All Due Respect Issue #1 (2 page)

“I gotta ask,” said Russo, “where’s a kid your age pick up a skill like this?”

Lucas hesitated a moment before answering. “Prison,” he said, thumbing the blade of his straight razor to check its edge.

If the kid was worried that’d spook me, thought Russo, he’s got me wrong—research or no. I knew he’d taken a fall the second I saw his ink; least he had the balls to tell me the truth.

“They let inmates play with straight razors now?”

“No,” Lucas said, the ghost of a smile playing across his face. “Just clippers—and even then, it took a couple years of good behavior before they let me. But that’s where I learned the trade. Led me to a gig sweeping floors at a salon when I made parole. Eventually, I convinced them I was good for more than that. Place closed down a few years after, thanks to the economic downturn—but at least I left with a marketable skill. Spent a couple years doing house calls for select clients, and then decided I wanted something a little more regular. That’s when I spotted Sal’s ad. Now here I am.”

The truth was a bit more complicated than that. Lucas’ story was factual as far as it went, but it wasn’t the whole picture. Truth was, Lucas couldn’t give a shit about working normal hours—he could make more on his own than he was ever going to under Sal’s roof. He responded to Sal’s ad because he knew Anton Russo was one of Sal’s regulars. He knew because the FBI agents who’d forced him to turn stoolie on his last client told him.

Lucas still felt shitty about ratting out Ben Meyers. Sure, Meyers was as mobbed up as they come, but he’d been decent to Lucas, taking a chance on him when few would on account of his rap sheet, and—once Lucas proved his worth—recommending him to enough of his friends that Lucas could make a comfortable living more-or-less aboveboard for a change.

It was the more-or-less that did him in. He ran his house-call service strictly under the table. Seemed to Lucas a minor infraction until the Feds came knocking. Agents Redfield and Lange—standard G-men both, with their dark suits, cheap shaves, and boring what-counterculture haircuts. He came home to find them sitting on his couch one day, his parole officer looking stern and disappointed in the armchair beside.

They told him it didn’t look too good for a kid who got put away for burglary to have a bank account full of unreported earnings, or that he’d failed to tell his parole officer the salon he’d supposedly been working these past three years had closed. They rattled off a litany of charges from parole violation to tax evasion, and once they’d laid it on good and thick, they gave him an out: help them build a case against Ben Meyers, and they’d overlook his lapses in judgment.

So he did. Turned out, it was easy. Meyers trusted Lucas. Talked freely around him. Gave him free run of his home. Lucas helped the Feds gain access to Meyers’s email. Supplied them with the number to his burner-phone du jour. Reported names and dates for anyone who came to visit while he was there. Proved his worth so thoroughly, it guaranteed the Feds would keep their hooks in him for good—and left Lucas wishing he’d been wise enough to negotiate some kind of exit strategy once his services had been duly rendered.

This gig, though, was a stroke of luck. Because while Lucas liked Meyers fine, he had a score to settle with Russo. Russo didn’t know that yet—nor did his asshole Fed handlers when they put Lucas onto him with the instruction to gain his confidence. Which was good, because they never would have put him onto Russo if they knew what he had in store. Lucas would be damned if he was going to cozy up to Russo just so they could arrest him on some piddling white-collar shit like they did with Meyers. It wasn’t nearly punishment enough for all he’d done.

Satisfied his blade was sharp enough, Lucas set the edge against the flat of Russo’s sideburn, and placed two fingers just above, in the man’s hair. He held the blade fast, and used his fingers to pull Russo’s flesh upward, resulting in a perfect horizontal line. A steady down-stroke, and Russo’s jaw line was swept clean of shaving cream and whiskers.

“So,” said Russo, “what’d you go in for?”

“B and E,” Lucas replied. “Possession of stolen property. I used to run with a crew of kids who’d creep houses together and take whatever we could find—food, pills, jewelry, electronics. There were three of us. We all came up through the foster system, and got all turned out at eighteen. We were on our own—no skills, no money, no nothing. So we made do, living in squats when times were lean, and pooling the dough we got from pulling jobs for furnished month-to-months when we were flush.”

“All for one and one for all, huh?”

“Something like that,” Lucas replied, finishing one cheek down to the jaw, and tilting Russo’s head so he could work on the other.

“When you took your fall, did your buddies get bagged, too?”

