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By Andrew Clark,
21 Feb 01
It had been a busy morning. When the stories had broken regarding the bleeding statute in St.Pauls, Eckland had acted quickly. Farr and Karpov had been been dispatched. Reports had been altered. They had spoken to the burnt-out bipedal refuse in Martin Arnold's block. They listened to reason. They had been redirected in their statements. It was at little cost in liberated drugs evidence or cash or blood. The local precinct had been put right on a few things. No papers would be carrying reports of a decapitated corpse, found in the lotus position, with 'defense wounds' on the hands deliberately cut in the shape of smiling mouths. No one would tie it with the blood-decorated Red Hook rooms officers found when the responded to reports of screaming. They had been commissioned to handle that yesterday.
A few reporters had got a whiff of the story. It was always the same ones.
Always the ones with bulging and regularly updated files. Always the ones
who listened to reason. They had good reason too. If not the cost in
liberty, who couldn't afford to listen to reason in a unreasonable world?
Whoever was paying Deputy Chief Eckland to pay Sergeant Charley Farr and
Detective Antov Karpov had got their money's worth.
'A nice easy morning,' said Karpov, igniting an ugly brown Polish cigarette. His accent was too perfectly neutral-American. An acute observer could have told he was a non-native speaker.
'Easy enough.' Farr lit his own Marlboro, luxuriating in the poison. 'Lunch?'
'Why not? It's time Fillet of Soul made a payment.'
'Harlem dining it is.'
The incongruous couple walked on to their car.
Farr was six foot, fat, bald, mustachioed in a cheap raincoat, cheaper suit, stained tie. Forty-six and pension secure. His shoulders stood square and straight and strained at the clothing. His fists were like enormous squares of pain. Many could testify to their effectiveness.
Karpov was all ersatz fitness in an eighties-cop-show veneer. Light jacket, T-shirt and slacks. There was a passing resemblance to Dolph Lungren (and too much styling product on the hair).
Robert Hubert raised a quizzical eyebrow to entice a response from Harvey. Harvey continued with a unoriginal tirade of expletive. The shemale was nursing a drawn Glock and switching from looking at Harvey to the assembling bijou hordette with increasing tempo.
'Who's the asshole, quickly!' Lepus spat, gun trained on the hallway door that was in the process of being kicked in.
'He is Robert Hubert.' The words issued calm and serene from Burroughs' smiling mouth. 'He is important but not how he imagines. Be gone.'
Hubert unwillingly stepped back into thin air.
'Great - time - for - the Buddha shit!' Lepus shot out between bullets in a stressed Alabama drawl.
Peel stood by the door ready to take over. Chaste Moon held the dog and a S&W Super-9mm.
Harvey stood beside Lepus in the hallway. They fired and fired. And Burroughs still smiled.
The plainclothes Chevolet Caprice double-parked outside the Fillet of Soul.
'We'll check reports for that trio Eckland wants found after lunch.' Farr slammed the car door shut.
'Sure.' Karpov leaned against the car with his back, one deck shoe resting on the door, the other on the street, and with practiced ease lit a cigarette. The image generated some smirks from passing locals.
'Should be easy enough--how many Tommy Lee Jones lookalikes hang around with transexuals?'
'How long you been in New York, boy?'
BANG! BANG! BANG! (mag change) 'How about using the fucking ray gun, Buck Rogers?'
BANG! BANG! BANG! 'Batteries gone!' BANG! BANG!...
Harvey laughed.
'All units, all units, North Manhattan, public disturbance at 125th and 2nd, violent crowd and multiple firearms reports, proceed with extreme caution. ESU and K-9 Units on-route. Operational command with Captain Fred Salmon, 25th Precinct, Car 368.'
Chaste Moon looked like a kid at an arcade shoot-'em-up. Nonchalantly, she fired rounds at the approaching club-wielding winos. Peel was all business: Crouched, tensed and deliberate. The ladies had taken over when Lepus and Harvey had shot their main weapons and immediate backups dry. The work was less urgent than before, as now bums had to clamber over the bodies of earlier waves, at least in the hallway.
Harvey and Lepus crouched by the window. A real horde was assembled below. A Korean grocer who'd taken offence with his shotgun had been washed over in a breaking wave of the crowd. They had heard the screams. Clumps of NYPD RMPs could be seen in the distance, with officers braced behind them with pistols and shotguns. But none of them were firing.
'Only fucking film the Camp Pendleton cinema unit had.'
'What the fuck you talking about Adolph?'
'_Zulu._'
The crowd began to lob bricks and piping through the window. Lepus took cover. Harvey fired two precious rounds from his final backup gun into the crowd., then ducked back, shattered glass clinging to his parchment-like skin. His left hand tightened on the barrel of the Desert Eagle. In the end it would make an effective club. Surplus weight. Ha!
'Some fucker with brains checks that hardware store for inflammable shit and we are toast.'
Roberta stopped firing and efficiently changed mags. 'This is my last!'
