by G M Eppers
“Guess what?” I asked, then answered myself without waiting for an answer from anyone else. “I don’t care where the Limburger is, or even whether it’s Uber. Let’s go get our people.” I walked determinedly past everyone and back toward the harbormaster’s office, turning our line in on itself like we were in a Busby Berkeley show. I grabbed Badger to walk beside me. “Two by two everyone. Hold goddamn hands if you have to. They are not getting anyone else.”
I marched straight into the harbormaster’s office first, however. I slammed open the door and pounded on the counter as the remains of my team stuffed themselves into the small anteroom behind me, curious. Ms. Vertucci rose and turned toward us in utter surprise. “What’s the meaning of this? Oh, you again,” she said, recognizing me and Badger. “Haven’t you had enough?”
“Oh, I’ve had enough, all right,” I blurted. My dander, as they say, was up about as high as it could get, along with my hackles and my blood pressure. “We came to you for help and you turned us down and now the Pappardelles have three of my people. Local support or not, we are going to go in there and get them. And if anyone gets so much as a scratch I’ll report you to the port authority for criminal negligence. You won’t be able to work a dock at a water park after I’m through with you. You should be ashamed. Turning your back on clear criminal activity. It’s people like you that give the Pappardelles the power they have. They didn’t take it. It was given to them. On a freaking silver platter. Law enforcement has to have some backbone or you might as well open the prison gates and let everyone out. I’m not going to stand for it. I’m not letting a bunch of Italian thugs run the show. I’m going to get them, and I’m going to get my people, and then I’m going to leave all of Italy to rot. Go ahead and enjoy all the Uber you want; I’ll be happy to watch your bowels clench up into a giant golf ball until you explode like those meatballs.” I wasn’t proud of myself, but at the same time, I meant every word and I would say it all again.
I turned around and started to storm out, but Butte, Sir Haughty, Sylvia, the twins and Badger blocked my path. I stumbled, and they moved out of my way with shock and awe on their faces. Now that my piece had been said, I just wanted to get away from all of them so I could do a primal scream, a scream that had been building in me since the moment Butte had told me that Billings was missing back on the London Eye. As I passed Sylvia, I noticed her staring at the harbormaster, who seemed to be busy fumbling with another cigarette, too offended to do more than sputter. Then quickly, Sylvia grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the door. She wouldn’t let go and gave me no choice. Besides, I was going that way anyway. By the time I’d gotten to the corner of the building, ready to make a beeline toward that rear entrance of the storage building that was all in shadow, Sylvia hissed at me. “You didn’t see it, did you?”
“See what?” I was panting I was so steamed. Billings, Roxy and Nitro were gone. They were so close and yet so far, as the saying goes. Ms. Vertucci could have turned purple, grown horns, and danced an Irish jig on the countertop and it would not have registered as odd to me.
She stepped back gingerly, like someone poking a sleeping lion. “Her bracelet.”
“What about her bracelet?”
“It was all starfish.” I still wasn’t getting it, so she went on barely missing a beat. “Just like the belt buckle and tie pin of that fire chief in Kutna Hora.”
Chapter Two
For several moments, we stood there just outside the harbormaster’s office, staring at each other as the wind toyed with our hair. “What do you think it means?” I asked Sylvia. It wasn’t like starfish were unheard of. The fact that two people over a thousand miles apart chose to adorn themselves with them could easily be coincidence. Right?
“Not here,” she said, glancing around. We didn’t see any obvious cameras but that didn’t mean there weren’t any. Or, more accurately, I didn’t see any obvious cameras. Sylvia could be seeing them every two feet, however. External surveillance was pretty common and not always easily identifiable. It could be set up right behind a knothole, or disguised as a motion sensor light. And any of the passersby could be an operative trying to overhear us. I looked longingly at the storage building yet again. I knew Avis and Agnes would back me up if I just wanted to storm the place, but it didn’t look like anyone else would. Not without hearing what Sylvia had to say.
