The lab door swung open, smacking against the wall with an echoing bang! Valco’s shoulders jumped up and his thinning hair bristled up like a frightened cat. He unconsciously slapped his folder of notes closed and made sure the small glass vial was still secure in his coat pocket. He wasn’t ready to show it, not yet. He spun around to find a stout, apish man shuffling through the door, clipboards, files, folders, and rolls of schematics stuffed under each arm. His beady eyes starred at Valco for thirty uncomfortable seconds before he angrily barked: “What are you doing here?” His Russian accent was thick as cold molasses; so impenetrable it took Valco another thirty seconds before he realized what had been asked.
Valco pinched his eyes shut and sheepishly shook his head. “Sorry, couldn’t sleep… Well, I don’t really sleep, in general,” he admitted. “So, I was just hoping to get an early start.” The man seemed so familiar, though Valco couldn’t determine why. He hadn’t seen him at the facility, but he couldn’t shake the feeling he had met him before. He tried his best to place a name to the face, but came up empty. “Have we met before? You remind me of someone, though for the life of me I can’t remember who… Name’s Harrison Valco,” he said, extending a hand.
The man’s lips snarled as he glanced at Valco’s hand. “I know who you are, Dr. Valco,” the man curtly replied, adjusting the items under his arms before charging past Valco toward one of the workstations. “I am Dr. Metchnikoff,” he added as an afterthought as he tossed his collection onto the table.
“Pleased to meet you, Dr. Met-shin-cough,” Valco struggled. He unconsciously scratched the back of his neck. He recognized the name, but once again, couldn’t place it. “Do you have a first name?”
Metchnikoff began stacking his files, folders and clipboards haphazardly in four separate corners. “Yes,” he replied, ending the conversation as he unrolled the first schematic, placing the corners underneath his wobbling piles of paperwork.
“Ah,” Valco sounded, thinning his lips in frustration. He walked across the lab back to his workstation, flopped down onto his stool and watched Metchnikoff move around like a cat chasing a fly.
“I was working on other projects,” Metchnikoff said, his back turned to Valco. “A mist, which took some time to solve.”
Valco’s ears perked up and his brow furrowed. “Sorry?”
“They needed my talents elsewhere,” Metchnikoff continued, his head hunched down as he shifted through his files. “Many other projects, all with very smart men, but no one with this,” he said, tapping the side of his head. “So, they take me here, they take me there, make me work, make sure I earn my time. Always busy, busy, like bee buzzing about.”
“Well, that makes one of us,” Valco replied, voicing his frustrations. “They’ve practically kept me locked in this section every day, won’t even tell me what it is I’m really working on.”
“You have not seen my machine?” Metchnikoff asked without lifting his head, his accented voice piqued with surprise.
“Excuse me?”
“My machine,” Metchnikoff reiterated, slightly lifting his head to look over his shoulder. “You have not seen it? Why have they not shown you my machine?”
“Oh, um, no,” Valco stuttered in confusion. “I don’t think so.”
“They did not show you my machine!” Metchnikoff shouted in surprise. He turned his whole body around to look at Valco. The large curved smirk stretching across his ape-like face reminded Valco of a mischievous young boy who had come across road kill. He got out of his seat and twiddled his fingers. “Come, I will show you,” he beckoned, moving toward the far door Valco had never been able to open. “You will be most impressed, yes.”
“Oh, yes, of course,” Valco murmured as he followed the squat scientist. Valco realized he stood nearly a head taller than Metchnikoff, whose back seemed permanently hunched. Standing so close to Metchnikoff, Valco had that same nagging feeling in the back of his head that told him he knew Metchnikoff, but that was impossible. “Where are you from?”
“Florida,” Metchnikoff offhandedly replied as he dialed in a long series of numbers in to the door’s keypad. There were three audible clanks as the door unlocked, reminding Valco of cannon fire. Whatever was behind it, the Collective didn’t want anyone to get to it too easily. Metchnikoff swung open the thick, metal door, its edges padded with soundproof foam.