Burroughs sat in the lotus position and continued to smile. The dog silently circled around him, ears held flat to its head.
'Hiya folks your listening to Godzilla Hit's of the Sixties with me Davey Lee--'
'--and me Tony Macaroni on KWNY FM for all your favorite retro tunes--'
'--before some more Dusty Springfield we have an urgent announcement from our good friends at the NYPD: there's riot raging in Spainish Harlem and the public are strongly advised to avoid Manhattan North of 120th Street and East of Lexington--'
'Bummer, no tacos today! Only joking. OK folks this next tune has been requested for Ramona by her Stephen, 'All Tomorrows Parties ' by the Velvet Underground...'
'Let's hit it!'
The meal had been excellent and it had been a shame to miss dessert. But Farr was all for showing the Precinct detectives that just because he and Karpov were a Deputy Chief's aides didn't mean they couldn't rough it on the streets.
At the moment roughing it consisted of sitting in an ESU command vehicle with a stressed Precinct commander demanding permission to open fire on an army of hobos. And drinking what passed for coffee in the 25th Precinct. ESU teams were running to the collections of police cars that were hemming in the riot. Karpov was 'walking the line' as he called it, patronizing patrolmen as he walked up and down. Chain smoking in a kevlar helmet and heavy protective vest, he looked like a third-world general with a coup on hold.
'Sir I have multiple armed perps and at least two sets of small-arms fire sir! Shooting will save lives!' The red-haired Salmon barked into his cell phone. Farr noticed something. The figure who had just fired two futile shots at the mass below his window had dry, almost leathery skin. The figure now placing a mattress against the window looked a hell of a lot like Tommy Lee Jones.
The cell phone was wrenched from Salmon's hands mid-sentence. 'Chief, your trio are at the center of this.' A moment for a reply and Farr shoved the phone at the stung Salmon.
Chaste Moon pistol-whipped the lead hobo with practiced ease and darted through as Bobbi slammed the door. 'Call it seconds, Lepus!'
The two old comrades were holding a mattress against the shattered window as it was pelted with multiple objects.
An axe blade pierced the cheap door two inches above Roberta's head. She flinched. It was enough for the flow of humanity behind the door. The women buckled and flew forward. The ex-Marines, backs to the pelted mattress, fired their last rounds.
Burroughs' smile was very broad now. Then Ralphie lunged at a staggering wounded man in rags and pulled him into Burroughs' lap.
The orders were given. Even Karpov seemed to know what he was doing. Farr took this as a good omen.
Farr raised his right arm and then brought it down swiftly.
'Just like that general guy in _Gladiator._' He smiled at Karpov.
Gas dispensers fired and officers in riot gear rushed forward at the mob, followed by detachments of ESU goons and patrolmen with shotguns and rifles.
'Go!' Shouted Karpov and he and Farr rushed forward, followed by plainclothesmen and picked ESU. They ran towards the lobby of the hotel. Both men carried shotguns loaded with rocksalt. And who gave a fuck about regulations anyway....
Parry. Parry. Knee. Twist. New target. Throat strike. Something clawing from the left. Turn. Hit. Loud bangs. Vision obscured by spray of blood. Hit blindly. Can't end like this. Parry. Pain. Concentrate, kick. To the right. Chop. More bangs. Pain in the stomach. Falling over. Over one of them. Too many. Can't end like this. We would do good work. Gouge. Bite. Dirt and flesh and blood. Work to do. I love my new body. Hit and hit and hit and hit and hit and hit..
'RMP 386 to all units! All units! Officers down, at least one armed perp amongst rioters!'
Farr panted up the stairs, discarding a dry shotgun and drawing his Glock. Old school or not, an extra nine rounds is always nice. Karpov was hand-loading the shotgun and staring. A corridor choked with dead, three feet deep. All the way to doorway. The backup was still fighting its way up the stairs with batons and shotgun butts and by the sound of it pistols now. Sounded like a brawl to the front as well.
Skirt torn. Hit and hit and hit and hit and hit and hit. The pain the pain. What's that glowing? Hit and hit. No can't be, no not with them out there. He doesn't exist, he doesn't exist, hit and hit. I don't believe. He wouldn' t allow them. Why does he look like Burroughs?
Farr and Karpov were the first cops into the room and the last. Brawling bodies cascaded across the room, easily divisable into hobos and others. Farr went to fire a shot in the roof but was sent flying by a roundhouse punch from a Tommy Lee Jones blinded by blood. Karpov froze. First time since Afghanistan. He was hit by a hobo wielding a Desert Eagle by the barrel and fell across a sitting smiling man with a headless corpse with its neck in his lap. The man glowed. The room glowed and then it was very cold.
Everyone was still and looked around the bare confines of the windowless, corrugated-iron building that contained them. Wind was building outside. Grapplers released each other. Agents, bums, and police stared at each other in disbelief.
Burroughs stood up. The smile stopped. Ralphie stood in front of him protectively.
'We have faced only symptoms. Now we near the cause.'
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