Dead of Night

by Blake Banner

  But even as I said the words to myself, in my mind, I could see Bradley’s diabolical face, bathed in firelight under the black sky of the desert, his eyes reflecting the dancing flames, his mouth twisted into a daemon smile.

  “You’re never out of options, boy. You’re just out of imagination.”

  And then the idea came to me and I smiled.

  “OK, Van Dreiver, you have a deal. When do I go and see this guy?”

  “You don’t. First you’ll see the manager of the bar. It’s called the Mescal, on Park Avenue, in South Bronx, Mott Haven. You know it?”

  “Yeah, I know it.”

  He picked up the phone. “I’ll make the call, you go over right now.”

  Chapter Three

  The Mescal Club was located just where East 135th Street becomes Park Avenue. It’s no secret, at least not to me, that the super rich and powerful in this world have a dark side. They like to get down and dirty sometimes. They like to slum it and flirt with the squalid and the dangerous. The Mescal Club was the ideal place to do just that.

  It was essentially a converted warehouse, set back from a dirty road, in a large parking lot beside the railway tracks. In stark contrast to the filthy street, the graffiti, the dumpsters and the chain-link fences, the club itself sported a purple awning trimmed in gold, a gold logo representing a peyote bud, two large potted palms flanking the door and a short strip of red carpet. There was no Renaissance fountain depicting Poseidon with a bunch of dolphins, but you felt there ought to be.

  When I got there it was six PM. The door was open, but it was quiet. I stepped into a lobby carpeted in red, with a small mahogany counter on the right. There was nobody behind it right then, but I could see a door to a cloakroom that had no cloaks in it. On the left there was a short flight of stairs, also of mahogany and also carpeted in red. Ahead there were heavy, padded doors. I went to them and pushed through.

  It was a large space with a high ceiling. A long, shiny bar made a dogleg from the left wall to the rear. There was a lot of booze behind the bar, and something told me they sold most of it most nights. To the right of it, six broad, wooden steps rose to a lounge area with sofas and big padded chairs. And against the right-hand wall there was a stage with steel poles where I figured the girls danced.

  The rest of the floor area was taken up with tables, each with a lamp and a flower, and sofas, armchairs and low tables flanking the walls and making cozy nooks in the corners.

  Sitting at the bar, at the far end of the room, were three guys. They were all looking at me. The guy in the middle was big, about six-six, with massive arms and legs and a back like an aircraft carrier. He swung slowly round on his stool to watch me. His head was big but his eyes were small and close together, making him look simian.

  On his right was a man in his late thirties. He had short hair, tattoos on his face and a pencil mustache. He had that look about him that some men get when they’ve lived a long time with violence, like they could have grown wise, but instead they’d gone bad, poisoned by all the hatred in their souls.

  On his left was a guy in a suit. He was tall and lean and his clothes were expensive. His hair was cut real short, the way Buddhists and ex-Russian military wear it. I figured him for the latter.

  The gorilla said, “We are closed.”

  “I’m here from Allied Security, Van Dreiver sent me.”

  “We’re still closed.”

  “I’m not here for a drink. I have an appointment to see Joe Chamorro.”

  The simian, who I figured was Joe, jerked his head at the pencil mustache. Mustache slid down from his stool and crossed the room to stand in front of me, looking up into my face. He’d had acne when he was a kid and his skin was pockmarked and oily.

  “You don’t hear so good? The man said the place is closed.”

  I felt a small pellet of hot anger in my gut. I spoke quiet and calm.

  “I hear fine. But repeating that it’s closed doesn’t change the fact that I have an appointment to see Joe Chamorro at six PM. Right now it’s six PM. Are you Joe Chamorro?”

  He cocked his head to one side. “I ain’t Joe Chamorrow, but...”

  I didn’t let him get any further. “Then get out of my face and get Joe Chamorro for me.”

  He closed his mouth and looked back at the gorilla. I jerked my head at him and said, “You, you’re Chamorro, right?”

