by CW Lynch
"So, we're all here," said Vic. "Now what do we do? Is this the bit where I stand up and admit I'm an alcoholic?"
Nobody laughed. Keane tapped his stubby fingers on the table, rocking back and forth in his chair. Crow idly brushed dust from his shoulder.
It was Blake who broke the silence. "I haven't seen a meet like this in forty years," he croaked, the full weight of those forty years audible in every syllable. "And you idiots aren't a patch on the guys who sat around the table that day. You want to know what to do? Put your cards on the table and share what you got, 'cause together is the only way I see us getting out of this alive. You don't want to play? Fine. Go home, drop your pants, and get ready to get fucked. Just don't fuck the rest of us at the same time."
Blake's oxygen tanks shuddered as he took deep lungful after deep lungful of air. The speech had taken it out of him and Vic wondered how Blake had held onto his territory for so long in this state. Maybe that was the answer, he mused, just take Blake's territory and then squeeze the other two out of the middle...
"Cards on the table..." said Crow. "Fine. I'll tell you what I know. There's a new police task force, all out-of-towners, brought in to clean up the city. They were sniffing around my operations for at least six months before the rest of you even knew they were here. They pulled off a few small busts, made some big press for themselves, then hit a brick wall of red tape and limited manpower when they wanted to go for anything bigger. King still owns the real cops, and the real cops don't kick down door one without his say so."
"So want went wrong, Chinatown?" grunted Keane.
"You know what went wrong," replied Crow, ignoring the insult temporarily. "They got help. Special help."
"The guy in the mask," rasped Blake. "The one who's been hitting us... ever since."
Silence fell around the table again. Cards on the table was one thing, but nobody was going to be first to admit how badly they had been hit. They were still sharks, after all.
"My boys say it ain't one guy," said Keane, breaking the silence. "They reckon it's the cops. One of them put on a mask one night, did what they thought needed to be done, and now they're all in on it. Vigilante cops, no more angels than we are. This is just a turf war, boys, the badges don't make it special."
"So how come these guys are still breathing?" asked Vic.
"Like I said," replied Crow. "They've made some good press. The whole thing, this "strike squad", it's happening all over. New York, Washington, Chicago, here. New president got in on a law and order platform, said he was cleaning up one state at a time, so every TV channel and newspaper in the state are crawling all over these guys like they're rock stars. We go after them direct? That's more heat than I want, and definitely more heat than my customers want."
"Federal heat?" said Vic derisively. "Been there."
"Presidential... heat..." wheezed Blake. "You heard Crow, this comes from the top. The real top. We ain't never had heat like it."
Vic steepled his fingers and sat back, rocking his chair onto its hind legs. There was something that none of them were saying, that maybe none of them dared say. The shark among sharks watched the others with his cold eyes and waited for the next droplet of blood to hit the water.
"Why ain't one of you guys turned 'em?" asked Keane. "We all got guys in the police, even me, and I ain't normally one for putting pigs on the payroll. Find what they want, what they need, and just give it to them."
"Leverage," rasped the old man. "It's been tried. But these guys, they're something else. My guys have dug, and dug deep, and there's nothing. And I mean nothing. They got no families, no girlfriends, no fucking boyfriends either. No kids."
"Nobody's that clean," said Crow. "You should let me try, I've got girls who can..."
"Forget it," interrupted Vic. Crow's eyes flashed indignantly, but the inherent pecking order of the table held sway. "Blake was bribing cops when movies were still in black and white. If he says they're clean, they're clean."
"A crack squad of completely clean cops..." mused Crow. "Except for when they put on masks and burn our businesses to the ground?"
Vic shrugged. "Maybe. Or maybe it is just one guy. Maybe the president sent him too, huh?"
Blake's oxygen tanks rattled as he took another deep breath. "One of my guys got up close to him," he said. "Said he was fast, like scary fast. Used a knife, cut my guy's fingers clean off and tossed him through a plate glass window. Said he stood over him afterwards, watched him. Talked to himself the whole time."
"So the guy's a nutjob, so what?" muttered Keane.