Sylvia waved everyone to follow her as she led us back to the van. We took the same seats we had vacated before, with Butte at the wheel, Badger on the passenger side, me behind Butte, and so on all the way to the twins in the last row of seats. Unlike other vans we’ve rented, this one only had seats that faced forward. I decided I liked it that way and vowed never to get a rear facing seat again. I wanted to be able to see everyone. I put my back against my door and surveyed the remains of my team. At Sylvia’s instruction, we locked the doors and rolled up the windows. The breeze was cut off, with its lingering scent of dead fish. The ambient noise of harbor business – boat horns, lapping water, seagulls, ships’ bells – all went silent. I tried not to notice the conspicuous empty seats where Roxy and Nitro had sat before. “Okay, Sylvia. Hurry up. We really need to get this operation underway.”
She slapped the seat beside her, angrily. “We don’t HAVE an operation, Helena! We came in without a plan and we’ve been floundering like we’re the smallest boat out there. We’ve got nothing. We don’t know the layout of the place and we don’t know how our people were taken. You know they are all highly qualified in hand-to-hand and Nitro was taken with no struggle. We would have heard it. Even a silencer makes some noise.” I remembered the Xenon fumes that Miss Chiff’s operatives had used to capture me at the warehouse. But that didn’t really seem like a Mafia tactic to me. My heart twisted at the implication that they’d been shot somehow. “We don’t even know if they’re still alive.” I choked up, but let her keep talking. “We’d have to learn something to know as much as Jon Snow, and as we all know, he knew nothing.”
“They are alive,” I squeaked. I felt like I was six again, being chastised for doing something reckless like running with scissors. Why was it so wrong to be an optimist all of a sudden?
“Why? Because they have to be? Look, I hate to play devil’s advocate here, believe me, but it’s possible they were killed outright. The building is storage for mail order meat, Helena, which means a bunch of freezers. Perfect place to store bodies until they can be disposed of.” I don’t remember raising my hand, and I don’t remember swinging, but the sound of the slap reverberated in the closed van like a gunshot in the Grand Canyon. Sylvia didn’t flinch. She just stared me down.
I had to make her stop talking about them like they were dead. The implication that they were being stored liked so much meat was understandably disturbing. “If you so much as think the words “Soylent Green” I swear I’ll take out your good eye!” It says something about my family that our annual family movie event was Soylent Green with Charlton Heston., a film about overpopulation and a drastic approach to solving world hunger. Spoiler alert. It involves cannibalism. We didn’t gather every Easter for The Wizard of Oz or The Ten Commandments, or stay up late to see Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory with Gene Wilder, although I enjoyed all of those movies. But when Soylent Green came on, I would cuddle with my Dad on the couch – back in the day when it wasn’t Dad, but Daddy, and when I could sit on his lap without cutting off his circulation. At first, of course, I didn’t even make it to the end of the movie. I’d fall asleep in his arms and wake up in my bed the next morning. But eventually, I did make it to the end, even though Mom was never really sure it was appropriate viewing for a nine-year-old. She’d stay and watch with us, but she was watching me more than the movie. Watching for signs that it was warping me, I suppose. But Dad wouldn’t let her send me to bed, not even on a school night. That was our movie. And I turned out okay. Arguably.
“Soy what?” asked Sylvia. She was too young to remember that movie, and it wasn’t exactly ubiquitous TV
fare, so it wasn’t too shocking that she hadn’t heard of it. I decided not to mention Sweeney Todd, either. I was the one making uncomfortable associations in my head, now that Sylvia had gotten me started, and I was the only one who could stop it. After a tense moment, Sylvia continued, probably making a mental note in her steel trap mind to research Soylent Green to find out why I found it so disturbing, “The starfish thing, though, could be worse. A harbormaster here, a fire chief there, for all we know a Supreme Court Judge or Communist dictator somewhere else. That’s why investigators have kept saying gas leak when it clearly wasn’t. They’ve all been bought and sold. And that’s why our findings coming out on international television got us in hot water so fast.”
