by Lee Goldberg
Macklin bounded in three steps to the chapel doors. He pressed his back to the wall and peered through the crack between the doors. He could see the first three rows of wooden pews. At the front of the room Simon, his arms folded against his chest, was leaning against a podium. Jesus Christ hung from the cross behind Simon and, head lolling on one shoulder, stared down at the evangelist.
Sliran paced angrily in front of Simon.
"Don't bitch at me, Simon. I wasn't the one who let Macklin run all over the goddamn city."
"How did he find out about you?" he asked softly.
"Shit, I don't know. Does it matter? If you had let me kill him the moment he started asking questions . . ."
"Building a case against Macklin would have been a case against us as well. Others could have been led to us. Had you killed Macklin, his black friend would have started to ask questions." Macklin saw Simon's face harden. Simon seemed to be fighting back his anger. "My plan was virtually foolproof, economical and efficient. Macklin would have eliminated any trail we had left. But you have ruined it all with your insipid handling of the Jeffries matter."
Macklin exhaled slowly, a sickening feeling swelling in his chest. They used me. Everything I've done has served them. All the killing. All the pain.
"Ah, fuck you, Simon."
Simon lashed out, grabbing Sliran by the neck with both hands. Macklin flinched, as startled as Sliran by the sudden strike. "You spineless lump of useless flesh! You have jeopardized everything!"
"It was perfect!" Sliran screamed, his hand pulling at Simon's wrists. "It was perfect to get rid of them all in one fell swoop. How was I to know Macklin would escape?"
Simon tossed Sliran back into the pew. "You should have consulted me. Had I known Jeffries and Macklin were connected I would have handled the matter in a more direct fashion." The evangelist, his back to both Sliran and Macklin, ran his hands through his hair and took a deep breath. "You made a stupid, stupid decision. And now you have compounded that stupidity."
Sliran, his face red and panting for breath, straightened up into a sitting position. "Simon, look—"
"Think!" Simon whirled to face Sliran. "Think for one fucking moment. For once in your life summon some intellect. Why do you think Macklin threatened you?"
"To put a scare in me," Sliran said quickly, "show what a big man he is."
Simon smiled thinly. "Exactly. Now, why would he want to do that?" His voice was acidic and patronizing. "I'll tell you why. He wanted you to panic. He wanted you to run. He wanted you to lead him to me."
Macklin spun and saw the chauffeur standing behind him, grinning, a gun equipped with a silencer in his right hand.
"Isn't that right, Mr. Macklin?" he heard Simon yell from the chapel. A chill rolled down Macklin's back. The chauffeur motioned with his gun towards the chapel doors. Reluctantly, Macklin turned and pushed open the doors, stepping into the chapel.
Simon, flashing his famous TV smile, stepped down the aisle towards Macklin. Sliran, surprised, stood up.
"So, you are the troublesome Brett Macklin." Simon looked back contemptuously at Sliran, who was visibly shaken by Macklin's arrival.
"I thought you'd look less like a circus clown in the flesh, Simon," Macklin said.
Simon chuckled. "That's good. You're living up to the brash image I had of you. Don't look so hurt, Mr. Macklin. This meeting was inevitable. You are predictable to a fault. You are here, just as I knew you would be."
Macklin felt broken inside. Simon was right. He had been manipulated from the start.
Simon looked over his shoulder at Sliran. "Luck seems to be on your side tonight, Sliran." Simon met Macklin's gaze. "Your luck, I'm afraid, has just run out."
Macklin sensed the quick motion behind him. The back of his skull exploded with pain and the floor rushed up to meet his face.
# # # # # #
Pain. As the blackness faded, that was the first, overwhelming thing he became aware of. It was comforting. It meant the chauffeur hadn't blown his head off. It meant he was still alive. He concentrated on the pain, using it to visualize his predicament.
A cold, stinging pain radiated from his wrists and coursed down taut, aching arms that seemed stretched to their limit. He shook his feet and felt empty space beneath him. Shit, he thought, I'm strung up.
Macklin sniffed. His nostrils filled with the room's dank, musty odor.
