Time & Space: Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Mac rolled onto his back with a sigh and let himself sink into the feather bed.

His mind was a blur, slowly clearing and latching onto bits of reality once more. Still breathing heavily, he felt the beads of sweat beginning to fall back into his hair with the change of gravity. A touch drew his focus as a pale, petite frame pulled itself closer to his. The weight of her arm across his chest made him feel safe.

“That was incredible,” she whispered in his ear through an exhale.

“Mm,” Mac replied, noticing how the pounding in his temples matched the rhythm of the fan overhead. After a moment, her hot breath on his neck began to annoy him. He slid out from under her arm and, sitting up, set his feet on the floor.

“What’s wrong?” she said with an apathetic concern.

“I need a drink,” Mac replied as he pushed himself off the bed and stepped into a pair of athletic shorts. He heard the bed creak as she retreated back into it - a sufficient reply.

The endorphin induced fog of ecstasy was clearing now. As it did, he couldn’t ignore that Tony was still there like a thorn in the underbelly of his consciousness, eyes lifeless and falling towards the asphalt. His body felt especially heavy as he descended the loft stairs, as though he physically carried Tony with him now.

He shook his head, a futile attempt to shake the thorn loose.

Dragging himself to the liquor cabinet in his newly leased studio apartment, he pulled a bottle of scotch from it, deftly snatching a glass tumbler in the same hand. His was no ordinary drug distribution business. He and his crew had amassed 2.5 million dollars in the last 6th months. The brains of the operation, his cut was the largest.

He sent the glass skittering onto the marble countertop and uncorked the bottle, carelessly pouring the glass more full than it was meant to be.

Mac drank long and deep, wincing through the burn with each swallow as the vapors forced their way into his nostrils and filled his head with a shimmering warmth. As the last of the elixir passed his lips, a low growl forced its way up from deep within him. The same shimmer flowed down his neck and lay over his limbs like a shroud. He opened his eyes, but Tony was still there staring, bleeding.

The blood pooled and began to trickle towards him. Not Tony’s blood. Mac had slammed the glass tumbler on the countertop, shattering it. A large shard protruded from the flesh between his thumb and forefinger.

Shooting pain jerked him away from his vision of Tony.

“Shit!” he yelled, inspecting the wound as a mixture of stinging pain and adrenaline replaced the buzz of the liquor. His hands shook as he gripped the red-stained glass and pulled it free. Mac snarled as the pain flashed white-hot for a fraction of a second and subsided into a dull, pulsing ache.

“What the hell happened?”

He turned to see his recent lover - he couldn’t remember her name - still topless, standing on the stairs and staring down at him. This time, her concern seemed genuine.

“Nothing,” Mac said. “I dropped it and cut myself.”

“Are you okay?! I can go with you to the hospital. It looks really ba-”

“I’m fine.” Mac began to rinse his hand in the sink. “You should go.”

Her expression soured as it became clear that their relationship would go no further, despite her newfound investment in his wellbeing. She turned and disappeared upstairs.

As the blood and water swirled around the stainless steel drain, Mac’s thoughts turned to Tony once more. Why could he not let this go? He had seen people die before. He had been there when members of his former crew were shot down in a drug deal gone wrong. He had never pulled the trigger himself before, he hadn’t pulled the trigger this time, but he couldn’t shake this overwhelming feeling of responsibility and guilt.

He had chosen the members of his crew on two criteria: dependability and expendability. Tony was nothing to him or anyone else. He had no family, no ties. So why should I care that he is dead? Mac thought.

He hadn’t even noticed her come down the stairs until he heard “...fuck you!” and a door slam behind him.

Right back at you, he thought.

He pulled a dish towel from a drawer next to the sink and tied it around his hand. By the time he had walked over to the liquor cabinet a second time, the blood had begun to soak through. He poured a second glass of the scotch and took the bottle with him to the balcony that overlooked Central Park from the Upper East Side. I don’t give a shit about Tony, he told himself emptying the glass once more. Mac Quora didn’t give a shit about anybody.

*****

“Let me in! It’s cold as hell out here!” Mac pounded his fist on the steel door until he finally missed as the door swung in.

