Acts of Violence

by Ross Harrison

  Finally, he gave me what I wanted. He glanced to his left and raised a hand to the side. Questioning another guy: what should they do? Then, probably after a shrug from his friend, he looked over his shoulder towards the stage. Then up, to Van’s office. Finally, back to the door.

  So there were at least three in the main club and at least one in Van’s office. I put my fist to the floor so it would hold the door steady as I got my feet back under me. Once I was crouched and ready to go, I decided on my targets. This guy I was watching first. Then his first friend. Then his second. The one in Van’s office was elevated, so I guessed it depended on whether or not he started shooting through the window. He might take priority once I was inside.

  The guy moved to a closer table. Held up a closed fist to his first friend though, so I guessed he was going to act as scout. Hopefully the others wouldn’t have moved from where I’d approximated their positions.

  The problem with going in was that if I needed to retreat, these doors only opened one way. That would slow me down and get me killed. But I didn’t intend to retreat. Not unless there was a small army in there. I doubted it. Three down on the floor and one in the office. That seemed about right. I allowed for two additional enforcers lurking somewhere. I could still handle that number.

  Fourteen plus one. I had to remember to count my shots. Couldn’t let myself get caught with an empty gun with shooters all around me. Both the other guns were ready to fire with just a flick of the safety. Nothing more I could do to be prepared. And I was getting bored.

  The guy started to move to the next table. So I went in.

  I pushed the door a couple of inches first. Then my pistol led the way. I fired three shots at him to be safe. All three hit him and he collapsed, halfway to the next table. The shots were exaggeratedly loud in the silence of the deserted club. So were the next dozen or so.

  Moving as quickly and as low as I could to the little wall, I cast my eyes around wildly for the other enforcers. From the looks of it, I’d guessed right. One was at the side of the stage. A second was at a set of steps up to the raised platform. The little wall had hidden him from me the first time I looked through.

  I fired a couple of shots at him as I reached the wall. Both missed. Bullets pounded the other side of the wall and it was only then I realised that I hadn’t even considered how bullet-proof it would be. Thankfully, it was nearly a foot thick and must have been solid, because no bullets came out my side.

  In the hopes of keeping both guys in their places, I reached up and fired a couple of shots over the top of the wall. Eight shots left.

  Not far from me lay the first guy’s gun. I was pretty confident two fully loaded guns backing up this half-empty one was plenty. It could still help me though. I fired another shot over the top of the wall. Then reached for the gun with my foot. It was a stretch, but I hooked my foot round it and dragged it across the floor to my hand.

  From the half dozen shots replying to my firing over the wall, I was pretty sure neither enforcer had moved. I risked waiting ten seconds or so. It was hard to know what they’d do. Some people would move to try to get a good angle on me. Others would stick to their one spot, where they knew they had some cover. Wouldn’t risk getting caught in the open. It was pretty stressful when, in the middle of a shootout, your opponent disappeared. Staying put gave you some sense of security. But these seemed to be experienced guys. So I simply had no idea what they’d do.

  That in mind, ten seconds was more than enough waiting. Aware that in the quiet even the smallest movement stood a chance of giving my position away, I threw the gun. I made it as smooth a movement as I could to minimise the sound of my sodden coat. Made sure I threw it straight and low. It didn’t arc high enough to be seen over the wall.

  As I’d hoped, the moment it clanged against a chair leg twenty or so feet away, the two guys fired in the direction of my supposed new position. They hadn’t moved. I popped round the side of the wall, where it opened to the steps down. From my angle I could only see the second guy’s head. With him concentrating on another part of the platform though, I was able to take the time to aim properly.

  I fired two shots. A puff of red on the other side of his head and him crumpling out of sight told me the second had been unnecessary.

  Now the third shooter turned to me again and I had to pop back behind my cover. I glanced up at Van’s office again. The glass was blocked out, so I had no idea how many people were up there. But at least they weren’t shooting at me too.

