Sharky's Machine (18 page)

He heard the door close.

Shotgun. A silenced shotgun.

He forgot the earphones. They ripped from his head as he bounded for the door. He had his automatic in band before he reached the stairwell. He bulled into the stair- shaft without precaution. Below him, several floors down, someone was running, taking the steps two or three at a time.

‘Hold it!’ he yelled. ‘Police, hold it!’

lie followed the sound, taking the steps six at a time and hanging onto the railing to keep from falling. Several flights below him he saw a shadow flee across the wall. He kept going. A door opened and slammed shut.

What floor? What fucking floor?

lie reached four, flattened himself against the wall, pulled the door open, and held it open with his foot as he swung around and leaped into the hail.

Empty.

He went to three, swung the door open and went through head first and low, almost on his knees, the 9mm held in front of him in both hands. He was outside on the terrace and he jumped quickly into the shadows, letting his eyes grow accustomed to the darkness.

He listened. The wind flapped the plastic pool cover. He started moving through the shadows towards the door on the other side of the pool. His reflexes were ready, but his mind was jumping back and forth. What had happened on the tenth floor. Was she all right? What the hell was going on?

He remembered his walkie-talkie. As he ran to the east tower he pulled it out of the case on his belt.

‘Central, this is urgent. Contact Livingston, Papadopolis, and Abrams and tell them Zebra Three needs them at base immediately.’

The walkie-talkie crackled. ‘Ten-four.’

He reached the other door, pulled it open and waited a second, listening, before he went through.

Nothing.

He waited and listened.

Nothing.

He went back on the terrace, checked it quickly, and then returned to the west tower. Both elevators were on the bottom floor. He went up the stairs. His mouth was dry and he was gasping for air when he reached ten. His heart felt as though it was jumping out of his skin. The hallway was empty. He went to 10-A and rang the bell, then pounded on the door. He stepped back and smashed his foot into the door an inch or two from the knob.

The door opened halfway and hit something.

He went in and slammed it shut with his elbow.

The first thing he saw was a scorched pattern of tiny holes near the ceiling. Blood was splattered around the holes. The second pattern had chewed a piece out of the corner of the entrance hall where it led into the living room.

A small marble-topped table lay on its side, a vase of freshly cut flowers spilled out on the floor.

She lay beside the table. Her face was gone. Part of her shoulder was blown away. The right side of her head had been destroyed. She was a soggy, limp bundle, lying partly against the wall in front of the door, blood pumping from her head, her neck, her shoulder. A splash of blood on the wall dripped down to the body. Her hands lay awkwardly in her lap.

Sharky clenched his teeth, felt bile sour in his throat, and swallowed hard and cried out through his clenched tee&

‘No. Goddamnit, no!

‘No.’

‘No!

‘Go-o-od damn it.. . no!’

BOOK TWO

Chapter Twelve

It was another country, another world, a place ripped from the past and sown with the fantasies of a mastermind.

The gardens, a tiny paradise stitched with walkways and encompassing almost three acres, stunned the eye with colour. Purple, yellow, and fuchsia azaleas were in full bloom, surrounded by hundreds of small pink and red camellia blossoms. Beds of iris, their praying flowers streaked with lavender and pastel blue, lined the pathways and grottoes, and small lotus trees and lush green moss covered the cliffsides and stream-fed alcoves.

Only a chest-high fence which prohibited pedestrians from straying off the path tainted the landscaped beauty. There was good reason for the fence. At the far end of the garden, hidden from the bountiful and lush sprays of colour by a sixty-foot-high cliff, was an arroyo, a tortured place that split the cliff in half. It was foreboding, a stark and shocking sight compared to the beauty of the gardens. There were no flowers here. Steam rose from between the rocks. A chill breeze blew down through its crevices.

Halfway up the cliffside, almost hidden by red clay banks, boulders, and scattered foliage, was a dank and ominous cave.

