorney and the President of These United States are all going to know all of this.’

  Jerzy turned his head, looked at him blankly, although not without pique. ‘Give me the paper,’ he said.

  Squad extended it, keeping the gun leveled at his head.

  The mobster unfolded the ragged paper, torn from a spiral-bound notebook, and squinted while he read.

  ‘The hell does “Certain damning evidence contained in file 10016 at the prosecutor’s office” mean?’ Jerzy said the Squad. ‘The hell is “Lawrence Sootin, esquire”?’ Jerzy focused on Squad’s handgun for a brief second and added, ‘All due respect.’

  ‘You should have read the letter,’ said Fax.

  A moment later, Squad was on Jerzy’s desk phone with Becky, still holding the mobster at gunpoint.

  ‘I’m here with your Mr. Polowski,’ said Squad into the mouthpiece. ‘He’s telling me he doesn’t know anything about what you wrote down here. It’s a little bit of a problem, Becky.’

  ‘This punk’s lying,’ said the kid. Raymond Stiles. They called him Puppydog to jerk him around, because once upon a time, it had gotten a reaction. He didn’t know a damn thing, but back when the kid had still been a kid, he could put a bullet through an engagement ring at a full klick. ‘Shoot out his knee, see what he says then.’

  ‘Polowski?’ said Becky.

  ‘Everybody on the street agrees that this guy I’m talking to right here, Jerzy Polowski, runs the local rackets,’ said Squad. ‘And you told me that the boss is the one who sent his goons after you.’

  ‘No, that’s Guido. The file was about this guy, Guido Haczyk.’

  ‘What kind of name is “Guido Haczyk”?’

  ‘Shut up.’

  Squad covered the mouthpiece and turned back to Jerzy. ‘What does the name “Guido Haczyk” mean to you?’

  ‘One of my lieutenants. What’s it to you?’ Again, a glance at the gun. ‘All due respect.’

  ‘You should really have read that letter.’

  ‘Keep poking me about it, motherfucker!’ Squad shouted back at Fax, his rage reverberating off the inside of his skull.

  ‘Is there any other critical news I ought to know, Becky?’ asked Squad into the phone, terse.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  After a long beat of silence, she said ‘Is it important whether I told anyone else about this stuff?’

  Squad sighed. Another little brick. Someday he was going to build a castle out of them, and go inside, and everybody was going to leave him the hell alone.

  ‘Yeah, Becky. That might be kind of important.’

  ‘Alright, uh— alright. Hang on a sec, I’ve got to go out into the garage, Jakey’s crying.’ Squad waited a moment, could hear Becky handing off the baby. After a moment, she started talking again: ‘I know this guy from school, Leon.’

  ‘Let me guess, a Polish guy,’ said Cragg.

  ‘He’s kind of sketchy,’ she continued, oblivious to the commentary track.

  ‘Get right out,’ said Cragg.

  ‘There was some stuff in the file that I didn’t understand. Some slang, some stuff about, you know, crimes. I thought Leon would be able to help me understand it.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ said Squad. Squad turned to Jerzy. ‘Guy name of Leon work for you?’

  ‘One of Guido’s, kind of a fag. Wants to be a writer or whatever.’

  Squad was about to say something else back into the phone when a short, surprised shriek came out of it and then a hushed, horrified, ‘Oh my god,’ and then the line was quiet.

  ‘Becky?’ said Squad. ‘Becky?’

  ‘That’s not good.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Jerzy, wary.

  ‘What just happened, boss?’

  ‘Becky?’

  ‘They’re here,’ Becky whispered into the phone. ‘They’re at the house! Those mob guys, and they’re with the guy from the file. They’ve got guns, and— My god, I have to go, Jakey and my mom are—’

  ‘Where are you?’ Squad hissed.

  ‘In the garage.’ Still whispering.

  ‘Can you get out?’

  Becky sobbed once then choked it off.

  ‘Get out, Becky.’

  Silence for a long moment.

  ‘Becky, can you get away?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do it.’

