Nicholas

 

Twelve Years Later

 

I paused for a moment and looked in the mirror. Sometimes I hardly recognized the man looking back. The guy in the glass was a cold-hearted son of a bitch. Icy blue eyes that didn’t blink. Throw fists or fire bullets at me, it didn’t matter. I wouldn’t flinch. Nobody could scare me.

 

I peeled off my leather driving gloves and looked down at my hands. A lesser man might be shaking, given everything that had just happened. Not me. My hands were calm and steady. I could perform surgery despite the adrenaline coursing through my system and the way my breath came in hot and heavy spurts. It didn’t matter. My hands never shook.

 

To think this had become my normal life. Driving away from cops and criminals alike, engine blasting, true thugs riding shotgun as I got them away from whatever hit or theft they were carrying out that day.

 

I was a driver for The Punishers. Not just any driver, I was the best. I was the one they called when the mission hung by a hair. When the streets were tight and the police were close, I was the only guy in the whole damn city good enough to get away. I’d never been caught. I didn’t think I ever would be.

 

Driving came too easily to me. Nothing had changed since the day Smalls first popped open the door of that luxury sedan and swung it open, gesturing for me to slip inside. When I’d taken the driver’s seat and put my hands on the wheel, I knew right away this was where I was supposed to be. This was my horse.

 

And every time I got in the car, I felt the same click in my chest, like something settling into place, a big, resounding Yes from a place deep within. A man knew when he’d found his calling. No one could convince him otherwise. Driving was what I was born to do.

 

The confidence in my face was obvious. But it wasn’t the flashy swagger I’d seen on the face of so many other drivers during my twelve years as a member of The Punishers. Cockiness got a driver killed. A sharp turn didn’t give a damn if you thought you were the best. All that mattered was that you respected it. In a job like mine, there was always something after me. Someone on my tail with anger pumping through their veins or the road trying to kill me at every turn, twisting just a bit more than it thought I could handle. But nothing got to me. I just didn’t let it.

 

This city was filled with jokers and idiots. Arrogant teenagers popping wheelies on their bikes during street races were always thinking that they could step into my shoes and do it better than me. What they didn’t realize was that it wasn’t about the machine; it wasn’t about being willing to take a risk or whip around a turn faster than the next guy.

 

It was about these steady hands. They didn’t shake. They never would.

 

Tonight’s job had been routine. I’d picked up Luca, the hitman, just before midnight. He’d come lumping down the stairs, looking pudgy and dirty, though that was pretty much par for the course when it came to this particular specimen.

 

“Evening, Nico,” he said as he slid into the passenger seat. He groaned as he shifted his weight to one side and pulled out a handgun from the waistband of his sweatpants. He kept talking as he took it apart, inspected it, and then put it back together one piece at a time. “Lookin’ forward to this one tonight. Real ugly son of a bitch we’re puttin’ down. You know, it just ain’t right to be slappin’ around a woman, is it now, Nico?” He didn’t wait for me to answer before going on. “It ain’t right at all. I don’t care if you are her pimp, still shouldn’t be beatin’ up on a lady.”

 

Luca sucked his teeth and shook his head in dismay. The machinery in his hands clicked as he locked the silencer down into place. I executed a smooth turn through the sparse late-night traffic at the intersection, gliding down the dark road towards what would soon become a murder scene. I didn’t say a word. I kept my eyes on the road. The wheel hummed gently beneath my gloved fingertips.

 

Luca lowered the window and pointed the weapon at himself in the rearview mirror. He squinted one eye as he looked down the sights. “Bang,” he said softly, pretending to pull the trigger. He let the gun recoil slightly from the fake shot.

 

We cruised to a stop at a red light. I looked at him. “Shut the window,” I said.

 

“Damn,” Luca whistled, “you really are a cold bastard, aren’t you, Nico? Don’t you think a fucker like this deserves to get put down?”

 

The truth was, I did think that. I hated the scum who mucked around this city. Leeches and small-time predators lingered everywhere I looked, finding the nearest warm, innocent body and sucking it dry. There were as many gangs and renegade clubs as there were city blocks. We couldn’t stamp them out quick enough. Every time we took down one upstart crew of filth, two more sprung up in their place. It was a fool’s errand to keep trying. So I’d learned long ago to let the small time players eke out a living wherever they managed to find a foothold.

