The Death of Suzie Sunshine (excerpt)

This is a excerpt from a short story called "The Death of Suzie Sunshine" a violent, gritty tale of revenge and murder set in the modern world of international terrorism and features a man named Fitz. Fitz used to be in the IRA, now he's a freelancer, specializing in truly dirty jobs.

It's available in issue #3 of Out of the Gutter crime fiction magazine out now.

He didn't know who I was, so he didn't see the shot to his balls coming.

He fell into my arms, gasping for air, his eyes rolled halfway up his goddamn head. The pain, the speed of my attack, and his own chicken-shit nature kept him from stopping what came next.

I leaned in close to his ear, like I was going to whisper sweet nothings, and I hissed: "You're going to die Sammy, you son of a bitch."

Sammy's eyes bulged with horror and his body stiffened. No one was supposed to know his name, his face, or his hideout. But I knew all that, and so much more.

Like how to use a cattle prod.

I drove the prod into his kidney and pressed the button.

Sammy's teeth clenched locking his scream down to a growl, and then he shook and fell to the floor.

Saliva dribbled from his mouth and formed a small puddle by my boot. I fought the urge to deliver one swift kick to his face and watch him choke on his own teeth and blood, because I had a job to do. More than that, I had a mission.

"Get him into the truck," I said to my helpers. They were locals; the sort of no-questions-asked boys who handled the little errands people like me needed doing. I didn't know their names, didn't want to, and they didn't know mine and didn't want to. The less they knew about what needed doing that night, the better.

One of them; a burly bruiser with a buzz cut and what looked like the entire Rise & Fall of the Third Reich tattooed on his arms, pushed in a stolen wheelchair while the other two boys picked up the still limp and drooling Sammy. After a few seconds of fumbling they had him strapped in, and less than a minute after that we were all in the van heading for the safe house.

Once we got to the safe house, the fun and games would begin.

#

The safe house wasn't really a house, and from a strictly workplace health point of view it didn't look that safe. It was an old brick and wrought iron warehouse where the land met the North Sea that once housed a way-station for tea, tobacco, coffee and whatever the hell the outside world had to sell mainland Europe.

"Does the water still work?" I asked one of the locals, a tall skinny bloke with a nasty looking scar on his face. There was still electricity in the building, namely a single bulb hanging from a greasy black wire casting a pool of dirty yellow light in the middle of the room, so I figured there.

He nodded and pointed to a rusted out old sink. I like a man of few words.

"Tie him to that chair," I said, pointing to an old wooden chair beneath the single working bulb. The Man of Few Words nodded and shook his head to the other locals who were wheeling the still unconscious Sammy from the van.

I took a plastic bucket to the sink and opened up the taps. It was water, for the most part, but there was also a lot of other shit coming out of that pipe. It didn't really matter, not like anyone was going to drink it. Once the bucket was full I horsed it over to Sammy, who my boys had just firmly bound to the chair.

"Wake up sleeping beauty," I said as I splashed him over the head with the mostly water. Sammy shook and sputtered. He looked around and muttered something in Arabic.

"Go outside," I said to the locals, "and have a smoke, my friend and I have to have a private chat."

The locals nodded and left, they had earned their keep. Sammy kept cursing in Arabic, and then he switched to English.

"Listen," said Sammy, "you have the wrong man. My name is—"

"Samir Hassan, AKA Sammy and a dozen other aliases, including the rather colourful nom-de-guerre of Scimitar," I replied, there was no problem with anyone's identity. "You were born in London in nineteen seventy eight. Parents ran a successful real estate firm, sent you to all the best schools, and then you graduated from Cambridge with a degree in engineering. You then did your post-grad work at a training camp in Pakistan."

"What are you," asked Sammy, "CIA?"

"Do I fucking sound like I'm from the CIA?" I asked.

"You sound Irish," said Sammy.

"I guess you're not a complete retard," I said.

"I haven't done anything to you?"

"I'm not here for me," I said. "I'm here for Suzie."

"Who is Suzie?"

"Her name was Suzie Sunshine," I said, "and you killed her two years ago."

"I don't know what you're talking about?" said Sammy Hassan, not looking as sharp as a scimitar. "I've never met anyone named Suzie Sunshine, let alone killed them."

"How can you be so sure?" I asked, pulling up a plastic milk crate so I could sit in front of him. "I mean you've destroyed a lot of lives. You killed people from Lahore to London and all points in between. You can't know all of their names."

"What is this all about?" screamed Sammy as he strained against the motley mix of ropes and heavy straps that kept him pinned to the old chair.

"It's about dying for your sins," I said, "or to be more precise for one sin in particular."

"Then why don't you shoot me?"

"That's not my job," I said sitting down on the milk crate. "My job is to deliver you to my client alive. Then my client will kill you. Since I have what you might call a personal investment in the case I happily offered to do it myself, but my client was very insistent."

"Where is your client?"

"On their way," I said. "So we have a little time to chat, to get to know one another. In fact, I want you to know about the life and death of Suzie Sunshine."

To be continued....