The Deer Slayers

The Novel Is Finished And So Are Two Bad Guys

The shell-shocked Earl Wilkinson reclined in his black leather Aames chair, feet up on his desk, Bose studio headphones channeling the driving beat of The Who’s My Generation through his body. His eyes were closed, and he was far removed from the insanity of the last few days. He had some vacation time coming. Heck, he thought, who needs this crap anymore. For the first time since he was 14 years old, he thought about quitting work. He had been afraid to quit because what if he was one of those people who needed to work and when they quit, they died. Actually, he had thrown himself into his work and into volunteer activities since Mary Ellen died. Instead of drugs to anesthetize him, he allowed the work and activity to dull the pain of loss and loneliness. The sense of loss and loneliness had been there, broiling under the surface, percolating up from time to time. At times like that, he wondered why he even went on because there was nothing important in his life. And maybe that’s why when people retired and stop working, they died. And maybe that’s why people didn’t live too long after their spouses died. Nothing to live for was a good reason not to live, Earl thought.

He picked up his feet off the desk and leaned forward in the chair. He grabbed the handset from the telephone’s cradle and punched in the numbers for the fire station’s non-emergency number. “Fire station,” the male voice announced.

“Santora, please” Earl said.

“Just a second, Chief, I’ll get her,” the disembodied voice said. Earl sighed, any idea about being discrete having disappeared altogether. “This wasn’t a good idea,” he said under his breath.

“Ummm … I think it was,” Angie Santora said into her end of the phone. She was thrilled, wondering is he would ever call her again.

Earl stuttered, “Y-y-y-you weren’t supposed to hear that. I feel like a real jerk,” he said. “Be that as it may,” he started to say, then laughed and said, “Bet you never had a guy say that to you who wanted to ask you out on a date.”

“Can’t say that I have, Earl,” she answered. “We going to get past all this crap? You want to do something this weekend? Toronto? Chicago?”

Earl was silent. This wasn’t what he expected. “I was thinking London for a week or so. Is your passport in order?” he asked.

“Sure is. I could get the time off. Someone will cover for me. I’m up for it. I’ve never been to London,” She said, voice quivering slightly.

“Me neither. Well, not London anyway.” Earl’s thoughts turned to the war in Europe. She wasn’t even born yet. Hell, he thought, I doubt if her parents were born yet. He smiled a small smile.

“So, do you want to get together this weekend?” she asked.

Earl leaned back in the Aames chair. “You make arrangements to take about 10 days off, and I’ll call and get the tickets. We might be able to get some really cheap fares because we’re booking so late.” Earl smiled. He couldn’t believe that he had suggested such a thing. She thought he was joking, He was joking, at first, but he figured that he hadn’t taken a chance like this in a long time.

Angie Santora sat at the desk, unable to say anything. It would be a good opportunity to get to know him better, for sure. She was stunned. She thought he was kidding. What happened in the last few minutes was not real life. She heard herself say into the phone, “Okay, Earl. How about coffee later?”

“Starbucks. 8:30. We’ll plan the itinerary. I’ll stop by your place and pick you up,” he said. He felt like he could not stop, but had to press on. He liked her. At least, they’d get to know each other, spending a week or so in London. He was looking forward to it.

They said their see-you-laters. Both got off the phone feeling much different than when the call started.

The phone chimed for Earl. It was Jackie, the high school girl he’d gotten from the joint vocational school as a dispatcher. She finished up her training and was working alone for the first time. “Chief, I need to patch you through to Officer Cruz. It’s better that he explain.” Her voice quivered.

“Cruz, it’s the Chief here. What can I do for you.” Wilkinson was puzzled. He recalled that the last time he was “patched through” a plane had crashed into Lake Erie.

“Chief, I need you out here at the Salminio estate. We have two bodies, both expired. One is most likely Eugene Salminio. The other, I think, is Burt Comstock from across the road.”

“On my way,” said Wilkinson, chair clumping down. He ran out of the office and through the dispatch center and out the back door. He got into the Corvette, started it, and accelerated, lights flashing, The siren would come when he reached the road and needed to clear out traffic at the intersection. He was amazed how over the years people no longer bothered to yield. One of these days he was going to arrest anybody who didn’t pull over and stop. On a fire truck run, he thought. Follow along and give tickets. He’d tell the new chief about that idea. Earl Wilkinson decided that he was retiring at the end of the week. Maybe he’d buy himself a one-way ticket to London and see how things had changed in the country, Dover, particularly. He knew Dover, but that was six decades ago. Then he realized that he didn’t pick up his left leg to get in the car. And his left knee was not complaining about anything.

He let it out on Lake Road and got the ‘Vette up to 85 miles per hour. No crowds had gathered. Cruz had called the station on the phone, not the radio; so, no scanners picked up the call. Earl would compliment Cruz when he got to the scene. No gawkers were there. No news people. No circus. Nice change.

He wheeled the car into Burt’s driveway. He would need to find Sylvia. He figured he might as well start at the house. Maybe she was at home. He already knew that Rose Salminio would not be too distressed with the news. She would be free without the change in identity, without having to testify, without having to look over her shoulder for the rest of her life. He got out of the Corvette, which he had pulled all the way around to the back of the house. Sometimes, a black-and-white Corvette with a light bar on the roof was not a good thing to drive around when doing police work.

Wilkinson knocked on the back door. Sylvia didn’t answer the door. He knew Burt couldn’t. Earl would see two bodies lying at the bottom of the steps leading to the elevated deck that was outside the Salminio bedroom.

