"How you gonna get home, Frank?"
"I'll take a cab. Later."
Paul left. Frank chuckled with self-satisfaction. Let them film him all day. He wasn't officially working today, so he really wasn't doing anything wrong. As an added bonus, Frank had a good excuse for staying right there at Krunchy Kreme Do-Nuts. He could eat doughnuts and egg on the idiots from Channel 8.
When Frank Krauser finally headed home to his south-side town house, he strolled past the site where his crew had been yanking out sidewalks all day. A cement truck was parked there, its huge drum turning, keeping the concrete mixed inside. Must have a night shift coming to pour it overnight so the new concrete could set before the morning vandals came along with the bright idea to write their names in it.
A vehicle roared up the street and swerved, coming to a halt with a chirp of tires right in front of him. It was the Ford SUV from the doughnut shop.
"What the fuck?"
The doors opened, front and back, and the four men who emerged wore tight black outfits that covered them completely except for their hands and heads. Those were covered in white gloves and white ski masks.
"Who are you clowns?"
Then he noticed that the masked men were carrying small plastic devices, each with a pair of metal probes at the front. They also had machine guns dangling from shoulder straps.
"You ain't from Channel 8!" Frank exclaimed, protectively pulling his big sack of Krunchy Kremes to his chest.
The biggest of the gunmen approached Frank silently and swiftly, his eyes blazing behind his mask. Frank
turned to run and found that one of the black-and-white clowns was right behind him, holding one of the little plastic things at him. Sparks of blue electricity sizzled out from the twin metal studs.
"Hey, assho—"
Frank's flabby arms were locked behind him in a pair of arms that felt more like steel clamps. "Hey! Lemme go, you piece of shit!"
Frank leaned forward and swung his great girth from side to side, the dangling sack of doughnuts flying all over the place. Frank lifted his assailant right off the ground—but the lock on Frank's arms didn't weaken.
Another one of the black-and-whites came right up to Frank and stuck the zapper in his neck. Frank couldn't get his feet moving, and he felt a painful jolt that stiffened his wobbly limbs.
The next thing he knew, Frank Krauser was being carried. There were grunts and curses, and it seemed he was being hoisted high off the ground before being dumped on a cold metal platform. A loud rumble nearby came to a stop.
"He'll never fit!" somebody complained.
"We'll make him fit."
Frank was able to shift his head enough to see the back end of the cement mixer just a few feet away, and watched with growing horror as the black-and-white clowns attached a big screw clamp to the opening and cranked it, forcing it apart. The steel ripped. Soon the entrance into the cement mixer was widened enough for—
"No. No way," Frank croaked.
"Yes way," said the great big black-and-white. Behind the white mask the hulk was grinning.
"Why?"
"You are corrupt," said the unemotional voice of another man.
"I ain't!"
"These are a symbol of your corruption." The man lifted the bag of Krunchy Kremes that Frank still clenched in his frozen fist. Frank jerked the bag away.
"Guess you need another dose of cooperation," the smaller man said, and put the stun device to Frank's throat again. Frank jerked and went limp. Lightning flashes obscured his vision, but he felt himself being lifted again. It took all four of them to get him up, cursing and screaming.
Where were the cops? This was the city of Chicago. There were four million people. Hadn't anybody called the cops?
They had his upper body inside the drum when they paused to gather their strength. Frank could feel his legs dangling outside. His vision cleared enough for him to see, by the light of the street lamp, the mass of wet concrete that waited below to swallow him. He forced his body to work, to move. He pushed against the slimy insides of the drum and lost his grip on the doughnut sack, which slid down, down, down into the concrete, where it rested on the surface. Frank sobbed.
"Come on, let's finish this," said one of his assailants.
Frank felt their hands on his legs and he started kicking, feebly. They grabbed his ankles anyway and pushed all of him inside the mixer.
He whimpered and tried making his arms work, tried to get himself turned, and only managed to move sideways before he slid into the concrete. His head landed on the sack of doughnuts and forced them into the wet mess. Frank felt the cold mass embracing him and he tried to shout. The gritty, heavy stuff filled his mouth and covered his eyes.
With a last surge of adrenaline, Frank crawled upright and thrust his body out of the concrete. He opened his eyes and saw the light outside the mixer for a moment. He cried out and reached for the light, but then the junk blotted it out for the final time. He clawed for purchase, unable to see, unable to hear.
But he did feel the rumble of the engine. He felt his world begin to turn.
None of the media outlets really knew how to handle the event. Channel 8, the news station that had vilified Frank Krauser the previous year, wouldn't touch it. A few of the other stations tried to come up with a Frank-Krauser-as-victim angle but gave up. Most of the coverage was limited to anecdotal blurbs in the papers and a twenty-second brief on the morning news show. The police never could decide if Krauser was murdered or not, so they conveniently decided on "not" and forgot about him. In fact, before very long, almost everybody had forgotten about Frank Krauser.
He had simply not been a very important person. That morning, though, one man who read about Frank Krauser's death in the online newspapers had been searching for just this kind of thing. What he read made his lemony face pucker with concern.
2
His name was Remo and he would have made a lousy used-car salesman.
"You don't exactly have a face a man can trust," said the sailor with the shotgun.
"That's actually one of the nicer things anyone has said about my face," Remo replied. "You fire that gun and you'll put a big hole in your sails."
"The first big hole will be in you. You're the killer, aren't you, eh? You killed Rudy from the Queen Bee, didn't you?"
"I didn't kill Rudy, and I didn't kill the captain of the Turnbleu."
The man with the shotgun stood up straighter, his face narrowing. The frigid wind tossed his long, greasy brown hair, and the icy droplets of rain collected on his yellow rubber waders, forming rivulets that trickled all the way down his body to the deck. "The Turnbleu was Finster's boat. Finster's dead?"
"Yes." "They find the body?"
"No, just a lot of red stuff that used to be inside of it."
"Why you telling me this?" the sailor demanded. "You proud of killing innocent men?"
"I didn't kill those sailors, but whoever did is working his way down the winner's list, and you're next."
The narrow-faced man looked more stricken. "Finster was leading the pack after Rudy disappeared. If Finster died, then I'm in the lead."
"And in first place on some bad apple's to-do list," Remo added.
"Which is you," said the narrow-faced man, raising his gun.
Lee Clark dropped the shotgun and cursed his clumsiness, stooping to grab it back. He didn't see it on the deck. Come to think of it, he hadn't heard the clatter when it hit the deck. And how come it just left his hands like that?
"Here," Remo said. He was still standing in the same spot on the other side of the deck hatch but now, somehow, he was holding Clark's shotgun.
"How'd you do that?"
"Did you notice I am not murdering you at the moment, even though I have the gun?" Remo asked.