The air was still. A warehouse? No, he thought, the air is too heavy and oppressive. Something smaller, more enclosed. A garage, a basement perhaps.
He listened for a sound of others in the room. Breathing or motion. He sensed neither. Slowly, he opened his eyes. It took a second for his eyes to focus. A single lightbulb dangled from the ceiling a few yards away. He saw the circuit breakers mounted on the wall, the dust and cobwebs, the boxes and discarded office furniture, the four steps leading up to the door on the far side of the windowless room. A basement.
Macklin looked up and saw that his hands were bound by a pair of handcuffs that, under the weight of his body, had sliced into his flesh. The handcuffs were draped over a pipe that was about the width of a broomstick and stretched the length of the room, a valve interrupting the span about halfway across. He wrapped his fingers around the chain and pulled. The steel bit into his wrist, making him wince with pain. He let go. Blood streamed down his arms and dripped onto the floor.
The pipe, and the cuffs, were secure, as he knew they would be. He was securely, and undoubtedly, Simon's prisoner.
There was a loud clank behind Macklin and the sound of an engine grinding to life. Pulleys squealed as cables went into motion. Macklin twisted and saw the bottom of an elevator shaft behind him, the rising counterweight telling him that a car was on its way down. The elevator car stopped at the lobby level and Macklin heard footsteps approaching the basement door. He closed his eyes as Sliran, Simon, and two of his men came in.
"Bring him around," Simon told Sliran, "and then find out what he knows."
"Gladly." Sliran advanced on Macklin, studied him for a moment, and then put everything he had behind a hard blow to the stomach.
The air rushed out of Macklin and he buckled. Before he could recover, Sliran swatted him across the face repeatedly, snapping his head sharply from side to side.
"Enough." Simon leaned against a stack of cartons. Sliran reluctantly stopped, stepping back from Macklin. He swung back and forth, moaning.
"C'mon, Macky boy. Tell us what you know," Sliran said, grinning.
Macklin's eyes fluttered open. His cheeks stung and his ears were ringing. Tears rolled out of his red eyes as he gasped for breath. "Know about what?"
Sliran raised his hand to strike Macklin but was halted by a strict glance from Simon. Sliran let his hand drop to his side and regarded Macklin with undisguised fury.
"Mr. Macklin, I'm a reasonable man. A pious man. I hate to see a fellow human being suffer. There's no reason for you to suffer." Simon stepped up to Macklin and lifted Macklin's face up by the chin. "I'm going to kill you. Okay? We won't kid each other. You can die easily, swiftly, one bullet though the head. Or, you can die slowly in agony. I can let Sliran here do what he pleases. Put an open flame under your testicles. Snip off your cock with shears and make you eat it." Simon spoke with the casual air of a person discussing the weather. "Perhaps he'll be more civil and just twist off your nose with a set of pliers, or remove your teeth, one by one. Either way, we'll get what we want."
Simon released Macklin's head, letting it drop against his chest. "The choice is yours, Brett. May I call you Brett?"
The last thing Macklin wanted to do was help the asshole. But talking would keep him alive for a few more minutes. The longer he stayed alive, the better his chances for somehow surviving. Besides, if he was going to die, he wanted to die knowing the truth.
"Gimme a sec," Macklin gasped.
"Surely." Simon smiled. Sliran looked disappointed.
Macklin wasn't sure what he knew. His father had been looking
into seemingly baseless rumors of gang violence, which were, in turn, spurring more gang violence. Then his father was murdered by a gang. Why had they killed him? Esteban said the mayor ordered it through someone else. That someone was Sliran, who blew Esteban's head off. How did it all fit together? Political enemies of Lucas Breen being killed in the midst of gang warfare. Why?
"The floor is yours, Brett," Simon said, his voice laced with impatience.
"Okay," Macklin swallowed. "You're using gangs to kill anyone who stands in your way or endangers Lucas Breen's shot at Sacramento."
"Good guess," Sliran sneered, lighting a cigarette. "Can I kill him now?"
Simon grinned. "Relax, Sliran, let the man finish. Go on, tell me more."
