Chapter 5 - The Neckless

Joseph "Joey" Suka and his brother James "Jamie" Suka spent twenty years speaking with their best idea of a Russian accent to Italians and Mexicans and Jamaicans and Crips and Bloods and various others.  Joey had explained to Jamie that Russians were scary.  Being scary could be profitable.  People paid debts to scary people.  People changed testimony for scary people.  People paid for protection from scary people.  And Joey explained that while anyone could snap fingers or break knee caps or effectively place an ice pick in a liver, Russians were especially scary.

Nobody, not the Italians, the Mexicans, the Jamaicans, the Crips, or the Bloods thought they were Russian.   But the story of how they brought back Anthony "Chicklets" Abato's teeth, all of them, to Giovanni Oddi made them scary.  When they mailed pieces of Andrew "Chopper" Nocerino to every other person on the witness list against Paulie Schmidt made them scary.  What they did to "Nuts" Pagono made them scary as hell.

They were ridiculous, but absolutely lethal.  And scary.  That made them valuable.  That meant they were well fed.  That meant they eventually had no necks.  Just heads popped up six feet above the ground on round mounds of surprisingly muscular flesh.  Six feet six inches of 322 pounds of twin - TWIN - terror.  They saw the world in black and white and left it in red.

If the client wanted someone to disappear, then the Suka brothers were a waste of money.  They could DO that, but...

If you wanted something done that involved a cleaver and a blow torch, the Suka brothers and their "moose and squirrel" fake Russian accents were a sound investment.

Brutality.

People paid good money for brutality.

But for good money, people wanted results.  Proof.  Driving around (never flying) with proof was risky.  But people paid really good money for risk.

But there is a funny thing about risk.  The first time you sneak out of your parents' house at one in the morning, it is nerve racking.  The 33rd time you do it, it is just climbing out your bedroom window at one in the morning.

The first time you drive around the greater Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex with a dismembered body in your trunk it is terrifying.  The 33rd time you do it, you stop for chicken fried steak at your favorite chicken fried steak place.  And then you curse in broken Russian when you find your car stolen.  All your plans for the intestines of Jimmy "Spaghetti" Spinnetti gone with your favorite cleaver and your vintage copy of James Agee's A Death in the Family.

For the first time in ages the twin terrors were afraid.  They knew they amounted to middle management at best.  Consultants maybe would be an even better description.  If their Caddie turned up with Spaghetti in it and a cleaver and fingerprints and a certain ledger that even Jamie didn't know about, then both twins were sure to be expedited death penalty candidates in the extremely mortal state of Texas.  Either by the citizens of the Lone Star State or the members of the Detroit Men's Swim Club.

That was when they met the young black man from Houston with a gun.  He never showed them the gun.  They never needed to see it.  He knew it was there and so did they.  The way he walked right up to them but stayed just out of reach.  The way he kept the hip with the gun nestled against it away from them.  The way...  Joey was the one to notice this but once he said it out loud to Jamie it made sense.. the way his right hand looked empty, incomplete without a gun in it, spoke a violent dialect that these two violent men could understand all to well.

Things for the Suka's changed almost immediately after that.  The car turned up.  And the body was undisturbed.  It was so convenient that Jamie thought the man with the gun must have stolen the car or at least arranged it.  But the man with the gun made no demands on them.  He just did them a favor.  A favor that kept them out of hot water with the state of Texas and more importantly, the Detroit Men's Swim Club.

Things changed for the Suka twins after that.  They still took freelance assignments and still made fear a fog, a film that settled over the ones meant to be afraid.  But they added book making to their duties once they took out a bookie that had cheated the Swim Club of their proper cut.  There was a drug dealer that had decided to testify about his bosses.  Did you know that testify comes from the root word testes?  The twins or the man with the gun apparently did.  And so the Suka's entered the drug trade as on of the most secure networks imaginable.

