Sharky's Machine

by William Diehl

The Nosh hung up and stepped out of the phone-booth. He paced back and forth in front of the car for several minutes, watching the building.

  He ambled up Twelfth Street to the front of the building. There were no lights. The street was black, the streetlamps broken or burned out.

  If the canary splits, The Nosh was thinking, I can at least nail him when he comes out.

  Paint curled from the windowsills of the three-story building and broken windows stared bleakly out at the dark street. Here and there lights flickered dimly behind old blankets.

  The pits. The absolute pits, thought The Nosh.

  He stood at the doorway, waving his light around, checking it out.

  A furry night scavenger dashed from the doorway into the sanctuary of the bushes. It crouched there, peering out, its amber eyes glittering in the beam of the flashlight.

  The Nosh stamped his foot at it and the creature ran off up the street, its ugly hairless tail dragging behind it.

  He turned the light back to the doorway and approached it. The front door was gone. Inside was a small vestibule.

  The inside door was propped open by a cement block.

  The vestibule was a litter of empty wine bottles in brown paper sacks, broken glass, crushed beer cans. Someone had dropped a sack of garbage down the stairwell. It lay just inside the main door, a splash of refuse, well nibbled-over.

  The Nosh shuddered.

  There were sounds inside the building, but he could not believe that people actually lived there.

  Night creatures scurried into cracks in the wall. A twenty-five watt bulb cast dim shadows on the stairwell, which smelled of rotten carpeting and sour cooking. The Nosh patted the tape in his inside pocket for reassurance and stood at the bottom of the stairs. High up, toward the third floor, the hallway lights were burned out. Somewhere in the building a radio blared static and country music. A child was crying behind one of the doors.

  At first he hardly heard the voice. He thought it was the radio or something moving in the shadows or his imagination. He looked up into the darkness.

  “Abrams …”

  A whisper, barely audible.

  He went up a couple of steps and listened.

  Nothing.

  He looked at his watch. Another five minutes and Sharky would be there.

  “Abrams …”

  The Nosh looked up again and pointed the finger of light into the blackness.

  “Down here,” he said.

  Nothing.

  He went up to the first floor. The child stopped crying and started to laugh. A woman’s nasal voice joined Dolly Parton on the country-music station. The Nosh felt more secure. How could there be any danger in a building where children were laughing?

  He went to the second floor.

  “Up here, Abrams …”

  “Who’s there?”

  Silence.

  The stairs groaned with age as he climbed to the third floor and stood at the head of the steps in the darkness, probing the dark hallway with his light. Apartment 3-B was at the end of the hall, the number painted sloppily on the door with house paint. He walked slowly toward it and stood outside the apartment.

  “Hello?”

  Nothing.

  He pushed the door open. It swung slowly on aged hinges. The apartment had a long central hallway ending at the living room with bedrooms off the corridor. No lights. A tremor rippled along The Nosh’s arm and across his back and he shook it off. He took a few nervous steps inside. Broken glass crunched underfoot. He was walking with his hand against the wall, following the beam of his flashlight. He passed a doorway to his right and turned toward it, swinging his light at the doorless opening.

  Then he heard Sharky, out on the street, calling to him:

  “Nosh!”

  Thank God. He turned back toward the main doorway of the apartment. It was then he heard the movement in the room. Instinctively he dodged to his right and crouched at the same time. But it was too late.

  He saw the blinding flash before he heard the dull, muffled explosion. The shotgun boomed in his face. Two barrels, shattering the quiet of the hallway with their silenced thunk, thunk! For an instant the corridor was lit by the ghastly yellow-red exhaust flame as the gases burst from the ugly barrels. The heat from the gas shattered The Nosh’s glasses, scorched his eyes, and the pellets tore into his face and chest. He was blown across the hallway into the wall. Pain chopped through the side of his face and tore at his shoulder. His feet flopped helplessly inches above the floor and he seemed to hang there for an instant before he fell.

  He saw a figure dart through a doorway. It seemed miles away. His foot was kicking the wall convulsively and he thought, I should stop that. But the effort was far too great. His reflexes went wildly out of control.