Valco followed Metchnikoff into the darkened room, their footsteps echoing. The door closed behind them, plunging the whole room into complete darkness before Metchnikoff flicked on the lights. Valco’s eyes took a moment to adjust before he saw the massive machine looming over him. Built of glittering, riveted steel, the machine stood over a story tall, almost touching the ceiling. Its base covered half the room; gears, piping and pumps lined its sides, feeding into the back of the machine. Three large glass cylinders filled with the Substance were fitted into the side of the machine’s head; even at this distance Valco could see the black ooze shift and move within the glass. Clear plastic tubes led toward the machine’s unnerving end, a long needle surrounded by three sharp pincer-like claws. Placed a few inches from the tip of the needle was an angled operating table, leather straps for the arms and legs, a brace for the head. Valco suddenly felt his stomach drop.
“Exquisite, is it not?” Metchnikoff said proudly, slapping the side of the machine with the palm of his hand, clang clang. “My machine. I designed it, yes. They asked for something simple. Injections, ah, yes, a seemingly simple thing, but they did not understand the beauty of Substance, the fine care you must take in preparing it, moving it through the system before you inject into the test subject. They do not understand that… How important it is.”
Valco found himself frowning. “It’s looks very… painful.”
“Incredibly,” Metchnikoff replied with a toothy grin, too big for Valco’s liking. He placed his hands behind his back and sighed. “What do you think, Dr. Valco? Tell me it is not a thing of beauty.”
An instrument of death, Valco immediately thought, the pit in his stomach growing exponentially. Aloud, he said, “It’s a testament to human engineering. You must forgive me, Doctor; they’ve kept me quite in the dark about… Well, everything. The machine, what is it for?”
Metchnikoff’s smile fell away. He clicked his teeth several times as he eyed Valco, as if he were debating whether to tell Valco or not. “You will see soon enough I am sure,” he said eventually. He began to turn back to the door when he paused. He looked back at Valco, enigmatically tapping the center of his forehead. “It all comes around.”
• • •
FINGERS JORDON needed to calm his nerves. His body still hurt from the beating Nord’s old boys had just finished giving him. The inter-gang violence had gotten bad these last few years, each blaming the other for their respective downfalls, most ignoring the fact that it had been the Green Lama who had taken them all down. The arguments had begun like a high school spat—not that Fingers ever went to high school—with shouting across the cafeteria, ultimately leading to a full out brawl, complete with broken noses, shattered bones and more than a few stabbings. The guards had broken it up with batons, though two boys from Pete Barry’s old gang got a couple of bullets to the brain for charging a guard. Served ’em right, Fingers figured, working with Nazis. Fingers might be a criminal, but he wasn’t a traitor. Ever since the cafeteria battle, the turf wars had gone guerrilla, leading to vicious laundry room beatings like the one Fingers had recently suffered.
Sucking the blood off his swollen lip, he walked through the courtyard toward the Pencil. A narrow slip of a man, with yellow skin from jaundice, and a bald head sunburnt red like an eraser, the Pencil was one lead point short of fully living up to his nickname. Two train engines stood beside him, a pair of grunts with jaws that stuck out like cowcatchers and foreheads that kept back the rain. Fingers could never remember the names of the two train engines, but everyone knew the Pencil.
“You look like shit, Fingers,” the Pencil commented
as Fingers approached. His voice was always deeper than what Fingers thought possible, his black eyes like coals. He had one arm hooked around the left locomotive’s arm. Looked like they were switch hitters, Fingers realized. Outside the gates, guys like Pencil and the Engines would probably get dragged through the streets, but inside, the rules were a little different.
“Freddie, tell me you gotta cig,” Fingers begged, ignoring the Pencil’s remark. He wiped away the blood dripping down his chin with the back of his hand. He had known the Pencil from back in the days when he was only known as Freddie Sams working as an enforcer for Harlem Joe, stabbing people in the sides and hanging them upside down until they bled out.
The Pencil shrugged. “Maybe I do. Maybe I don’t.”
“Jesus, Freddie, cut the shit,” Fingers groaned. He would’ve rolled his eyes, but his eyelids were too swollen. “You have cigs or you don’t?”
