Ain't No Rest For The Wicked
Chapter 1: Clint Would Be Proud
I'm sitting in a tiny cantina in a village in Ciudad Juacinta looking at a particularly ugly reminder of my sordid past.
"I'm a simple man, Tommy," the oily bastard across the table says to me, "I got whatcha call it…?"
"Poor vocabulary?" I try.
"Hardy fuckin' har. Gotham's got a comedian, Monaghan," the bastard sneers. "You thinkin' you're goin' ta replace him when ya get back?"
"Nah, but Gotham's got a tough guy in black, too. You thinkin' a tryin' ta replace him?" I sneer back and add a little smirk to piss this goombah off. 'Cause if ya are, I met the Bat and he don't sweat like that or smell like a cheap stripper rubbed her tits on him an hour ago. Get to the fuckin' point, Freddie, I'm tired of your Tony Soprano bullshit."
Freddie rubs his hand through his thinning hair and then looks at it when he realizes it's covered with oil. Mentioning the Bat shook him. Good. From what I know, this guy is muscle for Jack "The Wolf" Frandelli. "The Wolf" as in preys on little girls in red, not as in big scary animal. That's my shtick: Heya kids, my name is Tommy Monaghan. I kill people. It pays the bills most weeks. Some folks call me Hitman, but I save that for the underwear and bondage gear crowd. Everywhere else, I'm just Tommy, and that's enough to get most folks to piss themselves.
Enough about me, back to Freddie. Freddie's an aging goombah that thinks The Godfather was the pinnacle of Western civilization and that cheap pinstripe suits are the only thing a businessman should wear. He's no Wolf, little girls got no interest for him. Big guys in leather or latex do. Come to think of it, he might like the Bat. Shudder.
"Look Tommy, the boss needs you to do him a favor." Freddie says with a big grin.
Sure Freddie, we're all friends here, that's what you're tryin' to say with that grin. I ain't buying it. Word on the street is that Jack's crew made a big score back in Gotham. It netted him some big enemies. The kind of enemies that have muscle working for them that can toss cars around. That's why they want me. Problem is I'm dead. Not really, but that's what folks think after that big explosion and me going as close to invisible as I could for a couple years. I'm out of the game.
"Freddie," I say with my best intimidating grin, "You've got a problem, friend."
"Sure Tommy, sure. That's why I came to ya. We need ya."
"Freddie, you ain't getting it. You've got a problem. Not me. I'm dead and aim to stay that way. You see this tan I got? I liked getting it. I liked the little chica that rubbed the oil on me when I was getting it. I got no desire to go back to work, and if I did, it sure wouldn't be for a balding cocksucker and his boss who likes fishing for saplings."
"Fuck you too, Monaghan," Freddie says with clenched teeth. I can hear him sucking wind through them and see the veins in his temple pulse under the fat guy sweat and grease. "See, I ain't askin' ya, you two bit Mic. I'm tellin' ya. You do it or your buddy Sean gets dead real quick."
My gun is out and moving before he can blink. The butt catches his teeth, and I feel warm spatter and his high pitched scream rushing past my fist with saliva and blood.
"See, Freddie," I'm ice now. Bullshitting's done. "It really pisses me off when people threaten my friends. It hurts me. It hurts my pride. It hurts my sense of professionalism."
Freddie stares at me while blood seeps around the fingers he's holding over his mouth. The locals in the bar watch. They can't decide whether to cheer me on or stop me.
"You're only breathing because I want to know something." I stop here and use my free hand to tap out a smoke and pull it from the pack with my lips. Clint Eastwood does that in films. Coolest look ever. Makes a nice dramatic pause in the moment and lets the other guy have time to wet himself and give you information. Who says movies aren't educational?
"I get it, Tommy," Freddie spills, "You wanna know how we found out where you was."
Actually it hadn't occurred to me yet, but yeah.
"That's what I been wondering since you walked through that door, Freddie," I say stone cold and light my cigarette one-handed. God, Clint would be proud.
"Well, you gotta promise not ta kill me, Tommy," Freddie says, "But The Wolf's got your buddy Nat, or what's left of him."
I must go 5 shades paler through my tan because that grin is back on Freddie's face. The blood and broken teeth make him look like the scavenger he is.
"Yeah, tough guy," Freddie laughs. "You ain't the only guy that ain't dead."
"I'm not going to kill you, Freddie," I say low and monotone—and I swear I feel the room relax. "Tell me where Nat is."
Nat "The Hat" is a big loud pain in the ass that used to do jobs with me. He's also my best friend. I thought he was dead like I was playing at being. The thought of him with Freddie and Jack turns my stomach. Call it tough guy, outdated bullshit, but where I come from, Friendship means something.
"We got him, Tommy," Freddie says, then giggles with crimson drool oozing down his lip. "Got him put away real safe. He ain't much but he can talk. He stays drugged up most times, but he's one of my favorite girls. Boy, he'll say anything to make me stop."
This ain't good. He's trying to make me angry. It's working. I can see the gun shake a little at the end of my arm.
"Seems your buddy Sean told him he'd heard from you. Said he knew you was down in Mexico playing cowboy." Freddie spits and my new snakeskin boots are covered in specks of blood. "Nat wouldn't let him tell you he'd made it. Ashamed." Freddie laughs again and the tension is definitely back.
"We nicked him from a care center Sean was payin' for when one of the junkie orderlies started talking about how he knew where Nat and Tommy were. Figured he might come in handy, and whadda ya know, he did. As a sex doll and a piñata mostly, but he also gave us you."
I know it shouldn't, but humanity continues to amaze me in the sheer depth and variety of the filth it produces. I mean, I ain't a saint. I kill people for profit. But, what kind of fucked up world is it we live in where I'm the good guy? Fuck that. Where I'm usually the good guy.
The room becomes blood and thunder. My gun roars and kicks in my hand three times as I double tap Freddie's chest and finish with his skull. After the lightning and thunder, a mist of blood and cordite hangs in the air. Like some pissed off Norse god, I stand above the wreckage that was Freddie… and grin. I hear the door to the cantina slam open and pump two more rounds into Freddie's driver as I walk toward him. I'm ejecting the clip on the .50 as I move, and my backup is in place before the first hits the ground.
When I reach the doorway, I pump a final shot into Freddie's driver as he lays gurgling around his chest wound. Everything goes completely silent then. No one dares make a sound as I stand backlit in the door. I take a last drag off my cigarette and drop it on the corpse at my feet. I take a long look around the room and move through the door into the hot Mexican night, my green duster billowing.
Looks like I'm going back to Gotham to see a Big Bad Wolf. He wanted me there and I'm coming, but he ain't going to like me when I get there. I guarantee that.
I hear the locals whispering in the door behind me and toss a glance back as they stare at Freddie's Benz. I squint my eyes and suddenly I can see the gas tank under the car through the metal. My gun roars twice more and a fireball leaps up in the sky as the car explodes. The locals scream in surprise and rush back inside as I walk away. I don't want them telling the Fedarales which way I went.
As I walk away into the desert sunset, with my duster trailing me and a hot gun in my hand, I grin again. I whistle the theme from the Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Clint would be proud. Clint would be real damn proud.