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Episode 1: The Original Blueprints
Part 1
Once upon a time….
Bob “Little Bob” Du Nord shivered on the damp concrete floor of his basement laundry room. Blood oozed from a gash across his forehead and from deep purple bruises along his naked legs and chest. Where his knee-caps had been there was only ground meat with shards of bone, and raw meat and bone were all that was left of his elbows and the points of his hips. He moaned softly around a sock stuffed deep into his mouth.
Ned Maxilla stood over Bob. His denim apron was streaked with Bob’s blood but his messy shock of brown hair, dark grey dress shirt and blue jeans were spotless. In his right hand Ned held an aluminum baseball bat. In his left hand he held a shiny wooden bat. Both bats were smeared and spattered with Bob’s blood and the aluminum one sported a knee-sized dent about a hand-width from the top.
“Bob,” Ned said, “I gotta say this has been educational. I had always wondered what the difference was between wooden bats and aluminum ones and now you have shown me the light.”
Ned tossed the aluminum bat into the laundry tub where it spun once and leaned against the side. He pumped his fist at his perfect toss.
“Did you see that?” he asked Little Bob. “That was fucking perfect.”
Bob moaned but did not look up. Ned shook his head and hefted his remaining bat in both hands. He swung it down hard into Bob’s spine. There was a whump of wood hitting flesh and the audible crack of bone as Bob’s spinal column dislocated. Bob screamed around his sock.
“Pay attention, Bob. That was a primo toss you missed.”
Ned shouldered the bat and lightly tapped Bob’s bleeding head with the toe of a black dress shoe.
“If you would have payed attention maybe you wouldn’t be in this situation now. Huh? Does Mr. Capagio have your attention now?”
There were footsteps on the stairway but Ned did not look up. A woman came down the steps. She wore tight leather jacket unzipped to her navel and nothing underneath but a lacy pink bra which she nearly did not need and a shoulder holster with a snub-nosed thirty-eight tucked inside. Both bra and pistol were plainly visible. She was shorter than Ned and thin enough that the looked as though she were a teenager although no one who looked into her eyes would ever make that mistake. The woman’s eyes, her deep brown eyes, were arabesque and hypnotic. But, if you lingered long enough gazing into those gateways to her soul inevitably you saw a swirl and a flash and felt the primordial fear that lurks in deep shadows where light has never reached.
“Ned,” she told her partner, “finish him already. This is disgusting.”
“Your uncle said we were to make a statement. This is me making a statement, isn’t it Bob.”
Violet walked around Bob examining Ned’s handiwork while Ned examined the bat, frowning when he found a slight dent.
“Statement made,” Violet said. “Now finish him.”
Ned shook his head.
“Fingers,” he said. “Toes.” He reached into the chest pocket of his apron and retrieved a pair of pruning sheers which he waved at Violet with a smile.
Violet pulled the thirty-eight from its holster and fired into Bob Du Nord’s head splattering brains and blood across the floor and onto Ned’s shoes.
“Hey!” He grabbed a shirt from a basket and used it to wipe dripping pink goo from the black leather. “These are Italian.”
Violet holstered the gun and zipped up her jacket. She started upstairs.
“Guido likes things to be complete,” Ned told her.
Violet stopped halfway up the stairs, her head hidden behind the stairwell partition, her expression unseen.
“We don’t work for Guido, Ned. We work for Carlo. Bob was – he was Carlo’s best man. Pack up.”
She continued up the stairs leaving Ned wiping brains from his shoes.
“So this was Uncle Bob,” he said to himself. “Must suck to be you, Vi.”
When he was finished Ned grabbed both bats and started up the stairs. Violet’s voice came from the floor above.
“Leave the bats, Ned. That’s your statement.”
Outside on the gravel driveway Violet sat on her motorcycle, her teal helmet cradled in her arms. The black motorcycle and her black leathers would have rendered her nearly invisible in the suburban darkness but her short blond hair glowed like the moon. Somewhere in a far away yard a dog barked but it was distant and the killer was unconcerned. The cool autumn breezes blew through the dry leaves in a grove of oaks marking the far edge of the rolling property. A family of crows rose up from the trees and flew towards the permanent orange twilight of Minneapolis. Violet watched them pass as Ned exited the house and climbed into his black Crown Victoria. He never looked at Violet but simply started the car and drove away. Violet shook her head.
“Gonna have to kill that boy some day,” she told herself.
She started her bike and rode off east towards a late night meeting.
EPISODES
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