The Dark Retribution Series

Chapter 1-1

Nerves.

Twisted to the breaking point. Wound so tight he could barely keep his hands under control. He sat in the booth of the small diner, directly across from his partner, and tried to act calm. Tried to look normal. Impossible. Even when he lit his cigarette it was obvious. The hand holding the cigarette lighter danced around the tip of the cigarette like he was beating a drum. But flipping the old Zippo closed with a loud snap he slid the shaking hand into a pocket and sat back in the booth. Eyes filled with worry, he turned and stared into the gloom of a foggy night.

Nerves.

Fear.

Knowing he was doing something wrong. Knowing that, if caught, it would be the end of his career. The end of everything. Ten years. Ten years as a cop. Flushed down the tubes and forgotten. If he was caught. If…

“Artie, you all right? You feeling sick?”

He blinked a couple of times, his partner’s voice bringing him out of his dull reverie of the night’s fog and forcing him to turn and look at the red-nosed cop sitting in the booth opposite him.

His partner for the last two years, an Irishman by the name of Joe Gallagher, sitting across from him, lowered his cup of coffee and looked at him with eyes of concern. All night long on their shift he had barely spoken three words. But then the call came to go out and check on the report of a body lying in the street down in front of Pier 86. It was another victim. Another butchered woman. Number five for the maniac the papers had dubbed ‘The New Jack Ripper.’

“I’m… fine, Joe. Fine. It’s just that, well… it’s the fifth p********e killed. The fifth one on our beat. Cut to pieces like she was a piece of fine beef fresh from the slaughterhouse. Jesus, what a mess. And what a crowd we had to hold back. I mean, people everywhere. Reporters and cameramen. Everywhere. Down to get a glimpse of the body. Sick. Just sick if you ask me.”

His partner frowned, set the coffee cup on the table, and nodded. Yes. It had been a b****y mess. Always is when someone is eviscerated. Just thinking about the gory mess the two of them had stumbled on made him shiver involuntarily.

“Listen, the shift’s over. We can write our reports tomorrow. Let me drop you off at your house. Get some rest. Drink a beer or two. Try to forget about it.”

“You go on home, Joe. I’m supposed to go over to a friend’s house and drink a couple of beers with him. I’ll just call a cab and wait for it here.”

Gallagher’s brown eyes narrowed thoughtfully as he sat in the booth and looked at his partner. Artie Jones was a good cop. A very good cop. Slightly bald, getting a little paunchy around the middle, always a smile on the man’s face. Yes, a good cop. But one who thought too much. Cared too much. Maybe, maybe tried too hard in trying to make the world a better place. Not that there was anything wrong in that. The trying. The caring. But sometimes it got to you. Sometimes the meanness of humanity becomes overwhelming.

Sometimes, to be brutally honest, it was best to not care so much and just do the job needed to be done. Better than driving yourself into an early grave trying to save the souls of those who didn’t want to be saved.

“All right. But get some rest, Artie. Jesus, but you look terrible. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Artie nodded, waved a hand, and smiled as his partner slid out of the booth and walked to the diner’s entrance. He turned and watched Joe unlock the door to the black and white patrol car and slide in. It was almost one in the morning. Dark. The street lights glowed a dull orange-yellow, filling the wind-swept street with an eerie feeling almost palpable.

What if the sergeant found out? The Louie? What if someone sees him talking to him? Hell! Was he even going to meet him tonight? I mean… come on! He was a cop. He was supposed to stay away from this guy unless he was arresting him for a crime committed. But hell. Everyone knew they needed a break. His discreet phone call to the phone number Smitty advertised in the paper, done on a landline in an office building where no one knew him, asking for help, could get his a*s fired if anyone found out. Everyone knew Smitty. Supposedly the very expensive security consultant/private detective who worked out of a small set of offices over on Brewer Street. A one-of-a-kind professional who hired out at top dollar, usually to large corporate clients who needed his kind of specialty, i.e., meaning industrial espionage. Yet he also worked for individuals. Rich individuals, but not necessarily always rich individuals. But there were the rumors as well. Every cop in the city knew the rumors. He was supposed to be the mob’s top hitman. He was supposed to be invisible. He wasn’t even really known by those who employed him, for chrissakes! No two mobsters brought in for questioning ever described Smitty in the same fashion. He was tall. He was short. He had shaggy brown hair. He was a blond with a flat-top crew cut. He was heavy-built. He was as slim as a toothpick. Whenever a victim of a contract killing was found there wasn’t a single piece of evidence linking Smitty to anything. No video. No witnesses. No prints. No residual evidence.

industrial espionage. Crazy. Just crazy.

