The Big Machine Eats, page 14
But the seventh man…
He remained, still there inside the tape, eluding Rider. Then I joined up. Fast forward twenty years, a man named Mapone enters the frame. Catching Rider off guard, Mapone gets the upper hand—due to the shenanigans of a piss-poor human I won’t be getting in to—and Rider loses part of a leg. The only reason he survives at all is because of another man, Jeramiah Abrum. Does that last name sound familiar? Yeah, thought it might. The son of the man who ordered the deaths of Rider’s mother and sister. I mean, what are the odds, right? You ask me, it would appear the apple-not-falling-far-from-the-tree parable doesn’t work quite so well in this particular instance.
What Jeramiah brings to the table is many-fold, but what I’m going to discuss now are things as they directly pertain to you.
As I’ve already stated, the seventh man could not be found, as there was no way to verify who was behind the mask. Abrum kept records—this is Marcel I’m talking about, not his boy—and for such an evil, corrupt fuck, he ends up helping us from the grave.
It’s the records his son gives us that bring us to now.
Those documents allow me to cross-reference certain employment records I was never privy to before. Can you guess what I discovered, Bennet? That a certain someone might or might not have worked at one of Marcel’s strip clubs between the summer of ’95 and the day Rider saws the man to pieces.
But wait, there’s more.
It’s where your own son enters the frame. That bar he hangs his hat at, as well. He likes his sauce, that boy, but what he enjoys more is answering questions that go a long way toward saving his life. You know what he told me he remembered? Mentioned you were pretty hinky there for a while when he was a kid—you pulling at your hair for the better part of a year, always going on about you’d have to be some kind of fool to think you wouldn’t be caught.
I have to tell you: not one of your finer moments in the parenting department, Bennet. What I also have to tell you is this: we know. I know you know we know. And soon, to someone other than myself, you can try to explain your logic. Me, I think you had second thoughts way back when but found yourself between a rock and hard place with a madman looking down. It shows you might have had a little more human in you at one point in time. It’s the twenty-year gap I’m not so sure about. I mean, the things you could have done to try and make amends in that amount of time…
It wouldn’t have worked, of course, but if you’d tried, at least, it would have shown some type of personal growth. Not my department though, bud. Not when we get to the bottom of things. And we are at the bottom of things, Bennet. We can go no further. Before I leave, however, some advice: prepare.
The hours to come, he will make them feel like days.
Back to TOC
TYING UP LOOSE ENDS
A Bishop Rider Story
I look down to the scar on my right hand. From the first two knuckles up top and down to my thumb it resembles a Y. As always, it brings back the memory of who was there and how it occurred. The who was April, my sister, now gone more years than she’d been allowed to live. The how was the two of us tearing apart a fort when we were kids, when I was as innocent and bright as the world we played in.
Back then, Kuwait and the time I would serve there was a far-off thing no one could yet predict. Same thing goes for my return, when I resumed my position on the force. All of this, every bit, it’s all unscripted, just life as it was meant to be.
But monsters, they don’t play fair, especially if they believe they are deserving.
The Abrum brothers destroyed my life as easily as they destroyed my kin. My mother, I believe, got off easy, her age playing a part in the reason that dumpster air became the last thing she ever breathed. April was less fortunate. Men hiding behind masks raped her to death and recorded it for all the world to see. There’s big money in breaking small cunts is what Marcel Abrum said to me, there before Batista and I took him apart. Abrum billed what he did to April as an event, distributing it to customers who have yet to feel my wrath and some who already have. As I said: monsters.
Every goddamn one.
But the scar on my hand remains, no longer solitary but there all the same. I have lost flesh to this war. I have lost bone. All of it physical. All of it hell. But if it ensured our path, I would attempt all these things again. In a heartbeat. I’d even add a few things more.
It means I am not a good man. It means I have come to like what I do a little too much.
It means I am here to stay.
I know he’s going to run even before he makes bail.
Obese, Carmichael Sloat has a handlebar mustache that hangs over pock-marked jowls. He is also partner and brother-in-law to one Sullivan James Punter, a man I disemboweled.
Sloat and Punter shared ownership of a dance club called Pinks. On paper it looked good, seemed to be on the up and up. This wasn’t the case, though, not when you tugged at the seams.
Fetish porn. Human trafficking. Shit these dark old fucks got off on more than anything. In the basement of Pinks I find two men, a Down Syndrome boy, and a camera capturing things I wish I’d never seen. After I tear these men apart, I make the decision to go after the men behind these men—Sloat and Punter—the ones who’d given the go-ahead.
These dark old fucks.
I find Punter in his parking garage, suitcases already stowed. Sloat is another beast entirely: out of state the entire time this thing went down. Once home, he’s brought in for questioning, arrested and then released on a million-dollar bond.
Men like Sloat are smarter than most, more often than not the reason they get away with things for as long as they do. The thing of it is, I fall on this side of the equation, as well, the difference being, I plan on doing this for far longer than any one of them.
It means I dig a little deeper, two days later finding what I’m looking for. It’s then I take a trip.