“Shut up will ya!” Bruce hissed, waving him inside frantically. “I bet they’re watching us.”

“Lay off the weed, Bruce. You’re getting paranoid,” he said coincidentally just as Bruce choked on a too-deep hit from the blunt in his left hand. Mac crossed the room and tossed his heavy black bomber jacket onto a workbench covered in tools and computer screens. His head throbbed from the liquor he had consumed the previous night and throughout much of the day.Tony still stared at him in his minds eye between every pulse of pain.

The abandoned garage that they used as their hideout and base of operations was well hidden down an inconspicuous alleyway in the South Bronx. Only about a block away from a subway station, it was easy to hide the getaway car and quickly fade into New York’s overpopulated obscurity.

Inside, Bruce had built up a pretty substantial collection of tools and equipment which he would swipe from businesses and homes in the area. He would spend most of his time changing the body kits and paint jobs on the getaway cars in between drug heists.

Shep was standing at a high, work table in the middle of the room cleaning their small arsenal of firearms. The stolen Glock 9mm gleamed as he set it on a towel next to the other pistols.

A rail-thin Asian woman with a buzzcut and tattoos that spiraled out from under her torn, crop-top sweater gazed intently at a large computer screen. Her eyes flitted back in forth in unison with her hand on the mouse, blinking as she clicked.

Bruce had just finished coughing and sputtering out smoke when Mac threw something down on Shep’s table saying, “Looks like we’re famous.”

Shep set down the greasy rag and moved around the table to get a better look at a crisp newspaper. It had a picture of the tienda they had hit the night before sprawling over most of the front page, shattered glass window panes marred the storefront and police-line tape stretched across the foreground. The words “BRONX DRUG DEALER HIT BY RIVALS. 2 DEAD. CRIMINALS ESCAPE.” crowned the photo in large, bold, block letters.

“Shhhhi-it,” Bruce cursed, putting both hands on top of his bald head in surrender. Shep picked up the paper and scanned through the first few lines. The clicking from the corner stopped as the woman turned her gaze away from the soft blue glow of her computer screen.

“They’re saying we shot the clerk! Bastards!” Shep said. “They filled that place so full of led, it’s a miracle any of us got out alive.” His eyes flicked toward Mac. He continued reading, “It says here the stash was our only known motive. Looks like your deep web market is still off the radar, Ling.”

“They think we’re street pushers,” Ling stood up and crossed over to the table. “They’ve I-Ded Tony, but they don’t have any leads. I’ve spent most of the day making sure there were no breadcrumbs.”

“Good,” Mac said, “but we obviously were careless somewhere. How did they know we were coming?”

“I’ve been working on that too. I’m not quite good enough to hack directly into their servers without a traceback, but from what I can pick up through radio chatter and a few private email servers, it seems like they have moles all over the street markets.” Ling pulled a stool over and perched on it, her knees folded between her chest and her locked arms. “They likely placed lookouts on every major distributor we hadn’t hit yet as soon as some of their affiliates started reporting losses.”

“Damn, the cops run the streets too?!” Shep had taken out his dreads and now nervously began to toy with his sharply pointed beard. “Did they get a good look at me, Ling? The paper doesn’t mention me.”

“No identifiers from what I can tell,” she said. The hours each day Ling spent diving into the internet’s ocean of information sure was paying off, Mac thought.

“What’s our next move, man?” Bruce had begun pacing, hands still locked together on top of his head. “We just lost our supply chain and our current inventory won’t last us another month. We’re screwed, man!” Bruce’s voice rose with each word. “They probably know we’re here right now-”

Bruce was suddenly airborne, his legs had been swept out from under him and his arms sprawled forward to break his fall. He crashed into a stack of boxes full of vacuum packed pills and other leafy or powdery substances which tumbled down on top of him.

“I told you to cool it,” Mac said as he slid his right leg back into place beside his left. Bruce began to dig himself out of the heap of drugs and packing supplies. “We need to diversify. Become less predictable.” Mac turned and walked over to Bruce and offered his hand, which Bruce used to pull himself up off the floor. “We need to be stealing drugs from places the cops aren’t looking.”