Within its depths yellow eyes glittered evilly, accompanied by a sibilant warning, an intermittent hissing that sounded like air rushing from a giant punctured tyre. The creature lurking in the cavern was more sensed than seen. But its presence feathered the nerves.

One heard the other creature before seeing it, a half- growl, half-cry that drove icicles through the heart. A moment later it appeared, moving cautiously around the edge of the cliff, a towering myth, at once terrifying and majestic, like some primordial sauropod. It was a dragon, a golden dragon, each scale of its lutescent skin gleaming as it reared back on its hindlegs, stretching a full forty feet from its fiery mouth to the tip of its slashing, spiny tail. Green eyes flashed under hooded lids. Five ebony claws curled out from each padded foot. As it opened its fanged jaws a stream of fire roared from its mouth and rolled upward.

The dragon moved like a cat on the prowl, sensuously, slowly, sensing its prey nearby.

The yellow eyes inside the cave followed the dragon’s every move. It began to hiss again, a dangerous sound that reverberated off the cavern walls.

Then it moved. Slowly ft slithered from its hiding place and emerged, an enormous two-headed snake, its sinuous muscles sheathed in blood-red skin, the nostrils flat and piglike in its ugly snouts, its forked tongues flicking from two moist mouths as it slid up through the rocks seeking a vantage place high in the grim landscape.

It moved with chilling grace towards its adversary, eyeing the dragon through glistening black beads.

It began to coil, its thirty-foot body curling into a tight spiral. Then it struck, the vicious twin heads streaking from between the rocks, swooping down, its mouth yawning malevolently, then snapping shut, the fangs sinking deep into the neck of the dragon.

The dragon screamed in outrage and pain, twisted its head, and spat an inferno that engulfed the hissing serpent. The viper’s body surged forward, wrapping itself around the neck of the dragon while one of its two heads snapped back and struck again. The dragon’s shriek joined the hissing of the serpent. The two unearthly creatures were locked in a nightmare embrace.

High above them, from a soundproof booth overlooking the primeval battle, his face shimmering in the red glow of the flames below, DeLaroza looked like a vision from hell. The eerie reflection sutured his features with fleeting scars. His eyes flashed with joy and he clapped his hands together. He was, in that instant, an incarnation of the devil.

‘Incredible, absolutely incredible I’ he cried out. ‘Nikos, you have outdone yourself.’

Seated beside him in front of a large electronic control board, the creator of the scene smiled. His name was Nikos Arcurius, a wiry little man, trim yet powerfully built, his biceps hard and veined, his black hair frosted white at the sideburns, his brown eyes twinkling with the rush of achievement.

The dragon and the snake, coiling, hissing, spitting fire, fought on.

‘Enough,’ DeLaroza said. ‘Save the climax until Monday night.’

Arcurius leaned over the control board and pressed buttons, twirled dials, and the two mammoth creatures slipped apart. The snake retreated back to its cave and the dragon, like a regal legend come to life, stalked back to its hiding place among the rocks.

‘It is a masterpiece,’ DeLaroza said with awe. He laid his hand on the shoulder of his collaborator. Arcurius leaned back in his chair and surveyed the atrium and then nodded. It was true; it was a masterpiece.

Arcurius was Greek. Abandoned by his parents, he had grown up a street thief and pickpocket. When he was thirteen his quick hands had earned him a two-year sentence in Da Krivotros, a dismal island prison known as The Boxes because of the rows of solitary cells where even the slightest infraction of prison rules resulted in weeks in squalid isolation.

Thrown in with hardened criminals, Arcurius had earned their respect by putting his nimble fingers to a new use, carving puppets in the prison shop. He earned cigarette money and other favours from the prisoners by putting on Sunday shows in the visitors’ compound for the wives and children of other prisoners. He was back on the street by the time he was sixteen, first joining a travelling circus, then trying to make a living as a puppeteer in Athens, but by the time he was twenty he was on the run again, fleeing from one country to the next, always with the law snapping at his ankles.