  The enforcer had run out of bullets. I could hear him reloading. The sound was moving. It was my best chance. I raised enough to fire over the top of the wall. The guy saw me and took off running, so the first two shots were nowhere near. I fired the remaining four bullets. Dropped the gun and pulled out the one from my left pocket.

  In the hail of bullets, the enforcer had given up trying to reload. I was pretty sure he’d even dropped his gun. Aware that it might be a trap, I ran after him. I kept my eyes wide, but I couldn’t see anyone else lurking.

  Before the staff door closed, I saw the guy running up the stairs. I reached the door soon after and kicked it open. There was no barrage of gunfire, so as it swung closed again, I slipped through. The small hallway was empty. I put the gun in my left hand and pulled out the other one from my waistband. I couldn’t shoot for shit with my left hand, but there were too many potential hiding spots to cover with just one gun.

  With my right pistol, I covered the back of the stage and the top of the stairs. With my left, I covered the two doorways. One was closed. The doorway through to the dressing room didn’t have a door. I edged towards it, but no one appeared from any direction. Once there, I stuck my head through, but still there was no one to be seen. With any luck, this enforcer with the bleached blonde buzz cut was the last one here. I wasn’t lucky.

  I quietly and carefully started up the stairs, keeping one gun trained through the open back to the stage. After a few steps, I saw that the door was closed and the glass was opaque again. That wasn’t particularly good for me. They could see me coming, but I couldn’t see them. They could shoot me before I even reached the door.

  The first enforcer had looked in three places. One of them was up here. The other two places had been where his friends were standing. Up here wouldn’t be an exception. That meant there were at least two in the office now.

  The blonde had dropped his gun. Could have got another one from inside, but maybe not. Even after I killed two of the guys downstairs, whoever else was in there hadn’t shot at me, even though they had a good vantage point and the cover of opaque glass. Did that mean there were no guns in the office? It was a risky assumption.

  I fired two shots through the door. Ducked down low. No one fired back. That was promising. I still didn’t want to risk it. I took the stairs back down two at a time, putting the second gun away again. Still careful not to let my guard down, I grabbed a stool from the dressing room through the doorway to the right. Then I went halfway up the stairs. Had to put my gun down on the step for a moment. That gave me both hands to hurl the stool through the cracked glass of the door.

  There was a muffled curse but still no shots. I grabbed the gun and raced up. Through the empty doorframe, I couldn’t see anyone, but it sounded like the curse had come from the right. I aimed that way as soon as I was inside.

  One enforcer stood beside the leather couch. He wasn’t blonde.

  I ducked too late. Whatever the second guy hit me with struck the top of my head. It would probably have knocked me out if I hadn’t moved. Still knocked me down though. The glancing blow must have knocked him off balance because when I rolled, he was only turning back to me. He knew he’d lost his chance and he ran for it. Ducked at the same time, so when I shot at his head, it missed. At the door, my second shot found his arm. He cried and swore but kept running. The third shot missed too.

  Then I had other problems. The other enforcer took the opportunity to try to grab my gun. Wasn’t that
much of a problem really. Because of how far over me he had to reach, it was easily remedied by my knee to his face.

  He stumbled backwards to where he’d been when I first entered. I climbed to my feet, trying to count how many shots I had left. Twelve. Still seventeen in the other one though.

  I noted that the blonde didn’t run through the club. He must have headed for the back door. DeMartino would take care of him. With a bullet or handcuffs, I didn’t care.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked the enforcer while he blinked hard, cupping his right eye. ‘Where’s Van?’

  ‘Mr. Van Graaf’s services were no longer required,’ he said. Still trying to be smooth through bloody, gritted teeth. ‘He was let go.’

  I hoped that didn’t mean what it almost certainly did.

  ‘Why are you in Harem?’

  ‘Cole Webster wasn’t meeting his quota. He thought the pretty blue sand he found in the mountain was more worth his time.’

  I hesitated. ‘You’re telling me Webster’s really mining that mountain?’

