A Perfect Machine

by Brett Savory

  “Before we get in, and you get any bright ideas about elbowing me in the gut and making a run for it – or something equally ridiculous – I have a tidbit of information you’ll be interested in, and I’ll tell you much more about it once we’re away from here.”

  “Oh, yes? And what’s that?”

  “It’s about your daughter.”

  Palermo stiffened, then relaxed ever so slightly. “So what? You know I have a daughter.”

  “I know you had a daughter, but now she’s gone. Probably dead. And probably you killed her.”

  “That doesn’t–”

  “Her name was Adelina. Oh, and my sister, too, died because of you. I watched her die in front of me, the result of one of your Runs, or whatever the hell you call them. Stray bullet. Her name was Marla Krebosche.”

  And then Krebosche described Adelina’s physical appearance, right down to the two moles – one big, one smaller – near the top of her right thigh: “Like a planet and its moon,” he said. Which was what Palermo had said to his daughter when she’d asked about the birthmarks as a child.

  Palermo said nothing, realized this had to be the Bill Krebosche that shithead Duncan had mentioned, nodded when Krebosche asked him if he was going to sit still in the jeep.

  “I thought you might.”

  They got in. One arm still around Palermo’s neck, the knife digging in painfully where it had already broken skin, Krebosche closed the door. He put his free hand on the steering wheel, gunned the gas.

  Blue light from the moon overhead immediately filled the tracks left behind.

  * * *

  Through his binoculars on the warehouse rooftop, Marcton watched the taillights flicker as they receded, obscured by yet more falling snow. Below him at ground level, Cleve stood breathing heavily. When he’d driven the jeep over, he’d wanted very badly to smash the weedy little fuck’s face with his boot, but he couldn’t risk it. The guy was clearly a nut – but exactly how dangerous a nut, they didn’t know. He may well have slit Palermo’s throat if Cleve had made a move – not life-ending, of course, but if the guy knew that, too, maybe he’d just keep sawing, which would be life-ending. Palermo looked genuinely concerned for his own well-being, which was unusual. Cleve wasn’t used to seeing Palermo so vulnerable, and it unnerved him.

  Marcton and two others had had rifles trained on the kidnapper and Palermo, but no clear shot had presented itself.

  Now the instant the taillights had fully receded and Marcton was sure the kidnapper could no longer see them in his rear view, he yelled down to Cleve, “You, me, and two others. We’re going after them. We’ll use the Hummer. Get it running; I’ll be down in a sec!”

  Cleve nodded, said, “Got it,” and radioed two of his most trusted colleagues, told them to come to the Hummer ASAP.

  When all four men were in the Hummer, Marcton in the driver’s seat, they tore off after Palermo and his kidnapper.

  “Any idea who that was?” Marcton asked.

  “None,” Cleve said. The other two shook their heads.

  “And no idea where he’ll be taking Palermo, either, right?”

  Everyone nodded.

  “Fucking great.”

  * * *

  A few blocks away, Krebosche pulled the jeep over to the side of the road, cut its lights. His car was where he’d left it, unchanged, but piling up with snow.

  He jabbed the tip of the knife into Palermo’s leg wound – not deep, but enough to wrench another scream from him. While Palermo writhed in pain on the seat, Krebosche grabbed his gun back from Palermo’s waistband, put it in his own, quickly jumped out of the jeep, and trained the knife on Palermo.

  “Your fuckhead buddies will be coming soon, no doubt. They’re a fairly tight little unit, so I don’t doubt they’ll find us in short order. Problem is, we won’t be here. And we won’t be in that jeep anymore. Quit your fucking squirming and get in the car.”

  When he’d recovered enough to speak, Palermo glared at Krebosche, was about to let loose a string of curses and threats – a rarity for him – but then he thought of something. Something that might buy him some time.

  “Wherever you’d planned to take me, Krebosche, I have a better place to go. Somewhere much more interesting.”

  “Oh, yeah, where’s that?” Krebosche looked over his shoulder for any sign of lights, listened hard for engine noises.

