Blood Debt

by giving money to BC
    Hydro. "The recipient and his father will be getting on a plane in less than two hours."
    "It would be a lot more awkward if we infect him."
    They both considered the consequences for a moment.
    "All right." He took a swallow of the tea and then set the cup down on the table beside the bowl of fresh flowers Rebecca had always insisted on having in the kitchen. "I'll call. As long as he's not actually on the plane, I can get through to his father's cell phone. And the donor?"
    "We don't want him to talk…"
    "No. Of course not. All right, no difference between him and the others, then. Just get him out of the clinic as soon as possible."
    When the doctor had hung up and the milk had been returned to the fridge, he pressed the power button and dialed the buyer's number from memory. The conversation was, as he had anticipated, very awkward. However, in order to make a sizable fortune in real estate—
    even in the fast-selling Vancouver market—it was necessary to be a damned good salesman.
    Although he hadn't personally sold a property for some time, the old skills were still sharp, and it certainly didn't hurt that he was still the son's best chance.
    By the time he returned to his tea, it was cold. He drank it anyway.
    Rebecca had never minded cold tea and had often shared it with the cat. The cat had died for no apparent reason three months after Rebecca. The vet had shrugged and implied it might have been due to a broken heart.
    He envied the cat; its mourning had ended.

    "And in city news, violence connected with organized crime hit a new high last night with death tolls up into double digits."
    Fork full of scrambled eggs halfway to his mouth, Celluci stared at the radio.
    "Eleven men, including crime boss David Eng, were found dead in a Richmond floor-covering warehouse when employees of the warehouse arrived for work this morning. Some had been shot, but some appeared to have been savaged by an animal. As a number of the men are known to belong to the organization run by Adan Dyshino, police are assuming that negotiations of some sort erupted into violence. They are not yet certain that the death of Sebastien Carl in East Vancouver is connected and are now attempting to find his wife.
    Anyone with information about these or other crimes is invited to contact Crime Stoppers or your local police."
    "Yeah. Right." He snorted and continued eating. No one ever came forward with information about gang violence; the thing about organized crime was that it was organized. Witnesses were efficiently dealt with.
    So Vicki was safe.
    And then it hit him. Eleven men. Maybe twelve.
    Maybe more; unreported, made to look like accidents or like natural causes.
    All at once, he wasn't hungry. He stared down at the eggs, searching for answers in the pattern the salsa made against the yellow.
    Eleven men. Maybe twelve. All members of a criminal organization and, the odds were good, probably all killers. All men the world was a lot better off without.
    But still…
    The law had to apply to everyone, or it applied to no one. Whoever killed these men, no matter how much removing them might have improved things, had broken the law. Probably several laws. If it was Vicki…
    "You're jumping to conclusions," he snarled, shoving his chair away from the table. "Henry was out there, too. It wasn't necessarily Vicki."
    If it was Henry, did that make it any better?
    It didn't have to be either of them. "Two gangs together in an enclosed space, that sort of stuff happens. Probably had dogs with them." Opening and closing the kitchen cupboards, trying not to slam them lest he smash the etched glass set into the doors, he found three complete sets of dishes but no garbage bags. Vague memories of a laundry room sent him down the hall. It was behind the second door he opened and had obviously been used that morning.
    The washing machine was a European model. It loaded from the front like some of the big commercial machines and was supposed to use half the water. They were still incredibly expensive in North America and Celluci, who'd had to listen to one of his aunts extolling their virtues, wondered what happened in five years when the seal went and they flooded the laundry room. Vicki's clothes—jeans, shirt, sweater, underwear, sock, high tops; everything she'd worn the night before—were lying in a damp heap, cradled in the bottom curve.
    Eleven men. Maybe twelve.

    Maybe mud. Maybe a hundred other things.
    He put