The Pencil gnawed angrily on his lower lip. “No one calls me Freddie in here, Fingers, you know that. Pencil. That’s my name here and I like that name. Reminds people they can be erased.”
“And I know why everyone really started calling you the Pencil,” Fingers reminded him. He would have jabbed a pontifical finger at Pencil, but both index fingers were sprained and curled into trigger fingers. And it was probably best not to upset the train engines. “So let’s skip to the part where I get my smokes.”
“Rumor around the yard is you made yourself a nice little shiv,” the Pencil said with an audible sniff. “Always a useful thing, though it doesn’t seem like you used it today. Probably for the best, now that you need your smokes.”
Finger’s face fell. “They got the jump on me. Won’t happen next time,” he said as defiantly as he could manage. He shook his head, knowing it was a losing battle. “Dammit, I need it, Pencil,” he hissed through clenched teeth. “The fuck were you brought in here for, highway robbery?”
“Sliced a guy’s throat open in front of his kids. You shoulda heard them scream.” The Pencil paused in reminiscence and shrugged again. “Warden’s been keeping things tighter than a new slut’s ass, harder everyday to get things through; plus with that Cannibal Killer running amok down in the city there haven’t been too many shipments making their way up. Supply and demand, Fingers. Low supply, high demand. You’re demanding, I’m supplying. Capitalism. It’s what makes this country great. Besides, my boys might go on parole one day, and where would that leave me? Gotta prepare myself.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Fingers grumbled, resigning himself. He could always make another shiv. He dug into his pocket and brought out the thin metal blade and stuffed it into the Pencil’s narrow hand, where it instantly disappeared.
“Sweetheart,” the Pencil said to the locomotive on his right. “Give the nice man his cigarettes.”
The locomotive fished out three pitiful cigarettes that looked miniscule in the giant’s massive hands. Fingers snatched them out as quickly as he could and stuffed them in his pocket beside his remaining contraband matches.
“Pleasure, my friend,” the Pencil said with a broad smile. “Absolute pleasure.”
“Fuck you, Pencil,” Fingers growled, limping away.
“Line forms behind these two,” Pencil called after him with a broad wave.
Fingers moved over to a shadowed corner of the yard against the prison wall. He took out one of his bent cigarettes and did his best to straighten it to no avail. Fumbling with his matches, it took three attempts before he could light it, and of course, it tasted terrible. What did he expect? It had been a shit day; why not smoke a shit cigarette?
“Om! Ma-ni Pad-me Hum!”
Fingers closed his eyes in fear and irritation at the sound of the familiar whisper. Of course, he thought, his breathing ragged, his heart beating a thousand times a second. Everything else has gone wrong, why not this?
“Fingers Jordon,” the voice said.
“I’m in the slammer, dammit,” Fingers said through gritted teeth. He couldn’t make himself open his eyes. His hands were shaking. His cigarette fell loose from his hands and dropped down to the ground. He didn’t dare move. All the Green Lama needed to do was touch the back of Finger’s neck and his whole body would go limp, paralyzed from the neck down, leaving him unable to move for twenty minutes. Fingers had suffered through that before, he didn’t want to go through it again. He risked opening his eyes; trying to find evidence of his assailant, knowing it was a lost cause. No one saw the Green Lama unless he wanted to be seen. “Can’t you just let me be?”
“We meet again, Mr. Jordon,” the Green Lama whispered from the shadows, his voice seeming to come from all sides. “Our stars seem destined to come together at regular intervals. How are you?”
Tears began to pour down Finger’s battered cheeks. “Shit, shit, shit. Please don’t kill me, Lama. I’ve been doin’ my time, I ain’t never even tried to escape, not once. Hell, I didn’t even say nothing when you pinched my cousin Phil.”
“You have been here awhile, Mr. Jordon.”
Fingers sobbed as he nodded. Though he couldn’t feel it, his body was shaking violently. “S—since thirty-five. Over one thousand, three hundred days…”
“You know people, hear things.”