“So you think the starfish is a Mafia identifier.” She nodded. “What do you suggest we do?” I know, I’m the coordinator and I’m supposed to be the one thinking outside the box and coming up with ideas, but my thinking was muddled just then. And it was certainly good leadership to ask for input, even if I had had the best plan in the world. This whole thing had already gone on too long. I was beginning to feel like I was in a surreal nightmare, like those bad dreams when you’re trying to find a particular place, like an office, and you simply can’t. It’s not where it’s supposed to be. The door to room 327 is not between rooms 325 and 329 like it should be. The place grows more corridors than it ever had in real life, but no matter where you turn you can’t find 327. Only instead of room 327 I was looking for my son and I knew where he was but every time I got close it moved further away or vanished entirely. But this wasn’t a dream. The building wouldn’t move if I could just get inside it. I could wake from this nightmare if I tried hard enough.
Getting in was probably not hard, but even if we had brought our entire arsenal, it wouldn’t be a match for the firepower behind the Mafia. I knew it would be foolish to just break in and try to shoot our way to them. But I still wanted to. God, how I wanted to just blow the whole world away, present company excepted, and rescue my son.
“We need to call Miss Chiff and arrange for serious military support. Seal Team Six, or Seven, or whatever the number is now. We’re in over our heads. This isn’t just some wacko with a mixing tub and a snub nose 38. It’s the freaking Mafia.” Sylvia hadn’t even bothered to rub her cheek, though it had already turned red with a hand-shaped tattoo. Somehow, she knew the entire situation, saw the big picture, even without hearing about the decapitation and the forced appendix consumption. Just from the sight of a simple bracelet. Obviously, she had seen far more gangster movies than I had. She had an innate sense of who belonged and who didn’t, like Donald Sutherland at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The starfish connection was just her showing off. I wondered how long she had suspected and hadn’t said anything. Had she been actively looking for those starfish to turn up somewhere? Even if I’d seen the bracelet, I would not have made the connection to the fire chief. I made a different connection, though, after hearing her suggestion.
“Yeah, about that,” I said, swallowing thickly and stealing a glance at Butte who was stealing one at me.
“What about that?” Asked Avis from the wayback. “Don’t tell me this is going to get worse. I can’t stand it.” Agnes was again giving her a sympathetic rub on the shoulder. It looked awkward, but at the same time seemed perfectly natural to them.
Agnes said, “Sylvia’s right. We need more firepower. We need grenades, and smoke bombs and a flame thrower and stuff like that. How long would it take to get a tank? Do you think she can send us a tank?” This was a significant speech coming from the twins. Of everyone on the team, they were the least dependent on weaponry. They both held black belts in karate and red belts in Judo and aikido, and had completed Marine level combat training several levels above what was required for CURDS membership. They’d used their guns less often than anyone else and basically only carried them to be able to loan them out to the rest of us if we needed a backup. But certain situations will drive people beyond such training and right into Rambohood.
I just noticed that Avis’ bottom lip had been bitten ragged and raw. She was no longer completely identical to Agnes. I’d been so wrapped up in my own anxiety, I’d barely noticed theirs. Avis had to be ready to jump out of her skin. Hanging my head in shame, I apologized to Sylvia. “I’m sorry I slapped you. I just don’t want to hear any talk of them being, you know.”
“You slapped me?” she asked. Her one good eye, as green as the Emerald City, closed and opened again, the closest she was ever going to get to a wink.
Butte spoke up to save me the trouble of explaining. “We’re not sure if Miss Chiff is involved somehow. She’s the one, remember, who sent Helena on the mission to meet me. It seems it was a deliberate attempt to separate the head from the body, as it were. The folks at WHEY are also suspect right now,” he admitted. “You see, I was also sent on a mission to meet Helena, though whether that was to increase the chances of her getting separated or to separate me as well, I’m not sure.”
