Free Mortal Kombat by Jeff Rovin

years, thirty of which had been devoted to crime. As his team grumbled behind him, he entertained himself by thinking back to some of the stories. Like the time he'd been sent to collect some overdue loans from a macho TV star who'd fallen on hard times.
    The prop department took my money instead of the fake money we were using in the scene, the actor had said as Kano held him by the lapels of his jacket. Just give me till tomorrow, I'll have it!
    Kano gave him three seconds to fall on more than hard times has he dropped him from the top of Coldwater Canyon onto a roof about two hundred feet below. And wouldn't you know it? The hero-sized dude landed in such a way that the house, one of those stilt jobbers, fell down the rest of the cliff, swallowing the actor in a big cloud of debris and smoke. The next day, the papers were all full of "Actor Brings Down House" and "Star Dies; Hairpiece Survives."
    Then there was the political candidate who borrowed a bundle to get elected. When Kano came to collect, the lady said Kano's employer would have to wait; she'd spent it on a voodoo priestess to ensure prosperity for her district. Kano let her live because she was a lady, but he took the James McNeill Whistler painting that hung in her office. His boss liked the portrait of somebody's dog Cerberus, and everyone was happy – except the lady, who was accused of stealing and got booted out of office. Funny thing was, her district ended up real prosperous.
    But this story... this one took the Nutburger of the Year award. Fifteen hundred years ago, a baby who can barely say two words sticks his finger in a bowl full of ink his father's using to draw a dam or whatever the hell this thing under the map is. The kid draws away, and when the father returns from going to the bathroom or whatever he was off doing, he sees the map all finished... on this very piece of goatskin. And then it really got weird. The father was convinced the map was dictated to the baby by a dead guy, and the whole family goes off searching for whatever was marked with a little fingerprint high upon this stinking mountain. No one knows what happened to them, or how the map got into the hands of the guy who hired Kano. But the old dude, Shang Tsung, paid him two million American up front, so who was he to say, " Nah... yer story's right outta 'The X Files'."
    Kano scowled as one of the four men and one woman behind him began complaining that he'd stepped in some kind of goat patty.
    "Hey!" Kano said, turning his grizzled face toward the man. "Cut it out! I hate to hear yammerin' when I'm thinkin'."
    "Like your thinkin' is doin' us any good?" the short, long-haired young man shot back.
    Kano's muscles tensed beneath his white windbreaker. "What d'ya mean by that?"
    "I mean, Chief," said Moriarty, "could we be more lost than we are?"
    The sentence was not quite out of the man's mouth when Kano spun and, with a cry, swung a roundhouse kick at his jaw. Moriarty barely avoided it by arching back, his arms pinwheeling as he tried desperately to keep his balance on the sharply inclined slope. Kano landed and simply glared at him as he struggled. The boss's left eye, the normal brown one, was angry, but his right eye, the infrared-vision artificial eye that was held in place by a metal faceplate, glowed with fury.
    One of Moriarty's companions, Michael Schneider, finally reached out a hairy paw, grabbed him by the front of his sweaty and foodstain-covered Jet Li sweatshirt, and pulled him back.
    "Thanks, Schnides," Moriarty said, glancing back at the drop. Had he fallen, he would have slid through about two hundred yards of woods and then dropped off a cliff into the river below.
    "Don't mention it," said the bespectacled Schneider, balding save for a short, gray ponytail. "Just remember that you owe me, is all."
    "I won't forget," Moriarty said. "Unlike some jokers, I know the lay of the land."
    Kano was still giving his man the hot-eye. His hands were tight fists, and even