“Very dead.”
And that leaves just three: Steffani Loomis, Raul Mendes, and Ken Smith.
“The dirty cops are also dead,” Yasiv added. “So are the gangbangers.”
They all took a moment to sip their drinks, to allow this to sink in, before Drake told his story. But despite his claim to Mickey that it was long and complicated, he kept it simple.
Yasiv might turn a blind eye to the fact that Drake wasn’t at Oak Valley, but he wasn’t certain the sergeant could do the same if he found out about Mark Kruk.
“Hanna took me in to see Dr. Kruk, who used to treat Ken’s son Thomas Smith. After some, uhh, coercing, we managed to squeeze out of him that he actually took videos of those sessions. One thing led to another and we tracked down those tapes.”
He paused to catch his breath and to make sure that everyone was following.
“And that led us to a video that Thomas took of his father… of Ken speaking to Raul.”
As Drake was turning the laptop toward Yasiv and the others, something on the TV above the bar caught his eye.
The ticker at the bottom read: Two police officers dead in Tremont—Gang members fatally shot by responding police—Mayor Ken Smith to speak shortly.
“Hold on a sec,” Drake said, raising his hand. “Hey, Mickey, think you can turn this up?”
Mickey spotted him from behind the bar and nodded. He cut the music and then grabbed the remote and turned the volume to maximum. Several people groaned and complained, but when they saw who had made the request, the condition of Drake and his crew, they quickly quieted.
“We’re getting a news report of a police officer involved in shooting in Tremont,” the talking head said. The inlay showed an unmarked police cruiser with pixelated bodies hanging out of it. “Although details are sketchy at the moment, it appears as if two police officers were gunned down by local gang members. The police arrived quickly and fatally shot the gunmen.”
Drake glanced over at Leroy. A small smile spread across his lips.
The talking head suddenly put a finger to her ear and nodded.
“Yes… okay… we’ve just received word that Ken Smith is about to go live with a press conference about the shooting. We will switch to this feed now.”
The crime scene dissolved, and Ken Smith’s face filled the screen. He looked exactly as Drake remembered him: tanned with silver hair and impeccably dressed in a bespoke suit. Only he wasn’t smiling as he had been on the few occasions when Drake met him in his penthouse condo. Instead, his face was grim, his lips a thin line.
Just seeing the man caused Drake’s hands to curl into fists.
“Good evening,” Ken began. “Yesterday I vowed to all of you, all of the citizens of New York, that I would clean up the heroin epidemic that plagues this city. This most recent shooting highlights these efforts. The two officers who were killed, as well as the gang members who took their lives, were all part of an elaborate heroin distribution ring. This is only the first step, and thanks to wonderful police work…”
Ken Smith continued to drone on, but Drake had already drowned him out. His mind was working overtime, trying to understand all of this.
The heroin kingpin of New York vowing to clean up the city? How is that a good business decision?
“Are you sure… are you sure that he’s behind all this?” Leroy asked.
Drake didn’t hesitate; despite this new wrinkle, Ken was the one in charge.
And he had the video to prove it.
“Yeah, I’m sure,” he said as he pressed play. “See for yourself.”
Chapter 78
“I don’t get it,” Screech said, verbalizing all their thoughts. “It’s him… we know it’s him. Ken is running the biggest heroin ring in New York. Not only that, but he’s spiking it with the most powerful opioid known to man. Something that, if it doesn’t kill you, makes all other heroin feel like a sugar rush. But, at the same time, he’s on TV claiming to clean up the streets? What the fuck? Were Dalton and Pontiac just working for the competition?”
Drake’s mind was working over time trying to piece together how this all worked into Ken Smith’s master plan. And he kept coming back to one single idea: power.
“No, they’re definitely working for him,” Yasiv confirmed. “No one else would have the balls to use cops to distribute their product.”
“Yeah, and I heard the gang bangers talking… they didn’t mention Ken, but they mentioned Palmer,” Leroy added. “And so did Horatio.”