“Oh my God,” I heard myself say as yet another horrifying thought came to me. The depth of our dilemma was taking on staggering proportions.
“The upgrade,” said Badger. “No, not the OLED. It can’t be.”
Sir Haughty grunted. “You have to admit, the financial investment represented by our upgrade is both substantial and atypical. Miss Chiff claimed it was merely to stay competitive, but the American government never seemed that worried about competition before. It’s not like the job wasn’t getting done. In my opinion, there are definite signs of a security breach. Whether it is at Miss Chiff’s level or above is unknown.”
“Above?” I asked. I hadn’t really had time to think about that. Of course there was someone above her, but I didn’t know who. CURDS is a division of the CDC, under the Department of Health and Human Services, so I imagine she reported to the Secretary of the DHS. But it had never been my concern before. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I don’t even know who the Secretary of the DHS is right now, let alone if I’d ever seen him or her wearing a starfish. Then I shook my head. “It’s pointless to speculate. We can’t confirm or disprove anything we might come up with. As uncomfortable as it all is, it has to go on the back burner.”
But the upgrade wasn’t even the thought that had come to me. It was true. Whatever she and her team had done at HQ was in question. The system meant to provide better communication throughout the CURDS hierarchy could just as easily be a setup to keep tabs on our movements, information that would be extremely valuable to any of our Uber-producing clientele. Information, after all, was the most lucrative commodity out there. Our purpose was suddenly in question, as was our world view and our place in it. It was suddenly us against them. It was a bad feeling, a horrible feeling, to lose all confidence in your support system when you are about to try to overtake a Mafia stronghold. Even if we won this fight, we could still lose in the end. We could destroy every hitman in there only to be summarily executed by our own people. “Not just that, Badger.” My mouth had gone dry. I pulled out my phone and put it on the car seat. “Our phones. Miss Chiff has our numbers. God knows what else she can do using the GPS or apps we might not even know about. We don’t dare call for help, not from anyone, and we can’t bring our phones in there. The kidnappers have three of them, assuming Roxy’s was in her pocket and not on her HEP belt. They’ll be listening.”
Butte examined the contents of Roxy’s belt. “The kidnappers have her phone,” he concluded. “It’s not here.” The HEP belt Nitro had been wearing, and the phone Billings had had in his hand when he’d been taken would also be in their possession. “They could hack in. Might already be there.” Sadly, but without question, people began turning off their phones and tossing them onto their seats, looking at them as if they expected them to explode. I could see fear in their eyes as understanding hit. We were on our own. More on our own than we had ever been. Not only did we not have backup in local government, but it was possible we didn’t have CURDS behi
nd us, either. Our international authority might have been gone. The only reason to carry ID was to make it easier for the coroner to identify the bodies. It was like we were civilians. Educated and armed civilians, but civilians nonetheless, with no immunity to prosecution whatsoever.
And I think the worst part was not knowing. If we’d known all those things were true, I think it would have been easier to move forward. We were pretty good at acceptance. But believing that all those riches of support could be ours when we didn’t know and couldn’t ask for it was pretty hard to take. It was like looking in on a feast when you were starving and the front door is locked, but no one told you the back door was open, which you discover after the fact, after the food is gone, and you start to wonder if anyone in the room is really your friend. Okay, I was developing trust issues, obviously.
“Come on,” I added. “Walkies, too. They’ll be on the network by now with Nitro’s, listening.” I tossed my walkie onto the seat next to my phone. It had been hard enough turning the power off on my phone at Miss Chiff’s behest. Leaving it behind was going to be excruciating. And the walkie represented instant communication with my team. We’d all be going in blind and deaf. A bunch of Helen Kellers trying to find the dinner table. Cue the tantrum.