Sharky's Machine

Chapter Thirty

Scardi picked his spot carefully, with the same instincts, the same planning, that had kept him alive for forty-five of his sixty years in a business where death was as common as winter flu.

Several factors dictated his choice of position. First, accessibility to the victim. He wanted a clean head shot.

The .22 Woodsman had a specially designed eight-inch barrel with a Colt-Elliason rear sight and a ten-shot clip. The weapon was deadly up to seventy or eighty yards. With the silencer Scardi knew he could probably get off two, possibly three shots undetected. One would be sufficient, two ideal.

Second, he checked the pedestrian traffic patterns, looking for a place he could get in a clean shot without a lot of people around.

Finally, he looked for an escape route. It would be tough, escaping from Pachinko!, since it was accessible by elevator only. But there had to be a fire escape, a stairwell somewhere.

His modus operandi did not include trapping himself.

He stood on the balcony overlooking Pachinko!, orientating himself, studying every inch of the place through pain-clouded eyes.

He was standing with his back to the western wall of the building, looking down into the atrium. To his left was Ladder Street, winding down six storeys to the park’s main floor, where it became the main thoroughfare of Pachinko!, ending at the gardens. To his right were the shallow pond and the Tai Tak Restaurant. In the far corner to his left was the entrance to the pinball ride and in the far corner to his right Tiger Balm Gardens. Below him was the entrance to the underground Arcurion tour of historic Hong Kong.

There were three side streets in Pachinko! One was Prince Avenue, which ran perpendicular to the main street, starting at the foot of Ladder Street, and terminated at the giant figure of Man Chu, the robot who operated the ride. A second Street, Queen Street, paralleled Prince Avenue near the gardens. A narrow alley connected them, the stores on its eastern side built up to the far wall of the atrium.

The alley was virtually empty. Few of the guests who jammed the spectacular complex had discovered it yet. Only two stores on the alley had been completed. One was a petshop about halfway between Prince and Queen. The other was on the western corner of the alley and Prince Street, a trinket shop with a stall in front.

Perfect.

Scardi guessed Hotchins and DeLaroza would come down Ladder Street, turn into Prince, and go to the pinball ride. They would pass within fifteen feet of the alley. From the corner, hidden by the trinket stalls, Scardi could get off a couple of good head shots and escape down the alley.

And then what?

He continued to study the far side of the atrium floor. Then he saw the fire door. It was located on Queen Street between the alley and the wall.

The fire door provided his escape route. Scardi also reasoned that there would probably be an access door from the playing field of the ride to the fire stairs. If necessary he could enter the main floor of the ride and escape through the tunnels that led to the first floor. A risky trip, particularly for a wounded man, but an out nevertheless in case the stairway itself was blocked by police or security guards.

The wound burned deeply, but Scardi went over the plan two more times in his head before he was satisfied.

Scardi smiled. He was satisfied. It was a daring plan, but he had pulled off worse. And even if he didn’t, he was certain now that he could put a bullet in DeLaroza’s brain before he died himself.

Hotchins had been introduced with glowing platitudes by the state’s senior senator, Osgood Thurston. Hotchins’s speech was short and to the point, a straightforward declaration that he was running for president and running to win, for the guests had come to play, not to listen to political speeches. The press would have its chance at him:

later at the press conference.

Five minutes, that’s all it would take.

He was halfway through the announcement when he saw her the first time. A face in the sea of masks, staring up at him, smiling cryptically.

He floundered, lost his place as panic seized him. He smiled at the crowd, regained his composure, and when he looked back she was gone.

A moment later he saw her again, this time staring enigmatically from between the posters in a display in front of one of the booths.

Again, a few moments later, from farther down in the crowd.

He went on, losing track of what he was saying, flashing that smile, inventing lines, frantic to get it over with. For sixteen years he had savoured the anticipation of this moment. Now it was here and be was seized with terror.

Domino was out there, in that crowd of masked revellers, taunting him.

He finished with relief, backing away from the podium, his bandwagon supporters crowding around him, raising his anus over his head. Lowenthal, Thurston, three governors, the mayor, five congressmen, a dozen state legislators, several bankers, and two of the nation’s most powerful labour leaders.

