Judgment (15 page)

He glanced at Stocker. "Or you."

Stocker stopped pacing and turned to face Breen.

"Don't look so surprised, Jed. It's no secret you want this office when I go. If you don't catch Mr. Jury soon, we're both going to be serving fries at McDonald's."

"We're doing our best," Stocker said quietly. "We have a lead, a small one. Remember that cop that got torched?"

"Mackinaw or something, right?"

"Macklin, James Douglas Macklin. Some of Mr. Jury's victims were arrested for Macklin's murder and released on a technicality. The detective I've got heading the investigation, Neal Sliran, thinks Macklin's son, Brett, might be our man."

"So bring the son of a bitch in."

"We can't. We have nothing on him. In fact, we have nothing, period. No description to go on, no physical evidence except for the bullets we dug out of the victims. We're looking for a ghost."

Breen smiled. "He'll make a mistake and he'll fall." He looked at Stocker. "Just make sure you have someone there to catch him. Then bring this caped crusader to me."

The lights of Los Angeles gleamed and flickered below him. The night vistas always held an element of unreality, with their satisfying and startling visions. Some nights the lights were an endless field of precious jewels, glimmering and glistening, his for the taking. Other times the lights were torch-carrying enemies approaching ominously and whispering his name.

The lights were different tonight, slowly banding together into a new vision. He watched them carefully while absently tracing the gold-embossed book on his desk with his finger.

His polished white marble desk, eight feet long and four feet wide, dominated the room. The hand-rubbed teak paneling would have given the expansive office a hushed warmth if it were not in constant conflict with the unsettling sight of his desk. Adding to the contrast was a portrait of himself, behind his ornate leather desk chair, and flanked on either side by picture windows that afforded him a breathtaking view of the city. His blue eyes in the portrait blazed with power and confidence.

His eyes narrowed now as he stared at the city below him, watching the lights coalesce into a vision that was just beginning to become clear.

The phone rang.

The mood was broken and the lights became just lights.

He reached back and grabbed the receiver angrily. "Yes?"

"It's me." The voice was rough and resonant. Unmistakable. "We've got that shit on the run now. He's called in reinforcements."

"Big guns?" he asked wearily, turning and leaning on the desk with his elbows.

"Just one. A guy named Kirk Jeffries from New York. He's a wizard with statistics and can isolate a candidate's weak points with astonishing accuracy.

"He's one of those young computer geniuses and looks like one, too. A real sorry-looking asshole. But he's probably the nation's third or fourth best pollster.

"No one understands the guy's methods, but everyone knows they work. On your side he's an invaluable weapon."

"I take it he's with the enemy."

"Yeah, and it's a damn shame, too. He worked with me on my first campaign and made sure I said just the right crap to sway the iffy numbers my way. I'd love to have him on my side. But the guy is a loud-mouthed prick. Isn't a team player. He didn't know his place. I gave him the boot when it was clear I had the campaign won and I didn't need to put up with his shit."

"What sort of threat does he pose?"

"A big one. He knows a lot about me. Too much. We have to take him out of the picture. He arrives here in two days."

"Simple enough. We'll have him killed in the usual fashion."

"I don't think that's a good idea. Not with this Mr. Jury crap. Let's kill him simply." There was a pleading tone to his voice that, coming from him, was shockingly out of character.

"Macklin is harmless." He took a deep breath, forcing back his rage. He became enraged at the slightest hint of cowardice or lack of confidence. "We control him."

"This could explode in our face, you know, and ruin everything."

"Stop whining," he snapped, startling himself and the caller. He struggled to control his temper. With measured restraint, he spoke slowly and methodically, "You sound like a child. I'll handle this. I know what I'm doing." He sat up in his chair. "We're going to succeed. Have faith. After tonight's show, you'll have God on your side. I'm going to endorse you."

"Terrific," he snorted. "It will come in handy when they crucify me. I don't suppose you have a crown of thorns I could borrow?"

The caller hung up. The other man sat for a moment in silence, tapping his fingers on the leather-bound book. Someday he might have to kill that man. The caller was already showing signs of weakness that couldn't be tolerated.

He reached for the phone and dialed.

"Yeah?"

