by Nick Stone
Then his mouth was flooded with a glacial, slimy, lumpy fluid that tasted rancid and sour–curdled milk cut with vinegar and bleach, coupled with a strong trace of bitter herbs and fresh grass. He tried to constrict his throat to stop it going down but he couldn’t. The potion swept past his epiglottis and rushed into his stomach.
The funnel was removed from his mouth.
The man behind him let go of his jaw and uncovered his eyes.
Max could feel the fluid in his stomach, cold and heavy, as if he’d just swallowed a dozen whole ice cubes.
The barber was standing before him, smiling, the funnel dripping greenly on the floor.
‘Bon appetit,’ he said.
‘FUCK YOU!’ Max shouted. His throat and mouth were raw and coated with grit, his tongue swollen and tender.
‘You have a brave mouth, blanc,’ the barber said as he unzipped the leather case and opened it like a book, revealing two rows of surgical sewing needles, arranged in order of length and thickness, on either side of the case. The barber studied Max’s face for a moment and opted for a thick, four-inch-long needle. He cut a length of catgut from the spindle, knotted one end and threaded it through the eye. When he’d finished he nodded to the man standing behind Max.
The man clamped his palms on Max’s head and held it firm and still. The barber came over, crouched down and pinched Max’s lips tightly together with his fingers. He pushed the needle slowly through the corner of Max’s left lower lip. Max screamed and tears ran down his face as the point first punctured the skin and then penetrated the cushion of soft tissue, before bursting out of his upper lip. The pain doubled as the tough catgut slithered bloodily up and out through the hole. The barber wound the slack around his fist and tugged at it hard, dragging Max’s mouth up towards his nose, before sticking the needle back through his bottom lip and repeating the process. He sewed carefully and methodically, taking his time, until Max’s lips were completely sealed.
When he’d finished, the barber cut another, shorter length of catgut and put a single stitch through Max’s nose.
By then Max was in such pain he barely noticed.
The barber wheeled the table away and the men carried off the bucket, leaving Max to his suffering and the poison in his stomach.
He could feel the potion moving subtly, incrementally in his gut, like a living thing, finding its way around inside of him, familiarizing itself with him, slowly taking over.
He sensed himself becoming weaker, strength trickling out of him, away from his legs and arms, dissipating out into the air through the ends of fingers and toes. Tiredness was creeping through him, shutting him down, switch by switch.
The ceremony began.
First, he was encircled by people on stilts–all exactly the same height, all identically dressed in top hats, tailcoats, pinstriped trousers, ru?ed shirts and black gloves; all with their faces heavily made-up in pancake white from forehead to nose and black for the remainder. They stood, steady and unwavering, their hands folded in front of them and their eyes fixed on him, human totems dwarfing the sacrificial offering.
Then the light on him grew brighter and hotter and a circle of drums began to pound. The stiltmen joined hands and began to move around him, slowly, anti-clockwise, one giant step at a time.
The drums were joined by mass chanting, the sound of a hundred or more voices, reciting words he couldn’t understand in a prayer-like cadence, delivered in the lowest register.
Max could no longer feel much of his body. His eyes and ears were still working, his nose just about, and his guts too, channelling the potion, breaking it down, dispatching its lethal components into his bloodstream.
He couldn’t move his mouth or jaw. Breathing was difficult, mere whispers of air getting through the narrow gaps in his nostrils. He tried–reflexively, again and again–to inhale through his mouth, but his mouth was as good as gone. He’d suck in and get absolutely nothing.
He was no longer brave or defiant.
He was terrified–a little for himself, but mostly for Sandra and of what he’d be made to do to her. Boukman would send him to accomplish what he’d failed to achieve in Opa Locka.
The drum beats picked up, faster and faster they went, and the stiltmen moved with them, gaining speed, quickening their pace until their colours began to fragment and bleed into each other before his eyes, the monochrome contrasts merging into a single unbroken circle of grey–the tone of graphite strokes on paper and overcast Miami summer mornings and decades old prison barbed wire.
