Morally Ambiguous (Lo longer being updated)

Chapter 8

I think he started regain consciousness as I dragged him through his own posse’s blood, soaking into his pinstripe trousers. His eyes opened up a little, then as soon as he took in the gory, burnt and bloodied scene, his brain wanted to shut itself back off immediately. It was a mess; I’d caused an amount of carnage I’d never seen before in my life. Corpses littered the ground, fallen cross beams from the rafters sectioned of areas of the garage in a raging inferno, plus my car bonnet peeking out from under the sheet metal shutters, bent and crimped like screwed up paper. All in a day’s work, I smirked to myself, strolling out from the remains of a door, dragging the mob boss by the scruff of his neck.

Next time he regained consciousness was when we found our transport. My car was written off obviously, and I sure as hell wasn’t walking back with a busted leg, dragging a fat lump behind me. Once out on the main roads, I searched for a ride, and found one pretty fast. In a culture like America’s, where owning a car is both a rite of passage into manhood and as common as owning a TV, it’s surprisingly no hard to find a car. Problem is usually just finding the keys, but I had other options. He dropped unconscious again as I used his shining, bare head to pummel the tempered glass of the window.

It was an uneventful drive back, except for the horrendous noise and the flashing orange warning lights on the car. Luckily, it was too late for any of the cops back at the precinct to be bothered helping out some poor guy who had his only vehicle stolen. I knew those guys, and I knew how many of them were just dicks with badges, hopped up on the idea of having power over everyone else. For every decent man, there were three pricks in my experience of the police force, but, for the first time ever, they’re laziness was my ally.

I ditched the car about half a mile from my apartment, making sure they couldn’t track me back. Looking back, the blood trail dripping from my mafia friend was probably a giveaway, but at the time I hadn’t even noticed. I was a little busy hefting him onto my shoulders a giving him a fireman’s lift all the way back to my own little secret, an apartment hidden away from prying eyes and naggin wives.

It was a little present my father gave me, not long before he passed away, and before I’d even met my wife. My first place to live, a present for getting into the police force, on the sixth floor of an apartment block. Not a bad place by any means, but definitely not some fancy bachelor pad. Bought too, not rented, so I never had to pay for it for the rest of my life. That’s where I’d been living up until I met Sarah, but I never told her about it. I moved in with her so she didn’t need to. I was renting it out but it was currently vacant while I searched for some good tenants. That night however, it’s tenants would be far from good.

The six flights of stairs were a killer, but after a great deal of heaving and a surprising burst of strength from nowhere, I managed to haul him up and through the front door of the apartment, using the spare key I kept under the plant pot on the ground floor. He took a few hits on the way; it’s not easy dragging a twenty stone man up a concrete staircase without knocking into the handrail a few times. I sprawled him out on the floor, drifting in and out of reality, while I found him somewhere a little less comfortable.

A window ledge and a radiator did the trick. As he spat blood onto the ochre rug, soaking into the fibres and staining it with a thick dark smudge, I pulled a leather belt, some plasticuffs and an iron from the kitchen. Metal impacted on metal as I pulled the leather tight through the brass buckle, fastening it onto the scolding hot radiator. I lifted the fat man up and pushed him up onto the windowsill, pushing open the window and leaning his head out. A plasticuff through a hole in the belt fastened his hands together and onto the radiator, before wrapping the wire of the kettle around his thick neck, making sure the plug hit his head on the way round, bringing him back into the real world.

After a quick trip back to the kitchen to find another heavy appliance for my little interrogation, I tied a microwave onto the iron, resting it on the edge of the window, fatty groaning the whole way through. I walked behind him and pulled his head up, making sure he looked right into my eyes as I asked him, face emotionless, “ Where the fuck is my wife?”

He looked up and blurted through a fountain of red “The fuck you talking about?”

“Wrong answer.”

With the palm of my hand, I pushed the balancing iron and microwave contraption off its already precarious perch, swinging like a pendulum down and smashing into the wall. The momentum  pulled the fat man’s head down, yanking him from his place and smashing his face into the wall below. After pulling him back up, and the cord too, I turned back to his destroyed features.

“Lets try something easier for you to get through your thick skull. Who are you, what do you do and what do you know about Sarah Burrows? I’d really consider answering properly this time.”

For added effect, I grabbed a lamp from the nearby coffee table and smashed it clean through the glass window, catching the little pieces as they dropped to the cold stone floor. I lifted him up and scattered the twinkling shards under his body, slowly laying him back down onto the sharp pieces.

“I’m John Coulter, and I’m a head figure in a less than legal group. And I have no idea who the fuck Sarah Burrows is.”

His face came back even more broken and bruised after lifting him up from the ledge again. I unfastened the cable tie that was keeping him from falling out of the window.

“Ok, last chance. Tell me where my wife is. And whatever happened to those proper Mafia names? John Coulter’s a little boring isn’t it? Bland and dull, a little like the concrete out there.”

I pushed the microwave once again, watching as he slowly slid over the edge, wailing and flailing his arms wildly. At the last moment, I grabbed onto the end of his suit jacket, pulling him back into the room.

“Fuck man, I’ll tell you anything. I know who your wife is, and where. Just don’t fucking kill me man. You want money? Power? I don’t give a shit, anything, just don’t fucking kill me.”

“I don’t want your bribes you snivelling fuck,” I retorted “just tell me where Sarah is and how to get to her.”

He stumbled to his feet, swaying from left to right, before bracing himself up against the wall. A bruise was swelling up under his right eye and stupid amount of blood was pouring from his face as he wiped it with the cuffs of his jacket, blinking repeatedly to clear his eyes of the liquid red.

“Ok, man, ok, I’ll tell you everything. Just bear with me man, ok? I’m gonna start right at the beginning. You wife is in a lot of trouble, ok? But I swear on my Papa’s life, it wasn’t us.”

“Who in the fuck was it then?”

“Try going back to the precinct, buddy. The real bad guys were all sitting next you.”