by Jack Cuatt
“Through that door,” Machine says, nodding in the direction of Paul's office without taking his eyes off the doorman. He can smell the stocky guy’s breath. Sausage and garlic. A black square of tattooed skin peeks out of the top of his shirt collar. Machine knows what the square is meant to cover: a swastika. The guy’s a former Hammerskin. Low Town is full of them, but none of them work for the Kukovs. Paul is really scraping the bottom of the barrel, and breaking an unspoken rule: the Hammerskins belong to the Children of The Blood Militia.
“You here to see Mr. Fielder?”
Machine nods.
“Mr. Fielder doesn't like to be disturbed.” The doorman's imitation tough voice is getting on Machine's nerves. “Don't make it hard on yourself,” he adds as he puts a hand on Machine's chest.
Machine slams his knee into the doorman's groin, grabs a fistful of the man's hair, twists his head around, and snaps an overhand punch into the side of his head, just below his ear where a cluster of specialized nerves control the flow of blood to the brain. The doorman hits the floor.
A glance from Machine sets the waiters and busboys back to work. He steps over the bouncer, rounds the bar and walks into Paul's office without knocking.
The room is a mini-duplicate of Kukov's office at the compound. The desk is smaller, the ceiling lower, the paneling a shade lighter, but everything is similar. Paul lounges behind the desk with a cigar between his teeth and one hand down the front of his pants. He looks up at the door and spots Machine and the cigar falls from his mouth. It hits the carpet in a shower of sparks.
Machine nods at the room's only other occupant, Gus Bender. Gus is seated in one of the wing chairs, calmly chomping on a cigar of his own. Gus is the capo Machine had talked to the night Connie was killed.
The aging gangster looks at Machine from beneath wavy gray hair and thick brows with sharp, brown eyes too big for his face. He's wearing dock shoes and pressed khakis. He looks like somebody's grandfather, but he's got twenty-six hits under his belt. Only Moses has done more wetwork for Kukov than Gus.
“Machine,” Gus says as Paul stoops to pick up the smoldering cigar.
Breathing hard, the fat man straightens, gripping the Cuban between two fingers.
“Hello, Paul,” Machine says, stepping up to the desk.
“Machine.” Paul shuffles his buttocks around and puffs hard at the cigar to get it going again before asking, “What are you doing here? Why didn't you call?”
“Face-to-face is always better. It eliminates misunderstandings.”
“You should have phoned,” Paul insists, peering at the tip of his cigar.
“What do you want?” Machine asks.
“Sit down,” the underboss offers, waving Machine at the free chair.
“Is it going to take that long?”
Paul flushes and looks at the young killer with naked hatred. He doesn't like being treated this way in front of Gus.
“No. Not long.”
“Then I'll stand.” Machine says.
Paul shrugs. “Vlad says you can move against Scarpo,” he says, watching Machine's face for a reaction. He doesn’t get one. Machine's expression doesn't change.
“That’s pretty convenient for you and Vlad,” he replies.
Paul looks disconcerted. He shifts his ass around, smoothes his lapels and reaches for a fresh cigar.
“Vlad could get hurt by this, you know. This thing could blow up in our faces. You ought to appreciate this better.” Paul looks to Gus for support. Gus returns his indifferent, bug-eyed stare.
Machine lets it slide. “That's only part of what I want. What about the hitter?”
Fat Paul shrugs. “I don't know. I'm telling you what Vlad told me. Vlad says you can move on him anytime. He says you should understand you do this for yourself, not for him. You owe him, not the other way around.”
Machine laughs out loud, a harsh sound devoid of humor. This hit will make Kukov millions, but Machine ‘does it for himself.’
“Is that it?”
“That's it,” Paul nods, happy that the conversation is over.
Machine nods at Gus, sidesteps to the door, opens it, and looks out, keeping his body left of the opening.
The doorman is gone. A busboy is on his knees with a towel soaking blood from the carpet. Without a farewell, Machine closes the office door behind him and walks quickly across the dining room and out through the kitchen. Bonito, seated on his stool, sees Machine but pretends not to. The dishwasher is elbow deep in suds. Machine steps past him and out the door, into the lowering night.
