by Bob Mayer
“I do?” Damon was bemused. “What for?”
“The money you took from her.”
“That was my money, lad. Everything she has is mine. Including her life.”
“I’ll be considerate though. I’ll take it out of what you pay me,” Kane said. “Is the money in the trunk? Safe and secure?”
Damon looked at his gunman. “He’s ballsy, isn’t he, Win?”
Winters nodded. “Stupid to boot. Bad combination, Mister Damon. You’re spitting into the eye of a hurricane.”
“And there’s the matter of the man in the wheelchair you killed,” Kane said.
“The legless spook?” Damon laughed. “Tried to be a hero.”
“He was a hero,” Kane said.
“Now, what’s this insurance you boasted to Marcelle about?” Damon asked. “Certainly not your two police uncles.”
“Where’s my money?” Kane asked. It was hard to see out the tinted windows and stay oriented.
One hand on the pistol grip of the Thompson, Winters tossed a set of handcuffs to Kane. “Put ‘em on.”
Kane clicked the cuffs on his wrists.
The Mercedes rumbled through lower Manhattan, making several random turns.
“How did you find my place?” Damon asked.
“Which place? You’ve bought a lot of properties in Manhattan.”
“Don’t play stupid, you fuck, I’m too old for that,” Damon said. He indicated the map case. “The place you stole these films from.”
“Research,” Kane said.
“I’m going to need more of an answer than that,” Damon said. He stared at Kane, at least his dark glasses did, as if evaluating a side of beef. “I don’t think you’re a fucking eejit, are ya? From what Marcelle told me, you’re a mite dangerous. Enough to get him in a panic and I’ll grant he doesn’t do that lightly. Everything I’m asking now, if you answer truthfully, saves you pain on the back end. But you’re gonna answer eventually, lad. Easy or hard.”
“Trinity Holdings,” Kane said.
“How did you find out about that?” Damon asked.
“It’s in city records.”
“The fellow he rents from on Jane Street,” Winters said to Damon. “He used to work for the Post.”
“Did he find it?” Damon asked Kane.
Kane didn’t respond.
“We’ll deal with him later,” Damon said. “The list gets longer. I’m tending to believe the cunt you work for has passed her expiration date.”
“You already hurt her,” Kane said.
“Nah,” Damon said with a smile. “She wasn’t hurt, was she, Win? Not too badly. Just taught a lesson. She was lucky it wasn’t permanent. Haggerty was none too happy with her; took a while for those scratches to heal. So, you went to my factory.”
“That’s what you call it?” Kane asked as the Mercedes took a hard turn. “A factory?”
“As good a name as any.”
“How about kill house?”
“How’d you avoid getting blown to pieces?” Winters asked.
“I was careful.”
“You were careful.” Damon said. “So why aren’t you careful now? But perhaps you are. What’s this insurance? Did you take more than these three films? Stash them somewhere?”
“No.”
“You better not be lying to me, you fuck. You’ll hurt for every lie. I think you squirrelled away some film as your insurance. But we’ll find out.” Damon rapped on the dark divider. It slid to the side a few inches. “Factory.”
The glass shut. The Mercedes accelerated.
“How many people have you told about the factory?” Damon asked.
“No one.”
“We’ll learn the truth on that one too,” Damon said. “You’ve stepped into very deep water here, boyo. Well over your head. You have no idea.”
“You could enlighten me,” Kane said.
“You’ll see the light soon enough,” Damon muttered as he turned and looked out the window on his side of the car.
Several turns. Then the limo bumped up on a sidewalk and descended into the darkness of the loading bay at 85 Tenth Avenue. The limo halted.
The front passenger door opened and shut with a solid thud.
The door next to Kane swung out and a large hand reached in, snatched him by the hair, and tumbled him onto the concrete. Before he could scramble to his knees, a flurry of kicks propelled him to a spot in front of the Mercedes, spotlighted by the headlights.
Kane remained on his back and looked up at the perpetrator. Haggerty, six foot eight, solidly built, and standing straight despite being in his late 70s. He was a former boxer and his flattened nose and cauliflower ears indicated he’d taken more than a few hits. He was dressed in the Trinity uniform of black slacks and black turtleneck. Several faint scars marked the left side of his face—Toni’s nails.
