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Ten minutes later, two bags of miscellaneous cake stuff and three five-pound tubs of icing heavier, the Defender was heading north.
He glanced over. Rocko was blinking the blood out of his eyes from the second whack. He had an incredibly thick skull.
“Try not to get blood on that cake stuff.”
“Fuck you,” Rocko said, shaking the blood off his face and onto one of the tubs of fondant.
Shane sighed. “You set up the Two Rivers hit. Who hired you and who was the target?”
Rocko turned his beady little eyeballs toward him. “Who are you?”
Shane sighed. “My name is Shane.”
Rocko spit on him. “Fuck you, Shane.”
“Rocko, we can do this hard or we can do this easy. You got paid five thousand for a contract You subcontracted Vinnie ‘Can of Tomatoes’ Marinelli two thousand to do the actual job. He subcontracted it to a dumbshit named Macy for five hundred. Both Vinnie and Macy are dead. I killed them. The job isn’t done. So whoever paid you isn’t gonna be happy. Who paid you?”
“Fuck you.”
Shane crossed an old turn-bridge over the Savannah River. He saw a sign for the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge and turned off, drove down a one-lane dirt road, then onto what could barely be called a track until he was pretty sure they were deep into the swamp. Then he stopped the Defender, got out, went around to the passenger side and opened the door, quickly stepping back, Glock at the ready. “Get out.”
“You going to kill me?” Rocko demanded.
“Not if you tell me what I want to know.” Shane reached into his pocket and pulled out an airline voucher. “Then you take this to the Savannah Airport, get on a plane, and no one around here ever sees you again. Got it?” He slapped the voucher down on the hood of the Defender.
Rocko’s eyes shifted from the voucher to Shane. “Bullshit.”
“Who gave you the contract and who was the contract on?”
A very large alligator basking in the sun about fifty feet away was eyeing them, perhaps sizing them up for a snack. Shane squinted. The gator had a scar where one of its eyes should have been. It was a hard life everywhere, even in the swamp. The one-eyed reptile slid into the water with a splash and began to lazily move toward them.
Rocko heard the splash and glanced over his shoulder. “I took an oath. I ain’t violating it.”
“What are you talking about?”
Rocko frowned. “To make my bones with the mob, I gotta stick with the oath, right? I can’t violate the contract. It’s like, ya know, that doctor-patient thing. Or when a lawyer talks to a client.”
Spare me from idiots, Shane thought. “That’s movie bullshit.” A mosquito landed on his neck and took a bite. Halfway from its resting spot, the gator had paused, sizing up the situation with one eye. Shane figured it had more brains than Rocko.
Rocko’s head moved back and forth on his bull neck. “Can’t squeal. Mob oath.”
“Mob oath. You telling me Don Fortunato hired you?” Shane asked.
Rocko’s eyes widened. “You from the Don?”
“If I was from the Don, would I be asking you if the Don hired you?”
The furrow appeared in Rocko’s forehead as he tried to figure that out. “I’d like to work for the Don.”
Scratch the Don, Shane thought. He saw the muscles in Rocko’s shoulders begin to bulge and he knew what he was doing and he also knew that the plastic flex-cuff probably wasn’t going to hold. The tattoos on Rocko’s arms were rippling now from the effort. A naked woman on the right bicep was swaying seductively.
“Rocko,” Shane said with a deep sigh. “I really don’t want to kill you. But I will if you come at me. Think, damn it. There’s no mob oath if you’re not working for the mob. So you can tell me.”
The flex-cuff went with an audible pop and Shane shot Rocko in the left thigh as he started to charge at him. Cursing, the weightlifter grabbed the leg and hopped about.
“I told you not to do that,” Shane said.
The gator was moving forward again, smelling blood.