The crowd was cheering wildly as the band struck up a furious version of ‘Georgia On My Mind’. Flashbulbs and strobes blinded the dignitaries, and movie and television cameras swept the crowd, capturing its lusty reaction to their favourite son’s entry into the campaign.

Only DeLaroza read the fear in Hotchins’s eyes.

He pulled him aside after the furore had died away.

‘What is the matter with you?’ DeLaroza demanded.

‘She’s down there,’ Hotchins said. He was trembling.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘She’s in that crowd. She’s leering at me!’

‘Who?’

‘Domino. She’s here. In this place.’

‘You are going to pieces. She would never take such a chance.’

‘I’m telling you, Domino is out there. She’s trying to rattle me and she did it.’

‘Listen to me,’ DeLaroza said, ‘we have only to walk down that stairway and over to the entrance of the ride and get in that steel ball and then you will be finished here. I assure you, she will not be at the press conference.’

‘I’m not going down there.’

‘You are most certainly going down there. The cameras, the reporters, the public, they are all waiting for us. Everyone who sees you on television riding in an amusement park will identify with you. It is something everyone can relate to. You are not backing out now.’

He grabbed Hotchins’s arm and led him down Into the crowd, bodyguards and security men forming a wedge through the mob, leading them down through the noisy bazaar.

They had gone a few steps when Hotchins saw the sketch. He pulled free of DeLaroza and rushed to the artist.

‘Who is that?’ he demanded, pointing to the easel ‘When did you do this sketch?’

‘Just before the speeches,’ the young artist stammered.

‘Where did she go. Which way?’

The artist waved his arm towards the crowd.

‘Out there somewhere, sir. She said she’d come back later and pick it up.’

‘What was she wearing?’ DeLaroza demanded.

‘Wearing?’

‘What kind of clothes was she wearing?

‘Uh.. . I was concentrating on her face, y’know. Uh, gold gown. That was it, a gold gown. Big splash of red right here in the middle.’

Hotchins remembered the woman at the entrance, the eyes following him from behind the impenetrable mask.

‘It was her downstairs. I knew it. I knew there was something...’

DeLaroza was urging him along the stairs.

‘Smile. Wave at the crowd. We are surrounded by guards. You have nothing to worry about.’

‘I have her to worry about I’

Like Scardi, Sharky too bad devised a daring scheme, one designed to unnerve Hotchins, and it was succeeding. He and Domino had moved to the rear of the crowd. Now, as the spectators turned from the speaker’s platform to walk down Ladder Street, they were leading the way into Prince Avenue. At the end of the street, the glowering figure of Man Chu waited ominously to send Hotchins and DeLaroza on the first official spin through the pinball machine. Photographers were jockeying for position and TV cameramen were eagerly setting up their tripods.

It had worked like a charm. Domino had put the mask on the back of her head and faced Sharky. Every time Hotchins looked in her direction, Sharky had turned her around facing him and then, the instant his eyes were averted, bad turned her quickly back around, so that when Hotchins looked up again he saw only the expressionless mask.

They bad moved through the crowd, trying the trick a dozen times or so, and Sharky was sure Hotchins had seen her at least three or four times.

Now for the cherry on the sundae. Hotchins and DeLaroza moved towards the robot. When the two were safely inside the steel car, with the guard rail snapped shut and the door secured, Domino would step out of the crowd and call each of them by name. The last thing they would see before plunging down into the dazzling interior of the ride would be Domino.

Sharky hoped they would try something desperate.

As they started up Prince Avenue, Sharky lowered his head slightly and spoke into the microphone pinned on the back of his lapel.

‘How you doin’, Vulture?’

Papa’s answer crackled in his hearing aid.

‘Right behind them. Hotchins’s flipping. May not work, but he ain’t gonna sleep tonight.’

‘Stay close.’

‘Gotcha.’

On the street below Friscoe and Livingston stamped their feet and tried to control their excitement, waiting for something to break loose. They anticipated the unexpected and it was about to happen.