Winters stood next to Haggerty, the tommygun at the ready. “Frisk him,” he ordered the big man.
Haggerty knelt with a knee in Kane’s chest, forcing all the air out of his lungs and accentuating the pain from the kicks. Roughly searched. Rolled him over, knee into back. Finished the frisk. Stood.
“He’s clean,” Haggerty said in a surprisingly soft, raspy voice, indicating he’d taken some shots to the throat and consumed quantities of hard liquor.
“Get up,” Winters ordered.
Kane rolled over, sat, and then stood.
Winters nodded for Haggerty to move. The former boxer climbed the steps to the loading dock and opened the doors to the freight elevator. The light from the single bulb cast a weak glow into the garage.
The rumble of the limo engine ceased and the headlights cut out.
The driver’s door opened. The last of the Trinity, Dunne, was similar in appearance to Damon, just below medium height, whiskey belly, balding, and red-veined face. He sported a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun. Damon exited from the rear, carrying the map case.
“Get moving,” Winters ordered Kane.
Haggerty came down from the loading dock, opened the trunk, and retrieved two duffle bags, hoisting one over each shoulder. Damon led the way up the stairs to the elevator. Dunne stood next to Haggerty inside the freight elevator.
“Far corner,” Winters ordered Kane.
Damon put a key into the panel and turned it.
The doors scissored shut and the elevator rose. Winters had his finger on the trigger.
“That my money?” Kane asked, nodding toward the bulging duffle bags.
“Shut up,” Winters said.
It halted and Haggerty opened the doors. Dunne stepped over the fishing line, disappeared for a second, then returned, spooling the line. He glanced at Kane.
“Vietnam vet, eh?”
Kane nodded.
“You know booby-traps eh?”
“I’ve seen a few,” Kane said.
“Told you, boss,” Dunne said to Damon.
“You still fucked up,” Damon snapped and Dunne hung his head, a scolded dog. He walked to the plank and lifted it, removed the mine, and replaced the board.
“Clear, boss,” Dunne called out.
Haggerty carried the duffle bags to the weapons cases and dropped them with a solid thud. Damon tossed Haggerty a keyring. The big man unlocked the room with the trestles and lined with soundproofing. He brought the keys back to Damon. Haggerty pushed the door open, then grabbed a piece of eye-bolted plywood with one large paw and carried it inside.
The sound of hammering, then stapling echoed out of the room.
Winters kept the machinegun trained on Kane from a safe distance as he positioned him in the center of the open space. Dunne had the shotgun resting on his shoulder, one-handed. Damon unlocked the film room. Glanced over his shoulder. “What are you doing, Dunne?”
Dunne was startled. “What, boss?”
“Point that scattergun at the bastard,” Damon ordered. “He’s not to be under-estimated.”
“Yeah, boss.”
Dunne brought t
he gun level in both hands. Damon disappeared into the film room.
“Mind if I sit down?” Kane asked, holding up his cuffed hands and indicating a wooden crate.
“Yeah, I fucking mind,” Winters said. “Stay right where you are.”
Kane indicated the weapons cases. “That’s a lot of firepower.”
“Shut up,” Winters said.
“How are you getting it to the old country?” Kane asked.
“Not our problem,” Dunne said.
“Shut up,” Winters said to his cohort.
“He’s gonna be—” Dunne started, but Winters interjected.
“Give it a rest.”
After several minutes, Damon came out of the film room. “All accounted for.” He looked at Kane and shook his head. “What’s your insurance, Kane?”
“Can I have my money?” Kane replied, nodding toward the duffle bags. “You can keep the guns.”
“You’re cheeky,” Damon said. “I’ll grant you that. Not your money and not mine either. Them and the guns be passing in the night. As you will be.”
“I know where the guns are going,” Kane said. “Surprised someone gave you them on the promise of payment.”
“You don’t know shit,” Damon said. “I’m done fucking around with you.”
“There are lines we cross,” Kane said, “that can’t be undone no matter how much we try. I finally accept that.”
“What the fuck?” Dunne muttered.