  ‘Of course. He always was. But until recently, it was just a cover. Nothing much came out of it. But then he found some blue stuff in there. Found buyers for it. Worth a fortune. My bosses wouldn’t have minded, but it affected his operation with us.’

  I almost wanted to laugh. Webster was running a genuine mining operation. Sure, there was the trafficking too, but still… ‘And why are you telling me this?’

  ‘You asked. Besides, you’ll need to be up to speed when you start working for us.’

  I hesitated again. That came out of nowhere. ‘Your pretty girlfriend must have hit me harder than I thought. I could swear you said work for you.’ He smiled. Spat some blood out. Then smiled again. ‘And why would I be working for you?’

  He just stood there grinning like an idiot. I wanted to shoot him. But I didn’t know what information he could still give me. And there was something unnerving about that smile. Like he knew something he shouldn’t.

  I shot the floor between his feet. Cracks spread in the glass outward from the hole. I was pretty sure it was reinforced, and would take more bullets than I had and still not give way. But it still might unnerve the enforcer.

  The smile disappeared. I couldn’t tell if it had frightened him or not though. Probably not. Might have seen worse than a fifteen-foot fall. He probably knew it was reinforced too. Still, at least it had got rid of the smile.

  ‘Where’s Van?’ I decided to take a few steps back to the more pressing question.

  ‘He’s downstairs, if it’s that important to you.’

  ‘Where’s the data chip from the girl?’

  ‘You’re just full of questions, aren’t you?’

  ‘And full of pent up rage and in possession of twenty-eight bullets.’ I pulled out the second gun. ‘Where’s the data chip?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  I fired another shot into the floor. He took a quick step back. I fired a shot just past him with the other gun. Used the right-hand gun, since I’d have probably hit him by mistake with the left. He tried hard not to, but I saw him flinch.

  ‘Where’s the chip?’ I asked again.

  He smiled.

  I fired a shot with the left this time. Knee level, just in case. He stepped back again. Another with the right, on his other side this time. Another flinch. Then for the hell of it, I did it again. A third step back and he hit the window. He flinched a little more at that. He was more jumpy than he was letting on. His eyes flicked down the short trail of bullet holes following him and the cracks all around them. I hoped I was right about the glass. I didn’t care if he went through, but if that end of the floor gave way, the rest would follow.

  In the quiet after the gunshots, I heard a strange sound. It was almost a pleasant sound. I knew it was the sound of cracking glass. The enforcer’s eyes told me he’d heard it too. But we both realised at the same time that it was the glass behind him, not below him.

  The cracks spread slowly, like lines drawn by an invisible hand. They connected the bullet holes. Then all was silent again.

  I took a moment to glance around the office for any clue as to what the guy was doing up here. On Van’s desk, the enforcer’s gun sat with its slide back. Empty. That’s why he hadn’t shot at me. The cause of its missing contents seemed to be Van. His chair had several ragged holes in it. Each hole was in the middle of a bloodstain.

  I turned back to the enforcer. He must have guessed from my face that he needed to do something very quickly to help himself. He held up one hand, palm open towards me. Telling me to keep cool while he slowly reached inside his jacket with the other hand. I kept one gun pointed at his chest.

  ‘You’ll be working for us because of this,’ he said.

  Just as slowly, he pulled the hand back out. In it was a small rectangle. He tapped the side and one half, in an L shape, floated about ten inches through the air. Then a pale blue hue appeared between the two halves. They made the diagonal corners of a fancy datapad.

  His eyes flicked down to it for a few seconds while he tapped the screen twice. Then he flipped it in his hand to show me. It was a video. He knew something he shouldn’t.

  ‘We had to do our research before we came in to take over from Webster. We were watching. We know exactly what happ—’

  I shot him. With both guns. I didn’t know how many times. Perhaps six. Then I took two steps and kicked him in the chest before he had time to collapse. The window was severely weakened by all the bullet holes and his nearly lifeless carcass smashed straight through. As he dropped to the floor below, the rest of the window crackled and shattered. Only a few jagged pieces remained in the frame.