Scardi was in position. Waiting.

So far, so good. The alley was almost empty. Twenty, thirty people milling about.

The crowd was moving up Prince Avenue, choking the street from storefront to storefront. He could see DeLaroza’s bald head and flaming red beard through the mass of people, moving towards him.

He checked the alley again. The people were beginning to move towards him, attracted by the noise of the approaching crowd.

At the far end of the alley a mime on stilts, dressed like Uncle Sam, stalked around the corner and started awkwardly towards him.

The wound was numb now. His chest no longer pained him. His life was ebbing away, trickling down his leg. He looked down at the clown suit, at the crimson stain, widening, seeping down over his hip towards his thigh.

He leaned closer to the wall, peering around the corner and over the stall of souvenirs. He slipped the last red devil in his mouth, waiting for its surge, suddenly feeling himself growing taller, more confident.

Come on, you bastard, just a little closer. He zipped down the clown suit and reached inside, felt the comforting grip of the Woodsman, drew it out, and folded his arms across his chest with the gun concealed, the snout pressed up into his armpit.

You pipsqueak little nothin’. A fuckin’ GI that I turned into a millionaire. What a fool, to think you could kill the old pro.

The speed surged through his blood, cleared his vision. He checked out the people in the front of the crowd, looking for tell-tale signs. Cops. Bodyguards. Security guards. He could always tell them by their eyes, by the way they checked everywhere.

His gaze fell on the woman in the gold gown. She was walking straight towards him. he stared into her face. There was something familiar there. Did he know her? Was it someone who could identify him? He panicked for a moment, then remembered the clown face. Nobody could see through that clown face.

And yet...

He concentrated on the face again. She was twenty feet away, bearing down on him. He dipped into his memory and then it began coming to him. Slowly. A photograph. That was it, a photograph. A photograph he had studied for hours.

And then it hit him.

Domino!

Domino?

No. It couldn’t be. She was dead. He had seen her face explode in front of his shotgun, seen her brains hit the wall. Domino was dead.

‘You’re dead,’ he muttered. He started backing away from her. ‘You’re dead,’ he repeated.

Domino saw him before Sharky did, a terrifying sight. His face bad dissolved, paint melting into a surrealistic glob of red and blue and chalky white. The ridiculous clown suit was stained blood red. His eyes were mad with fever. He was backing away from her. Saying something.

‘Sharky?’

‘I see him,’ Sharky said and stepped in front of her.

‘He’s saying something.’

The crowd pressed them towards him.

‘He’s saying. . . Jesus, he’s saying “You’re dead” over and over,’ Sharky said.

He looked hard into the crazed face, at the hawk nose, the pointed chin, the pig eyes. Then he saw the gun in his hand, the Woodsman.

‘Jesus,’ he yelled, ‘it’s Scardi!’

The clown turned and ran.

Sharky shoved Domino into the doorway of the store on the corner.

‘Stay here. Put on the mask, don’t let Hotchins and DeLaroza see you.’

‘But —‘

‘It’s Scardi, don’t you understand? He’s all we need.’ He yelled into the mike:

‘Papa, the store on the corner of the alley. Cover Domino!’

‘On my way.’

‘I’ve spotted Scardi!’

On the street the name shocked Friscoe and Livingston into action.

‘Shit,’ Friscoe cried out.

‘Let’s roll,’ Livingston said.

Scardi ran down the alley, shoving people aside, plunging between the stilted legs of Uncle Sam. The mime teetered and plunged forward into an awning over the petshop, crashed through it, and fell on top of several cages. They split open and the alley was suddenly alive with yapping Maltese and Pekingese dogs.

Sharky charged through the madhouse, stepping over the wreckage of the awning. Uncle Sam was struggling to his knees, his six-foot trouser legs straggling out behind him.

‘You okay?’ Sharky yelled at him.

l would be if I could get these damn pants off.’

Sharky went on, racing to the end of the alley. He stepped cautiously into Queen Street and looked both ways. The street came to a dead end at the wall on his left. To his right it was clogged with merrymakers. No sign of Scardi. He walked past the first few shops, looking in through the windows.

