Giles Blunt - Crime Machine

He moved on toward the last door at the end of a short hall.

A voice behind him said, “Put the gun down.”

Cardinal whirled and dropped to his knee in one motion, Beretta at the ready.

“Very impressive,” the man said. He was in his late fifties. Bigger than Cardinal by a lot. Short hair and a military look to him, a shotgun at his shoulder-a shotgun being the exact tool for the situation. Fill a room with buckshot and no one gets away.

“Curtis Winston,” Cardinal said.

“It doesn’t matter who we are. It only matters what we are.”

“I know what you are, and you’re under arrest.”

The man came closer. “Cop,” he said. “Society’s lackey. Lickspittle. A no-account backer of the status quo.”

“Somebody has to take out the garbage.”

“Garbage is just material you don’t personally value. Others might take a different view.”

“Put down the weapon.”

“No.”

“You’re not getting out of here.”

“You might want to recalculate those odds. Shotgun versus pistol. Pathetic little cop versus… what? A force of nature. A united family.”

“A family is not what I’d call you.”

“What would you call us?”

“Just put down the weapon.”

“Negative. What would you call us?”

“I don’t see any us. I just see a gangster minus a gang.”

“Family, not gang. Our loyalties run deep. Now drop the Beretta.”

A hooded figure came in from the side door. “It’s the girl you have to worry about,” she said to Cardinal. “Not Papa.”

“Hello, Donna,” Cardinal said.

“You don’t seem surprised to see me.”

The man called Papa did. “Christine,” he said, keeping the shotgun trained on Cardinal. “Christine, what are you doing here? Have you forgotten the rules?”

“I know the rules,” she said. “‘You leave the family, you leave for good.’” She turned to Cardinal. “How’d you figure it out?”

“Mendelsohn. You killed him because you knew he was going to recognize you. You took the photos from his file. What I don’t understand is why you killed the kid at the ATM.”

“He wouldn’t tell me where Papa was.”

“You kill a kid? To have Papa bear all to yourself? You’re that desperate to run with this guy again?”

“Not run with him. Kill him.” She pressed her gun to Papa’s head. “He won’t shoot. Papa never shoots anyone.” She lifted the shotgun out of Papa’s grasp and stepped around him. He stared at her with hatred. “You’re not the easiest man to find,” she said.

“You led a cop here? Are you that much of a traitor, Christine?”

“It was the other way around,” Cardinal said. “She followed me. Tried to shoot me, too, if that’s any consolation.”

“To warn you away,” Donna said. “If I’d wanted to kill you, you’d be dead.”

“That is true,” Papa said. “Meet Christine Rickert-best shot I ever saw. Best tracker, best fighter, best I ever trained. It broke my heart when you quit the family.”

“Family,” Donna said. “Always family. What a joke.”

“What do you want, Christine?”

“I want my life back, Papa.”

Papa laughed. “I gave you your life back. Years ago. What were you? A juvenile delinquent. A petty thief. Drug dealer, street slut, a human spittoon. We took you in, gave you a home, something to belong to. Something to believe in. You could have become anything-special forces, undercover cop, the failsafe assassin. We trained you until you were the absolute best you could be.”

“Trained me to kill without mercy.”

“You were good at it. You were the best.”

“Trained me to believe that the slightest discomfort could be solved with a bullet.”

Winston shrugged. “So you threw it away. Now what are you?”

“Daddy’s girl.”

“You’re nothing. You’re a zero.”

“You made me in your image. Trained me for slaughter. I never learned any other way to meet the world. What are you supposed to do when your lover upsets you? You kill him. What do you do when you don’t get the job you want? You kill. What do you do when your husband isn’t a saint? You kill him. I just spent eight years in fucking prison, Papa.”

“Not for anything you did with me.”

“It was the culmination of everything you taught me.” She looked at Cardinal. “That’s right, John. My husband didn’t leave me. I sent him on his way.” She gestured with the gun. “With this. It’s one thing when you kill a stranger. That’s relatively simple to get away with. Unfortunately, when you shoot your husband in a fit of rage, you tend to get caught.”

Cardinal spoke quietly. “How did you know where to find the ATM kid?”

“Papa here’s a creature of habit. Always tells them to hit the first ATM again. After the second one. Every time. Kid wouldn’t tell me anything. But like I say, Papa’s a creature of habit. I don’t know how far Mendelsohn got with this, but you check back, you’ll find that aside from his habit of beheading people who annoy him, Papa likes to storm someone’s house and drain every dime out of every account they ever opened. As soon as you said Kreeger was wealthy, in the fur business, I knew he’d be here. The kid didn’t tell me a thing. Just stood there waiting for it. He knew if he got into his car I’d follow him.”

“Lemur was loyal,” Papa said. “Unlike you.”

“And look where it got him,” Donna said. “Are you proud of your children, Papa?”

“Donna-Christine,” Cardinal said. “Whatever you have in mind now, don’t do it.”

Donna laughed. “He took my life. Why shouldn’t I take his?”

“If not for me,” Papa said, “and the family I gave you, you’d have been dead at fifteen.”

“You’re an assembly line for murderers. You’ll just keep turning out more like me. Taking you down will be the one good thing I’ve ever done.”

“Don’t do it,” Cardinal said.

“Why, John? You have a happy ending for me? You marry me and take me away from all this? I don’t think so. In a way, you’re partly responsible. You gave me a glimpse of real love, real loyalty. You would have figured me out quick enough-but it was just so obvious you loved your wife. Real love. Not the fake stuff Papa deals in, the real thing. That’s something I’ve never had, never will. You can’t imagine how that feels.”

“You kill a boy and a law officer and God knows who else,” Cardinal said, “and you blame it on your childhood?”

“You can’t imagine the things I’ve seen. Either of you. You can’t begin to guess the places you travel when you’ve had the benefit of Papa’s training. I’ve seen fathers clasp their hands in prayer and beg, beg not to be killed-not for their own sakes, for the sakes of their children. I’ve seen young mothers sprawled on the ground, blood spilling from their heads, their babies wailing in the next room. I’ve seen teenagers, a teacher, an architect, at least one doctor-all dead for the same reason. The same simple reason. Because Papa wanted it that way. It was never for anything that mattered, anything that might make sense as a motive. They looked at him wrong, they didn’t bow down to him, they didn’t recognize that he was God, obviously they were not fit to live. I lost interest when he started cutting people’s heads off. Not personally, of course. Why kill anyone yourself when you can have a so-called son or daughter do it for you?”

“Look at you,” Papa said. “You’re magnificent. An implacable force. Come with me up north. We’ll work together. We’ll raise a family the like of which has never been seen, and we’ll take over whatever’s left of the world.”

“Big talk from a guy who’s never killed anyone.”