The following is an excerpt from the novella Wetwork, a tale of vampires and a hitman, betrayal and revenge. It will be available in late May/early June of 2011. Enjoy the excerpt!

 

Wetwork

1.

Joey 'Nine' closed his eyes for a moment and listened to the steady music of raindrops pounding on the roof of his old Cadillac. He matched their beat on the steering wheel with his nine fingers and waited.

Vincent had better hurry his ass up. Joey didn’t like sitting out in the open like this even in the middle of the night. Half the thugs in the city wouldn't mind seeing Joey in the ground, and most of them knew what his patched up Caddy looked like. He felt too exposed out on the street. But if the rain continued falling, it might keep all the little rats with gats inside tonight. At least that was a plus.

A sudden pounding on the passenger side door made Joey's eyes snap open and his hand instinctively shot for the S&W .40 tucked into the rig beneath his left arm – even though none of the killers he knew bothered knocking.

It wasn't a hitman.

Vincent stood there smiling like an idiot, skinny as a dried up French fry with sickly looking skin about the same color. Rain plastered his greasy blonde hair to his head. He knocked again before Joey leaned over and unlocked the door. Vincent got in and shook himself like a dog.

"Rotten out there, man. Just fucking rotten," Vincent said. "Even my dick's shriveled."

"Thanks for adding that to my mental files," Joey said. "What is so damned important that you had me come all the way over to this crap neighborhood at one in the morning in the middle of this goddamned downpour?"

"What do you think?"

"I imagine it's got something to do with Giovanni," Joey said. Phantom pains surged down to his left hand and he glanced to where his ring finger used to be. "But I don't have time for guessing games, so tell me now or I'll dump your ass back out into the rain."

"Alright. Let's just start the car and drive. I don't like sitting here," Vincent said. "Maybe we can hit Del Taco. They got an all night drive-thru. It's over on Imperial."

Joey started the car and pulled out into the empty street. The wiper blades didn't work as well as they used to. Mostly they just smeared the grime and dirt that had caked onto his windshield from weeks of neglect. It gave the world outside a blurry and surreal look that he didn't like.

"Say, Joey, you got a couple of bucks to spot me for a burrito?"

Nice to see it was the same old Vincent, as ugly and broke as a Dane Cook joke. Joey was sure the skinny prick was probably carrying at least a couple hundred in weed on him. The guy stank of the stuff.

"Tell me what you got to tell me and I'll think about it," Joey said.

"I was out walking the dog today and guess who I see? I see Giovanni's little bitch Carlos, and he sees me. Well, he comes up to me and he tells me his boss has an offer and that he's been looking for me. He says I can get back into her good graces if I do them a favor."

Joey had known Vincent long enough to know that 'walking the dog' meant that he was out with his girlfriend, the poor woman. Vincent was a classless human being through and through. Vincent was also a liar, and one had to guess the truth and lies whenever his mouth opened.

"That's great, but what does this have to do with me?"

"She's offering you the same deal. You help and she'll call off her goons."

"What kind of favor?" Rachelle Giovanni had her hand in various criminal enterprises, everything from prostitution to extortion and things a hell of a lot worse. Whatever it was, he knew it probably wouldn't be very pleasant.

"Moving some merchandise."

"I don't like it. That woman doesn't forgive easily," Joey said. "She might just want to get us both together so she can torture and kill us personally."

"You got trust issues, man," Vincent said.

"Gee, you think?" Joey had history with Giovanni, good and bad. Her father used to run everything and Joey worked as an enforcer, a hired killer when occasion warranted. Joey and Rachelle had been involved in the most intimate sense of the word. Her father died and she took over the business. She changed. She got cold and distant and she cast Joey aside. He was still the favored hitman for a while, but that all went to hell. Giovanni wanted him to kill a kid because the dad had some outstanding debt.

Joey refused. Sure, he was a dirtbag and a murderer. But he wouldn't kill a kid. Giovanni perceived his refusal as disrespect. Carlos had taken the job instead; whacked the poor kid and become the new blade in Giovanni's right hand.