Cruz sat on one of the chairs at a table on a large concrete deck around the pool. He looked to the north away from the bloody mess that used to be Burt Comstock and Eugene Salminio. He had seen the blood awash and congealed upon the concrete pad at the base of the steps And what had caused it to be so. He called the Chief. And then he sat down. The flies were buzzing.

“Looks like they’re dead,” Earl said from behind Cruz. “Not really what you want to see after a nice breakfast at Paul & Evelyn’s,” continued Earl, knowing that Cruz had seen something that he hadn’t seen before. Earl, however, had seen the same thing the day before. He saw what was left of Eddie’s head and that looked just about the same as the two that were lifeless here.

Cruz choked out, “Sorry, Chief, I’m having a hard time with this one.”

“Just so you know, Cruz, I’m having a hard time with it, too. You don’t get used to it just because you’ve seen it so many times before. I have been through almost 60 years of killing, Cruz. I was 14 when I went to Europe to fight the Nazis. It is tough now. I’d just like to know the animal that did this to them. And to Salminio’s buddy, Eddie, yesterday. Same thing. And to a guy a few years back named Big James Sheridan.”

Cruz interrupted, or maybe Wilkinson was finished, “That’s Little Jimmy’s dad. Weird.”

“What’s weird?” Earl asked.

“I’ve been sitting here for a while before you came. There’s a group of deer over there to our left in the trees,” Cruz said, pointing over to the tree line at the edge of the Salminio property. “They haven’t moved. I see two big bucks, three does, and a couple fawns.”

Earl shouted, “Hey! Yee-hah!” Earl was surprised that the deer didn’t bound off. Instead, the two bucks took a few steps in Earl’s direction, then stopped. Earl pointed out to Cruz, “There used to be deer all over town until the housing developments started re-claiming wooded areas. You wouldn’t believe how much of the town was virgin land. I mean, it had been tree-covered since the place was settled up until about 10 years ago. Then wham! Salminio and his people moved in and bought up all the property and started putting up houses, stripping the land bare for economy.”

“So, we got the last of a dying breed out there in the trees over there,” Cruz inserted in the history Wilkinson was recounting.

Wilkinson nodded, “True, I guess. I recognize the one buck. The antlers on the left side are broken off.” As Earl explained, pointing at the deer he was talking about, the two bucks majestically walked toward Earl and Cruz. They stopped and stood about 60 feet from the two policemen. The one Earl knew pawed the grass, digging it up, and bowed its head. The other watched without moving, then made a noise, through its nose, blowing out.

Earl smiled and shook his head. “You see anything strange, other than the broken horn on the bigger one? Huh, Cruz?”

Cruz looked hard, leaning forward. The nausea was beginning to fade. He took a deep breath. The stench of death, the blood, urine, and just plain shit that he encountered when he turned the corner of the house had been replaced by the fresh smell of the lake blowing in from the northwest. Cruz was silent, still looking, trying to figure out what Earl, the old coot, was talking about,
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“Do you believe that man is supreme on this Earth?” asked Earl. He stared at the two big bucks, standing next to Cruz, who remained seated at the table. “I guess what I’m asking is whether you think that God anointed Man as the ruler of all he sees or whether God empowered or endowed other creatures?”

Cruz looked sidewise at Earl Wilkinson, wondering whether he had suddenly lost his senses, but he respectfully answered, “I don’t know, Chief. I never really thought about it in those terms. I suppose that other creatures have been endowed with intelligence. I mean, like whales, they’re supposed to be intelligent. Maybe God meant for them to rule the oceans and for Man to rule the land.”

“How about deer? Do you think deer think and reason?” the Chief asked, pulling the small pair of binoculars out and handing them to Cruz. Cruz looked through the binoculars and finally noticed what the Chief had seen with years of experience. Blood. The two bucks were splattered with blood.

Burt and Geno

The phone rang. Eugene Salminio stood in the middle of his expansive living room, frozen in space and time. He looked around, somewhat puzzled. “Where in Hell is the fuckin’ phone?” he asked himself, which seemed an appropriate question, considering where he was in his life. He couldn’t recall the last time he answered the telephone in his own house. His office phone rarely rang. The phone ringing jogged his memory that there was a message on his office answering machine.

He staggered into the kitchen, looking around for the telephone. There had to be a phone in the kitchen, he thought, because Rose always was talking on the phone in the kitchen. His fuzzy mind tried to crystallize the picture in his head of his wife on the telephone in the kitchen, and he laughed because all of a sudden he was thinking of being in the optometrist’s office trying different strength lenses behind that big figure-eight-shaped thing that the doctor put up to his face and made him read the chart.

The phone stopped ringing. The silence brought him back to the kitchen. The phone Rose would talk on didn’t have a cord. It was cord … less, something he didn’t trust because a scanner could pick up every conversation, like a miniature radio broadcasting station. He preferred wired phones, hard-wired phones, like in The Matrix, which he had never seen, but had heard about from his kids.

He walked over to his office door, holding onto first a black-lacquered table with an oriental lamp on it. The lamp started to tip over. He tried to catch the lamp but only set it on its way a little bit faster. It crashed into the black granite floor. “Where the fuck is she?” he asked nobody in particular. She hadn’t called him. For all he knew, she was dead. And if she didn’t show up soon with a reasonable alibi, then she would be dead.

