EYEHEARTZOMBIES

I feel like I’m taking off the years when I write this stuff down. I never would have thought it could feel this good to bring up such bad stuff before I started. I don’t have a lot of time left, though, so I’ll write some more and think about how it feels to go over everything later. If I can.

After the whole Cindy thing, I kind of kept my head low for awhile. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter…. They all came and went and I just kept doing my thing. Ray started giving me bigger and bigger jobs and after a half-year or so, I got my own crew. They were a bunch of two-bit hoods, but they did alright by me. And I did alright by them, too. Only two of ‘em never went home to their mothers. The rest all did fine.

They’re not really that important to what got me here, though.

Lucca was one of ‘em. Manny was another. Those two did a lot in my life, and lot in my road to this shithouse. Lucca left the racket about two years after Max came back from college. That would be about five years total after the warehouse.

We were in upstate New York, outside of a farm house in the middle of winter. It gave me the memory heebie jeebies it was so close to how Joey had died. Lucca was still the biggest Italian guy I had ever seen; one you’d never dare call a daygo or a guido; and I had finally grown into my job. I still carried that little Saturday Night Special, though. Kept it in a special holster that hung in the small of my back, just under my suit jacket.

This night we were just there for a hit. Two guys had decided to duck out of the Mob, which was fine. They ducked out with a half-million in cold cash, which wasn’t. They also left a trail of dead gas station attendants and hookers a mile-wide that anyone could have followed. Naturally, the police were days behind us in tracking them down. We showed up at the abandoned farm house around midnight and they were still up, having a good time. All the lights were on, the house was ablaze with yellow light and sounds of a portable turntable blaring out Glen Miller. We could hear laughter and talking — loud talking, they were obviously drunk — a half-mile down the road. We didn’t bother sneaking up on the house.

The house was a typical farmhouse. One front door smack-dab in the middle of one of the long walls, two windows on each side of it. The two short sides had one window each, the back three. There was a chimney on the roof and it was belching white smoke into the late winter air. This was in February of ‘42, if I remember correctly. War was raging all over the world, and we were about to bring a bit of it to this house.

A long woodpile stood on the side of the house, tall and strong enough for me to stand on and reach the edge of the roof. It was a cedar slat job, which I liked. No slippery tiles for me to ice skate across. I pulled myself up and worked my way over to the middle of the roof. Then I edged down the front slope until I was just above the front door. Lucca had been edging around to the back of the house.

The plan was for him to get around back, pop in at a window and scare the daylights out of ‘em. They’d come running out to jump in the car they had stolen along the way, which I had taken the keys and spark plug wires from, and I’d cap ‘em on their way out. Intricate and over-the-top, yes. But damned if it hadn’t been a boring year so far.

I was laying on my stomach, on the snowy shingles above the front door, when I heard some pebbles hit the roof behind me. A couple more hit, and one bounced and hit me on the head. I pushed my way up to my knees, then to my feet, and walked back up the roof slope to the top. Lucca was standing near the trees that grew by the house and he held up five fingers to me. I held up five back and shrugged my shoulders. He held up five again, then three and make sweeping shapes in front of his chest. I looked at him for a minute, then it came to me. Mountains, knockers, funbags. Breasts! There were three dames in there.

I shrugged my shoulders then ran a finger across my throat. I shrugged again. Should we kill ‘em? Lucca waved at me to come down so we could talk. I hopped off of his end of the roof.

“I don’t like this,” Lucca said in his loud whisper. “We shouldn’t kill people that aren’t involved.”

“How do you know they’re not involved, Lucca? They’re with the scumbags. I say they’re as guilty as the rat bastards that ran out with the money.”

“I still don’t like it,” he said. Lucca had never been one for needless bloodshed, but I was surprised at his…desire…to leave this one for another day. Another day and the cops might get a clue and hope up here. Another day and these bastards might realize we were here. They had already killed two gas station attendants, one at each fueling stop along the way, and four hookers. The hookers had been killed in the big cities along the way. One pair in Ithaca and another in Albany. They were bad news for women.

Another day and they might be bad news for us.

“Look, Lucca, if we kill ‘em all, yeah, we’re horrible. We kill two innocent dames. But if we don’t kill ‘em, chances are they’ll kill the girls themselves tomorrow ‘fore they move on. If we kill the guys and leave the girls, they could finger us to the coppers.” I tried to sound considerate, but I wasn’t sure how it came out. I was more interested in saving my ass and getting said ass back to some place warm.

Lucca looked at me for a few moments, obviously considering what I had just said. Finally, he nodded. “OK,” he said, “but we do it a new way. You go in front door, I go in side door.”

“Side door? I didn’t see no side door.”

Lucca lead me over to the other side, opposite the wood stockpile, to where a double-door was set into the ground, leading into a cellar or basement.

“OK,” I said, wanting to get the job over with. Lucca pulled open the doors with a dead-raising squeal and headed down into the darkness. I just hoped there was a door leading up into the house somewhere down there. And that Lucca would find it. I stumped back around to the front of the house.

I didn’t stop at the front door. I went past it to the far window, and crouched down. I looked in over the sill and I could see all five people dancing and jiving to Glenn Miller. I liked the big band stuff as well as the next guy, but tonight it seemed to grate inside my skull.

