What You Break

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  I slung the shotgun back over my shoulder and got my old service Glock out of my jacket pocket. I had to go through the steel door and onto the shop floor. The door, which I had been through once on a previous visit, was heavy and had only a slit of a window in it. That slit wouldn’t give me much of a view of who or what might be waiting for me on the other side. As powerful and loud as the Benelli was, a long barreled weapon was unwieldy to use coming through a door.

  I looked through the window slit, moving my head from side to side to see as much of the shop floor as I could. It was fairly dark, none of the higher-intensity factory lights were on, but it was far from pitch black inside. Skylights in the factory roof provided some ambient light. I saw nothing moving on the floor at all. I gripped the handle, turned it, gently pushed open the door, and stepped through.

  62

  (SATURDAY, LATE AFTERNOON)

  After I eased the door shut behind me, I let myself calm down before moving again. Pressing my back to the closed door, I listened. For what? For anything. For everything. But there was nothing to hear. No screams. No shuffling of feet. Nothing at all except for the sounds of my slowing breaths. Through the windowed wall at the opposite end of the shop, I saw the overhead lights were on in the corridor that contained all the offices. There was no movement there, either. I tried to remember if I’d seen a door marked UTILITIES or UTILITY ROOM during my previous visits, but it was no good. I assumed, mostly out of wishful thinking, that it had to be where the offices were. It didn’t really matter. I couldn’t stay where I was much longer. I had no idea of how long Alejo would be out of it. I had to get a look inside the Box and I couldn’t leave Spears alone for too much longer.

  I checked my watch. Although it felt as if an hour had passed since Spears crashed his car into Ryan’s, less than fifteen minutes had actually elapsed. I put my service weapon back in my pocket, took the shotgun in my hands, and moved as carefully and quietly as possible to the area on the shop floor where the Box was located. As I moved, I kept an eye on the corridor windows. I was almost there when Cuchillo’s silhouette appeared in the corridor. I froze, feeling as naked and exposed as the day I was born. The only cover I had was a shadow thrown from the corner wall of the Box. Cuchillo took his face away from the glass, moved down the hall, and opened the door onto the shop floor.

  “Alejo! Alejo!” he shouted, his voice bouncing off all the hard, flat surfaces.

  When there was no reply, he shook his head, said something I couldn’t hear, and began to close the door. But he stopped, opened it back up, and peered into the darkened factory. He looked right at me, right through me. He seemed to sniff the air. He hesitated, then finally closed the door. I waited until he disappeared from view before moving again. The clock was really ticking fast now. If they were already getting impatient for Alejo, they would find him soon enough.

  I stepped around the corner as quickly as I dared and found the thick steel door to the Box, which was kind of a cross between a bank vault and a restaurant refrigerator door. Once again, I exchanged the shotgun for my old Glock. I knelt down and touched my ankle where I had the baby Glock holstered. If I walked into something unexpected, the ankle holster was a kind of insurance policy. If they took the Benelli and the big Glock away from me, they might not think to check me for another weapon. When I stood up I didn’t waste any time. I yanked on the handle. The door must have been counterbalanced because, in spite of its girth, it opened as if it weighed only a few ounces. As the door pulled back, a light came on, and what I saw inside made me sick.

  To my left, along the wall, neat row after neat row of assault-style rifles, AR-15s and M4s were lined up in racks, waiting to be packed. There were several large computer-controlled milling machines at the rear of the room, but most of the Box was dedicated to a weapons assembly line. There were several long, parallel benches with bins of various rifle parts next to each of the assembly stations. Some of the stations had bench vises, coil-corded power tools hung from outlets in the ceiling at other stations. There was no plasma cutter here, no tanks full of exotic or flammable gases. I pocketed my Glock, took out my cell, and thumbed to the camera icon. I started at the rear by the milling machines and worked my way forward, documenting every aspect of the manufacturing and assembly process.