He reached for the stairwell railing to steady himself. His goal was about 15 feet away, the door to his office he kept in the house. He wanted to get to the phone and listen to the message. It could be important. Or it could be a telemarketer. It could be Rose. She didn’t have the private phone number, but she could probably get it from Eddie. Eddie was in love with Rose, of that Salminio was certain. Then he remembered that Eddie had his head obliterated with the business end of a crowbar and wouldn’t be flirting with Rose anymore. And that he had lost his only friend in the world.

He steadied himself on the stairwell railing to ready himself for the headlong rush over to the closed office door, the door knob to be specific, so that he had a handhold. The door knob seemed to be drifting back and forth a little, a movement he thought that he could predict. Or maybe not because it started to move up and down a little, like he had to follow a bouncing ball. He decided that he had to do it before the whole room started spinning and he lost his lunch. He laughed to himself. He hadn’t had lunch. It was morning. He hadn’t slept all night. He drove for hours looking for Rose. He called a few people, a few of her friends, to try to find her, without success. Then he ended up at the Blue Note on Clifton with Doreene and Claudia, whom he had never met before; but they were willing to listen as long as he supplied the drinks and Phil played the piano.

He steadied himself on the stairwell railing to ready himself for the headlong rush over to the closed office door. He spied the door knob again. It was moving, but he thought he could do it. He staggered toward the door, but he felt the floor tilting to the left, carrying him along with it. He caught the door knob with his right hand and fell to the floor, clawing to get to the doorway. He pushed the door open and crawled through the doorway. He lay on his back, looking up at the ceiling about twenty feet above.

His thoughts turned to Rose. Could she have been kidnapped? There would have been a ransom call or something, he thought. Who would do such a thing? Nobody he knew. Nobody would have the guts to do it. He would track them down and kill them, kill them slowly. Could she have just up and left him? He would have to check the one bank account to which he gave her access. There had been two thousand dollars in the account; so, even if she chose to take it all, she wouldn’t get very far.

He didn’t think that she would sacrifice all that she had to leave him. He was correct, but wouldn’t find that out. Earl Wilkinson knew what happened. He picked her up and drove her to the Quaker Square Hilton in Akron, where she was met by a couple members of the FBI’s Organized Crime Task Force. She didn’t call anyone. She didn’t tell anyone where she was going. She disappeared from the face of the Earth.

Eugene Salminio thought he should check their room to see if she took any clothes with her. If there was no money gone from the bank and no clothes gone from her closets and dressing room, then it was a kidnapping. He couldn’t call the police. The kidnappers knew he wouldn’t call the police. He wouldn’t pay any ransom.

He dragged himself to a standing position with the help of his mahogany desk. He saw the little red light flashing on the phone and decided he should listen to the message. He pushed the button to rewind the recorder. It was a hang-up. He threw the answering machine against the wall. He noticed some movement across Lake Road on the south side. Burt Comstock was out at the edge of the roadway near his mailbox holding something in his hand with an extension cord extending back to the front door.

Eugene Salminio decided to hire Burt to find out what happened to Rose. Whether she was kidnapped or had run away or was in a ditch dead Geno wanted to know, Burt was the guy for the job. He had no conscience and would do the job without emotion and without judgment. He would even kill her if Eugene wanted him to do that. He’d have to think about that one. If she was kidnapped, then that could be worked into the equation.

Salminio walked out the front door toward the street. Burt noticed him and waved. Geno waved back and kept walking. Burt had some kind of wood-burning tool and was burning his last name into the wooden mailbox, smoke wafting in the morning sun.

“Hey, Burt,” Salminio called as he crossed Lake Road.

“Hey, man,” Burt replied. “You look like you got run over by a freight train. What happened?”

“Rose is gone. I don’t know where she is,” Eugene said, hands at his side and open towards Burt.

“That’s too bad. You two been having problems?” He asked. Burt minded his own business, unless asked to get involved; so, there was no way he would know if there were any problems between Eugene and Rose.

“No, no problems. I don’t know if she left on her own or if she was kidnapped,” Eugene replied. “I was hoping that maybe you could find out for me. I don’t really want to get the police involved, if you know what I mean.” Burt nodded, knowing exactly what Eugene meant.

“I think we can talk about that, if you want,” Burt pointed out, non-committal as usual. He smelled the alcohol burning off Geno, wondering how long it would take for the organized crime boss to sober up. Burt read about Eddie’s gruesome death in the newspaper and wanted to ask Geno if there was any connection between the disappearance of his wife and the death of his close compatriot. He figured that there was some bond between the dead guy and the wife. Burt formulated the hypothesis that he was Eugene Salminio’s shill, looking for the wife was an excuse. Who could accuse Salminio of murder when the grieving widower had retained Burt to find the wife. Or Burt would be the patsy, set up to take the fall when he finds the body with a bullet, probably a .22, in her head. Or he could be totally wrong about Salminio.

“Why don’t we go over to my place,” Salminio told Burt. “We can work out an arrangement. I have no idea what is going on. My life is falling apart. And somebody is going to pay.”

“Well, let me put this away,” Burt said, holding up the wood-burning tool. “Finished. What do you think?”

“Looks good, I guess. I thought you spelled your last C-O-M, not C-M,” Eugene pointed out.