  “I know where the guy who killed Adelina is. I know exactly where he lives. I’ve got men watching his place as we speak. We could go there.” Palermo raised his hands to show he meant no threat, maneuvered himself to the edge of the jeep’s seat, let his weight carry him off the edge as gently as he could. Grimaced as his feet touched the ground. Used the open door for support. “Right now. We could go there. If I’m lying, you can do whatever you want to me.”

  “Motherfucker, I can do whatever I want to you right now.”

  Palermo nodded, tried to catch his breath. “So it would seem.”

  “Besides, I already know who killed Adelina: you did. I’ve known it for nearly a year.”

  Palermo’s mind scrambled to put the pieces together. Nearly a year? Why don’t I know who this guy is? No time for that now; he needed to convince him it was in his best interest not to take him wherever he had planned. At least if Palermo could get him to an address he knew, he’d have a shot at his guys being able to help him. Now that the knife was away from his neck he didn’t particularly need his men to save him – even with his leg injured, he was fairly certain he could overpower Krebosche – but his curiosity was piqued, and he wanted to know who this guy was, what he knew about Adelina, how he’d been able to retain all this information for nearly a full year. “You think you know all sorts of things, clearly,” Palermo said. “But I’ve already planted a seed of doubt, haven’t I? What if I’m not lying? Don’t you want the guy who actually pulled the trigger, not just the person you think ordered it?”

  “Stall tactics, and I don’t give a fuck, Palermo. Get your ass in the car. You can lie to me all you want in there. You can lie until I slice your head off. Oh, and by the way, even if you wrestle the knife from me, my gun’s loaded with hollow points, so you’ll want to think twice. I know your body eats normal bullets, but a well-placed hollow point might just take your head clean off.”

  “Why not just kill me now, then? Why are you waiting?”

  “I want you to know who I am, and why you’re dying,” Krebosche said. “Once you know that, really understand it, I’ll take your fucking head. Or shoot it off your shoulders. Whatever.”

  Palermo shuffled through the ankle-deep snow toward the car, Krebosche within arm’s reach the whole time. As he passed by the back window, Krebosche swept snow off it.

  Krebosche was stronger than Palermo had anticipated when he’d found him on the ground outside the warehouse. He probably could overpower him, but he was younger and quick. And very, very angry.

  When Palermo reached the passenger side, Krebosche put the gun under his chin, said, “Get in slowly, dickbag. Slide over to the driver’s side.”

  Palermo grunted and got in the passenger side, slid behind the wheel. Krebosche kept the gun trained on him as he sat down himself, shut the door. Snow fell in a heap from the window.

  Krebosche put the keys in the ignition, said, “Start it. Drive.”

  “Where to?”

  “Just drive, idiot. I’ll direct you as we go.”

  Palermo turned the key, the engine flared to life.

  “Windshield,” Krebosche said.

  Palermo activated the windshield wipers. Snow fell to either side of the blades.

  “Keep the lights off.”

  Palermo put the car into gear, drifted away from the curb. “Left or right,” he asked as they approached the first intersection.

  “Left. Away from your warehouse. And don’t indicate.”

  Palermo came to a complete halt at the stop sign, turned slowly, carefully.

  “A little faster would be nice.” />
  “Just trying to make sure we arrive alive.”

  “Not a real concern for you right now, OK?”

  Palermo shut up.

  They drove on in silence for a couple of minutes, Krebosche directing Palermo at intersections, keeping an eye on the mirrors for lights. Then Palermo said: “Can I have something to stop my leg bleeding?”

  Krebosche turned to him, a look of incredulity on his face. “Why would I care if you bled to death?”

  Palermo sighed, and they drove on in silence.

  The weather combined with the hour made it so there was barely anyone out at all, so spotting a tail would be fairly easy. Losing one on these roads, however, would be a different story.

