Marked

TEN

The conversation isn’t exactly sparkling during the journey. Doyle puts several questions, gets several stony glares in return. Oh, except that one time when one of the men tells him to shut the fuck up.

The guy sitting next to Doyle — the one who started all this with his offer of a free lumbar puncture — has white hair that contrasts starkly with the blood still dribbling from his lip. Not old-person white. Just white. And he’s not an albino either. Doyle wonders whether to ask him if he’s had an accident with bleach recently, but thinks better of it.

The other two bozos sitting up front are big and ugly and stupid. All muscle and no brain. It’s a wonder either of them has enough intelligence and coordination to drive.

But somehow they manage to transport Doyle across town without incident. He keeps an eye on the changing streets as he tries to work out where they’re taking him. The buildings around him become large brick-built warehouses, now mostly converted for use as bars and restaurants. Directly ahead, he sees the horizontal slash of the High Line — the elevated park that was once a section of the rail system. His stomach begins to churn.

His fears are confirmed when the SUV makes a sudden turn into a narrow alleyway. That’s when the sun comes out, if only figuratively. In reality, the rain clouds continue to piss on everyone. But at least Doyle now knows exactly where he is. Knows exactly whom he has been brought to see. Knows exactly why he’s here. Shoulda guessed, he thinks.

This is the meatpacking district — a tiny quadrilateral that once somehow managed to contain over two hundred slaughterhouses and packing plants. The smell of death is rarer here now.

But not always entirely absent.

Doyle has been here before. Last Christmas, to be precise. It wasn’t fun then, and it won’t be any more hilarious now.

When the men drag him out of the car and he stands on the slick cobblestones, looking up at the dark-brick building, it all comes flooding back. He remembers every detail of that night. He has never told anyone else about it. Not the police, not his wife.

He has never told them about how he shot and killed a man in this alley.

The man with the whiter-than-white hair steps up to a side door in the building, pulls out a bunch of keys, and opens up. His two associates take Doyle by the arms and lead him inside.

They move through a dim utility room, then through another door that opens into a vast empty chamber. Doyle has never seen it like this before. The last time he was here, the place was heaving with gyrating, sweaty bodies. The air was filled with a rhythmic pounding that shook his bones. Everyone stoned and happy and oblivious.

Now, though, the nightclub is as forlorn as an abandoned ship. The dance floor is deserted and marked with scuffs and numerous unidentifiable stains. The bar is unmanned, and black steel shutters have been lowered to keep out intruders. The walls are of bare brick — harsh and unwelcoming.

The footfalls of the men echo around the converted warehouse as Doyle is led over to an iron staircase. They start to climb, and the metallic clatter reverberates. They arrive at a walkway that runs the length of one wall. Doyle can still picture the half-naked female dancers that were positioned here on his last visit.

They don’t stop here, but continue up another staircase to the next level. Doyle is guided along the walkway to a door at its center. Whitey knocks three times and waits.

‘Maybe he’s in the shower,’ says Doyle. ‘Or busy jerking off.’

The man to Doyle’s left gives him a smack on the side of the head.

When the door is finally opened, another man-mountain comes into view. He’s even bigger and uglier than the three who were sent to collect Doyle. The kind of guy who should be holding a peeled banana in one hand while picking his nose with the other.

‘Would you like to buy some of our cookies?’ Doyle asks him. ‘Or chocolate brownies? You look like a chocolate brownie kind of guy.’

The man furrows his eyebrows slightly, like he’s smelled something unpleasant in his cave. Then he looks at Whitey, and a spark of recognition fires in the recesses of his brain. He pulls the door wide open and steps aside.

The men hustle Doyle into the room, and he feels his breathing become faster. It’s a large office. Wood floor and oak paneling on the walls. A massive oak desk in the center of the room. The air is cool — the building designed to prevent its carcasses from rotting when it was used to house animal corpses. That time was way before Doyle’s last visit here, but even in his own memory this is a place of violence and bloodshed. He will never forget what happened here in front of his eyes.