“This is making my head hurt,” Screech said. “It’s all so damn confusing.”
It was confusing, Drake thought. There’s no doubt about that.
But there was also something clean and inherently pure about it.
“Power,” he blurted. “It has to do with power.”
All eyes were on him now.
“What?”
Drake took another sip of his scotch as he collected his thoughts. Screech said that it didn’t make sense, because it didn’t. Not to him, anyway. But they were looking at it the wrong way. They were approaching it from a purely business standpoint, but Drake knew that it wasn’t money that motivated the mayor.
“What we know about Ken Smith?” Drake asked.
“That he’s a silver-haired douchebag?” Screech said.
Drake ignored the comment.
“Everything that Ken has done—everything that he has done since sending his son to see Dr. Mark Kruk has been about one thing: power. At first, I thought he was just about the money… but on the video of one of Thomas’s sessions, he says his dad has tens of millions. That was before his bid for mayor. I’m guessing his net worth has ballooned to double or triple that amount. So, what do you do if money is no issue? If striving after the almighty dollar no longer gets you hard? You need to satisfy your need for power through other means.”
“Like politics,” Hanna said, speaking for the first time in a while.
Drake nodded.
“That’s right. There’s no more powerful position in New York than the mayor. He used me to effectively destroy his competition and help him get elected. But I think this is only the start. I think he has even higher aspirations.”
“Wait—wait a second,” Yasiv interrupted, shaking his head. “Why the heroin? I mean, he’s already mayor, he’s got money and power, why mess with heroin? It’s just so risky to… to what? What’s his end game here?”
Drake took another sip of his drink.
“Power… what better way to move up the ladder—to move from mayor to governor, president, even, than put an end to the biggest epidemic the greatest city in the US has ever seen? Look, he has a better, cheaper product than everyone else. You said so yourself, Yasiv, the heroin tainted with ohmefentanyl has flooded the streets. Not only is it readily available, but the junkies want this shit—Leroy, you can attest to that. So now Ken controls the supply, the demand, the distribution, and the price.” Drake hooked a chin at the television. “And because of that, he can shut it all down.”
The table fell silent. Eyes darted from one tired face to another, and then each of them finished their respective drinks.
“That’s fucked up,” Hanna said. “That’s really fucked up.”
Drake agreed.
“All he has to do is cut off the supply, and the problem will eventually dry up. If someone else tries to fill the void, he knows all the players. He can shut them all down. He’ll be a fucking hero.”
Yasiv pulled something out of his pocket and laid it on the table. It was a well-worn sheet of paper.
“What’s that?” Drake asked.
Yasiv’s eyes never left the page.
“Loose ends, that’s what this is. Your theory makes a lot of sense, Drake, except for this: this is a list of everyone involved in ANGUIS Holdings. Everyone who ever contributed to getting his heroin ring up and running by ‘donating’ to the Church of Liberation. There are dozens of people on it. If Ken was planning to shut it all down, how do you
think these people are going to feel? I mean, the company officers, sure, they’ll get paid handsomely. But short of executing everyone on this list—which includes a good portion of the NYPD, by the way—they aren’t going to go away quietly. And if my experience has taught me anything, it’s that if enough canaries sing, no matter how bad their individual voices are, they start to form a tune.”
Drake chewed the inside of his lip as he mulled this over. Yasiv was right. They were still missing something.
“May I?” Screech asked, reaching for the page. Yasiv handed it over, and Screech produced a pen from his pocket.
“There may be dozens of them, but tonight, there are at least three fewer,” Screech said as he crossed out Horatio Dupont, Pete Dalton, and Michael Pontiac’s names. “Thanks to our wonderful police work, of course.”
And then it clicked.
Wonderful police work.
That’s what Ken Smith had said during his press conference.
Drake snapped his fingers.
“That’s it,” he said quietly. “That’s it. These loose ends, Yasiv? He doesn’t need to clean them up.”
Yasiv made a face.