One-armed Billy comes toward me as he always does, in woodland camo starving for a wash. He extends his hand, smiles, and I see a couple more soldiers have exited the ruins.
“Long time, Rider. Really long time.” True, my last visit to his farm being one where we gave his pigs a taste of what Billy trained them to crave—a meal not found on any type of menu, save a rain forest or two. “If I remember correctly, the ladies ate well that day, not finishing until far into the night. Big fucking bastards, all three a them boys.”
“Not here to reminisce, Bill. Got things I need to get done.”
I explain myself, ask how long he thinks it might take him to do what I required.
“Depends,” he says, the stub of his left shoulder saluting as best it could. “How much you say this piece of shit weighs again?”
The bags I leave outside the adjacent room. Once I’m inside the warehouse I remove his blindfold and the gag. He spits. Spits again. “They’re fuckin retards, you fuck! You think they have clue one as to what the fuck is going on?!”
I rethink the gag. Stuff it back in hard.
I then tell him I know his secret, the shit he calls his worst fucking fear. Peanut butter comes next, up and down each side of his track suit. He sways as I do this, the chains not as taut as I’d like. I pause, readjust, and then open the second jar of Jif. Done, I grab the hockey bags, three in total. I drop them in front of Sloat, observe as he watches them pulse and bulge.
“That boy, he deserves more than this,” I say. “All of them do.”
I open the bags, the contents a blur of fur, each an eruption neither of us can turn from. Fifty or so rats per bag, they scurry to the outskirts of the inner walls, hug tight to the shadows they find there. Sloat’s Tinder profile listed rats as his biggest fear. Rats, the fear his mind couldn’t shake. By the look in his eyes, I would have to agree.
I close the man-door behind me. I don’t turn out the lights. I don’t just want him to feel what was going to happen.
I wanted him to see.
Back to TOC
RUIN AND PAIN
A Bishop Rider Story
A month after Keeko Reyes rearranges my insides I’m still pissing blood.
“Might be time to change the way we go about things, Rider. Last time I checked, neither of us is getting any younger.” Batista wasn’t wrong, not about this. It would take some doing, sure, but if we meant to continue, it had to be done.
“First tell me about Fontane. We get him taken care of, you, me, and options can go have a nice long talk at a restaurant of your choosing. We can even do your hair.” The Detective smiles at that, a surly little thing. I’d seen it before. I’d see it again. What I didn’t plan on ever seeing again was a man named Fontane.
“Looks like the son believes he can continue from where the father left off,” Batista says. Drug running. Extortion. A list the length of both my arms. His being here now, coming home, could only mean one thing: Time for someone else to bleed.
And bleed he did, on almost the exact spot I’d taken a five-iron to his father’s inner ear.
“Wait! Just…wait.” He’s on his knees, his hands above him like he’s holding up a piano. Built like his father, dressed like his father, his face displays the same blockish shape. “I know how you work. I heard. I give you somebody better, someone who might be into kids, you let me walk, right?” The kid was serious, too, what he was saying akin to what he believed to be a full-fledged plan.
I drop the nine-iron, move forward and put holes in his legs until he realizes the information he’d been given was wrong. No one walks. Not when kids were involved.
Not even close.
What he ultimately gives me pans out, his info leading us to a bungalow off Canal. More stone than wood, with a wide front porch, it stands in one of the safer parts of Culver. Families just above the poverty line lived here now, the ones who still believed. It’s mid-October, chilly, the wind from behind kicking up like boots wrapped in gauze. I can’t say this has anything to do with what I find, but I can tell you it has everything to do with how I respond.
Over a three-day period I watch one woman and four different men come and go. Another man is involved—jean jacket and tatts—but him I see only as he lets the others in through the front door. What I also see is a delivery service, Buttenham’s Pizza, two out of the first three nights I keep watch. The kid who brings the pizza can’t be more than twenty, the Buttenham’s jacket he wears the same dried-blood color as his cap. I concentrate on him, a plan forming, as I couldn’t risk going in, not without knowing all of the parties involved. Isn’t until night four, when Buttenham’s returns, that it slides into place.
The kid was the key.
Also, as Batista had suggested: it might be time to change the way we’d been doing things.
“Phenobarbital. Horse tranq. I’m playing kind of loose with the dosage, but sixty milligrams spread out should send these fuckers somewhere south of tomorrow afternoon.” Batista hands me the powder, pauses, and then wishes me well.
“Just be ready with the van,” I say, realizing more than ever that I’d gotten a very bad feeling somewhere along the way.
I dump the delivery vehicle in the river and walk the remaining three blocks. The jacket’s a tight fit, same with the hat, but it would have to do. Dissolving, the phenobarbital is evenly spread over the two pizzas I carry. Once inside, depending on when and how fast they ate, I’d have access within the hour.
It’s then we’d see what’s up. It’s then I’d decide how to proceed.
I give it another hour just to be sure.
Inside I hear nothing but a TV turned up loud. The place is immaculate, filled with high-end furniture I’d expect elsewhere. Hardwood floors and wainscoting throughout. I find jean jacket and tatts at the kitchen table, face-down in a slice of pizza. Beside him is the woman and beside her, another man.