There are two things vying for Doyle’s attention here. One is an object covered by a gray tarpaulin. It stands over to Doyle’s left, like a life-size sculpture waiting to be unveiled. Doyle isn’t sure what’s under that tarpaulin, but he can make some guesses.

Then there’s the man seated at the desk. He wears a dark suit, no tie, shirt open at the collar. He is broad of shoulder, broad of head, and carries a broad smile. His name is Lucas Bartok. Despite his smile, he is not a pleasant man. In fact, as Doyle knows only too well, Lucas Bartok is the stuff of nightmares.

‘Doyle! Glad you decided to accept my invitation.’

Doyle shrugs, then jerks a thumb toward Whitey. ‘How could I refuse, with your boy here asking so nice? For a while I thought he was gonna get down on one knee and propose.’

‘Yeah, Sven’s a charmer, all right.’

Doyle turns to the man with the snowy hair. ‘Sven, huh? And what part of Ireland are you from? Maybe I know your folks.’

Sven just glares back at him, possibly because he’s not sure if Doyle’s question is serious or not. Possibly because he doesn’t give a shit and just wants to tear Doyle’s limbs off.

Bartok says, ‘Looks like you didn’t fall for him right away, though, Doyle. That’s some whack you took to the cheek there.’

‘I’ll take your word for it. I can’t look at it without a mirror. Makes my eyes go funny.’

Doyle waits for everyone to tense, and he gets it. He gets it because he just broke the cardinal rule. The one which says: Don’t make fun of Lucas Bartok’s eyes.

Lucas Bartok is cross-eyed. And we’re not just talking a mild squint here. Not a slight drifting of a pupil. No, Bartok’s eyes are so misaligned he can have staring competitions with himself.

Everyone in this room is aware of Bartok’s condition, but none of the other men here will have dared mention it. Not ever. Otherwise they wouldn’t be in this room. They’d be somewhere nobody would ever find them. Decomposing.

Doyle says it because he needs to show these people that he’s not afraid. The jokes too. Humor to hide the fact that he’s actually scared shitless. To hide the fact that, although he may seem unruffled on the surface, inside he’s trembling. Because if there’s one thing he knows not to do right now, it’s to show weakness. Weakness could get him killed. But then again, so could pushing Bartok too far, because Bartok is certifiable. Doyle found that out last Christmas. He witnessed first-hand what this man is capable of when roused.

‘Get him a chair,’ Bartok orders, the amusement gone from his face now.

‘I don’t mind standing,’ says Doyle. ‘I don’t plan to stay all that long.’

One of the men brings a heavy oak chair over, places it behind Doyle, then pushes down on his shoulders to make him sit.

‘Long time no see,’ says Bartok.

It seems to Doyle that it’s a statement just crying out for a personal insult, but he decides it’s prudent to hold back this time.

‘Yeah, we should get together more often. Say, what are you doing next Thursday? I got tickets for Springsteen.’

‘Yeah? I’m tempted. Let’s wait and see if you’re still alive then, huh, Doyle?’

‘Why? What’s my doctor been saying to you?’

‘You got a clean bill of health. For now. Which is good news for me, because I got a job for you.’

‘No thanks. I already got a job. I got a long list of scumbags to lock up.’ Doyle selects one of Bartok’s eyes at random and focuses on it. Letting him know that he’s high on that list.

‘Yeah, well you’ll just have to fit this into your busy schedule. You don’t get to say no to this one.’

‘And if I say no anyway?’

Bartok glowers at him. At least, Doyle thinks it’s aimed at him. Then Bartok slides open a drawer in his desk and takes something out of it. He holds it up and studies it, allowing Doyle to do the same.

It’s an icepick.

It could be worse. It could be a meat hook, that being Lucas Bartok’s implement of choice when he really wants to go to work on someone. But an icepick can be lethal enough. Go ask Trotsky.

‘What does this say to you, Doyle?’

‘You’re expecting another ice age?’

Bartok’s sigh is more of a snort. He gets up from his chair, still brandishing the pick. Doyle’s eyes dart around the room as he tries to decide his best move. He’s got a psychopathic killer in front of him, and a wall of muscle behind him. And they’re armed too. The odds don’t seem in his favor.