The salvation of Nikos Arcurius came when he signed on as a crewman on a steamer going from Marseille to New York to escape the local gendarmes. In New York his fortunes finally changed. Starting as an apprentice, he moved up quickly to become one of Broadway’s most innovative set designers and while still in his twenties Arcurius was lured to Hollywood. There, on the vast sound stages of the big studios, his imagination flourished.

And it was there that he had met a visitor from Hong Kong. Victor DeLaroza was drawn to him not only by his enormous talent but by the candour with which he spoke of his early life.

‘These fingers,’ he once told DeLaroza, wiggling all ten in the air, ‘belong to the second best pickpocket in Athens. The best one was never caught.’

DeLaroza quickly realized that Arcurius’s real genius lay not only in design but in production as well. He put Arcurius to work developing a new concept for toys and together they had revolutionized the industry. The Greek had an uncanny ability for breathing life into DeLaroza’s wildest fantasies, designing and building toys of remarkable realism. Small transistor cards hidden inside dolls whose skin felt almost real caused eyes to blink, mouths to open and close, and activated tape loops through which the lifelike creations spoke simple sentences. His animals were marvels of innovative miniaturization. One, a small horse, performed four different gaits, its ingenious insides set in motion simply by the snap of a finger.

DeLaroza’s exhaustive marketing skills had turned Arcurius into a household word and his creations, called Arcurius, into the most popular toys in the world, several of them so remarkable that even though mass-produced, they had already become collector’s items.

Then DeLaroza had conceived an idea so exciting, so challenging, that be and Arcurius bad devoted five years to designing it, another four to building it, and spent more than ten million dollars on the project.

Now, the result of their combined genius sprawled below them. It was to be the instrument by which DeLaroza would emerge from his self-imposed world of secrecy.

Now, with Corrigon out of the way — and tonight, Domino — DeLaroza felt secure at last. Publicity releases would now begin revealing his contributions for the first time. Now he felt he could face cameras for the first time, unafraid.

Now he himself would introduce the world to his grandest accomplishment.

Pachinko!

The most outrageous, the most breathtaking, the most stunning madness of all.

Pachinko!

The ultimate playground.

In the heart of the glass tower DeLaroza had gutted six floors and replaced them with a towering atrium that began five storeys above the ground. it was encircled by a narrow, eight-foot balcony from which spectators could view Pachinko as if they were standing on a precipice looking down on it. Behind them the city of Atlanta could be seen, sprawling out behind floor-to-ceiling windows.

The panorama was staggering. Within the great space, nearly the size of four football fields, DeLaroza and Arcurius had recreated their own version of Hong Kong. A bustling, vibrant, ebullient amusement park and bazaar, as startling as it was ambitious, had been built in the middle of a skyscraper.

The journey to Pachinko! began on the first floor where an imported Chinese arch led to four bullet-shaped glass elevators that travelled up the exterior of the building. The arch was guarded on either side by two ten-foot temple dogs, their red tongues curling humorously beneath gleaming, dangerous eyes. A blazing Art Deco sign over the arch announced Pachinko! always with the exclamation point. A booth in front of the gate converted American dollars into reproductions of Hong Kong dollars, the medium of exchange for special attractions in the complex. One elevator lifted spectators who simply wanted to observe the spectacle to the special balcony where, for another dollar, they could watch the revellers below. Four other elevators opened on the eleventh floor, the entrance to Pachinko!, where two ancient stone posts imported from Macao stood on either side of a long, rambling stairway that led to the main floor, six storeys below. The stairway was a replica of Hong Kong’s bustling Ladder Street, a narrow confined alley teeming with shops, cubbyholes and snack-food stalls, and intersected by several other avenues.

