Sharky's Machine (38 page)

Nothing.

The bleeding clown had vanished.

Scardi stood inside the fire door for a few moments gasping for breath. He had caught a glimpse of a big guy in a tweed Suit running after him. A cop? Some irate guest? He didn’t care. He saw the door on the landing below, the door that led out onto the giant pinball playing field. His escape route.

He leaned against the wall and staggered down to the landing, pulled the door open, and stepped over the spring- loaded guard rail that surrounded the tilted board.

It was like walking into his own nightmare. All around him, reflected on the mirrored walls, the Mylar ceiling, were grinning Orientals. They towered over him, mocking him, strobe lights flashing from their slanted eyes, colours kaleidoscoping from their rubber bodies, electricity humming through the springs that wound around their bases. I-fe was hypnotized by the fantasy garden, by the flashing lights, and he lurched crazily out among them like a somnambulist.

The upper part of the board was adjacent to the bottom of Ladder Street, separated from it by a wall of mirrors and plywood. Near the top over a narrow chute with bumpers on both sides, was the control booth for the ingenious ride. The operator, who controlled the speed of the ball, was too busy to notice the madman strolling through the maze of bumpers and chutes and tunnels. He had checked out all the controls. Everything was ready. He picked up an intercom phone. ‘Okay’ he said, ‘let ‘er roll.’

From the safety of the trinket shop Domino and Papa watched DeLaroza and Hotchins climb into the six-foot steel sphere. An attendant pulled the guard bar up and locked it across their laps.

The press was having a field day, shooting pictures, ordering the candidate and the owner of the spectacle to wave, smile, shake hands with the mob that crowded around.

From deep inside the infernal machine, the operator pressed the start button.

The steel ball began its descent.

The crowd was cheering, lining up to be next.

The ball plunged down into the tunnel.

Sharky had walked up Queen Street almost to the main thoroughfare and then turned and started back. Scardi was close by, he could feel it, sense the evil of the man. But where?

He walked back towards the end of the street. Then he saw the fire door, discreetly marked, camouflaged by shrubbery.

He ran down the street to the door, ‘waited a moment, listening, drew his Mauser, and then, shoving the door open, jumped inside and cased the stairwell.

Empty.

Bloody footprints led down the stairs to the other door. He followed them, waited for a second, and pulled the door open.

A moment after the operator had ordered the ride to begin he looked up and saw Scardi, wandering like a lost child among the field of flashing bumpers.

‘Hey, you!’ he screamed. ‘Get outa here, you crazy fool!’ The bleeding apparition kept coming towards him. ‘Oh, my God,’ he cried, ‘get outs there. The goddamn balls coming!’

He snatched up the emergency phone.

Scardi shot him in the head.

The operator fell to the floor. Scardi could hear the rumble as the ball began its descent. It boomed out of the tunnel at the upper end of the game, spiralled around the giant playing surface, and rolled out onto the board, struck the first bumper, bounced away from it in a blaze of lights and clanging bells. It sped up towards the top of the field, ricocheting off the guard rail into another bumper.

From inside the ball, DeLaroza saw the grinning face of Shou-Lsing, god of long life, grinning down at him as the steel car struck the springs around its base and bounced away, spinning around on its ball bearings, rolling towards another. It was picking up speed as it bit another bumper and another, jerking him and Hotchins from one side of the seat to the other. The ball sped past the control booth and he looked up.

There was no one in it!

‘My God!’ he cried out.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘There’s no one at the controls, no one to brake us.’

The ball struck another bumper and reeled away from it, spinning on its axis, and rolled into one of the narrow funnel-like bunkers, slowing as it went through the tight passageway.

At the other end Scardi was standing in a duelling position, his side facing the ball, his hand held straight out, aiming his pistol at DeLaroza.

DeLaroza’s eyes bulged as he saw the assassin standing there, waiting to kill him.

He released the catch on the side of the guard bar and jumped out of the ball. Hotchins, confused and dizzy, tried to follow.