"My guess is that Sliran here, through gang members like Esteban, purposely stokes gang tensions by concocting events that never occurred. I assume it's to pit the gangs against each other in such a way that your enemies get killed in the midst of it all."
Simon clapped. "Bravo."
"Why? Why not just kill them?"
"Don't be an idiot, Brett. If someone is assassinated, people investigate. If the gangs kill them for us, the victims become just another statistic. No one sees a larger picture."
"I see," Macklin whispered. It was diabolically logical. "So I get it now. Sliran would feed his Estebans on the various gang stories they would go around and feed to their fellow gang members. These Estebans would say a rival gang had committed a serious affront that demanded immediate, violent retribution. Perhaps sometimes the Estebans wouldn't have to lie. Maybe Sliran would get his rocks off kicking in a few heads and make it look like a rival gang did it. My father asked too many questions. He had to be killed.
"Sliran saw Shaw meet with Tomas Cruz and arranged for the kid to have the shit kicked out of him. Invalidate the confession so the gang members didn't end up in jail and accidentally spill something about your operation."
Macklin swallowed, shifting his gaze between Simon and Sliran. As soon as he ran out of things to say, Simon would let Sliran indulge his sadism.
Macklin didn't kid himself. There would be no swift end. Sliran would make him suffer.
"And you, Brett, performed wonderfully as my garbage man. You cleaned up any trail we might have accidentally left," Simon said, impressed with himself.
"With the exception of this mishap, things went smoothly."
"I can't figure out, though, how you got these few gang members, these contacts, to help you." Macklin needed time.
"It was easy." Simon walked up to Macklin. He stood so close Macklin could smell the wintergreen mouthwash on his breath. "They were sent to our missions by probation officers who wanted to take part in a community service. I don't think we disappointed the probation officers."
Macklin took a deep breath. Anything he said now was absolute guesswork.
"You bought the gang members off, appealing to their greed with money, drugs, maybe even guns. I don't suppose many of them lived long enough to enjoy their rewards. After all, the more you used them the more they knew, and replacements were always easy to find."
"You're very good at this. If I had known that before, I wouldn't have let you live so long."
"I don't know, Simon. If I were in your shoes, I probably would have done the same thing. Let the son of a bitch tie up any loose ends that could lead to us and then get rid of him."
"You sound very smug and self-assured for someone in your position, Mr. Macklin."
Macklin glanced up at his cuffed wrists and frowned. "You can't win them all."
"This has been fun, Mr. Macklin."
"There is just one thing I can't figure out," Macklin offered tentatively.
"Imagine that," Sliran growled, "just one thing."
"You and Breen," Macklin said. "A symbiotic relationship. I suppose you have the power, through your ministries, to influence voters and pump money into his campaign. Breen has the power to keep the law from rummaging through your dirty laundry, and his support adds a legitimacy and prestige to your ministry. Together, using God and government, you two can control a lot of people and do a lot of damage. No doubt, you both dream about the presidency. Quite a relationship."
Macklin smiled. "I wonder who owns who."
Simon stiffened. "Well, it seems you've uncovered quite a bit. You get an A-plus for ingenuity. Now we can end this uncomfortable business with a simple question. Who have you shared your knowledge with?"
Macklin's heart started to pound. He was at a dead end. Silence would stall death. And lead to torture. To say he had told no one would lead to a similar end. Anyone he named, just to buy time, would be killed. Silence, now, seemed to be the only avenue.
"That sure put a muzzle on him," Sliran said. "He finally shut the fuck up."
"Loosen his tongue," Simon whispered, meeting Macklin's defiant gaze.
Sliran gave his fury free rein. He beat Macklin like a punching bag, unrelenting in his feverish assault until Macklin slipped into merciful unconsciousness.
"Stop," Simon hissed, angry at himself for letting Sliran lose control—he wanted answers, not a corpse.
Macklin's chin rested against his chest, his breathing erratic and body slack, swaying gently from the force of Sliran's blows.
Simon lifted Macklin's head by the hair and examined his eyes with his free hand. "Sliran, you miserable fuckup. Look what you've done. He's no good to us now."
