Kill the King (6 page)

A bomb. It’s a
fucking bomb. Marko must have known about my deal all along. He
probably just wanted to see me one last time before I die. Now he’s
sent me away to blow up their lair, and take Metzger down with me.
That’s what I’d do. Kill a rat and an enemy in one big boom. I
should have killed him when I had the chance.

Tyler stood up
and nervously paced back and forth, bourbon in hand. Boreta’s
paranoia had already infected his thoughts.

It might be
cash. It might be dope. It might have nothing really important
inside. All of this could be just a test of my loyalty. I might
survive after all. . .and then what? Kill Marko tomorrow?

It never
escaped Tyler’s thoughts. Marko Boreta had to die. It was the only
way he could save himself from the Block. There was no other way
out.

Tyler’s eyes
remain fixated on the briefcase once again. He knocked back his
drink and dragged the briefcase to the middle of the coffee
table.

Fuck it.

The thought of
escape was enticing enough to let his fingers slide up and down the
combination lock’s jagged discs. A click here, a click there. One
notch moved up, one moved down. The digits kept changing but the
result remained the same: nothing.

“Come on. .
.”

Tyler spoke out
loud to the briefcase in the way a frustrated gambler would berate
a slot machine. His anger and desperation began to rise as he
continued to fiddle with the combination lock. One sequence after
another, and another, and another. . .and still nothing. Tyler
tried one last random combination before angrily conceding defeat.
He slammed his fist on the coffee table, discouraged.

“Fuck!”

Tyler made a
beeline to the liquor cabinet to pour another drink and crack open
another pack of smokes, hoping that it would settle his nerves a
bit before he could give it another try. As soon as he grabbed his
lighter there was a loud knock at the door.

“Open up, my
friend! We’re running late!”

The gravelly,
accented voice was unmistakeable. Khaled had arrived but was behind
schedule, as was his habit. Tyler hurried towards the door to open
it, but noticed from the corner of his eye that the briefcase had
in fact opened after all. He froze, unable to see what lay inside
from where he stood. All he could see was the outside casing
flipped open.

Tyler remained
static as Khaled continued to knock, but quickly snapped out of it
once he heard the clinking of metal coming from the outside. Khaled
had his own set of keys and was on his way inside in a matter of
seconds. Tyler dashed towards the briefcase, slammed it shut and
returned all the numbers to zero, hoping that he remembered the
last sequence right. As soon as the last digit was returned to its
original position, Khaled hastily entered the room.

“You don’t
answer the door, asshole? We’re late!”

Tyler tossed
the briefcase in Khaled’s direction, forcing him to catch it
awkwardly before it could touch the ground. Khaled cussed in
Arabic, clearly displeased with Tyler’s gesture.

“You should
have answered the door, and you should have just handed me the
briefcase.”

Tyler holstered
his pistols and zipped up his jacket. “I knew you had a set of
keys, Khaled. And besides. . .what do you expect is inside?
A
bomb?”

“Whatever.
Let’s just go already.”

****

“Do you
remember that fight we had?”

Tyler rolled
his eyes, annoyed and uninterested. He didn’t like to reminisce
like Khaled did. Tedious small-talk was never his strong point.

“Yeah.”

“Well. . .”
Khaled paused, waiting for Tyler to contribute to the conversation.
“What do you remember about it?”

Tyler flicked
his cigarette butt out the passenger window as they stopped at a
red light. “I had to fight you for five minutes if I wanted to be a
Dead Boy.”

Khaled smiled
as he shifted gears once the light went green. “Yeah, that’s right.
I was already a Dead Boy for a year or two by then, and I brought
you in.
Me.
You had to fight either me or Big Black
Joe.”

“Yeah. Big
Black Joe. Blacker than coal and bigger than a phone booth. Teeth
like broken glass.”

Khaled
snickered and gave the dashboard a slap. “Big Black Joe. . .head
like a fire hydrant and fists like wrecking balls. Biggest nigger
on the block! But. . .”

Khaled
hesitated before continuing. “. . .why’d you pick me instead of
him? He was bigger but I was stronger, and I was your
friend.”