Burt traced the individual letters he had burned into the wooden slat covered mailbox. “Fuck,’ Burt blurted out. Sylvia would have scolded him for using such language in public, especially in the neighborhood in which their next door neighbor was the minister of the Baptist church down and around the corner. “What an idiot. Fuck it. Let’s go,” he said, tossing the wood burning tool on the ground. “I’ll fix it later. I’ll make the ‘C’ into an ‘O.’ That’ll work out.”

Eugene grunted his approval and started to walk across the two-lane blacktop road. Burt followed him. “I’ll fix some coffee, if I can figure out how to work the coffee maker,” Eugene said.

Eugene Heads Home

Eugene Salminio sat in the back of the limousine, looking at the houses that lined the north side of Lake Road, catching glimpses of Lake Erie. Clouds were gathering over the lake, which meant some bad weather for those out to the east. He needed some time away. He called his travel agent to book a junket to Las Vegas. He heard that Elton John was doing some shows there. Rose could take in the show; he could play poker with the high rollers. Eugene didn’t look at himself as a high roller. He was a good poker player, which he couldn’t say about the high rollers in Vegas. They weren’t really going there to win. He was. He hated to lose, even though he was playing against a house that fixed the games. The rules in Vegas were designed to produce profits for the casinos and tax revenue for the State of Nevada. He ran a fair game whenever he held his back room games down at the club. It was difficult to play in Vegas with a guy up in the camera booth looking at your hand, talking into a two-way radio. He may have been all wrong about it, but that’s the way he felt about it.

He told the driver to head for his home instead of the police station. “Fuck that asshole,” he said out loud. Eugene fingered the barrel of the Walther nine millie, thinking that he would like to use it on Earl Wilkinson if Wilkinson gave him any trouble about Eddie. Wilkinson would have his nose into the Salminio business. He already was asking questions about why Eddie was there and Eugene could tell that Wilkinson was going to try to probe deeper. Eugene thought about calling the mayor, but he knew that she would not interfere in the chief’s investigation. That would be risky for her. That would arouse some suspicion about her relationship with Eddie or Salminio. He didn’t need that complication popping up. He hoped that she kept her mouth; otherwise, she might have to take a trip. A private plane crash could be arranged. Eugene’s brain was moving into overdrive at this point. He thought he might be getting ahead of himself.

“What was that, Mr. Salminio?” the driver asked politely.

“Nothing, Arthur,” he replied. “I was just making a social commentary.” Eugene was polite, however, and dialed the police station, leaving a message for the chief that he would be in the station as planned because he wasn’t feeling up to it. He promised the dispatcher that he would call in the morning after a good night’s sleep. He punched in the number for his house, but got the answering machine. He thought that Rose must have gone into the shower or was out by the pool. A couple contractors were coming by to see what she wanted to do with the pool house. They were supposed to have plans already drawn up so that she could make a choice. That’s probably what was happening.

Arthur, continuing the drive west on Lake Road at the speed limit, which irritated the drivers of the cars and SUVs behind him, laughed at the “social commentary” remark his passenger made, even though he didn’t understand what the man in the back seat meant by the “social commentary” remark. He wasn’t paid to understand those kinds of things. The woman in the pink Mercedes Benz behind him was flashing her lights, urging him to go faster by gesturing to him. He took his koot off the accelerator pedal and slowed a little so that she came closer. He expected her to try to pass him, but she obeyed the double yellow line on the rad and stayed where she was, backing off a respectful distance. He accelerated a little to a few miles an hour over the speed limit. She would have an opportunity to pass him farther up the road. If she was nice to him between here and there, he thought he might not accelerate when she tried to pass.

Arthur checked the rear view mirror. His passenger had the sawed-off shotgun laying across his knees, but his eyes were closed and head was back. He appeared to be asleep, but Salminio wasn’t asleep, just resting and trying to relax after a long, deadly morning. Arthur could see that the safety on the shot gun was on, which made him a bit more comfortable driving. There was nothing quite like the sound of a sawed-off discharging in a closed car. He was grateful that Salminio knew how to handle one. The Walther, Arthur opined to himself, was a good choice, especially that model, which had some stopping power and was rapid-fire, Arthur felt safe with the weapons on board.

Of course, he had his own sidearm in the console between the seats. He had a Smith & Wesson vintage .44 Magnum, loaded with teflon-coated ammunition. He was prepared for what came his way. He was driving limousines in Chicago when a guy on the street asked him to roll down the window when Arthur had stopped at a red light. Usually, he went along with a windshield washing for a buck. He pulled a dollar out of the console and lowered the window and gave it to the guy.

“You got more’n’dat, dontcha?” asked the guy, who wore a navy pea coat and Chicago Bears knit cap pulled down over his ears.

Don’t know what you mean, brother,” Arthur answered.

The guy pulled out a snub-nosed .38 revolver and said, “Come on, you got more where that cam from, dude.”

Arthur reached into the console and pulled out the .44 Magnum and said, “This is all I got, man. You want I should make a deposit?”

The guy said he didn’t, to which Arthur replied, “Gimme your gun and all your money, man.” And he robbed the robber. He gave the passenger he was carrying his money back and apologized for the lack of hospitality of some Chicagoans. It was shortly after that encounter that Arthur decided to go back to Cleveland, where he grew up.

Arthur didn’t think anything like that would happen in these parts, but he was always prepared. When his passenger requested specific types of weaponry for the ride home, trouble was sure to be following them. But not in a pink Mercedes Benz. Arthur had scanned the line of traffic as he climbed a small hill and saw nothing suspicious, which is what he had expected.