 

My sights were on the bigger target. I wanted to take down the biggest leech of them all—the Espositos.

 

They had been terrorizing their swath of the city for decades. Damn near every business owner in their territory paid a fortune just to keep the Esposito enforcers from coming through and smashing their shops to pieces. In return, what did the Espositos provide? Nothing. The fees were called “protection money,” but the only thing the Espositos protected from was themselves.

 

The only thing stopping the Espositos from expanding their vampire operation to encompass the rest of the city was us. The Punishers. That wasn’t to say we were the good guys. We weren’t, far from it. There were enough vices and scoundrels littered throughout our crew to make the local jailhouse look like a church choir. But in contrast to the Espositos, we might as well have been fucking angels.

 

Luca was the type who would have been at home on either side of the war. He loved violence, no matter who he was inflicting it on or for. It was just a quirk of his birth that he’d been born on the Punishers’ side of the tracks.

 

Here he was, on his way to take a man’s life—a man who deserved it, to be sure, but still, a human being—and he looked like a kid at the candy shop, too overwhelmed with excitement to know where to begin. He squeezed the handle of the gun with glee. His fingers tapped on the thigh of his greasy, stained sweats. A softly hummed song came from his pursed lips.

 

We were different creatures, he and I. He loved blood for its own sake. It didn’t make a difference to him who it belonged to, why it had been spilled, what kinds of horrible things he left in his wake. All that mattered was the power he held when he stood over another man, or a woman, or even a child, with a weapon in his hand. It was a drug for him. I couldn’t understand that.

 

The light changed green. I stared at Luca for a moment longer. “Just shut the window,” I repeated.

 

We drove the rest of the way in silence.

 

A few turns later, we pulled up outside a decrepit, two-story apartment building. No lights came from inside. I parked alongside the curb and looked at Luca. He ogled back, his froggy eyes bulging with eagerness, unshaven jowls quivering along with them. “Be back in a jiff, amigo,” he said mockingly. Then he scrambled out of the car and walked around to the rear of the building.

 

Silence settled in once he had gone. I let loose the breath I’d been holding. I couldn’t deny that Luca was right. This man deserved to die. He was a notorious pimp with a predatory streak, well known for beating his hookers to the point that the ER closest to his turf had a special code they used whenever one of his girls came limping in, bloody and battered. He paid off law enforcement handsomely, so the ones who might have thought about wading through this shitty, dangerous neighborhood to arrest him were convinced to turn a blind eye. But he’d pissed off the wrong guy, and word passed through the criminal grapevine that a contract was out on his head. Ever the opportunist, Luca had volunteered the Punishers to take the job. So here we were, playing judge, jury, and God, all at the same time. Funny how the ones at trial were always guilty.

 

I breathed deeply. My hands were resting lightly on the top of the wheel. The cooling engine made audible clicks and groans as it settled down. I checked my watch. Two minutes had passed. No sound or motion from inside.

 

Then I saw the thump of something large and heavy hitting the other side of the curtains over the front window. It disappeared just as quickly. I started the car up again and rolled down the windows.

 

Over the soft purr of the motor, I heard glass shattering from within. Two quick flashes that could only be gunfire. A brief lull in the action, then the front door burst open and Luca came waddling out, tucking his gun angrily into the back of his sweatpants and pressing a palm to a cut on his forehead. He grimaced as he pulled it away. Blood shone on his hand under the dim streetlight.

 

He yanked open the side door and threw himself in, slamming it shut behind him with a thunk. The moment his weight was in the car, I pulled out. My eyes flitted back and forth from the road in front of me to both rearview mirrors, checking for anyone following us.

 

“Goddamn bastard,” Luca cursed as he wadded up the bottom edge of his shirt and held it against the slice on his temple. “Threw a fucking lamp at me, can you believe that?”

 

“You didn’t have to wake him up,” I said.

