A Taste of Life
Maggie’s World
Maggie surmised
that she’d spent way too many moments in her life hanging out in an alley. They were always dirty with years of grime
and trash, and smelled of piss and rotting food. Yet she was indeed sitting behind a dumpster,
carrying out a task she wished could be left to someone else.
Royce, her and
Stephan’s Company mark, stood at the entrance to the alley trying to lure
buyers for the drugs he kept concealed in his baggy faded blue jeans. He was wearing a black T-shirt today and a
matching ball cap, turned backwards. His
face was unshaven and more shaggy than when she and
Stephan had found him. In fact, Royce
had bags under his eyes and a grim expression, which probably was the main
reason that he didn’t seem to be making many sales.
Not caring about
his career as a dealer, Maggie was waiting to see if the Company was going to
take him out. She’d been watching him
off and on since the day before, and she hadn’t had a hint that the dealer was
in trouble with his bosses. It was still
too early to tell, but she was beginning to fear that the plan had failed.
At mid-afternoon,
traffic on
Two men approached
Royce who were out of place like pit bulls in a cat
show. They both wore flower print button
up shirts and slacks, with dark sunglasses shielding their eyes. Apparently recognizing the men, the young
dealer’s face shifted into a resigned expression. The thug wearing a fedora grabbed Royce by
the arm and ushered him down the alley.
None of the men spoke as they walked by Maggie in her hiding spot. She remained perfectly still, knowing that if
she did so, they would not see her.
When they were well
away from any ears or eyes on the street, the fedora man pushed the dealer away
from him. Royce slammed into the wall
rain worn brick wall of the nearing building, grunting with the impact. He whimpered as he grabbed his shoulder and
looked at the men with uncomprehending eyes.
“What’s up, guys?”
Royce asked.
Fedora
smirked. “You know what’s up. What they hell do you think you’re doing,
Royce?”
Royce held up his
hands. “I ain’t done nothin’.”
The other tough guy
threw out a lightening quick hand and slapped the dealer. The skin on skin contact reverberated through
the alley. A hand automatically rising
to his stinging face, Royce looked scared.
“You took ten kilos
more than you were supposed to, idiot, and we ain’t
got no money back to show for it. Where is it?”
Fedora asked.
The young man
shifted on his feet and stammered incomprehensively for a moment. “I ain’t got
it. I gave it to somebody.”
The man in the
fedora’s eyebrows arched from under his glasses. “To who? And why would you be so stupid?”
Royce threw up his
hands. “I don’t know. I gave it to this guy I met that works for
Drake. I was thinking about hookin’ up with them.”
Fedora lashed out
without warning, planting a heavy fist into the center of the dealer’s
face. The force sent Royce into the wall
again, and this time he tumbled with a cry down to the filthy asphalt. The silent thug moved in on him, placing two
kicks with his suede shoes into the younger man’s side. The bigger man stood over Royce for several
moments before backing away.
The young dealer
looked up, his peach fuzz mustache smeared with blood. “Man, don’t kill me.”
The man in the
fedora shook his head. “You know we ain’t gonna kill you, ya idiot. If you
weren’t Jeremiah’s nephew, though, you’d be dead. Don’t doubt it.”
Royce scrambled to
his feet with renewed confidence. “I won’t do nothin’ like that again. I promise.”
“You’d better
not. We might not be able to put you
down, but we can make you wish you were dead.”
Fedora shoved Royce
again as he and his partner walked up the alley. The kid shrank back into the wall and stayed
quiet and still, waiting for his tormenters to be gone.
Maggie’s gut
hurt. This wasn’t the way it was supposed
to go down. Royce was a little thug drug
dealer and he was supposed to be dead at this point. She and Stephan had not asked him to detail
his family tree when they’d picked him out as their target. She guessed they should have, because now she
had a dilemma.
She didn’t think
the kid would have a lot of positive qualities to better mankind during the
rest of what would probably be a shortened life, but she didn’t want to kill
him. Maggie tried to keep her list of
victims to a minimum. She could always
let him slip away and they could find a new target to do their bidding. That would take some time, and there was no
guarantee that the next choice would be any better than this one.
Not to mention that
the information she’d just learned actually made Royce a more attractive
target. There would be no doubt that he
was one of Jeremiah’s boys. The story
would likely be deduced to the Company discovering that one of their own was stealing, Jeremiah had to set an example, so they offed the kid. It’s
not like he was Jeremiah’s kid, after all.
When Royce pulled
himself straight and began walking toward
“Hey, Royce,” she said
softly, but with enough force for him to hear.
He turned around
and focused on her, his brow crinkled as he likely wondered where she came
from. “What?”
