Marcus Sakey - At The City's Edge

The volume turned down with every step away from the lobby. They passed a restaurant, the air heavy with the smell of french onion soup and filet mignon, and took a side corridor to a door marked "Employees Only."

The garage was dreary, the buzzing sodium lights draining color. Several panel trucks were backed in against the wall, followed by rows of staff cars, Hondas and Fords, most a couple of years old. The air was stale with old exhaust and cigarettes.

The alderman's car sat twenty feet away, beside a delivery truck. The Towncar was running, a trickle of exhaust rising from the tailpipe. Lightly tinted windows screened the interior, but he could make out a man in the rear seat. "Right on time," Jason said. They started toward the car, Cruz's high heels clicking on the concrete. "Let's get this over with, get home. I could sleep for a week."

Jason opened the car door and leaned in, opening his mouth to say hello.

In the splinter of a second it took to process the man pointing a gun at him, a thin face marked by a white ridge of scar tissue, it hit Jason what had been nagging at him.

Anthony DiRisio had been wearing a tuxedo. If he'd followed them here, where would he have come up with a tux?

Then something hard and heavy cracked his skull, and the world shivered into night.

Back in the desert.

The street was winding and filled with children. They laughed, wrestling, tumbling in the dust, all almond eyes and shining smiles. But beyond them he could hear a noise, a humming, crushing sound, something coming closer. It was death, he knew that, and he yelled, tried to warn them. The children wouldn't listen, none of them would listen , even as it came around the corner, a juggernaut of creaking metal treads and armor plates the color of disease, spitting gouts of flame in a tide of red and yellow. The children played, never looking at the machine drawing closer, this terrible engine that had its own momentum, that ruined everything in its path. Martinez was in the street, too, the children squealing with delight as they climbed on him and over him, and he hummed a single steady note as he stared at Jason, hummed it as the flames reached him, hummed it as fire ate the world, hummed a single droning note like the end of everything.

Then the car hit a bump, bouncing Jason Palmer's head against the window it lay on, and he came to, the hum transformed into the buzz of tires, the vibration of glass against his ear. His eyes opened, bleary, swimming, too wet. The car seat fabric. Headlights through the glass. His hands, in front of him and touching at the wrists.

Voices.

It came back in a flash, and he closed his eyes, head and heart racing. Pain blossomed with consciousness, a throbbing flower with roots unmaking his brain. It was worse with his eyes closed, color and shape playing against the darkness as they passed other cars, nothing to focus on but creeping scarlet pain.

Voices again, from the front. "I'd like to get there tonight, Grandma."

"Don't be an idiot. We can't afford to get pulled over."

"Why not? You could chat with them, you know, bullshit about the job. Pretend you're still a cop."

"Fuck you."

Jason's skull was filled with concrete. He was in a car. Slumped on the right side. The men in front of him were talking. Bickering. His body hurt, every crack and divot in the road ringing up through his temples, and his hands were bound together. Zip-tied, by the feel of it; his hands bloodless and numb. There was something warm leaning against him. Warm and heavy and soft.

He waited for the next set of headlights to pass, then risked opening his eyes a slit.

No.

It was Cruz. He could just make her out in his peripheral vision. Her eyes were closed, but he didn't see any obvious wounds. Whoever had taken him out must have done her just as fast.

Pain had come first. Now anger followed. He cherished the burn, the black powder heat. Owned it, bank up the fire inside. He was going to tear someone's head off. He owed Cruz that much. He could lunge forward, try for the wheel. Or if he could get his arms up and over one of their heads, he could-

Stop .

The voice in his head was familiar, but it wasn't his own.

It was Mikey's.

You aren't clearing a room, rifle in hand and squad at your back. You're dizzy. Unarmed. Your hands are bound. Go easy, little bro. Think. Figure out what you're fighting. I'm depending on you .

Billy is depending on you .

Jason took as deep a breath as he dared. Closed his eyes to focus, then opened them again, looking forward this time. He remembered Billy's description of the men he'd seen murder his father: one big, muscular and balding; one slim and normal-looking, hair black and gray.

Anthony DiRisio sat on the right. Thinning hair and hard jaw, the casual weight of working muscle. An air of cold menace. Calm, cracking jokes as he rode shotgun. The driver more nervous, his fingers tapping the wheel, his shoulders tensed. His hair was black giving way to gray. Galway, Cruz's old partner. A cop gone to murder and worse, but not used to it yet. Not comfortable.

So two. And when he opened the car door he'd seen a third guy, the gunman with the scar across his cheek, the one he'd dumped in the river down by Lower Wacker. He must be in another car.

Through slit eyes he couldn't see much out the window, just the lanes of a highway, some construction barriers. The rain had stopped, but drops on the window spun onrushing headlights into stars. Lonely street lights, and beyond them, trees. They'd left the city behind. Suburban houses still peeked through, but Jason could only assume they were headed out to some quiet rural woodland where two shots in the head wouldn't be heard.

All because of the alderman.

Fucker . He'd played the good man, the JFK Democrat, smart, dedicated, considerate. Talked with conviction about the flaws in the system, the worm in the apple, when all the time he'd been describing himself. Christ, the guy had listened as they parroted his plan back to him.

That was why DiRisio had been there, why he'd been in a tux. It hadn't been for Jason and Cruz at all. He'd been there because he worked for the alderman. He was the fixer, the lethal hand of darkness.

"This is a waste of time," DiRisio said. "Let's just clip them and dump them in the river."

"He wants to talk to them." Galway tapped his fingers on the wheel.

"A washed-out soldier and a cop wanted for murder. Nobody'd miss them." He paused. "Though that partner of yours is a peach. You ever get a taste?"

Galway turned to stare at DiRisio. He had a stern profile, craggy and unblinking, and he didn't look nervous anymore. "You're a piece of shit. You know that?"

DiRisio laughed. "Pots and kettles, my friend."

"I'm a cop. You're not my friend."

"You got that half right."

Jason tuned them out, hearing Galway's words again. He wants to talk to them , the cop said. The alderman wanted them alive for some reason. Which meant they weren't on their way to an execution field after all. So long as they had value, they wouldn't be killed. Questioned, beaten. But not killed.

And so long as they were alive, there was time. Time to get his bearings, time to seize an opportunity.

Time to make them pay.

It was a thin thread of hope, but Jason clung to it as the car rolled into darkness.

Somehow, someway, he would make them pay. Even if it cost his life.

A rich man's neighborhood. Garish houses set back from the road, fronted by wide swathes of rain-black lawn. The mansions were all different styles, English manors to Greek revivals, but they were united in a single characteristic: All were bordered by fences. Some dressed up their intentions with decorative stone, others played honest with spiked metal, but the message was universally clear.