The sour human smell hit him before anything else.
The stink of fear and surrender, the feculence of pain long past restraint.
Then the sequence of screams.
The screams were piercing, keening, worse than fingernails on a chalkboard piped through reverb. It was a surprise, considering the long reedy frame of the source of the screams, the long, slim dancing body, that they were deafening. Yet, the muscle of the Ork let him scream on, coaxed out shrieks, shrill and desperate calls for help, insensate bellowing and then the chugging grunts of uncomprehending response. It was okay, though. Under control.
As the muscle guy crushing the metacarpals in the long man's grip observed with a half-lisp, “It's all good, dawg.”
They wanted him to scream.
It was important, Malek the Mallet had always said, for the penitent always to hear his own screaming.
It would bring the guy back to reality when the other senses were blurred.
Nick Andromeda brazened into the main garage of Gary Lee Obidowski's Body Shop, Service and Tow like he was walking into a brothel full of welcoming whores. He seemed at ease, despite a hitch to his shoulder as he walked, his manner and expression proclaiming cocky stud looking coolly back into the face of a doomed man's agony. This wasn't pathology or hubris.
This was survival.
One misstep, one wrong turn of the trick and he would be the bound screamer dancing with an electric drill sunk into his thigh, crying, begging and shitting his pants.
He smiled and acknowledged the muscle of the Ork, like what they were doing was flat out nothing, whittling on wood maybe.
The wounded, human scent all but wiped out the usual pungency of acetone, Valvoline and axle grease. Nick fought the desire to shove a handkerchief over his nose and the involuntary gagging at the back of his throat.
He knew what it was. Not the smell of fear, but the smell of desperate loss, the last letting go of a hopeless life-brawl. Nick swallowed back hard to damp the gagging.
Malek sucked sausage between his teeth, not bothering to get up and shake the detective's hand, and why should he? This pissant hack, detective or not, was just another payroll zombie, a droid thought he was a comer, thought he was some kind of high-flyer going places. Malek sighed, his frown implacable. Youth always mistook exploitation for success, grudging tolerance for freedom. It had to be that way. That was how youth sometimes got lucky enough to make it to old age.
Malek didn't crack a smile at the thought of his having reached old age prematurely, which was plain from his patchy hair, sallow features, desiccated skin, one wall eye. He looked at Nick and suppressed hostility with a savage bite into his sausage and peppers submarine sandwich.
(In New Orleans, they have po' boys, in Philadelphia, hoagies, and always heroes in New York. In Boston, it was submarines.)
Andromeda was sweating bullets, his color was bad and Malek's eyes caught this like two red lobster claws.
Malek guffawed with a mouth full of submarine sandwich cud, articulated in muted deformity: “Franchot! Hey Franchot, already, get Nicky something out the deli bag so he shouldn't starve! Looks hungry to me.” He brushed crumbs off the stained Zegna suit jacket.
Andromeda flashed—this was yet another test and he'd better not miss. It was the constant heart-check straight off the prison yard. The rule was simple: show your humanity and out yourself as a pussy.
And everyone knows what pussies are for.
“Pastrami,” boomed Nick. “If you got it.” Sweat pattered down from his cheek to the floor and Malek chewed on mirthfully, amid the shrieking, screaming, groaning and whimpering of the long man, watching Franchot place a rolled sandwich bag in front of Nick and Malek with bloody fingers.
Nick treated the blood like so much surplus sauce, tore open the white puckered butt end of the rolled sandwich and glommed onto it with his teeth in one quick hurry. Malek eyed him, frozen in thought. Nick kept on biting.
The long man in his soiled, once-white shirt and tan slacks wailed on miserably as the muscle of the Ork went through the paces of their gruesome, passionless routine. Grim punches punctuated perfunctory jabs with the knife while the shrill keening of the electric drill kept pace with the inarticulate pleading of the man on the table.
Blood spattered, nameless clear liquid flew, tears streamed.
The long body thumped violently against the table where it lay helpless, prone and, even at this extreme moment, innocent.
Nick swallowed hard, slices of pastrami hanging down from his greasy fingers.
He was just getting used to the wild cries and screaming until they began to ooze down to a demodulating moan.
“Tell me it's disgusting, Nicky. Don't be a shy boy.”
“It is what it is,” Andromeda said, putting the submarine sandwich delicately down on the desk in front of Malek, helping himself to a tissue from the box on the desk and dabbing away the blood and grease from his hands.
“Makes you sick, don't it, Nicky boy?”
The moan choked off to abrupt silence.
Andromeda's shoulders slumped, Franchot, the huge goon and one other shadowy lump of a short, squat man in the back washed up and cracked beers kept cold in a long white meat freezer in back. He knew what the meat freezer was for—the long man who was now no longer dancing.
“Hey, Padrone,” said Franchot. “This mutt's gonzo for now. Want we should use the spirits of ammonia?”
Patiently irritated with the interruption, Malek dismissed the suggestion. “No, take a break, have your beers, but get ready to put in some hours so we can get a little closure here.”