Tyler shook his
head, irritated by the question’s premise. “Don’t be so raw about
it. Joe would have
killed
me. He
don’t want no crackers
n’ chinky-ass motherfuckers
joining in. At least I had a chance
with you.”

“But I did beat
your ass hard, Tyler. Admit it. I fucked you up good. That’s why
you—”

“—what. . .gave
you a couple of chicken scratches? Big deal. You were a big boy,
Khaled. It was nothing.”

Khaled turned
his eyes away from the road and shot back a look of
incredulousness. “Nothing?
Nothing,
motherfucker? You’ve got
serious balls to say that to me.”

“You’ve got
serious balls to talk to
me
like that, after what you’ve
done. I never fucked any of your girls behind your back. Can
you
say the same?”

Khaled grit his
teeth and drove quietly for several blocks. The conversation ground
to a halt.

“I thought we
were going to let that shit slide for now.”

“Just because I
didn’t shoot you in the fucking kneecaps it doesn’t mean I’m
letting that shit slide. I’m just putting that on the shelf for the
time being. I’m still gonna bust your balls in the meantime. Get
used to it,
my friend.
You’ve got a lot of owning up to do
with that. You’re lucky I didn’t tell Marko about it. . .he would
have done worse things to your face than I did back in that fight
we had.”

Both remembered
well enough how the fight concluded. Tyler had tucked away a
double-edged razor blade in his pocket before the fight, and when
the brawl went south he clenched it between his teeth without
anyone noticing. When Khaled clutched him in a bear hug, all Tyler
had to do was lean in and brush his mouth on his friend’s face and
let the blade do the rest. The first cut left a long and thin red
line on Khaled’s cheek. The second cut grazed just above his right
eyebrow and splattered blood all over both of their faces, and was
enough to compel Khaled to let go. A desperate groin kick dropped
Khaled to his hands and knees, and after a few more punishing blows
to the face the five minute mark had passed and the initiation was
done with. At the gang leader’s urging, they hugged it out and
promised not to hold a grudge. From then onwards, Tyler was a Dead
Boy and Khaled was no longer his friend. . .he became his
brother.

“You know what
I think, Khaled?”

Khaled sighed.
“What. . .”

“I think you’re
just mad about me cuttin’ your face up because you were hoping for
a kiss. Fuckin’ faggot.”

Khaled’s face
squirmed and contorted as he tried to stifle a laugh. “Asshole. .
.”

Tyler’s face
cracked a half-smile, if for only a second. It was a good story
after all.

****

Tyler and
Khaled were escorted through the warehouse’s main entrance, where
about fifty members of the Fourteens were congregating. Before the
auto plant closed down for good it was a storage area for unused
machinery and spare parts, but those glory days of industry were
nothing but a distant memory. Its cold grey walls were now lined
with massive flags and banners displaying swastikas, Celtic
crosses,
Totenkopf
crossbones, and violent slogans regarding
death, blood, and purity. The Fourteens had adopted this warehouse
as their church, and the banners became their stained glass
windows.

On one wall
loomed a solitary banner, colossal and more menacing than the rest.
It was hand-made by their revered leader himself at the time of
founding, and in spite—or
because
—of its crude design and
violent imagery, it was their most treasured relic: on a field of
white stood a monstrous black
Reichsadler
eagle perched
victoriously atop a mountain of bloody skulls. Beneath the skulls
was their motto; fourteen ominous words that served as the
foundation of their movement and left no room for misunderstanding
and compromise:

Defend the
Aryan race. Protect your brothers. No mercy for our enemies. Sieg
Heil!

Tyler and
Khaled studiously observed their surroundings. Stepping into their
lair was a rare permission for even them and their curiosity was
strong, especially now that their numbers had grown in recent
times.

The warehouse
was only two storeys high but was a wide open space with little
furniture and permanent fixtures on the inside. In one corner stood
a modest library where a half-dozen young men pored over the
hateful literature that crammed their bookshelves, while at fifty
paces away sat a dozen large men loudly arguing with each other
over a game of cards. They looked comparatively older and far less
athletic, and on the floor surrounding their card table a few
upturned hard hats could be found alongside crushed beer cans and
cigarette butts. The rest of the Fourteens could be spotted on the
other side of the warehouse, hard at work lifting barbells and
punching heavy bags to the sound of skinhead punk rock that blared
from a large boom box. They looked tough, angry, and motivated.