No one could pin anything illegal on this guy. All anyone could say for sure was the guy was an absolute merciless killing machine. He somehow could slip in, silence his victim, and slip out and no one would know until hours later. And he had connections. Knew everyone who was anyone to be known on the streets. That was the deciding factor. That was the single point for him to get this wild idea. Ask Smitty for help. The police department, the entire city, was baffled. Scared. Frozen in indecision. This madman left no traces. He left no evidence behind. He left no DNA material behind. It was like, like he was a ghost who preyed upon those who practiced the oldest profession in the world. No one knew why.

So maybe it would take a ghost to find a ghost. A killer to stop a killer.

A shaking hand ran across his lips as he looked down at his coffee cup. With the cigarette between his fingers, he reached for the cup just as he heard the noise of an approaching car through the plate glass window beside him. Lifting the cup Artie turned to look outside.

He froze in mid-motion, eyes almost popping out of his head with a mixture of surprise and horror.

A cab – an old Ford Crown Victoria – battered and abused, sitting parallel to the curb in front of the diner, its right rear door open. Waiting. Waiting for someone to get in. The clatter of his cup slipping out of his fingers and bouncing on the tabletop made everyone in the diner turn and look at him. Blinking a couple of times, color draining from his face, he stared at the taxi for a heartbeat or two and then turned to look at the eight or ten people sitting in the diner.

They were staring at him. Faces puzzled. Or bemused.

“Hey, buddy!” the guy behind the diner’s long counter said, holding a phone up to one ear and staring at him irritably. “It’s the cabby outside. He says the meter’s running. So how about it? You want him to take you someplace or not?”

Artie Jones stared at the diner’s chief cook for a moment in shock and turned his head back to look out the window and at the waiting taxi. He hadn’t called for a taxi. The story he told his partner about going over to see a friend tonight in a taxi was just that. A story. So how… how… how…?

“Hey, Mac! Sometime tonight, okay? I got orders to complete.”

Artie felt himself nodding. Moving his hands and his body to slide out of the booth. He felt himself walking down the length of the diner and out through the entrance into the hot night. Like an out-of-body experience, he saw himself walking down the sidewalk toward the open door of the cab and folding himself up and sliding into the back seat. He saw himself close the cab’s rear door. Felt the cab accelerate away from the curb rapidly.

Saw it all. Experienced it all. Yet couldn’t believe it. Didn’t want to believe it. It was so surreal. So bizarre!

surrealThe car accelerated hard down the street and then made a sudden right-hand turn. A block later it turned again sharply and turned again straight into an alley. The headlights went off as the car bounced and rolled down through the alley rapidly and came out on the opposite street. The lights snapped on as the car slowed down.

In front of him all he saw was the back of the head and the upper shoulders of a man wearing a cabbie uniform. Glancing down at the backrest directly in front of him he looked for the small plastic pocket which was supposed to show the cabbie’s license and photo. There was no license. No photo. But there were eyes. Cold black orbs staring at him. Reflecting off the rear-view mirror whenever a sliver of light flashed past.

Cold eyes. Hard eyes. The eyes of a killer.

“I hear you’ve been looking for me.”

A surreal, almost rasping harsh whisper. Coming out of the darkness of the front seat. Unnerving. Making Artie involuntarily wince.

“Smitty?”

“That’s what some people call me, Artie. But I answer to a number of different names.”

He felt a cold chill run down his spine. He tried to swallow. Tried a couple of times. But he was so scared there was nothing to swallow. He lifted a hand up to his face. Almost. But he stopped suddenly when the whisper exploded in the darkness. Like a scalpel flashing out of the darkness.

“Make sure you keep your hands away from your g*n, friend. Away from any pockets. Understand?”

Artie hesitated, looked at his hands, and then back up at the rear-view mirror and nodded.

“Good. Now tell me. Why does an honest cop like you want to talk to a man like me?”

How was he going to do this? How was he going to ask for help? He was a cop, for chrissakes. Cops go after the bad guys. Cops solve the murder cases. Cops are the ones who are supposed to protect the public from madmen like, like this new Jack the Ripper. Or from someone like Smitty.

“Well, you see, we’ve, we’ve got a problem. There’s a man we’re after. Crazy. Insane. A f*****g madman. He’s going around killing women. Prostitutes. And we’ve got nothing. Absolutely nothing. He’s been killing for the last four months. We know as much now about this guy as we did when we found the first body.”

The cab flew down empty streets. Never staying on one street for more than two blocks. Swift, hard turns right and left. Mostly right-hand turns. A few left. But in general, Artie got the feeling they were traveling in one twisted, jagged, clockwise circle. Somehow he knew that when this conversation was over he would not return to the diner.

“So what is it you want me to do.”