“And where the hell is that?” Bruce chuckled, skeptical.

Ignoring him, Mac turned to the rest of his team. “Ling, get me everything you can on hospitals in the area. Start small, local, but work your way out.” Mac was moving across the room as he spoke. “I want anything that might be useful.” He picked up his jacket and spun into it. “Floor plans, staff rosters, common treatments, and medications they may have on hand.” He turned to Shep, “You find me a new Tony. I still need eyes, but I need you on the inside with me. Remember, no ties.”

Shep’s face darkened, but he replied, “yes sir.”

Mac scooped up the Glock and released the magazine to check that it was full. He liked the weight of it. It felt familiar. He turned and strode toward the door. “Bruce, find us an ambulance, fix it up, make it convincing.” He pulled the door open, “I’ll see you all back here in 48 hours.” Mac turned and the door slammed shut with a metallic BANG!.

Tucking the pistol into his breast pocket, Mac crossed his arms over his chest as the frozen December air pierced through his leather jacket like an arrowhead. He felt the cold sink deep into his ribs and he began to lose control over his jaw. He unfolded an arm long enough to pat down his pockets, searching for the familiar rectangle of his cigarette carton. Nothing.

Shit.

Without his portable heat source, Mac decided he wouldn’t last long in this chill. He began walking briskly, winding his way out of the narrow alleyway, checking over his shoulder often to make sure no one was paying him any unwanted attention. Instead of taking his usual route to the subway station, Mac took an extra left turn, a path he knew would lead him past a nearby smokeshop that would still be open, even this late on Christmas. He reached the main street and began to cross towards the neon emblazoned “Smoker’s Haven” when a wailing ambulance rounded a sharp corner and nearly took him out.

Mac jumped back onto the curb as the van raced by and watched as it cut its siren and pulled under a building awning a block from where he stood. Looking both ways this time, Mac crossed the street and turned to see where it had stopped.

Diagonally from the smoke shop, huge, lit, red letters read “EMERGENCY ROOM” across the top of the awning, framed on either side by a simple, square, red cross. Nurses and EMTs scrambled around the newly arrived patient for a few seconds before they vanished behind automatic sliding glass doors. Mac smiled.

He had been this way only once before, but must have been so fixated on his fix that he missed this medical center all together. Maybe he had noticed it and just hadn’t cared, or maybe this had been why his plans so quickly turned to hospitals, he didn’t know. But there it was, the veritable jackpot, and only a few blocks from the hideout.

Bingo.

This would be target number one. If their theft were to be discovered, the detective's search area would quickly expand beyond their hideout, allowing them time to plan their next move undetected.

The closer you are to danger, the further you are from harm, Mac thought, a line from a movie, or a book, he couldn’t remember.

Forgetting all about his cigarettes, Mac moved in for a closer look. He walked past the main ER entrance and rounded the other side of the building. Moving quickly down the alley, he looked for anything that might be helpful. He passed a loading dock complete with a door that read, “EMPLOYEES ONLY.” It didn’t look the most secure.

Moving toward the back of the building, he tried to glimpse inconspicuously into the nearby dumpster for shipping containers or pill bottles that may give him a clue as to what might be of value inside. Suddenly, a CLANG from the loading dock caused him to jump down behind the dumpster.

He peered out from his hiding place and watched as an attractive young blonde woman skipped down the loading dock steps and into the alleyway, the employee door swinging shut behind her. She wore simple, aquamarine scrubs and carried a small clutch purse. She turned away from Mac and made her way towards the street

Mac moved quickly and silently, without thinking. His excitement at his good fortune had blinded his eye for tact. He clutched the formed grip of the pistol. He was going to find out what he wanted to know.

The woman never saw him. He stepped behind her, putting a frozen hand over her mouth. She inhaled, at first with shock, and then poised to scream. Mac jabbed the barrel of the pistol into the back of her ribcage and her pent up breath released in a terrified, shaking exhale.

He whispered in her ear, “I’m wondering if you can help me with something.”

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