  Krebosche was trying desperately not to let doubts niggle at him, but Palermo’s words had, indeed, taken root. What if Palermo did know where the trigger man was? Krebosche hadn’t actually seen him kill her – and one other man, and a woman, were in the house he’d followed them to. But did it matter? Palermo clearly had something to do with his daughter’s death, was obviously someone – if not the main someone – to blame for it. Wasn’t that enough? Would killing the actual murderer really make that much of a difference? As for his sister, he knew he’d never find her killer, since the person whose bullet ricocheted down that alleyway probably didn’t even know what they’d done.

  But did it truly matter who, specifically, was responsible for what happened to Adelina? With each street that went by, each corner turned, each streetlamp flickering by overhead, and the moon bathing him in its weird blue light through the car window, Krebosche knew with a growing certainty that yes, it did matter. It mattered very much.

  They crossed the tracks, went deeper into the suburbs until Krebosche gave Palermo one final instruction: “Left up here, then turn into the first parking lot on your right. Home sweet home.”

  The tires crunched snow as Palermo turned the car into the parking lot. It wasn’t really Krebosche’s home, but Palermo didn’t need to know that.

  “Very back spot, in the shadow of that big-ass tree. Then kill the engine.”

  Palermo steered the car into the spot, cut the engine, turned his head to look at Krebosche, said, “I’m bleeding onto your lovely seat covers here. Just so you know.”

  “Duly noted.”

  * * *

  Back at the abandoned jeep, headlights cut dual cones through the snow and darkness. Another vehicle – this one a black Hummer – crawled close to the jeep, sidling up to it. Cleve’s arm was out the window, holding a handgun the size of his head, trained on the jeep.

  “Any movement?” Marcton asked from the driver’s side.

  “Nothing. I think it’s been ditched.”

  As they pulled parallel, Marcton saw that this was the case. “Fuck.”

  “Agreed. What now?” Cleve said, pulled his arm inside. “Does he have his cell on him?”

  Marcton turned. “Probably. Why, you wanna text him: ‘where r u?’ Christ, Cleve, give it some thought.”

  Cleve looked down at his lap. “No tracking device in his phone?”

  “No. No tracking device, dummy. And no, we can’t do some clever shit with the GPS.”

  “Well, since he’s got his phone still, if he can get away, he can at least try to call one of us, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “So maybe we just go back to the warehouse and wait.”

  “No, Cleve, we do not just go back to the warehouse and wait.”

  “You know, I’m not just some fucking idiot you can talk down to like this.”

  Marcton grinned. “You kind of are, Cleve. Sort of. Maybe a little bit, you know?” He held up his thumb and index finger, moved them very close together. “Just this much.”

  Cleve knew Marcton was just winding him up. His smile showed it, and it helped cut the tension. “Seriously, though, why not just wait? What can we do out here? The weather’s getting shittier by the second, and we’ll be useless if we get stuck.”

  “In a Hummer,” Marcton said. The guys in the back chuckled.

  “Alright, fine, fuck you all. Do what you want.” Cleve settled into a sulk. “Just trying to do what’s best.”

  “What’s best is to keep looking for Palermo. Let’s just think about this for a minute. Now, where would he go, if he had any choice in the matter? Would he try to stall the guy? Yes. Alright, so what’s a good stall tactic? What’s a good way to buy time? Better yet,” Marcton said, snapping his fingers as an idea occurred to him. “Where does he know we’ve got guys?”

  Cleve just stared at him.

  “The nurse’s place,” Marcton said. “That’s the only other operation going on right now besides the regular Runs – speaking of which, if we’re still on lockdown at the warehouses, will there even be one tonight? And if not… well, shit, let’s not even think about that. Let’s make sure we get this sorted so that there can be one. Anyway, Palermo would try to get him to the nurse’s place. He’d be a fool not to.”

  “So, we let our guys there know to watch out for him, yeah?” Cleve said, finally catching on.

  “Yes, we do, Cleve. Yes, we do. You take care of that; I’ll drive.” He turned in his seat. “You ladies in the back just keep holding hands. We got this.”

  * * *

  “Adelina was my girlfriend.”

