Silence Kills

The Silence Series

“Do you expect me to believe you’ll let me live.” Oden Wold spoke to the assembly of the heads of the Six Families. 

“Believe…doubt…—” the wispy old man uttered through his narrowly open crinkled mouth, drooling slimy droplets of nicotine from his copious cigarette habit. “—when… you…leave…here…you…family…is…no…more.” 

In the dark room, where only one light in the ceiling illuminated the gray haze of smoke and dismal darkness, it was decided the Wold family had lost its position. 

Having retained its power footing in the Bowery and Narrows for centuries, having just managing to survive political maneuvers and outright warfare. Now, with the slow deterioration of Haze City’s infrastructure and industries, there was a need to trim the fat in organized crime. 

“You think my people will just…roll over?” Oden sneered at them, showing his extra long canine teeth. 

“Doesn’t matter if they do or don’t.” the large Mediterranean mans words hit the room as if his tone was hammering nails to seal shut a coffin lid. “There is no more discussion. Get your boys outside, and get you and your wife and kids out of town, or all bets are off.” 

With that the five remaining crime families turned their swivel chairs, showing their backs to the odd man out. 

Oden knew he was a dead man, and so was his family, both of them, if they weren’t already dead. Big Ted, his faithful enforcer acted as his bodyguard, shielding his shorter, yet broader bodied leader from any possible gunfire. 

Walter Bhigs, one of his most loyal captains, ushered him out of the meeting room. Once they were safely through the door, and up the stairs, they were in a nearly vacant alleyway. Just outside a nondescript brick building where the meeting had taken place in its basement. 

“You’re lucky to get out of there—” Walter began to give a obviously rehearsed diatribe, but Ted had wrapped his ex-wrestler fingers around his throat. 

“You sold us out!” the big man snarled, putting so much of his strength into strangling the smaller man, you could see Walter’s eyes begging to bulge out. “How much to sell us out!?” 

“Please…Oden…” the scarecrow of a man begged. 

“They knew too much, Walter.” Oden sighed out in disappointment, the sense of betrayal left him meek, yet his fury was crawling its way to the surface. “I told all my council a different location of the stash…Walter…why?” there was a hurt in his voice, he was otherwise merciless to traitors in his organization, but Walter was his childhood friend. 

Blood brothers. Friends for life. He thought they die for one another, he was his children’s Godfather. 

Ted loosened his hold, just enough to hear Walter’s response. 

“They—” he breathed in deeply air, not sure if he would be breathing it much longer. “—got me off of drug charges.” 

“Damn it!” Ted overcome by his anger, began to squeeze Walter’s neck tighter than he did before. “I told you! Stop moving that crap!” 

“Ted loosen it, I don’t want him passing out.” Oden wanted his enforcer’s grip tight enough so every gulp would pass through with great pain and effort. “Walter…” Oden wanted to look away, but couldn’t. Despite hating what his friend did to him, he knew he couldn’t allow him to walk free. “...you hurt me…you hurt me—” before he could say the final words, he heard Ted scream out—

“Watch it!” then as he let go of the traitor, he pulled out his large handgun and fired at a shadow down the alley. 

After several shots that thundered through the alleyway, a familiar figure fell out, dying, still holding onto his tommy gun. 

“Jesus! They turned, all of them!” Oden realized that his crew had jumped ship, switching alliances, and before he could make Walter pay for setting the ambush up—he vanished. Ducking into some patch of darkness, concealing himself as if he were a rat, successfully fleeing a predator. 

More gunfire came from down the alley. With no where else to run, Ted and Oden ran the other way, returning fire when possible. As they got halfway however, they met a blitz of bullet fire from ahead. Stuck between an ambush from behind, and a line up of machine gun turrets, closing off the other end of the alley, Oden could feel death digging into him with its bony fingers. 

Doors were locked and bolted, windows were shuttered, and there wasn’t anywhere to hide. That was when he could hear something from above, looking up he saw a rooftop of his men forming a firing lines, and taking aim with their tommy guns. 

“See ya, Ted.” Oden told his only loyal friend. 

“Yeah…” Ted couldn’t finish his words, soon the large man who Oden saved from a exploitive circus contract was decimated by hundreds of flesh eviscerating bullets. Looking as if he was suffering a seizure, as the bullets tore into his body, he slumped against the wall, before sliding down to the ground, leaving a thick trail of blood. 

“You bastards! You disloyal mother—!” before he could raise his gun, Oden was mowed down in all directions, so horribly was he mutilated, his corpse was beyond recognition. 

After the assassination was complete, the gunmen vanished, taking with their tools of ambush, not even leaving a single bullet casing behind. 

The police came, and the Detective Inspector on the scene looked down at the bloodied, gory bodies laying lifeless on the ground. 

“Jesus…how much you wanna bet one of these guys is the father to the mother and her kids that we fished out of the canal?” the Inspector shook his head. “Times must be hard, even the mob are laying people off.” 

The investigation was still open after many years, no suspects were on file, no interviews, no leads, it was perpetually unsolved, tucked away in a millions of cold cases. 

The bodies were buried in unmarked graves, and eventually the Oden Crime Family became a long forgotten memory. Another historical factoid in the long violent history of Haze City. 

***

Haze from the mire north of the city had settled onto the oily blackness of the city. Walking out of a bar with mild commotion from a dice game going on inside, Walter Bhigs bearing the evenings take of another collection job, stood under a streetlight. 

