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

by Jack Cuatt

  It's a short drive. Jerry parks parallel with the Granada in the deep darkness created by the bridge's rusted girders.

  “Out of the car, hands where I can see them.” Machine climbs out first and the three men circle to the rear of the van. Greg opens the doors.

  “Put that crate by the back of the car,” Machine says, nodding at the crate he loaded up for Scarpo. Greg’s nose bubbles snot as he and Jerry carry the crate to the Granada, put it down in the tall grass and turn to face Machine.

  Machine is careful to keep the woods behind him to break up his silhouette. Even at four feet the dealers can barely make out his outline.

  “You know how this has to end,” he tells them, pointing the 9mm at Greg's sweat-slick forehead. But he hesitates to pull the trigger, He decides, instead, to take a chance and solve the problem of getting the weapons back to Low Town.

  He lowers the automatic. “I promise you, if you cross me again, if I see you again, you're dead, your families are dead, everyone you care about is dead. Give me your driver’s licenses.” He extends his left hand, palm up.

  The brothers pass them over without complaint.

  “I want you to transport these weapons for me,” Machine tells them as he pockets their IDs and separates a key from his key-ring. “There's a warehouse in Low Town. Franklin and Decatur, twenty-two-twenty-six Decatur. Drop the guns there. Leave the key inside on the floor. Got it?”

  Jerry nods anxiously, almost gagging on his “Yes!” For the first time, he actually has a hope of survival.

  “Where's the warehouse?”

  “Twenty-two, twenty-six, Decatur. Leave the key,” the words tumble over Jerry's lips.

  “Very good. Do as instructed. Do otherwise and you're Tommy.”

  Jerry almost snaps his neck nodding.

  “If Marshall Jones asks, I never called. You never saw me. Understood?”

  Twin nods.

  “Whatever's left back there is yours. Get gone.”

  They do just that, scramble into the van, slam it in reverse, lunge out onto the road and speed away in a shower of stones and a cloud of dust.

  In a matter of seconds Machine has the Scarpo crate in the back seat of the Granada and is backing up the slope, the mangled trunk lid bouncing on its hinges. With the headlights off, he trails the brothers back to Low Town.

  After assuring himself that they're headed for the warehouse, he parks the Granada at Horace's and leaves a few thousand in currency on the mangled trunk lid. The charge had destroyed the lock and twisted the trunk deck, but the damage was minimal thanks to the small size of the charge. Horace has a crew of metal workers and mechanics on standby; they should have it fixed in a day or two at the most, Horace will understand by the amount of cash that it's a rush job.

  Machine walks back to his hotel, climbs the stairs to his room, steps inside, and locks the door behind him.

  He peels off his black slacks and shirt and washes up in the bathroom sink. He's disgusted with himself for letting Tommy and his crew get the drop on him, but all in all he is satisfied with the night's events. He feels no remorse for the dead. Tommy, Sid, and the woman chose their roles and played them to the end. Nothing more was expected of them.

  Machine gets dressed in clean clothes, reloads the Smith, and hits the street, determined to find Finnegan and get some questions answered.

  23

  Machine joins the half-drunk crowd on the Avenue as his mind turns over the unresolved problem of the Scarpo work: how to get inside? He must have a moment to question Scarpo; finding the hitter who did the actual work is top priority, the old man's execution of secondary importance. But getting inside the compound unnoticed seems almost impossible given the electronic security measures, the dogs, and a dozen or more of Scarpo family soldiers.

  He’s on the Avenue, three blocks from New Town's North Gate when a scuffle breaks out on the sidewalk ten feet from him. A prostitute in bike pants, a black miniskirt and halter, comes screaming out the front door of an hourly-rate hotel pounding a bald straight with the heel of her shoe.

  “You fuck me, you gotta pay me!” The woman screams as she dances around the straight, bringing the shoe back and down. She can't seem to stand still, though the straight has stopped running. Clad only in a pale green T-shirt and matching G-string, he covers his head and screams for the Jesus creeps.

  Machine steps to the wall as a pair of Christian Police move in hard and fast. The prostitute is about to take a tour of the prison-factories, if the cops don't shoot her in the head and dump her in the river to save the paperwork.