  There were partially assembled rifles all along my path, but what I’d found most interesting were the piles of rectangular aluminum slugs by the milling machines and what those machines turned them into: lower receivers for assault rifles. The receivers were the business components of the rifle. The place where the firing mechanism was housed. The place where you locked in the clip. There were no markings of any kind on the receivers: no numbers, no place of manufacture, no nothing. These rifles would be completely untraceable weapons—ghost guns. I’d heard about ghost guns for many years, produced only on a very small scale in the garages and basements of overzealous gun enthusiasts, Second Amendment advocates, and antigovernment hate groups, but this was doing it on a large scale.

  Suddenly I understood the whys and hows of things. Linh Trang and Lara had either seen inside the Box or spotted something wrong in the paper trail. After all, the other rifle components had to come from somewhere. Maybe the invoices didn’t match up with what the bosses said was being produced. Maybe too much money was coming in. A thousand things, large or small, might’ve caught Linh Trang or Lara’s attention. Gyron made the weapons and the Asesinos sold and distributed them. I remembered what Alvaro Peña had said to me about how the Asesinos were recently flush with cash. No wonder. There were long lists of potential customers for ghost guns, and most of them scared the shit out of me. Drug cartels and white supremacists were the least of my worries. With these things available on the street, it was easy to imagine a scenario where terrorists got hold of them, walked down Sixth Avenue or into the Smith Haven Mall at Christmas, and sprayed innocent people with clip after clip until bodies were piled three deep. I was picturing that when I heard something at my back: someone racking a slide.

  “Don’t turn around, asshole. Put the shotgun on the floor,” Carl Ryan ordered, his voice thick with menace. “When it’s on the floor, kick it forward.”

  I didn’t argue.

  63

  (SATURDAY EVENING)

  I placed the Benelli gently on the floor and kicked it less gently back toward the milling machines.

  “I also have my old service piece in my pocket,” I said.

  “Same drill.”

  I did as I was told, but if I thought that would satisfy him, I was wrong.

  “And the ankle holster, dickface,” he said. “I’m not an amateur.”

  When I had unstrapped the holster and kicked it toward the back of the room, he told me to turn around.

  Ryan, a SIG in his hand, was flanked on his right by Cuchillo, holding Spears’s .38 on me, and on his left by a heavyset, older man with sleepy eyelids, holding a shiny automatic pistol aimed right at my chest. Now everyone was accounted for, but too late to do me any good. Both Cuchillo and the fat man had the vulture/skull tattoos on their necks. Ryan waved his index finger at me.

  “Come on, Murphy, let’s go. We’re gonna have a nice painful little talk and then I’m gonna kill you and Spears.”

  At least Spears was still alive, but I wasn’t exactly comforted. They backed out of the Box and waited for me. When I stepped through the door onto the shop floor, Ryan kicked me in the balls. I went down and puked up what was left of my lunch onto the floor. I struggled to get my breath back, to come back into my own head and body. Before I could, though, he was leaning over me, shouting at me.

  “You nosy motherfucka. Lara worked here for almost twenty years and because she was hot for you, she had to stick her fucking nose into things. Now she’s dead, asshole. That’s on you. That’s on you!”

  He swung his foot at my chin, the edge of his boot tearing open the skin along my jaw. I was bleedin
g pretty badly, but he hadn’t actually make very solid contact. I faked it, sprawling back onto the floor and closing my eyes. It was all I could do not to get sick again as I landed face first in my own vomit.

  Ryan, leaning over me again, spit on me. He missed my face. “Fucking glass-jawed pussy! Cuch, get him into the utility room with his friend. Jorge, go find out where that moron Alejo is. I ask him to do one simple fucking thing and he can’t even do that shit.”

  I heard what I assumed were Jorge’s feet heading toward the loading bay door, metal filings scraping between the soles of his work boots and the cement floor. A steel hand clamped itself around the front collar of my jacket and began dragging me ahead. When I thought it was safe to peek, I opened my eyes just a slit. Ryan was walking ahead, fast. Cuchillo was a strong bastard. He was almost keeping pace in spite of pulling my weight. Just as Ryan was opening the door that led from the shop floor into the office corridor, someone, Jorge, called out.