“No time for philosophy or theology now,” Damon said. “You can spout that shit with the devil when you meet him. See what he thinks of it.”
Kane looked at Damon. “It’s comforting to know all of us are past that line. We made the decisions that brought us to this place well before now.”
The sound of stapling ceased.
“Take him in,” Damon ordered Winters. “Put him on the board. I’ll join you in a moment with the camera.” He headed to the film room.
Winters indicated the other room with the muzzle of the Thompson. “Go.”
Dunne tried to contribute macho by pulling back the hammers on the shotgun.
Kane reached the doorway to the torture chamber. He paused in the entrance. Haggerty waited by the plywood kill table, chains and shackles in hand.
Kane looked over his shoulder at Dunne and Winters. “’Life is for the living. Death for the dead. Let life be like music. And death a note unsaid’.”
“Keep praying,” Dunne said. “Fat lot of good it will do you.”
“Move,” Winters gestured with the tommygun.
Kane reached out with handcuffed hands and grabbed a line of fishing wire he’d emplaced vertically just under the soundproofing opposite the door hinge. He dove that way, taking the line with him. He landed inside the room, next to the brick wall as the line pulled the clacker hidden under the soundproofing, firing the Claymore mine he’d wedged in the shadowed angle above the outside of the door. It also pulled the pins on two smoke grenades, one inside the room and one outside.
The Claymore detonated and shredded Dunne and Winters, seven hundred steel ball bearings ripping through flesh and bone. Red smoke billowed in all directions from the inside smoke grenade. Outside the door, a yellow grenade spewed forth, mingling with the residue smoke from the Claymore
Kane continued his dive, rolled, and came to his knees, head ringing from the danger close explosion on the other side of the bricks.
Haggerty blinked, waving one hand, shackles still in it, trying to clear away the red smoke. Someone screamed in agony outside, the sound echoing in the open space.
Kane shuffled toward Haggerty on the balls of his feet, right leg forward, cuffed hands up. Haggerty reverted to form, assuming a boxing stance. Then the big man belatedly remembered he had an advantage: the gun in his waistband. He reached for the revolver.
Kane slid in low with a sidekick directly into the front of Haggerty’s locked left knee. The edge of the boot hit exactly and the knee buckled back, tearing ligaments and tendons. As big as Haggerty was, all that weight added to the negative pressure on the joint. The boxer went down in a spiral anchored on the broken leg, emitting a surprised gasp of pain. The fall added to the damage, but that was the least of Haggerty’s problems as Kane was on him. A front snap kick toward Haggerty’s face. Kane had been aiming for the forehead, but the tip of the boot went into the right eye socket, shattering the bones around that soft organ and rupturing the orb with a dull squish none of them heard as they were deafened from the Claymore.
Haggerty screamed as he fell onto his back.
Kane snatched the Dirty Harry revolver out of the boxer’s waistband, cocking it as he stood. He fired the .44 Magnum once, the large bullet putting a decent sized black hole in Haggerty’s forehead and blowing out the back of the skull with a splatter of blood, bone and brains onto the plastic he’d just laid out.
Kane wheeled to face the door, revolver in both hands. The exit wasn’t visible through the smoke. He moved to the right, along the brick wall, gun at the ready.
The screaming outside descended to a desperate moaning. Then a voice pleading in Latin.
Damon’s voice cut through the smoke and the prayer. “Win? Haggerty? Dunne?”
Kane estimated from sound that Damon was just inside the door of the adjacent film room, smartly not venturing out into the yellow smoke. Kane knelt and stiffened the fingers of his right hand, holding the gun in the left. Jabbed down, punching through the plastic sheeting. Into the soundproofing. Found another line he’d emplaced the previous evening along the base of the wall, hidden under the material. Pulled it.
The flash-bang grenade went off inside the film room with a concussive explosion magnified by the small, brick-enclosed space. Kane kept one shoulder on the wall for orientation and rushed to the door of the torture chamber, out, to the left, along the brick wall and into the film room.
Damon had a pistol in hand, but was disoriented, unable to see or hear. With his free hand, Kane snatched the gun out of the old man’s hand and tossed it aside. Grabbed him by the throat and dragged him outside. Threw him to the ground.