 

“Where’s the fun in that? I want ’em to know why they’re gettin’ what they’re gettin’. No sport in killing a motherfucker when he’s balls deep in La La Land, counting sheep or whatever.”

 

“It isn’t supposed to be fun. You should—”

 

Blue lights behind us. Shit.

 

“I should what?”

 

“You should buckle up.”

 

I depressed the clutch and cranked us up a few gears. The car shot down the dark road. In my mirror, I watched as the cops picked up speed to chase after us. Someone must have reported the gunfire.

 

A dead end approached up ahead. I swerved left and applied more pressure to the gas pedal. We nosed forward faster. I glanced back. Two cop cars slid around the corner, tires screeching.

 

Clutch down, another gear higher, and the motor in our car started really getting after it. I could feel the thrum of metal on all sides. My eyes narrowed in intense concentration. My hands gripped tighter on the wheel.

 

Speed. Give it to me.

 

The next few minutes were a blur of hairpin turns, screeching tires, and Luca, wide-eyed, clutching desperately at the armrests like he thought he was about to get ejected from the vehicle at any moment.

 

The cops were good drivers, but I was better. I whipped a fast U-turn to give ourselves some breathing room, then scorched down a long residential street towards an alley at the far end. It was just big enough to allow the sporty sedan I was driving to pass through.

 

Emerging onto the other side, the dawn breaking through the clouds greeted us. The police were long gone.

 

“Jesus Christ, man,” Luca said, chuckling to himself. “You drove like a bat outta hell.”

 

“Just doing my job,” I replied coldly.

 

“That’s one fucking hell of a job.”

 

We scooted to a junkyard a few more blocks away. I pulled behind a teetering mountain of garbage and scrapped electronics, then killed the engine. I sat quietly for a moment as the car settled into place. Luca breathed heavily next to me.

 

“Here,” he said after a moment, tossing something heavy onto my lap. I looked down. It was a bejeweled wallet, expensive calfskin leather decked out in gold filigree spelling out initials I didn’t recognize.

 

“What’s this?” I asked.

 

“The pimp’s. Give it to Fists. Let him know the dude is gone.” Luca opened the door and huffed his way out, groaning as he took to his feet and stretched. The morning air seeping in through the open door was chilly and dewy.

 

“Where are you going?”

 

Luca peeked his head back into the car. “Gonna get a drink, then I’ve got a pretty little bitch coming over to suck my dick. Tell the prez I say hello.” He gave me a mocking salute, then sauntered away, lighting a cigarette as he left. He disappeared around another massive mound of broken, rejected goods that the people of the city had abandoned.

 

His stench lingered behind him. It was a mix of body odor, cig smoke, and something underneath that was just a bit nastier and more unfamiliar. I didn’t want to sit around and try to figure it out.

 

Sighing, I got out of the car and went around to the trunk. Popping open the lid, I reached in to withdraw a large red can. The liquid within sloshed to and fro as I walked around the car pouring gasoline in through the open windows. The sharp chemical tang quickly overpowered whatever smell Luca had had clinging to him.

 

Burning the car was standard protocol. One use only, that was the rule. Didn’t make sense to keep driving around a vehicle that some random passerby might be able to identify as being involved with a crime.

 

It was a shame sometimes to lose a car this pretty, though. One of the new kids had picked it up outside of the opera hall a couple weeks ago. A fresh coat of paint, some fake tags, and it had been ready to go for whatever mission Fists, The Punishers’ president, deemed necessary. But when her time was up, that’s just the way things were. No point in arguing. The rule was in place for a reason.

 

I emptied the last of the can into the rear window. Tossing the can aside and stepping back, I plucked a cheap gas station lighter from my pocket, spun the wheel, and lowered the dancing flame to the fabric of the backseat. It caught immediately. Cat-tongue fire licked along the cloth trim, spreading quickly to engulf the interior with heat and smoke.

 

I crossed my arms and watched for a while as the car burned. The smoke carried away our fingerprints, our hair, our skin particles. It took away everything that ever said we were inside it.

 

That was how things should be. In, out, and gone without a trace.

 

I turned and left the junkyard.