  He nodded once. His face was impassive. I pushed the mustache aside and crossed the room to stand in front of the ape-man.

  “We have an appointment, at six. I’m here. You want to offer me a job or you want to measure dicks?”

  If he didn’t like my tone his face didn’t show it. “Dick said you been in special ops. That true?”

  “For the last eight years, Special Air Service, Iraq, Afghanistan and other places I can’t mention.”

  Mustache had come up beside me and was looking like he wanted to gut me right there. I ignored him and Joe asked: “You ever kill anyone?”

  I narrowed my eyes at him like he was stupid. “That was my job.”

  He grunted. “How many, one, two?”

  “I lost count, Joe. Ask your barman how many drinks he’s served in the last eight years.”

  There was a trace of a smile on his fat face, and his small eyes seemed to sneer. “We get fights here sometimes. People pull knives, break bottles. I don’t want no exhibition martial arts. I need a guy who can finish it fast and put the brawlers on the street. Can you do that?”

  I sighed. I was getting bored. “Yeah, I can do that.”

  Mustache gave me a shove on the shoulder. “Eh, you watch your tongue, gringo. You talkin’ to your boss. You watch your fockin’ mouth!”

  Joe was still watching me. The pellet of anger in my gut was getting hotter and I was running out of patience. I spoke quiet.

  “Tell your pet monkey that if he touches me again I’ll break his hand. Now, I am about through with this piss-ass interview. You have a job for me, make me an offer. You want to play tough guy, go play in the sandpit, boss.”

  Mustache stepped toward me, planning to thump me with both hands on my chest. I took his right wrist in my right hand, seized his fingers with my left and made like I was breaking kindling for the fire. I heard three of his four knuckles crack. His mouth opened to let out a scream. I took a small step with my right foot, and smashed him in the jaw with my right fist. I heard that crunch too.

  As he went down I stepped behind him and supported his weight long enough to pull the Glock from his waistband. Then I let him drop. I could see the alarm now in the Russian’s face and in Joe’s simian eyes. I ejected the magazine and put the pistol on the counter.

  “Are we done with the bullshit? Or do I have to put you two in hospital too?”

  Joe turned to the Russian, who gave a small nod. He turned back to me.

  “OK, you got the job. You start tonight, nine o’clock. Be on time. First week you man the door. After that we see.”

  “Yeah?” I shifted my gaze to the Russian. “So do I get paid, or am I doing this because Joe is such a nice guy?”

  The Russian spoke for the first time. “One thousand bucks a week. We declare five hundred. The other five is tax free bonus. You on probation for one month. After that we see about promotion. Tonight we sign contract.”

  “Agreed.” I showed him the magazine and set it next to the Glock. Mustache was beginning to moan on the floor. “Be advised, next time one of your clowns comes at me, I’ll break more than his fingers.”

  He closed his eyes and gave his head a small shake.

  “We must make small test. Now you are in family and Mr. Rusanov will make sure you are treat with respect.”

  The next week was a drag. Not much happened and Joe’s men stayed largely out of my way. Most of my work consisted of standing at the door watching for people with average bank accounts who were going to be a pain in the ass for people with above-average bank accounts. Occasionally there was a bit of pushing and shoving
, but there were no major incidents, until Saturday night.

  Saturday night Mr. Rusanov showed up at twelve midnight in a black Bentley. He had three girls with him whose combined ages probably almost equaled his. His car was preceded by a dark blue Audi and followed by another. Two guys in suits climbed out of each Audi and stood around the Bentley while the chauffeur opened the door for Rusanov and his harem. Then the whole entourage proceeded across the parking lot to the door. There the girls went in with two of the bodyguards and Rusanov, and the other two stopped to talk to me.

  He was sixty or sixty-five, in good shape, with big shoulders and hard blue eyes under a three-hundred-dollar haircut. His voice was the kind of tectonic disturbance that causes tsunamis. He rumbled, “Bauer.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I hear good things about you. I like.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Tonight maybe I have visitor. I don’t want visitor. He is Mexican motherfucker, Gregorio McDonald. He want my club. You make go away. OK?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good,” he rumbled a laugh and repeated, “Good.”

