Turf War

17Jan12

“I don’t give a shit what Carmine wants,” said Kevin Delgado, even though he didn’t mean it. “If he thinks he can waltz in here and start calling the shots he has another thing coming.” Delgado attempted to fast draw his two shoulder-holstered hand cannons and managed to drop one and tangle up the other. There was an ominous click that told the assembled men that if Delgado had managed to load the thing he would have just blown a hole through his ribs.

Pete Ivy sat on a crate chewing on a toothpick and nodded. “Yeah. You’ll show Carmine that attempting to call your bluff will be a complete waste of time.”

Delgado collected his dropped gun, loaded the other –illiciting a grimace from the other men– and pulled his jacket off the back of a chair. “I’m going out there.” He gestured with his free hand at the warehouse door. “And I’m going to put a hole in every man between me and Carmine.” He slung the jacket over his shoulder and tipped his hat forward to block the rain and opened the big double doors on the warehouse. Pete and Gilder shrugged and loaded their Thompsons.

Delgado took a step out into the rain and then stumbled back into the warehouse when a rifle round ripped into his abdomen. Pete jumped into the car and moved in front of the fallen man while Gilder scooped up their fallen leader and tossed him into the back. Pete piloted the vehicle out into the pissing storm and drove wild, turning and twisting the car to dodge any incoming rounds. Shots plinked off the hood and the doors as Gilder tried to contain the blood gushing out of Delgado.

Pete kept the accelerator down and the car hydroplaned through a few empty streets. Every shadow was an assassin, every pile of trash an ambush. Gilder tore up Delgado’s shirt and examined the wound. Delgado kicked and screamed, “Oh God, oh God, oh God, I don’t want to fucking die!” Gilder was compelled to slug the man. The gut wound was extremely shallow, all the blood was strictly surface. A bleeding grazer, maybe half an inch into the tissue, if that. Gilder slugged Delgado again and Delgado kicked violently into the seat. Pete lurched forward from the blow and over-corrected on the slimy road, flipping the rig down a short hill.

The three men climbed out of the car. Bruises and scrapes nothing in comparison to their shattered pride and tattered confidence.

Pete pulled his gun from the car and wrapped it in his jacket. “I quit,” he said and walked into an alley. Gilder followed suit leaving Delgado bleeding in the street.

“If that’s the way you want it! Sure. Fine. I can take a hint,” said Delgado.

Again, he didn’t mean it.


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Such an Easy Thing

13Jan12

Duck moved silently into position on the muddy hill. It was the perfect vantage point of the makeshift barracks the Germans had holed up in. Young Donny and Biggy T were ready to flank the structure from the rear as soon as me and SS lit them up with the smoke and machine gun fire.

“For the Shogun!” yelled SS. He had been yelling it all tour, nobody knew what it meant but it certainly carried well through the shattering air. We each tossed two smoke bombs and tour into the three story house with a couple of rounds from our rifles. We fired in bursts two to three shots, fall back behind the wooden fences and fire again. Young Donny and Biggy T were hopefully lighting the place on fire from behind. No way to tell from here.

SS’s gun jammed so I fired a few rounds and ran to his position to fire a few more. “Get a move on. Your going to ruin it,” I said.

“Dammit, Hank. Gun’s jammed. Filthy Germans must piss in the street or something. This mud is vile.”

“Cram it SS, just get the damn thing working before you get us all killed.” I fired another few and rand back to my position. I reloaded and fired again, relieved to hear the report from SS’s gun echoing along with mine. The smoke from our bombs was starting to clear and I could see Germans streaming out the front to take cover amongst debris. They opened fire from the roof and forward windows as well. “Keep your head down!” I called to SS.

It was too late. He poked up from cover to fire and got cut down by three shots. Duck opened fire from the hill and I made a break for SS. He didn’t even have time for last words. I took his ammo and his slung his rifle over my shoulder. I could see gunfire ripping up the side of the hill and fired another salvo to cover Duck.

