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  Crawford continued, idiotically failing to pick up on any of the above simple body language signals.

  ‘You see, I’ve found a way to eliminate the thorn in my side - the evil Mafia boss Thomas Magnelli…’

  Loretta interrupted. She had heard enough of his ‘Bull Shit’ and couldn’t hold her fake smile much longer. ‘Oh yeah, he’s the evil one, and you’re so clean… clean as a whistle.’ Her face drooped like an old woman’s face when she realised what she had done.

  He replied with a backhand across her face, his male hands cruelly striking her female face.

  ‘You’ll learn not to interrupt a man when he’s talking, you silly bitch. Pretty soon I’ll run this city - and you’ll learn to damn well respect me then.’

  She held her throbbing face and held her tongue.

  Then she held Eddie Crawford’s head in her arms and cried tears. Tears of sadness.

  Sadness about the way her life had turned out.

  Sadness that she would be stuck with this monster forever.

  Sadness.

  Chapter 30

  Josef Kowalski dangled his rod into the still waters of Lake Peacewater, which was near his home. He caught many fish, kippers, herring and small sharks. Fishing was easy to him; like shooting fish in a barrel.

  It was his only chance for peace in a world shot damn well to hell.

  After twenty years of being the Police Chief of the New York NYPD, he had seen many bad things, several terrible things, and two awful things. But he had never felt quite as uneasy as he did now.

  Stoker had been like a son to him for years, and Kowalski knew he was in deep with Thomas Magnelli and perhaps Johnny Spang. Kowalski sensed (with typical cop sense street smarts) that this could be the end of the line for Frank Stoker.

  And who would come to his funeral?

  Maybe the owner of that café he lived above.

  Maybe the homeless informant he seemed to care for.

  Maybe the latest beautiful woman he had been sexually intimate with.

  But not a damn dime’s worth more than that.

  Kowalski sighed, and rued the wasted life of his friend.

  He (Kowalski) wondered what he (Stoker) would do when he found out Kowalski’s last remaining secret – something he had been working on for years. Would he (Stoker) forgive Kowalski (Kowalski)?

  Kowalski exhaled and processed memories like a computer imbued with the emotions of a human bean.

  Two and a half decades ago, Frank Stoker had entered the academy at the age of 18. He had been big then, big enough to cause whispers in the canteen, locker room and car park amongst the old hands, the steady Eddies and the grey geese. Stoker ruffled feathers even before he’d got his first pay check. The tattletales couldn’t wait to gossip about the man mountain who had signed up.

  Cops, with their typical good-humoured cop humour, had named him ‘The Boy Mountain’.

  Of course, when, at the age of nineteen point two years old, Stoker had broken every shooting record in the academy and obtained his black belt in three different martial arts, they stopped calling him that.

  They just called him Stoker.

  Kowalski remembered the tears he had had in his eyes, when, as a newly promoted Police Chief, he had pinned the badge onto Stoker’s chest upon his graduation from the academy.

  Back then, Stoker had been touted as a future Chief of Police by anyone who met him. Within his first year on the streets he had brought down a notorious Brazilian street gang who had been terrorising a middle class neighbourhood. He refused the bravery badge he was offered.

  Kowalski soon learned that Stoker didn’t care for recognition. Something about the guy meant that he existed only to take down criminals – a relentless search for justice.

  Something in Stoker’s past had made him that way. Something that will not be revealed in this book but could easily be told in an enthralling prequel.

  The same thing that made him reject rewards made him reject the politics required of a top cop. Within five years he had pissed off just about every senior guy in the unit, and even the District Attorney made a point about singling out his ‘reckless’ actions in the destruction of a Mexican meth lab in the Bronx.

  Twelve no-good gangsters had died at the (bare) hands of Stoker, and a corrupt cop had been hospitalised.

  And it was that damn single mindedness that stopped Kowalski bringing Stoker in on the thing he had been secretly running for years. Stoker wouldn’t understand it, and wouldn’t tolerate it. It would be nearly over now anyway.

