A moment later the tough guy's pistol nosed around the corner of the mausoleum. It was a snubnosed .38, blue steel, and Remo waited for the arm to follow, using both hands as he grabbed the shooter's wrist and elbow, whipping him around the corner, to his knees.
The wrist bones and the elbow snapped together, but he had a grip on the shooter's throat by then, bottling up the scream.
"You want to live?"
The kneeling gunner tried to nod, eyes bulging with surprise and pain.
"So take a nap."
The death grip shifted slightly, fingers finding the carotid arteries on either side and cutting off the flow of blood to one befuddled brain. The shooter wilted. Remo made scrap of his snubby and another switchblade.
It was a moment's work to dump his latest prize beside the human fireplug, and he went back to the hunt. His third mark was of average height and heavyset, a waddler who compensated for his flab by packing a Colt .45. His wingtip shoes made little squishing noises as he moved among the tombs.
With half the crew already snoozing, Remo had an urge to wrap up the preliminaries and proceed to his interrogation. Waiting in the shadows of another tomb, he jabbed a punch at number three and dropped him in his tracks. As the shooter fell, a reflex action of his muscles triggered off a loud round from the Colt and brought his final sidekick on the run. Remo hadn't planned it that way, but it was okay. The next goon would come to him.
Three goons were plenty, Remo calculated, and he met the fourth man with a palm thrust that took him underneath the chin and broke his neck. The guy was dead before he hit the ground, and Remo crushed two more shooting irons into steel lumps.
Remo gripped a shooter's belt in either hand and hoisted them, moved back in the direction of the tomb where he had stashed the other two. He swung the flaccid bodies as he walked, for all the world resembling a man out for a stroll with two light shopping bags-except that each of these weighed just about two hundred pounds.
He dropped the living gunman near his fellows, propped the dead one up against a nearby tomb, where he would be immediately visible to his companions when they came around. One small adjustment to his posture, and the scene was set.
Reviving his three captives took only fifteen seconds of pinching, probing, slapping. They were slumped together, muttering and shaking heads that throbbed with pain when Remo stepped in front of them and spoke.
"I guess you're wondering," he said for openers, "exactly why I called you all here this evening."
"What's that?" the fireplug asked, addressing no one in particular.
"I'm glad the three of you could join me," Remo said, still smiling. "I'll be your inquisitor this evening. Anyone who wants to live can simply answer all my questions honestly, first time around. There will be penalties for bullshit, bluffing or attempting to walk out before the game is finished. Do we understand the rules?"
"Where's Gabby?" asked the goon who had been carrying the .45.
"Oh, right." Remo pretended that the fourth punk had already slipped his mind. "We played a practice round while you three sleepyheads were snoozing. I'm afraid he lost."
That said, he stepped aside to let them see their friend. At first, the groggy shooters didn't understand what they were seeing, and it took a moment for the details of the scene to register: the late, lamented Gabby sitting with his back against a marble tomb, his head inverted so that he was kissing stone.
"Poor sap thought he was Linda Blair," said Remo. "That's the breaks. Hooray for Hollywood." The other three were staring at him now. The thug in the middle cradled his shattered arm, in too much pain to make a move, while the others were wondering if two-on-one was good enough to let them walk away from this alive.
"You've got two choices," Remo told them. "We can talk or we can fight. So far tonight, you haven't done that well with muscle."
The silence stretched between them, dragging on, until the fireplug spoke at last.
"Okay," he said, "what is it you wanna know?"
Chapter 11
Late Thursday morning, Armand Fortier was notified by Eulus Carroll, one of his least favorite prison guards, that he was favored with a visitor. The Cajun mobster was perplexed, because he hadn't summoned anyone to call on him, and no one he could think of had the balls to come and see him uninvited. Oh, the Feds had come a few times in the early weeks of his imprisonment, mostly to taunt him, hoping they could make some kind of deal now that they had him caged, but they had long since given up.
"Who is it?" he asked Carroll.
"How the hell should I know, shithead?"
Eulus Carroll was six foot eight and weighed at least three hundred pounds, most of it muscle. He was as black as coal, head shaved and took no shit from anybody in the joint. The story was that he had killed two inmates with his bare hands when they made the grave mistake of coming after him with shanks, and while Armand could never verify the tale he had a sneaking hunch that it was true, Carroll hated convicts, which at first blush seemed peculiar for a man who chose to spend his life with prisoners, but story number two involved a budding pro football career, sidelined when Eulus had been run down in a crosswalk by a car thief and escapee from the Fuiton County jail. The doctors told him he would never play again for money, and as soon as he could walk-or so the story went-he had signed on as a corrections officer to get some payback happening. And payback was a bitch.
"You know the drill," Carroll said, and shook the chains in Armand's face for emphasis.
"Yeah, yeah."
Embarrassed by the routine even now, the Cajun raised his arms above his head while Carroll wrapped the belly chain around his waist and locked it at the back. Next came the shackles. Carroll crouched behind him, and while it was tempting for Armand to kick old Eulus in his big black face, it also would have been the next best thing to suicide. The cuffs were last, secured to the belly chain so that Armand could neither scratch his balls nor wipe his nose.
"Let's go."
They had to clear three different checkpoints-double sets of heavy sliding doors controlled by guards secure in bulletproof glass boxes. It was all about security, the Cajun realized, but he believed that part of it was also psychological, reminding every convict in the place that he was under someone else's thumb.
Visitations were strictly controlled in Atlanta, with the main visitors' room patrolled by multiple guards whenever convicts were present, rigid barriers blocking any contact between inmates and their visitors. Aside from that, there were four smaller rooms, as well, where screws weren't supposed to peek or eavesdrop, and these were used for inmate conferences with lawyers and occasionally psychiatrists employed by the defense team on particularly sticky cases.
Fortier was all the more confused when Eulus Carroll led him to the block of private rooms and opened number three. With nothing in the way of explanation, Carroll opened up the door, shoved Fortier across the threshold, closed and locked the door behind him. Glancing back, the Cajun saw his keeper's face framed briefly in the door's small window, double panes of glass with wire mesh in between, before it disappeared.
His visitor was standing in the corner farthest from the door, hands in his trouser pockets, watching Armand with a crooked little smile. If Fortier had ever seen his face before, it didn't stick.
"You've gained some weight," the stranger said. "Must be that starchy prison food."
"Who the fuck are you?" demanded Fortier.
"You want to have a seat?" the stranger asked as if he hadn't heard. "Relax a little while we talk?"
"My mama told me not to talk to strangers," Fortier replied. He made no move toward either of the straight-backed wooden chairs.
"That's fair enough," the visitor replied. "I'll talk, you listen. It'll do you good."
Armand said nothing, but the stranger didn't seem to mind.
"You've got a motion for a retrial coming up in June, before the Seventh Circuit. Some new evidence, your mouthpiece says. Right now, you look to have a fifty-fifty chance of winning that round."
"I feel lucky," Armand told him, never able to resist a timely gloat.
"That wouldn't be because you're weeding out the prosecution witnesses who sent you up, now, would it?"
"You must be an idjit, come in here and ask me that."
"You're right," the stranger said. "There's no point asking questions when we both know what the answers are."
The Cajun felt like telling him that what he knew and what the state could prove were very different things, but he decided not to push his luck. The room was more than likely wired, with tape recorders rolling. This wasn't a privileged conversation, and he didn't want to push his luck.
"You've killed nine people that I know of in the past two months," the stranger said.
"I been right here," said Fortier. "I'm sure the warden will be pleased to verify that fact."