The yellow smoke dissipated slowly in the humid, hot air. Dunne was dead, cut in half, his legs in tatters, his guts spilled all over his corpse. Winters was alive, barely, hands wrapped around his lacerated stomach, trying to hold his organs in. Most of his clothes had been blown off, revealing pale, liver spotted, bloody, old man flesh. He moaned and continued to whisper something in Latin. Keeping an eye on Damon, Kane knelt next to the gunman.
Winters repeated the first line of a prayer over and over. “Ave Maria, gratia plena. Ave Maria, gratia plena. Ave Maria, gratia plena.”
Winters turned his head toward Kane. His eyes were red and bloody around the edges. He paused the prayer to a higher power for a plea to a mortal one. “Finish me, lad. For the sweet love of God.” Then he resumed. “Ave Maria, gratia plena. Ave Maria, gratia plena. Ave Maria, gratia plena.”
Kane was certain Winters had never answered the prayers or dispensed the ‘love of God’ to any of the uncounted who’d ended up on the plywood and then fed into the oven, incinerated into the smog of the city.
“Ave Maria, gratia plena. Ave Maria, gratia--.”
Kane shot Winters in the side of the head.
Kane walked to Damon, who was slowly regaining his sight and hearing. The old man crawled on his stomach toward the elevator. Kane shot him in the back of the left calf, almost amputating the leg with the big .44 caliber slug.
Damon screamed and rolled over onto his back. “You fucking cunt! You fucking cunt!”
Kane stood at Damon’s feet and aimed the big gun at his face.
Damon stopped screaming, taking deep, harsh, shivering breaths. Blinked several times and tried to focus flashed eyes. “Money. I got money. I can give it to you.”
Kane didn’t respond.
“Two million!” Damon hissed as his face spasmed in pain. “Cash, lad.” He scooted backward on his good leg.
“
Six thousand, four hundred and thirty-two dollars,” Kane said.
Damon’s face twisted in agony and confusion. “What?” His back reached the brick wall next to the elevator. “What?”
Kane aimed the muzzle of the big gun at Damon’s head and his finger curled over the trigger.
A prick in Kane’s neck. He reached up and pulled a six-inch long wooden dart with a feather on the end out of his skin. The gun dropped from his other hand.
He lost control of his muscles and fell to the floor.
Wednesday Evening, 13 July 1977
MEATPACKING DISTRICT, MANHATTAN
Breathing was a vain struggle as Kane’s diaphragm refused to function. That horrid feeling of inhabiting a terrible nightmare and needing to run away, to fight back, to do something, anything, just wake up, but unable to make the muscles respond.
Except this was no dream.
Eyes fixed, lying on his back, Kane distantly saw dissipating yellow smoke and the ceiling. His ears rang from the Claymore, the flash-bang and firing the big revolver. He couldn’t get his eyeballs to respond to his will. Nor his eyelids. He focused all his effort on breathing.
A voice managed to faintly penetrate the ringing in his ears. “Well, mate, you made a bloody fine mess here, didn’t you?”
A tall figure loomed in Kane’s peripheral vision and the voice clearly identified the speaker: Quinn. The Kiwi kicked the gun away from Kane’s cuffed hands.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Quinn said. He was circling. “I’m too late to save these pikers. Damon’s plan. Westway. The contracts and the Cappucci cut. That’s a crack up.” Quinn paused by Damon. “Ah. Still amongst us, old fella?”
Black spots appeared in Kane’s eyes as his oxygen level depleted.
“I’ll pay you,” Damon begged Quinn.
“I’m sure you will,” Quinn said. “Just not in the currency you expect.”
Kane’s diaphragm twitched a partial breath. Not enough.
Quinn straddled Kane. “You were too nice to him. Too good to the entire lot. Filthy pigs, these Irish. You’re probably wondering if you’re dying, ay, Kane? How’s the breathing? The mixture is a touchy thing.” Quinn disappeared from Kane’s vision as he walked away, but his voice reached him. “You’re not dying. It wears off. The headhunters use a certain mix to paralyze their prey. A different concoction to kill immediately. Big tribal secret. I didn’t want to send you off to Valhalla. Not right away.”