Arthur asked Salminio where he wanted to go, since the police station was now not the destination of choice. Salminio gave him the address, telling Arthur it was just past the city’s carved welcoming sign.

Arthur found the place and turned the limo into the driveway of the Salminio house, and pulled around back as Salminio had instructed. Arthur noticed the demolished pool house, but decided not to say anything. Being silent was the safest alternative when he didn’t know the facts. He got out of the limo and opened the rear door for Salminio. Salminio handed him a hundred dollar bill. “Her you go,” said Salminio. He put the Walther in his jacket pocket. “I’m leaving the sawed-off, taking the Walther. Tell them to bill me for the gun. Probably 600 bucks. Make sure they don’t stiff me on it, Arthur.”

“Thank you for your generosity, but we are not permitted to accept tips, Mr. Salminio,” Arthur said, offering the bill back to Salminio. He’d take the tip after Salminio offered it again. It was expected at the agency.

“Fuck that. It’s yours. I’m not telling anybody,” Eugene said, annoyed by the driver’s honesty. “Just take it and get back on the road,” Eugene told him. Arthur thanked him, got in the limo, and backed out. Eugene saw some movement out of the corner of his eye to the left. He wheeled left, but didn’t see anything. He took out the Walther, feeling a little more comfortable, but knowing that if someone wanted to blow his brains out from a quarter mile away, that could be done. In fact, the trigger could have been pulled and Eugene would not know it. Paranoia, he thought.

He continued to look toward his neighbor’s house. His neighbor, a TV news anchor on a local station, who told Eugene to his face every chance he had that he was going to take Eugene and his empire down, had planted a wooded buffer zone between the houses for privacy. Eugene thought it was done solely to aggravate him, to block his view to the west of the lake. He filed a lawsuit against the TV talking head, claiming that the talking head wasn’t allowed to put up trees and bushes on his own property, but Eugene’s lawyer lost the case for him.

Eugene couldn’t see anything. It was just his imagination playing tricks on him or some birds or something.

Salminio turned on his heel and keyed the door near the garage. He went through the laundry room and into the family room. He called out, but Rose wasn’t answering. He walked to the staircase and called out for her. There was no response. He was annoyed that she had not called him to let him know she was going out somewhere. He had told her time and time again that he needed to know where she was going, if she was going out. He wanted to know how long she would be gone and who she was going to be with. Those were simple instructions, he thought, that any moron could follow. Apparently, she couldn’t follow his instructions. Then it crossed his mind that she might be taking a nap; after all, a lot had happened today. Eddie had been killed. The police were snooping around. There was more than a little stress being dealt out to them that could have caused her fatigue. He figured he better check the bedroom.

He trudged up the steps. There was a day when he had been able to take steps like this two at a time, but those days were long gone. His knees still hurt from the acrobatics he performed at the scene of the accident in which Rose was involved with that sick-o Little Jimmy Sheridan. He allowed himself to laugh at the misfortune of others, in this case, Little Jimmy Sheridan, who died at the hands of an amazing flying bulldog. He thought that if he wrote a book and put that story in the book, nobody would believe it could be true. That’s how life was, stranger than fiction. Always.

He needed a pain pill for his knees. He was headed in the right direction, since he forgot the pill bottle on the dresser because the Chief of Police had stopped by in the morning to snoop around. Earl Wilkinson was a devious son-of-a-bitch, who would lie, cheat, and steal to get what he wanted. In this case, Salminio thought that Wilkinson was after him, wanted to pin something on him, wanted to see him behind bars. That would not happen in Eugene’s lifetime, which was a prophetic thought.

He opened the double doors to the master bedroom. Rose wasn’t sleeping on the bed. He called her name. She wasn’t in the room. He wondered where she went. Ginny wasn’t around the house, either. Eugene thought out loud, “Probably went shopping or something.” He spied the pill bottle and stepped over to the night stand. He opened the bottle and shook out two of the small yellow pills and popped them into his mouth. He swallowed them dry, shaking his head with the bitter taste.

He whirled around. He heard something, a little creaking. He walked out of the bedroom and looked down over the living room and saw nothing unusual. He walked on the bridge over the living room and peered into the office he had in the house. The light on the phone was blinking, telling him he had at least one message on that line. It was a private line, not a business line, to that phone, his personal private line, the number of which only a few people had. One of them was dead. Other than the silent, blinking light on the telephone, he saw nothing unusual. He was spooked by Eddie’s death. It had to be that. He was seeing things and hearing things.

He went down the staircase, stumbling at the bottom, but maintaining his balance. He thought that the pills might be taking effect. Then again, they might not be because his knees were still complaining loudly.

Somebody was in the attached garage. He heard them in there. Knocked over the fucking garbage can. He would be ready. He wished he had taken the shotgun, too. He clicked the safety off and chambered a round of ammo, ready and willing at that point to send whoever was out there to his maker.

Going Nowhere Fast with Burt & Sylvia

Burt was happy to see Sylvia. She cradled a rather large Toys-R-Us bag in front of her, checking in front of her every few steps to make sure that she wasn’t going to trip on any of the uneven stepping stones Burt had put in several years earlier. He hauled the stones from a quarry in Sandusky that was still producing stones after over 150 years. He snuck in one night and loaded up a friend’s pick-up and had himself a new walkway at no cost. Burt thought that he should help Sylvia and carry the package, but he was hoping that she would fall. Maybe she’d hit her head. Maybe she’d … he put those thoughts out of his mind.