Nothing.

The bleeding clown had vanished.

Scardi stood inside the fire door for a few moments gasping for breath. He had caught a glimpse of a big guy in a tweed Suit running after him. A cop? Some irate guest? He didn’t care. He saw the door on the landing below, the door that led out onto the giant pinball playing field. His escape route.

He leaned against the wall and staggered down to the landing, pulled the door open, and stepped over the spring- loaded guard rail that surrounded the tilted board.

It was like walking into his own nightmare. All around him, reflected on the mirrored walls, the Mylar ceiling, were grinning Orientals. They towered over him, mocking him, strobe lights flashing from their slanted eyes, colours kaleidoscoping from their rubber bodies, electricity humming through the springs that wound around their bases. I-fe was hypnotized by the fantasy garden, by the flashing lights, and he lurched crazily out among them like a somnambulist.

The upper part of the board was adjacent to the bottom of Ladder Street, separated from it by a wall of mirrors and plywood. Near the top over a narrow chute with bumpers on both sides, was the control booth for the ingenious ride. The operator, who controlled the speed of the ball, was too busy to notice the madman strolling through the maze of bumpers and chutes and tunnels. He had checked out all the controls. Everything was ready. He picked up an intercom phone. ‘Okay’ he said, ‘let ‘er roll.’

From the safety of the trinket shop Domino and Papa watched DeLaroza and Hotchins climb into the six-foot steel sphere. An attendant pulled the guard bar up and locked it across their laps.

The press was having a field day, shooting pictures, ordering the candidate and the owner of the spectacle to wave, smile, shake hands with the mob that crowded around.

From deep inside the infernal machine, the operator pressed the start button.

The steel ball began its descent.

The crowd was cheering, lining up to be next.

The ball plunged down into the tunnel.

Sharky had walked up Queen Street almost to the main thoroughfare and then turned and started back. Scardi was close by, he could feel it, sense the evil of the man. But where?

He walked back towards the end of the street. Then he saw the fire door, discreetly marked, camouflaged by shrubbery.

He ran down the street to the door, ‘waited a moment, listening, drew his Mauser, and then, shoving the door open, jumped inside and cased the stairwell.

Empty.

Bloody footprints led down the stairs to the other door. He followed them, waited for a second, and pulled the door open.

A moment after the operator had ordered the ride to begin he looked up and saw Scardi, wandering like a lost child among the field of flashing bumpers.

‘Hey, you!’ he screamed. ‘Get outa here, you crazy fool!’ The bleeding apparition kept coming towards him. ‘Oh, my God,’ he cried, ‘get outs there. The goddamn balls coming!’

He snatched up the emergency phone.

Scardi shot him in the head.

The operator fell to the floor. Scardi could hear the rumble as the ball began its descent. It boomed out of the tunnel at the upper end of the game, spiralled around the giant playing surface, and rolled out onto the board, struck the first bumper, bounced away from it in a blaze of lights and clanging bells. It sped up towards the top of the field, ricocheting off the guard rail into another bumper.

From inside the ball, DeLaroza saw the grinning face of Shou-Lsing, god of long life, grinning down at him as the steel car struck the springs around its base and bounced away, spinning around on its ball bearings, rolling towards another. It was picking up speed as it bit another bumper and another, jerking him and Hotchins from one side of the seat to the other. The ball sped past the control booth and he looked up.

There was no one in it!

‘My God!’ he cried out.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘There’s no one at the controls, no one to brake us.’

The ball struck another bumper and reeled away from it, spinning on its axis, and rolled into one of the narrow funnel-like bunkers, slowing as it went through the tight passageway.

At the other end Scardi was standing in a duelling position, his side facing the ball, his hand held straight out, aiming his pistol at DeLaroza.

DeLaroza’s eyes bulged as he saw the assassin standing there, waiting to kill him.

He released the catch on the side of the guard bar and jumped out of the ball. Hotchins, confused and dizzy, tried to follow.