“Why not? If any of these birds—”
“No, you don’t get it,” Drake interrupted. “He—Ken Smith—doesn’t need to clean these loose ends up, because we’re doing it for him. We’ve been doing it all along without even knowing it.”
Chapter 79
“Fuck,” Screech said. “I think… I think you’re right.”
Drake nodded.
“Before us, before Triple D, there was the Church of Liberation. Not only did Ken Smith use the Church to launder money and raise capital, but he was using Ray Reynolds as a hitman to take out anybody who opposed him, or any officer who got out of line. I have no doubt that Ken would have widened the scope and used him to systematically take out all the names on your list—targeting everyone involved in ANGUIS Holdings.”
“Which is why Ken tried to convince everyone that the Skeleton King was dead, that it was all over when you shot Peter Kellington,” Yasiv offered. “That way there’d be no task force hunting down Ray and the Church.”
“Yeah, but we put an end to that. It wasn’t part of his plan, but Ken probably didn’t care because Ray was becoming erratic. He didn’t mind, because he had someone else that he could rely on, someone who was arguably more stable than Ray; he was counting on the fact that—”
“—you wouldn’t give up,” Screech finished for him. “The one thing Ken Smith could always count on is that you, Drake, wouldn’t stop until every single one of the ANGUIS members was held accountable for what they’d done.”
“That’s right,” Drake said, looking down at his empty glass. He tried to will it full. “I’ve been Ken’s pawn since the very beginning.”
“And when it looked like you were getting close to him? That you were getting erratic? I think Ken hired someone in prison to take you out.”
It was Hanna who spoke this time. She might be fairly new to the party, but she’d quickly picked up on the nuances of the narrative.
I remember you, Drake… you’re the one who put me in here.
It wouldn’t have taken much to tip Rodney Wise off, to pay a guard or two to look the other way for a few minutes. Drake thought back to his cellmate, the methhead who’d claimed his name was also Drake; he’d been stabbed in the leg and killed. There was no doubt in Drake’s mind that this was no accident, that there had been a hit out on him and that the confused man had just chosen the wrong person to imitate. Ken had probably gotten news that the job had been completed, as well, which was why Drake had slipped through the cracks and had been sent to Oak Valley.
If Ken had known that he was still alive, the man would have never let that happen.
“Probably,” Drake admitted.
“But there’s one loose end that he probably didn’t count on: Dr. Mark Kruk,” Hanna continued. Drake shot her a look, but she averted her eyes. “Ken used the man’s psychosis to take out his son who didn’t share his aspirations of global domination, or whatever, but he thought that when Kruk was caught—”
“—that I would shoot him,” Drake said. And he almost had… he almost shot the man, and probably would have if it hadn’t been for Chase.
Ken couldn’t be behind her disappearance, could he?
“Or that he would go to prison, where he could just pay some thug to kill him just like he tried to do to you.”
“But he never went to prison,” Screech said. “He went to the psych ward, which made it more difficult to get to him.”
“There are ways,” Hanna said. “But you’re right, it’s more difficult. My guess is he just waited to see what would happen. When Dr. Kruk didn’t change into his alter ego or whatever, he deemed it safe. Marcus Slasinsky wouldn’t have hesitated to blab about his connection with the mayor, but not Dr. Kruk. I’m not even sure that Dr. Kruk is fully aware of the link or even the fact that he killed three people.”
An image of Dr. Kruk’s eyes and the way they’d gone dark for a moment or two during their time together flashed in Drake’s mind.
During his time at Oak Valley, and even when they’d gone to the man’s storage garage, he had been Dr. Kruk. But now? Now that he escaped with Chase’s hair and blood? Was it a stretch to think that he’d reverted back to Marcus Slasinsky?
“But he told you about the tape… evidence that you can use against the mayor. Why would he do that, if he didn’t know anything about the connection? Was it just because you asked nice?” Yasiv said.
“I only asked for the tapes of his sessions with the mayor’s son. It was on one of those tapes that Thomas made reference to the SD card.”
