Savage Shadows

Prologue

Manny"s eyes were as big as silver dollars as he looked at Chino Genetti, holding a .45 in his face. “Please, no,” begged Manny. “Please don"t kill me.”

“Please, no,”“Please don"t kill me.”“Why would I let you live?” asked Chino.

“I ain"t so bad, man. I"m a good guy. Sure, I done killed a buncha motherfuckers and sold smack, but I"m a good guy, deep down.”

Chino"s phone went off. Chino looked at Manny, gun still in his face, and reached for the phone. “Hold on, I got a text,” he said. Chino looked at his phone, seeing the text was from Dobbs. It read: I"M AT GRILLBY"S. WHERE U AT?

Chino looked at Manny. “Sorry. This"ll just take a second.” Chino held up the phone, hit a button, and spoke into it. “Running late. I"m at work. Be there soon.” He stopped and looked at the phone, reading his message back. He looked at Manny, shaking his head.

“Fuckin" speech to text,” he said. “You heard what I said, right? But speech to text thinks I said, "Running laid. I"m a jerk." You believe that?” He looked back down, continuing. “"Beater spoon."” He looked at Manny. “"Beater spoon"? What does that even mean?” Looking into Manny"s frightened eyes, he said, “I don"t know why I use this feature. It takes me longer to fix the fuckin" message than it would to just type it. But I got fat fingers and I don"t like to type.”

"Beater spoon"?Manny was looking at him crazy. “What the f**k, man?”

“What the f**k, man?”Chino considered fixing the message but decided to wait. He stuck the phone back in his pocket.

“What can I do to stop this?” asked Manny, frantic now. “I got money. You want money? I can pay.”

“You wanna hear a joke?” Chino asked.

“What?”

“What?”“Knock knock.”

Manny stared at him, trying to understand.

Chino straightened the pistol, trying to intimidate him. “You say "Who"s there?" Let"s try again.”

Manny stared at him.

“Knock knock.”

“Okay. Who"s there?”

Chino squeezed the trigger, firing a round into Manny"s face, dropping him. Standing there staring at the body, he considered messaging Dobbs. No, he would wait. He still had to do the thing with the ice picks.