Something hit him in the chest, knocking him back into the car. The guard bar snapped back, trapping him inside. Hotchins looked down at his shirt front, saw the tiny hole there, reached up very slowly, and touched it.

Blood spurted from the hole and cascaded down his dress shirt.

The ball rolled out of the bunker, struck another bumper, and bounded away amid clanging bells. Hotchins sighed and fell over sideways in the seat.

DeLaroza dragged himself to his feet. His ankle was twisted, the knees torn Out of his tuxedo. He ran, limping, and ducked behind one of the bumpers.

Scardi was oblivious to the ball careening from bumper to bumper around him. it whisked past him, almost knocked him down. He had one purpose now. Nothing else mattered.

‘Howard, for God’s sake, listen to me!’ DeLaroza screamed. He was backing up, trying to keep the bumper between himself and Scardi.

‘Don’t call me that!’ Scardi cried out. ‘1 ain’t Howard. I ain’t Burns. Pm Scardi. I made you. You hear me, Younger? You was nothin’ but a dumb goddamn dogface. I gave you all this.’

He stepped from behind the bumper and fired at DeLaroza. The bullet hit the wall and one of the mirrors burst into dozens of reflecting shards.

DeLaroza turned and ran, aimlessly, dodging amid the grinning statues and flashing lights.

The pinball, totally out of control and roaring across the playing field, struck its last bumper, lurched over the floor, leaped the guard rail, and crashed through the wall.

The mirror exploded into millions of splinters. The wall shattered as the steel ball burst through it and rolled out at the foot of Ladder Street, struck one man and sent him reeling back up the steps, rolled over another, crashed into a shop at the bottom of the street and ripped through it, bursting out onto the main thoroughfare amid a shower of dolls, bracelets, and postcards.

The crowd scattered, falling over each other, as the antic pinball smashed through it, tossing people into the air like tenpins, ripping the marquee off the puppet theatre before it tore through the wall at the edge of the man-made lake and soared out over the water. It plunged down onto one of the sampans, split it in half, and bit the lake, sending a geyser twenty feet in the air, before it finally rolled to a stop.

DeLaroza limped towards the gaping hole in the wall. Scardi aimed and shot him in the thigh. He fell forward, hit the springs at the base of a bumper, and was thrown like a rag doll almost to Scardi’s feet.

The killer looked down at the battered DeLaroza. He calmly snapped a fresh clip into the pistol.

DeLaroza crawled to his knees. Across the floor he saw a man standing in the emergency doorway, watching the mad scene.

‘Help me,’ he yelled. ‘Please, help me.’

The man in the doorway yelled back to him.

‘My name’s Sharky. Hear that, DeLaroza? Sharky!’

DeLaroza moaned. He looked back at Scardi. The assassin was standing over him, grinning, aiming the pistol down at him. The gun thunked once, twice, three times, and the bullets tore into DeLaroza’s chest. He screamed once and slumped forward, his head resting on its forehead in front of his knees, like a man in prayer.

Grinning maniacally, Scardi leaned forward and shot him again in the back of the head.

‘Okay, Scardi, that’s enough,’ Sharky said.

The man clown turned towards him. Sharky stepped over the railing and started for him.

‘Drop the gun, Scardi,’ Sharky called to him. ‘Police.’

The word seemed to trigger Scardi’s dying energy. He scrambled through the ragged hole in the wall, crawling through broken glass and splinters of plywood, out into the main floor of Pachinko!

He got up and, half-running, half staggering, made for the opposite end of the atrium. The crowd scattered as he waved his gun madly at them, clearing a path for him. Ahead of him he saw the gates of Tiger Balm Gardens. He struggled towards them.

Sharky stepped through the hole and went after him, slowly, deliberately. There was no rush now. There was no place for Scardi to go.

On the stairs above him, Friscoe and Livingston saw Sharky stalking the frenzied killer.

Sharky saw them too and held his hand up at them.

‘He’s mine,’ he said coldly.

‘Scardi?’ Friscoe asked.

‘It’s Scardi,’ Sharky said, still following after him.

‘You gotta take him alive,’ Friscoe yelled. ‘We need him.’