Drake left out the part about Dr. Kruk not only knowing which session with Thomas would be useful, but also the fact that the man had gifted him the SD card without asking. Shit, if it hadn’t been for Dr. Kruk leaving it for him in plain sight, Drake might have assumed that Thomas kept it—that it was still in his home somewhere or had been destroyed.
Marcus Slasinsky was in there, all right. He might be buried deep down, but he was still in there.
“It doesn’t matter,” Drake said suddenly, shaking his head. “All that matters is that we get this video out there before anyone else dies.”
“Get it played on one of the news stations and I can put out a warrant for Ken’s arrest. At the very least bring him in for questioning. Palmer will put up a fight, but the public outcry will be too great to ignore. The problem is, Ken’s reach is far and wide—he’s shown that time and time again. We have to make sure the video gets in the right hands, that you get it to somebody who doesn’t work for him. In short, we have to make sure that people see it, and I’m not talking on some jerk’s blog. It’s gotta be shown on a quasi reputable network. Otherwise, Palmer will stall, make me verify the authenticity first before I can act on it. That’ll give Ken time to… well, do what he does.”
Drake racked his mind trying to come up with someone in the media he might be able to trust. This proved difficult; during his years as an NYPD detective, he’d burned a lot of bridges. But there was one man who he thought hated Ken Smith more than he hated Drake. Hated Ken enough to go out on a limb and make sure the video aired.
“I’ve got a guy,” he said softly. “I’m pretty sure he’ll do it.”
Yasiv rose to his feet.
“All right, let me know when and I’ll prepare the warrant in advance. In the meantime, I’ve got a crime scene full of dead cops to deal with. We can’t let anybody know, particularly DI Palmer, that any of this is going down. And Drake, as soon as you get the video into the hands of your contact, you have to go back to the facility. I can’t stress that enough. If this all goes according to plan, I’m sure we can do something about your charges. But if you’re not back in Oak Valley when they come to get you, if you’re an escaped fugitive…”
Drake nodded, even though there was zero chance that he would be ever heading back the
re.
The two men shook hands.
“Thank you,” Drake said quietly. Yasiv nodded and then turned to the others.
“Take care of yourselves. I’ll be in touch.”
When the four of them were alone at the table, Drake turned to Screech.
“And you? What’s your plan?”
Screech reached over and squeezed Leroy’s shoulder.
“I’m going back to the office—someone’s gotta start seeing clients that actually pay money. And I’m taking Leroy with me. He’s a bang-up guy, Drake. He saved my life and he helped put all this shit together. We can use him; he’s gonna make one hell of a PI one day. Better than you, even.”
Drake thought he saw a hint of a smile form on Leroy’s swollen lips.
“That ain’t saying much, but for what it’s worth, I approve. I’ll—”
“I’m going with you, too,” Hanna interrupted. “If it weren’t for me, Drake would be sucking his food through a straw and getting regular electroshock treatments. Besides, I’m looking for work; I sincerely doubt that helping someone break out of a psychiatric facility makes one’s resume shine.”
Chapter 80
Unlike Barney’s, Patty’s Diner hadn’t changed. In fact, Drake doubted it had even received a fresh coat of paint since it opened in the middle ages.
Even the waitstaff was the same, down to Broomhilda’s sour expression and her I don’t give a fuck demeanor.
“What’re you having?” the woman croaked.
“Coffee, black,” Drake replied.
When Broomhilda stayed a moment longer he looked up at her.
“You want a shot with that?” She asked. “You look like you could use it. What about some Key Lime pie?”
Drake was taken aback by the questions.
She can’t possibly remember me, can she?
“No, just the coffee.”
The woman pressed her wrinkled lips together and then retreated to the counter.
As usual, Drake had taken the cracked booth with a clear line of sight to the door. And, sure enough, no sooner had his coffee arrived in front of him did said door open.
Detective Damien Drake series Box Set 2 Page 58