Something hit him in the chest, knocking him back into the car. The guard bar snapped back, trapping him inside. Hotchins looked down at his shirt front, saw the tiny hole there, reached up very slowly, and touched it.

Blood spurted from the hole and cascaded down his dress shirt.

The ball rolled out of the bunker, struck another bumper, and bounded away amid clanging bells. Hotchins sighed and fell over sideways in the seat.

DeLaroza dragged himself to his feet. His ankle was twisted, the knees torn Out of his tuxedo. He ran, limping, and ducked behind one of the bumpers.

Scardi was oblivious to the ball careening from bumper to bumper around him. it whisked past him, almost knocked him down. He had one purpose now. Nothing else mattered.

‘Howard, for God’s sake, listen to me!’ DeLaroza screamed. He was backing up, trying to keep the bumper between himself and Scardi.

‘Don’t call me that!’ Scardi cried out. ‘1 ain’t Howard. I ain’t Burns. Pm Scardi. I made you. You hear me, Younger? You was nothin’ but a dumb goddamn dogface. I gave you all this.’

He stepped from behind the bumper and fired at DeLaroza. The bullet hit the wall and one of the mirrors burst into dozens of reflecting shards.

DeLaroza turned and ran, aimlessly, dodging amid the grinning statues and flashing lights.

The pinball, totally out of control and roaring across the playing field, struck its last bumper, lurched over the floor, leaped the guard rail, and crashed through the wall.

The mirror exploded into millions of splinters. The wall shattered as the steel ball burst through it and rolled out at the foot of Ladder Street, struck one man and sent him reeling back up the steps, rolled over another, crashed into a shop at the bottom of the street and ripped through it, bursting out onto the main thoroughfare amid a shower of dolls, bracelets, and postcards.

The crowd scattered, falling over each other, as the antic pinball smashed through it, tossing people into the air like tenpins, ripping the marquee off the puppet theatre before it tore through the wall at the edge of the man-made lake and soared out over the water. It plunged down onto one of the sampans, split it in half, and bit the lake, sending a geyser twenty feet in the air, before it finally rolled to a stop.

DeLaroza limped towards the gaping hole in the wall. Scardi aimed and shot him in the thigh. He fell forward, hit the springs at the base of a bumper, and was thrown like a rag doll almost to Scardi’s feet.

The killer looked down at the battered DeLaroza. He calmly snapped a fresh clip into the pistol.

DeLaroza crawled to his knees. Across the floor he saw a man standing in the emergency doorway, watching the mad scene.

‘Help me,’ he yelled. ‘Please, help me.’

The man in the doorway yelled back to him.

‘My name’s Sharky. Hear that, DeLaroza? Sharky!’

DeLaroza moaned. He looked back at Scardi. The assassin was standing over him, grinning, aiming the pistol down at him. The gun thunked once, twice, three times, and the bullets tore into DeLaroza’s chest. He screamed once and slumped forward, his head resting on its forehead in front of his knees, like a man in prayer.

Grinning maniacally, Scardi leaned forward and shot him again in the back of the head.

‘Okay, Scardi, that’s enough,’ Sharky said.

The man clown turned towards him. Sharky stepped over the railing and started for him.

‘Drop the gun, Scardi,’ Sharky called to him. ‘Police.’

The word seemed to trigger Scardi’s dying energy. He scrambled through the ragged hole in the wall, crawling through broken glass and splinters of plywood, out into the main floor of Pachinko!

He got up and, half-running, half staggering, made for the opposite end of the atrium. The crowd scattered as he waved his gun madly at them, clearing a path for him. Ahead of him he saw the gates of Tiger Balm Gardens. He struggled towards them.

Sharky stepped through the hole and went after him, slowly, deliberately. There was no rush now. There was no place for Scardi to go.

On the stairs above him, Friscoe and Livingston saw Sharky stalking the frenzied killer.

Sharky saw them too and held his hand up at them.

‘He’s mine,’ he said coldly.

‘Scardi?’ Friscoe asked.

‘It’s Scardi,’ Sharky said, still following after him.

‘You gotta take him alive,’ Friscoe yelled. ‘We need him.’