They developed a reputation for over paying their help.  People chocked it up to them remembering what it was like to be lower down the ladder.  But if you worked for the twins, and you were good at your job, and you kept your mouth shut, you could make a lot of money.

The first time that reputation paid off for them was when the Redhead came to work for them.  She was beautiful.  Not pretty.  Pretty implied an innocence.  Pretty you could look away from.  You could not take your eyes off of the redhead.  For a hired killer that would seem to be a handicap.

But you would stand there with your mouth open and your hands limp and ... other parts of you forgetting the definition of the word "limp".  The fact that she got in to see them without an appointment was one testament to her caliber.  The ceramic straight razor that she had brought with her was another. She held it first against where Jamie's throat should have been and then teasingly against his nose when the man with the gun had shown her his properly adorned right hand.

She made a gift of the razor to Jamie whose pupils were still a bit dilated.  She smiled at Joey and his nostrils flared.  She turned to the man with the gun and pinched her lips together against the smile that wanted to blossom there.

"So you are the brains behind these two 'wild and crazy guys,' huh?"

End Chapter Five

Chapter 4 - Tells

The red head drove.  The rain was falling harder and harder and the road could barely be seen.  Her attention seemed to be solely directed at the road.  He knew better.  She never took her eyes off the road but he had absolute confidence that she did not miss a single move he made.  She had taught him how to do it.  But she was still the best.  It looked like the road was her sole focus.

He looked up to the roof of the car.  He closed his eyes.  She asked, "What's wrong?"  He smiled without ever opening his eyes.

She never asked the question again.  She drove through the rain a bit too fast for safety or comfort.  He did not love her.  He didn't.  Really.  But she was exactly the woman he would have loved.  She was smarter than him.  More pragmatic and conversely and illogically more honorable.  She was predictable in a way that made you only more disconcerted.  If you knew her, really knew her, you feared her, at least a little.  She scared him just a bit.  He treasured the fear she had allowed him to feel.

"You let him live."  The rain changed directions, working with the wind to make a fool of gravity so that it seemed perfectly normal for droplets to run parallel to the car.  She did not slow a bit.  He inhaled deeply Slow down, you are driving too fast, he never actually said.

She sped up a barely detectable mile per hour.  You have ignored me twice and I am getting a little pissed about that, she never actually responded.  They stayed that way for an uncomfortable number of minutes with her driving the route to his home more by memory than sight.  They stayed that way in a mild state of bitterness that only two old lovers can.

"I let him live," he responded without really answering.  It was a surrender on his part without giving up anything.  She had taught him that too.  She eased off the pedal - all the way back to her original speed that had unnerved him in the first place.  And so they danced.

"Money is not an issue," she replied.  Not "you have money" or "we have money" - she twirled away from him.

"Money enough to never,ever think of money again is always an issue."   His reply - a sweeping bow and an outstretched hand.

"A con man who has studied you for at least 3 years..."

"Seven according to him..."

"For three years... has promised you a fortune.  There is a joke there about Nigerian royalty."

He smiles again without looking at her.  "He either means for me to share in it with him or he means for me to take the fall for it while he makes away with the money.  I don't know yet."

She moves her head to the left.  Really, only a slight tilt to the left - a centimeter or two, barely enough to shift her hair.  But her hand, her right hand, came up and swept a strand of sunset red hair back over her ear.  IF her lips had pinched just a bit - charmed.  The lips did not pinch.  If she had followed the hair sweep with a deep inhalation - pissed.  Just the chin and the hair - vague disappointment and a little annoyed.  The fact that he had left such a dedicated, knowledgeable threat with the original number of holes annoyed the pragmatist.

"Our cut," OUR CUT - OURS - MINE and YOURS - YOURS AND MINE , "would be roughly 2 Billion."

The car fish tailed and she tucked her head hard to the left with a deep gasp and fought the road and the wet for control again.  She then peaked at him under red bangs that flirted over her green eyes and she bit her lower lip just slightly.

End Chapter Four