  ‘I can hear Jakey crying,’ her voice was small as a dormouse a thousand miles away.

  ‘You’ve got to get her out of there, boss. If she loses it, she’s going to—’

  Squad said to Becky, ‘Jakey needs you to live. If you go in the house, you’re dead. Jakey needs you to live. Leave the house.’

  ‘Ok,’ said Becky finally.

  ‘You said your mom’s house was in Cloverdale. I’m going to meet you at whatever McDonald’s is closest to your house. Are you leaving the house?’

  The line went dead.

  *

  Over the next sixty seconds Squad said things like ‘This fuckhole Leon,’ and ‘No, right this instant!’ and ‘…faster than you’ve ever driven this top-heavy piece of shit in your life.’

  *

  Jerzy’s SUV tore into the lot. Becky was standing next to the massive post that held up the golden arches, leaning on it like she lacked the strength to stand on her own. She was wretched, her face a red, demolished mess of regret and terror.

  Jerzy had come around to an intense interest in knowing why a file in the prosecutor’s office was full to the brim of one of his lieutenants.

  Squad jumped out of the truck before it came to a stop, running across the parking lot, scanning the area for danger.

  ‘Nothing, boss. It’s clear.’

  Squad reached out his hand to Becky, who was sobbing openly at his arrival.

  ‘They h-h-h-have…’ she started, but couldn’t finish. Squad took her hand and pulled her back toward the SUV.

  ‘It’s going to be okay,’ he said. ‘We know how to deal with shitbags.’

  *

  Becky balked at getting into the SUV when she saw Leon inside. He was riding up front, with Jerzy in the back and one of Jerzy’s goons behind the wheel.

  ‘They’re going to help us,’ Squad said to Becky, and demonstrated his surety by climbing in first, taking the middle seat on the back bench and holding out his hand to help her up.

  She hesitated. Squad barreled ahead: ‘Jerzy is Guido’s boss. He’s not any happier that Guido’s apparently planning to turn state’s evidence than Guido is that you know he’s going to do it. Get in, Becky.’

  Becky blinked.

  ‘She can’t process that in her state,’ said Thom gently. Squad took a frustrated breath, doing his best to swallow his impatience.

  ‘This truck is going to where Guido has your baby. When it gets there, Jerzy is going to kill Guido. Are you alright with that?’

  Becky climbed into the truck.

  *

  The SUV rolled into the alley behind the drug store where Leon had told them that Guido holed up when he needed to lay low.

  Leon looked sick, which is how he’d looked ever since Jerzy
had exploded into the room where Leon had been working on a laptop and let loose a fusillade of Polish. He then proceeded to empty a clip of 9mm ammunition into the computer and the table it was sitting on while Leon rolled frantically backward on his second-hand office chair and barfed into his own lap. Shooting up the laptop had pushed Jerzy a notch up the sensibility scale, as far as Squad was concerned.

  ‘If this one moves,’ Jerzy said to his driver, indicating Leon, ‘kill him.’ Driver nodded. Jerzy slid out of the car.

  ‘You stay here,’ Squad said to Becky, and followed Jerzy out.

  Squad came around the SUV’s open tailgate, where Jerzy tossed him an M16. As he reflexively caught the weapon, Squad grinned, a shy thing he immediately tucked back inside the scowl whose outlines made up the more permanent definition of his face.

  Jerzy was popping the clip on his own assault rifle, checking the rounds inside and slapping it back in place.

  Squad slid the proffered weapon back into the truck to a cacophony of protest— ‘Oh, man!’ ‘No!’ ‘C’mon, boss!’—from inside his head.

  ‘I’m good with this,’ Squad said, sliding his beat-up army-issue from his waistband.

  Jerzy shrugged and shut the tailgate as Becky came around the back of the truck, a monument of determined motherhood.

  ‘I’ve seen that look before, boss,’ said Harms.

  ‘Get back in the truck,’ said Squad.

  ‘Are you planning to get my baby back with those?’ she asked, looking pointedly at the guns.

  ‘Get back in the truck, woman!’ said Jerzy. ‘We will take care of this!’

