Mad eyes widely scrutinize the blown-open, pulverized mug, as though fascinated, even captivated, by the total obliteration of its every physical identifier, save for the few teeth still left in the mouth, and perhaps the greater part of one ear, the other having been sheared off against the retaining wall just above the ice-filled Dnipro River.
A hand of stony bleeding knuckles hovers over the destroyed head, the rocky forefinger all but straightens out, as if to gently caress the blasted nose bone, its nasal septum flattened mush against lacerated purple cheeks and a torn-away upper lip exposing the upper jaw’s raw and blood-logged gums, turning what used to be a merely fat and sneering puss into a hideous death-skull grimace under the dim cold light flickering from somewhere above the quay.
And again, the monstrous fist begins to piledrive into the remains of the head – over, and over… and over… the entire occiput now just a thick soup of bone grounds and fragments moving against the concrete in a gel of brains.
“Mack… MACK!”
The fist freezes in mid-descent. Hank MacDonald, a still powerfully built man now in his 70s, sees the black military boot of his sharpshooter, Jonah Morne, nearly touching the sharkskin shoulder of John Smith’s dead goon. It is one of the two that had tried to kill Mack that day some months ago when Smith had summoned Mack for a meeting at the top of one of Podil’s most iconic hills.
A setup, gone agley. If it hadn’t been for Morne, Mack would probably be dead.
Okay, Smith went bad, sure; but why he’d want to off Mack, Mack could neither understand, nor forgive. Presently, half Mack’s rage is accounted for.
“Now for the other half…”
Without bothering to go through the pockets, Mack pushes himself off the body and strains up toward biped, refusing the offer of Morne’s hand.
“Mack, I thought you wanted to hunt this guy down for info on Smith. I had no idea you were going to liquify his entire head.”
“Smith? I have all the information on Smith his mother could ever hope for. At least now you know… now you know…”
“Okay. Now I know. So, what’s next?”
“Next? We take out the other one. Trukhaniv Island. We talk about it. Plan it. Then we go. And… and that’s it, that’s all I want. I’ve got to show ‘im. I’ve… got to show… Come on. Let’s get the f –”
“What about the body?”
“Leave it… just leave it… He’s got to know… he’s got to know…”
As an underscore, Mack slides a visiting card into the suit lapel pocket of the hitman’s remains that simply says “Mack”.
“Mack, Smith’s not even gonna see that. He won’t know it was… Mack, the cops, or the military, are gonna scrape this up, and he won’t even hear about it for another –”
“Oh, he’ll know, all right, Morne. He’ll know. I’ll make sure of that…”
xxx
“Tom, if you’re gonna shuffle off your mortal coil, you’re gonna havta try to shake yourself into the next room. I know you don’t want me to see it. You’ve got your little rug there. You’ll be more comfortable…”
Mack’s gray cat has had its face and front paws dipped in a shallow bowl of water as some imagined form of relief for the bad experience he’s been having – the worst of his life. Somehow, Tom barely lifts himself out of the bowl and plops face-down and flattened out on the living room floor – faded, warped, and broken Soviet-era parquet – wetting it all around.
“Tom, I’m not gonna take you into the other room; you’re gonna havta try to do it yourself.”
It looks like Tom wants to comply with his master’s not unreasonable request. He stretches out his quivering front paws before him, desperate for traction against the floor, his hind legs working in spasmodic, manic bursts to push himself forward from behind.
“Nineteen years a prisoner on Earth, and 18 of those held hostage by me. It’s a good day for you, Tom. Very soon, now, you’ll be free.”
Mack drains his tumbler of Maker’s Mark and pours himself half a tumbler more, as God helps slide the cat onto the threshold of the door into the room indicated by Mack, where he leaves him: the front half of Tom’s body in that room, not visible to Mack from where he’s sitting; the back half, still in the living room, visible.
“Good enough, Tom. Thanks. You were very good to me… My little Tommy…”
Mack takes a swig of the bourbon whisky, and finishes what he’s poured himself with the second swallow. He pours himself another half a glass.
“Shit. Look at me. I’m Jack Step.”
No real movement from the cat; just rapid breathing.
Mack thinks about the murder he’s just committed, and for some reason his mind swims the sea of memory, on the liquid raft of whisky, to his wife, Margaret, Maggie, Meg, nee Sinclair, now several years dead, reported by family to have passed away peacefully in her favorite chair.
Why had his son, Douglas, not told him when it happened? Maybe because, Mack guesses correctly, he was afraid his father simply wouldn’t come.
They’d gone to the same Protestant church as children, the broad-shouldered athletic boy Henry MacDonald being two years older than Little Meg, but then suddenly saw each other for the first time when their age of passion hit – those hot and tumbling yearnings lower down that never seem to stop, and change the way you breathe, and the suffering, and Little Meg not so little anymore.
And they eventually had Dougie, and that was all; and now Mack’s a grandpa; sure…
Mack hears Tom choking and gurgling, his lungs filling up. Mack looks over to the door and sees Tom in his death throes; the merciful final tremors running like weak voltage back and forth along the animal’s old, matted fur.
“It’s over.”
Mack thinks about the several framed pictures he has of his wife in one of the bedroom’s dresser drawers; and the few he has of his son, too. The bitterness of ruined time wells up in his eyes and flows out over the lids. Mack takes out his handkerchief and wipes them, and then blows his nose. He wipes his wet lips with a sleeve.
Because then she left him for a couple of years, to have another man’s kid. Sure, sure, Doug is his boy, it’s clear – a chip off the old block; the resemblance is unmistakable, if not uncanny. But why did she have to go and do that?
And then that didn’t work out, and the other man’s family took that kid – Doug’s half-brother, out there, somewhere – and Maggie… well, she came crawling back, as they say, to Mack.
But after that, it was never the same. And Mack had never really gotten the chance to raise his only son the right way.
And then… well… And then there was Ukraine… And then there was John Smith.
Mack looks up from the table into the living room’s middle space.
“Hey, there, Tom.”
The cat soul paces back and forth before Mack’s eyes, though some meters deep inside the ether; but had it been closer, Mack would not have thought to touch it. The cat has taken on the aspect of his old cocky self, as if showing off for Mack, to Mack’s delight, yet appears hesitant to part ways with his old boss, as though out of some concern.
“You go on now, Tom. You’re free. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be all right. I’ll be fine, now, Tom. You go on…”
But the cat continues to hover on, as though not altogether sure if he should go.
“Come on! Go on, now, Tom! You’re free, you’re free! Go play with your new friends. Go on! Go… go! Hey, now, Tom – go find Chubby…”
And at that,
Mack’s cat does scat.
Chubby had been Mack’s other cat, who’d died some years before; around the same time, as a matter of fact, as his wife.
Tom had never really gotten over it.
Filed by Steve Kowalski, Friday, February 13, 2026