He relaxes only slightly when Bartok walks across the room, away from Doyle and over to the tarpaulin-covered object.

‘You know what’s under here?’ says Bartok.

Doyle doesn’t answer. He doesn’t want to see what he’s about to be shown, because he knows what it is.

When Bartok whips away the tarpaulin, Doyle’s fears are confirmed. It’s a man, sitting on a chair. To be precise, it’s a man who is very naked and very dead. And, also to be precise, he’s not exactly sitting; he’s more kind of perched there. He’s scrunched up into a ball, his knees pushed up to his abdomen and his arms folded across his chest. His fingers are stiffened into claws and his eyes are open. He stares accusingly at Doyle. As well he might.

The sight of this figure is disturbing enough, but there’s something else that makes it all the more horrific.

The man is frozen solid.

Doyle can see the vapor tumbling down the frost-whitened flesh. He tells himself it doesn’t matter to the victim. He’s beyond feeling the cold. But still it doesn’t sit right with Doyle. You freeze turkeys. You freeze fish — even those with bones in. You don’t freeze humans. Even in the mortuary, bodies are usually stored a couple of degrees above freezing.

‘What are you thinking, Doyle?’

Doyle can’t tear his eyes away from that grotesque solidified corpse. Can’t shake the feeling that it in turn is looking right into Doyle’s soul. The icy glare chills him, and he wants to shiver.

‘Pretty good, Lucas. Can you carve swans too? I prefer swans.’

Another quip. Bravado. Trying to prove how unmoved he is. But it lacks conviction. It sounds hollow, even to himself.

Bartok leans closer to the frozen head of the man. He seems morbidly fascinated, like a kid observing a bug after he’s pulled the legs off it. Slowly he raises the icepick, then with the tip of it he gently taps one eyeball. The harsh clicking sound sets Doyle’s teeth on edge.

‘Now that’s what I call a stiff. You remember this guy?’

Doyle swallows hard. Do I remember? Of course I remember. Sonny Rocca. He worked for the Bartok brothers, back when there were two of them. I killed him. I had no choice.

Even though Rocca was a career criminal — a failed Mafia applicant who saw the Bartoks as the next best thing — Doyle kind of liked him. In life Rocca was good-looking and had a disarming smile, and Doyle almost felt sorry for him because of the treatment he received from the Bartoks. He never desired to see Rocca dead. But fate put the two of them in the alley outside, guns drawn, and it was clear only one of them was going to walk out of there alive. Doyle decided it had better be him.

All of which might have been fine had Doyle been here on official police business, fighting the good fight against the forces of evil. But he wasn’t. He came here because he’d struck a deal with Lucas’s brother, Kurt. A deal that effectively involved Doyle signing his soul over to that man, putting him forever in his service. Luckily for Doyle, but not so luckily for the Bartoks, Kurt wound up dead shortly before Rocca did. That put an end to the deal, but it didn’t make Doyle’s actions any more forgivable. He couldn’t tell anyone that he’d consorted with known violent criminals, and he certainly couldn’t reveal that he’d killed one of them.

He watches now as Bartok traces the point of the icepick down the face of Rocca. Onto his neck. Then down his torso. Doyle listens to the scraping sound it makes.

‘See here?’ says Bartok. ‘Four holes, though not the best grouping in the world, Doyle. The slugs are still in there. Your bullets. From your gun. The cops would know that, wouldn’t they? I mean, if I was to give them Rocca’s body here and they took a look inside, they’d be able to figure out who did it, wouldn’t they?’

Doyle has always dreaded this day. Last Christmas, Bartok told him he had Rocca’s body. Told him, too, that one day he would come back to Doyle for a favor. As the months came and went, Doyle started to believe it was a bluff. He almost convinced himself that Bartok had dumped the corpse.

But no. Here it is. Bartok kept it. Put it on ice, literally. And now he’s found a reason for using it as his bargaining chip. Doyle is no expert on ballistics, but he knows that discharged bullets bear rifling marks unique to the weapon that fired them. If the tech guys get to the bullets inside Rocca, it won’t be long before Doyle is fingered as the owner of the gun involved. Especially if someone like Bartok helpfully points them in that direction.

