“Maybe you gave him too much,” Angelo said. “Looks like you knocked him out.”
“Sometimes it happens like that. We won’t get anything more out of him. Besides, he’s getting nowhere in his chicken shit investigation of our organization. He’s nothing; I’ve got him blocked at every turn. It’s that bastard Silverman I’m worried about.”
“Maybe he’ll quit the case if O’Brien should happen to disappear.”
“No way. He’s a fucking bulldog. We’ll fight him if we have to. But I don’t want the cops finding any more bodies. There’s too much heat coming down now, because some asshole whacked that Graham bitch before Kruger could get to her.”
“What do you wanna do with him?” Gus asked.
“You two get him outta here, right now. Get him outta my sight! Throw him in the garbage pit. Then turn on the grinder.”
C H A P T E R 50
Angelo and Gus cut me loose from the couch, grabbed my arms and legs and carried me out the door. With my eyelids slightly open, I saw everything in a hazy blur. My mind was back in focus, but my muscles wouldn’t function. I felt like a sack of wet mush. I couldn’t resist, could hardly move, but if I didn’t get control of my body, I’d soon be dead. As we got closer to the garbage pit, the stench made me want to gag, but I couldn’t even do that.
The dim yard was spotted with circles of yellow light coming from floods mounted high on posts. The two goons carried me between a dump truck and a huge diesel tractor with a scraper blade toward an area about fifty feet behind the office. One of the floodlights illuminated the pit, a metal-lined rectangular hole in the ground with a chain guard rimming the perimeter.
They dropped me on the hard ground close to the edge and I tasted dirt. “Go turn on the grinder. I’ll roll him into the pit,” Angelo said.
“Yeah, the machine has to be up and running or he’ll plug it up,” Gus replied. “I’ll have to feed him in slow and easy with the rest of the crap. You sure he’s out of it?”
“Hell yes.” Angelo let out a mirthless laugh. “The boss thinks he’s a smart son-of-a-bitch, but he ain’t no doctor. He shot him so full of joy juice it practically killed him. That shit never works. I could’a told him. But he never listens to me.”
I turned my head a fraction and saw Gus hand Angelo his gun. “Here, use this if he comes to.” Angelo jammed the gun in his belt. “He ain’t coming to. Be more fun if he did. I’d like to hear the bastard scream as he makes a nosedive into the grinder.”
In my mind I saw a large garbage disposal ripping chunks of my body to shreds as I was being fed into its gaping maw. Not pretty.
Gus dashed off into the dim light toward a tall iron platform twenty feet away. Beyond the platform loomed a cluster of heavy-duty machinery. I had to act. But I was still too weak to put up a fight.
Angelo pulled one of the metal pipes, a stanchion connected to the thin guard chain, out of a small hole in the ground and cast it aside, leaving a section open. He grabbed my legs and dragged me close to the edge. I heard Karadimos, probably standing somewhere outside his office, shout, “Angelo, for chrissakes, dump him in the goddamn pit already and get your ass back here. I need help going through these records.”
“Aw shit, boss. I wanna watch him get chewed up in the grinder.”
My body teetered on the side of the pit for a second or two. Then, Angelo rolled me the rest of the way in. As I twisted and started to slide into the hole, I grabbed the chain lying on the ground and held on for dear life. The chain snapped and the pipe stanchion followed, hitting me on the head as I tumbled into the pit and landed on a pile of rotten cantaloupes. My head hurt and blood ran down my face. But after what I’d been through, it didn’t seem to matter.
Suddenly I heard a loud whirring noise, like a jet engine firing up. The grinder! I felt a vibration, and the rotten cantaloupes under me started to move. I was sinking into the morass. I had to do something fast. Gus must have also switched on the conveyor that fed the giant garbage disposal. It moved under the refuse. I didn’t give a damn about the putrid smell, the viscous slime oozing into my pores, or anything else. I just had to get the hell out of there. Adrenalin pumped through my system, eliminating the Pentothal effects, and my body came to life.
Holding the pipe in one hand, I reached out with the other, feeling for the side of the pit. Like a gator swimming through a river of shit, I squirmed and kicked and made it to the side, but I continued to sink deeper. The side of the pit was slippery with sludge; no foothold. I scraped and clawed and only slipped farther down into the muck.
Looking up, I saw stars in the night, but I also caught sight of the edge of the pit, maybe five feet above my head.
Above and to my left, an angle iron brace crisscrossed the opening. I ran my hand over the chain that was connected to the pipe-rusty and thin. It snapped before when I held it as I rolled in, but I had to try again. It was my only hope.
Holding the end of the chain, I tried to loop the pipe around the brace. No luck. It fell back and I sank deeper. The grinder made crunching, gnawing sounds as it gobbled up the refuse being fed into it.
I had one more chance before being sucked down under the garbage heading for the grinder. I brought my arm back like a spear thrower and snapped it forward. The pipe shot upward; it didn’t fall back. It circled the brace and dangled there. I quickly looped the other end of the chain around the angle iron and started to climb out of the pit, hand over hand.
I prayed Angelo hadn’t disobeyed his boss and hung around to watch, and I prayed that the chain would hold my weight. My prayers were answered. It held.
I crawled over the edge of the pit, exhausted and covered with rotting garbage, but alive. Sprawled on the ground for a moment, I gasped for air. The pigs in Saugus would have to make do without ground lawyer on the menu tomorrow.
I shot a glance around the yard: no Angelo. In the shadows off to my right, I could see the tall platform. I made out the dim outline of Gus standing atop it. He stayed busy feeding garbage that came up an inclined conveyor into a hopper above the giant grinding machine. I also spotted an enormous steel cylinder beyond the grinder and could smell the ground slop being cooked in the long rotating tube.
Undoing the pipe looped around the brace, I scrambled to the bottom of the platform. I had to get Gloria’s aluminum case before Karadimos destroyed the evidence, and I needed a weapon. Gus had given his revolver to Angelo, but he probably had another gun tucked away.
The deafening cacophony of the machinery concealed any sound I may have made as I scurried to the top of the platform. Gus turned and faced me, eyes wide, just as I wound up and bashed his head with the pipe stanchion. He fell where he stood. He wouldn’t be getting up anytime soon.
Quickly, I went through his pockets and felt around the rim of his pants. I also patted his legs looking for an ankle holster.
Goddammit, no weapon of any kind. What kind of asshole gangster didn’t carry a hidden gun, or even a knife?
Back down on the ground, I glanced toward the lights burning in the office. Karadimos and Angelo were still there. It’d be suicide to walk in unarmed. But soon they’d wonder about Gus, and they’d come out to look for him.
Hunched down, I made a dash for the big D7 Caterpillar parked close to the office and climbed atop the bulldozer. I knew about these beasts from working summer construction jobs during high school. Pushing the button, I started the pony motor-the small motor that starts the big one-and waited a few seconds, then pulled the lever in front of the instrument panel, engaging the main engine.
The diesel coughed once, belched smoke, and turned over. I feathered the choke, and it ran smoothly. I pulled the throttle out a hair, put the dozer in gear, and jumped off the monster. It crawled away, moving in a circle like a lumbering ogre at about two miles an hour. The dozer’s racket was deafening, drowning out whatever noise came from the grinder.