Machine's Work: A Hyper-Violent Crime Thriller (Assassination City Book 1)

by Jack Cuatt

He steps onto the sidewalk. The drizzle has stopped, but the clouds remain. The sun's light bleeds through a bleak crimson-gray. He turns north toward the Bradley Hotel.

  The Bradley is one of the nicest hotels still operating in Low Town. The only better one is the Bentley Arms, south of the Free Zone, in an area currently being incorporated into New Town. The brick walls are going up. It will be New Town's Historic District. A canopy will cover the area so it can be enjoyed even on days when the wind comes from the chemical plant. The whole project is over budget by three million dollars and not yet complete, but the Christian Council is still very enthusiastic.

  The Bradley has a fine lobby showing signs of fatigue. Worn carpet, creaky elevators and dull brass, but it's still a reasonably reputable enterprise. Machine passes through the huge glass doors and crosses a lobby dotted with dusty fake plants and musty old sofas to a desk near the elevators. A clerk in a seedy tuxedo silently produces the key to Machine's room and passes it over along with an envelope. The hotel's name is embossed in the left corner. Machine pockets the envelope and turns from the counter. He bypasses the elevators in favor of the stairs. Elevators are too confining, natural traps. A lot of wetwork can be done between floors. He climbs up three narrow flights, TVs and voices on every side, and walks down the hall to room 312. Cautiously, he steps to the right of the door, uses his key then pushes the door open, and peers around the jamb.

  The lights are on; he always leaves them that way. The bathroom door is open. The bed is unmade. His open suitcase is on the dresser, clothes spilling over the edge. There's no ID, no letters or papers, no photos, nothing that could lead back to Machine. All of that is at his family's apartment in New Town. The only personal item is an open drawing tablet that lies on the bed beside a package of pastel pencils. The pages of the tablet are turned back to reveal a half-completed portrait of a young woman with brown hair and light eyes.

  Machine steps through, pushes the door shut behind him and locks it, then drops the grocery bag on the dresser and opens the envelope. He recognizes the handwriting. His father's. It reads simply, “4 PM Lobby,” in a slanting script reminiscent of barbed-wire. No salutation, no closing. Moses is not known for his affection.

  It’s been two weeks since Machine last saw his father, Moses Slaski, better known to the underworld of Low Town as Red Sleeves. That isn't normal: Moses counts on his son to take his back on most wetwork, but Machine hasn't questioned his father's absence. He had hoped the old man was finally dead: overdosed in a hotel room or shot down on a job. Either would have been fine with Machine.

  Moses Slaski is the son and grandson of mob hitters. His father, Machine’s grandfather, Alvin, had been gunned down forty years ago in a Low Town brothel. Alvin had worked for the Lucetta Family, one of five Italian crime families that had run Low Town in the old days. Alvin was a self-made widower. He had killed his wife when Moses was only five, dismembered her body then dumped it in the river. After that, Alvin took a liking to one of Don Lucetta's mistresses. Everything went smoothly until a drunken Alvin knocked the woman around one night, prompting her to confess the affair to Lucetta. Predictably, the Don ordered both Alvin and the woman killed. The work was carried out, but not before Alvin put twelve Lucetta soldiers down for the long-count. No one had stepped forward to take possession of Moses, so he was put in a foster home; a deteriorating twelve story hotel where refugee children were warehoused. It was there Moses met Vlad Kukov.

  As teenagers, Vlad and Moses formed a street crew that quickly gained a reputation for extreme violence. The aging Don Lucetta, always on the lookout for new talent, had brought the two into the Lucetta Family, a decision he would regret. In just four years, Vlad and Moses went from working for the mob, to working with the mob, to whacking out the mob. Moses himself took out Don Lucetta, after blow-torching and murdering the Don's two sons. Vlad became the new boss of Low Town and Moses became the crime family's chopper.

  In the years since then, Moses' services have always been in high demand. But lately, he's been slipping, getting sloppy. For years he's been gradually losing his mind. He’s hopped up most of the time, flying high on black tar. It started five years ago, when Machine was twelve. Mild doses of heroin at first, enough to make the old hitter's hands tingle and his mind go numb. Only when he wasn't working, to ease the boredom. In three months he was snorting coke and smoking crank to even out the junk-lows, doing all of his work wasted, killing for the hell of it. Walking a razor-wire tightrope toward the gates of hell, grinning sickly and white-knuckling his Smith.

