ONE OF THE WICKED
(A MICK CALLHAN NOVEL)

By Harry Shannon

Prologue

Midnight . The young man in the torn Armani suit ran through the desert sobbing like a schoolgirl. His name was Calvin, and he was barely twenty-four years old. He tripped and fell, rose again. The shadowy earth was an uneven mix of rocks and earth, dried sage and cactus. His Gucci shoes were tattered and full of sand.

Calvin risked a look back over his shoulder. He saw a small group of people watching from a flat rock, next to the giant red Hummer. The presence of one man in particular made his stomach roll. Calvin paused for a moment, bent forward sharply at the waist and spewed what was left of three shots of Skyy Vodka and a few cocktail sausages. Bright headlights pinned him there, alone on the pocked surface of a moon.

By the Hummer, someone said, “That is how a man drowns.”

The voice was low and raspy, with only the faintest of accents, and it carried. The speaker was a huge man, nearly seven feet tall and very fit. His grey eyes were as clear and cold as those of a sled dog. He wore his hair in a buzz cut.

“What you mean, Nicky?” The blonde took a pull on her tepid bottle of Crystal. “I not understand.”

Nikolaou Argetoianu spat at her feet. “Slut, you are in America. Learn to speak English.”

The girl flinched. “I am sorry.”

Nicky ignored her, cupped his hands and shouted, “Wait, Calvin, perhaps I have another deal for you. And then you do not have to die tonight. You are interested in this new deal?”

The terrified young man in the distance was still vomiting. Finally, he stood up a bit and waved one hand. He was interested all right.

“A man drowns because he panics,” Nicky said to the girl, who hugged herself as if against a nonexistent cold. “He forgets the water will hold him up, and that most things work out when one stays calm. You see? Now, watch.”

Nicky yanked the hunting rifle to his shoulder, aimed and fired. The silenced weapon emitted a muffled chuffing sound, and a spray of earth appeared inches from the terrified runner’s feet. The boy called Calvin jumped up, pinwheeled his arms, falling backwards into the sand like a snow angel.

“Listen to me,” Nicky called. “I’ll say this one last time. Are you listening, Calvin?”

Calvin sat alone in the sand, crying and praying. Finally he sat up, took a deep breath and forced himself to respond. “Please. Anything.” Calvin hated the weakness in his voice almost as much as the urine staining the crotch of his expensive trousers.

“Oh, but of course you are frightened. This is because I killed your friend, yes? You must understand our position, Calvin. You two were scamming us. Mr. Big Paul Pesci cannot allow such a thing. He must remain a man of respect. So my superiors decided that something had to be done.”

“Please don’t kill me.”

“Do not beg. Now stand up.”

Calvin stood up.

“Walk this way.” Nicky’s voice became both gentle and firm. “And I promise we will not kill you.”

The blonde took another step backwards, closer to the Hummer. “Nicky, I don’t feel too good. Can I go lay down in the car, please?” She knew what that very sudden tone of kindness meant, and she suddenly wanted to be somewhere, anywhere else.

Nicky frowned, as if pondering something. He scratched his fashionable stubble. “I can never get this one thing straight, is it ‘lie’ or ‘lay’?”

“Excuse me?”

“No. Stay here, little bitch. And keep your mouth and legs shut until I ask you to open them again.”

Nicky tossed the rifle to the third figure. “You, keep him covered.” The muscular man named Lucky complied mutely. He glared down the scope and tracked Calvin. The rifle made a small red dot flicker on the kid’s sweaty forehead.

“Calvin, I said come closer. Quickly.”

The kid in the desert shivered like a man with the flu. His last shred of courage deserted him. He stumbled back toward the red Hummer. Why did I let you talk me into this, Rudy? Why? We had enough money to go home; we didn’t need more. Why did I let you get us caught?

Calvin kept his eyes on the ground but tripped anyway. He stared down at the shadowy dirt, forced himself back to his feet and kept walking.

Nicky cleared his throat. “As I was saying, your partner had to be executed. His disappearance will serve as a message to other grifters that it is most unwise to fuck with Big Paul Pesci. I take no pleasure in such things. Violence is one of the more unpleasant parts of my job, Calvin. It is an ugly necessity of life, nothing more.”

Calvin was weaving like an extra in a zombie movie, but he was making progress. Nicky checked his watch. “Come on, hurry up.”

The kid paused, perhaps twenty feet away. “What is it? What’s the deal?”

“Wait there.”

Nicky sighed dramatically. He moved to the left a bit, so Lucky would have a clean shot, and stomped out into the dried sage. As Calvin watched the tall man approach, a stress flashback loosened his bowels. He saw his lover and partner screaming in terror.

“Where is it?”

“What? What?”

“Where is the item that was with the cash?”

“What item? Please!”

“The disc.”

“Disc? I don’t know what you mean!”

“I think you do.”

This seemingly amiable giant had clutched a screaming Rudy’s hair in one hand, yanked that handsome face back, and used a saw-toothed hunting blade on the exposed throat. One clean swipe had nearly severed Rudy’s shrieking head. A second cut had done so.

And then the man called Nicky had left Rudy to rot in the bloody sand and drove further out into the desert. He’d been toying with Calvin for at least thirty minutes now, ordering him to run around in circles, sniping at his feet with the hunting rifle, laughing good-naturedly.

Nicky closed the distance rapidly, boots snapping twigs and silencing insects. The night took on an even bigger chill.

Calvin raised a flat, thoroughly useless palm. “Stop right there.”

The giant called Nicky grinned. He had long, white front teeth. The better to eat you with, my dear. “Relax, Calvin. As I said, I am here to offer you a deal.”

Calvin pictured Rudy again. The pain, the blood. “I’ll take it.”

“No, no,” the huge man said and chuckled. “You must hear me out first, and then decide.”

Calvin cringed. “One option is you shoot me down?”

“Oh, no. Much worse.”

“That’s just great,” Calvin sobbed. “Okay, then what’s my other choice?”

Nicky reached into his pocket. He produced a small pair of garden clippers with wicked, shiny blades. Smiled. “You carry a message for us.”

“A message?”

“We do not like wasting our time on something as mundane as locating stolen property. We have better things to do, you see. But we will not rest until this item has been returned to us, yes?”

“We didn’t know. We thought it was just money. Just money.”

“Oh, it was much more than just money, my friend.”

“This fucking disc you keep asking about? I never saw it. We don’t know anything about that . . .”

“Okay, here is the deal. I want a message to reach whoever holds our property. The disc. Perhaps then he will send it back and save us all a great deal of pain, time, and trouble.”

The boy wailed in terror and misery. “What do you want from me?”

“Nothing much, my little thief.” Nicky clicked the garden clippers. He showed large, white teeth. “Just hold out your fingers.”