  Palermo met Krebosche’s eyes and knew he wasn’t lying.

  “For a little over two years. I gather she didn’t tell you.”

  Once Palermo had stopped his mind from flying off in several thousand directions at once, he said, “Not one word.”

  “Thought not. And I know you’re her father.”

  A nod. Eyes cast down. Palermo applied pressure to his wound. A bit of blood burbled up between his fingers.

  “She said you wouldn’t want her with anyone but ‘her own kind.’”

  “True.”

  “And what kind, exactly, is that?”

  Palermo looked confused. “You don’t know about us?”

  “I know you’re up to some shifty shit, but right now I’m lucky I’m remembering why I’m even in this car with you. Five minutes away from you and we both know it’d start to haze over.”

  “Interesting. I thought you knew more than that. Well, good, then. I’m not telling you anything else. You’re going to kill me, anyway. Why would I tell you anything else about us?”

  “How about because I loved – still love – Adelina?”

  Krebosche was playing dumb to see what information Palermo might give up. He knew if Palermo thought Krebosche knew all about them, he might not give any him further info.

  A car went by slowly on the street, headlights cutting the shadows back. Palermo and Krebosche both tensed up. The yellow shafts carved deeper into the darkness. Moving on. Gone.

  “So did I. And…” Palermo struggled with whether to tell him anything else, decided that if he had loved Adelina, then he deserved to know at least this – some truth mixed in with a lie: “I didn’t kill her. No one did. She just… ascended. Or something akin to that. We don’t know what to call it, exactly. People have various words for it. It’s only happened once.”

  Palermo had already tipped one of the cards in his hand – a damn big one, at that. He wasn’t about to tip them all by telling Krebosche about Henry Kyllo.

  “But I saw you and another man go into a house. I followed you there. You went in, with Adelina. A while later, after a woman showed up, you left that house – without Adelina – and a good portion of the house was destroyed by something – something that demolished it from the inside. And I never saw or heard from Adelina again.”

  “When we went into that house, it was to witness her transformation.”

  “Into what?”

  “We didn’t know.”

  “So what happened?”

  “We still don’t know. She just –” he motioned upward with his hands “– disappeared.”

  More lies. “How? Like in a fucking magic show? What destroyed most of the
house? And what’s this ‘ascension’ horseshit? What the hell are you talking about?” Krebosche’s anger rose quickly in his chest. “You expect me to believe this?”

  With Krebosche’s outburst came a sudden wave of lightheadedness in Palermo. He was losing blood. Not fast, but fast enough that it needed to be stopped very soon, or he’d pass out.

  “Seriously, can I get some sort of tourniquet on this? If we’re going to sit and chat, I need to be conscious.”

  “Fine, shit.” Krebosche rooted around behind Palermo’s seat for a couple of seconds, sure to keep an eye on him, then came up with a camera with a strap. “Use the strap.”

  A minute later, Palermo had the camera strap wrapped around his leg. The bleeding stopped.

  “So this person you were going to bring me to – the guy who you said killed Adelina. Obviously a trap of some kind. What’s there? What kind of ambush would I have been walking into?”

  “Not a big one. Just two of my men stationed there, watching an apartment I asked them to keep an eye on.”

  “Well, clearly we’re not going there now.”

  “Clearly.”

  Another car drove by, didn’t turn in.

  “You know,” Palermo said, deciding on a different tack, realizing that trying to convince Krebosche to go somewhere – anywhere – of his choosing would never work. “I’m something of a weather tracker. All weather means something, I think. It’s a harbinger of things to come. If you study it closely enough, I think you can tell what might be coming down the road for you.”

  Krebosche just looked at him.

  “I keep notebooks,” Palermo added.

  “Good for you.”

  “Yes, actually, it is, because I think this storm means something. We’ve never had one like it – not in the entire time I’ve been keeping track, which is to say nearly my whole life.”

  “Fine, I’ll bite. What do you think it means?”

  “Damned if I know.”

  That hung in the air for a moment, then Krebosche said, “Alright, then. Good to know.”