"I have another elimination for you to arrange," he said smoothly. "Same price, same procedure. As usual, make sure he looks like another innocent victim caught up in gang warfare. Be absolutely certain."

"Okay, okay. What is the guy's name?"

"Kirk Jeffries. He's coming into town in two days. I trust you can get the details on your own?"

"Yeah, I got sources. What about Macklin?"

"I told you, let him have his fun, and then you can have yours. Just do as I tell you."

"Macklin should die now."

His anger flared. "Do as I say! That's what I pay you for."

He slammed down the phone. Someone knocked timidly at his door. "Enter," he yelled.

The huge oak door swung open and a woman wearing only a white bathrobe stepped meekly into the room, closing the door behind her. She was slender and tanned, her breasts full, her legs long and smooth. She had a euphoric, punch-drunk look that labeled her as one of his many, nameless, utterly devoted minions.

She approached him slowly, stopping just in front of his massive desk. He walked around the desk, came up behind her, and turned her by the shoulders to face him.

He looked at her with father-like warmth. But inside the frustrations were boiling, had brought him to a breaking point. He recognized the symptoms well and struggled to reveal none of them to the girl. Touching her hand tenderly, he led her to the center of the room.

He motioned with his head to her bathrobe. "Take it off," he commanded.

The robe slipped off her soft, brown skin and fell to a clump at her feet. Her empty, trusting gaze met his as she obediently dropped to her knees. "I love you, my savior."

Her placid acceptance of his whim made him nauseous. She was empty and useless, utterly devoid of redeeming value. Yet he had made her that way. A part of him wanted her like that.
Needed
her like that.

Elias Simon smiled. "I love you, too, my child."

He turned as if to walk away and then spun, giving her a sharp kick in the jaw that snapped her neck with a crack. The blow catapulted her young, budding body across the room and sent her stunned soul seeking explanations in the next world.

He felt much better.

Brett Macklin lay naked in bed, his sheets a wrinkled heap at his feet, staring across the room at a killer.

He stared into his own bloodshot, dull eyes reflecting back at him in the mirror above his bureau. The eyes didn't have any of the humor he had always seen in them before. They were a soldier's eyes, eyes that had in the last week dispassionately witnessed slaughter, torture, and depravity. All of it in live-action, full-color, six-track Dolby stereo.

What have I become?

It was a question he couldn't answer. Not yet. Not until the killing had ended and he could go hide somewhere and rebuild himself. Reconstruct his world again. His father, a constant authority figure in his life, a symbol of unshakeable stability, was gone. The justice system that had been his father's religion, a system that had earned his unquestioning devotion, a system he had taught his son to respect and obey, had betrayed them both. And the man Brett Macklin thought he knew best, himself, was now a stranger to him.

He sat up, resting his back against the headboard.

Macklin was startled by his new single-mindedness of purpose, this violent determination to eradicate the slime that had taken his father, then Melody, and then Saul and Moe. A single-mindedness of purpose he easily gave in to even though it defied all his morals, his entire sense of right and wrong. How long had he really been living with this stranger? How had it manifested itself in the past? How would it shape his future? The reflection cast its unwavering gaze upon him and he knew tonight he would kill again.

# # # # # #

The room sizzled. The cool night breeze and the whirring fan didn't change a thing. They just couldn't compete with Busty Keaton. This woman could melt the polar ice cap.

But tonight she was farther south, trapped forever on scratched celluloid, dancing on Primo's wall. She writhed and contorted in front of him, her fingers between her legs, her head tossing madly from side to side.

"Yeahhhhhh." Primo grinned, taking a deep drag on the best weed he'd ever had. Beside him, on the metal desk, the old projector could barely keep the images up, rattling and whining as it sucked in the film and spilled it out around Primo's feet.

She fell to her knees, bent backwards, and opened herself up to him. "Hey, momma, c'mere and sit on my lucky bar stool," he cackled, pulling on his crotch.

The small, wooden box of a building seemed to close in around him. Sweat glistened on his forehead and chest, dampening his open shirt. It was just him, the heat, and Busty in the scrap-yard office, having a party.