I didn’t know where Young Donny and Biggy T were, but something seemed wrong. The Germans should have been more panicked, scattered. I fired several bursts from SS’s rifle and it jammed again. “Pissing German mud!” I dove for the ground and wallowed in that sallow slop. The smoke had all but cleared but it was a dreary day and everything was the same dull gray. Maybe they wouldn’t see me.

Duck stopped firing from the hill. Reloading, retreating? Dead? I couldn’t tell. I crawled on my belly to the side of the barracks and cut down two more Germans as they pointed at the hill. I ran around the back and saw two more standing over the bodies of Young Donny and Biggy T. I cut them down as well.

I grabbed the fire packs and lit the damn place up. I watched the front door and shot every last bastard that tried to escape.

Long after the structure was nothing but embers our backup finally drove in. Three jeeps and a compliment of twenty men.

“You’re late,” I replied bitterly.


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At the Post

12Jan12

Mason Gregory delighted in the sounds of The City. The myriad combinations of honking and yelling. The constant chug and thud of never-ending construction. The background sounds of a million conversations bouncing through the streets. The City was his home, and he had never once stepped any further out of her than the East Harbor. He feigned ignorance of the concept of the suburbs and would not leave the confines of the city proper.

Mason’s job was cub at the city desk. If something spontaneously popped up anywhere in The City it was Mason’s job to know about it five minutes before it happened. And he was more than good at it. Suspiciously better than anyone else in the office. Anyone else who had ever worked at The Monitor in its proud 130 year history.

Friday, a call came in talking of activity in Old City. Mason was out the door the moment the location was named pausing only to collect his coat and snap his fingers at the smallest photographer sitting in the pen. They walked to the destination. Taking side streets and back alleys. The photographer lagging behind as the terrain became cluttered. Mason grew impatient and spurred the whelp of a lad along with a quick story of King Ralph.

They emerged from a side alley to see a cluster of fire trucks around the stairs of the Second Precinct. The oldest still functioning headquarters of law and order in The City. While most of it had been converted to offices for politically minded sergeants and captains to squabble at the heels of the commandant, the bottom two floors contained the men of the organized crime division, Mason explained to the photographer. The two closed in on the steps where a ring of cops were establishing a perimeter around two bodies lying on the steps.

Mason jabbed the photographer and whispered instructions, a how-to of poking the scene for information without getting his camera smashed like a lolly. Mason himself fought forward to identify the bodies.

His charge up the hill was interrupted by the sudden appearance of Jimmy Dollar. The inexplicably upscale named fox-hound of The City’s finest. Known in some circles as a media consultant others as a handler, he was a shit-eating grin billowing out of an expensive suit. “Mason Mason Mason. Always the first to arrive, never the first to leave, always on the case, never misses a shot of the face.” Jimmy motioned and two officers grabbed the diminutive photographer and hauled him over to a car. “That’s that. Mason. I’ll give you the professional courtesy of walking to that car instead of being dragged.”

Mason frowned. “What’s with the strong arm tactic, Jimmy?”

Jimmy sharpened his nails with a file and made an expansive gesture of the scene. “New policy, Mason, press tents, media blackouts, releases. You will get briefed with all of the other reporters all at the same time in a little place we have set up a block from here. Reporters outside of the designated areas are arrest on site.”

Mason nodded in cadence with Jimmy’s fat lips and took mental pictures of the two bodies barely eight feet away. “We won’t stand for it, Jimmy. We’ll find the news and we’ll report it. All of it.”

Jimmy smirked. “I’m sure you will Mason. And the headlines will read ‘Reporters do what Jimmy Says’ from paper to paper all day long. Now move.”

Mason walked to the car and got in. A uniform drove he and his photographer a block away to the press tent and let them out. The moment they were out of the car mason hailed a taxi.

“Come along,” he said to the photographer, “Its time we hit the tombs and figure out why the letter Z was carved into both of those bodies five times.”


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Victor’s Prize

11Jan12

Before he was killed by the Southies, my brother, Tony, was the greatest racer in The City. He knew every street back and forth, every corner, every speed trap and every undercover car at a distance. He drove by sound and feel. Shifting, throttling, and breaking from the vibrations that rumbled through his racer, The Machine.

