Dan smiled. He bent down, and stroked Deke’s head. “Stay! Don’t move, Deke!”
Deke whined momentarily, but laid down with his head on his paws. Dan turned around to face the pack. “There you go. Deke won’t hurt you. As to my giving you everything on my person, that’s not happening.”
The leader snorted amusement, dancing around a bit with his two companions enjoying the show. He stopped suddenly, sweeping the blade of the knife an inch away from Dan’s neck. Dan didn’t even flinch. “You think you bad, huh O.G.?”
“Nope,” Dan replied. “I just don’t give a shit, kid. My wife and best friend for decades passed away and left me behind. It’s too bad you didn’t work your knife instead of your mouth. Unfortunately for you, my friend cares more than I do about me for some reason.”
“Who you talkin’ about, old man?”
“That would be me.” Nick streaked around the leader’s two companions, and buried the seven inch blade of his knife up through the leader’s chin into his brain. He pulled it free, and slashed the throat of the man nearest the leader. The third man turned to run, but stopped short as another blade pierced his heart in a jolt of thrust from yet another knife. “Nice timing, John. I hardly heard you at all, El Kabong.”
“Thank you, Nick.” El Kabong wiped the blade of his knife on the twitching body’s jacket. “It’s chilly tonight. I’ve got spatter on me, and so do you, Muerto. We’ll have to hope Gus remembered to pack extra jackets. That punk even got blood on your mask.”
Nick pulled off his mask. Even though there was only moonlight, Nick saw the splatter on his new black Muerto mask. “Damn it! I just received this yesterday.”
“Uh… Nick… I thought this was supposed to be a turnover of bad guys to the police,” Dan said.
Nick put his arm around Dan’s shoulders leading him in the opposite direction a few steps. “I may have neglected to mention this Dan - when I was building this op as a great endeavor for the weak of body and head. El Muerto doesn’t like courts, jurors, and especially lawyers. Sure, if these three would have dropped their weapons, knelt on the ground, and clasped their hands behind their heads - while begging for mercy those other poor old couples didn’t get, that they mugged on their two month long rampage, maybe they would have seen another day.”
“Not to show disrespect, El Muerto, but you didn’t allow them even a few second’s time to surrender before you and El Kabong stabbed the shit out of them,” Dan replied, kneeling next to Deke, aware of the dog’s aversion to the smell of blood, especially on bodies he had nothing to do with.
Nick wiped his blade, while looking over Deke. “So… what’s your point?”
“Officer Dickerson will be displeased when it was only a couple of days ago he asked you to put your keen writer’s mind to work helping him find the muggers terrorizing our small community. I think he had it in mind to arrest and bring them to trial.”
“Instead, my buddy Neil will find these three hoodlums, complete with weapons. Let’s get some facials so we can send them into our other interested party, Kabong. I’ll do the DNA swabs. You do the facials.”
“Yes, Muerto.” John used his iPhone to take the pictures and a short video while Nick gathered DNA swabs to put with the pictures in order.
“You getting all this, Payaso, my silent partner?”
“Yes, Muerto, I’m keeping my mouth shut while you and Kabong go on another bloody rampage. I’m awaiting orders for pickup. If it weren’t for Fang and Geezer, I’d leave you bad boys to walk home. When we planned this, we were to alert the police before those three ever reached Geezer, while we covered him in case the cops were slow.”
“I wanted Kabong to practice his woodcraft. Besides, I read what they did to that old man and his wife a few days before Neil called me in for a consult. They beat the two senseless. The old man died in the hospital. I didn’t feel like paying a hundred and fifty grand each per year while they incarcerated these three. Okay, I’m done Payaso. Drive by when we get to the other side of the street.”
“Wipe your feet before you get in the car, and strip anything with splatter off before you get in the car.”
“Yes, Dear. Anything you say, Dear,” Nick joked as he led the way to the street. The ground fog had increased significantly, which worked to make the three men and Deke nearly invisible until they reached the other side of the highway in the lights from Gus’s new Ford Edge. “Strip down Kabong or Payaso will nag the shit out of us all the way home.”