  The datapad had retracted back to its compact state. I bent and picked it up. Put it in the inside pocket of my coat. I didn’t fool myself that it was the only copy, but after we took down Webster and a good chunk of these off-worlders, the video would do them no good. They wouldn’t need me for anything. All they wanted me for now was cannon fodder. Maybe to give them an inside track on what DeMartino was doing. Then they’d have finished what Little Dick had started.

  ‘You all right?’ It was the Italian himself. About time. Not that I’d wanted him to catch up any time soon.

  ‘Fine. There’s more of them downstairs.’

  ‘Not any more. I saw you having a chat with…’ he stepped to the empty window frame and glanced over the edge, ‘…that gentleman. So I went to check out the rest of the place. You took care of everyone up here.’

  ‘Not everyone. That blonde buzz cut…’

  He turned back to me. ‘Oh, he tried to get past my gun with a rather small knife. It didn’t work.’

  So he wasn’t going to ambush us in the basement then. ‘What was downstairs?’ Part of me didn’t want to know the answer. Van was as close to a friend as I had. Which said a lot about me, I guessed, since we were barely on a first name basis.

  ‘A lot of blood. And a very unpleasant sight sitting beside Mr. Van Graaf’s body.’

  I closed my eyes. Not sure why. It wasn’t as though that would shut out reality. Okay, we may not have actually been friends, but as far as the degenerates of this city went, Van was the one you’d want in charge. Part of me had hoped that would happen. I was probably fooling myself. The off-worlders would take control of Harem now and if they’d let Van live, he’d have stayed in the same position.

  ‘I’m guessing that unpleasant sight is a shaved gorilla with no nose?’ I said.

  DeMartino smirked. As though it was just the comparison he’d been trying to put his finger on. ‘Yep.’

  ‘I’m surprised they took him down with anything less than an airstrike.’ I began to transfer the remaining bullets from one gun into the clip of the other.

  ‘They didn’t.’ I stopped and made my gaze a question. ‘He seems to be guarding his boss’ corpse. I went down there and found three guys pretty badly broken. I don’t think shooting him did much. He has at least three bullet wounds.
And he doesn’t seem to know.’

  I was glad I hadn’t broken my chair over his head earlier.

  ‘He didn’t seem too hostile towards me so I identified myself. He just said two words. Would you like to guess what those words were?’

  I finished transferring the bullets. Thirteen plus one.

  ‘What were the words?’ I asked.

  ‘Jack Mason.’

  *

  We went through the door at the bottom of the steps. The basement wasn’t the bare brickwork of my own. The floor was carpeted in black and the walls were painted black too. The lighting was soft, coming from lamps along the walls.

  The passage we found ourselves in was lined on either side with doors. I glanced through a few. There was a lot of rubber, chains, whips, handcuffs, electrodes, metal clips attached to batteries. I decided to stop looking after I saw the wooden table with wrist and ankle straps. In any other building, I’d have thought I’d stumbled into some psychopath’s torture chamber.

  Halfway through the basement we came to a circular open area. A long red leather couch ran all the way around the walls. In the centre was another table with straps. Obviously for the more extroverted sexual deviants.

  Around the table lay three bodies. The enforcers were indeed badly broken. Bones poked through the skin in places. One of them appeared to have had his head crushed. It was the gorilla. He sat on the edge of the couch right at the opening to our passageway. His back was to us and he was looking at the table. Or rather, what was strapped to the table.

  Covered in blood, and cut and beaten, Van was strapped by his wrists and ankles. Beside the table was a tray. Instead of the implements that would usually reside on it, the tray bore two knives, a knuckle-duster and two wires connected to a battery.

  I couldn’t imagine what information they’d wanted from Van. Or why it would have required torture to extract it from him. He and the off-worlders should have been on the same side. He wanted Webster taken down too. Perhaps he thought these people would be worse.