Hr felt himself slipping away. There was no other way he could explain it to anyone. Sylvia was smiling at him, and he figured that if she didn’t watch where she was going that she would take a fall. “Look’s like we have visitors,” she said quietly.

Burt looked to where she was pointing her nose. The deer were back, this time with a big buck. And they were again munching on the bushes he had planted. He smiled at Sylvia, but only because she was expecting him to smile about the cute, little deer being in their yard. That’s what she always called them – cute little deer. If she had ever been close to them, she would know that they weren’t as little as she thought and they weren’t cute, either. They were smelly, foul creatures that passed on diseases and destroyed property. The bleeding heart liberals in the legislature had restricted hunting seasons and now the deer population was pestilence on mankind. The Department of Wildlife people wanted to open up the season on deer to thin the population but some jackass lawyers had filed lawsuits fighting that. Burt thought that some of the lawyers should be killed along with the deer.

Burt was slipping, losing grip with reality, a lot faster than he realized. Sylvia smiled back at him, then stumbled a little, but didn’t fall. She had a new wood-burning set for Burt she bought at Toys-R-Us. She thought he would be happy. The deer leaped off and scampered into the wooded area behind their house. Sylvia lost sight of them as they blended into the background of the woods.

She said to Burt, who was opening the door. “Look what I got for you. A present.” Sylvia said to Burt, walking up the two steps into the house.

Burt followed. He pulled the door shut behind him and took the bag from Sylvia. He knew that he should thank her, so he did. He was surprised by his own voice. It sounded somewhat disconnected from him – that was the only way he could describe it to anyone. He heard his voice, but didn’t realize that he said the words.

He opened the bag and recognized a wood-burning set. He remembered the smell, the smell of burning flesh. That wasn’t the wood-burning set. That was the phosphorus and the jellied gasoline that burned flesh beyond recognition so that when he tried to carry them, their flesh just slid off. And the smell, he fought the smell, so he wouldn’t have to go back. “Sylvia, I need help,” he said, haltingly. He was losing it and afraid of what he might do. She was the only one around and she would know what to do. She always did.

“Come here, honey,” she said, opening her arms to him. She embraced him, arms around his back, her head under his chin. She stroked his back with her hands. “Just hold on, Burt. It’ll pass. It’ll pass,” she said softly, tears in her eyes.

Burt wrapped his arms around her and felt his chin resting on the top of her head. He breathed in deeply and could smell the shampoo she had used. It was better than the burned flesh smell, which was a good sign. He felt that he was returning to normality. He was excited, all of a sudden, about the present she brought home.

“Sylvia, you didn’t have to get me the wood-burning set,” he said.

Sylvia smiled. He was back. Her Burt had returned quicker than he had ever done before. She could relax a little. She could turn her back and not have to worry about him jumping on her and trying to kill her, as he had done several times over the years. But he had saved her life in the Rocky Horror All-Night Laundromat on that first night that they met and she felt that she had to stick with him through thick and thin, that is, through the times he smacked her around and treated her like she was a prisoner of war. Burt, she knew, had done many wonderful things for her and for others. He had returned their daughter to her and had done the same for many others. It would have been easy to leave him, but life was not supposed to be easy.

“Let’s check out the wood-burning set,” said Burt, excitement returning to his voice. He felt better, not feeling disconnected from his body. He opened the box and found the wood-burning tool and all the different tips arrayed neatly in the box, all with their little conforming-shaped indentations.

“What did the police say?” Sylvia asked.

“They don’t have any answers. Wilkinson likes to pretend that he knows what he’s doing, that he’s got his finger on the pulse of modern crime-fighting. I think they were sent by that clown in Utah who thinks he’s the second coming. You don’t use an elephant gun to try to kill someone. The guy just wants me to know that I shouldn’t go back and cause him trouble. I’d say he’s got trouble coming his way, what with killing a couple cops. That whole group is going down when someone locates them. You think Waco was a conflagration. Half of Utah will be up in smoke when they find this guy and his people.”

“So, you think we’re okay, then. There won’t be any more shooting?” Sylvia asked.

“We’ll be okay. I’m through with Jacob Smith. I got my clock cleaned. Got two good people killed. Thank God that Carla was there; otherwise, I wouldn’t have come back alive,” he told Sylvia, which was more than Sylvia had heard about Burt’s business the whole time they were married. She didn’t ask. He didn’t tell. She figured that he would talk about it if he wanted to or needed to. Maybe, he needed to.

“I wonder if they went after her, Burt?” she asked, trying to help him work through the problem.

“Good question, Syl. I’m going to give her a call. I doubt that they did. I met Smith. He would be able to find out who I was, identify pictures. They didn’t know Carla. She was in the vehicle, bailed out, killed quite a few of them. Laid down cover for me. Couldn’t help those two cops. It was tough. I fucked up on the plan, underestimated the enemy.”

“You did your best with what you had, Burt. You can’t beat yourself up like this,” Sylvia pointed out to Burt. She didn’t really know what had happened. People were killed. She was lucky that Burt made it out alive. Now, she was lucky that Burt was watching out for their safety.

“Thanks, Syl,” he said, twirling the wood burning tool between his thumb and forefinger. He took one of the tips, a cylindrical one with a pointy tip on the end and slipped it into the tool. He stuck the plug into the electrical outlet in the side of the kitchen island.

Sylvia watched, then asked, “You want me to get something you can burn something into?”