The stump throbbed where Joey’s finger had once been. "You can't trust her."

"Shit, they ain't gonna kill us," Vincent said. "You really think they couldn’t have found you a long time ago if they wanted to? I don’t imagine it would take much to find your address. They just want us to move this new product since they got heat on them. We ain't been seen with them in ages so they figure we're good to go."

It would make life a hell of a lot easier if he didn't have to keep looking over his shoulder, but trusting Giovanni wasn't going to come easy; not after all she'd done. A job that came out of nowhere like this was usually a setup. Hell, even Vincent should be smart enough to know that. "Where are we supposed to pick it up, and where do they want us to take it?"

"I'll tell you that after I get my burrito," Vincent said. He blew into his hands to keep them warm.

"Right," Joey said. If it was a setup, he was going to shoot first.

"How about we turn on the radio and get some tunes?"

"I only get the easy listening station when it's raining."

Vincent reached over and turned the radio on. 'Rocky Mountain High' began playing as they turned into the Del Taco drive-thru. Joey shook his head and stifled a laugh. Syndicate enforcers and runners always listen to John Denver before a job… just because they're that badass.

2.

The storage facility parking lot was empty. The late hour and the driving rain were to thank for that. They'd driven down to the unit while Vincent slobbered on his burrito. Joey could barely make out what the dope was saying between bites. Apparently, the goods were supposed to be in a storage unit under guard of the Haitian. At least that was good news.

Joey had been friends with him… although friend might be too strong a word. He was as close as people in their line of work could really ever be. If the Haitian was there, Joey knew that at least it wasn't a setup. They'd both helped one another out of jams before. He had even been the one to tip Joey off that Giovanni wanted him dead.

He opened the automated gate with the code Vincent provided and drove to Storage Locker 10B, located on the far side of the complex. He drove slowly, watching and waiting for signs of an ambush. He didn't see anyone – but that didn't mean the place was empty.

He parked and grabbed his shotgun from the trunk. His .40 was nice, but the scattergun could be a hell of a deterrent if Carlos or one of Giovanni's other goons decided to show. "Where's the Haitian?"

"He's probably inside," Vincent said. "Doesn't make much sense to stand out in the rain, does it?"

"You'd better be carrying a piece," Joey said as they made their way toward the unit.

"Jesus, man, I told you it ain't like that. This'll square us both with Giovanni," Vincent said. "Besides, guns make me nervous."

"You're a real shitty drug dealer, you know that?"

"I've been told."

"Yeah, well what exactly was it that put you on her bad side in the first place?"

"What do you think? I was sampling more of the goods than I was selling. She didn't like that too much and threatened to break my hands," Vincent said.

"Broken hands ain't that bad. At least they'll heal."

"Shit, Giovanni knows how to hurt a person the deepest. How could I roll my smoke with busted hands?"

"Good point. We wouldn't want you to get clean and sober."

"Hell no," Vincent said. "Could you imagine what that would be like?"

When they reached the unit, Joey saw the rollup aluminum door. It was already partially open – about two feet off the ground – and the lock was missing. He wondered if the Haitian would even hear them approach over the sound of the driving rain.

"Haitian," Joey called. He didn't know the man's actual name and he'd never bothered to ask. He doubted anyone did. After a moment, he called out again. When the Haitian didn't respond, Joey pumped the shotgun.

"He's in there," Vincent said. "He's got to be."

"Open the door and find out," Joey replied. He stepped back to give Vincent room to lift the door.

"Great," Vincent said. He lifted the door open.

"Go in and turn on the light," Joey said. He held the shotgun to his shoulder, aiming at the dark maw of the open unit, well aware that he was a perfect target.

"No, man, you can do it. You've got the gun," Vincent said.

"Damn straight I have the gun," Joey said, moving the barrel of the shotgun slightly so that it pointed at Vincent's chest. "Go in and turn on the light."

"That's cold, man." He stepped inside and a moment later light flooded the room. The sound of his retching came almost instantly.

A crumpled body lay in the corner. It was a large man with dark skin and gold rings adorning each finger of his left hand. The Haitian.