DeLaroza surveyed his version of the city. Looking down on the exciting maze below him, he envisioned it crowded with tourists and sightseers, entertained by strolling magicians and acrobats while a travelling Chinese band provided the background music. It was a splendid bazaar, with banners floating over more than thirty shops where everything was sold, outrageously expensive antiques, cheap souvenirs, Suits custom-made by Kowloon tailors, Oriental rugs, postcards, imitation Buddhas, cameras, the finest jade. Food stalls offered snacks of sizzling ribs and Peking chicken. Cats strolled the steps.

On the main floor the Greek had created a shallow lake with a small version of the Tal Tak floating restaurant in one corner, its cuisine presided over by Wan Shu, one of Hong Kong’s finest chefs, its garish decks reached by small sampans which carried diners from the main promenade, a winding path where theatres offered karate, judo, and weaponry exhibitions, excerpts from Chinese opera, and puppet shows for the children. There were three night clubs and two other fine restaurants, a recreation of the Man Mo Temple, known as the Place of a Thousand Buddhas, a sixty-foot model of the Shinto Pagoda, an opium den, and a sampan ride through a tortuous series of tunnels under Ladder Street where like-real Arcurius played out some of the most dramatic moments from the turbulent history of Hong Kong. The main street terminated at one end at the gardens with their abundance of rare flowers and beautiful young Chinese guides, who would escort visitors through the enchanting maze, explaining the icons of Chinese mythology found in its grottoes and pavilions. As they ended the tour the guides recounted the legend of Kowloon, the Ninth Dragon, and his battle with T’un Hai, the two-headed snake of the Underworld. Throughout, DeLaroza had insisted on historical, mythological, and architectural integrity.

The grand opening, now only three days away, would attract all three major television networks, radio, magazine, and newspaper reporters from all over the world, leading politicians and British and Chinese dignitaries, all to be flown in on special junkets. Photographs and visitors had been barred from the amusement complex until opening night, for DeLaroza knew that the reaction would be much more excited if an aura of mystery were created about Pachinko So it had remained an enigma, a giant surprise package to be unwrapped the following Monday night.

What better time for Donald Hotchins to make his announcement?

Julius Lowenthal stood a few feet from DeLaroza, his eyes saucers of amazement as he stared down through the glass front of the soundproof control booth at Pachinko! DeLaroza turned to him, towering over the weary Washington lawyer.

‘Well, sir,’ DeLaroza said, ‘what do you think of our toy, eh?’

‘Toy?’ Lowenthal said incredulously.

DeLaroza chuckled. ‘Perhaps I should say “playground”. Until tonight no outsider has seen it. I have forbidden photographs and all but the most general description.’

Lowenthal shrugged his shoulders in an almost helpless gesture. ‘I, uh. . . I’ve lost my tongue,’ he said. ‘I’m speechle€s.’

‘You do not approve?’

‘Oh, my God, of course. It’s monumental. A monumental undertaking.’

DeLaroza took him lightly by the elbow and led him out of the booth and along the balcony towards Ladder Street.

‘I’m flattered that you let me take a look,’ Lowenthal said.

‘The least I could do,’ DeLaroza said. ‘Once again I must apologize for Donald’s absence. It is an old and personal political commitment. He will be back tomorrow and you two can get back to business.’

‘I’ve been around politics long enough to understand these things,’ Lowenthal said.

‘Good. Besides, this will give us a chance to know each other a little better, yes?’

‘Of course.’

But Lowenthal doubted it. He had been close to many rich and powerful men during his career but had never really known any of them well, for they were guarded people. Secrecy went with power and money — it was a thing he bad learned early on. But he had to admit that DeLaroza was perhaps the most shielded of all. There was nothing but the skimpiest of’ dossiers on DeLaroza. No pictures, no stories. Lowenthal knew that he had come to America sixteen years before and had become a naturalized citizen four years ago. He had managed Hotchins’s campaign finances almost from the beginning and done it impeccably. There was little else available. His holdings and personal worth were unknown, his companies privately held. If this was to be an opportunity for anyone to get to know anyone, it was DeLaroza who would find out about Lowenthal and Lowenthal knew it.