“Yeah. How about the tools for the grill outside? I’ll put our name on the handles of the new spatula and the other stuff. That would be pretty cool, don’t you think?” Burt asked. When he had the wood-burning set before, he would never ask. Sylvia considered it a good sign. She figured the animals were safe from possible branding, which is why she got rid of his wood-burning kit before – the cat didn’t enjoy the experience at all.

“That’s a great idea, Burt,” replied Sylvia, feeling encouraged by Burt’s demeanor. This was a small thing, but she was hopeful that it foreshadowed good things to come. Burt had started to sleep better. He hadn’t slept through an entire night since she had come to know him. When she met him, he told her, “I haven’t slept since Nam.” She thought, for the first two years that she was married to him, that this was literally true. Anytime that she was awake during the night, Burt was awake, usually pacing. He told her that he did sleep, but for only a few minutes at a time, sometimes as he paced back and forth at the foot of the bed. He had gotten better over the years. She caught him sleeping now. When she woke up now, he was usually sleeping next to her with a peaceful look on his face. She hoped that he had found some peace in his dreams, which were horrible affairs until relatively recently.

Burt returned from outside with the three-piece wooden-handled grill set. A smile creased his face, which created the dimples in his cheeks. Sylvia liked what she saw as he walked into the kitchen. He held up the tools.

“Thanks for getting me the wood-burning set. I think what I’ll do is get some nice wood blocks and whittle some things, then use the wood-burner to enhance the sculptures. Maybe I can sell them at the craft fair at the high school or something,” he said to her.

“Hey, Burt, I’m a little tired. Mind if I take a nap?” she asked.

“No, go ahead. I’ll just work on these handles. I should probably run up to the store and get some half and half. I used the last of it while the cops were here,” Burt pointed out.

Sylvia smiled, “Okay, honey. Get me up in a couple hours if I’m still sleeping, okay?”

“Sure, dear,” he said and he leaned over and kissed her, lingering a little longer than Sylvia expected.

He's Dead, Gene

“It’s for you,” P.J. said, handing Eugene Salminio the cordless phone.

“Who is it?” he asked her, as if she were his office receptionist.

“I don’t know, Mr. Salminio. He asked for you.” She didn’t like Geno Salminio. He was a good customer and tipped well, but not well enough because he took advantage of the relationship they had. He would conduct his “business” right there in her barber shop without regard to the risk to which she was exposed. She knew that there were times that millions of dollars had exchanged hands right there on the tapestry sofa and chairs around the coffee table in the upscale barber shop. She wondered what would happen to her if the police had come in during one of these “business” meetings.

Earl Wilkinson, in a perverse way, thought he might enjoy this telephone call. There was no one else to call. Eddie didn’t have a wife, children, or any other family. He had Eugene Salminio and the corporate and criminal enterprises in which he was involved. “Geno,” said Wilkinson. “This is Chief Wilkinson. I got some bad news about your friend, Eddie.”

“What did he do?” demanded Salminio, always thinking the worst. It never crossed his mind that Eddie would have done something noble and laudatory. No chance. Geno knew his compadre, Eddie, too well.\

“He didn’t do anything, Mr. Salminio,” Earl replied, placing great emphasis on the first syllable of Mis-ter. “I’m sorry, but he’s dead.”

“What!” shouted Salminio into the phone. “Is this some kind of joke? Oh, no. What happened?” he asked, gaining some measure of composure.

“We don’t rightly know who did it. He was out at the Hide Aweigh property, looking for the old man,” Earl started, calling Jimmy Bangalore “old man” because he knew that Eugene Salminio had no idea what Jimmy’s name really was nor did he care. “Old man,” Earl figured, Salminio knew.

“Yeah. I sent him out there to buy the place. What, did that stubborn-fucking old man kill Eddie? Is that what happened? Fucker,” Salminio interrupted.

“No, he didn’t kill Eddie. I was hoping that you had some idea. Maybe you want to help this old man do his job. Someone busted up your pool house. Now Eddie gets whacked, rather brutally, I might add. Looks like someone bashed his head and face in with a crowbar a few times, scattering blood, bone, and brains all over the landscape. It’ll definitely be a closed-coffin ceremony, if you know what I mean.” Earl listened to Salminio’s breathing. Salminio needed to get in shape or see a doctor because his breath out was rattling a little, maybe the start of pneumonia, Earl feared.

“I’ll call a cab and be out there soon, Chief. Give me an hour. I’ll come to the station to sit down with you.” Eugene was a bit flustered, puzzled by the events of the day. He wasn’t afraid just yet. That would come later, although he didn’t know it. But he wondered if this was payback for throwing D’Angelo out the window 600 feet or so down to the pavement. Someone would know that he had been there. That someone probably would have no idea about the money, but he would have an idea about the mess on Public Square.

”Thanks, Geno,” replied Earl in earnest. “I could use the help.” Earl was being honest. This was the same M.O. as the Sheridan murder, Big Jim Sheridan’s murder. So, Earl thought, it could be murder for hire. Same guy in both cases did it. That perked him up a little. At least, he figured it wasn’t random. He might be able to solve both of them. That would leave unsolved only that girl who disappeared after being seen at Max & Erma’s just over a year previously. She was dumped off on Lake Road by the park, bound and gagged, raped, sodomized by some kind of pole, all beat to Hell. There were similar circumstances in a few nearby communities, and the cops had banded together to form a task force to try to find the serial rapist/killer. Earl didn’t have a good feeling about that case. He thought that the killer had moved on to another territory, since nothing had happened in some time. He felt good about the fact that perhaps the danger had passed, but one could never be sure. Ted Bundy had roamed the country killing young women for years. Earl prayed to whatever God there was that the terror was over. He’d take an unsolved murder in exchange for no more deaths like that girl and the others suffered at the hands of a sick maniac.