‘What do you want, Lucas?’

Bartok smiles again, and his grin seems even more malevolent below those unruly pupils of his.

‘Anton Ruger.’

‘Who’s Anton Ruger?’

‘Piece of shit used to work for me.’

‘Used to?’

‘Yeah. We didn’t see eye to eye.’

Another cue for a wisecrack. Doyle is starting to think Bartok is acting the straight man on purpose, just to test him. He lets it ride. He’s decided he wants to get out of here alive.

‘What’s your beef with him?’

‘He’s got something belongs to me.’

Bartok steps back to his desk. He flips open a folder that’s lying there, then takes out a large photograph and hands it to Doyle. The photograph shows Lucas Bartok and his brother, Kurt, posed at a desk. Kurt is smiling into the camera. It’s hard to tell what Lucas is looking at. He could be checking his watch for all Doyle knows.

‘Ruger’s got your brother?’

‘You know, Doyle, that’s some fucking mouth you got on you. Cut the clown act before I shove this icepick up your ass, you get me?’

Doyle returns his gaze to the picture. ‘All right, so what am I looking at?’

‘Our hands, dick-brain. Look at our fucking hands.’

Doyle looks. The siblings are sporting matching rings. They’re garishly huge, and shaped into a letter B. At the center of each curve of the letter is a large sparkling gem.

‘Solid platinum,’ says Bartok. ‘And those rocks? Diamonds. We bought them for each other.’

Doyle can almost swear he hears Bartok’s voice catch as he says this. Very touching, he thinks. Or at least it would be for normal brothers. With Bartok, this uncharacteristic display of sentimentality makes him seem even more deranged.

‘Very nice. I’m lucky if I get socks.’

‘That’s because you’re a nobody, Doyle.’

‘Thanks for the confidence booster. And what do you want this nobody to do?’

‘When Ruger left my employ, he didn’t go empty-handed.’

‘He took your ring?

‘You catch on fast for a dumb mick cop.’

‘You should put in an official police complaint. We take that kinda thing very seriously.’

‘This here is my police complaint. And I know you’re gonna take it deadly serious.’

‘Meaning what? What is it you’re asking me, Lucas?’

Bartok leans forward. He has the icepick out in front of him, its tip pointed directly at Doyle.

‘What I’m telling you, Doyle, is that you’re gonna kill this fucking piece of crap.’

Doyle stares at Bartok for several seconds.

‘Okay,’ he says.

Bartok flinches. ‘Okay?’

‘Sure. When do you want it done?’

Bartok’s eyes rove even more uncontrollably than usual. His lip twitches. ‘Are you fucking with me, Doyle?’

‘’Course I’m fucking with you, Lucas. I ain’t killing nobody. Now are we done here? Because I got places to be.’

He sees the look of sheer evil on Bartok’s face. The icepick is still aimed between Doyle’s eyes. He braces himself. Waits for the onslaught. Tries to figure out how he’s going to defend himself.

But Bartok smiles. Not the most comforting of expressions when it’s worn on a man like this, but surprising nonetheless. Bartok steps away from Doyle. His smile develops into a low chuckle, then a deep-throated laugh. He looks across to his men, and they join in with the merriment. Nervously, it seems to Doyle.

Bartok continues walking away. He steps past the rigid contorted figure of Sonny Rocca.

And then he spins back to face Doyle. And as he turns, he raises his arm, the one carrying the icepick, and he lets out a huge angry roar and he brings that arm down again. Brings that icepick down. Sinks it handle-deep into Sonny Rocca’s skull. Doyle hears the crunch of bone. He winces. The laughter stops. Somebody sucks air through their teeth. Bartok releases his grip, leaving the icepick still embedded in the top of Rocca’s head. He’s dead, Doyle tells himself. It doesn’t matter. But still it hits Doyle as a shocking, senseless act of violence.