“No. The job I got busted on was one I scouted. For better or worse, I was always the man with the plan. The place belonged to family headed on vacation—I’d seen their car out front the day before all loaded up, so I knew their brownstone would be empty. But they had a security system, and I missed it. By the time I realized my mistake, the cops were out front. I figured it was up to me to make it right, so I walked out the front door hands-up, while my boys snuck out the back. I told the cops I was alone.”

“The other two got away clean?”

“Not exactly,” said Lucas as he moved on to Russo’s neck. “Mike’s serving fifteen years for a mugging gone wrong. Happened few months after I got caught. I can’t say I was surprised—he’d always been the hothead of the group. It was only a matter of time before he did something he couldn’t walk back. Without me there to yank his chain, he got reckless quick, and sloppy too.”

“Fifteen for a mugging’s kind of extreme. What happened?”

“He held a couple up at knifepoint. Wore a ski mask and everything, just like in the movies. Probably thought he was being clever. Anyways, the guy made a move on him, and Mike wound up burying his knife in the dude’s side. He split, but they wound up nailing him anyway because he left prints all over the handle, and blood all over the blade. Turns out when you attack somebody with a bladed weapon, you’re as likely to cut yourself as you are your victim. Did you know that? I sure as hell didn’t. Then again,” he said, wiping the shaving cream off the razor with his sleeve, “I guess I’ve always been more careful with a cutting edge than poor, stupid Mike. Point is, his knife hit one of the guy’s ribs going in. It stopped the blade, and Mike’s hand slipped. Saved the fellow’s life, and cut Mike’s fingers all to shit. The prosecutor said the wounds were textbook. The jury believed her. It took them all of fifteen minutes to put him away.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. Like I said, with Mike it was always just a matter of time. Anybody who met him could see it. When he took his fall, I felt for him, but it didn’t hurt like losing Jamie did. Least Mike’s got a shot at a real life when he gets out.”

“What do you mean, losing Jamie? What happened to him?”

“Jamie was the baby of the group—in age and temperament. Kind of a space cadet, his head always in the clouds. He was a sensitive kid born into a world that didn’t give a shit about him. Me and Mike tried to look after him, but when we went away, he fell apart. He was already into the junk when I was arrested. Moved from chasing smoke to shooting shortly afterward. A year later, while I was inside, he bought a bad bundle on the street and died messy in an alley—one of ten dead junkies in a week. Papers said the stuff he took was more desomorphine than heroin. It’s cheaper and easier to acquire than the real thing, and made right, it packs a harder punch. Made wrong, it’s fucking battery acid. The shit my friend shot up was made wrong. It ate him from the inside out.”

“That’s awful. I’m sorry.”

Lucas’ razorblade paused on Russo’s neck. “You ought to be. You sold it to him.”

“Come again?” Worry flashed in Russo’s eyes. Worry, but not fear. He was too confident in the protection his reputation afforded to be afraid. Too sure he was untouchable.

“Not you personally. One of your street-level hoods. But there’s no way they cut your shit with something that nasty without your consent. So tell me,” he said, holding his blade fast to Russo’s tender flesh, “what’s the profit margin on ten dead junkies?”

“Listen kid, I’m going to cut you a break because it’s clear you’re hurting—by which I mean I won’t have you strung up by your balls for talking to me the way you did, so long as you come to your senses quick. But you’d best watch your tongue from here on out, or I might just change my mind.”

“That’s tough talk from a guy who’s got a blade held to his neck.”

Russo snorted. “Kid, you don’t have the guts. You’re a boy playing a man’s game. Talk tough all you want, but we both know when the time comes, you’ll tap out.”

Lucas increased the pressure on Russo’s neck. His skin dimpled beneath the blade. His carotid pulsed against its cutting edge. “You sure about that?”

“You’re goddamn right I’m sure. I’ve seen your type a thousand times. All inked up like some fucking ghetto thug, but beneath the surface, you’re soft. You don’t have what it takes to kill a man. You’re just some two-bit con who didn’t even go down swinging when you got nabbed. You walked out with your hands up like a little bitch—and abandoned your friends in the process. You wanna blame somebody for your buddy’s death—and for your other buddy’s fall—there’s plenty of mirrors in here to choose from. But don’t waste my time pretending like you’ve got what it takes to cut on me.”

