The Killing Kind Read Online Free
Author: Chris Holm
these days, services more buses than trains—is an imposing marvel of Italianate architecture a full city block in size, with a vaulted ceiling, elaborate cornices, and an interior rife with gleaming marble. Massive columns jut upward toward skylights through which the gray light of the perpetually overcast Upstate New York sky streams through. Long, low wooden benches shiny from lacquer look out of scale for so large a space and lend the interior an oddly ecclesiastical air. In addition to a proper shoe-shine stand, the building also boasts a barbershop and restaurant, the latter an authentic lunch counter of the type that once appeared on street corners in every town in America.
The terminal was built in a fit of optimism, when rail was king, by the same architects who’d designed Manhattan’s Grand Central—but Utica’s fortunes were even then on the wane, having peaked decades before during the heyday of the nearby Erie Canal. Now the station seemed not so much preserved as forgotten, like an apparition doomed to walk the same halls again and again.
For the past fifty years, Utica hasn’t been known for much of anything—unless you count the violent struggle between four crime families that stretched the length of the seventies and eighties for control of the city.
Gazing dully out the window of his chauffeured Lincoln as it conveyed him from the private airstrip to his destination, Alexander Engelmann couldn’t for the life of him guess why organizations as powerful as the Genovese and Colombo crime families, as well as Outfits out of Buffalo and Scranton, would bother spilling blood over such a place. It seemed any money this town once possessed had been wrung out long ago. But he had to admit, their train station was really something. Perhaps it was pride that motivated their bloodshed.
Engelmann’s calfskin Ferragamos clacked against the marble floor of the terminal. Despite the summer heat, he wore a charcoal sport coat of worsted wool, a pair of pressed chinos, and a crisp white shirt, open at the throat. He carried neither bag nor weapon—his only luggage, a small carry-on, was in the Council’s hired jet, and he never traveled armed, preferring to procure any weapons in-country as needed and discard them after use. The terminal was empty but for Engelmann, two students with dreadlocks and dreadful clothes waiting for a bus, and a hulking mass of steroid-enhanced Mafia muscle shrink-wrapped into a black suit that bulged suspiciously at armpit, back, and ankle. Why this gorilla needed three firearms was beyond Engelmann, as was how anyone with that much muscle would even have the flexibility to reach an ankle holster.
Not that his assessment mattered—it was habit, nothing more. This occasion did not call for violence. Which was a pity, really; stiff and irritable as Engelmann was from his hasty trip halfway around the world, he could have used a pick-me-up.
As he approached the gorilla, the gorilla jerked his head to indicate the barbershop beyond. Engelmann strode past him without breaking stride, pushing through the glass doors and stepping into 1953.
Dime-sized hexagonal tiles, once white but now the color of old teeth, covered the floor, the grout between long since gone to black. Above waist-high marble wainscoting stretched walls that aimed for sunny yellow, but missed. Rounded mirrors hung above small vanities piled high with products Engelmann would have guessed ceased production decades ago. At each station was a pedestal sink and a barber chair of black vinyl, white trim, and ornate, tarnished bronze.
In one chair was a man, beside whom stood an aged barber. Whether the man was tall or short, fat or slim, Engelmann couldn’t tell, because he was mostly hidden beneath a black cutting cape—and his face was wrapped in steaming white towels in preparation for a shave, so that only his nose and thick black hair showed. His head was tilted back, his nose pointing skyward. His hair was
The terminal was built in a fit of optimism, when rail was king, by the same architects who’d designed Manhattan’s Grand Central—but Utica’s fortunes were even then on the wane, having peaked decades before during the heyday of the nearby Erie Canal. Now the station seemed not so much preserved as forgotten, like an apparition doomed to walk the same halls again and again.
For the past fifty years, Utica hasn’t been known for much of anything—unless you count the violent struggle between four crime families that stretched the length of the seventies and eighties for control of the city.
Gazing dully out the window of his chauffeured Lincoln as it conveyed him from the private airstrip to his destination, Alexander Engelmann couldn’t for the life of him guess why organizations as powerful as the Genovese and Colombo crime families, as well as Outfits out of Buffalo and Scranton, would bother spilling blood over such a place. It seemed any money this town once possessed had been wrung out long ago. But he had to admit, their train station was really something. Perhaps it was pride that motivated their bloodshed.
Engelmann’s calfskin Ferragamos clacked against the marble floor of the terminal. Despite the summer heat, he wore a charcoal sport coat of worsted wool, a pair of pressed chinos, and a crisp white shirt, open at the throat. He carried neither bag nor weapon—his only luggage, a small carry-on, was in the Council’s hired jet, and he never traveled armed, preferring to procure any weapons in-country as needed and discard them after use. The terminal was empty but for Engelmann, two students with dreadlocks and dreadful clothes waiting for a bus, and a hulking mass of steroid-enhanced Mafia muscle shrink-wrapped into a black suit that bulged suspiciously at armpit, back, and ankle. Why this gorilla needed three firearms was beyond Engelmann, as was how anyone with that much muscle would even have the flexibility to reach an ankle holster.
Not that his assessment mattered—it was habit, nothing more. This occasion did not call for violence. Which was a pity, really; stiff and irritable as Engelmann was from his hasty trip halfway around the world, he could have used a pick-me-up.
As he approached the gorilla, the gorilla jerked his head to indicate the barbershop beyond. Engelmann strode past him without breaking stride, pushing through the glass doors and stepping into 1953.
Dime-sized hexagonal tiles, once white but now the color of old teeth, covered the floor, the grout between long since gone to black. Above waist-high marble wainscoting stretched walls that aimed for sunny yellow, but missed. Rounded mirrors hung above small vanities piled high with products Engelmann would have guessed ceased production decades ago. At each station was a pedestal sink and a barber chair of black vinyl, white trim, and ornate, tarnished bronze.
In one chair was a man, beside whom stood an aged barber. Whether the man was tall or short, fat or slim, Engelmann couldn’t tell, because he was mostly hidden beneath a black cutting cape—and his face was wrapped in steaming white towels in preparation for a shave, so that only his nose and thick black hair showed. His head was tilted back, his nose pointing skyward. His hair was
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