And then Bartok is advancing on Doyle again. Coming straight at him, charging at him, fists bunched, teeth bared. And Doyle cannot read his intent. Cannot work out what those crazy eyes are looking at. .

And then Bartok stops. He stops and he points at Doyle. He laughs again. He holds a hand against his paunch as he laughs, like this is the funniest thing ever. And again the men join in, but still it is not genuine amusement: it is a release of tension. Because everybody in this office except one knows that they are in the presence of insanity.

‘You should see your face,’ says Bartok to Doyle. ‘What a picture.’

Doyle is the only one who isn’t laughing. He doesn’t find this the least bit funny. He finds the whole situation unsettling and scary in its unpredictability.

Says Bartok, ‘I know you wouldn’t kill this hump. Don’t matter what goods I got on you, you wouldn’t whack somebody for me. I know that.’

‘So what do you want?’

‘My ring. I want my ring back.’

‘You want me to get your ring back for you?’

‘That’s what I want.’

Doyle considers asking one more time whether he’s heard correctly. It seems such a mundane request, unrepresentative of Bartok’s fearsome reputation.

Says Doyle, ‘What about Ruger?’

‘Ruger is nothing. He’s less than nothing. One day our paths will cross again and I’ll waste him. Until then, all I want is what belongs to me.’

‘Why don’t you waste him now? Get your ring back yourself?’

‘Because I don’t know where he is, dumbass. That’s why you’re here. You’re a detective. I want you to do some detecting. Find this cocksucker and get my property back. If it helps, think of it as returning stolen goods to their rightful owner.’

‘You really think Ruger’s still got it? I’m no expert, but I’d say a ring like that has to be worth a lot of money.’

Bartok shakes his head. ‘Nah, he’s still got it. For one thing, I put the word out that I’m looking for it. Everybody who Ruger could possibly sell it to knows who it belongs to. Ruger tries to sell it, I find him. That’s the last thing he wants, believe me. Besides, what I’m hearing is that Ruger likes to wear it himself. His story is that it’s my brother’s ring, and that he whacked him to get it. It’s his way of trying to build up some respect. Anyone who would dare to cap one of the Bartok brothers has to be a real bad-ass, right?’

Doyle mulls it over. Considers his options. Decides he doesn’t have any.

‘And that’s all you want me to do? Get the ring?’

‘Don’t make it sound like a walk in the park, Doyle. Ruger, he don’t wanna be found. And if he hears you’re looking for him, he’s gonna try stopping you. He may be an asshole, but he’s an asshole with teeth.’

Doyle thinks some more. Okay, so maybe it’s not such an innocent request after all. Maybe I’m underestimating the amount of danger involved in this operation.

‘If I do this? What then?’

Bartok strolls back toward the gruesome seated corpse. ‘You scratch my back, I scratch yours. I get my ring, you get the wop. You want, you can dig the slugs out yourself. I’ll make sure he’s nice and defrosted for you. You got till eight o’clock on Sunday morning. Drop it in on your way to church.’

‘Sunday? It’s already Thursday. No dice, Lucas. I need longer.’

‘Sunday morning. After that, I get rid of the body before it starts to smell. I’ll tie a ribbon around it and leave it outside police headquarters, somewhere like that, and you can start looking forward to your jail time.’

Doyle looks at the sad spectacle of Sonny Rocca. Sitting there, all hunched up, with four bullets in his chest, a length of steel in his brain, and every cell in his body turned to ice. Could the guy be any more dead?

Doyle sighs. ‘How do I get in touch?’

‘Sven will give you a number. You don’t call, then he comes looking for you. Don’t make him have to do that, Doyle.’

Doyle stands. ‘You better keep your side of this, Lucas.’

Bartok returns to the chair at his desk. ‘I told you. You scratch my back, I scratch yours. Just make sure Ruger don’t scratch you first.’

The four meatheads escort Doyle out of there then. It’s a relief to be away from Bartok, but he could do without this new mission.

As he clatters back down the iron staircase he thinks, Don’t I have enough on my plate already? Now I have to go on a quest for a damn ring.

Now I’m Bilbo fucking Baggins.