  Machine isn't sure how much dope his father is using, but a lot of money has curled in green-gray smoke down his father's throat or been forced through a vein. And it's only a matter of time before Vlad Kukov finds out. And, when he does, Moses will be eating grass by the roots. But Machine plans to be long gone by then. The time away from his father has given him room to think. Free from Moses' dark, corrupted presence, he has made the decision. It's time he left the family business and took his mother, Connie, with him. By force, if necessary. She arrives by train today. That's what the note is about. Father and son will go together to the Metropolitan Station. The train from Pennsylvania arrives at 4:15.

  Machine's mother has been at the Stone Lake Pentecostal Asylum in Philadelphia. It's an expensive institution. All the richest crazies go there. The poor and insane go to the brain changers or the prison farms. This has been Connie's fourth trip. She's cured, again, and back to the source of her problems, Moses Slaski, Red Sleeves.

  But not for long.

  In the past two days Machine has gathered all the cash from the bank accounts in New Town, the safety deposit boxes and the stash at the apartment. Almost a quarter of a million dollars. Enough for a fresh start.

  Machine strips off the overcoat and baseball cap and piles them on the room's one armchair. He seats himself on the edge of the bed, leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands, the food forgotten. He isn't hungry anymore, he's worried.

  Machine has chopped dozens of men in the last five years, but the thought of putting the Smith to the old man’s head and dropping the hammer still chills his blood. Moses isn’t some street gangster or dope dealer; he’s a trained killer with hundreds of dead men to his credit. But that doesn’t dissuade Machine. If Moses has taught him anything, it’s that everyone is meat for the grinder.

  Machine picks up the drawing tablet and stares at the face so carefully drawn from his memory. The portrait is expertly done. Machine has always loved to draw. It has been his one refuge from Moses. With a pen or pencil in his hand all other thoughts would fade, all his troubles, all of his pain. The woman in the portrait is Marie Kukov, daughter of Vlad. The only friend Machine has ever had. She’s two years older than he is, but the two had spent a great deal of time together in their teens, before her mother decided Marie shouldn’t be hanging around gangsters. Marie is in her sophomore year at Princeton now, studying child psychology. Machine hasn’t seen her in two years, only spoken to her on the phone a dozen times, and yet her features are as easily recalled as his own. He loves her, not that it matters. He could never tell her that. He could not risk rejection and the inevitable alienation. Better to have her as a seldom seen friend than to lose her completely.

  Machine sets the tablet aside and rises slowly. Dark circles surround his pale gray eyes. Taking off his shoes, slacks, and shirt, he bundles the wet mass together with the overcoat and cap. He should dump the gear now, but fatigue is too great for caution to have much sway. He drops them on the floor by the bed. A six-inch straight razor is strapped to the inside of his left forearm by a loop of Velcro. The loose end of the Velcro hangs to his wrist. A quick tug and the razor drops into his hand. He peels off the Velcro and places it and the razor on the floor by the door.

  Naked, Machine's skin is pale, rippling with compact muscle. The flesh of his right hip is dimpled from a shotgun wound, a souvenir of a hit gone sour. A road map of deep scars, healed without b
enefit of stitches, crisscross his back. His arms, hands, and chest are marred by paler scars, remnants of shallow razor cuts. A testament to years of abuse. To years of Moses' training.

  Machine pulls the mattress from the bed, drags it across the room and drops it in front of the door, pressed tight to the thin wood panel. He places the Smith on the carpet, near to hand, then turns off the light and climbs between the sheets.

  The room's shades are drawn. The washed-out light of the growing day does not penetrate. The clock on the bedside table reads 6:15. Closing his eyes, he steps back inside himself, blocking out what he must do tomorrow, and dives into the darkness at the core of his being. He needs as much rest as he can get.

  Junkie or not, Moses is still the best chopper in Low Town.

  Machine spirals down a dark tunnel, knowing it is a dream, fighting against it and losing. It's a nightmare he's used to. One he has lived.

