Cleaners

A successful murder is like a successful restaurant: Ninety percent of it is about location, location, location.
Three men in black hoods knelt on the waterfront warehouse floor, their wrists and ankles trussed with heavy plastic zip ties. There were few lights. They knelt over a large, faded stain on the concrete floor, left behind by the hypocritically named White Council of Wizardry during their last execution.
I nodded to Hendricks, who took the hood off the first man, then stood clear. The man was young and good-looking. He wore an expensive yet ill-fitting suit and even more expensive yet tasteless jewelry.
“Where are you from?” I asked him.
He sneered at me. “What’s it to y—”
I shot him in the head as soon as I heard the bravado in his voice. The body fell heavily to the floor.
The other two jumped and cursed, their voices angry and terrified.
I took the hood off the second man. His suit was a close cousin of the dead man’s, and I thought I recognized its cut. “Boston?” I asked him.
“You can’t do this to us,” he said, more angry than frightened. “Do you know who we are?” Once I heard the nasal quality of the word are, I shot him.
I took off the third man’s hood. He screamed and fell away from me. “Boston,” I said, nodding, and put the barrel of my .45 against the third man’s forehead. He stared at me, showing the whites of his eyes. “You know who I am. I run drugs in Chicago. I run the numbers, the books. I run the whores. It’s my town. Do you understand?”
His body jittered in what might have been a nod. His lips formed the word yes, though no sound came out.
“I’m glad you can answer a simple question,” I told him, and lowered the gun. “I want you to tell Mr. Morelli that I won’t be this lenient the next time his people try to clip the edges of my territory.” I looked at Hendricks. “Put the three of them in a sealed trailer and rail-freight them back to Boston, care of Mr. Morelli.”
Hendricks was a large, trustworthy man, his red hair cropped in a crew cut. He twitched his chin in the slight motion that he used for a nod when he disapproved of my actions but intended to obey me anyway.
Hendricks and the cleaners on my staff would handle the matter from here.
I passed him the gun and the gloves on my hands. Both would see the bottom of Lake Michigan before I was halfway home, along with the two slugs the cleaners would remove from the site. When they were done, there would be nothing left of the two dead men but a slight variation on the outline of the stain in the old warehouse floor, where no one would look twice in any case.
Location, location, location.


Brief Cases, Even Hand, Page 143-144