"You don't get it," hissed Blake. "My guy? He's been with me twenty years. I've known him since I was a kid. He ain't never been scared of nothing, but he was scared of this guy. And I mean real scared. Last I heard, he was still pissing the bed and sleeping with the light on."
"Maybe you need better guys, old man."
Blake lurched forward in his seat. "You little Irish shit! I ought to rain down... rain down... enough pain on you to..."
"Leave him, Blake," interrupted Vic, standing up to talk over the old man's coughs and splutters. "And you, Keane, you shut up now! You run protection in Southside? I can put the word out with one phone call that your protection ain't worth shit, that you ain't worth shit, and you'll be back mugging hookers for beer money by Friday."
Keane opened his mouth, then closed it. Crow let out a small snigger. The shark among sharks had spoken. Vic had never uttered a threat that he could not carry out ten-fold, and they all knew it.
"That's what this is all about anyway, right, protection?" Vic continued. "Well fuck, guys, if you're all too scared to say it then I will... what the hell is King going to do about this?"
And there is was. The thing that none of them spoke about. Shark or not, killer whale or not, that was the one thing that you didn't talk about. Shark or whale, you didn't call out King. Compared to you, King was the god-damned ocean that you swam in. The boss of bosses, a criminal elite so elevated that he owned the cops, he owned the media, he owned senators and governors, and he did it all in plain sight. Cane King had been a household name his whole life, the heir apparent to the King fortune. Charismatic, powerful, and deadly. A celebrity criminal, the kind they didn't make any more. He was the guy the sharks paid for protection, for license to operate in what he called "his" city. They all had "King's Men" on their crew and they all paid up to the King.
For a moment, there was no sound in the slaughterhouse except for the shallow hiss of Blake's oxygen bottles. Vic realised he was standing over the others, but held his ground. An old man, a pimp, and a thug... how the hell had it come to pass that these were all Vic had for contemporaries?
And that was when it happened. A slow hand clap that echoed around the kill floor, bouncing off the cold metal walls, and seemed to fill the place like thunder. Vic, Blake, Keane, and Crow all looked up.
There, on the gantry above them, looking down on the kill floor, was Cane King.
ONE FOR SORROW
The warehouse looked just like all the others. It was supposed to, because the warehouse was hiding in plain sight. A lot of meat came in and out of the docks and a lot of it moved at night, so nobody paid much attention to a warehouse that kept the lights on and had vans and trucks coming and going in the small hours. No paid much attention to the rank odour that oozed from the place, the paper and board covered windows, or the odd noises that you could hear in those rare times when the docks were truly silent.
Each to their own, right? That was the code of the docks. Nobody ask, nobody tell, and everyone go along. Unless you were Owen White and Rosa Blind. If you were Owen White and Rosa Blind then you were cops, and it was your job to notice warehouses like that warehouse, and have the uncontrollable urge to kick the door in.
Parked up in the docks, Owen and Rosa didn't normally practice the art of being inconspicuous or hiding in plain sight. They liked to be seen. Since they'd come to this hell hole of a town, they'd made it their business to be seen. O
n the streets, in the precincts and, most importantly, right up in the face of every son of a bitch who thought he was above the law.
But tonight was different.
The back door of the car opened almost silently and the Magpye slid soundlessly onto the back seat.
"Detective White," he said. His voice muffled through his mask, but gave Rosa a chill down her spine nonetheless. She had spent six years profiling serial killers and rapists before being hand-picked for the "Clean Squad", as they jokingly called it. Nothing, but nothing, in those six years had made her feel the way she did when in the same car with Magpye. She had always considered herself grounded, rooted in the real world, and in the now. It was what made her a great profiler; her almost mechanical brain was the perfect tool for analysing the chaos that drove others. Now, confronted with something so unreal, she could feel the cogs and gears of her mind grinding together, threatening to seize up at any moment.
Was this really what they were doing? Had they really put their trust in this man, this... creature? Rosa had been trained to hunt people like Magpye, not put a leash on them and take them out for a walk.
Owen adjusted the rear view mirror. "This is a bad one, I just need you to know that."
"They're all bad ones," replied Magpye.