A movement in the corner caught my eye and I saw Lucca’s head peeking out from under a trap door in the corner of the room. Apparently any other rooms in the house were on the other end, as this end was just the living room and kitchen.

I ran back around to the front door just as Lucca came fully out of the floor. I kicked the door handle and watched the door fly in on its hinges. It slammed against the jamb and the bang was finally enough noise to alert the traitors that justice had come.

I walked in, holding two forty-fives, one in each hand, and shot a girl with each of my first shots. I had aimed low for the first round and caught each of them in the stomach. They dropped to the floor and screamed.

Lucca’s first shot, carrying his shotgun as always, took the feet out from under one of the guys and the third girl. I turned to my right and shot the second guy as he dashed toward a table with a couple of pistols and a rifle on it. I hit him in the knee and the shoulder, causing him to stumble and rap his head on the edge of the table. He hit the floor in a belly flop and began to bleed.

I went over to the second guy, the one I had just shot, and turned him over. He seemed to be out cold and I only needed information from one. I shot him again, this time in the head. He flopped once and never moved again.

Lucca had walked over to the two girls I had shot first and began to check them for any weapons. They were clean — I saw now they were just in underwear anyway, hard to hide a weapon in that — and then he checked the first guy and the last girl. I joined him.

The first guy, who must have been Tim from the description we had received — long, stringy hair; two birthmarks, one on his neck, the other on his left shoulder — was trying to crawl toward the doors in the other short wall. I assumed there were bedrooms that way. Both of his knees were shredded by the wolf shot that Lucca had used on him, so he was pulling himself along with his hands. He was concentrating so hard on moving that he didn’t noticed me walking up in front of him. I stepped on his right hand and he screamed.

“Shut up,” I said, and slapped him across the back of his head with an open palm. “Shut up, turn over on your back. Don’t move a peg.” He hurried to obey. “Now, tell me. What made you think, in that tiny little head of yours, that you could take our money?”

“We — we just wanted out, man. That’s all.” His eyes were wide with fear. “We just wanted out.”

“I don’t go for that magoo. You know who I am, don’t you?”

“You’re one of the icemen, right. The killers. I — I don’t know you, man. I never seen you before in my life! Just let me go, man, just let me go and I promise you’ll never see me again. Nobody has to know! I won’t tell a soul. You can take the money — take it all, I don’t want it! Just let me live”

“Tell me about the dough, Tim. Where’d you stash it? In the rooms over here? What else am I going to find in there? Some more dead dime-bangers, Tim? I know how you two are. You like to ride ‘em and then put ‘em away dead, don’t you? You’re a couple of sick fucks, Tim. But, hey, to each his own. What’ll I find in there?” I threw away both of the pistols and pulled the revolver out from behind my back. I stuck the barrel, chilly from being outside, to his sweating, feverish forehead.

His eyes rolled in their sockets and he tried to look at me and the gun at the same time. “Just the money, man! Just the money. Oh God, please let me live. Kill James if you want, man. Kill him if he’s not dead already. Take the money. We didn’t mean to kill the girls. I didn’t, at least. That was all James, man, all James. I ain’t no killer. There’s nothing in there but the money, man!”

“Nothing but the money?” I asked, cool as a corpse.

“Nothing but the — .” The last word was swallowed in the hollow whump of the revolver’s shot. Tim dropped dead. I used the next three shots to take out the women, too. The room seemed eerily quiet with only Lucca and I breathing in it, now.

I heard Lucca call my name from near the front door. I turned to him. “Yeah?”

“I’m going back to the car. Get the money,” he said, then turned and walked out the door. He closed the door behind him as much as he could; it hung slightly off plumb now. I turned and opened the first of the two doors on that side. It was the bathroom. Nothing in there but piss and a few whiskey bottles. The second door was the bedroom and there was a duffel bag sitting on the bed, neat as you please. I snatched it up and opened it up. The money was in it, alright, so I zipped it back up, turned and walked out of the house. I kicked over one of the oil heaters they were using to keep it warm enough to dance in their underwear. In a few minutes, the oil would leak out and in a few more the place would start to burn.

Lucca and I had parked the car a quarter-mile or so from the house, as usual, and the walk back seemed very loud. My steps echoed off of the snow-covered trees and came back to me as several people walking. I always hated that effect and it made me think that things were going to go badly soon. I was right.

When I got back to the car, Lucca was standing next to it. The car was started and warming up, but he stood out in the cold, rubbing his hands and stamping his feet.

“What’s all this?” I asked him, feeling a sinking feeling in my gut. “Why’re you out in the cold, ya goomba.” I smiled at him. I think I was the only one he’d ever let call him names.

“I’m done with this,” he said, his head hanging. “I don’t like all the killing no more. I’ll drop you off tonight and then I’m done. No more killing for Lucca.” He looked up at me when he had finished, his face asking for acceptance, but his eyes defiant.

“OK,” I said. “I’ll tell the bosses tomorrow. Let’s get a cup of coffee ‘fore you leave, though, OK?”

He smiled and we got in the car. I never saw Lucca after that night. Seems like people walk out of my life an awful lot.