 

# # #

 

Which was how I ended up in the bathroom of a pizza parlor, stripping off my gloves and staring at myself in the mirror. I tucked the leather gloves into my back pocket.

 

“You gonna be in there all day, or what?” a pissed off voice demanded.

 

“One second,” I said back. I splashed some water on my face from the rusty tap. The cold felt good. After wiping an arm across my face to dry it, I unlatched the door and stepped out.

 

“Jesus, what the hell were you doin’ in there, son?” the grumpy old man who ran the place said.

 

I grunted and moved aside to let him through as he slipped past me into the single occupancy restroom and yanked the door closed behind him.

 

The place was dimly lit, dull neon signs flickering from the walls proclaiming that this was the best pizza in the neighborhood, the city, and the world. None of that was true. The pizza here was shit. But I was hungry, and a slice would do just fine for the time being.

 

I walked up to the counter. “Pepperoni,” I growled to the teenage girl working the register. She gulped as she drank me in. Her face swam with the same mixture of emotions I always inspired in women. There was the fear. I was, after all, a big motherfucker, standing nearly six feet five with shoulders that every now and then required me to push through slim doorways turned sideways.

 

Inevitably, after the fear came the thirst. They saw my blue eyes and my teeth, which were somehow straight and white despite the years of hard living and shitty nutrition I’d had while growing up.

 

And after the thirst was the awe. That was when it all came together. It only took a word or two for them to see that I was the kind of man who did not take no for an answer. I was a force of nature. It didn’t take a genius to see that right off the bat.

 

The girl hadn’t moved since I’d first spoken. I raised an eyebrow. “The pizza?” I said questioningly.

 

“Oh, right.” She blushed, turning as red as a stoplight. “I’m so sorry. I’ll get that for you right away.” She scurried off to the side to scoop a piece from the trays sitting under the hot lamps behind the glass. Hustling back over, she slid the paper plate over the counter in my direction. “That’ll be a dollar fifty, please,” she murmured. She didn’t lift her eyes from the register keyboard.

 

I gave her a twenty and walked away without waiting to see what she’d say.

 

Outside, the morning was sneaking across the sky. It had started to warm up a little bit, but the air was still nippy. I raised the pizza to my mouth and took a bite. I almost spat it out again right away. The thing was somehow disgustingly greasy and stale as hell at the same. Honestly, I was a little impressed with the new depths they’d reached. I guessed that was what I should have expected from the only pizza place to be open this early in the morning.

 

I scanned around the sidewalk, looking for a trashcan, when something else caught my eye. A little kid was peering out at me from around the corner of a nearby alleyway. His clothes were tattered and filthy, he was hardly more than skin and bones, but there was something in his eyes that made me look twice.

 

He had that survivor’s glare, an expression that said, “I may look small and weak, but you just wait. One day, I’ll make it.” I recognized that glare. It was the same one I’d had when I first ran away.

 

“Hey, kid,” I said. I gave a short whistle. He panicked for a moment, then steeled himself and took two steps towards me.

 

“What do you want?” he said defiantly. I saw he was barefoot.

 

“You want the rest of this?” I asked, offering the pizza in his direction.

 

He hesitated for the briefest of moments before pouncing towards me and snatching it out of my hands. He devoured the food hungrily, barely waiting to chew before swallowing it down into his aching belly. I knew that feeling. Hunger was a motherfucker. A bite of hot food could make all the difference in the world.

 

He had finished sucking down the pizza and was licking the grease from his fingers when another thought occurred to me. I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the pimp’s wallet. The gold stitching glimmered in the light that had just started to peek over the tops of the buildings. I took out the ID card and tossed the rest of it towards the kid. He caught it in two hands against his chest. When he opened it up and saw the hundreds of dollars tucked inside the billfold, his jaw dropped.

 

“Go buy yourself some shoes,” I told him.

 

“Thanks…thank you, mister,” the kid finally managed to splutter.

 

“Don’t mention it,” I told him. “I know what it’s like to be out here hungry and alone.”

 

I checked my watch. An hour had passed since we’d ditched the car. I figured it was safe now to go retrieve my motorcycle and head to the clubhouse to report to Fists. He’d be wondering how things had gone.