by John Etzil
I cleaned out the airplane, refueled her, and tucked her in for a well-deserved rest. My baby’d done good.
29
Cosmo looked at his burner phone and read the cryptic one-word text for the third time.
“Trouble.”
“Shit, what the fuck does this mean?” He tossed his phone to Amare, a short, squat fellow who was also built like a fridge, and barked instructions. “Get ahold of Dwayne and see what the fuck he’s talking about.” He shifted on the couch, stuck his hand into one of his pockets, and grabbed another phone. He turned it on and dialed Catherine.
It went straight to voicemail.
“Stupid bitch isn’t picking up either.” He grabbed the remote and flicked on the TV.
The boarded-up and abandoned house on Bailey Street, just down the street from his very first heroin house, wasn’t as nice as his spread in Chairsville, and he missed the tranquility that his golf course provided, but he loved being close to the action. His cash bribes had gotten him a pirated electrical feed and satellite dish on the roof of the house, as well as water service, so he had many of the comforts of home.
Having grown up in Camden, he felt at ease in the run-down neighborhood that he’d taken over. With savvy business skills and a propensity for violence, he’d done well for himself. Unlike many of his long-gone rivals, he saved all the cash he made, watching every penny like an old miser. He didn’t waste it on woman and hangers-on. He reinvested it back into the business, although not in the traditional way of modernizing a plant or expanding a sales force.
After a few years of small-time dealing, he’d amassed enough cash to hire a loyal crew of muscle, many of whom were still with him today, and the Silent But Deadly Aces was officially formed. Initiation included performing a drive-by gunning down of a random drug dealer on a South Camden street corner that must result in at least one innocent bystander being killed, and an SBDA tattoo across your chest, or abs if the chest was already spoken for.
If you were a female, your first initiation task, and something that you repeated until perfection was attained, was to blow Cosmo. Depending on your membership status, i.e., how hot you were, you were either kept around to satisfy the male members’ sexual demands, or put out on the street to bring in some extra cash. If you had particular attributes, one of them being white skin, you were likely to become one of Cosmo’s favorites, which meant that you were off-limits to everyone except Cosmo. He was, however, known to “lend” his favorites out to his friends on a regular basis.
Catherine was one of Cosmo’s favorites.
First the SBDA had taken over Bailey Street, Cosmo’s old hood where he had grown up, with a single night of violent terror that the locals still whispered about to this day. When the sun had risen the following day, there were eighteen dead bodies, all gunned down in cold blood, lined up on Bailey Street. It looked like a war zone in a fourth-world country.
Nobody in Camden had called the cops when they heard the gunshots, and they wouldn’t have arrived until daylight anyway. The local press often listened on the police scanners for the juiciest crimes, and when the airwaves announced a report of multiple homicides on Bailey Street, the press arrived on the scene before the cops did. They started filming, complete with dead bodies littering the streets as their backdrop. This particular reporting team showed up in a modified Humvee made to look like a military machine, and the reporter and camera crew were decked out in the latest military protection gear that reminded all its viewers that they were reporting from a war zone.
The video went viral.
The feds arrived right away, Justice Department officials, state trooper bigwigs, and local politicians all saying the right things to the camera but only succeeding in delivering one thing: lip service.
Fast forward seven years, and Cosmo and the SBDA had expanded from Bailey Street, to York, to Grant, and then to all of Pyne Point. Everything north of I-676 was controlled by Cosmo. Everything south of I-676 was membership initiation fodder.
Amare walked over to Cosmo to deliver the bad news. “Dwayne ain’t answering, boss, but you need to see what’s on the news.”
Cosmo grabbed the remote and turned on CNN.
“Holy fuck.”
The live coverage of Cosmo’s slaughterhouse started with a helicopter video of the entire property, which was filled with police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances. Narration from an onsite news reporter described the “upscale neighborhood with multimillion-dollar homes.” The video zoomed in on the backyard golf course, further in on the torn-up turf, and finally focused on the two sheet-covered bodies sprawled out on the patio, a dark stain seeping out from under them.
Text ran along the bottom of the video that described the body count found inside the house, and how the police were still collecting evidence.
Cosmo took one look at his ripped-up golf course and threw the remote at the TV. He missed, and the remote shattered against the wall. “Motherfucker. Who the hell did this?” He stood up and paced around the room, kicking over the already abused lamps, chairs, and couches. He grabbed his phone and dialed Catherine again. Straight to voicemail. He turned to Amare. “Call in the crew. We got work to do. And get LoJack Larry over here right away. Tell him to bring his equipment. He’s gonna earn his money.”
“Will do.” Amare stepped into the bedroom to make his phone calls and shut the door behind him.
Cosmo dialed Catherine gain. Voicemail. He was starting to worry about her. His informants inside the police department texted him that all the dead bodies in his house were male, and everyone else in the house was accounted for. Except Catherine. He also learned that the neighbors reported being awakened by gunshots and a low-flying plane.
For Catherine not to answer his calls, she must be in trouble. In the world that Cosmo existed in, trouble and dead often went hand in hand. Out of all the women in his stable, Catherine was his favorite, and he’d hate to lose her.
