Free Nightjack by Tom Piccirilli Page A

sent a rainbow pinwheeling into darkness. He brushed shards of glass from his wide shoulders and shook it from his hair.
    “It’s a neat trick,” Pace said. “Most people don’t realize how easily safety glass breaks. It’s designed that way in case a car ever goes off a pier and sinks underwater. There’s no way to open the door or roll down the window then, because of the water pressure, so you just tap the glass with a screwdriver or nail file and it gives way.”
    “I shall remember,” the bull said with a slight Greek accent, “if I ever drive off a pier.”
    “You’re Vindi?”
    “You do not recall?” The voice had a certain heavy resonance with the hint of a growl, a touch of implied menace.
    “We’ve met before?”
    “Yes, several times. We were quite friendly. On that ward, in the institution.”
    “You were there?”
    “Visiting.” Vindi shoved his huge nose forward and peered into Pace’s eyes. His beard drifted in the breeze. “I see you have not been taking your medication. You seem as ill now as when we last met. You do not react well to treatment.”
    “What do you know about it?”
    “I know everything about you, Mr. Pacella.”
    Inside him, a few different people were yelling and trying to grab his attention, but they drowned each other out. Maybe Pacella was still around despite Jack’s best efforts to kill him. The schoolteacher hiding somewhere deep, grading papers, preparing exam questions. Reading Renaissance poetry, maybe drinking cocoa. The fucker actually used to drink cocoa. Jane bringing it to him on a tray, with a dish of almond cookies. She wanted to kiss him with a mouth full of wine and he wanted to sit there and drink frickin’ hot chocolate. He’d hold the cookie with just the tips of two fingers, so afraid to get stains on his books. Seated in front of a small fireplace in a leather chair that cost him half a year’s salary, in a room covered with dark cherry paneling because it made him think of England, a place he’d never been. Learning how to smoke a pipe but never really enjoying it, as he paged through Browning, Keats, Burns. Sipping the cocoa, wiping those two fingers on a silk napkin.
    It was no wonder the guy had to go.
    Pace shifted the handle of the screwdriver in his fist, holding it the way he would grip the handle of a blade. All these wise guys packed big guns loaded with hollow-tipped and mercury-filled hotshot shells that exploded on impact and chopped a guy up to pieces inside. The bodyguards carrying oily paper bags full of zeppoles, cannolli, and Napoleons for their bosses. You never drop the zeppoles. Trying to juggle the bags and get their guns out at the same time. They liked to show off their .45’s and .357 Magnums with barrels so long it took like eight seconds to draw them fully out of their holsters.
    Jack could have a liver on a plate in eight seconds. By the time the goombas got their weapons free they had five inches of stainless steel in the throat or between the ribs. The Ganooch boys too stupid to know they were dead, still holding the zeppoles while a river of red froth sluiced across the floor.
    “You know everything about me?” Pace repeated. “Good. Then you’re the one I want to talk to. I’m a little mixed up on some things, and my psychiatrist isn’t helping. She’s got her own problems.”
    “Yes, she is ineffectual. And deeply repressed.”
    “Okay, so give me the details.”
    It tickled the Minotaur so much that he let out a snort. Vindi displayed an uneven row of thick, yellow teeth. All this effort to affect elegance and style, yet the guy wouldn’t get his teeth capped or trim the beard. He was totally gratified that he could get away with being so repulsive.
    “I’m serious,” Pace said.
    “Oh, I know you are. That has always been your most dire ailment. How uncompromising and Spartan you are. It is ultimately what led to your initial mental collapse. The first breakdown, and all those that