  “Cuchi, ven rápido. Hay un problema. Ven rápido!”

  Cuchillo said to Ryan, “There’s trouble.”

  “Go see what’s up. I’ll handle him.”

  Cuchillo let go of my jacket, the back of my head thumping to the floor. I was still woozy and nauseated from the kick in the groin. Ryan slapped me across the face.

  “Get up, motherfucka. Get up or I’ll kill you right here.” Ryan pressed the SIG to the side of my face.

  I tried, but couldn’t manage it, not at first. Then, on the second try, using the wall, I propped myself almost upright. I wasn’t sure how walking would go, but I was pretty motivated not to die. I opened the door and took a tentative step through into the hallway.

  “Go right, asshole.”

  Using the corridor wall for support, I took slow, measured steps. At the bend in the corridor toward the offices, was an unmarked, black steel door I hadn’t even noticed when I’d been there before. Light leaked out the bottom of the door into the hallway.

  “In there.”

  Some of my strength back, the nausea almost gone, I turned the handle and pushed in with my shoulder. My eyes immediately focused on the body in the center of the room, Spears’s body. He wasn’t moving and I couldn’t be sure he was breathing. What I could say was that his face was a pulpy, red mess and that his eyes were swollen shut. His lips were wrecked and pieces of his shattered front teeth were on the floor next to his head. There was a puddle of blood by his left hand and then I saw his left pinky and ring finger were missing.

  “Tough motherfucka,” Ryan said, admiration in his voice. “He didn’t give you up until Cuch cut off his ring finger. Sit down on the floor.” He pushed me in the back with the SIG.

  I sat down close to Spears. He was unconscious, but still breathing.

  “When Cuch gets here, it’ll be your turn, Murphy, and he won’t be cutting off your fingers. Or you can make it easy on yourself. You tell me who you’ve told about this, which one of your old cop buddies you’ve clued in, and I’ll just shoot you and him. Don’t tell me now and you’ll look worse than him. Worse, because it will be Cuch to start with, then I’ll be doing the hurting. It’ll be me. We got machines in the shop that’ll do some awful bad things to the human body. You ever see what people look like after shop accidents? Either way, you’re gonna tell me.”

  “Let’s trade,” I said.

  “You’re in no position to trade.”

  “Okay, fuck you. You try your best to get those names outta me. Who knows, maybe the cops are on their way.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I know why you killed the women. They must’ve caught on to what you were doing here. But where did you kill Linh—”

  “Right here,” he said, anticipating the question. “Rondo did her right where you’re sitting, right after we had her punch out. She was happy to cooperate after we forced half a bottle of scotch down her throat and told her we’d cut her fucking finger off and do it for her, that fucking pain-in-the-ass gook cunt. She was a ball-breaker from the moment she got here. What about this invoice? What about this check? I shoulda fired her ass the first week. Then she came in that Saturday and came looking for me on the floor about petty-fucking-cash receipts. She was told a hundred times never to go on the shop floor or anywhere near the Box, but she just couldn’t fucking behave.”

  “And how did you get Salazar to do it?”

  Ryan laughed. “He volunteered, the crazy motherfucka. He said he was probably going to go away for killing a MS-Thirteen guy over a drug dispute. These guys are the craziest motherfuckas I ever met. When it comes to their gang shit, I stay out of it. Helps me keep breathing.”

  “But they had Salazar killed.”

  “Like I said, when it comes to their gang shit, I stay out of it.”

  “And Lara. Christ, Ryan, you knew about her kid and you still—”

  “Shut up.”

  But I didn’t shut up. “Do you know what they did to her? They gang-raped her—”

  “I told you to shut the fuck up.”

  “After they were done raping her, they beat her to death with baseball bats. Nice partners you got.”

  He charged at me, screaming, “That’s on you! That’s on you.”

