Dead Letter Drop

3

One half of me was sorely tempted not to bother to find out who they were, or where they were taking me, or what they planned to do, but just to crash out, let them take me wherever they planned and let the chips fall where they might.

The other half of me that had kept me out of the long wooden box for over three decades wasn’t going to have any of it. Secretly I was glad about that.

‘Know thine enemy,’ says the Good Book. On my 18 months’ intensive training in the Highlands six years back I’d been told much the same. I studied them, listening to their chatter: not a great deal to listen to — scrambled eggs for brains in their dialogue department; the highlight of their conversation was whether it would be better to take the first, second or third left to get to the Henry Hudson Parkway. They could count to three.

They were goons, four big rented goons, and I had an ominous feeling that they hadn’t got the wrong man; I could almost hear a cement-mixer grinding away in the trunk, making the quick-drying concrete for a pair of snug-fitting size 9½ boots.

I stared through the hairs in the goon on my right’s nostrils at the far-away lights of the Bronx as we cruised up the west bank of the Hudson, along the scenic Palisades Parkway past the neatly mown grass and the neatly trimmed hedges and the neatly painted signs to the neatly laid-out beauty spots — all carefully done to show how wealthy and prosperous the State of New Jersey was compared to its shabby neighbour on the other side of that deep, deep river. And tonight it looked deeper than ever.

There was an acute pain in my backside. What had felt like a small lump at the beginning of the ride was hurting more and more at each bump we went over. It was something I was sitting on. The pain, combined with the jabs from the shooter in my private parts every time we jolted, was beginning to make me feel irritable.

The two-way radio suddenly crackled into life. ‘Bravo Delta, are you on time for the wedding?’

One of the goons in the front replied, ‘Bravo Delta picked up the groom.’

There was a pause while the usual squawks and screeches came through the speaker, then, ‘Roger, Bravo Delta, we’re on our way to collect the bride. See you at the church.’

‘You got it,’ said the goon.

It didn’t tax my brain a great deal to work out who the bride might be, but just to help me out the goon in the front passenger seat, whose teeth looked like they had suffered a bad attack from termites, and whose breath smelt like he’d been drinking from a rain-tub full of dead bats, turned the ghastly assembly of scars, dents, spots and boils, perched above his neck and below his hat, that passed as his head. ‘Means your broad, sweetheart.’

If nothing else, this gem of English syntax annihilated the remainder of my fears about them having the wrong man. However, it didn’t make the pain in my backside any better, and it didn’t make me feel any happier. Nor did it give me any better clue as to who they were or what they wanted: a corpse, or a source of information — at the end of it all, probably both. I wasn’t overly inclined towards letting them have either; however, in light of the current situation, unless I did something pretty smart, and pretty quickly, it didn’t seem that my opinion was going to amount to a hill of beans.

We turned off the Parkway onto 9 West, curving round and underneath the Parkway onto a thickly wooded two-lane road. It was starting to rain; it was light rain, but it hit the car with a distinct slashing sound — a sound I had heard before when it rained in temperatures as cold as it was today: freezing rain — one of the most lethal of all driving hazards. To the driver it looks like ordinary rain, and it is, except that the moment it touches the surface it turns to ice; within moments of freezing rain starting, the road turns into an ice rink. It is not an uncommon phenomenon in the north eastern seaboard states during the winter. It is very difficult and very frightening to drive on. Muttered curses from the front seat, and the motion of the speed of the car easing slightly, indicated that the driver had recognised the hazard; whilst this rain lasted, and it wouldn’t last for long, I didn’t have to worry about the driver.

I tried in the gloom to study as best I could the shooter that was wedged between my legs; it was either a Smith and Wesson .44 revolver or a cheap copy cranked out by some back-street supplier. Either way it would be about the nearest thing to a hand-held Howitzer, well capable of carrying my crown jewels down through the seat and out through the bottom of the car. If it was a copy then I needed to worry about the trigger mechanism since it probably would be unreliable and more than a little sensitive to the slightest movement — ideal for the type of gorilla holding it, since his breed were not the type to discriminate too much about when or where their shooters went off just as long as they went off long enough and often enough to keep them on someone’s payroll.

The goon on my right was gazing out the window, off guard. The one in the passenger seat in front was wiping condensation off the windshield. Through the windshield, a long way ahead, was a green traffic light. Between us and the traffic light was the battery of tail lights of a large truck, probably a tractor-trailer. We were travelling downhill, and too quickly for the surface.

The goon in the front passenger seat switched on the ordinary radio; a commercial jingle blared out. The music stopped and a jolly voice told us all what rotten, lousy, stinking husbands we’d all be if we didn’t rush out instantly and make arrangements to have Whamtrash drainage systems installed in our homes and make life for our wives one whole lot easier. From the silence of the goons I could only think they were contemplating the advantages of a Whamtrash system.

‘One of your friends came into my apartment last night and shot the wrong guy,’ I announced.

The goon with the halitosis swivelled his head around. ‘Shaddup.’ He turned his head back to watch the road.

The traffic light was turning red. The radio told us of amazing bargains to be had at a local Pontiac dealer. All we had to do was go there and ask for Elmer Hyams. Elmer Hyams would do us real good. We would do our family unit a lot of good by buying a brand new Pontiac. We couldn’t buy a brand new Pontiac anywhere else in the United States of America cheaper than by dropping in and saying ‘Hi!’ to Elmer Hyams.

I rammed my left thumb down hard, real hard, into the trigger mechanism of the goon’s 44 and felt the hammer hit my thumb, hit it hard; my right hand smashed down on the reflex nerve of his gun hand, the gun jerked up and I jerked my thumb out; the hammer carried on down to the shell, hit the shell good and hard; the bullet blew out and took a chunk out of the roof; another bullet blew out and took another chunk out of the roof; another bullet blew out and took off most of the roof of the goon on my right’s head; another bullet blew out and went in between the goon in the front seat’s shoulder blades, and came out of his chest carrying most of his heart with it, and took most of his heart out through the windshield and into the New Jersey countryside.

I now had the gun. The driver had both hands on the wheel and was trying to see what was going on in the back. He forgot for a moment about the red light and the truck that had stopped, then remembered. He stamped on the anchors on the iced-up road and was turning the wheel this way and that. I thumped the goon on my left’s balls so hard he jumped up in the air. I had the door handle down and shoved him hard before he came back down in his seat, shoved him out into the road, and I was rolling out there with him. Another bullet blew out and went through his Adam’s apple. I thumped into the grass verge and rolled over. I saw the big black car do one complete circle and then slide, nose first, straight under the long, long tailgate of that big, big truck, and that tailgate swallowed up the big black car as it went further and further under, slicing through the windshield, and through the steering wheel, and clean through the necks of the driver and his passenger, depositing their heads in the lap of the goon in the rear seat; it carried right on, slicing through the neck of the goon in the rear seat and depositing what was left of his head out through the rear windshield, so it rolled down the trunk of the car, bounced off the rear fender, and came to a rest a little way up the road.

The stabbing pain in my ass was still there. I gingerly felt my behind and found a big lump, a big, sharp lump. I pulled, and it came away from my trousers, and I held it up in the gloom: it was a set of false teeth.

I sat down, took some gulps of air and carbon monoxide. The highway had gone very quiet. Away up, I could hear the sounds of the truck driver retching. It was the only sound and it went on for a long time.