"We've been monitoring the warehouse for three weeks now," said Rosa. She found talking made it better, especially talking over case notes. If she could drag them all, Magpye included, back to the world of facts and figures and logic, then maybe she could cope with this. "Surveillance has been difficult, for obvious reasons, but we estimate Victor Chase is moving two to three shipments a week through here."
"More drugs?" asked Magpye. "We're tired of hitting drug dens. They just build more and there's always more junkies who want to work in them for a cheap hit."
Owen watched Rosa take a mental note. They'd heard Magpye talk about himself in the plural before, and Owen knew that some part of his partner's machine-mind was filing this incident away as well.
"Not drugs, no," he said. "Kids. He's shipping kids."
Magpye's head dropped and Owen and Rosa heard him muttering something behind his mask.
"We've put in for all the paperwork, just like always. A bust like this could open up this city, take things to the next level... we could take Vic Chase."
"But the paperwork got lost," said Magpye, "Just like it always does. Because behind Vic Chase is Cane King, and Cane King runs everything."
Rosa sighed. "You can't take an internet conspiracy theory and make it the basis for an investigation," she said curtly. "Cane King has been investigated every way there is and he's come up clean every time."
"Of course he has, that's the conspiracy," replied Magpye. Rosa's well trained ear could hear the tension in his voice, the frustration. Vic Chase was a scum-bag, through and through, and after everything Rosa had seen in almost a year in this damned city, she had no qualms about unleashing Magpye on him. But this obsession with Cane King was becoming dangerous.
"Look," said Owen, "We know you think King is behind all this. And maybe he is. Maybe the puzzle piece you need to prove it all to us is in that building right now, or maybe it isn't."
Owen turned in his seat to face Magpye.
"But even if it isn't, we do know what is... a whole bunch of kids who are about to get sold on to the highest bidder. You know the knife edge we're on here, I know you know. You think it sat right with me, staking this place out for week and week, watching the vans come and go, knowing what was inside? I've been in and out of dirty departments my whole career and I never knew a cop turn a blind eye to something like this. Whatever's going on in this town it's rotten to the core, I'll give you that. I'd love to make a case, make it stick, and put Vic Chase away... but we can't."
The car was silent for a moment, except for the soft murmuring of the Magpye.
Owen watched him. It was true, he'd worked in and out of dirty departments his whole life. He'd come to believe that a lot of people couldn't be that close to so much pain and misery and wrongness without it rubbing off on them. The only sensible response was to become worse than the thing you had to face every day. Some cops did it in a bottle, some in a line of white powder. Some put a gun to their heads. Some just put out their hand, took the money, and sold their morality on to someone else. If it was a bad world, why be a good person? And he knew he was on that same slope now. He'd been recruited because of his work uncovering corruption, and now he was running a disturbed vigilante in his own turf war against the mob. Maybe he'd already slipped too far. Or maybe not.
The Magpye looked up from the floor of the car. "We'll make it stick."
Owen watched as Magpye slipped out the car and dashed across the street, disappearing into an alleyway between two warehouses.
Rosa sighed. "This is wrong."
"What's going on in that warehouse is wrong."
"He'll cross the line, you have to see that."
"When he does, if he ever does, I'll be there."
"It'll be King. He'll take a run at him no matter how insane we tell him it is."
"You think it's that crazy? I've been around corruption a long time Rosa and I'll tell you thing... the deeper it goes, the higher it goes. You might want to dismiss it, but I think he might be right."
"I'll remember you said that when Cane King's on a slab and our friend out there is suspect number one."
Owen started up the car. "If the time comes, I'll bring him in myself."
THE KING OF KINGS
Cane King was six foot six, blond, and handsome in the way that magazine covers like people to be handsome. His suit was worth more, Vic suspected, than his apartment. Cane was flanked by his two chief lieutenants: Mick Garrity, the dirtiest of dirty cops, and Jack Taylor. Vic had heard things about Taylor, things that made even his flesh crawl. Vic was a shark, sure, and he'd done his share of bad things, but always with a purpose. He was a businessman, first and last. Taylor, on the other hand, was the kind of guy who does bad things just because he wants to. An ice cold sociopath who would kill you as soon as look at you.