‘Not anymore,’ Sharky said.

Scardi stumbled into the gardens, rushing blindly away from his pursuer. He slashed through the shrubs and flowers, scrambling up into the protection of the rocks and crevices. He fell against the side of the cliff at the far end of the gardens, looking back towards the street.

The tall guy in the tweed suit kept coming. And coming.

He was taking his time. Scardi fired a shot at him, half-heartedly, and it thunked harmlessly into one of the gates.

He turned and crawled frantically on his hands and knees, up, up, deeper into the crevices of the Tiger Balm. Every move now was agony. His sight was going. Every breath screeched through his tortured lungs. There was hardly enough blood left to sustain his frenetic flight.

Sharky walked into Tiger Balm Gardens, stepped over the fence, and followed resolutely after the mobster.

The silenced pistol spewed and dust kicked p in front of Sharky. He did not duck, did not dodge to one side or the other. He kept going, straight ahead, closing in.

Scardi dragged himself to his feet, backed away from him. His sight was almost gone. A vague shadow was moving towards him. He backed around a ridge in the cliffs and slumped against the rocks.

The unearthly shriek behind him was like no cry he had ever heard in his life.

He turned, looked up. A dragon loomed over him. Its mouth began to open.

Scardi screamed in pure terror.

The dragon’s mouth opened wide and a river of flame’ poured from it, and enveloped him.

Scardi was a human torch, his clothes and body an inferno, his screams of pain as unearthly as the creature that had just incinerated him. He rolled back around the ridge, feet and hands thrashing madly.

Sharky shuddered and turned his back to him.

One shot, he thought. One shot would put him out of his misery.

Well, it was one shot Scardi would not get from him.

He started back down towards the gates. Scardi’s screams followed him almost all the way down. Finally, they died away.

Domino and Papa came down the battered street towards him. She stopped a few feet in front of him.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

‘Never better,’ he said and smiled down at her. Then he took her by the arm and walked to the edge of the lake. The stainless-steel pinball lay upside down in three feet of water. Hotchins was hanging from the guard bar, his head and shoulders under water, his once handsome face distorted like a reflection in a funhouse mirror.

‘So much for the next president of the United States,’ he said. ‘And that was the shortest political campaign in history.’

The elevator stopped and they walked rapidly through the lobby and outside into bedlam. A dozen police cars had pulled up into the plaza, their blue lights whirling. A TV newsman was interviewing a woman who seemed on the verge of shock. An ambulance screamed around the corner and pulled in with its siren dying down to a growl. They walked past a crowd of spectators, some holding drinks from Kerry’s Kalibash, staring up at the building.

Livingston and Friscoe were standing away from the crowd, talking intently with Jaspers who was jabbing the air between them with an icepick finger.

Sharky kept walking, holding Domino tightly against him. He had passed Arch Livingston and Barney Friscoe and Papa before The Bat saw him.

‘Sharky!’ he bellowed.

Sharky kept walking.

‘Sharky!’

He was almost to the car.

‘Sharky, godammit, stop!’

He stopped, still holding her close to him, and looked over his shoulder at The Bat.

‘What the hell’s going on here? What the hell. . . I want some answers. Just who do you think you are, all of you? You’re, you’re. . .‘ He stopped.

Livingston came over to them. ‘You okay?’ he said.

‘I’m okay. I’m taking her outa here.’

‘Whatever,’ Livingston said and smacked him on the shoulder. ‘You run a hell of a machine, brother. Any time.’

‘Thanks.’

The Bat snapped. ‘Now let me tell you something—’

Sharky cut him off. ‘No, you’re not telling me a goddamn thing.’

He started back towards the car.

‘Godammit!’ The Bat screamed. ‘you’re through, Sharky! You hear me?’

But if Sharky heard, he made no response. He kept walking, past the police cars, past the crowd, away from the building, away from The Bat, away from the nightmare. The wind shifted and a cold breeze blew past them, carrying the carrion odour away from Sharky, blowing it back towards Mirror Towers and with it the hurt, the anger the hate.

They got in the car and drove away.