“I hear everything, anything you wanna know I’ll tell ya, I promise, just don’t… Please, don’t—” A pair of hands reached out from the shadows, grabbed him by the collar and lifted him off the ground. His feet dangled uselessly, the toes of his shoes just scraping the concrete. Fingers forced open his eyes, finding himself face to face with the Green Lama’s shadowed visage.
“Someone is coming after my companions, Mr. Jordon,” the Green Lama whispered. “That is something I will not tolerate.”
“Your—your companions?” Fingers sputtered. He couldn’t think straight. It had been four years since he had confronted the Green Lama, back when he was just another gangster in the Crimson Hand’s little army; shooting down Tri-American flights, robbing the city of Cleveland blind. It would’ve been great fun if it had all gone as planned—they would’ve all been millionaires—but no one took into account the Green Lama; how could anyone foresee a myth? A man dressed up like a Tibetan monk fighting crime, how could that ever be true? But like the burning bush to Moses, the Green Lama had proved to be terrifyingly real. Through guile and unexplainable abilities, the Green Lama had used Fingers—though tortured would be more apt—to bring down the Crimson Hand. Fingers still woke up screaming most nights.
“My friends,” the Green Lama said, his voice like rolling thunder. Fingers could swear the Lama’s eyes were beginning to glow a greenish-white. “My family. They killed Theodor Harrin; they took Gary Brown. It has been two weeks, who are they coming for next?”
“What? Wha—What’re you talkin’ about? I swear I don’t know nothing!”
“Don’t try and fool me, Fingers. If there’s one thing you never want to do it is lie to a man who defeated a god. You must know something.”
Fingers started laughing uncontrollably, tears still pouring down his cheeks. “Ain’t no one that goddamn stupid to go after you, Lama. You know how many guys you put in here? There are still some—some guys who…” The words got caught in his throat and his jaw quivered. “Guys who still wake up screaming about you,” he confessed, his voice barely audible. The Green Lama’s hands began to glow from within; Fingers could feel the slight heat rising off them, as the hair on his head stood on end from the electric charge. “All right! All right! Everyone’s been sayin’ that you been pickin’ off the big boys over the last few years. Takin’ out the brains behind all the big jobs like you did with Gandini and von Kultz. Making sure it sends a message that no one will ever try and take their place.”
The Green Lama’s grip slackened, the verdant aura in his hands and eyes dissipating in a whiff of smoke. “What?” he asked, sounding as though he had been punched hard in the gut.
“All I know is no one’s seen the Crimson Hand since you busted him. And that Russian s
cientist down in Florida? I’ve met guys who were in every slammer between here and Mexico and ain’t no one knows what happened to either of ’em,” Fingers replied. “After you busted them, they just—just disappeared. We all thought you killed them.”
Fingers waited several moments for the Green Lama to reply. He tried to read his expression, but the Green Lama’s face was hidden by the hood’s shadow—if that even was the Green Lama’s real face. Fingers could make out signs of greasepaint and what looked like a false chin. Beneath that though, the Green Lama’s skin had gone pale and Fingers realized the truth: The Green Lama had no idea what had happened to the Crimson Hand either.
The Green Lama let go of Finger’s collar and stepped back into the shadows. As Fingers fell toward the ground there was a rush of air as something shot into the sky. Fingers’ legs were wobbly, but he caught himself against the prison wall. He didn’t bother looking for the Green Lama, knowing he was already long gone.
Fingers couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something terribly wrong about it all. Someone was going after the Green Lama’s associates and not just finding them, but killing them too. More than that, the Green Lama hadn’t known Pelham and the other super criminals had disappeared. Whatever was going down out there, it was big; bigger than anything Fingers had ever been involved with, which was saying a lot. Fingers found his cigarette burnt down to a nub at his feet, ash kicked around like gray sand. He sighed, booted it away with the toe of his shoe and limped back toward the yard.
Looked like it was safer inside after all.
• • •
“YOU CANNOT go into an active crime scene,” Detective Fulton said, pointing at Caraway with a cigarette clamped between his fingers as the former Lieutenant paced around his and Crevier’s shared office. Crevier stood off to the side, massaging his eyes after having watch the two men trade barbs for the better part of the afternoon.
The Green Lama: Crimson Circle Page 14