He slipped inside to get a better look at the carnage. The Haitian's eyes were open, staring up at the ceiling. His mouth was slack and his throat ragged and torn, but there wasn't much blood on the floor. The wounds on his neck looked as though they came from teeth.

His body lay next to an opened metal crate that was a few feet long and about a foot high. It reminded Joey of a coffin, except for the digital padlock on the opened lid. He'd seen locks like it before, but this one looked like it had some type of timer attached to it.

"The fucking burrito," Vincent said. He spat more vomit onto the floor. "I'm so screwed. I fucking killed myself because I had the munchies."

Joey paid little attention to Vincent. He was more concerned with the crate. He looked inside and saw crude wadded up bedding as well as a pillow and a small brown envelope. The box wasn't large enough to hold a full-grown adult even if they tucked their knees to their chest, but someone had definitely been in there. It was the right size for a child. He opened the envelope and looked through the contents.

Inside were several pictures. One was of the Haitian drinking a martini. The other was of Joey smoking a cigar on the deck of Giovanni's yacht. A third picture was a family portrait that looked like it had been taken at Sears or one of those other cheesy studios suburbanites were so fond of using. The fashions in the picture were outdated, and he figured it was an old photo from sometime in the late eighties or early nineties. The mother and father had stupid, placid grins on their faces. Above the husband's lip was a mustache that would have made Mario, Luigi and even Thomas Magnum envious. The child, a little girl of around seven or eight with dark curls and a round face, looked utterly bored in the photo.

"What was supposed to happen here?" Joey asked. He pocketed the pictures and turned to face Vincent, who was leaning against the wall and weeping quietly.

"I fucked up," he said. "I was supposed to get you here on time but I was hungry."

"You aren't making a whole lot of sense right now," Joey said.

"I knew you'd buy me something to eat. You're a good guy, Joey. You remember that. You're a good guy."

"What happened to the Haitian?"

Vincent shrugged. "I really don't know. I just know that I was supposed to get you here and I didn't make it in time." He slid to the floor next to his own puke and placed his head in his hands.

"What were you going to do when you got me here?"

"You were supposed to go in there and help the Haitian with the box. When you went in, I was supposed to lock both of you inside."

"Then what was supposed to happen?"

"I don't know. I thought maybe they had a bomb in there or something," Vincent said. "I didn’t know what it was."

"You did this so you could clear your issues up with Giovanni?"

"Yeah, I did. I couldn't keep hiding from you and when she made the offer, I… I didn't know what to do. She hates you and she was pissed at him," Vincent said, nodding at the dead man. "She knew the two of you were tight and she thought he was probably feeding you some info to keep you ahead of Carlos and his hounds."

"Haitian wasn't that stupid," Joey said. He pointed the barrel of the shotgun at Vincent's face. "What you did was a real dick move."

"Don't shoot me," Vincent said.

Joey smiled. "I ain't gonna shoot you. You said that Giovanni knows how to hurt people the deepest, right? I'm going to leave you here for her. I assume you brought an extra padlock or chain for the door?"

Vincent nodded and dug the padlock out of his pocket. He slid it across the floor to Joey.

"I won't be seeing you around," Joey said. He went back outside and started to roll the door closed.

"You're really just gonna leave me here?" Vincent said.

"Don't worry; the Haitian can keep you company."

3.

Joey wasn't going to stick around town to see how pissed Giovanni got when she found Vincent sitting there in a pile of his own puke. Vincent deserved whatever was coming his way. He felt bad that things had gone the way they did with the Haitian, but he wasn't about to stick around and try to make sense out of any of it. What had been able to do that to him? The Haitian was a big man, smart and always armed.

The thought of Giovanni hiring a little person as an assassin was as amusing as it was brilliant if that was what she'd done. Who would expect trouble from a midget… or was it dwarf? Maybe it was little person. Joey didn't know the politically correct terminology. The fact that he was even thinking the words politically correct pissed him off. He had to hurry.