  Machine is eleven years old. A thin canvas-covered mat has been spread on the living room floor, the furniture shoved out of the way. Machine and Moses face each other across ten feet of open ground. Both are covered in sweat from a rigorous one-hour combination of calisthenics and T'ai Chi Chu'an, a regimen Moses forces his young son to follow. Preparation for life behind a gun. Moses is stripped to the waist, his bone-white flesh stretched tight over steel-hard muscle. He's smiling, his black eyes glittering. Machine's right eye is swollen closed, his thin chest and arms covered in bruises and welts. Blood leaks from his nose and trickles down over his lips. He stares at his father with loathing, his eyes cold and fearless, out of place in a child's face.

  “Keep your eyes focused on mine, all movement begins with the head,” Moses warns as he moves in, guarding his face with his forearms, stepping gracefully from side to side, giving away nothing, prepared to strike in any of a dozen ways with hands or feet.

  Machine lifts his hands, keeping loose, his heart beating in his ears, and waits for the inevitable attack.

  Moses feints a jab, then suddenly drops to the floor, snaps his left leg out straight and kicks Machine's feet out from under him. Machine hits the mat on his back, his lungs expelling with a whoosh, but that doesn't slow his reaction time. He immediately rolls away and up into a crouch, just in time to avoid Moses' forearm smashing down toward his face.

  Moses hops to his feet, as graceful as a leopard. “Very good, but you have to immediately counter. See the blow coming, avoid it, then attack!” He steps back to his former position. “Again, and move faster,” he says as he circles left, eyes on his son, feet moving in staccato rhythm, left to right.

  Machine takes a deep breath, hating his father, wanting to hurt him. Wanting to kill him. He steps forward, pivots on his left foot and lashes out at Moses’ groin with the heel of his right foot. Moses brushes the kick aside, steps inside Machine's guard and throws a punch at his jaw, knuckles extended. Machine dodges the punch, but not the elbow that follows it. It smashes his lips flat and sends him reeling backward, blood pouring over his chin, eyes unfocused.

  “What is your fucking problem?” Moses bellows, spraying spit, “Drop your guard on the street and you're dead!” He pursues his son, snapping a wicked chop into Machine’s neck, then kicking him in the solar plexus. Machine goes down hard, his breath gone, lungs on fire. White spots float in front of his eyes. He tries to roll over, tries to rise, but he doesn't have the strength.

  “Up!” Moses roars. “On your fucking feet. Be a man!”

  Machine doesn't move. He can't.

  Turning his back on his son, Moses grabs a length of stripped electrical cord. “You're going to learn,” he says as he turns on his son. “One way or another.”

  The electrical cord slashes across Machine's back, tearing flesh. Moses brings the lash back and down, back and down. Spit sprays from his lips as blood flies from the lash.

  Suddenly, Connie appears behind Moses. She grabs his arm and shrieks at him, looking in horror at her bleeding son, coming between them as she will so many times in the future, offering herself up as a victim. Moses locks his hands around her throat and squeezes. Connie's face turns purple. Her eyes bulge and her mouth opens in a silent scream.

  Mercifully the dream fades and Machine slides into deeper sleep, sweating and twisting in the hotel sheets.

  3

  The Metropolitan Train Station is an ancient structure built before the age of tinted plate-glass and structural steel. A city block square with fifteen platforms underground, it is formed of sooty granite pocked by acid rain. The brass railings and light fixtures are tarnished and plywood fills the cathedral-like dome where leaded glass used to be. Wide concrete steps, worn smooth and black, lead down thirty feet from all four directions.

  Machine and his father come through the swinging doors, past a Jesus creep cradling a twelve-gauge Jackhammer, and walk down the steps. Machine is wearing black - a popular color in Low Town - slacks, shirt, sport coat, and crepe soled shoes. Moses is shrouded in a long black overcoat, a black fedora pulled low over his bone-white face.

  The Metro terminal floor is huge. The smell of burned circuitry and urine, frying food and unwashed bodies is choking-thick. Gritty little shops line the walls selling everything legal and illegal. Sweating food vendors fry suspicious-looking meat over charcoal hibachis or cook noodles in huge pots over Sterno and propane. In the open areas, blankets spread on the floor are littered with the miscellaneous collections of the rag pickers and scavengers who make the Metro their home.