Eugene Salminio’s day was getting worse by the hour. He had been confronted by the old chief of the town’s police force about someone unknown who had taken a wrecking ball to the pool house, which would end up costing him an arm and a leg. Little did Eugene know, but his problems grew exponentially when he left the house for his hair appointment because his wife decided, after talking to the chief alone, which is exactly what Eugene did not want to happen, but was powerless to prevent, to turn state’s evidence and testify as to the killings, including the bodies in his own backyard on the edge of the cliff overlooking Lake Erie, and the bribery and extortion that were part of her every day life with Eugene Salminio.

If Eugene became aware of his wife’s cooperation with the feds, he would have to kill her, which would arouse suspicion in the law enforcement community. More trouble for the big man at that point would be in the offing. But Eugene Salminio would not make it to that point. Events were conspiring against him.

The only good part of his day was the massage he got at P.J.’s Executive Barber Shop, except that he wished that P.J. would have gone a little farther down than the shoulder blades. She used a vibrating machine that took away the stress of the morning encounter with the inimitable Earl Wilkinson. P.J. nicked him shaving and nearly started crying. Eugene wondered what kind of baggage that P.J. was carrying on that delicate frame to cause her near collapse with a slight mistake that drew a little blood and didn’t hurt a bit.

He went to his meeting with D’Angelo in the Terminal Tower. Salminio hadn’t planned for D’Angelo’s trip to street level that morning, but he made a split-second management decision that harkened back to the old days of the business. It was probably not a good decision, but it was a lucrative decision and one that would not weigh on his mind for much longer. He would be free of the worry and second-guessing.

And as he waited for the limo he had ordered to pick him up, he contemplated life without Eddie. It was his hope that Eugene Jr. would return and take over management of the legitimate side of the business. He could still pull strings from behind the scenes and work his political magic without his son being tainted. Eddie was one of the last of a dying breed, witness his demise, who could be trusted to handle the legitimate aspects of the organized crime business and take the plunge over the edge to the dark side, but still keep them separate and apart. Geno didn’t want his son out there shaking anyone down or making the threats that Eddie made and then carrying them out when necessary to maintain order and to teach others a lesson. It was a new world and a different time.

Eddie was dead. It did not seem at all possible. He was a well-trained assassin, having learned from the best in Europe at the tender age of 17 and having learned much more in the field in actual hit situations. Eddie did work for several governments early in his career, which allowed him to take the job as Eugene’s body guard, then his second in command. That someone could get the drop on Eddie without Eddie taking one or two or all of them with him was well beyond Geno’s ability to comprehend. Eddie was very good at what he did.

Geno fought the rising feeling in his belly that he identified as fear, something he rarely felt. He needed to be careful; hence, he had called his friend, Anthony Palermo, at Limo Livery over on Murray Hill, the old neighborhood, who Eugene could trust. Eugene Salminio trusted Anthony to stock the limo for the ride back home with a sawed-off shotgun and a Walther P990 Double Action 9mm with several magazines.

Eugene never knew Eddie to fail to follow instructions. It turned out that Eddie did circumvent some of Eugene’s instructions, but those deviations were overlooked in the bigger scheme of things because of the benefits that were accorded the Salminio empire. The elder Salminio knew that Eugene Jr. would not be able to step in and that he himself did not know enough about the day-to-day operation of all of the legitimate businesses to step into Eddie’s shoes. He’d have to figure out who in these companies he could trust and who he couldn’t trust, then rely on those he could trust to learn the operations.

It was too much to worry about at this point. Maybe these were all signs to just walk away and chuck the whole thing. He had enough money to cover any conceivable need he and his family might ever have.

P.J. interrupted Salminio’s train of thought and told him that the limo had pulled into the garage. Salminio asked P.J. to walk to the garage with him. He whispered that he had a bonus for her.

“You already gave me this,” she showed him the bracelet on her wrist, sparkling even in the fluorescent-lighted underground hallway that lead to the parking garage in the Landmark Office Building.

He grabbed her arm, impatience showing. He was hurting her, but he didn’t care. She would run interference for him to the limousine. Until he saw the driver and knew who he was, Salminio felt that he was in danger in the garage. He held P.J. close, thinking that nobody would gun down or blow up an innocent woman just to kill him. Something like that hadn’t stopped him in the past, but he set that thought aside. He hadn’t been playing by the rules back then.

He slipped her ten 100 dollar bills and held her close to his right side, holding his leather bag full of money in his left hand, as he approached the limo. The driver got out of the long gray Caddy with a white vinyl top and greeted Salminio. Eugene recognized the driver and said hello and dove into the safety of the limo’s interior. On the floor was a light blue nylon bag. He put the leather bag on the seat next to him as he faced front. There was an empty seat facing him. He reached down and unzipped the blue bag and found the shotgun and Walther pistol with a box of shotgun shells and several loaded magazines for the Walther.

The driver pulled out of the parking garage, took a left, driving past the huge red guitar advertising the Hard Rock Café, and headed to the freeway going west out of the city. Salminio felt somewhat safe.