The only thing he wanted to do was to grab a few things from his apartment and then skedaddle, get the hell out of Dodge and every other cliché he knew for blowing town. He cruised through two red lights on his way and didn't even bother slowing, not caring if a cop pulled him over. Hell, it would have been preferable to dealing with Giovanni, or whatever she had hired to kill him.

He made it across town and pulled up to his apartment in less than fifteen minutes.

Psycho cannibal midget or not, he wasn't going to stay in town any longer. Someone had torn out the Haitian's throat. He'd cruise south for a while and then head east. Maybe stay in Albuquerque for a bit and just let shit settle. He could find work there. Yeah, that sounded like a plan. He hopped out of the car and hurried up the steps into his little one bedroom hideout. It was barren and held only his essentials.

As he was tossing several knives and some of his clothes into a duffle bag, he heard someone behind him, the sound of shuffling feet across carpet. In a single fluid motion, he spun around and dropped to a knee while drawing his .40 from its holster.

Instead of an angry dwarf or one of Giovanni's toughs, it was a little girl. The same little girl that was on the picture he'd found in the crate. She looked just the same as she had in the photo, except she no longer looked bored. She looked unsure, almost timid. Blood covered her pallid hands and mouth. Her once white dress looked like a Jackson Pollock study in red.

She tilted her head and stared at him.

Her mouth opened to reveal sharp teeth and suddenly she didn't look so fearful.

4.

Vincent huddled in a corner as far away from the Haitian as he could possibly get. He'd tried the door several times but the lock was strong and it wouldn't budge. He thought about turning off the light so he wouldn't have to look at the dead man. But he really didn't want to be alone in the dark with a corpse either. Instead, he just sat with his head down and prayed that he might be lucky enough to have a heart attack before Carlos and Giovanni showed up. They were going to make life miserable.

It didn't take him long to remember that he had some weed. Once he started puffing away on a joint it took the edge off a little. He relaxed a bit, stretched out his legs, and then chanced at glance at the Haitian, the poor bastard.

"What the hell happened to you, man?" Vincent said. He took another hit and thought he saw the Haitian move. His arm twitched. It was slight: but he was sure he saw it. He swallowed hard and kept watching. Maybe the body did things like that. Maybe it moved after death because of nerves or something. Vincent didn't know. He'd never had reason to try to find out something like that.

The Haitian's foot twitched.

"Fuck," Vincent said. He stubbed out the joint on the concrete floor and kept watching. If the son of a bitch moved again, he'd –

The Haitian's mouth opened and he groaned.

Vincent pushed himself further into the corner, told himself it wasn't real. Someone must've laced his weed with LCD or something because it couldn't be real.

The Haitian sat up. His chest heaved as he tried to take in air through his ruined throat with great wheezing gasps. He blinked a few times and brought his hand up to his neck. His eyes locked on Vincent and he opened his mouth as if to speak. No words came out.

"Hey," Vincent said. He took another hit and watched at the wound in the Haitian's throat began to knit itself back together. "I didn't do this to you. Just so you know."

The Haitian flopped over onto his belly and then pushed himself up to his hands and knees. He started crawling toward Vincent. He flicked the joint toward the Haitian and then turned around and tried to get his fingers beneath the door. Maybe adrenalin would kick in and maybe he'd be able to break the lock. Maybe –

He felt the Haitian's large, meaty hands clamp down on his shoulders. He tried to pull away but the dead man was just too strong. He struggled and pulled, but the Haitian wrapped his arms around Vincent's so he couldn't move. He tried to scream, but the man was squeezing too hard, like a constrictor snake. Breath rushed from his lungs like leaky balloon, and he thought he heard his ribs breaking. Stars darted in front of his eyes.

Maybe it was all just a bad dream.

Maybe he'd wake up.

The Haitian's teeth sank into the side of his neck. Vincent felt his own blood begin to spill out onto the floor. He heard it splash onto the cold concrete. It felt like the sting of a thousand tattoo needles driving into him.

He closed his eyes.

At least Giovanni hadn't gotten to him.

 

Thank you for reading this excerpt from Wetwork! Once again, the novella will be available in late May/early June of 2011.