Sharky's Machine

Chapter Three

ATLANTA, 1975

The face was malevolent, its mouth wrinkled and shrivelled with age and frozen in an evil leer, its taunting eyes flickering feebly as they stared through the window of the pub. Outside a cold fall wind raced across the courtyard that separated the two-storey shopping mall from the mirrored skyscraper, sweeping leaves before it as it moaned through the open plaza. They skittered along the pavement, dancing past the grinning apparition and swirling away into darkness.

A few blocks away the chimes of the cathedral began tolling midnight, striking the last seconds of All-hallow Eve. Pursued by the clock, ghosts arid goblins, saints, sinners, black magicians, and lords of the underworld raced across the moon-mad sky, and fire-eyed birds darted to the safety of skeleton trees. The last chord sounded. The piazza was quiet. A blanket settled over the city. Devilment ended. Halloween was over.

But not quite.

Evil muses were still at play, concocting one last monstrous trick.

The door of the pub called Kerry’s Kalibash opened and a man in a scarred leather jacket stepped out into the chilly night air, carrying with him briefly the sounds of merriment, of laughter and music and ice rattling in glasses. The door shushed shut behind him. The man was tough- looking, with grey hair and dull eyes. He stood, shoulders hunched, and stared across the plaza at the twenty-storey building watching the blinking lights of a jet jog across the mirrored facade. It was a stunning structure, floor after floor of mirrored windows reflecting the distant skyline. The man turned as he stared up at the penthouse where lights glowed mutely.

He had followed the woman there. Somewhere in this building was the man he had wondered about, hated, for thirty years. As he watched, there was a movement in the shrubs near the pub behind him. He seemed hypnotized by the soaring building, by the kaleidoscope reflected in its face, by the bullet-shaped elevators that shot up and down the outside wall. A couple left the pub, laughing and wrapped in each other’s arms, and walked towards the parking lot.

The hidden figure froze against the wall. Son of a bitch, he thought, too open, too dangerous. Not neat and planned like Hong Kong. But it had to be done now.

The couple vanished into the parking lot. The figure moved again. He came straight towards the back of the man in the leather jacket. As he approached him he raised his left arm. He was holding a pistol with the ugly black cylinder of a silencer attached to the end of the barrel. The gun was only a few inches from the back of the man’s head when the gunman said softly:

‘Corrigon.’

The man in the leather jacket whirled and stared straight into the barrel of the pistol, now only two or three inches from his eye. A strange look crossed his face, a crooked grin of recognition and relief.

He saw the weapon only an instant before it flashed, before he heard the curious little pwuit the silencer made, before he felt the brief, fiery pain tear into his head, rip through his brain, and explode against the back of his skull.

His fingertips went numb. Then his hands. Then his arms. He lost the feeling in his legs and feet. His mouth filled with bile. He was falling and didn’t know it. Streaks of light cascaded down towards him from the building, showering past him like antic stars. Then they diminished and died. He heard a scream, a tight and anguished cry trapped in an agonized throat. Then all was darkness and silence except the relentless wind crying across the open plaza.

The last thought the man in the leather coat had was that the scream he heard was his own.