  Pedestrians fall back, the parting of a swarm of roaches, as the creeps wade in. The woman goes down with a snap of broken bones and a scream. One of the creeps supports the bloody fat man while his partner kicks the woman unconscious.

  Machine doubles back to the corner. Sightseers, mostly New Town straights, move toward the confrontation.

  At the corner, crossing against the light, he glimpses a mop of tangled red hair above a desert-fatigue jacket with sergeant's chevrons on one faded sleeve. Finnegan. Using elbows and shoulders, Machine muscles through the crowd toward the junkie.

  Finnegan stays out of the densest traffic, walking slowly, his eyes on the sidewalk, arms bent up in front of him like a praying mantis. His left forearm is so swollen it threatens to burst the seams of the fatigue jacket. His right arm isn't much better. His face is covered by a messy beard and pink-brown lesions. Pedestrians stay out of his way, giving the junkie all the room he wants, looks of loathing on their faces.

  Machine shadows Finnegan for a block and a half. As the junkie reaches the mouth of an alley between two topless bars, Machine takes him by the elbow and propels him into the damp darkness.

  “Jesus,” Finnegan yells, stumbling through the debris, spinning to face his attacker. In the darkness of the narrow alley, Machine is no more than a silhouette. “I ain't got shit but the virus! Let me be! Let me be!”

  Machine pushes the junkie against the wall, knee-deep in ruptured garbage bags, and holds him there, one palm on the smaller man’s chest.

  “Shut up, Finnegan,” Machine says.

  “Machine.” Finnegan instantly recognizes the voice. He slumps against the wall. “Why you gotta do me like that? All you gotta do is say hello. Maybe buy me something to eat. Catch up on old times,” Finnegan babbles, his lips curled in a dope-grin. His arms maintain their unnatural position, so infected, the blood flow so restricted, they are almost useless. They should have been amputated long ago. It’s amazing the junkie is even alive, but somehow the little ferret manages to hang on. Black market ABV, probably. He certainly makes enough cash selling out everyone and anyone.

  “Shut up,” Machine says again, his voice harsh. Finnegan is the lowest of the low: a snitch. A necessary evil, but nothing more.

  “You ain't got to be like that—”

  “Shut up,” Machine cuts him off again. He presses Finnegan tighter to the wall to get the point across. “I need information not conversation. Have you seen Mike Sculli lately?”

  Finnegan relaxes then. He’s back on familiar turf; information for cash. He relaxes into the bricks and smiles, his rotten yellow teeth catching the weak light filtering in from the Avenue. “Not fuckin' likely,” he chuckles phlegmatically. “Red Sleeves was looking for him the week before he got shot at the Metro. I ain't heard nothing about Sculli since.”

  “Red Sleeves chopped him?” Machine releases Finnegan, steps back, and looks toward the street. Pedestrians walk by but no one looks their way. He looks back at Finnegan.

  “I don’t know for sure,” Finnegan says with a shrug. “But I heard that Red Sleeves and Sculli was working some big deal. That's the word. It blew up and Sculli split with the ducats. That's why Red Sleeves was looking for him.”

  “What kind of deal?”

  Another shrug. “Don't know. I'm just relating what I heard. But Sculli is a gun dealer, so…” he lifts his shoulders and lets them fall.

 
“Find out.” It's an order, and Finnegan takes it that way. He's been working the streets a long time, carefully playing the odds. In all that time he’s never made a misstep. He isn't stupid; he'll do as the young chopper asks.

  “Who's Scarpo's weakest link?” Machine asks, not really sure how he's going to use the information. Maybe bleed a few facts from a luckless banger?

  “You working that old greaser?” Finnegan perks up, sensing a new story to tell, more information to sell. “Old bastard should have been—”

  “Who?” Machine cuts him off.

  “Okay, okay, I was just asking. His nephew, Antony. He runs the Fourth Street Market in the Bottoms. That’s Scarpo's drop for the powder men. Scarpo ain't got no kids, so he sets a lot of store in his sister's brats. Antony's her only son. Antony delivers the drop every day, Monday through Sunday.”

  Machine nods and files the information away, the outline of a plan beginning to form. A daily drop. Regular routines were something that had the potential to be exploited.