Right now, he was looking at Vic Chase.
"Mr. King," said Blake, breaking the silence. "I had no idea that you..."
"What?" asked King. His voice was strong, flowing. A voice that commanded. A voice that convinced. "Didn't know that the heads of the four families that I let run this city were coming together? Now, I wouldn't be half as smart as people say I am if I didn't know that, would I?"
Garrity and Taylor stepped in behind him, Cane sauntered across the gantry and down the flight of metal steps. Each step clanged like a bell. One, two, three, four. Vic held his ground, waiting for the next shoe to drop.
"Although I must say," King continued. "You could have picked more comfortable surroundings."
"It's a safe place," Vic replied, his eyes never leaving Jack Taylor. "Not so many of those about right now."
Garrity pushed past Vic and dumped a heavy duffel bag on the table. There was something big inside, big and wet.
"What the fuck?" blurted Keane, "The fuck's in that bag, Garrity?"
"The answer to your problems," answered Cane, patiently waiting for Garrity to return to his side. The dirtiest of dirty cops was also one of the most out of shape, not that it mattered. Mick Garrity had a mean streak as wide as any there was, and could fight with the best of them. Out of shape or no, Vic wouldn't have bet against Garrity in a fight with Keane.
Cane pulled Vic's chair across to himself and sat down, Taylor and Garrity standing either side of him.
"So, Garrity tells me you've got a problem with the new cops in town?"
"Them and their freakshow helper, yeah," said Vic. "It's been six months and there's no let up. People are starting to ask questions Mr. King."
Cane smiled. "Ah yes, the mysterious vigilante. The masked man. We're going to deal with him too."
"Thank you, Mr. King," wheezed Blake. "We appreciate it."
"That's it?" said Kea
ne, "You're not even going to ask him how?"
"Mr. Blake has been alive a lot longer than you," said Taylor suddenly. His voice was the antithesis of Cane King's. Emotionless, monotone. "Perhaps his gratitude and respect for Mr. King are why."
Cane laughed. "It's alright, Jack. It's a fair question, and it deserves a fair answer. So, open the bag..."
"What?" asked Keane.
"You heard him, Irish," said Crow, suddenly finding his voice. "Open the bag."
Vic watched as Keane moved cautiously towards the bag. He had to admire the way that King had divided the room so quickly. Blake and Crow on one side, the loyal and dutiful, Keane on the other. It didn't give Vic many places to go; Keane wasn't the sort of ally that he wanted, even if he only lived through the next ten minutes.
Keane got a hold of the zipper and slowly opened up the bag. "Holy shit."
"Empty it," said King, even as Keane was backing slowly away from the bag. "Onto the table."
With one hand over his mouth, Keane took hold of the end of the bag and slowly lifted it up. The contents shifted awkwardly, then began to spill out. The first few pieces were unrecognisable, just hunks of bloodied flesh, fragments of broken bone. Blood and bile had begun to leak from the bottom of the bag and pool on the table when a partly skinned hand toppled out. Blake's oxygen bottles hissed as he drew breath, watching a misshapen head roll free.
Crow vomited, unable to control his revulsion, as the head stopped, face up, in front of him. The eyes were gone, the mouth was nothing more than a smashed and gaping hole.
"The first of your so called untouchable super cops," said King. "Tomorrow my news network will break the story that this hero-cop was killed by your vigilante. He'll be public enemy number one. Garrity here will set up a task force to track him down and when we find him... well, I'll leave that up to you."
HIGHWIRE ACT
Magpye finished scaling the roof of the building next to the warehouse and carefully wound in his trapeze wire. The adjacent building was slightly larger than the warehouse, and this perch offered Magpye a view down on to the roof of the warehouse that was his target. Six months ago, he could practically have walked up to the front door. The gangs had gotten smarter since then, more cautious. A lot of the operations were mobile now, moving from place to place to stay ahead of him and the few clean cops who fed him his information. Those that were too big to moved, like this one, had been fortified. Good, Magpye thought to himself. They're scared. They're under siege.