He heads for his hotel. He has a lot to think about. A lot to plan. This will be his first major solo work.
It doesn't make him any less happy that Moses is dead.
Paul and Gus sit quietly for a long moment after Machine leaves. Finally Paul breaks the silence.
“I’m gonna have to kill that kid,” he says.
Gus snorts and shakes his head. “You take a run at Alex and I wouldn’t give even odds that you ain’t the one ends up lying in chalk.”
“Somebody got to Red Sleeves,” Paul points out defensively, his eyes flicking to Gus then back to the door. “I never thought that would have happened…”
Gus snorts again. “Red Sleeves scared me,” he admits with a nod of the head. “I ain’t too proud to admit that. But that kid terrifies me. He’s a fucking plague, Pauley. A killing machine. You be smart and stay out of his way.”
Paul makes no reply, just continues to stare thoughtfully at the door.
17
The next morning, Machine rises early, having spent the previous night thinking over the upcoming work. Not specifics, just the outline. He's been through this before with Moses; he's confident he can plan the hit with a little more information.
Rising from the mattress pressed against the hotel room door, he immediately begins to stretch in preparation for a rigorous set of exercises. The program, developed by Moses, consists of a half hour of calisthenics followed by a half hour of T'ai Chi Chu'an, a graceful Chinese martial arts exercise, then another half hour of calisthenics. After the exercise, Moses and Machine used to spar with fists and razors, but Moses discontinued that practice when Machine started dishing out more punishment than he took.
While he exercises, his pale skin rippling with compact muscle, Machine considers the specifics. He needs Scarpo alive first, at least alive enough to answer questions. Problem: Scarpo hasn't left his compound in the two years he's been at war with Kukov. Machine will have to get inside.
Tired and limp an hour later, Machine climbs into the shower and washes under the tepid trickle, scrubbing with a washcloth and soap bought at a dry goods store near the North Gate. He towels dry and dresses. As he exits the bathroom, he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror over the sink. What he sees is his father’s face imprinted on his own. The same cold eyes, the same hardness, the look of a killer. Self-awareness makes him sick, despairing. It prompts thoughts of his mother.
“This is not what I want to be,” he whispers hollowly. A lie and he knows it. A killer is all he has ever been. All he knows.
“An eye for an eye,” he says more firmly, shaking off the doubts. He has work to do. Introspection can only make him hesitate. And hesitation kills.
Tearing his eyes from the mirror, he walks around the room, wiping the damp bath towel over any surface he might have touched. He drops the towel after using it to open the hall door, then takes the stairs down and out.
The Easter Industries plant spews soot into a lead-colored sky. A strong, cold wind whips down the street, blowing from the north, smelling of chemical smoke and diesel fuel. The first rancid taste of winter.
The Granada is still parked near the Bradley. A fifteen minute walk takes him there. Machine drives north to the turnpike.
The turnpike is almost empty. Only a few scab rigs, avoiding the Trucker's Union strikers. The strikers are fighting for jobs being taken away by satellite haulers. They can't win; the Federal G
overnment owns the satellites.
Machine exits at Marshall Road and drives south. The road is new asphalt edged by trees, fields, and cows. The sun is bright. Pale gray clouds fill a China-blue sky. A world away from Low Town. He would have liked to take his mother somewhere like this. Somewhere clean. Somewhere fresh. Somewhere far from the murders committed by her husband and son.
There aren't many houses in this direction, but construction has begun on a half-dozen gated communities modeled on the same principle as New Town. The same principle as the castles of the middle ages. Brick walls separate freshly poured concrete foundations and streets from the undeveloped fields and woods. Battered yellow bulldozers crawl across the bare ground, smoothing and reshaping the pasture into yards and driveways. Scarpo's home is well beyond the new construction.
As he passes the mob boss’ estate, Machine casually looks over the layout, trying not to draw too much attention. He knows his youth helps him there; no one takes a teenager seriously.
A twelve-foot brick wall topped with razor wire parallels the road beginning two hundred yards before Scarpo's ornate iron gate. The wall is fronted by a fifteen foot strip of manicured lawn and low shrubs. No trees, probably for security reasons. A pair of ten-foot wrought iron gates block an asphalt drive. A hundred yards straight back from the gate, the drive turns beyond a windbreak of trees. The house itself is out of sight.