  “You hear anything else, you find me,” Machine tells Finnegan.

  “You got it. You gonna pay me now?”

  Machine digs in his jacket pocket, pulls out four hundreds and stuffs them in the side pocket of the fatigue jacket.

  “I'll be around,” Finnegan assures him. “I'll start looking for Sculli.” He pushes off the wall and starts for the street. Machine's palm in his chest stops him. Finnegan steps back, eyes darting.

  “Mention my name to anyone about anything and the virus won't get the chance to kill you. Understood?”

  “Yeah,” Finnegan chuckles, “Sure.” He tries to laugh it off, wheezes, gasps, and goes into a long coughing fit. “You're the king, Machine,” he finally gasps then spits blood into the trash at his feet. By the time he looks up Machine is gone.

  Machine walks by the Fourth Street Market on the return trip to his hotel. A working streetlight, a rarity in Low Town, flanks the store, lighting it and the alley beside it. The store's interior lights are off, the steel shutters rolled down. Machine takes a look up and down the block. A half-dozen bars line the sidewalk, all in full swing. People coming and going. He walks into the alley.

  Twenty feet down the alley, he turns and faces the light. The Smith appears in his hand too fast to see. It coughs once and the light dies. Broken glass jangles on the sidewalk and night reclaims the alley.

  Machine holsters the Smith and moves on. It's after 3:00 AM when he lies down in front of the door of his hotel room and closes his eyes.

  24

  It's 2:20 PM when Machine hits the Zone. He takes a stool at the bar of a low ceilinged club across the street from the Fourth Street Market and orders a beer. As he sips the tepid liquid, he reads the want ads followed by the sports page and the rest of the paper. The funnies are the last to go.

  He's dressed down, cultivating the look of a man out of work. Baggy jacket, a faded blue baseball cap, and blue jeans. He does a good job of looking and acting the part. The florid bartender, who spends the afternoon haranguing the regulars in a pompous, grating voice made hoarse by an ever-full tumbler of whiskey, only notices the level of beer in the teenager's glass. The place is perfect for a stakeout. The only complaint Machine has is the curling yellow fliers taped at eye level across the bar's front window. He can barely make out the grocery store across the street. But he sees enough.

  All day long, men in suits and sport coats enter the store carrying bags and briefcases only to leave minutes later empty handed. None of the local residents use the place. They walk quickly past the market to a ratty-looking store spilling across the sidewalk at the end of the block. The market is the only business in the neighborhood with more delivery men than customers.

  At 5:00 PM the day's constant arrivals and departures come to an end. Only Antony and two heavy-shouldered, flat-faced companions are left in the store. The sluggers don't worry Machine; he recognizes the type: recruits from the fights or the Crips. Thick muscles and thicker heads. A little before 7:00 PM the lights over the market's counter go out. Ten minutes later, Antony steps out the door, fronted and backed by the muscle, carrying a bulky steel briefcase. None of the three bother to check the street. They chat and yuck it up as they walk to Antony's white Mercedes parked in the alley beside the store.

  The muscle ride up front; Antony, in languid gold-chained splendor, sits in the rear. The Mercedes backs out of the alley and speeds away, headed for the elevated. No lead or follow car. Sloppy. Scarpo should protect his sources of income more diligently. Machine is unimpressed, but a little reflection on the security measures at Scarpo's mansion reminds him that the old mobster is not stupid. Machine can't afford to get cocky.

  He swallows the last of a flat beer, folds the newspaper under his arm and exits the bar, leaving a pile of silver on the counter. He walks down the street to the Lincoln, parked at the middle of the block, climbs into the car, starts the engine, and pulls away from the curb.

  He catches up with Antony's Mercedes as it turns up the elevated highway's access ramp. He tries to keep a few cars between the Lincoln and the white import as they merge with the light traffic and head north.

  After fourteen miles it seems obvious that the Mercedes is heading for Scarpo's estate. Machine knows he can't follow Antony and his crew down the narrow asphalt road without being spotted, but he needs to be near the gate when the Mercedes turns in. He wants to see what kind of security measures Scarpo's soldiers employ before letting the vehicle enter the compound.

