Read Online All Due Respect Issue 2 by Owen Laukkanen - Free Book Online

shut the door behind me.
    “Look, I don’t have much in the register, but you can…”
    “Where are they?” I asked.
    Delmar looked taken aback. “Who?”
    “Those civil rights kids.”
    “I dunno…”
    I cocked the gun.
    “Hey! Hey!”
    “Don’t fucking lie to me,” I said. “If there’s one thing I hate, it’s a fucking liar.”
    “Okay! Okay! I don’t know where they put ’em. I…I…I didn’t have anything to do with it. They just told me.”
    “Who?”
    “Roscoe Parker, George King, and Larry Smith. They’re the ones did it.”
    Roscoe Parker. Also known as Sheriff Parker.
    “What exactly did they do?” I didn’t really give a shit, but I thought the feds might like to know.
    “Well, uh, Sheriff Parker pulled ’em over and arrested them. Only he didn’t take ’em to the jail, he brought ’em to the club. He called George and Larry over, and…”
    He trailed off, out of breath. He looked like he’d just run a mile. Poor fat bastard, all sweaty and pale.
    It occurred to me that he was scared shitless. I snickered.
    “Okay. That’s all I wanted to know.”
    A look of relief washed across his doughy face. “Look, I…”
    I shot him twice. The first bullet hit him in the chest and drove him back against the wall, his eyes and mouth flying open in shock. The second tore out his throat, and splattered the wall behind him with blood.
    On my way out, I robbed the register.
    Outside, the wet Mississippi heat swallowed me whole; before I’d even made it to the car, I was drenched in sweat.
    I supposed I should call the office and see what they wanted me to do.
    Back at the hotel, I locked the doors, drew the blinds, and sat on the bed. I was just reaching for the phone when it rang, startling me.
    I chuckled and picked up the handset. “Hello?”
    “Mr. Merlino?” The voice on the other side was tight and stern, like a priest after he finds you gangbanging a nun with some other guys.
    “Hey,” I laughed, “I was just about to call you…”
    “Mr. Merlino,” the director said, cutting me off, “you are being paid to collect intelligence, not to blow people away.”
    “Oh, they find him already?”
    “Yes, they did.”
    “Well, you can’t expect me to ‘collect intelligence’ right if I leave a neat little trail of witnesses behind me. You know as well as I do that he would have called the cops and his butt buddies too, and this little spy and chase shit would be over.”
    “Did you at least get him to talk first?”
    “Yeah, I did.”
    “What did he say?”
    “Said the guys who did it are Sheriff Parker, George Smith, and Larry King.”
    “You mean Larry Smith and George King?”
    “Whatever.”
    “Did he say anything about bodies? There are bodies, right? They’re not being held somewhere?”
    “Nah. They’re dead. He didn’t know where they put ’em. Only the Three Stooges there know that little sweetheart.”
    “Well, we’re gonna need you to find that out for us.”
    “And then what, let the assholes get away? ‘Oh, don’t kill ’em; that’s awful.’ What do you want me to do? I beat one of ’em up, get him to tell me where they buried the bodies, and then I let him go and he tells his buddies and…what?”
    “Don’t worry about that. It’s not your problem.”
    “Fine. Fuck you.”
    I hung up.

    Once I was done fuming, I opened up the file and found the part about George King. Fifty-eight, King called himself the “Grand Wizard” or some shit. Guess that made him kinda like the don. I’ve never personally tried to whack a boss, but I know it wouldn’t be easy, so I skipped over him and went on to Larry Smith.
    Ol’ Smithy, it said, owned an auto shop outside town. Since it was hardly five, I decided to try there first.
    The drive took twice as long as it should have because downtown Louisa was closed. You’d think they’d never had a murder before.
    So, I had to take a detour. It was getting dark by the time I pulled into Smith’s Auto