Note that this book is still under construction
Hardcore
Note: Two of the characters in this story, Veronica Gianni, and Chris Szala, go by nonbinary pronouns, they/them/their.
For the world is Hell, and men are on the one hand the tormented souls and on the other the devils in it. —Arthur Schopenhauer
Part One Sub Rosa
That which is done in secret
Chapter ONE
V tikhom bolotye, chyorty vodyatsya – A Russian saying meaning, In the quiet swamp, demons are found.
∞
Tuesday, February
Elizabeth, New Jersey 10:00 pm
Tanner Harrison unlocks the door of his mother’s house and once inside, drops a black gym bag on the floor, and throws the keys on a table with a sense of angry urgency. He’s on his phone.
The friend on the other end of the call tells him, “So there’s this guy who’s been asking around about you.”
“Who?”
“Some guy named Gabriel Ross.”
“What? The private eye weirdo? I thought he was dead.”
“Well, someone who says he’s Ross has been asking around.”
Agitated, Tanner starts searching the small two-story house. The house has a few expensive items—mostly electronics, and otherwise nice middle-class conservative furniture. The house belongs to Tanner’s mother. He has a room upstairs, his old room, decorated in Early American dirtbag ne’er-do-well.
Tanner briefly stops in his room and his closet, smelling of unwashed clothes, old beer, and weed. He takes out a shoebox and opens it to grab a S&W .32 and checks that it’s loaded. “What’s he asking about?”
“He said he wanted to discuss things with you.”
Tanner shoves the gun down the back of his pants. “He’ll be dead for reals, he comes around again.” Tanner speaks with the bluster and aggression of one who’s never been in a serious throwdown. “You see him, let me know.” Tanner ends the call. Now for why he’s here.
Tanner is a medium-tall white man in his early thirties, on the wiry side. He wears faded jeans, faded boots, faded tee, and a faded hoodie. He has unruly longish brown hair and hazel eyes, currently scanning the house for things he could grab along with his objective. For that, he goes to his mother’s room. She is currently in the hospital with some such woman thing. A good time for him to get what he needs. And that is in her closet, in a locked wooden trunk. He opens the closet door in triumph, and then slumps in shock. A shiny new padlock on the trunk thwarts his objective. The trunk is too heavy to move easily.
Tanner then stalks around the house seeking a hammer or bolt cutter or something, but can’t remember where his recently deceased father kept his tools. Mom might have sold them, the stupid…Tanner curses more, calling his mother nasty names for the unspeakable crime of not having tools for his use to steal from her. He opens a hall closet and in his haste, knocks a can of scouring powder off a shelf and down his front.
Sweating, he heads into the nearby bathroom, resentfully kicking aside the faded bathroom rug. He starts running water in the sink. When he reaches for soap, it suddenly occurs to him there is a man sitting on the toilet tank, feet on the bowl lid.
Tanner whirls around. The man sitting on the toilet tank is Gabriel Ross. And he’s holding a remarkably large gun, a Glock 40. Remarkably large guns aren’t necessary to kill people, but they do have a psychological effect.
As does a person’s reputation. Tanner is somewhat daunted, but not enough to think he can’t get out of it—his type never is. He puffs himself up to look like Jon Berenthal as The Punisher, a character he cheers without understanding. He fails to look anything like Berenthal, but that doesn’t stop his attitude. “What the fuck are you doing here? What do you want?”
Ross doesn’t move nor show any distress. Tanner is unnerved, knowing Ross was supposed to be hospitalized or dead. Yet here he is with the Glock. Tanner raises his hands but draws back his right elbow, preparing to reach back for his own gun. In the fantasy of his badassery, Tanner will get the drop on this guy and dump his body in the Passaic with the rest of the river’s corpses for the day.
Ross is speaking: “Stop moving. I can shoot through both your knees before you pull your piece out.”
Tanner quickly reviews what he knows regarding this New Yorker. Not afraid of breaking laws, violence, or getting hurt. May have connections, serious connections. Might be insane. A friend of a friend who was locked up in Union County Correctional saw what Don Mathers looked like after a fight with Ross and said it looked like a horror film. He is supposed to be a do-gooder but some say he spread that rumor when actually he is a hired killer. Some think he took out mob assassin Stephen Cody and that’s why no one has seen Cody after his alleged escape.
Ross speaks in a somewhat raspy monotone. “Where is the money you stole from your mother?”
“Fuck you.”
“No thanks. The best thing you can do is take your leeching ass somewhere across the country and never bother your mother again. Tell me about the money and I will walk away.”
Tanner, in the manner that small-time criminals demonstrate a lack of critical thinking, decides that Ross is all talk as he’s gay, and so can’t possibly be as tough as Tanner himself. He shifts his posture slightly, smiling. “Did she hire you? Fuck that. You’re not what they think you are. A real killer would have done something by now.”
“Oh, really? Well, perhaps “they” did not tell you about my secret weapon.”
“What’s that, assh–”
Something hits him in the kidneys. Tanner cries out in pain, and is in shock that Ross had not even gotten up.
It’s not him. Another person has come up from behind him. Tanner tries to turn around but the other person simultaneously pulls the gun from his pants and punches him again, causing him to fall over the bathtub. He looks up over his shoulder, gasping. The other figure is all in black, a hoodie covering their head, wearing dark glasses and a neck gaiter.