  Stoker never changed. He was passed up for promotion after promotion, but still kept making dozens of arrests per week. Problem was, New York just kept supplying criminals. Every time Stoker took one down, two would step up in his place. (Exaggeration for dramatic effect).

  So the cycle kept continuing. Stoker would clock in for work, turn poorly educated young men into felons, and then clock off. The only other cop he really spoke to was Kowalski.

  The only other male cop, that is.

  When they misguidedly allowed women to become Female Police Officers, Stoker worked his way through every one at the station. They found him irresistible.

  ‘Twenty five years of that same cycle’ thought Kowalski, his limp rod dipping into the cool water.

  ‘Twenty five years and it could be nearly over for him.’

  A tear of sadness galloped down his cheek like a poignant horse.

  Kowalski was tired.

  He only had a couple of months before his retirement, and he planned on pissing off the Mayor and the D.A. even more by recommending Stoker as the new Police Chief. It was the only way the city could get clean. Stoker was unbribable, more than could be said for most cops at the station. And he was tough. But the main reason was because Kowalski knew it would get Stoker off the streets. He had long been the most prized scalp amongst the street gangs, and now he was public enemy no. 1 (number one).

  Besides, Kowalski knew that if Stoker didn’t get the job, that sinister phantasm Clarence Von Klatt wouldn’t have any real competition. And Kowalski knew that Von Klatt had been shining Magnelli’s shoes for years – he just couldn’t prove it. He shuddered at the thought of Von Klatt taking over.

  Kowalski had had to be tough through the years, fending off bribes and threats from the various Mafia bosses competing over the city streets. It had been hard, but eventually all but the most diabolical gangbangers had grown a respect for this sturdy little Polish Police Chief who never backed down.

  Kowalski was going to retire to his small log cabin in the large and rural country Canada with his wife and dogs. His dogs were both Beagles and one was blind in one eye, but that really isn’t important to the story.

  He heard a twig snap in the woods behind him. He turned and instinctively reached for his Police Gun.

  Hell. He had left the gun at home in his rush to get out to the lake.

  ‘Stupid, Josef. Damned stupid.’ His brain spoke but his tongue lay still.

  He scoured the woods with his eye-lenses, but, being an old white man, had poor eyesight and couldn’t make out anything moving.

  ‘Probably just a deer.’ Thought Kowalski, incorrectly.

  He returned to his fishing, and reminiscing about Stoker. Conveniently, Kowalski was thinking about Stoker’s life and providing useful backstory.

  Kowalski thought happily of his wife and two daughters, one of whom was not a lesbian runaway. His family life had been the best thing that had happened to him. His life was full and rich.

  Contrast that with Frank Stoker, who only seemed to have three interests.

  Firstly, the marriage of the penis and the vagina. Sex. No way to sugar coat it. Sex. Stoker had an insatiable thirst for women, and they loved him too. Sex.

  Secondly, literature. Stoker was a brilliant interpreter of books, from old, boring books such as W.Shakespeare, to new and detailed books like Police Gun Cleaning Manuals. He read over a book a month. He devoured written words like he devour
ed women.

  Lastly, violent justice. Stoker was a brutal man. He had killed dozens of men (interestingly, no women and, thankfully, only one child) in the line of duty, almost always with his fists. He hated guns, preferring to test himself physically. That was a test he always damn well passed. Stoker devoured fights like he devoured written words (and by association like he devoured women).

  Kowalski thought back – had Stoker even left the city limits in the last twenty years? Perhaps five times whilst in the line of duty – chasing bad guys throughout the state like a predator chasing prey. But he always returned to the station immediately afterwards.

  He had never taken a vacation day.

  Kowalski realised that even though he felt close to Stoker, he didn’t know the man one damn jot.

  Then, from nowhere, his idle thoughts were punctured by the unmistakeable sound of a leaf being bent, and he span around like an old merry go round.

  Facing him stood the largest man Kowalski had never seen. But he worked out who it was using his eyes and his brain together.

  He had been trying to find something to pin on the Japanese monster Hitoshi for over a decade, but nothing would stick.

