Chapter II

Tom locked steely gazes with the German man and gently squeezed the trigger until the man’s skull spattered across the roof deck with alarming force, spraying hot blood over the newly planted flowers. Disgusted, Tom let the body slump to the floor where it joined the rest. He shuffled his feet to avoid getting blood on his shoes.

Sitting atop this pile of corpses, Tom wiped his brow with his .22 and rolled a spliff. So much death, so much carnage, and still he could not find Rusty.

With a bang, the door swung open and Tom whirled around, his glock at the ready. However, it was only Kenneth “Kenny” Spalla, Tom’s alarmingly handsome sidekick, adjusting his Bulls snapback with one hand and carrying a sack with the other. Lowering his glock, Tom growled, “what did you find?”

Wordlessly, Kenny unrolled the burlap sack. The heads of Harry and Gudo, the downstairs neighbors, hit the ground with a sickening thud. Their eyes were missing.

“No…” said Tom and he rolled Harry’s head off the roof and into the alley with the sole of his pristine Jordans.

“Where is Rusty?”