Ross seems impassive. He hasn’t moved. “You can still tell me before it gets worse.”
“You’re not going to kill me,” Tanner croaks. “I’m gonna have you arrested for trespassing.”
“No, you won’t. We’re here with permission, to protect the property. You don’t have a title to the house, and therefore you are trespassing.” Ross drops a paper in front of him in the tub, a court-ordered eviction, and then another, a restraining order.
Tanner slowly sits up, his back throbbing in pain. He’s used to getting his way through bullying and yelling, and being defied makes him snarl like a cornered dog. The legal papers don’t seem real to him. “She’d never fucking do that. Never.”
“Yeah, I know what you told her, that you were in debt to a drug dealer and needed her help. But she’s not handling this right now.”
“What–” Tanner starts to get up, but the other person in black points his gun at him. He stares up at the figure, still trying to grasp the situation. “So…what, my sister? You think I’m gonna listen to her?”
“Yeah,” Gabriel says. “A court did. So you will. Better you leave now.”
Tanner lifts his hands like he’s surrendering. “Fine. Whatever. Let me get my stuff. I’ll get that bitch later.”
“What does your “stuff” consist of? We can put it out on the lawn.”
“My bag! Just my bag. It’s by the front door.”
Gabriel moves off the toilet and leaves, presumably to check out the bag. Tanner starts to get up. “Stay the fuck out…” he stops when then black-clad figure raises their gun towards him.
“Jesus,” Gabriel says from the front of the house. “So many things here to get you arrested.” He picks out a set of keys and checks them out. “A storage unit. Interesting. This looks like the one you got your mom to pay for, so her name is on it but she’s never seen it. I bet that’s the place to check for the money. Time to move.”
The other person motions with the gun, and Tanner carefully climbs to his feet. He does not bother with the papers in the tub. He limps to the hall, and then the living room and the front door area, with the other person behind him. Gabriel is by the door with the bag at his feet. He holds up a bag of crystal from Tanner’s bag.
“Vitamins, maybe?”
“Fuck you.”
Gabriel shrugs and drops the meth in the gym bag. Tanner notices he doesn’t move fast. The other person seems androgynous but Tanner suspects it’s a woman. To Tanner, if the person was that confident in their abilities, they wouldn’t have dressed to disguise.
Tanner makes a final play, and he has a surprisingly good move. He lets his voice get whiny and says, “Hey, be careful.” He bends over to pick up the bag, but then swings it hard against Gabriel’s legs and carries the motion to smack into the person behind him.
Gabriel loses his balance and the figure in black stumbles back. An opening but not much; the person in black has fast reflexes. Tanner makes a grab for the gun in Gabriel’s hand.
A strange second that seems to last for an hour as the two men hold onto a gun both with and without thought for what it would do. The gun moves like a needle in a dial between the two of them. The figure in black grabs Tanner’s arm and moves up to his hand, trying to push him away from the gun.
Three people struggle over the gun, sweating. Fear and panic send hot wires of energy in Tanner’s arm and his hand trembles as he’s made the lizard-brain choice to shoot no matter what.
Sensing this, Gabriel and his companion inch closer to him, with the gun’s trajectory ever so slowly creeping past vital points. The person in black puts their knee on Tanner’s right calf and pins him to the floor. Gabriel uses that leverage to push him against the wall. Through their dual pressure, they work on prying him away from the gun. The sweat makes it hot and slick work. Any second, the gun might go off.
Maybe Tanner subconsciously gives up. Maybe the two get the best of him. Maybe an invisible force intervenes. Something happens, and Tanner’s fingers slip from the gun. Gabriel immediately moves away as the other person grabs his right arm and yanks it hard up behind his back. Tanner grits his teeth to not show pain from this person’s surprisingly effective grip.
Gabriel slowly gets up. He feels every bit of his injuries. But he holds the gun firmly. “Get out. Now.”
Tanner recognizes the end of the line. He has enough self-preservation to crawl away, reach for the bag, and then stumble out of the house.
Gabriel and his companion follow, to watch Tanner peel out in an old Mustang with rust on the panels.
The two collapse on the small cement porch. Veronica pulls the gaiter down from their face, which is red and sweaty. “We going to call the highway patrol on him?”
“Just a minute. I want to get in touch with actually still being here.”
They rest for a minute, breathing quietly. Both are exhausted and shaking from adrenaline and residual fear and anger.
They still have some things to do. Go to that storage unit, come back and change the locks, install a security system, and notify the client of the happenings.
“Don’t tell Joel about this…for now.”
Veronica nods. They don’t want to get involved with the conflict Gabriel has with his boyfriend about returning to work. “He’s working on his upcoming trip. He may not even notice we were out today.”
That isn’t true, although Joel has been alternating with mother-henning Gabriel about doing too much, with zoning out completely from the world around him. For a man who lived his life pretty much fuck you I do what I want he’s been damn hypocritical lately. Lecturing about taking precautions and then doing a 180 and disappearing into his phone.
They all have issues going on. It’s not something to deal with right now. Right now, Veronica just wants to appreciate being alive.