  He pushed himself into a sitting position, his one leg bent behind him, still kicking, and fell against the wall. He was vaguely aware that his life was leaking out of him, forming a dark pool at his feet. His hand was shaking, but he managed to work his wallet out of his pocket and threw it aimlessly into the main hallway.

  “P-p-p-police,” he stammered at nobody. “P-p-p-police …”

  And then with all the fading strength he had left, he screamed:

  “HELP M-M-M-M-E-E-E-E….”

  26

  Sharky had taken only a moment to tell Livingston he had to leave, that he was worried about The Nosh, and to tell Domino he would be back shortly.

  He drove like a maniac across the city, speeding through red lights, cutting through filling stations at intersections, his hand on the horn all the way. Pedestrians fled for their lives before him. He spotted The Nosh’s Olds from a block away and screeched in beside it, but he saw it was empty before he even stopped. He jumped out of the car, looked up Twelfth Street.

  Darkness. The wind rattled old fences and dead tree limbs.

  Which apartment? Where was he? Sharky’s heart was pounding so hard he could hear it, like a pump in his ears. He cupped his hands and yelled:

  “Nosh!”

  And a moment later he saw in the upper floor window across the street the hideous yellow-red flash. Oh Jesus! He grabbed his flashlight and ran across the street and into the apartment house, his automatic ready. The he heard the terrible scream:

  “HELP M-M-M-M-E-E-E-E….”

  Sharky charged up the stairs, up to the third floor, his light leading him on. When he reached the top floor he stopped, looking at the open door at the end of the long hall. He heard something thumping inside the apartment, like someone knocking on the wall. He moved cautiously down the hallway and then the light picked up the glitter of gold on the floor. A gold detective’s badge.

  “Nosh!”

  He ran to the doorway of the apartment, saw the flashlight on the floor, its beam fixed on a foot that was jerking spastically, kicking the wall over and over again. He flashed his light on The Nosh’s face. Abrams was leaning against the wall. The side of his face was blown away and his mouth was crooked and bloody. His jaw was torn loose at one side and bits of glass sparkled on his cheeks. There was a jagged, gaping hole where his shoulder had been and blood spurted from a dozen wounds in his chest.

  Sharky jammed his gun in his belt and dropped on his knees beside the little man.

  “Nosh. Jesus, Nosh, hold on. I’ll get somebody. Can you hear me, buddy? Hey, c’mon Nosh, nod. Blink your eyes. Do something!”

  “I … grahg … largh … agha….” The Nosh’s voice was an ugly croak stifled by the blood that filled his mouth and overflowed onto his chest. He began shivering violently and Sharky pulled off his jacket and threw it over him.

  “C’mon buddy, hang in there. I’m gonna find a phone, okay? Shit, man, don’t fade out on me now.”

  The Nosh’s eyes rolled in his head. He looked up at Sharky without recognition. His eyes were turning glassy.

  More blood surged up from his chest and filled his mouth.

  He was limp. His head lolled against Sharky’s chest.

>   “Nosh!”

  Abrams looked up again. His face seemed to sag. The skin grew loose. He was turning gray. His eyes were no longer focusing. They began to cross. There was a clatter in his throat and then his eyes rolled crazily and turned up into his head.

  “No … c’mon …”

  Sharky’s attention was riveted on his dying friend. When he heard the sound behind him, it was too late. The knife edge of a hand slashed into the back of his neck and he was thrown over The Nosh’s body, the pain from the blow stunning him as he lurched into the wall. He twisted as he flew forward, swinging one leg in a wide arc in the darkness, kicking blindly, feeling it hit something soft, sinking deep into human flesh. He kept rolling, away from the wall and into the dark hall until he was stopped by two legs. He swung his knees under him, balled his fist, and shoved himself upward, driving his fist between the two legs until it slammed into a crotch. He grabbed in the dark, his hand closing around the unseen figure’s genitals, and he jerked him forward. A toe found his back and buried deep just over the kidney and Sharky roared with pain and rage and twisted back in the other direction, swinging his fist in the dark. He missed, took another blind swing, and missed again, then remembered his gun and pulled it from his belt, but he was afraid to fire. He was disoriented in the dark, afraid he might hit The Nosh. He sensed movement all around him. A fist hit his shoulder and bounced away in the darkness and he rolled again, toward the main hall, away from the activity.

