Killer by Dave Zeltserman Read Free Book Online Page B

them – my pop’s father also died young, as did all my pop’s uncles. I don’t think any of them made it into their fifties, but they all worked hard each day of their life as laborers up until the moment they died. Fuck, my brothers who followed the rules and tried to live cleanly didn’t even make it into their twenties.
    In a lot of ways it didn’t make sense for me to give up Salvatore Lombard. With my family history I never expected to make it to forty-eight let alone sixty-two, so why make that deal?
    I spent a lot of time thinking about it in prison. For years I tried to convince myself that I did it as payback for whoever it was inside of Lombard’s organization who gave me up to the Feds, especially since I had wanted to retire from that life and I’d let Lombard strong-arm me into running that business at the docks. Over time I realized that wasn’t the reason, as much as I wanted it to be. What was mostly behind my making that deal was that I needed a glimmer of hope, no matter how dim, of someday walking out of prison. I don’t think I could’ve managed inside without that. But that probably wasn’t the only reason; at that point in my life I needed to come clean with what I’d done. I don’t know, but I think that was behind what I did, at least at a subconscious level. But no matter how much I struggled over it, I could never be quite sure how much of a role that played in it, if any at all.

    I had finished both bathrooms on the first floor and was pushing the cart towards the elevator when I realized I was mumbling under my breath, carrying on a one-sided conversation with my pop. Yeah, I was going to need a radio or something, otherwise this quiet would drive me nuts. Looking around sheepishly, I checked to see if the security guard was nearby and whether he could’ve overheard me. I didn’t see him, and I pushed the cart past the elevator until I spotted him sitting behind the same security desk he’d been at earlier. I doubt he had heard me, he seemed too engrossed in the paperback he was reading. When I started to push the cart back to the elevator, he looked up, startled, as if I had spooked him. Our eyes met for a brief moment before he glanced back towards his paperback, his round pink face turning flaccid. If it wasn’t clear enough earlier, it was clear then that the two of us were never going to have much of a conversation together while I worked there – he was terrified of me, and that wasn’t going to change.
    I pushed the cleaning cart into the elevator and took it to the second floor and started on the bathrooms there. Once I was done with those I moved up to the third floor, and then after those were done, started emptying trash cans throughout the building, then vacuuming each office and the hallways.
    I was finished by one o’clock. I had no better place to be, and besides, I was supposed to be working until two so I stayed holed up in the last office I had vacuumed. They had a plush leather sofa in their lobby that was a hell of a lot more comfortable than the cot I had waiting for me. A few times I almost drifted off, my eyelids heavy, but I stayed awake until two, and then trotted back to the front security desk and checked the keys in with the apple-cheeked youth working there. He didn’t say a word to me, nor me to him, and I knew that was the routine we had settled into, not that I should’ve expected much else.
    Stepping outside I held my jacket collar tight against my throat, trying to seal off the cold. A wind was whipping about and I lowered my head against it. After half a block, I looked up, thinking that I had seen something out of the corner of my eye – a black sedan driving away with its headlights off. I must’ve imagined it because when I looked up the street was empty and the only noise I could hear was the wind. I stood staring bleary-eyed for a moment, then lowered my head again and quickened my pace.

chapter 7
     
    1970
    Carl Slagg’s a big