The Machine. A dark green muscle car with all the trimming. Raised back end, scooped wheel-wells on the front for greater turning radius, air intake on the hood for the engine, and a ballast system in the trunk that let Tony shift the weight of the car as he cornered. Tony saw the car at a trade show. Saved for two years to pick it up aftermarket. A burned out jalopy then. Rusted and damaged from a garage fire. Took him another year of wages and sweat to shape it, to refine it like a sculptor at a block of marble.

Beck Stevens leaned against The Machine and sneered down his stub of a nose at me. “You challenging me? Here? On my own turf?” I nodded in the quiet dark of 124th Avenue under that streetlight that buzzed and blinked like a mad hornet. “Your dumber than you look kid. Nobody can beat me on these streets. Not even that deadstiff brother of yours.” My hand instinctively curled into a fist at the mention of Tony, but I kept my gaze firm.

“Yeah, Beck. I’m calling you out. Two laps around. Winner takes all.”

Beck laughed, coldly. His boys echoing his sick taunt a moment later and thumping at the roofs of their cars. In total there were eight members of the Southies. And there was just me. My car wasn’t spectacular, a beat up derby car I lifted from a junkyard and tuned just enough to get it running. I called it The Creep. Took me six months of practice to work up the nerve. To perfect my technique. To come out here and challenge Beck and get Tony’s car back.

Beck slapped a hard fist against the side of The Machine. “Alright, alright. You want a race Pratt? I’ll give you a race. We do three laps. Up around Deckard, over to Lee’s, and under the Nolan.

I slid over the lumpy hood of The Creep and fired the ignition from outside the car. “You’re on, Beck.”

We lined up under the 124th street light. Standard rules, race started when the light blinked three times. Up and around through Deckard, a street known for its posh luxuries and ample police presence, over to Lee’s where a stray bullet could end your race and your life, and under the Nolan Tunnel, which took you by the pier where DeBrano’s ghost is supposed to haunt the wharf. A tricky route and one that made Beck’s boys stand solemnly at the sides of the road with looks of fear and unease.

The streetlight buzzed and blinked until it blinked three times fast. And it was on. The tires of The Creep squealed and left a plume of smoke wafting behind as I pushed the machine beyond the redline. It sputtered and rattled and backfired like a cannon. The Southies’ fear turned to laughter and Beck and The Machine gained an instant lead.

We raced through the dark streets of The City. A dystopian nightmare made of concrete and steel. Shadows and lights fought for purchase around every corner and the buildings wept stained tears of dirty runoff. The Machine was as mean as ever, even without Tony at the helm she tore through the streets whipping around corners and firing through straightaways like a devil born of The City itself.

There was no way I could catch it. Even with a hack like Beck at the wheel there was no way. But that wasn’t the point. Beck was a cocky son of a bitch. He had been playing like he was a big shot with the Southies since before he killed Tony. But he was a small guppy in a pond filled with sharks.

We shot through Deckard and hit the straightaway to Lee’s. Ten miles of road you couldn’t squeeze through walking during the day but at night it was a tunnel of darkness pitched between the stone guardians of skyscrapers. I hit the nitrous switch and heard The Creep cry for mercy. Nitrous was illegal under the code of street racing. Dangerous and unpredictable. But this wasn’t an honor race. This was about revenge.

I pulled up alongside The Machine and saw Beck sneering and yelling at me. I shot in front of him and pulled The Creep into a sideways. Beck slowed to a stop and hopped out. “What were you thinking? Huh? Little shit Pratt. You thought you could pull something like that and still walk away?”

I sat on the hood of The Creep with my hands tucked under my legs. “No. I figured you would be too stupid and greedy and full of your self to resist gloating. That you would quit the moment you thought you had won and tell the world about it. And that you wouldn’t know where you were when you did it.”

Beck stopped walking forward and looked around. He had picked the route, he had chosen to go by Lee’s to frighten me. But he had more to fear from the place. So much more. He was shot six times before he hit the ground. I dragged the body over into The Creep and turned the nitrous tank back on. I nodded into the darkness.

I loaded into The Machine and drove away. I didn’t so much as glance at the mirror when the explosion took Beck and The Creep to Hell.


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