  Father and son move through the crowd, their eyes picking out the undercover cops and the players. There's not much difference, really, mostly just the quality of clothing. The cops have more money, but the players dress better.

  The Metro is well-guarded. Christian Police in black uniforms and chrome face shields stand amid the squalor, isolated on islands of worn tile. They’re spaced at twenty-foot intervals, their posts continually manned. They’re equipped with the futuristic-looking Pancor Jackhammer twelve-gauge, a modified cattle prod called a stun stick, and Glock-17s. The Metropolitan's patrons wisely keep their distance.

  “Track seven,” Moses Slaski says through barely parted lips, the first words he's uttered since he met Machine in the Bradley's lobby.

  Machine glances sidelong at his father and then away. He doesn't acknowledge the remark. It's been track seven the last three times. Track seven straight to hell.

  Moses Slaski is tall and thin with dark crew-cut hair. His eyes are sunken, the lower lids turned out and bloody. Under his overcoat, needle tracks dot his forearms and the backs of his knees. A six-inch straight razor is slip-lined to the inside of his right forearm and a silenced Smith and Wesson 9mm hangs from a shoulder rig under his left arm.

  Machine and his father wind their way through the cluttered maze as sooty commuters rush past to catch the factory train. The dealers, pimps, and the boosters work the crowd, stealing everything in sight. They pass the entrance to track four where a wild-haired, skeleton-thin preacher is ranting about the coming apocalypse. Fire and destruction, drugs, sex, and money. He doesn’t get far into the sermon before the nearest Jesus creep moves in. The crowd parts before the black uniform. Jaded eyes follow the creep's progress. Machine and Moses keep moving.

  Machine hears the electric short-circuiting sound of the stun stick in use, nervous laughter from the crowd, then a thump as the preacher hits the tile. He doesn’t look back. Buying into someone else’s problems is a sure way to end up dead.

  They turn left down the sloping corridor to track seven. The train is late.

  It always is.

  The platform is twenty feet wide and sixty feet long with the track on the left. The floor is littered with pornographic flyers advertising clubs, dating services and 976 numbers. A half-dozen factory commuters are waiting close to the yellow hazard strip, eyes like one way glass. At the far end of the platform, three bums in busted shoes and worn-out coats are building beds. Not far from the bums, a pale blond man with the drab appearance of an insurance
salesman is leaning against the wall beside a pair of scruffy suitcases, picking his teeth with a transit card.

  Moses and Machine walk to the middle rear of the platform and put their backs against the wall. There they wait, eyes forward, arms slack at their sides, hands ready to move for the weapons hidden beneath their clothes.

  Moses stares impatiently into the tunnel's black mouth. High on black tar and speed, his thoughts click like pool balls.

  Machine watches his father from the corner of his eye. A fine tracery of scars line the old man's neck and hairline. Machine wonders what Moses looked like before the surgeries. If a death-white face and a colorless slit for a mouth was the best the doctors could do, they must not have had much to work with.

  A muffled roar announces the train's approach. The clatter of metal on metal and the smell of burning diesel fuel flows out from the tunnel. The commuters edge forward. Machine and his father stay where they are.

  “Machine,” Moses says in a voice like crushed glass. Moses calls his son by his street-tag. He gave him the name when Machine was seven years old. It fit then and now.

  Machine stares at the grimy advertisements posted on the walls and waits for Moses to continue. Cracked tile and smoke stains surround tired slogans. Anti-chemical Rain Ponchos For The Ones You Love. Procreate, It's His Plan. Jesus Saves!

  “Watch my back,” Moses says as he shoves off the wall and strides toward the front of the platform.

  The train roars into the station with the screech of metal on metal and a rush of hot air then halts with a hissing groan. The train's doors open. Passengers press forward. More than Machine expected. Free-farmers by their simple dress; flannel and denim, feed caps for the men and head scarves for the women. They pour out of the cars, a herd of beef for the gankers, pick-pockets, and muggers. Their shouts and laughter blot out the train's idling diesel engines. They quickly fill the platform.