  Guiding the Lincoln into the far right lane, he passes Antony's Mercedes three miles before the exit ramp. If he can't follow the Mercedes, he'll take the lead.

  He tries to pace the Mercedes by matching the same conservative five miles over the speed limit that Antony's driver had maintained. He exits the elevated highway and turns toward Scarpo's.

  Night has settled over the empty fields. The stars are the only light. A mile before Scarpo’s property, Machine slows and turns down a narrow dirt road half obscured by brush and scrub trees. He makes a K-turn, aiming the Lincoln back toward the asphalt, and kills the engine. He waits there for fifteen minutes before the Mercedes passes.

  Leaving the Lincoln’s headlights off, he falls in behind the car, a quarter mile back.

  As the Mercedes slows for the turn at Scarpo's, Machine eases to the shoulder and glides to a stop. From the glove box he takes a pair of night-vision binoculars secured from Tommy’s stash and trains them on the gate.

  In addition to two goons inside the gate, who look like standard issue bonebreakers, a third man stands in the driveway outside. The exterior guard is dressed in green camo and has a rifle strapped over his shoulder and a large dog at his knee. He and the dog step aside as the Mercedes turns in and stops. But it doesn’t stay stopped for long. No words are exchanged between the men in the car and the three men guarding the gate. The gate merely opens and the car speeds up the sloping drive, its headlights throwing huge shadows from trees and hedges until its taillights blink out of sight.

  Machine puts the Lincoln in gear, makes another K-turn and heads back to the highway.

  Soon, he is back in the city. He parks the Lincoln at Horace's and reclaims the repaired Granada. Horace has replaced the trunk lid with a duplicate painted with gray primer. The rear quarter panels are still smoke-blackened and bent, but the lid closes and latches. A new lock is in place, the key sitting on the car's dash. The only thing missing is the plastic explosive and detonator. Overall, the repair makes the car look even junkier.

  Machine exits the garage behind the wheel of the Granada headed for food and his hotel.

  Tomorrow he moves on Scarpo.

  25

  Machine rises in the early afternoon, loads down the chest-pack with items taken from dead Tommy, straps on a bulletproof vest, and retrieves both Škorpions from the ceiling. He straps the chest-pack on over the vest, tucks the Škorpions under it and slips into a black windbreaker. After wiping down the room for fingerprints wi
th a dirty T-shirt, he drops the key at the desk, pays for another day and leaves the hotel.

  It's another gray day. On the corner, near the hotel, two teenagers are arguing while a half-dozen others watch and pass a bottle. One of the teenagers is tall and stoop-shouldered with albino-white hair. The other is Italian, short and pear shaped with a blue rag tied over his head. As Machine stows the extra Škorpion in the trunk of the Granada, the tall teenager pushes the Italian hard in the chest. The Italian goes down on his ass. He doesn’t bother to get up; instead he pulls a gun and starts blasting. Three quick shots echo down the street and the spectators scatter. The bottle they were passing hits the pavement. The tall blond teenager flops to the sidewalk, half his face blown away.

  Machine shakes his head as he climbs behind the wheel of the Granada. Throwing punches in Low Town was a sucker’s game. Everyone from your grandma to the kid cooking your hamburger was packing a gun. As he cranks the engine, three more shots are fired. He looks to where the Italian was standing but he’s not standing anymore; he's flat on his back beside his victim, three holes in his chest. His killer is halfway down the block, running fast.

  Machine puts the car in gear and drives away from the scene. Just another day in Low Town.

  He parks the Granada at Horace's and returns to the bar across the street from the Fourth Street Market. He orders a beer and a burger and spends three hours at the near end of the bar, nursing two more beers while reading the newspaper and watching the drop shop. At 5:30 PM he folds the paper, drops a handful of rumpled dollars for a tip and exits the bar.

  The sun is dropping behind the soot-haze. Smoky night is settling thick with chemical humidity. The street is almost deserted. Machine strolls down the sidewalk, shoulders hunched against the chill. At the corner, he crosses the street. In his dark clothes, he is all but invisible against the grilled and shuttered store fronts. He reaches the alley where the Mercedes is parked and darts down it, staying close to the wall. This is the second most dangerous part of the plan; a mistake now and the whole thing is off.