Sighing, Simon released Macklin and walked slowly over to Sliran, whose face was damp with sweat from the exertion of the beating. Without warning, Simon slapped Sliran across the face and sent the cop reeling into the cartons. Sliran was about to spring on Simon but saw the two lieutenants tensing. Besides, Sliran wasn't sure he could take Simon.
"We'll deal with Macklin later." Simon looked down at Sliran as if he had just caught him jerking off in church. "In the meantime, get rid of Shaw."
Sliran struggled to his feet, uncomfortably aware of Simon's hard gaze. "With pleasure."
The cop took one last look at Macklin and then walked out, followed by Simon and his men. The door closed.
A moment later the pulleys whined and the elevator climbed up the guide rails of the shaft at five hundred feet a minute.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Shaw's eyes burned. They were dirty and sleepy and he had rubbed them too much. He expected his eyeballs to shrivel up and just drop out of his sockets onto the stacks of files.
Soon it would be morning and sunlight would assault his tired eyes. Loud noise would grate on his ears, cutting through the Tylenol wall around his headache and setting it bursting free.
"Shit," he muttered, letting his head drop onto the desk. It had been a hard few hours. He had ridden with Jeffries to the hospital and asked him about his conversation with Macklin.
Something Jeffries told Shaw had bugged him as he drove home from the hospital, poking and prodding him until he made a U-turn and headed back downtown to the station.
Now, just a few hours shy of dawn, Shaw was left with his notes. And his discovery.
Over the last two years a dozen people related somehow to the Elliot Wells campaign had been killed in the midst of gang skirmishes. It was far too big a number to be a coincidence. But it was far too big a mystery for an exhausted, sleepy cop to take on at three a.m.
And he wasn't so sure he wanted to take it on when he was fully awake, either.
"Shit," he said again, picking up the legal pad and scanning the list once more.
It was no wonder the connections had not been made before. An old woman who had contributed money to Wells' campaign was gunned down in Beverly Hills in what seemed like just another case of gang joyriding. An influential lawyer, popular with California politicians and a noted Wells supporter, was killed during a gang fight in a downtown parking lot. A well-known media consultant, brought in by Wells to design a new media campaign, was butchered in a gang massacre at a Chinese restaurant. Alone, the murders had none of the earmarking of a premeditat
ed assassination. Together, they made a sickening tapestry of conspiracy and death.
Someone was manipulating the gangs. But how and why?
The man with the motive was obviously Lucas Breen. Yet, it could be anyone with a grudge against Elliot Wells.
Whatever it could be, Shaw knew he could prove nothing. At least not yet.
"Putting in overtime, Shaw?"
Shaw dropped the notepad and looked up. Sliran leaned against the open doorway to the empty squad room.
"What are you doing here, Sliran?"
"I'm covering for Locklear this morning. What's all that shit on your desk?"
Shaw sighed. "Background. I'm just checking up on some hunches of mine."
"Really," sneered Sliran. "I got some hunches, too. I bet you help Macky boy load his gun every night, huh? Maybe he comes home after he blows a few guys away and tells you all the grisly details so you two can jerk off together."
Shaw stood up and stretched. "Jesus, Sliran, aren't you a little old to be playing school-yard bully? I'm not going to take a swing at you, so save it. I'm too tired to give a damn what crazy crap is thriving in that narrow mind of yours." He set his legal pad on top of the stack, picked it up, and headed towards the door.
Sliran didn't move.
"C'mon, Sliran, you gonna block my way all night, trip me, or what? I want to go home and go to bed, okay? You can get me at recess tomorrow."
Sliran stepped aside. "Fuck off, Shaw. You and Macklin are on borrowed time."
Shaw walked past him into the hallway. "Scary line, Sliran. On that note, I bid you good night."
Sliran watched Shaw disappear down the hall, lit a cigarette, and then went over to Shaw's desk and began looking through the drawers. He'd catch up with Shaw later, and then kill him.
# # # # # #
Brett Macklin hung from the pipe, his consciousness whirling in a dizzying netherworld of nausea and gnawing pain.
Get rid . . . with pleasure.
Shaw.
The words sailed in and out of the confusion and ache, slowing his journey through it and bringing his thoughts with each repetition.