The chanting was no longer a verse, but a single word, one he recognized, shouted in unison, loudly, very loudly:
SSSSO-LO-MON
SSSSO-LO-MON
SSSSO-LO-MON
SSSSO-LO-MON
Now the drums were being beaten so fast they sounded like propellers, and the stiltmen were orbiting him with centrifugal force, emitting a faint cooling breeze that wafted his way.
SSSSO-LO-MON
SSSSO-LO-MON
Then the trapdoor dropped open and a shaft of blood-red light came out of the ground.
SSSSO-LO-MON
SSSSO-LO-MON
A man rose up from the floor–a man dressed and made-up as the stiltmen were, except he was all in white.
He stepped out of the light and took two paces towards Max. He folded his arms, reached inside his coat and pulled out two long gleaming samurai swords, which caught the light and dazzled Max. He closed his eyes, very briefly.
When he opened them again the man was standing a few feet away from him, twirling the swords at high speed as if they were batons. The kaleidoscopic bolts of light were shooting from the blades–red, pink, orange, violet, yellow and blue splattered Max’s eyeballs and blinded him to his surroundings.
He found himself thinking of sunsets. Sunsets on the beach opposite his home; watching the sun dripping down behind the darkening ocean like a drop of burning honey. Every day ended at sunset.
74
‘Don’t blame yourself,’ Eldon mumbled to Joe as they stood together on the MTF roof at dawn on Sunday, sunlight starting to dissolve the night away from Miami’s flat cityscape, giving it the biliousness of unearthed bones.
Both men were exhausted–physically and mentally–and their nerves were frayed from a combination of non-stop anxiety, missed sleep and way too much coffee. They’d been up close to forty-eight hours looking for Max. No result.
The last time Joe had seen his partner was when they’d split up outside the airport. Then he’d watched security camera footage of two fake cops dragging him out of the concourse, a shadowy man with an indiscernible face at their side, unchallenged by the dozens of officers trying to keep control of the hysterical, panicked crowd in the building.
‘Max was like kin to me,’ Eldon continued, following a flock of seagulls making for the ocean.
‘Was…?’ Joe said.
‘Come on, you gotta be realistic at times like these, prepare for the worst. Max’s dead. Boukman’s finished what he tried to do in Opa Locka.’
‘That’s straight-up cold,’ Joe said.
‘It is what it is,’ Eldon said. ‘You think this is easy for me? You think this ain’t hurtin’ me? I’m dyin’ in here.’ Eldon pointed to the middle of his chest. He had tears in his eyes. ‘Max was damn family.’
‘The son you never had, right?’ Joe said, with a trace of sarcasm.
‘Yeah.’ Eldon missed it. ‘Something like that. We were real close, you know? He came to me about everything. Everything.’
‘He didn’t come to you about Boukman,’ Joe reminded him.
‘Well, he should have. If he had, he’d-a still been alive.’
‘Yeah, right.’ Joe chuckled grimly. ‘Like it was that easy.’
‘What are you saying?’ Eldon frowned and narrowed his eyes.
‘You know why he never told you nothin’ ’bout Boukman? It was ’cause you woulda done nothin’. You were too busy puttin’ the Moyez case on a bunch of guys didn�
��t have nothin’ to do with it. You didn’t give a shit who the real perps were. It’s all about lookin’ good on TV and pleasin’ them politicians you hobnob with.
‘The real Moyez investigation was our thing–our case. Not yours, not MTF’s–ours. Me and Max did it in our time, on our own dollar. That’s ’cause Max is and always will be what you, Mr Burns, are not. And that is a real cop. You just wear the uniform. Underneath it, you’re just a mercenary. A soldier of political fortune. A gun for hire. And this–MTF–your unit, your creation–ain’t nothin’ but a bunch of thugs with a licence to kill. You’re runnin’ a crew of straight-up gangsters. Just like Boukman.’
Eldon was open-mouthed and speechless, his stare criss-crossing Joe’s face in every direction, as if he was trying to be certain Joe had actually just spoken the words he’d heard. His wart was a weak tint of pink.