  He went inside and for the next two hours did the kinds of things rich bad people do when they don’t feel like watching TV or playing Scrabble. Then at two AM a red Ferrari pulled into the lot, followed by a Chevy van. I knew what the van meant, and suddenly felt acutely the loss of my C8 Carbine and my P226.

  The growl of the Ferrari died and a man in a cream suit with elaborate cowboy boots climbed out. From the other side emerged a perfect woman who had apparently been lobotomized shortly before having her face pumped full of Botox. They approached at a relaxed pace, he stroking his thin mustache, she clinging to his arm, watching the night with empty eyes. I blocked the door with my body. His face hardened. Before he could say anything I asked him:

  “Are you Gregorio McDonald?”

  “What the fock? Who the fock…?”

  “Are you Gregorio McDonald?”

  “I am Gregorio McDonald! Now get the fock...”

  “You can’t come in. Please leave, and tell your boys in the Chevy to get out of the parking lot.”

  “You get out of my fockin’ way, gringo. I wanna see Peter. He expectin’ me and when I tell him...”

  “You have to leave.”

  His face was crimson by now and he waved a finger in my face. “I gotta see Peter Rusanov! I got a business proposition for him! You let me in! Nobody tell me I can’t...”

  “For the last time, Mr. McDonald. You have to leave.”

  He screamed and screwed up his eyes. “Step aside or I fockin’...”

  He got no further. He had come too close. I slammed the heel of my right hand into the tip of his jaw. He staggered one step back and fell, but by that time I was past him and running.

  I knew I had three, maximum four seconds for the boys in the van to react. I got there as the side-panel door was sliding open. I could just make out a guy in denim with bare arms and an AK47 climbing out. I didn’t stop to think. I grabbed the door and put all my two hundred twenty pounds into slamming it closed again, biting deep into his forearms and his knee. He screamed with pain and dropped the assault rifle. I caught it before it hit the ground, took a large step to my right and emptied a short burst into the cab. Another step to my left took me back to the side door, which was six inches open with a denim leg and a disfigured bare arm hanging out. Inside I could hear raised, panicking voices. I shoved the cannon in and emptied the magazine. It took about three seconds, which when you count them out is a long time.

  Like I said, you can do that in enclosed places.

  When I was done I wiped my prints off the weapon and used the man in denim’s hands to smother it in his prints. Then I pulled him out and dumped him on the ground beside his rifle, and walked back to the entrance. The Botox Babe was standing by her man, rigid with terror and botulinum toxin. I hauled McDonald to his feet by the scruff of his neck and snarled at his woman, “Go away. Now.”

  She reached in McDonald’s pocket, grabbed the keys to his Ferrari and ran. I dragged him inside and shoved him through the padded doors into the throbbing, flashing nightmare that was the bar. I escorted him through the manic, shouting, grinning crowds and up the wooden stairs to where I knew Rusanov would be sitting.

  He watched me approach with McDonald and scowled.

  “I toll you, no disturb. No let this piece of Mexican shit in.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, but I thought you’d like to know that his boys just committed mass suicide in their Chevy van in the parking lot. One guy with an AK47 killed the five in the back, the two in the front and himself. This clown tried to force his way in and I had to break his jaw. I thought you might want to talk to him.”

  For a long while Rusanov was as expressionless as the Botox Babe downstairs. Then he said, “All dead? In van?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Fingerprints?”

  “All his.”

  If volcanoes could laugh they’d laugh like Peter Rusanov. He roared, then exploded, turned to the guy on his right and spoke to him in Russian. Two of them got up and took McDonald away. Rusanov gestured at me.

  “Sit! Sit here, near me, have drink, woman, you want coke? We talk. We talk about future for you. You have big future.”