But in spite of his words, Russo wasn’t sure—Lucas could see it in his eyes. There was a flicker of doubt showing through the cracks in his bravado. Lucas dragged the straight razor a fraction of an inch across Russo’s neck, like a violinist coaxing a mournful note from his instrument. A bead of crimson welled glistening from the wound, and was reflected in the gleaming flat of the blade.

Fear blossomed in Russo’s eyes. His hand shot up to still the razor. His pinkie and ring finger grasped the shank and hinge. His middle and index wrapped around the blade. It sunk bone-deep into his skin. Russo hissed and pulled his hand away as if the razor were an open flame. Lucas dropped the blade as well. It clattered to the floor beside the barber’s chair.

Russo was out of the chair in a flash, his bleeding hand clamped over his bleeding neck. With his free hand, he fumbled for the handkerchief that no longer resided in the breast pocket of his suit coat. He was red-faced with fury—but for the first time since he’d walked in, his eyes were alight with life. “You little shit,” he spat. “You’ll pay for this, you mark my words. The only reason I’m not going to kill you here myself is I’ve been seen—and unlike you and your punk friends, I’m too smart to take the rap. But understand my people are going to come for you. You’ll burn alive before the week is out. And know that when you do—know that at the very moment you’re in so much goddamn pain your writhing ruptures muscle and snaps tendons and you pray for death to come—I’ll have three dozen witnesses who’ll be able to attest I was eating a porterhouse the size of your fucking head and drinking champagne that costs more than you’ve made in your entire life with women who’d charge you twice that much an hour.”

Russo yanked open the door and stormed out into the streetlit night, the tarnished bell above it clanging in alarm. Lucas watched until Russo disappeared from sight. Then he closed the blinds and locked the door, and flipped the sign on it to
CLOSED.
He realized as he did his hands were trembling—not from fear but from adrenaline, from anticipation.

He never dared hope his encounter with Russo would go so well.

Every barbershop or hair salon Lucas had ever been in kept nitrile gloves on hand. Lord knows why Sal bothered, since as far as Lucas knew, Sal never dyed his clients’ hair—but as he slipped on a pair he was grateful that Sal stocked them nonetheless. He plucked the bloodied straight razor off the floor, and with the sleeve of his barber’s whites he wiped the handle, tail, and upper blade clean of prints—leaving only those on the shank and lower blade, both left by Russo, as well as Russo’s blood. Then he wiped down the floor where it had landed, and the barber’s chair, too. When he was done, no trace of their scuffle remained.

On his way out the back door, he grabbed the bottle of Russo’s favorite Sambuca he’d bought in anticipation of their meeting from the stockroom shelf, and three bottles of rubbing alcohol as well. Then flicked off the lights, and stepped out into the darkened alley.

The panel van was so goddamn nondescript—neither ancient nor late-model, neither tricked-out nor run-down, with
SMITH’S FLOWERS
emblazoned on the side—its license plates may as well have read FBI. Thankfully, the alley dead-ended, so no one but Lucas even realized it was back here—Sal hadn’t once taken his own trash out since he’d hired Lucas, and the other businesses that backed up on it closed hours ago. Lucas didn’t bother knocking on the van’s side door, instead setting down the bottles he was carrying and sliding it open himself; though Redfield and Lange were both inside, they weren’t in any condition to answer him. They greeted him with smiles ear to ear—made slightly less welcoming by the fact those blood-smeared crescents stretched well below their chins, exposing cartilage and gristle.

Redfield was positively giddy when he texted Lucas that afternoon to tell him Russo was on his way to Sal’s. He and Lange hauled ass across town to beat him here so they could listen in. Lucas slit their throats just moments before Russo arrived, while they were trying to wire him up for sound. Thankfully, the van walls got the worst of it; he’d tried his damnest to direct the spray away from him. His barber’s coat—which, as now, he’d left hanging just inside the back door before he ducked out to meet with them under the pretense of having a smoke—hid the rest.

Lucas climbed into the van and closed the door behind him. He grabbed Lange’s cold right hand and held it tight to the van floor, palm up. Then he rested the bloodied edge of his already gore-streaked straight razor against the crease at the base of Lange’s index finger. With the meat of each gloved palm against the flat top of the blade, he guillotined down hard, and Lange’s finger came off with a crunch. White bone glistened in the darkness. Blood oozed black and thick, but didn’t pour.