‘So, no, I don’t blame myself. I blame you, Mr Burns. You’re responsible for this. You and this fucked up paramilitary outfit you run. And if Max turns up dead, you’ll have his blood on your hands, same as Boukman,’ Joe said. He was angry and bitter, but calm with it. He hadn’t raised his voice at all.
His boss was still mute, in a whole new terrain with no map and no get-out clause.
‘After I bring Boukman in, I want to transfer out of here–but only after I bring Boukman in,’ Joe continued, ‘’cause you know what? I don’t like the way you do things, Mister Burns. And, most of all, I really don’t like you.’
Eldon glanced out at the city, and then back at the sea, bewildered. He looked at Joe and found his subordinate appeared to have grown a few inches taller in his moment of rectitude. Eldon had to look up at him. It was humiliating, but it was just the two of them up here, so no one could see it.
‘Do you know why I brought you up here, Liston, you dumbfuck loser?’ Eldon mustered his voice, but it was hollow, without its usual booming, crushing authority.
‘Somethin’ to do with dividin’ up the scarlet robes?’ Joe asked.
‘Huh?’ Eldon frowned.
‘You read The Bible, Mr Burns?’
‘Is that what this is about? You a Jesus freak?’
‘No.’ Joe smiled wryly. ‘I’m just big on right and wrong.’
‘Fine!’ Eldon snorted. ‘Bring Boukman in and you’ll get your wish. In spades.’
Joe let the racial insult go. He truly didn’t give a fuck.
He turned and started walking towards the steps, then stopped.
‘Oh, and one more lil’ detail–’bout my forthcoming transfer. I ain’t gonna be no grinnin’ house nigger in Public Relations. You can tear up that plan.’
Joe was heading out of Eldon’s office when the phone rang. He hoped–and dreaded–that the call might be about Max, so he decided to hang around and listen.
Eldon came in quickly through the side door and grabbed the phone.
‘Yeah?’ he snarled, back in his game. ‘What!’ He looked at Joe. ‘When?’ He opened a drawer, took out a .38, checked the cylinder and placed it on the desk. ‘Where is he?…fuck!’
He hung up.
‘You are not gonna believe—’
He didn’t have time to finish because the door opened and Max walked in.
‘What the fuck…?’ Joe gasped.
Max was completely bald, missing his eyebrows and his mouth was swollen, bruised and encrusted with dried blood. His eyes were glazed and fixed straight ahead, seeing without recognition. He was wearing a long black raincoat Joe had never seen him in.
‘Max?’ Joe started walking towards him.
Max reached into his coat and pulled out a MAC11.
‘BURNS! GET DOWN!’ Joe yelled and took a dive to the right, hitting the carpet as Max opened fire in the direction of Eldon’s desk, pulverizing the glass display case behind it with a single sustained burst of .380 ACP rounds, flying out at 950 feet per second; the small weapon jiggling in his hands as he drained the magazine, bullets flying wide and crooked, smashing all the windows, splitting chairs, blowing chunks out of the walls and side door and strafing the top of the mahogany desk until it looked like porcupine hide.
Max emptied the MAC11 in seconds, dropped it and reached for his service pistol.
At that very instant Eldon, who’d crawled around the desk with his .38, took aim at his would-be assassin and fired.
Joe got up and ran at Max, slamming his shoulder into Max’s hip and bringing him down easily.
Eldon’s bullet missed them both by a close, hot whistle.
Joe took the automatic out of Max’s holster and tossed it. He did the same with Max’s ankle piece.
‘Is he dead?’ Eldon asked.
‘No.’ Joe looked at his partner, whose eyes were on Eldon. ‘Get a medic!’
Eldon looked for the phone and found it–the casing completely blown off, a busted mess of coils, springs and twisted metal.
Max, meanwhile, reached for his hip holster grabbed at air and brought his empty hand up in Eldon’s direction and pulled in his index finger a few times, before dropping his arm.