  Hitoshi’s vile samurai sword hung at his side. It must have been five feet long, and as sharp as a blade.

  There was a moment’s pause whilst Kowalski gathered his thoughts.

  ‘Hitoshi. Magnelli’s attack dog. Or should I say bear. I guess I know what you’re here for.’

  ‘Kowalski. Police Chief. You die.’ Grunted Hitoshi.

  ‘You should know something. If you kill me, you’ll have Frank Stoker after you. And when Stoker wants something, he damn well takes it. Before too long, you’ll find your face full of his fist. Mark my damn words.’

  Hitoshi laughed. ‘Hitoshi afraid of nothing. Of nobody. Let Stoker come.’

  ‘I won’t beg for my life, you monster. But let me call my wife first. Let me tell her I love her, one last time.’

  ‘No. No call. No wife. You die now.’

  Kowalski went to raise his hands to his face but they were sliced off in a single stroke from the sword. Another swept his legs away in a millisecond.

  The third removed his head from his body, and then everything went black.

  Chapter 31

  At about the time Josef Kowalski’s spinal column was severed and his head removed from his body, Stoker pulled up at his house and spoke to the Police Chief’s old wife, Mary.

  Mary was an elderly lady, nearly over sixty. She had normal features. Her clothing was not colourful.

  Stoker demanded the whereabouts of her husband, nonchalantly avoiding even a simple hello.

  Mary explained laboriously that Kowalski was fishing at the woods behind the house, at which point Stoker pushed his pointy index finger onto her cold, dry, grey lips.

  ‘OK, shut up. I gotta go.’

  He sprinted out of the house and up the meandering path through the woods to the jetty on Lake Peacewater that he and Kowalski had fished from a couple of years ago.

  Though he remembered the route like a seasoned sniffy dog, it was long and far, and Stoker had been through hell - and back through hell - and back.

  His heart was pounding by the time he arrived at the grisly scene.

  Kowalski had been sliced like a damn pepperoni. He could barely recognise the body, but he would have had no problem recognising the blood type, if he had had a mobile blood testing lab with him. Because there was blood everywhere. It was like that scene from Carrie.

  Stoker screamed at the top of his lungs.

  ‘HITOSHI… MAGNELLI…’

  Tears fell from beneath his eye lids and down onto the floor.

  It was at that point, Ladies and Gentlemen, that Frank Stoker lost control.

  His face turned red as it became engorged with blood. He fell to the floor holding his face. He punched a young, broad-shouldered oak tree in the trunk, snapping it in two. He kicked the bucket of fish that Kowalski had been keeping his fish victims in – sending flapping fishes hurling through the air like flying fishes, before they gracefully re-entered the lake and gratefully inhaled water in the same way a man (or boy) might inhale oxygen nitroxide – ‘air’ to you and me.

  Just as these lucky, greedy fishes lived, Kowalski had died. Over the next few seconds, Stoker grew to hate the fishes, jealous of the lifeblood coursing through their veins, whilst his fatherlike friend and mentor and boss Josef Kowalski had come to die.

  Of course, Stoker knew it was foolish to blame the fishes for the death of his friend.

  Blood splattered in gruesome arcs over the jetty. He recognised the grisly handiwork of the Japanese monster Hitoshi.

  Soon, his rage focused on Magnelli and his diabolical assistant. They would both pay for this.

  Stoker walked slowly back to Kowalski’s house, like a sullen child. To give him some credit, he did at least have cause to be upset - unlike the majority of children in this day and age who seem to get upset at, for example, the most inconsequential of minor car crashes.

  One look from his handsome, weathered, sad face, and Mary knew her husband was dead.

  She cried for minutes – initially (of course) justifiably, but eventually tiresomely. Stoker sighed as he held her sobbing, haggard abdomen.

  ‘Mary, you know I gotta make these guys pay. I gotta leave soon. You call the cops.’

  ‘But Frank, you are the cops. Or, at least, a cop (singular).’

  ‘I know sweetie, but I got a strange feeling about this. Not only are my friends being mutilated beyond the patience of their own lifeblood, but I gotta hunch that there’s bad cops involved in this.’

