Procession of the Dead Read Online Free

closing the deal, and they’d suddenly whip out a knife or a chain, and off it went.
    I was able to handle myself. In my time with Theo, I never took a bad beating. I kept fit, ate sensibly, worked out at home every night. I had quick reflexes and a quicker eye. I took a few hard blows, but mostly to the stomach where they didn’t mark me. My face was as pristine as the day I arrived, nose straight, ears unchewed. I’d get caught eventually—everybody did—but so far I’d gotten away lightly.
    I hadn’t killed anyone. I’d smashed many bones, clubbed a few heads, tossed a couple of souls from speeding cars. But Theo held me back from killing. He said he didn’t want to throw too much at me too soon. It was one thing teaching a crazy crackhead a lesson he’d remember, another to pull a gun and end his learning forever. Killing was sometimes necessary, but should always be delegated where possible. He’d only killed two men personally in all his years. He said it was two too many.
    “Deaths come back to haunt you,” he often muttered. As worthy an epitaph as any.
    The big fish was The Cardinal and everything we did (despite Theo’s warning that first day) was designed to bait him. There was only so much we could do as an independent organization, only so far we could go on our own. If we were to grow and move in stellar circles, The Cardinal had to acknowledge us. Until that happened, until the call came to visit Party Central or attend dinner at Shankar’s, we were trapped in the shoal marked small fry.
    The call to greater things came on a Tuesday. It was nearly six months since I’d arrived. We’d toiled like slaves, building, plotting, planning for the future. We worked well together and brought out the best in each other. I’d rekindled Theo’s desire to be successful, and he’d taught me what was possible and what wasn’t, separating my wiser ideas from my foolish fancies. His experience and my hunger made us a potent combination.
    We knew we were on the right track when Neil Wain contacted us. Wain wasn’t one of The Cardinal’s men, but he was a ganglord of some note. You had to be wary if you got on the wrong side of him. He had The Cardinal’s seal of approval and in the city that was everything. Dealing with him brought us one step closer to Party Central. Wain was a test—we were being sounded out. If we proved ourselves competent, there’d be more to come. Wain was the door to a new world of upper-echelon corruption, politics and total control. The world of Cardinal crime.
    He wanted us to handle a drug shipment. He’d arranged for it to be brought into the city but there was too much for him to distribute by himself. We were to take a third, pay the bulk up front and cut him in for a percentage of our profits. He was asking a lot but money wasn’t the issue. We wouldn’t make much out of the deal in the short run, but long term it could be our most profitable move ever.
    We met him at an abandoned wharf warehouse, late Tuesday night. It had been a struggle getting the money together in so short a time—part of the test—but we cracked a few heads, called in favors and did it.
    Theo was excited beyond words. His eyelids were blinking up and down so fast, you almost couldn’t see them. His hands were twitching and I could hear his heart beating from ten feet away. “This is it, Capac,” he told me, squeezing my arm. “I never thought it would come so soon. It’s because of you. Don’t deny it! We were going good until you came along, but you’ve made us go great.”
    “You’re flattering me,” I protested. “All I do is follow orders. I’m nothing special.”
    “Don’t you believe it,” he said. “Whatever we get tonight, wherever we go from here, it’s down to you. This is your night. Enjoy it. Hell,
relish
it.” He bit his lip to stop his eyes from watering. He hadn’t been this emotional since our first encounter. “Come on. Let’s go meet our destiny.”
    We