Two Scarpo soldiers, not openly carrying weapons, loiter just inside the gates, mouthing at each other. They look up disinterestedly as the Granada rolls by at thirty-five miles an hour. One look at the car and they return to their conversation. Sloppy.
Past the gate, the wall continues another two hundred yards before making a ninety-degree turn beside a narrow stream half-hidden by stunted trees and brush. The stream passes under a small bridge and wanders through the pasture opposite Scarpo's compound. The stream could be a weak point. All the scrub brush and trees…
Machine accelerates. Six hundred yards beyond the stream, a dirt farm road intersects the asphalt. He slows and takes a left between shaggy pastures dotted with surveyors’ stakes. Developer's signs line the road giving directions and price ranges. Broken down barbed-wire fences and brand-new telephone and utility poles. Scarpo is about to get neighbors. The road is rutted, little used till now. Machine guides the Granada along, bumping and weaving through the potholes. A hundred yards down, he stops the car on the shoulder, knee-high in last year's dead grass, kills the engine and gets out. He opens the hood and gives the radiator cap a quarter turn. Steam rises and hot anti-freeze boils out as he steps back and away.
No houses or people in sight. A gang of crows squawking in the trees and the distant rumble of earthmoving equipment are the only sounds as he leans under the hood and unscrews the butterfly nut on the radiator's drain, careful to keep his hand out of the flow of boiling-hot fluid. He allows the radiator to empty almost completely before closing the drain. From the trunk, after first disarming the car’s secondary defense system, an eighth of a pound of C-4 wired into the locking mechanism, he retrieves a two-gallon plastic gas can and starts walking back toward the asphalt.
The sun is warm on his shoulders despite the chill in the air. A cool wind whispers in his ear, smelling of turned earth and wood smoke. He reaches the asphalt road that fronts Scarpo's estate and turns back toward the stream. He’s worked up a light sweat by the time he reaches the creek ten minutes later.
A crumbling concrete embankment slopes away from the narrow bridge to the ground beside the water. Gas can in hand, Machine climb-slides down the slope into the shade of dormant vines and tree limbs as dense as tangled hair.
It's cool here, another world, dark and silent. Water ripples and swirls in a shallow pool. Machine stoops and dips the can in the stream as his eyes travel up the muddy bank to the brick wall half-obscured by vegetation. Coiled razor wire glistens along the top of the wall. Beneath the wire, a dirt path follows the wall out of sight. There are no trees within fifteen feet of the wall, only rotten stumps. With the can full, he climbs carefully through trailing vines and creepers for a closer look at the path. He stops just short of it and inspects the ground. Boot tracks, dog tracks, cigarette butts, and candy wrappers. Regular patrols, but no one in sight at the moment. He scans the trees. No hidden security cameras. It was just the wall and the wire, the dogs and some hired guns. Machine will have to nail down the patrol schedule if he intends to go over the wall. Hard to do in an unpopulated area. He can't set up surveillance across the street in a pasture.
He sets the can down and walks twenty feet up the trail, careful to keep to the weeds beside it, examining the boot prints, trying to figure out how frequent the patrols are. The edges of the freshest tracks are dry and crumbling. As humid as it is under the vine-latticed canopy, the tracks must be several hours old. Probably last night. Sloppy.
Machine retraces his steps, grabs the gas can and clambers up the concrete slope. His mind is still seeing the trail, the wall and the water, still picking at a plan. Only the dog worries him. One dog could mean more dogs roaming the grounds. Bad news.
Absorbed in thought, he doesn't notice the beige Acura parked under the trees across the road, or the tall thin man with a face like a sick vulture sitting in the open driver's side door. Machine is halfway up the slope when the man speaks.
“That's private property you're on, kid,” he says with a voice to match his face, full of splinters and sharp edges. Wraparound sunglasses cover his eyes.
Machine scrambles to the top of the embankment, thinking of the Smith. He can palm it in a flat second, thanks to hours of diligent practice. As ever, he remains outwardly calm.