“I like that,” chuckled Franchot. “We open him up so you can get closure.”
“I don't want you to like it, just fucking do it!”
Franchot mumbled assent. Nick cleared his throat.
Malek continued eating his sandwich methodically, unashamed of talking with his mouth full or of producing an uneven cascade of crumbs and an infrequent salvo of bits of sausage meat. “I agree it's sick, disgusting, inhuman.”
“I never said anything about it.”
“But you were thinking it.”
“How would you know?”
Malek slammed down his sandwich with a fist and bolted up, spitting bits of sandwich in Nick's face. “I know because this is about men, dipshit, not little cunts running around pretending to be men.”
He sized Malek up for a moment and decided he couldn't take him. Though older, maybe not in as good shape, Malek was nevertheless a fearless, psychotic Gila monster of a fighter. Once he bit, you'd have to kill him, and he was very hard to kill, as a graveyard full of former partners, adversaries and bosses from Malek's past silently attested. Plus, punching his lights out now and then dancing a quick tarantella on his face would queer their deal. And Nick was about nothing if he wasn't about the deal.
“Fine, Mal, it's whatever it has to be, I guess. I'm not here to make judgments, I'm just here to make a pickup.”
“Don't be a cunt, Nicky! You know what I'm saying.” He beamed at Nick brilliantly for a half-second, then let his jowled and tanning-bed wizened face slacken back down to dour.
“I know what you're saying.” He lit a cigarette, half-proud of the smoothness with which he did it.
Malek tossed a fat manila business envelope at Nick's chest and he folded his arms over it to keep it from falling. “This is what men do, Nicky, not little cunts disguising themselves as men, not privileged little faggots never had to sweat anything, affecting manhood like a new cologne to impress their swishy friends. Manhood to them is a fucking suit, a car, some bitch wife they only wind-up renting who ultimately fleeces them bare. The true men, like us Nicky, we do what has to be done, the thing that must be done.”
“The hard work.”
“The hard things, Nicky. The worst things—like calmly sitting by eating a submarine sandwich while some barbaric freaks break, mutilate and torture your best under-assistant accountant to death. This was a man you trusted, who you had over to the house for dinner, knew your kids. You sit by and eat and do your business and keep one eye on these hellish proceedings to make sure they get fucking done, because this is what men do. This is what men are—willing to do the hard things to make a life for children and to protect their family and the ones they love.
“You loved the under-assistant accountant, right?”
Cold fish eyes, no anger. “But this is business. And the business we know knows no love, does it, Nicky?”
“In reality, I guess not.” He dragged deep on his cigarette. “You know, he was innocent—”
Malek guffawed at that, slapped himself, then gobbled the last of his sandwich. Nick blushed as Malek shook his head, smoothed back greasy, matted remnant strands of dirty white and axle grease-black hair against his scalp.
“Okay, okay, poor choice of words. But you know he had nothing to do with it.”
“Only God and the poor schmuck know for sure. You know how it's done, you been in the world long enough.”
“Your boss gets waxed, you go down next, or up if you're lucky.”
“He wasn't too lucky.”
Moans oozed up to the foreground as the three stalwart torturers of the Muscle of the Ork began plying their trade, literally shoving cracked ampules of spirits of ammonia up the long man's nostrils.
“Do they have to—?”
“They have to. If he was in on it, we'll soon know. They always break, always.”
“There have been exceptions, I've heard.”
Malek grunted between ambient moans, “Covers all bases, after the death. Like cauterizing a wound. Conspirators scatter, whether he led them or not. We find out what there is to find out, or nothing, and the mutt dies for the greater good.”
“Bentham.”
Malek's weak eye fluttered. “You're a deep guy, Nicky. That mummified shit lawyer knew what was up for sure, lemme tell ya.”
“I didn't know they put Bentham in comic book form.”
He patted Nick's clammy cheek. “Brave, brave Nicky. Be careful about judging when to kick my ass and when to kiss it. This business isn't very failure tolerant, my friend.”
“I'm not here because of any failure, just business. I'm here for the pick-up and that's it.”
“We both know different about that, Nicky. The big blue wall ain't what it used to be. You're here because I have a job for you and for no other reason, and yes, there's a few extra yards in the envelope to remind you just who you're working for, and who you're working for is working for.”
Nick sighed and sat in the chair, shoved his heels up on the desk to make a gesture of token defiance.
“There was an exception to the torture rule, you know, you sadistic fuck.” Nick announced above a sudden ramp-up of shrieking.
The stocky humpback figure in the shadows was busily breaking the long man's feet with a large vise-grip just as zestily as if he were tucking into a boiled lobster dinner, savoring each succinct crack of the claws. All Nicky could see of this lump's face was the blinding white of his teeth flashed in a split grimace, and his thick, low build exaggerated in shadow.
“Joseph Xavier Null!” he shouted to drive home the point.
Malek made an expert grab across the desk for Andromeda's throat and connected. He seethed and spoke low, yet piercingly: “Don't give me your fucking urban myth, you punked-out rent-a-detective!”