‘GET A FUCKIN’ MEDIC, NOW!’ Joe shouted at Eldon, who was standing dazed, looking around his ruined office.
75
Monday mornings were when Gemma Harlan liked to teach her interns something new about autopsies. New week, new lesson was her motto. Today she’d be demonstrating the art and practice of organ removal. She had an ideal cadaver to work on, cause of death known–the police shooting at the airport–so no suspicious circumstances, therefore no detailed medical report to write up, just the basics, and perfect material to try out her new recruit on.
For the last two weeks a young man called Darius Vincenzio had been learning the ropes. Darius, who they all called ‘V’ around the morgue, was a quick study; he only needed to be told and shown something once to get the hang of it. Gemma was highly impressed with him and was even considering offering him a job at the end of his internship. The only thing that worried her was that he hadn’t yet DNPed–dashed and puked. Most interns did that at their first or second sight of viscera–she had–but, so far, he hadn’t betrayed so much as the slightest hint of discomfort around the dead. She hoped he wasn’t holding back and damming up until something really gruesome came along, and that he wasn’t a nutjob.
The body was fetched out of the Burger King refrigerated truck and wheeled into the morgue, where it was taken out of its bag, identified, measured and weighed.
Carmine Desamours. Sex: male. Race: black. Hair: black. Eyes: green. Height: 179 cm. Weight 154 lbs. Birthmarks: a mole to the left of the navel. Scars: extensive and historical.
The wounds were examined–two clean entry wounds on either side of the spine, consistent with .38 calibre bullets, the skin was indented and singed black with gunpowder. The exit wounds in the chest were larger–the size of quarters.
After Darius and Martin had washed the body and placed it on the slab, Gemma told her intern to make the cuts, as she hit play on the cassette deck and Bacharach and orchestra’s ‘Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head’ came out of the speakers.
Darius made the Y-incision behind the ears and down the sides of the neck to the breastbone. Then he made the T-incision across the shoulders and down the trunk to the pubicbone. He concluded with a vertical cut a cross the middle of the neck. The openings were textbook perfect, as usual.
Gemma pulled back the flaps of skin and exposed the chest plate. She then took an electric saw and cut through the ribs to the side of the chest cavity, before very carefully lifting off the sternum and its appended ribs, exposing the heart and lungs.
Gemma went to work, explaining every cut and the importance of doing it in order as she worked the scalpel through the tissue, starting with the heart, and then moving on to the punctured lungs. She removed the left lung and then let Darius test out his new knowledge on the right. He was a natural, excising it perfectly.
They moved on to the first part of the digestive system–small intestine, oesophagus, pancreas, stoma
ch, duodenum and spleen–a more delicate extraction procedure, which she preferred to demonstrate in full a couple of times, before letting her interns loose on it–even the most gifted ones like Darius.
After she’d removed the corpse’s stomach, she handed it over to Darius to place on the scales.
He took it from her. And then he frowned.
‘Somethin’ don’t feel right here,’ he said, palpating a corner of the organ. ‘What?’
‘It’s got like–something inside.’
‘Probably food.’
‘Don’t feel like food,’ he said. ‘This is–like–hard.’
‘Could be a bullet,’ Martin said from across the slab. ‘You’d be surprised where those things end up. One time, this guy who’d got shot in the head? We found the slug in his rectum.’
‘This ain’t a bullet. Less he got shot with a golfball.’ Darius felt the floppy stomach some more.
‘Hand it over.’ Gemma stuck her hands out impatiently.
The stomach had a small round object inside it, like an egg.
‘OK. Weigh it first, then we’ll open it up.’
76
‘Have some fruit.’ Sandra plucked at the bunch of grapes at Max’s bedside.
‘I want a smoke,’ Max said through lips so swollen they looked like they’d been transplanted from a cartoon trout.
‘You want to infect your mouth? You heard the doctor. No cigarettes till you’re healed.’
‘I need a smoke.’
‘You’ve had enough poison. Go on, eat some fruit. It’ll do you good.’