I continue on, deeper, toward the back of the house. Downstairs now, I walk into a fully finished rec room. Foosball. Ping-Pong. Big screens. On one couch is another drugged piece of scum. To his left, on the carpet, lay shitbird number five. Farther on, I hear what I hoped I would not, the cries hitting me like cinder blocks through to the back of my gut. I pause, one second, two, and the cries become louder, adamant. Another room. And then another. This one has sex swings hanging from the ceiling and cameras on tripods positioned toward all three. At the back of this room, in rows, are three cribs and the sixth man passed out in front.
I shake my head. There is no god.
Batista hands me the bag and I hand him the infant. Two more children are passed off and he grabs me by the forearm. “Make them suffer,” he says. This and nothing more.
It takes nine hours to complete, even with the bone saw. And it’s all on the cameras they already had in place. I cut. I fasten. I tie off and cauterize. I also lose jean jacket and tatts in the process, nicking his femoral artery early in the reduction. Before me lay piles of arms, piles of legs. In front of these rest eyes, now more like marbles with tails than anything. Twelve of each, thirty-six in total, and infinitely dryer than when I began. Save the one I lost, the owners are naked and leaking, leaning against one another on one of the bigger couches I had brought in from the adjacent room. They weren’t awake yet, but I planned on letting the cameras roll.
Someone would come soon. Either to see why no new product had come their way, or just to see what was up. It didn’t matter. What did matter is what I say, there as I finish up. “Don’t come back.” From one monster to another the language would not get lost, not with people whose only currency is pain, their only goal, ruin.
It’s why I offer them my name, why I suggest they try and find me before I found them.
I force myself to breathe.
Two months later. Christmas Eve and I move from the back page to the front page as soon as the video is leaked.
“Look how it’s been cut though,” Jerimiah is right. Whoever released it doctored it down to how they wanted it to appear. I do not speak in this version, not as I had when it was being taped. Gone are the cribs, as well, cropped from view. It looks exactly as it should, the impression they’re going for blending with the perspective they require. The thing about perspective, though, when you pair it with the right set of eyes, not everyone blinks. Especially when most of the people in this world choose to keep their heads in the sand. “I mean, what do they gain by putting it out there like this?” Good question.
The better one being: what don’t they?
I have a feeling it’s an inside job, even before Jeramiah confirms the link. “Idiot used his wife’s credit card to buy the cribs. Four at one time. People and their points. Christ.” Jerimiah is the flipside to his father, more light than dark, but I still have a hard time telling him I appreciate what he does. We couldn’t have done half the shit we have without his intel and cash. Wasn’t always this way, either, was worse, in fact, and for some reason I fought him hardest after he replaced my leg. Stupid. All of it. Batista finally persuades me with four little words: he’s not his father. Man had me there. Still does.
“Daughter lives across town. O’Bannon and his wife the only ones who occupy the house. I suggest dosing her before you begin your talk. Good?”
It was.
They say not everyone is crooked. I believe otherwise. Wired from birth, we all lean toward what we desire most. It’s how far people are willing to go to bend the rules that starts the slide. The strongest of us can recover from this, stopping well before we’ve reached the ledge. The ones who can’t stop is where the trouble lies. Their desires turning to justification when it comes to hurting—or the possibility of hurting—others along the way.
From a sitting position in his bed Detective Sergeant Sid O’Bannon says this almost verbatim. Almost bald, nose like a blade, he keeps stealing looks at the missus, even though I have assured him of her safety.
“You think I wanted this? These men do not take no for an answer.” I hated his voice. I hated his face. But what I hated more was envisioning the questions he would have had to entertain to get where he was. Courtesy of the butt end of my Glock, I share this displeasure.
“Fucking Christ! I’m talkin’! I’m sitting here and talkin’!”
“Tell me why you leaked the video.”
“Scared. Pissed. Take your pick. You guys end up fighting amongst yourselves, maybe I slip through the cracks. You’re a hard man to kill, Rider. An even harder one to catch.” Figured it had to be someone with access on the inside. Was never going to be anything but, not with how it went down.
“I don’t—” I don’t care for don’ts. Never have. A little bit more steel informs him of this.
“Christ—c’mon!” And then he quiets down, resigned-like, sleeve up and under his nose to stem the flow. “They’re watching me. Some are middle-eastern. More of them are white. They send me pictures of my wife and daughter every seven days, right to my phone. I told you: they are the hardest fucks I have even seen and I’ve seen nowhere near the top.”
Bingo. Second floor. Everybody out. The downside was that O’Bannon stayed topside longer than he deserved. Didn’t mean he couldn’t go unscathed; a hard push down a short flight of stairs was the best I could manage. It left him as I needed him: functional. For a little while, at least. After that, who knows. Maybe I bring back a blowtorch. Maybe we begin where I left off.
Time would tell.
I choose O’Bannon’s daughter. I feel she is the easier mark. Three days later I snap a hard-looking black man taking pictures of Christine O’Bannon as she exits Dal’s Gym and Fitness. She’s short, in sweats, her ponytail whipping as she walks. He’s thick, down low, almost coiled in his seat.