  Ryan smacked me across the left side of my face with the SIG. Unlike the glancing kick that had cut my skin, the gun made solid contact at the back of my jaw. It was like getting Tasered with a sledgehammer, pain shooting up into my head, my mouth, my neck and shoulder. I felt it in the fingers of my left hand. My face swelled up almost immediately.

  “They did that to her to teach me a lesson,” he said, distraught. “They thought I was getting sloppy, that I didn’t deal with you the right way, and they weren’t happy about having to kill one of their own. So they were gonna show me how to do it and what happened to partners that disappointed them. That’s why they tried to have you killed that night, too. They warned me that next time it would be me. They said they could always find some greedy Anglo to do business with.”

  He went silent, looked at his watch, turned to the utility room door. I didn’t move. Didn’t say a word.

  “Where are those morons?” Ryan mumbled loudly enough for me to hear.

  He turned toward the door, took a step, and raised the SIG. But when there was a sharp rap at the door and the handle turned, Ryan lowered the gun. The door flew open and locked in place.

  “Where the fuck have you guys—”

  He never finished the sentence. He never took another breath. Instead there were two hushed metallic barks and the back of Ryan’s skull exploded. Blood, bits of bone and brain sprayed Spears and me. Ryan’s body plopped to the floor like a handless sock puppet.

  Lagunov stood in the doorway, removing the sound suppressor from the barrel of his gun, his face as impassive as if he had dropped an envelope through a mail slot. Stepping into the room, he pocketed the suppressor, holstered the weapon, and shook his head at me. But it was me who spoke first.

  “It took you long enough to get here. Another few minutes and he might’ve killed me.”

  The corners of his mouth lifted in spite of himself. “You are very brave, but foolish, foolish man.”

  “I do what I have to do,” I said. “Where are the others?”

  He nudged Ryan’s body with the toe of his shoe. “This man has plenty of companions for his travels in the next life.”

  “All dead?”

  “All.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I, too, do what I must, but you took a dangerous risk. What if I had already gotten to Slava and eliminated him while you and this man here were doing this operation? My employer’s interests would have been seen to and the cavalry would not have come to save you.”

  I smiled at him, my jaw aching as I did. “It was a safer bet than you think.”

  That actually unnerved him. “Why do smile at me?”
/>
  “Turn around very slowly and look for yourself.”

  What he saw when he turned was Slava standing in the doorway, the Benelli raised in firing position.

  “As I have said to you, Gus Murphy, you are a resourceful man.”

  64

  (SATURDAY EVENING)

  Slava spoke in Russian to Lagunov. I didn’t understand a word of it, but the tone was clear enough. When Slava was done talking, Lagunov placed his holstered pistol, another one holstered to his ankle, a nasty-looking combat knife, and an ASP on the ground at his feet. One by one he kicked them to Slava, who did not move an inch. Neither Slava nor I had to be reminded of how dangerous a man Lagunov was. He had left proof in blood all over the premises, some of it at my feet.

  Lagunov turned to me. “You will kill me here or at a different location?”

  “We’re not going to kill you at all unless you force us to.”

  He looked relieved but confused. Neither expression fit his perpetually chilly, stoic face.

  “If Slava killed you and ran,” I said, “what would that accomplish? Your employer would just hire someone to take your place, and that man would eventually find Slava, wherever he was. That and your employer might take my part in this as an insult to him, putting not only myself but all my loved ones at risk. I get the sense your successor would not be as . . . polite as you have been with me.”

  “I am afraid my employer would demand my successor do whatever was necessary to not repeat my mistakes.”

  “And even if we could elude your successor and his successor, one of them would get either or both of us sooner or later. Sooner, more likely.”

  “Agreed.”

  “So, you see, Mr. Lagunov, all three of us have a problem.”

  “How would you suggest we resolve it?”

  “Slava and I want a meeting with your boss.”

  Lagunov laughed and said, “You are joking, no?” He turned back to Slava and said something in Russian, probably repeating what he had said to me.