Among the large
group of men training hard in their makeshift gym was a man who
easily stood apart from all of them: a vicious chiseled specimen,
his skin pale and littered with crudely-etched racist tattoos that
trailed from his throat to his fingertips. He was in the middle of
pummeling the abdomens of two scrawny-looking men, standing at
attention as they accepted their beatings. One was a teenager with
a bruised face, the other a bloodied nose and older-looking. Both
looked terrified. Tyler couldn’t make out what was being said; no
doubt the words used were obscene and threatening. Tyler and
Khaled’s escort gave a loud whistle in his direction. The thug
turned around and nodded, then gave each youth one last punch
before walking away. The young one was knocked out cold with a
savage blow to the chin, the older one slugged so hard in the gut
he fell to his hands and knees and retched all over the floor. The
thug then casually grabbed a towel and walked over to greet Tyler
and Khaled.

“Hey, fellas!
Fellas!”
He spoke loudly enough to garner the attention of
his peers, still wiping the blood off his swollen knuckles. The
boom box clicked off and the place went silent.

“Alright boys,
who ordered take-out? Anyone?
Hoo odah fly lice an pohk foh
mista big boss?”

The crowd
bellowed with laughter at his jape, performed with caricatured
squinted eyes and bared teeth. Tyler and Khaled calmly waited for
the laughter to fade before speaking.

“Sorry, Ron.
It’s just a briefcase this time.”

The brute
shrugged in contrived indifference. “Ah well, fuck’em if they can’t
take a joke. How ya been, Charlie Chan? It’s been a while since I
last saw that flat gook face of yours. Sucked any good cock in
prison? I bet you tasted
all kinds of chocolate
. . .am I
right?”

Tyler didn’t
take the bait and changed the subject. “I’m fine. Much better than
those guys you just beat up. They must have done something bad to
earn that”.

“What, those
dumb fucks? Yeah, they earned that beating. They were on a night
hunt with two others, but only they made it back. Two of our
brothers are dead, and whoever killed them got away with it thanks
to these bitches. I had to let them show that kind of shit don’t
fly with me. Can you believe this shit? Fucking pussies.”

Tyler shrugged.
It was enough of a relief that he wasn’t suspected of anything
yet.

“They need to
man the fuck up. If they won’t do it by themselves, then with
almighty God as my witness I’m gonna grind their bones into fucking
dust. No one
but no one
fucks with us without consequence. .
.not anymore. We’re takin’ over this town, brick by brick and dead
nigger by dead nigger. Ain’t that right, boys?”

The crowd
hollered in approval and set off a frenzy of exchanged Nazi salutes
and the shouting of racist slogans. Ron tossed the bloody towel on
the floor and grabbed a beer from a nearby cooler.

“You can leave
the briefcase with me. Ali Baba can pick it up tomorrow.”

Khaled scowled
and took a step forward, but Tyler stuck his arm across his chest
to keep him from taking another one. Like all bullies, Ron enjoyed
taunting people when the odds were stacked in his favour. Khaled’s
temper made him easy prey.

“I was ordered
to hand it to
him
only. Not you. Let me see him, or we’re
walking out and taking the briefcase back with us. Metzger will
hold you responsible for this.”

Ron’s face
darkened. “Yeah, yeah. . .fine. Go ahead, but the terrorist stays
here with me. You don’t need two to make a
derivery
. It’s up
the stairs,
rast door to da reft.”

Khaled handed
Tyler the briefcase.

“Don’t take too
long, my friend.”

“I won’t. Be
good while I’m gone, alright? If they give you shit about being
Arab, tell them a story about the bad old days in Rafah.”

****

Frank Metzger’s
office was easy to spot. It was the only lit room on the other end
of the dim, narrow corridor. As he slowly paced towards the office,
Tyler could hear some indistinct conversation. He gathered that
Metzger was reading a prepared speech.

“My brothers,
let it be known that—”