‘Not anymore,’ Sharky said.

Scardi stumbled into the gardens, rushing blindly away from his pursuer. He slashed through the shrubs and flowers, scrambling up into the protection of the rocks and crevices. He fell against the side of the cliff at the far end of the gardens, looking back towards the street.

The tall guy in the tweed suit kept coming. And coming.

He was taking his time. Scardi fired a shot at him, half-heartedly, and it thunked harmlessly into one of the gates.

He turned and crawled frantically on his hands and knees, up, up, deeper into the crevices of the Tiger Balm. Every move now was agony. His sight was going. Every breath screeched through his tortured lungs. There was hardly enough blood left to sustain his frenetic flight.

Sharky walked into Tiger Balm Gardens, stepped over the fence, and followed resolutely after the mobster.

The silenced pistol spewed and dust kicked p in front of Sharky. He did not duck, did not dodge to one side or the other. He kept going, straight ahead, closing in.

Scardi dragged himself to his feet, backed away from him. His sight was almost gone. A vague shadow was moving towards him. He backed around a ridge in the cliffs and slumped against the rocks.

The unearthly shriek behind him was like no cry he had ever heard in his life.

He turned, looked up. A dragon loomed over him. Its mouth began to open.

Scardi screamed in pure terror.

The dragon’s mouth opened wide and a river of flame’ poured from it, and enveloped him.

Scardi was a human torch, his clothes and body an inferno, his screams of pain as unearthly as the creature that had just incinerated him. He rolled back around the ridge, feet and hands thrashing madly.

Sharky shuddered and turned his back to him.

One shot, he thought. One shot would put him out of his misery.

Well, it was one shot Scardi would not get from him.

He started back down towards the gates. Scardi’s screams followed him almost all the way down. Finally, they died away.

Domino and Papa came down the battered street towards him. She stopped a few feet in front of him.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

‘Never better,’ he said and smiled down at her. Then he took her by the arm and walked to the edge of the lake. The stainless-steel pinball lay upside down in three feet of water. Hotchins was hanging from the guard bar, his head and shoulders under water, his once handsome face distorted like a reflection in a funhouse mirror.

‘So much for the next president of the United States,’ he said. ‘And that was the shortest political campaign in history.’

The elevator stopped and they walked rapidly through the lobby and outside into bedlam. A dozen police cars had pulled up into the plaza, their blue lights whirling. A TV newsman was interviewing a woman who seemed on the verge of shock. An ambulance screamed around the corner and pulled in with its siren dying down to a growl. They walked past a crowd of spectators, some holding drinks from Kerry’s Kalibash, staring up at the building.

Livingston and Friscoe were standing away from the crowd, talking intently with Jaspers who was jabbing the air between them with an icepick finger.

Sharky kept walking, holding Domino tightly against him. He had passed Arch Livingston and Barney Friscoe and Papa before The Bat saw him.

‘Sharky!’ he bellowed.

Sharky kept walking.

‘Sharky!’

He was almost to the car.

‘Sharky, godammit, stop!’

He stopped, still holding her close to him, and looked over his shoulder at The Bat.

‘What the hell’s going on here? What the hell. . . I want some answers. Just who do you think you are, all of you? You’re, you’re. . .‘ He stopped.

Livingston came over to them. ‘You okay?’ he said.

‘I’m okay. I’m taking her outa here.’

‘Whatever,’ Livingston said and smacked him on the shoulder. ‘You run a hell of a machine, brother. Any time.’

‘Thanks.’

The Bat snapped. ‘Now let me tell you something—’

Sharky cut him off. ‘No, you’re not telling me a goddamn thing.’

He started back towards the car.

‘Godammit!’ The Bat screamed. ‘you’re through, Sharky! You hear me?’

But if Sharky heard, he made no response. He kept walking, past the police cars, past the crowd, away from the building, away from The Bat, away from the nightmare. The wind
shifted
and a cold breeze blew past them, carrying the carrion odour away from Sharky, blowing it back towards Mirror Towers and with it the hurt, the anger the hate.

They got in the car and drove away.