  The beam from one of the flashlights swept the hallway, found him, and Sharky spun around, half sitting, and fired an inch above the light. The flashlight spun crazily in the dark, hit the floor, and shattered. There was a groan in front of him, the sound of a body hitting the floor.

  A foot crashed down on his ankle and the pain stabbed up his leg. He swung the gun, trying to imagine his assailant there, in the dark in front of him, and raised the gun, but before he could get another shot off, a foot kicked his wrist, knocking his arm straight up. The gun flew out of his hand and clattered away in the darkness. Another foot slammed down into his stomach. Sharky gasped, grabbed the leg, and twisted hard, pulled himself up to his knees, his fury turning to blind hate. He wanted to hurt them, these unseen figures striking at him in the dark, to kill them.

  And then a fist as hard as a gauntlet smashed into his temple and his brain seemed to explode. The floor tilted insanely under his knees and he floundered, trying to catch himself, to stay up. Another fist slammed into his neck and this time the pain could not be ignored. It fanned out through his body like an electrical shock. His hands went numb. His back gave out. He jack-knifed and fell forward and it seemed forever before the floor came up to meet him.

  The sounds around him were echoes that grew fainter and fainter. And then there was only the darkness.

  27

  Sharky stirred and turned over on his back, but his foot was caught on something and he stopped. He tried wiggling it and felt the bite of a rope in his ankle. He was tied to something. He opened his eyes and his vision strayed crazily around the room. Nausea swept over him and he closed them again.

  Pain mushroomed into his neck and temples.

  He closed his eyes and lay still. He felt like he was moving, rocking back and forth.

  I’m still dizzy, he thought.

  Then he heard a weird scream, a sorrowful cry that seemed to echo over and over again, raising the hair on his arms.

  My God, he thought, what was that?

  It came again, a mournful shriek that died slowly and was answered a few seconds later by another echoing from farther away. He recognized the sound. It was a loon, lamenting insanely in the night, its demented love call answered by its mate.

  A loon? He lay there sorting out the sounds around him. They began to make sense: ropes creaking, boards groaning, the rhythmic slap of water against wood somewhere below him. It was a boat.

  He opened his eyes and blinked, trying to clear his fuzzy vision. The room was shadowed, lit only by a lantern that swung in an easy arc overhead. He lay hypnotized by it until the nausea returned. He gritted his teeth to keep from vomiting and turned his eyes away from the light.

  It was a small room, a cabin, and he was lying on the lower bunk of a double-decker. One side of the room curved in and there was a porthole in it. Facing it, on the other side of the cabin, was a hand-carved latticework partition which separated the room from the hall. The door was heavy and made of some kind of dark wood, rosewood or mahogany. The far side of the room, opposite the bunk, was dark. The lantern shed a small pool of light over a table and chair which sat in the center of the cabin. He smelled pork cooking in garlic.

  In the darkness opposite him, a cigarette glowed briefly. He concentrated, trying to make out a shape, a form of some kind in the shadows but he could see nothing.

  Then he remembered The Nosh.

  God damn them. God DAMN them!

  He fought back tears, but they came anyway, dribbling down the side of his face, and he reached up and wiped them away.

  “Well, welcome back to the land of the living, Mr. Sharky,” a voice said from the shadows.

  He squinted into the darkness.

  “Oh, don’t try to see me,” the voice said. “It’s much too dark. It will only strain your eyes.”

  It was a big boat, too big for the river. Then the loon cried again and Sharky thought, I’m on the lake. Seventy miles from Atlanta.

  A voice he did not recognize, hoarse and trembling with fatigue, said:

  “Where’s my partner?”

  My God, he thought, was that my voice?

  It was a weak, whining, nasal voice and Sharky hated it.

  “Unfortunate,” the voice from the darkness said, “but the sacrifice was necessary.”