The pale light seemed to be a isolated island of illumination in a pitch black sea of darkness. Nothing seemed to exist outside the heavenly glow of the streetlight, even his dust jacket and hat seem to take on a angelic white shade under the light. Moths fluttered around the light, the beating of their wings added to the paranoia inducing isolation. Despite being in the capital city, everything was segmented, quieted, and foreboding, as if he had broken some taboo, and was sentenced to an existence as a wayward specter, to haunt the quieted streets of a muted world. 

Despite the recent boom in the city’s housing development, urban decay had made the south and east side into a chanty town, occupied by the living hopeless. Walter couldn’t even remember the last time he had a real nice steak dinner. The last time he even tasted still hot red meat was…the memory was blotted out by unexplored guilt. 

Walking off into the darkness, his footsteps echoed on the unseen sidewalk. No cars were on the road, the usual starlight array of lit apartments and buildings were darkened, no one can afford the luxury of having lights on anymore. 

Even wax for candles was a rare treat, best saved for get togethers, or those rare moments of reading a book late into the night. The further he walked from the streetlight, the more quiet the city became, till as if all at once, it went silent. 

He thought he might’ve gone deaf, till he realized he could hear his breathing and footsteps. Continuing on, he heard the short echo of each step become less bombastic in comparison to the soundless void, till eventually he could no longer hear them. 

‘What the Hell.’ he spoke aloud, but no sound came from his mouth. 

Confused, he started to exert his lungs in an afford to make any audible sound. Pushing any noise out of his straining throat, left it sore, and he felt as if something tore inside his neck tendons from the effort. After recovering from a sudden coughing fit, Walter realized he couldn’t make  sound. 

Was he deaf? Mute? Or trapped in such Twilight Zone nightmare? Whatever the case, he had become light headed, and stumbled into a dark alley. Feeling himself tumble over a overstuff garbage can, he felt his coat become soaked with refuge juices. Shaking off the mucky liquid from his coat, he straightened himself, and saw he was in a abyss, a infinite voice of utter darkness. 

Looking back—darkness. Forward—darkness. Up, down, left, and right—darkness! The air was thick, and he no longer felt the walls of the building around him, as he felt as if he was floating miles off the ground, into the empty expanse of outside space. 

No sound. No sights. No air. He struggled to breath, as if there was a pair of familiar hands wrapped around his neck. Scrapping at the leathery limbs, he couldn’t even scrape dead skin from the thick hide. Coughing, croaking, he felt his neck shrink two sizes as his head went light. 

Just then as if someone flickered on a light in the dark room, he saw his reflection in a pair of reflective, black lenses. Blue in the face, he saw behind a masked of black, metal mesh, he saw a expression of pure hatred. Before he could no longer manage to opened his eyes, he could’ve sworn he recognized the face under the layers of metallic mesh, but he didn’t have the concentration to keep focused. 

Death came to him in a fetid head at the back of his skull, as his brain slowly died, he couldn’t use any of his senses—except for a sense of utter despair. 

Walter Bhigs died without hearing his silent stalker, who before casting him into the depths of hell, deprived him his faculties. One by one, he left the man knowing what death felt like, just so he wouldn’t be too surprised when the Silence finally reaped his traitorous life. 

***

Detective Bricks and Detective Litman, looked at the body of a Marcrien Family bagman, who despite being strangled to death, had over fifty grand, cash on his body. 

“I don’t like this Lits.” Bricks threw out his coffee, losing the stomach to finish off the vile brew of gas station caffeine. 

“You’re contaminating the scene!” a rookie from CSI blurted out, unaware of the loose standards the department had for certain procedures. 

“Hey Joey, tell the new blood to shut it will ya’!” Bricks’s words smacked the newbie upside the head with the swiftness of a brick thrown by a Major League pitcher. 

“Don’t worry Bricks, I’ll give him the talk.” Joey answered back, as he butted out his cigarette against the walls of the alleyway. 

“Don’t make it sound so sordid.” Bricks looked back at the victim, which Litman was examining closely with his eyes half covered by his bushy, blond mop top. Adjusting his own thick, small spectacles, he squatted neck to his partner, as he looked intently at the victim’s neck. “What’s up Lit? Find a nickel?” 

“I found a peculiar formation on the bruises around the neck…the suspect was wearing rather unique gloves to leave these unique pattern indentations—” Litman rose up from his observation and snapped his fingers at the closest photographer. “—you! Quickly take snaps of the neck, before the indentations disappear.” 

“Why you so eager on this one?” Bricks rarely seen his partner so intense with crime scenes before, usual mob related killings were as interesting to him as a HIV positive hooker was to Bricks. 

Litman didn’t say anything at that moment. Nearly a hour and a half passed before they got into their car, after gathering the information they needed to file their report. 

Then once Litman started the car, he suddenly answered Brick’s long standing question. “One hand was bigger than the other.” 

Bricks was used to having a delay to his question, but without a proper caffeine fix, he was slower on the update, that time around. 

“What?” 

“The left hand had long fingers, but the right hand had big, meaty hands…either two people strangled one victim—” 

“Or Frankenstein ran out of matching parts for his monster.” Bricks’s sarcastic remarks, didn’t endear himself to Litman. 

“This is important Bricks.” 

Bricks rolled his eyes. “More important than beating the lunch rush at Stacy’s Diner?” 

“...Bricks…someone outside the mob is killed this guy.” 

Bricks tried to feign some understanding at the importance of what he just learned. 

“A vigilante? You’re worried that some nutcase is icing the mob? Do you realize how that isn’t our problem?!” Bricks sighed, and waited for Litman to speak, but he didn’t.

Not during Lunch, or when writing up the report. Instead he just gathered files upon files, anything about Walter Bhigs. 

Eventually he uncovered a cold case file, about the Oden Wold murders.