  He laughed a lot again and I sat beside him and told a girl with no more than a tray and a G-string that I’d have a whisky, straight up, no coke. He leaned forward and slapped my shoulder with a huge hand and glared at me.

  “Tell truth, detail, what happen?”

  I told him truth with detail and he listened carefully. The naked waitress came and placed a tumbler of whisky in front of me and went away with blushing cheeks. When I’d finished and pulled off half of my drink he signaled to one of his boys, said something in Russian and sent him away. Then he leaned over to me and spoke above the noise of the music.

  “You are good boy, Special Ops. I like this. I have good job for you. You go home now. Take Clara if you like, or Zoe...” He laughed. “Or both! Have some party, relax. You been good boy tonight. Tomorrow you come back six PM. No more door for you. I have nice job for you. Nice job.”

  “What about my pay?”

  He looked away from me, like he wasn’t going to answer. I followed the direction of his gaze and saw his guy in the suit returning. He handed Rusanov a manila envelope. Rusanov looked inside and handed it to me.

  “Special bonus, my thanks for your services tonight. Ten grand. Now go, rest, relax, have fun. I see you here tomorrow, in my office upstairs. Go. I go talk to Señor McDonald.”

  I drained my drink and left, with ten grand in my pocket and a sick hollow feeling in my gut. I had no problem with killing the guys in the van, or what was going to happen to Gregorio McDonald, for that matter. I was pretty sure it was no worse than what he had done to many others. What was making me sick was my employer. I was working for evil, and that was bad.

  Chapter Four

  I didn’t take Clara or Zoe home. It’s not that they weren’t cute. They were. But I like to choose my own sleeping partners. And when I do, I like them to have a slightly wider vocabulary than, “Yes baby, right there, just like that baby.” Clara and Zoe were sweet kids, but I had a feeling that was about the reach of their conversation. Who knows though? Maybe they had complex views on world peace.

  I drove my beat-up VW Golf home, slept four hours and rose at seven thirty. I spent the day training and doing some research into Bronx gangs, Russian and Albanian mobs and offshore accounts. At four PM I showered and changed my clothes, and drove back to the Mescal Club, thinking about something Sergeant Bradley had said to me one night in the Lacandon Jungle, on the border between Mexico and Guatemala.

  We’d been lying among ferns on the banks of the Usumacinta River, eight miles northwest of Frontera Corozal. We were waiting for a riverboat. We had intel it was loaded with five hundred K of pure coke, a wholesale value in the States of about ten million bucks, but a street value of five times that.


  We were there because Her Majesty’s MoD was doing a favor for their friends in the Pentagon, and their friends in the Pentagon were doing a favor for their friends in the Distrito Federal. We had no legal status there and what we were about to do amounted to murder, discretely sanctioned by governments who believed themselves above the rule of law.

  When I said this to Sergeant Bradley, he’d snorted something like a laugh and said, “There are two things you need to remember in this world, Bauer: one, the most valuable commodity on this planet is not oil and it is not heroin. It is violence. He who has the most violence available to him, is the most powerful man on Earth. And the reason for that is the second thing you need to remember: the law we hold so dear is nothing more nor less than rules supported by the threat of violence. He who controls the violence, makes the law.”

  Five minutes later we had strafed the decks of the riverboat with automatic fire and breached its hull with RPGs, killing a dozen men and sending fifty million bucks worth of cocaine to the bottom of the river.

  That day, we were the law.

  I got to the Mescal Club at five minutes before six and climbed the steps to the office upstairs. I knocked on the heavy mahogany door and it buzzed open. The office was an oblong, thirty-five feet long and maybe fifteen or twenty feet wide. The walls were bare redbrick and the floors were polished wood. There was a desk at the far end, in front of a large, plate-glass window. In the middle of the floor there was a nest of armchairs and a sofa around a coffee table, and against the right wall there was a large, wooden dresser with a tray of bottles and glasses.

  Rusanov was sitting in an armchair with a glass of cognac in his hand, smiling up at me. On his right was the tall guy I’d met before, during my interview. Rusanov gestured me in.