“I didn't see any signs, sir,” he explains as he crosses the road toward the Acura, taking in the bulge on the man's right hip and the three undone buttons at the bottom of his pink dress shirt.
“Looking for something back there?” Sunglasses asks. His left hand doesn't stray from his waistband. His attention doesn't waver. He hasn't downgraded his awareness on sight of a teenager with a gas can.
“My car overheated down the road. I needed water,” Machine lifts the can for emphasis, “I noticed the creek so I came back to it.” The wind is cold on his back. The asphalt feels gummy under his feet. Good purchase for a lunge.
Sunglasses says nothing for a moment, then, “Get in. I'll drive you back.” He waves Machine around the front of the car.
Machine circles the Acura, momentarily turning his back on Sunglasses. An “X” burns at the base of Machine's skull, but he keeps walking. He’s just a teenager with a car trouble.
Sunglasses slides smoothly behind the wheel as Machine hits the leather of the passenger seat. Machine glimpses something black in Sunglasses' hand, and knows the pistol is no longer on the soldier's hip but wedged between his thigh and the seat. Smoothly done.
Neither man speaks on the short drive back to the farm road or the lurching ride down it to the Granada. Sunglasses brakes the Acura ten feet behind the battered old car. He opens his door, looks across the seat at Machine and waits for the teenager to start out before he does the same. He walks with Machine to the front of the Granada and mutely watches as he fills the radiator and presses the cap back in place.
Machine drops the hood. “Thanks for the ride,” he says, the gas can dangling from his left hand, his right propped on his hip, inches from the Smith.
“A lot of nice houses out here,” Sunglasses says. “A lot of money lying around.”
“I guess,” Machine replies with a shrug, letting his impatience show.
Sunglasses shakes his head, then sidesteps along the Granada, keeping his gun hand toward Machine.
Sunglasses stops at the door of the Acura. “Stay out of trouble, kid. At least around here,” he says as he slides behind the wheel. He cranks the car. The Acura bumps and jolts down the dirt track in reverse, its driver alternating his gaze between the rearview mirror and the teenager standing beside the old Ford. Not sloppy at all. Professional.
Machine climbs into the Granada, waits two minutes, makes a u-turn and drives back toward the asphalt. As he crosses the stream, he looks again for cameras, microphones, anything. Nothing attracts his attention but there has to be something. Sunglasses knew he was there, and exactly where. That's no coincidence. If this was the real thing, it would have gotten bloody.
The same two soldiers are behind the gate. They glance at the Granada then turn back to their conversation. Sunglasses' Acura is nowhere in sight.
The Granada rumbles sedately past and out of sight of the estate.
This trip has made Machine sure of one thing: he needs a set of construction plans for the Scarpo mansion. He'll have to find them on his own. He wants no help from Kukov. This is Machine's work; he won't go deeper into debt to Vlad.
18
It isn’t difficult to get the construction permits for the Scarpo house on file at the county courthouse in New Town. County records are public, but only to the public who have access to the walled city. Machine makes a quick stop at the apartment, dresses in a conservatively cut suit and tie, combs his blond hair back and puts on a pair of glasses with blocky frames. When finished he looks a little older, college age, maybe. The guise gets him past the front desk clerk and into the filing area.
Unfortunately, there are no plans on file, but, from the permits Machine acquires the name of the architectural firm responsible for the design. Gibbons and Clark. Their office is in Low Town, on Harvey Street in the Historic District. He returns the file to the bored female clerk and leaves the walled city behind him.
Back in slacks, a black turtleneck and his weapons, Machine parks the Lincoln at Horace's and reclaims the Granada. There is still daylight left, gray and diluted. He drives toward the historic district, to an address close to New Town's North Gate. He finds it hard to believe the architectural firm's office is still in the old city. Some type of statement on New Town's utilitarian design? When he gets there, he decides architectural statement was not the reason. The building is composed of water-damaged cedar planking and lots of glass. It stands out like a chrome tooth next to its brick neighbors. It is multileveled with overhanging roofs and cantilevered balconies too narrow for people. At its highest point it is four stories tall, at its lowest only one. A staggered pile of splintery gray blocks no more appealing than the colored geometry of New Town.