  ‘Frank, are you telling me that Josef had corrupt cops in his department? He wouldn’t stand for that.’

  Stoker stared her right in the eyes. ‘Mary, you gotta understand. No matter how skilfully made the nappy, or as we Americans say, diaper, sometimes baby shit leaks out. Fact of life.’

  ‘Oh Frank…he was my only love.’ She started crying again.

  Stoker’s cue to leave. He had no patience for the tears of women.

  He rose from the sofa and started walking towards the door, left foot following right following left… well, you get the picture. He was walking in the normal way. It didn’t warrant a detailed description.

  ‘Wait, Frank, before you leave. Josef – or Joe as I used to call him back when he was my alive husband – wanted you to have this envelope.’

  She walked slowly over to a desk in the corner of the room like an old woman, because she was one, and handed him a greying, yellow envelope made of faded green and red paper.

  Stoker took the envelope thirstily, stuffing it into his back pants pocket, near his anus. He would read it later, not in this chapter.

  ‘Oh, and Frank?’ she wheezed, as she waddled back to her chair, sitting down like an overheated pigeon in the Texas sun.

  ‘Yeah, Mary?’

  She paused, before unpausing and saying:

  ‘Kill them, kill them all.’

  She turned her hand into an imaginary gun, two fingers forming the barrel, the clenched remaining talons forming the handle and her thumb artfully replicating the trigger. She fired two shots in the air and winked at Stoker.

  Frank buried one fist in his other hand like some kid pitcher playing stickball.

  ‘Count on it, babe. Count on it.’

  He walked out of the room and into the hall.

  Stoker realised he needed to take a leak before he left, so he snuck upstairs to use ‘The John’ (American for toilet). He actually spent up to five minutes in there and tried to sneak back out without Mary seeing. He walked downstairs gingerly like a gayman in a frathouse party.

  She did happen to see him but didn’t mention anything to avoid embarrassment.

  Stoker never knew she knew.

  Chapter 32

  Hard rock blared from the beaten up juke box in the corner of the bar.

  Ravers, Rockers and Goonies mingled in the mosh p
it – the spaced out dance of the dead. They bashed into each other with lifeless eyes – milky white skin tattooed with satanic creatures such as bats, snakes and toads.

  The bar was the colour of bone, and the wild eyes of the Goth rocker behind it seemed to tell any ‘square’ to get the hell out – this was for rockers only.

  In one corner, a gang of bikers smoked cheap cigars and passed around a bottle of strong whisky. They cursed with abandon and disrespected women.

  In the other, Goth kids stretched over black sofas, headphones on and marijuana bong passed from hand to hand. They held ivory blades and aluminium truncheons adorned with stickers of their favourite Goth rock bands.

  The music was debauched and really was genuinely far too loud.

  Only one place in New York, hell, in the whole world, quite like it.

  ‘Welcome to the Bronco Roadhouse’, read the sign above the door. Someone had insolently scrawled underneath, apparently in blood:

  ‘Fuck Off Cops and Squares’

  Into this manmade hell entered Thomas Magnelli. He pushed past the gang of ravers guarding the door, and took one sweeping look across the room, half in disgust, half functionally because he was looking for someone… or something… or someone. To avoid any doubt, he was looking for someone.

  He saw the gang of bikers in the far corner and made his way across the dance floor to meet them.

  He was accosted by a whacked out loon – she must have been six feet tall and slender as a rake. Her eyes rolled back in her head as she said:

  ‘You some cop or something? Fuck you, Fed!’

  She threw her drink over Magnelli’s shirt.

  He slapped her once, hard, in the face and she fell to the floor.

  Some kid with blue hair and a nose ring stepped up and grabbed Magnelli from behind.

  Suddenly he was surrounded. Surrounded by the Lost Boys. Generation Y. Kids raised on vampire films and weak father figures.

  ‘You slapped my chick, Fed, and now you’re gonna pay.’

  The blue haired kid pulled out a switchblade knife and moved to thrust it at Magnelli.