Hell Hole

Cain knew he was a two-bit crook. That was jus’ the way it was and he accepted it.

“Besides,” he thought, “The bosses keep asking me to finish one job or another, so they gotta like how I get things done.”

Cain had been questioning his life-style the last couple of weeks. It all started when he met Rosie.

She was a show-girl and Cain was smitten. He also felt certain Rosie liked him back.

Unfortunately, she was tied up with Mick, who was also a penny-ante criminal, though Mick had no idea how small-time he was. To Cain’s way of thinking — that made Mick a purely dangerous man.

It was mid-afternoon when Cain’s phone rang.

“Yeah,” he answered.

It was Mick, “Meet me on the Mape’s side of the Lincoln Tunnel.”

“Okay, give me twenty minutes,” he responded as he hung up the receiver.

“Dumb fuck,” Cain mumbled as he picked up his car keys, “its Lincoln Alley — not tunnel.”

It wasn’t the first time Mick had called the alley-way downtown the tunnel. He was from back east originally and often screwed shit like that up.

Cain wheeled the old Buick into the alley and immediately saw Mick standing at the end, across the street from Reno’s newest hotel-casino. Next to him was a large rolled up piece of carpet.

“Son of a bitch,” Cain muttered as he pulled up to Mick.

He’d seen this before and while he didn’t know for a certain fact what was inside the rolled of carpet, he felt he knew it had been alive at one time. Cain knew it wasn’t a good thing to be too curious.

“Same place?” he asked as he got out of the car.

“Yup,” answered Mick as the two stuffed the roll into the sedan’s trunk.

They headed eastbound out of Reno and through the nicer part of Sparks. Highway 40 ran though both and out into the middle of Nevada’s wide open desert.

They were headed to a small place they nicknamed, “Hell Hole.” It was jus’ this side of the Nev-Mass Tungsten mine, on a dirt road, little used anymore and obscure to most anyone, unless they knew where to look.

Cain had been there before.

As usual Mick was shooting his mouth off – talking about one job after another. This was one of the reasons Cain thought of him as dangerous – should the syndicate discover how god-damned mouthy Mick was, he and who ever he was around, would end up dead.

Then Mick said something that caught Cain’s attention.

“Cock sucking whore was trouble,” Mick commented, hiking his left thumb over his shoulder, indicating the roll in the trunk, “So I did the Boss a favor. Besides I was tired of her shit anyways.”

Cain felt his grip on the steering-wheel tighten as he thought about Rosie.

It was the longest 45 minutes Cain could ever recall as he turned onto the dirt road that led to “Hell Hole.” And by the time he stopped the car, he wanted to cut the fucking Irishman’s tongue out and slice his throat.

As he turned the key in the trunks lock, he wanted to ask, “Is this Rosie?”

He fought off the urge, and lifted his end of the roll from the car. Cain tried not to think – only act – like he’d learned to do killing Nips in the Pacific a few years ago.

The pair moved over to the opening of the abandoned mine shaft, the one they labeled, “Hell Hole,” and in a back-and-forth rocking motion launched the roll of carpet and its content into the opening.

The roll slipped into the darkness of the maw with no difficulty. Both men stood there for a second as if listening for it to make a sound – which it didn’t.

Mick leaned over and laughingly called down into the hole, “Kiss my lily-white ass, Rosie darling.”

Cain, who’d already started back to the Buick, spun around. Again he didn’t think — he  jus’ acted.

He smashed his right foot into Mick’s leaning body. The blow sent the Irishman off-balance and into the hole.

However, Mick managed to jump forward a bit and was now clinging to the opposite-side of the smooth-edged mine shaft, struggling and clawing to gain a hand-hold. But he couldn’t, and instead slid into the black chasm and unlike the carpet roll, Cain heard his screaming as it faded away into nothingness.

It was the first time he’d killed a man since the war. He wandered back to the car and leaned against it, fishing out the half-full pack of Lucky Strikes from his jacket pocket.

He watched his hand tremble as he held the match to the tip of his smoke, marveling at the sensation. Cain couldn’t tell if he was more frightened at what he’d jus’ done or if it was the excitement of killing.

Cain rested against the car and smoked his cigarette until it was nearly burned down to his fingers. He flicked it away, reached back and slammed the truck of the Buick shut.

He then climbed behind the wheel.  It was a less-than-ten-minute drive back to the highway.

“Fucking asshole,” Cain stated as he turned onto 40 heading to Reno.