  ‘She has a point, sergeant,’ said Thom. ‘We don’t know what’s inside that place. You can’t establish a perimeter by yourself. Especially while you’re keeping your other eye on this loose cannon mobster.’

  ‘Although we realize he’s your new Luddite best buddy,’ added Cragg.

  Squad looked over at Jerzy. ‘Get Leon.’

  A moment later Squad, Jerzy, Leon, and Becky were wedged into the alcove where the back door of a coffee shop on the next block gave a good view of the drug store’s side door, where a black F150 was parked that both Leon and Jerzy had confirmed was Guido’s.

  Leon had his cell phone pressed to his ear. It was ringing.

  ‘It’s, uh, Leon,’ he finally said into the handset. ‘I, uh— we’ve got a problem.’

  He listened to the tirade of response for a moment, tried to break in, gave up under the avalanche. Jerzy finally reminded Leon of the M16 concealed inside his jacket and Leon found renewed religion about wedging a word in edgewise.

  ‘Look,’ Leon blurted, ‘Jerzy found out about the arrangement, and there’s some more, but I don’t want to tell you on the cell.’

  Silence. Then some decidedly cranky Polish.

  ‘Colorful,’ commented Cragg.

  Into the phone, Leon said ‘I, ah…’ He looked like he wanted to die. Jerzy gave him a look. ‘I can’t get away right now,’ he said. ‘Is there any way you can meet me?’

  The string of obscenity that flew out of the phone suddenly jumped across the street as Guido came out the side door of the drug store, still swearing into his cell phone as he stormed to his pickup truck.

  Jerzy emerged from the alcove and stalked purposefully toward Guido, taking his M16 out from under his jacket.

  ‘Hey sergeant,’ said Cragg, ‘ask Becky for her phone.’

  ‘Not the time, specialist,’ said Thom.

  ‘I’m saying you might want to—’

  Thom suddenly understood, and broke in: ‘—Cragg’s right, Chief, and you haven’t got a lot of time.’

  Squad knew the tone, and it had never led him wrong.

  Meanwhile, in the street, Jerzy had brought the M16 to his shoulder. He shouted something in Polish to Guido that had the unmistakable character of, ‘Turn around you sonofabitch.’

  Guido got halfway around before a burst of bullets tore him to pieces.

  Jerzy stepped up to his still-twitching body, yelled something else, and put another bullet into his head.

  Back in the alcove, Squad was holding Becky’s phone. She had her hands over her ears and was shrinking into the far recesses of the doorway. ‘Alright,’ Squad said to her, ‘how do I, uh, get a copy of that to somewhere else?’ he asked her.

  ‘Uh…’ She was freaking out, unable to summon anything other than horror at having just seen a human being shot to hamburger.

  ‘My wild guess would be the button that says ‘Send,’ sergeant.’

  Jerzy was already walking back across the street toward them, smoke rising from the M16’s barrel and action. Squad’s callused, sausage-looking fingers hunt-and-pecked at the phone as he came.

  Jerzy pointed at Leon, jerked a finger back toward the SUV. Leon humbly turned to head for the vehicle. As soon as Leon’s back was turned, Jerzy brought the gun to his shoulder and put a bullet in Leon’s brain stem. Becky screamed.

  Jerzy turned back to Squad and Becky. ‘Sadly, it is check-out time for you and you, as well.’ Jerzy, who didn’t seem remotely sad, started to bring his gun up again, but Squad held up Becky’s phone.

  ‘Did you know these things have video cameras in them, these days?’

  Jerzy faltered for a second.

  ‘And I have it on good authority that when you push this little button, the one that says “Send”, you can just e-mail some video from the phone to anyone on the Internet. Like, say you had a home movie of some crazy Polish mobster shooting some guys up in broad daylight.’ Squad narrowed his eyes and growled: ‘You kill us, friends of mine are gonna wonder why they just got that video, and they’re going to come looking for you, and they’re going to have some leverage, and you’re gonna all of a sudden get really popular on…’

  ‘…Christ, what’s that Internet thing with the videos called, again?’ Squad asked.

