William Landay - The Strangler

A rock chattered nearby. To his left. A few feet away, low in the shadows.

He jerked his gun around and fired, fired, fired, eager for release, as if he had been holding the bullets uncomfortably in his body.

The noise was deafening. The corrugated crazy-angled steel walls echoed the sounds and, it became clear, the bullets themselves.

The man cringed at the ricochets, crouched down, and it was in this position that he felt his right shinbone crack in two, heard the dry snap, then-after a delay, an extended moment-he felt a burst of pain in his leg. He looked down to see his shin grotesquely segmented, his leg two-kneed like an insect’s. He stared, uncomprehending. His right foot lay flat on the ground, instep down. It reminded him of an empty boot dropped on its side. He understood, briefly, that the rock had been tossed to distract him, but already he was toppling onto his back.

Above him, Michael Daley hoisted a sledgehammer a second time. Michael shouted in pain as his arms reached ten o’clock and his shoulder-smashed in the fall-dialed upward. The pain made him dizzy. But the long-handled sledgehammer seemed to know where it was going, as if its design compelled it along a predetermined arc, and so Michael lassoed it above his shoulder and brought it down on the man’s upper chest, just below the hollow of his neck.

The blow shook the man’s body. His arms and legs jumped.

Michael tugged the sledge but it stuck, or seemed to. The illusion held for a moment-it felt like the hammer was sunk in the man’s chest, like an ax head in a fat log-until Michael realized what had actually happened: His own shoulder had failed. He could not budge his right arm, let alone the weight of the sledgehammer. The impact with the ground minutes before had spread open the bones of the shoulder, and now he could feel the displacement in his own skeleton, the ball of the humerus dislodged, grinding the rim of the socket, the arm dangling light and unsprung. The pain, though, was not confined to the area of the jumbled bones. It was general, radiant, a cold electrical current that chilled his entire side. The last two fingers of his hand tingled, as did his neck. Silently he chanted his old migraine prayer: I am not my body; I am in my body. He would master the pain.

With great effort, the man rolled onto his elbows and scraped forward, apparently unaware of the gun he had dropped or the heavy sledgehammer sliding off his body. His breathing was clutched and whispery.

Michael limped around him, crouched, and demanded, “Where’s Conroy?”

The man belly-crawled a few feet toward the center of the pit. For a moment he did not move, then he raised up on all fours and pawed ahead. Stopped. He arched his back, opened his mouth wide, and released a gush of vomit with no more effort than a dog opening its mouth to drop a ball at its master’s feet.

Michael picked up the gun. Surely it had been emptied, but he did not know how to check. He gathered up the sledgehammer as well. (Should he leave the tool in the pit where he had found it? Mix it in among the others left here by the workmen? Or take it away to avoid leaving evidence?) With these implements, the gun in his right hand, sledgehammer in his left, he felt absurdly well armed and capable. He felt himself grow stronger under their influence.

The injured man was stock-still, on hands and knees. His breathing was shallow.

“Where’s Conroy?”

No response.

Michael raised the gun uncertainly. Where to place it? The man’s head was bowed, so Michael pressed the nose of the gun against the back of his scalp where it nestled in the dense black plush of his hair. “Who are you?”

“Like you don’t know.”

“I don’t know. Tell me.”

“Vi-Vincent Gargano.”

Michael paused. Until now he had known Gargano’s name and reputation but had never seen him. Vincent The Animal Gargano. Holy shit.

“Why are you doing this to me?”

No response.

“Where’s Conroy?”

Gargano lay in the mud, silent.

“Is he here?”

“No.”

Michael’s finger tensioned the trigger, but he paused. “Is Joe Daley really dead?”

“Yeah.”

“Who killed him?”

“I did, you d-” Gargano wet-coughed, then labored to suck in a shallow, congested breath. “Dumb fuck. I did the both of ’em.”

“The both of…who?”

“I clipped your old man, too. Last year. Now I did the other. Ha! Two Joe Daleys. I-” He did not finish, or could not.

Michael snapped the trigger back decisively. The gun hopped in his hand with a springy clack. Empty. He tossed it away.

“Can’t even f-can’t even fuckin’ count.”

“Is anyone here with you?”

No response.

Michael shook his head. He felt a lethal sense of detachment. He was indifferent to the man at his feet, to consequences, to his own former self. The killing mood. He tugged the sledgehammer up and guided it through its parabolic course again-he yelled again as the handle lifted his arms excruciatingly-and he brought it down squarely on the small of Gargano’s back, where the belt of his jacket had pulled up to expose a bulge of soft flab and a cirrus cloud of black body hair. The impact made a fleshy smack.

Gargano’s limbs held him up a moment, then he collapsed.

“Are you alone here?”

Gargano wheezed.

“Are you alone?”

“Yeah.”

Michael sat down carefully in the dirt. Just lowered himself down. The hammer moved off his lap, drawn away by the weight of its heavy head. He cradled his injured arm with his good one, holding it across his belly. In this position the pain was reduced almost to nothing, although the nerves still shivered with the memory of it. His mouth was particled with dirt and stones. A raw scrape burned down his cheek. On the right side of his scalp was a cool wet sensation, as if a flap had been opened and the interior of his head lay exposed to the air. It was not painful. Far from it, the breezy window in his head, if it was that, was rather pleasant.

He closed his eyes and imagined those footsteps again, shick-shick-shick-shick-shick, whisking along the pavement. He dreamed Joe Senior sprinting down that alley as Conroy dropped back, with a grimace of Judas’s remorse on his face. Joe Senior coming around that corner, scuffing to a stop, confronted by a gun, the four-shot derringer, panning up to the face of-this man, Vincent Gargano.

Michael struggled to his feet, shielding his injured arm. With his good hand, he pat-frisked Gargano’s body.

Nearby a hole had been freshly dug, a deep tube drilled straight down in the earth to receive the next pile. The piles were arranged in a grid; the next would be planted here. A crane and an enormous pile driver loomed above it. Michael stood over the hole and looked down. He could see ten feet or so, after that it fell away into darkness. Michael knew about these piles. Everyone who worked downtown did. When the piles were being driven, windows shook in offices a half mile away and people kept their windows closed to muffle the raucous clanging. Gargano had intended to dump Michael’s body in this hole. Tomorrow morning, according to the plan, with each smash of the pile driver, Michael would be rammed down and down.

For now, the scene was quiet, so quiet that Michael could hear the wind fluting softly past the piles. He dropped a pebble into the hole to gauge its depth. He didn’t hear it land.

Gargano gasped. He said something which Michael could not hear until Michael stood right over him: “I c-can’t breathe.”

“Why,” Michael said, “did you do this? Why me?”

“I c-can’t breathe.”

“Why me?”

“Orders.”

“From who?”

“Capobianco.”

“Capobianco? But why me? Why me?”