We buried Jones at 2:00 a.m. in a vacant plot at old Stratsford Cemetery. Weren’t many of us there, just Andy to do the shovel work,

Victor to supervise, and me: the guy who ratted Jones out. No witnesses. Wouldn’t do to have news of Jones’ death become common knowledge before we could dig up our alibis.

Law frowns on slicing a guy into stew meat.

If anyone deserved killing, it was Jones. Yeah, he used to be my friend, but taking up with Victor’s sister, it just wasn’t right. Victor’s the boss, and that right there meant it was dangerous to mess with his kin. Then to treat her like he did? Yep, Jones had it coming to him. Jones told me about it this afternoon. And I told the boss. Victor put out the word to contact him if anyone saw Jones or Nancy. Yeah, I ratted. Friendship is one thing, but what I felt for Nancy, what we all felt for Nancy, well, it went beyond loyalty.

Blonde hair with an angel face and ways to match: Nancy was such a pretty little thing. Used to be, anyway, before Jones got hold of her. And like many a woman before her, she was taken with Jones’ brawn, bluster, and bronze good looks. Jones could’ve been one of them models in an ad for the Adonis Fit Club. Hell, even his eyes looked bronze, shining like they did and full of flirt. We took care of his eyes, though, didn’t we? Took care of the rest of him, too.

At first Jones snuck around, meeting Nancy on the quiet, at out of the way places he thought Victor wouldn’t know about. They’d frequent seedy little dumps, the kind where the “a” in the Vacancy sign sputtered and flared and refused to stay lit. Just another way for Jones to show Victor no respect. Nancy deserved them four-star joints, nothing but the best for the boss’s sister.

Jones would meet her, liquor her up and have his way with her. Sometimes his way wasn’t so friendly like. Jones had a jones for giving pain. Got him off real good. I know because he bragged to me about what he did to one of the women before Nancy. Seems a man develops a taste for meanness and he has to feed that taste, no matter how it might spell his doom.

I guess tonight Jones decided to gorge.

Nancy met him up at the Anvil Inn, a little joint, the rooms not much bigger than ten feet square. He brought the booze and she brought her birthday suit, so they were all set up for a night of fun. Only Jones brought a few supplies Nancy didn’t know about. The handcuffs were no big deal. According to Jones, they’d used cuffs before. It was the ball gag that got her nervous. That and the surgical instruments Jones brought in after he’d secured her to the bed. He put that gag in nice and tight. Nancy could barely scream past the ball stuffed in her mouth. She managed though, oh yeah, she managed. The desk clerk alerted Victor. But by then it was too late.