  ‘Are you talking about YouTube, chief?’ the kid asked.

  ‘…on YouTube,’ Squad finished. ‘So instead of pointing that thing at me, get your ass inside that drug store and explain to your wayward thugs that one of them just got promoted, and then come walking out that door with a baby and its grandma.’

  Jerzy didn’t look too happy, but sure enough, that’s what he did.

  Jakey and grandma were reunited with Becky, with sobbing and hugging and all that stuff that Squad had never once in his life waited around to see.

  Before Jerzy’s truck pulled away, everyone agreed that none of them ever wanted to see each other ever again, and that if anyone ever said anything to the police, it was going to be an unwelcome shitstorm all the way around.

  And that was that.

  *

  Squad walked down the street at dusk in the direction of the Greyhound station.

  ‘I noticed you never did find that “Send” button,’ said Cragg.

  Squad took a drag on his smoke and then tapped his temple with his index finger, leaving a cigarette contrail.

  ‘Let’s keep that between the five of us,’ he said.

  Warrior of the Sunrise

  Maurice Broaddus

  Lalyani surveyed her surroundings, one hand pressed against her hip in stoic resignation, the other clutching her spear. Half of her spear’s length was razor sharp iron and had considerable heft, not easily wielded by a man, much less a woman. Pangs of hunger rumbled her insides, but she dared not chance a bite of what little fruit she spied amongst the sickly branches. Fungus encroached into the uninviting copse of trees in slow digestion. The stink of rotting carcasses rose from the murky waters of the fetid pool, discouraging anyone from tarrying too long. A low-laying fog swirled about at the foot of the jutting crag. The Mountain of No Name, a desolate stretch of rock, leered from above the tree tops.

  The silence disturbed her, the forlorn and petulant stillness wore on her bones. No bird song, no frog bark, no monkey chatter, no whir of insect, no stir of bushes. The beast had come this way. The muscles in her arms ached from their previous encounter.
The scars along her back still oozed, though she paid the pain no mind. She nursed her anger, a newborn to be suckled until it could march on its own. She would kill the beast and then its master, such was the simple order in her world. That was who she was now.

  Lalyani, the Outcast.

  Her name would be whispered on the lips of griots, in poem, and song, and story—sometimes of her adventures with Dinga Cisse and that Greek dog he called a friend—not that she cared about such things. Most times, however, she preferred to go her own way, to wander The Path anyway it bent.

  Unbridled and sure-footed, she had the supple physique of a horse, her legs wide-braced and powerfully muscled. Though lacking a man’s height, she held her head high, her shoulders always bent in anticipation of action. A broad girdle of bronze beads over black sable skin made no attempt to hide her full-bosomed figure. Her leopard hide skirt stopped a hand’s spread above her knees.

  Slinging her spear through her kaross, she groped for handholds along the unnatural ridge of stone before her. The shelf was more wall than anything else; a craftsman had worked too hard to make the imposing edifice appear natural. Her people, the Mo-Ito, were hill denizens, so she climbed the stone spire with keen aplomb. She quickly passed the shattered bones of men scattered along the ridges who had failed their bid to climb the summit.

  Hours into her ascent, the cliff wall leveled into a landing. Her hands had grown numb from finding purchase. From the top, she turned westward. The impenetrable forest roof thinned at a kraal. Her breath hitched in remembrance of …

  *

  … how she struggled in Manuto’s presence. The chief storyteller and high wizard summoned her to his hut for his final pronouncement. Manuto let loose a weary sigh as if not knowing where to start and circled her. She imagined he often paced the length of his hut, wondering what to do with her. In better days, she teased his over-protectiveness of her, rarely admitting, even to herself, how much comfort she took in his attentions. Tonight he bore the mien of his position; his word to the chief’s ear was law. Her throat tightened in a dry swallow.

  ‘It is time,’ Manuto said. A fine sheen of sweat misted his fresh-shaven head.

  ‘Let me see him one last time.’