Darwin's Nightmare by Mike Knowles Page B

— Steve had come in slicing high. The pool of blood was growing; so were the screams inside the office. Steve wasn’t talking; he was taking off Mario’s ear with a barber’s straight razor. He must have taken the razor off one of the barbers when he came in. Steve was using the razor like a conductor’s wand, making the fat Italian man scream a bloody aria. His pockmarked face was made even uglier in its agonized distortion. The ear came off despite the pawing of stubby fingers. Steve slammed it on the desk and started on Mario’s nose. When it was half off he looked at Mario and demanded, “Where is she?” The question had an exclamation point in the form of a haymaker.
    When there was no response he moved the razor back to the nose, and the answers came like water from a faucet. “Tommy took her! He did it! Talarese did it, all right? Just stop!”
    â€œI know him,” I said.
    Mario saw me, and his eyes widened. “You fuck. You yellow traitor shit. I’ll spit on your grave.”
    â€œDid you know?” Steve’s voice was like a window breaking; it got everyone’s attention.
    Mario’s eyes focused on Steve’s, and he spit out hate camouflaged in English. “What did you expect when you acted like an animal. Everyone pays, everyone. Some just pay more than others.” His last words were framed by a small smirk.
    Steve stepped back and bent so that he was eye level with Mario. “Where does Tommy live?”
    â€œWhy?” Mario’s smirk vanished, and he looked puzzled. I knew what he was thinking: no one would go looking for Tommy Talarese.
    The nose came off with screaming and pleading, and then, once again, answers came. Tommy’s mother, wife, and son lived in a red apartment building on King William Street. Tommy had made his home in the centre of the city, away from his bloody work on the east side. I knew the area. The building was one of several luxury complexes in the heart of downtown. The city tried to create upscale buildings, like Tommy’s, that would offset the rapid decay of the city. Each building that went up pushed more people out. It was the city council’s secret hope that they could move every undesirable citizen out of the city a block at a time — a transfusion of wealth to revitalize the decaying concrete. The lobby furniture in one of the complexes would be worth more than a year’s rent in any of the older buildings in the area. The new buildings also had doormen working twenty-four hours a day to protect those with money from those without.
    The sound of Steve’s foot hitting the bloodied face followed the answers. The kick knocked Mario from the chairto the floor, and then the stomping started. The sound was like boots walking in thick mud. Steve stomped Mario long after he had died on the floor behind his desk. It would take the authorities some time to decipher what the mess on the floor was, and even longer to figure out who.
    Back in the car, I didn’t question what had happened — no one needed doubt. We moved through the streets fast and smooth. Neither of us spoke for the first few minutes. I was thinking about what Mario had told us. Tommy Talarese was as scary a human as I had ever met. He was a man who had gotten where he was through nights of blood. He revelled in cruelty as though it were a religion. Tommy had butchered entire families, raped children in front of their fathers, and tortured enough people to fill a cemetery. Tommy was a maniac of all trades, but he was especially fond of taking limbs. The east side was like a little Sierra Leone in the eyes of those who had come up against Tommy. He was out-of-his-mind crazy, and now he was interested in Steve.
    â€œThis Tommy Talarese,” I said. “He’s a big deal. He’s Mario’s boss, and a scary fuck in the truest sense of the words. He’s sadistic and violent on a whole other level. He got