Mandrill Park

Mandrill Park, Part 1

THEN...

The rain fell cold onto his feverish face and against his eyes as he looked up into the sky. The intermittent breeze rushing across his body made the evening feel cooler than it should, yet a sickening heat suffused his body. He was hurt. Bad. He was lying on the wet ground and he felt hard grit and stones under his back. The night sky was blurry, swimming with dark spots and flashes of white and red and he knew that the onset of awful pain was only a heartbeat away.

He wondered how many times he had been shot.

A pair of faces came into view from his dwindling peripheral vision. Male faces, possessing very similar features. Hardened faces reflecting the animal natures of the men standing over him.

His killers.

Damn. He wasn't going to make it this time. His luck had run out.

Hazards of the trade...

"You can take this as personally as you'd like," one of the men said harshly. "You were an arrogant, disrespectful, elitist shit and how the Mustached Petes ever put up with your crap for as long as they did amazes me. You're talented, but not that talented. Personally, I think this was long overdue. You had it coming..."

Marcus, he thought dizzily, that was Marcus. The control freak, the ambitious one, the brains.

"Well, I'm not one to speak ill of the dead," the other man said. The speaker was Marcus's brother. It was getting harder and harder to concentrate ... his focus kept drifting to other days, other times. What was the man's name again? Oh yes, it was Carmine. A classic crime boss name. A cliche. Carmine was the aggressive one, all anger, street hunger, and pride. Macho asshole. Born to be a triggerman. Carmine's oily baritone broke into his jumbled reverie. "Times are changing and the old order is no more. There's a new kingdom being built now, our kingdom, and you should have shown more loyalty, should never have gone behind our backs. You thought you were untouchable. You know better now, don't you, bitch? Frankly, watching you bleed is the most fun I've had all week."

Their voices began to fade. Time felt like it was slowing to a crawl.

A shock ran through his mind as he realized he couldn't feel his body any more.

"We'll leave you to your dying now," Marcus sneered. "And after that, we'll have some of the boys clean up your mess. No more police, no more district attorney, no more of this turning state's evidence bullshit. We'll get back to business without any more interference from you."

Carmine leaned in closer and his face loomed as large as a mountain, yet the man's features were gray and indistinct. Damn, it wouldn't be long now....

"When you wake up in hell, tell Lucifer he's behind on his payments and the Rodriggo brothers want him pay up. Hell ain't his anymore. It's ours, it's all our territory. Tell him to drop off what he owes here, in Mandrill Park, the last place you drew a living breath. You think you can do that, you disloyal jackoff?"

Marcus snickered and said, "Let's go. He's almost gone. Hey, asshole, have a nice death."

And so, without another word, they left him there to die, in the mud and the litter and the rain in Mandrill Park, on the edges of Ninjatown.

Punk assholes. They got lucky with the ambush. Neither of them had the talent or the stones to face him one-on-one. They'd never have taken him if they hadn't been such sneaky, lying pukes. Lousy pack animals. Needed a small army to bring him down. Cowards.

When his heart thundered its last sluggish beat, he thought: "No way I let them get away with this. No way."

And then there was an eternity of cold pain that stretched into a silence filled with lightning.