His gritty body odor and the pot smoke mingled with the smell of years of cigarettes and cigars, cheeseburgers and belches, rusting scrap metal and dusty windowsills. The infrequent visitors to the scrap-yard office did their business in a hurry, talking fast and making sure they didn't bump into whatever must have shit and then died there.

Stacks of yellowed invoices and forms lined the walls that surrounded the two desks in the center of the room. In one corner, a soiled army cot rested in the shadows beside an old Frigidaire. For Primo, this was home sweet home.

Primo found the shack comforting. Especially at night. Here he always felt relaxed, safe. Nobody, not even that spineless bastard blowing away his friends, would dare bother him here. A Saturday night special lay beside the projector and a switchblade was in his back pocket, pressing against his buttocks.

Primo's eyes widened as Busty bent forward and pressed her face between her legs.

"Holy shit," he muttered. It was the most fantastic feat he had ever seen. For the first time in his life, he felt something akin to respect. Primo involuntarily shivered. It wasn't a reaction to Busty's amazing contortions. It was something else, a tickle between his shoulder blades. He tried to shrug it off. But the irritation continued, making it impossible for him to enjoy Busty's orgiastic writhing.

He looked over his shoulder at the window behind him. Brett Macklin stood outside, expressionless, his breath fogging the glass.

Primo grabbed his gun off the desk and swiveled, pumping three bullets in rapid succession into the window. The glass shattered and a cool breeze swept into the room. "Ha-ha! Blew the fuck out of you, asshole!"

Primo, his gun smoking, stalked up to the window and peered over the sill. There was no body.

"You're dead, fuckwad," Primo yelled at the stacks of metal sheets, twisted car bodies, and rusted piping. "I'm gonna cut off your balls and make you eat 'em!"

Primo climbed out the window and crouched on the cold dirt, the gun held out in front of him. As he walked into the shadows cast by the scrap piles, he could hear Busty Keaton squealing wildly in the office.

The crazy motherfucker Mr. Jury picked a fight with the wrong guy. "I'm gonna shish-kebab your fuckin' head, motherfucker. No one fucks with Primo." He walked in smooth strides around a heap of urinals, sinks, and busted refrigerators. Goose bumps rose on his damp skin, chilled by the cool air blowing through the scrap yard.

He heard a whistle behind him. "Hey, shorty, lookin' for me?"

Primo whirled around. Something icy splashed on his face, stinging his eyes and soaking his upper body.

Coughing, Primo stumbled backward, his vision blurred. A strong odor filled his nostrils and burned the tender membranes.

"What the fuck," Primo spit, stumbling back against the refrigerator. The smell of the substance was overpowering. His heartbeat built quickly into a frenzied pounding. "Gasoline," he hissed fearfully.

Primo, still unable to see clearly, broke into a run. He stumbled over a pipe, sliding face first into the dirt.

He frantically scrambled to his feet and saw two figures standing five yards away, both Brett Macklin. Blinking hard, tears streaming down his face, Primo raised his gun and pointed at the double vision of Brett Macklin.

"You're dead, asshole." Primo fired. Macklin threw himself sideways to the ground and felt the bullet whiz past his ear. The spark from the gun barrel ignited Primo's arm. Macklin saw the split second of surprise and terror in Primo's eyes before the fire consumed Primo's face. A high, wild scream escaped from Primo as the fire engulfed his body and drew it into a tiny, twisted curl of bubbling flesh.

Macklin stood up slowly, the smell of burned meat heavy in the air. He felt nothing. Not even hate.

The sirens comforted Esteban as he strolled down the street. The sound was a natural part of the night, the babbling brook and the wind whistling through the trees of his urban wilderness. Mother Nature here was a robot made of asphalt and steel, grease and tar, with eyes of dirty glass and lungs of soot.

Grit and gravel and shards of glass cruncheditted under his feet.

He embraced the warm smell of exhaust in the air and the sound of screaming sirens. It gave him a fleeting sense of security as he made his journey to Primo's place. There, he would be safe.

Mr. Jury was after them, and Primo could protect him. Alone, Esteban felt utterly defenseless and vulnerable. Primo made him feel strong. Primo made him feel a lot of things. Primo got him women, which he knew he could never get himself, drugs, booze, and money. Primo was father, friend, and foe.