Nick breathed steadily and did nothing—let Malek take the lead in going for calm. He touched Malek's fingers and one by one, in response, they tentatively released.
The Muscle of The Ork ignored them both, preferring to work the long man instead. They sized it up, knew what it was all about. Malek could handle one guy all by himself no sweat—even a police feeb—and if he couldn't, well then, everyone could just move up a notch, couldn't they? You want to run a tough crew, be tough enough to do it, no matter how old or burned out you are.
Everybody knows there are no easy retirements on the street.
“Don't give me your fucking fairy stories.”
Nick was stolid. “They say he survived the torture and then came back to clean house. Wiped out Gomez and the Family leaving nary a trace.”
“But Uncle Fester, you mean, down at Lemuel Shattuck—the fruit loop ward. He's alive.”
“If you want to call it that. Tell me, did he break, Malek? Did Joey X go down like the rest? Or did he break the Family?”
“He's dead like all them mooks. I wasn't there, but I know that if that mope lasted at all, it was because Cousin It wanted to draw it out, sick fuck that he was.”
“But that's how old Cousin It died, isn't it? Tortured to death in his own favorite dentist's chair?”
“But it wasn't Joey X what did it, but some new pro likes to do things Hollyweird style. The whole fucking thing was staged. But, really, I don't care who smoked the Family. I just want whoever it is smoked for good and all and you're the guy who's going to do it.”
“I don't do hits.”
“You do now.
“Fuck—”
“No discussion, Nicky,” Malek snapped. “This is about what men do, remember? And I expect you to be a man about it, not a cunt. Disappointing me is a very bad idea. Just ask anyone senior down at One Schroeder.
The long man wailed piteously as he jittered on the table under three pairs of filthy, ape-thick hands, as if to underscore the point. A Skil Rear Handle Circular saw whined in echo raised in shadow against the back wall, and then the shrieks were parsed by a deep, sonorous heaving that built to an inevitable break.
“You're sure this is the same guy, same one who took out the Family?”
“I don't know what I did to piss this guy off, but I don't give a two shits. He's killing off my crew and he's not going to stop until the Ork goes the way of Family.”
“You're that sure?”
“Who else could it be? Some dead mook come back from the grave? A bag man in redemption? I got ‘em crawling up my asshole! Like my problems come from dead, buried and resurrected guys other than Jesus fucking Christ himself.”
“Funny.”
“Hysterical. In all your police training, you don't think maybe it was the one skinny guy seen leaving that house in Allston with my fucking hot million bucks of uncut crystal meth under his arm? Guy what left behind three dead housepainters and one dead ex-muscle?”
“I heard about that at the station,” said Nick, lighting up again, speaking above desperate, lunatic animal noises of the long man. “Big fire, three bodies. I thought your rip-off artist got away clean, they told me.”
“More dirty than clean, Nicky. I had some friends pick him up a few blocks away, crawling like a baby, both knees shot out from under him. We had a little chat, came to a clear understanding. Then I painted the walls of the van with his brains. Should of made a bigger mess than it did.”
“So you do know.”
Malek blinked in assent, sat back behind his desk and put on his Ray Bans, perhaps feeling self-conscious about his untreated amblyopia.
“You enjoyed it, you fuck, didn't you?”
“No time for fun and games, Nicky. This is serious business. This is money.”
“And that guy over there, that's serious business? That's money? You know he had nothing to do with it. You knew before you even took him.”
“You got to cover all the bets to win the game, Nicky. There's no doubt about him now, and that's for sure.”
Silence came down hard and fast like a falling weight so that everybody looked. Malek quickly brought things back to order. “Fucking stuff his goddamn nose with spirits of ammonia ampules already!” he shouted in a blast of sudden fury.
The hump in the shadows snickered in echo.
“Point's moot now, Padrone. I think his heart stopped.” This from Franchot.
“Fine then. Make bite-sized pieces out of him and feed him to the animals down at the Franklin Park Zoo. No traces, no murmurs but from the rats on the waterfront and the ones on the South Shore. Let them do the squeaking.”
Nick was sweat-soaked, emptied of resolve, unsteady on his feet. He compensated fast. “After this mutt takes out your murder crew and shoots the knees out from under your muscle boy and then is smart enough to disappear with your hot million dollars’ worth of meth, you think a single guy is gonna grease him easy and score you back your drugs? You think that?”
“I think that exactly.”
“Where the fuck do you get that idea? You snorting your own product or what?”
“Same principle as dealing with the zookeeper's friend over there. Covering all bets, leaving no loose ends.”
“I don't get it.”
“Sure you do, Nicky, you're the bright boy down at One Schroeder Place, aren't you?”
Nick blanched, seeing where all this was going. He should have doped it out in the first place, but his own inflated sense of self-importance eclipsed subtle reality. “Boyd,” he sighed.
“That's right, Nicky. Very good. It seems our little friend has a big-time jones for your fucking boss!”