Sawbones

Special Agent Stinky.”

“Ah, fuck. .” says Jack, peering out from the back seat, “why me?”

“’Cause I said so.” Henry takes off his sweater and it goes on the branch next to his jacket. Then it’s the shirt’s turn.

Jack swears his way out of the car, “Cock-sucking, God-damned, lousy, mother-fucking. .” He takes a handful of plastic sheeting and hauls the agent’s body out of the trunk onto the grass and mud. Jack’s feet slither as he drags the wrapped corpse away into the woods. “Got my fucking new shoes on as well. .”

“You know,” I say to Henry, pointing at the cop, “we have to ditch the car. They’re going to notice this guy’s missing — if they haven’t already — check what his last call was, and then every cop in Illinois is going to be out looking for us.”

Henry stands there in a white undershirt, his US marine ‘Semper Fi’ tattoo sitting high and proud on his arm. “I think we need to talk about Jack,” he says, snapping on another pair of those latex gloves. “What you know about him?”

“He’s from the Bronx.”

“Yeah, but what’s he done?” Henry hauls the State Trooper backwards till the guy’s sitting against a tree trunk.

I shrug. “What you mean, what’s he done?”

“I mean,” says Henry, uncuffing the cop’s hands, “you ever work with him before?”

The cop tries to fight back, but his arms don’t work. Henry punches him in the face, just in case, then pulls the guy’s hands round to the other side of the tree and cuffs them again. He’s going nowhere.

“Nope.” To be honest, I’d never even met the guy till two days ago.

“So why the hell’s he here? You and me, I can see. We’ve worked for Mr Jones a long time. We got a track record. But Jack. .” He shakes his head and starts unbuttoning the cop’s waterproof jacket.

“I heard he came out of Chicago. Did some work for the Palmer family. Strong-arm stuff. Why?”

“I don’t trust him.” Henry takes out his eight-inch combat knife and runs it along the seams of the Trooper’s jacket. Cutting the fabric away. Then he does the same with the guy’s shirt, till the Trooper’s sitting there naked from the waist up. The cop’s crying, the mumbling behind the gag getting even more frantic.

“When a dog gets all mean,” says Henry, “they chop his balls off. Like Mr Jones did to Brian there. Maybe we should do the same to Jack.”

Henry unbuckles the Trooper’s belt, then pulls down the guy’s pants, till he’s sitting there in nothing but his boots and underwear.

“Jack’s just an asshole,” I say, “He’ll be OK.” Besides, I don’t want to see another castration for a long, long time. The balls would have been bad enough, but the frank and the beans? No wonder Brian doesn’t talk much any more.

“Hmmm. .” Henry doesn’t sound convinced. He pulls the Trooper’s gun out of its holster and twists it back and forth in front of the guy’s face. “I think we’ll start with this.” He sits back on his haunches and places the barrel against the cop’s knee. “You’re a State Trooper, right? So they’ll have told you all about this Sawbones bastard. Like where they found them arms and legs. You’re going to tell me all about it. And just so you know I’m not shitting with you, and this isn’t all a big hoax, I’m going to blow your kneecap off before we start. OK?”

Behind the gag the Trooper screams.

“What happened to you?” I ask, when Jack finally staggers back to the car. He’s been gone nearly an hour and a half. His jacket and trousers are smeared with mud, his hair’s all messed up and his bruised face is twisted into a scowl.

“Fucking fell, didn’t I?” he spits. “I fucking hate the great fucking outdoors. What’s so fucking, pain-in-the-ass great about it? Fucking trees and fucking mud.”

“Well, at least you didn’t get eaten by a bear.”

Jack freezes. “You’re fucking shitting me! Bears? You sent me out there, on my own, and there’s bears?”

“You got a gun, don’t you?”

“Bears. .” He shivers. “And me dragging Agent Bear Snack all over the fucking place.”

Henry looks up from what’s left of the State Trooper: the poor guy’s a mess, but he’s still breathing. Just. “You bury him good and deep?”

Jack looks offended. “Course I did. And far out too. Only way anyone’s going to find that FBI bastard is with a Ouija board.”

“Good. You did good.” Henry even smiles. He holds out the Trooper’s gun. “You can finish this one off.”

No one moves. Then Jack says, “He tell you everything?”

“Oh yeah. They found them arms and legs four days ago, stuffed in a bunch of bins round the back of a diner. Just off the Interstate. Said they think whoever did it was heading East.”

“You think he’s hiding anything?”

Henry glances down at the Trooper’s blood-soaked body. “Nope. He ain’t got jack shit to hide anyway. Only lead they got is maybe some people saw a dirty Winnebago parked where they found the body parts.”

“Then why do we need to kill him? We could just let him go.”

There’s a pause. “Yeah. . why not? After all we only kidnapped him, stuffed him in the boot with a dead body, tortured him. . I’m pretty sure if we asked him nicely he’d keep his mouth shut.”

“I’m just saying, OK? You said he’s told us everything so — ”

“Hello? Earth to planet fuckin’ Jack: he — knows — your — name. He can ID us!” Henry holds the gun out again. “And I want you to kill him.”

Jack’s sweating. “I don’t want to kill him. You tortured the poor bastard — you kill him.”

“See?” says Henry, turning to me, “I told you we can’t trust him.”

That got a scowl. Jack flexing his muscles. Making himself look bigger. “The fuck you talking about?”

“Me and Mark was just saying,” Henry goes over to where his jacket’s hanging from the tree and pulls a cigar out of the pocket, “how we don’t know you from shit.” He sparks up a big silver Zippo lighter and sets the flame to the end. “How you could be anyone.”

“I just buried an FBI agent in the fucking woods! With bears!”

Henry puffs, getting the cigar going, then blows out a big cloud of bitter-smelling smoke. “For all we know, you could be a cop.”

“A COP?” The bits of Jack’s face that aren’t bruised purple go bright red. “A fucking cop? You dirty old bastard! You — ”

“What did you call me?”

This is getting outta hand fast. “Come on,” I say, “this ain’t helping.”

Henry puts the Trooper’s gun on the ground, then turns to smile at Jack. It’s not a nice smile. It’s the kind of smile you see on a really pissed-off shark before he bites you in half. “I think you and me need to have another chat, sonny.”

“I’ll do it.” It’s a little voice, shaky, young. And we all turn to see Brian clinging onto the doorframe of the crappy car we stole in New Jersey. He’s trembling, one hand holding on to the place where his equipment used to be. Before Mr Jones took a bolt cutter to it. “I’ll kill him.”

Henry smiles. “You sure, kid?”

Brian nods, and shambles forwards, each step coming with a wince of pain. “I’ll kill him. . and you. . you take me to a hospital. .”

Henry picks up the gun. “How do we know you won’t go to the cops?”

“And tell them. . what? That. . that I shot a State Trooper?”

The kid has a point. Henry hands over the weapon, shows Brian how to cock it — no pun intended — and stands well back. I take my automatic out and hold it loosely at my side. You know — just in case Brian decides to go out in a blaze of glory.

The guy handcuffed to the tree looks up at Brian’s pale, bloodless face. The Trooper narrows his one remaining eye and moves what’s left of his mouth. We can just hear the word, “Please.”

Before Brian blows the guy’s head off.