  The rage built inside Sharky like a tornado in his gut. But he held his tongue. Nothing more would be accomplished with dialogue. Escape was the only thing he could think about now. Concentrate on it, he thought. There will be a way. There will be a way. He looked down at his foot. It was lashed tightly to the foot of the bunk. His jacket was stained with The Nosh’s blood. The fire roared inside him again.

  Let me take one of them out. Let me watch his eyes when he goes, the way I watched Larry’s eyes.

  “Hai, Liung,” the voice in the shadows called out and the door opened. Three men entered. They were Orientals, short and lean, their faces wide and hard, their noses broad, their eyes beads under hooded lids. They wore white tee-shirts, the cotton molded around hard muscles and taut, flat stomachs. One of the three had a scorched hole in the shoulder of his shirt and a bloodstain down one side. Sharky could see the bulge of a bandage under the shirt.

  Sorry it wasn’t a couple of inches lower and an inch to the left, you sorry son of a bitch.

  Another one had a splint on his forearm.

  Sorry, Nosh, sorry I didn’t do better.

  The one with the splint on his arm stood near the door, his arms at his sides as the other two approached the bunk, untying his foot and dragging him to his feet. His knees buckled and they pulled him upright. His vision wobbled. The room went in and out of focus.

  From the shadows, smoke curled like a snake, twisting into the heat from the lantern. Sharky concentrated on the corner, letting his eyes grow accustomed to the darkness.

  “If you’re trying to build a mental image of me, forget it,” the voice said. “It’s much too dark. And there’s no need to say anything to my three friends. They don’t speak English. In fact they rarely speak at all.”

  Sharky said nothing. He continued to stare into the dark corner of the room.

  “You can save yourself a lot of time and pain if you will simply answer one question for me,” the voice said. “That’s all we’re here for. A simple sentence will do it, Mr. Sharky. Where is the girl?”

  Sharky said nothing.

  “Where is she? Where is Domino?”

  Sharky continued to stare at the glowing tip of the cigarette.

  “All I want is t
he address.”

  Sharky moved slightly toward one of the Orientals and then quickly twisted the other way, snapping his arms down toward his sides. As he did, the two Chinese exerted the slightest pressure on the nerves just above each of his elbows. Pain fired down Sharky’s arms to his fingertips and both arms were almost immediately paralyzed.

  “Don’t be foolish,” the voice said. “They can paralyze you with one finger—and they will. That was a simple exercise. The feeling will return to your arms in a minute or so. The next time they will be more persuasive.”

  Sharky felt the numbness begin to subside. His arms felt as though they had fallen asleep. They tingled as the feeling returned. He shook his hands from the wrists and flexed his fingers.

  “You see what I mean? Now can we make it simple, Mr. Sharky? Or will you require more complicated tricks?”

  Sharky still did not talk. He peered hard into the shadows. Was it Scardi? The tobacco was brash and smelled rancid. Sharky concentrated on that for a few minutes. English cigarettes, he thought. But his accent is American. Sweat beads rolled down his face and collected on his chin, stubbornly refusing to drop off.

  Gerald Kershman, the man in the shadows, was becoming annoyed.

  “Stop staring over here,” he said. “I find it irritating.”

  Sharky stared stubbornly at the corner.

  Kershman said something in Chinese and one of the men holding Sharky reached up with a forefinger and pressed a nerve beside Sharky’s right eye. The pain was literally blinding. The vision in the eye vanished. Kershman chuckled. He felt a surge in his testicles, a sensual thrill. He was growing hard watching Sharky’s ordeal. Secretly he hoped Sharky would prove difficult, that the torture would get more intense, and he began to tremble with excitement at the thought. He dropped his Players cigarette on the floor and, turning his back on Sharky, lit another. Then he said:

  “Time is of the essence. You will give up the information. It’s really just a matter of time.” Then, sharply: “Pa t’ a k’un tao chuo tze.”

  The two Orientals jerked Sharky to the chair and forced him down into it. There were two straps attached to each arm and two others mounted on the table. They strapped his arms to the chair, leaving his wrists and hands free, and shoved the chair against the table and fastened the straps on the table over the back of each hand, tightening them until he could hardly curl his fingers.