Probably another gook. Vino had seen the news enough to know they made those Vietnamese small. The better to strap dynamite to them and sneak them into U.S. Army camps.
Vino kept a watchful eye for dynamite as he cleaned.
The torsos went in bags all on their own. Vino was surprised there were only two. It seemed that there was too much of a mess in the warehouse for only two corpses.
Vino noticed something else odd as he was working. It was the way the body parts had been severed. Despite the large amount of blood and the random scattering of limbs, on closer inspection he found that every single appendage looked to have been cleanly amputated.
Something here wasn't right. A hacksaw would have chipped bone and made jagged tears in flesh. This was more like a smooth-edged blade had been used. A butcher knife or surgeon's scalpel. Yet there was no evidence of tools anywhere around. And even if there were, this Mr. Winch of the Vietcong didn't look strong enough to force a smooth blade through solid bone.
"I got a bad feeling here," Vino whispered to his brother as they dropped a pair of bags on their tarp. He snapped to attention when it was Mr. Winch who responded.
"Feelings for a killer are dangerous things," came the thin, cold voice.
Vino's head shot up.
Winch was back. No longer in the shadows, the Oriental now stood at the fender of the Thunderbird. There was no sign of the other mystery person he'd been talking to.
Mr. Winch smiled. It was merely a function of the facial muscles. There was no emotion behind the expression.
"You are a killer of some sort, correct?"
Some of his Mob associates considered him slow, but Vino Vercotti was sharp enough not to admit anything. Whether or not this guy had an in with Mr. Viaselli, there was no way he was going to confess outright to ever having killed.
"I get around," he grunted.
"You don't have to say it. You reek of it. Of death."
Vino and Dino didn't admit anything. They loaded the penultimate bag of mangled body parts into the car trunk.
"Everything reeks of it here," Vino said, disgusted.
"Not everything," Winch said. "Not yet anyway." His last words were spoken so softly they were swallowed up in the sounds of cursing and crinkling plastic. The two Vercotti brothers stooped for the last bundle.
"It is an interesting thing about killers," Winch mused as they hauled the sack to the car. "Some-a very few, granted-but some are truly born to kill. They may never know it, may walk through their daily lives oblivious to the darkness lurking below the surface, but sometimes a moment comes. A split second that puts them to the test. These moments are rarer than born killers themselves, but when they come-" this time Winch's smile was sincere "-the men who do not think themselves killers are shocked at the ease with which they kill. The calm with which they obliterate a life. They are shocked by the very lack of shock they feel."
Now Winch was just babbling nonsense. The more he talked, the better Vino felt. The seed of fear that had been germinating in the pit of Vercotti's stomach was slowly dying with each word. By now he wasn't even listening.
"That's just great," Vino muttered as he dumped the last bag of body parts into the trunk of the big car.
"But because they are so hard to find, true born killers hardly ever fulfill their destinies," Winch lamented. "Fortunately, there is an alternative. It requires taking someone who is not naturally suited for dealing death and, by stages, bleeding the humanity from him."
"Sounds about right," Vino agreed, disinterested. He hadn't even heard most of what Winch said. "This blood's pretty soaked in," he said, nodding to the floor. "We should be able to burn it off okay. Soak it in gas and light it up. The building should be fine. Ceilings are high enough and the posts are far enough so it won't catch. You know where there's a fire extinguisher around here, just in case?"
When he turned, Vino was surprised to find that he'd missed something in the cleanup. On the floor near the bumper of the car was a severed arm.
That shouldn't be. Vino had personally collected three arms. And he'd seen Dino grab up another. There were only two guys dead in the place. So where could this fifth arm have come from?
In the instant before words came, in that slivered moment when he was pondering the fifth arm that was lying on the floor where it had not been a second before, Luigi "Vino" Vercotti became aware of a lightness in his shoulder.
When he glanced over, he found that his sleeve now ended just beyond the end of his turned chin. Horror set in. Vino's eyes flew to the floor where his severed right arm twitched, fingers curling reflexively.
Only then did the pain come.
He saw his horrified brother stumbling back. Reaching under his jacket for the gun beneath his armpit.
Vino's mind reeled. He saw Winch. Standing placidly near the car. Too far away to be the cause.
A flash of movement. Close up.
Then he remembered. There was someone else here. The person Winch had been talking to in shadow.
As Vino grabbed for the spot where blood pumped from his naked shoulder socket, feeling bone beneath his shaking palm, he saw someone dart up before him.
He caught a glimpse of soft yellow hair. Barely registered a pair of electric-blue eyes.
A too pale hand shot out, fingers drawn tight.
The pain came like an exploding star. Vino's left arm joined the other on the floor. He screamed.
By now Dino had managed to draw his gun. Hand shaking, he sent a single fat slug at the little dervish that had appeared like a vengeful demon near his howling brother.
He was too close to miss. Yet somehow he did. Worse, the bullet that should have hit the small apparition thudded hard into Vino Vercotti's chest.
Vino went down. His knees hit concrete. The instant they did, a bare foot lashed out.
With a sound reminiscent of a popping champagne cork, Vino's head tumbled off his neck. The decapitated body fell, blood pumping a red river from its severed neck.
Wheeling from the dead man, the small killer turned full attention on Dino Vercotti. In a panic now, Dino unloaded his magazine at the person who had killed his brother.
Somehow the killer managed to dodge and weave around most of the bullets. When one of them finally hit his target, Dino nearly jumped for joy.
The bullet struck the killer in the upper arm. The instant the screaming lead kissed flesh, the murderer of Vino Vercotti stopped dead. A look of fearful incomprehension blossomed full on the very pale face.
He was open now. Vulnerable. This time, Dino wouldn't miss. He aimed at the small chest.
"This is for Vino, you little prick," Dino growled. Before his hairy finger could caress the trigger, he heard an angry exhalation from the other side of the car.
Winch. Dino would take him out next. Right after he'd dealt with his brother's killer.
But in the instant he was pulling the trigger, he felt a presence nearby. A gentle displacement of air.
His flickering eyes briefly caught a glimpse of Winch.
Impossible. Winch was on the other side of the car. People didn't move that fast. Dino's brain was still insisting this was so even as the hand of the man that could not be there was ending the Mafia man's life.
Winch struck Dino Vercotti in the forehead with an open palm. Skull fragments launched back into Dino's brain. As a look of dull shock spread across his five-o'clock shadow, the hoodlum toppled back on the cold concrete floor.
Winch turned away from the body. Disgust filled his flat Oriental face.
"Miserable," he proclaimed.
The killer of Vino Vercotti was recovering from his shock. A pale hand clutched his arm where the bullet had grazed his left bicep. The fear that had flooded his blue eyes after being shot was now directed at Winch.
"I'm sorry," the killer said.