No Rest 4 Wicked Botniks Chapter 17

Bobby Malone #9: Heaven, Hell, or Here

Tyler B. Morrison

Oct 20, 2023

Available for iOS and Android

NO REST 4 WICKED BOTNIKS

CHAPTER 17 Bobby Malone #9:

Heaven, Hell, or Here

Bobby woke up. That in itself was a pleasant surprise. Existence sure beats nonexistence.

It didn’t smell like sulfur, there were no infernal flames licking away at his toes, and no diabolical noise assaulted his ears, like Botnik Poetry, say. No demons or clowns or demon-clowns or clown-demons, and there was nary an ass-poker in sight. So whatever afterlife this was, it definitely wasn’t Hell.

The pleasant surprises were piling up.

On the other hand, there was no haloed damsel named Angel lounging around in a gossamer dress to take him up to the Pearly Gates with her dainty, sainty body. Faith, Hope, and Charity did not arrive out of the blue to propose a casual foursome. For that matter, this didn’t look a damn thing like the Old Falcon Saloon back in the Fort. He knew that place; it was where he belonged.

And he wasn’t puffing away on his smokes while arguing the finer points of alcohol with St. Peter, or teaching St. Paul how to cheat at Holdem. And he certainly wasn’t enjoying a medium-rare steak fresh from a sacred cow with the Big Man and his son, Jesus H. Christ. So this definitely wasn’t Heaven, either, or at least not one of his cartoonishly blasphemous private fantasies.

The soul of Bobby Malone didn’t deserve the straight shot to Paradise anyway. He was fairly certain he had avoided becoming Satan’s personal bitch in Cocytus, so that most likely meant that he had made it to Purgatory.

Bobby couldn’t remember enough of his Dante to recognize how that should look…

…But Purgatory probably didn’t look this.

He was bound to a wooden chair under a single harsh light in his face, surrounded by shadowed crates and barrels. Purgatory probably didn’t look or smell like an old musty warehouse, long abandoned. Probably…

A funny thought hit him then, later than it should have, maybe. Huh. Maybe he wasn’t even dead after all. He didn’t feel dead, but then again, what did dead feel like, anyway?

What Bobby did feel was tired and sore all over. His mouth was parched, his throat rough, torso and limbs felt scraped and bruised. He had a massive headache, and his thinking was muddled and confused. He tried to recall the last thing he could remember before ending up here, wherever here was.

—The Rusty Schooner, and the shootout-
-Russians trying to kill him-
-A botnik killing the Russians-
-Chaos, confusion, and utter destruction-

How had he survived it all? Miraculously, he hadn’t been shot. Not once, with all those bullets. How was that even possible?

Bobby had been so certain that he was a goner, he had just given up to tears and vomit and a fetal position on the floor. That’s why he had wondered a few breaths earlier if he had wound up in Heaven or Hell. Because coming out alive from that clusterfuck at the bar just didn’t seem like a real—-pardon the pun——viable option.

He would have to say a few more thank-you’s to his own personal guardian angel. Thanks, Gabe or Raphi or whatever your name is. Thanks again to the patron Saint of Lost Causes, and above all, thank you to the patron Saint of Lost Items. That was a deadbeat detective’s favorite, any day.

Thank God!

After a few more minutes, his head was getting a bit clearer. He had shaken off and sweated out some of the bourbon (and the threat of immediate death). Bobby Malone analyzed the facts of the night, and how they might fit into his one little case.

The night had devolved so quickly into violence, though, and none of Bobby’s questions had really been answered. In point of fact, Bobby had never had the opportunity to ask those questions in the first place. He was no closer to knowing why Allimay Jackson’s fiancé had been killed in what looked like a drug deal gone insanely, outrageously wrong.

No, wrong didn’t cover the half of it. Esteban Hill, the fiancé and apparent buyer, had lost both his eyes to some sort of energy blast and gained five slugs to the chest. The dealer, some low-life by the name of Danylets, had been neatly bisected at the belly button. And the dealer’s botnik muscle, an old Volgatech Svarog Mark IV, had been turned into a heap of smoking junk metal.

Overkill was an understatement.

After checking the crime scene firsthand, he minded his P’s and Q’s with his favorite badge in Envy: Jane Louise Carter. She was a good woman and a better homicide badge. After shooting the shit with Carter, he had checked in at all the dives near Murray and Fifth. He had finally gone to The Rusty Schooner to find out more about Danylets, to see who knew him and who answered for him, on the assumption that he had been on the bottom end of the Bratva food chain. Danylets had operated out of the Zadnitsa, after all.

Maybe the murders had been an internal matter with the Russians, or maybe it was part of a larger turf war with the Yakuza or one of the city’s other gangs. Hell, maybe it was one of the Cartels rising again, like they had twenty years ago.

But because of a disagreeable bartender and a trigger-happy bouncer unit, Bobby had learned absolutely nothing and almost died for the effort.

And now here he was——stuck to some fucking chair in some fucking warehouse by fuckers unknown. He couldn’t see any guards, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t being closely guarded. There were a few ways to find out, however.

Bobby tested his bonds, trying to jerk his arms and legs free, but it was no use. His limbs had all been thickly coated with a dense spray of Neat-0 Inc. Plastifast, gluing him in place to his seat. He’d need a gun, an authentic Bowie knife, or a damn laser to neutralize the foamy silicone-cement gunk.

Without the proper chems, he was definitely glued in place.

“Maybe this is Limbo,” Bobby groaned to himself.

END OF CHAPTER 17