Maggie didn’t say
anything else. She strided toward him with purposeful steps. Behind him, an occasional unidentifiable
shadow crossed beyond the end of the alley.
No one was interested in coming into the dank environment, so she had
free reign to do what needed to be done.
The slender woman stepped toe to toe with her prey. His dark eyes were curious, but not as afraid
as they should have been.
She smiled at him,
and he stupidly smiled back. People
never suspected that she could do them harm until it was too late. Her innocent looks had always been one of her
most valuable assets. In less than a
blink of an eye, she surged forward with her teeth bared, sinking her fangs
deep into his throat while he silently screamed.
* * *
Warin Drake was nowhere to be found in his
spacious, dark mansion. The lights were
off throughout, and none of the Family who worked to upkeep it were around. Only Warin and Maggie lived there on a permanent basis, and no
one was staying in any of the guestrooms.
Other than an occasional crack of old wood as the house shifted, it
remained as soundless as a tomb.
Maggie could think
of only one place left to look before she could conclude Drake had made an
unscheduled departure, which was not unusual for him. He didn’t have to report to her, after
all. She walked across the formal
sitting room, the furniture there used only a few times a year, and opened the
French doors to the back porch. Cool air
from inside the house rushed around her, sucked out by the hot
Drake sat in
shadows at the glass top table sipping lemonade. He was still dressed in his robe, his short
gray hair still unordered from a day of sleep.
If needed, he kept normal daytime hours so that he could do
business. If left to his own devices,
though, he preferred to keep his waking hours at night. With the sun slipping below the horizon, it
was almost time for Drake to play.
His cold eyes cut
toward the door. “Maggie,
my darling. You’re home.”
“Hello,
Father. Did you sleep well?” she asked.
“Like the dead,” he
said, a lecherous smile forming on his perfect lips.
Maggie took the
seat adjacent to him, glad that her body could relax, even if her mind could
not. “We need to talk about Jeremiah.”
Drake’s expression
changed and he sighed. “Can’t we ever
just talk about the weather?”
“You
and I?” Maggie paused
and met his weary stare. “No. We have too much drama in our lives.”
“I suppose you’re
right,” he conceded. “What about
Jeremiah?”
“I’ve come up with
a plan to shift the focus of this police investigation of the murders to him,”
she said.
Drake waited for
her to continue.
“If there is
another murder that is more definitively linked to him, that should get Reed’s
attention to start investigating Jeremiah, rather than us,” she said.
“I like it so far,”
her father said.
Maggie looked
away. “Good, because
I’ve already done it.”
Drake’s chair
screeched against the wood floor as he leaned forward. “You killed someone on your own
initiative? I’m so proud.”
“Father,” she said
in a warning tone.
He put out a hand
to stop her protests. “I always knew you
were a chip off the old block. Who was
it?”
“Just
a dealer who happened to be Jeremiah’s nephew. He
was stealing drugs from him too, at Stephan’s bidding.”
Drake leaned back
again, a smug, satisfied look on his face.
“My, my.
This exceeds my expectations. I
don’t think I could have done better myself.
You’ve certainly stirred the pot.”
Maggie leaned back
and let her head rest against the back of the chair, closing her eyes. “Hopefully Reed will take the bait and leave
us alone.”
“How is the
erstwhile detective?”
“Kind of normal and
boring,” she said.
“You’ve been
watching him for how long, and that’s all you’ve got for me?” Drake asked.
Shrugging, Maggie
opened her eyes and looked at him. “Like
I said, I haven’t seen much. He’s a cop and
he does cop stuff. He drinks a lot of
coffee and likes catfish.”
“Do we need to
eliminate him?”
Maggie’s frown
deepened. “What about normal and boring
makes you think he needs to be killed?”
“I hate normal and
boring,” Drake said.
“You’re not funny,”
Maggie replied.
Drake’s boyish
smile let her know that he thought he was quite the comic. “What’s next?”
Shrugging, Maggie
hoped there was no next. “I’ll keep
watching Reed and hope that he finds a new direction in his investigation.”
Drake stood, his
robe stirring the still evening air.
“Okay, but if he doesn’t, we’re going to have to consider action against
him if he continues to poke his nose into places he doesn’t belong. I don’t want you to get too attached to this
officer.”
Maggie knew it was
too late for that warning. She was
already attached to Reed, if that was the right word for the way she felt. There was no going back on that now. She just needed to keep working to fix the
murder investigation, and eliminate the need to kill Reed.
“I’m not attached,”
she said, standing from the table.
“We’ll do what we need to do to protect the Family.”