Especially to a competitor who’d ruined his golf course.
30
Debbie gave Catherine some of her clothes and set her up in the spare bedroom. She slept most of the day, came out around dinnertime and asked Debbie for some more Advil. She didn’t eat anything, or acknowledge me, other than to give me the finger. She got her Advils with a glass of water and went back to her room. Her piercing black eyes were filled with anger, and she spat daggers at me as she slammed the door shut.
Debbie frowned and shook her head. “She looks like shit.”
“That’s to be expected. She’s got a drug addiction, plus she’s been through a brutal day. I can’t imagine what’s going through her mind right now.”
“Probably how to escape from us.”
“You should think about taking her to a doctor for a physical. I bet she’s got all kinds of health issues going on, plus she’ll need some meds to help ease her off the drugs.”
“I thought of that. I need to talk to her and see if she’s open to it.”
“Did she speak to you at all when I was in the hangar?”
“Yeah, she’s angry and feels terrible. It sounds crazy, but all those men in her house were her friends. They looked after her, like big brothers. You killed them all and now she hates you for it.”
“Unfortunately, I didn’t kill them all. None of them were Cosmo.”
“She said he wasn’t home last night. He spends about half his time in Camden, where he was last night.”
“Lucky bastard. Our mission would have been a complete success if he was there.”
“No worries, Catherine is safe now.”
“Is she? With that psycho running around, nobody is safe.”
“How’s he ever going to find us?”
“People like that have ways, and they don’t give up. It ruins their street cred if they do. And one thing about that Cosmo—he values his street cred above everything else.”
“True. But I still think the odds of him tracking us down are slim to none.”
“
Yeah, well, just the same, I’ll keep tabs on him through HFS.”
“Good thinking.”
We finished our dinner and sat on the couch with a cold beer. I wanted to put on some Barry White, but Debbie nixed that idea. “Yeah, right, I don’t think so.”
The next day I was up early and left for work before sunrise. The plan was for Debbie to take Catherine to the doctor for a full physical, get her into some kind of drug treatment program, and ease her back into normal life.
Saber’s protective instinct made him a good fit for Catherine, and she befriended him right away. He was perfect for her at this point in her life, and what she needed most. A companion who didn’t judge you and only wanted to be your friend.
We decided that Catherine would be better off if all three of us stayed at my place for a while. The would give her Saber’s companionship, along with a remote enough location where we don’t have to worry about her hitching a ride out of town. She hadn’t opened up to me, and might never, but at least she didn’t give me the finger anymore.
In between my busy day of handing out speeding tickets and breaking up a parking lot scuffle between two old geezers in the Cobleskill Walmart, I managed to get in some HFS research on Cosmo. Although his past activities were well documented, he’d been off grid for the last few days and nowhere to be found. It was like he’d dropped off the face of the earth. That scared me. If he was smart enough to evade HFS eavesdropping, he was more dangerous than I thought.
Boy, was I ever right.
31
Special Agent in Charge Paul Cefalu finished reading the New York Times article that Leo Kennedy had emailed him. It was a story of gang violence in Camden, New Jersey, that Leo thought was linked to the Newburgh Massacre.
He rubbed his forehead and ran his fingers through his hair before stopping at the back of his neck and squeezing the tension out. He’d never, in twenty-six years of federal law enforcement, seen multiple instances of this type of violent activity so close together. What the hell was going on in the world?
He shook his head, sighed, and dialed Leo Kennedy’s phone. Leo answered on the second ring.
“Kennedy.”
“Leo, in my office, please.”
“Be right there.”
Agent Cefalu didn’t waste any time with pleasantries when Leo stepped into his office. “I read the article, very interesting.”
“Did you see the Crazy Pilot YouTube video of the low-flying aircraft taking out the pool ladder?”
“Yeah, I saw that too. You really think Lamburt’s involved in this?”
“When the Newburgh carnage occurred, I dismissed him as a suspect, figuring there was no way one man could do all that. But now I’m starting to wonder again. Oh, one other thing I forgot to mention.” Leo was almost breathless in his excitement. “Do you remember the complaint from the guy in Kingston? The one who called in about the low-flying aircraft the night Agent Skillman disappeared?”
“Oh yeah, I remember. What about him?”
“He called me this morning. He was one of the sixteen million viewers of that Crazy Pilot YouTube video. He swears it’s the same aircraft he saw the night Agent Skillman disappeared.”
“I wouldn’t pay too much attention to him, Leo. Isn’t he close to a hundred years old? And he saw it at night, too.”
“Yes, but he’s sharp as a tack, and he swears that with the nearly full moon, he could identify the aircraft. That plus the sound of the engine. He’s a WWII pilot, and been involved in aviation his whole life. Everything from flying to sales, to maintenance of aircraft. He swears on his great-grandkids that the aircraft he heard was a Cessna 206H with a Power Flow tuned exhaust.”
“Interesting. And let me guess, Lamburt owns a…”
Leo nodded his head. “Exactly. A Cessna 206H. With Power Flow tuned exhaust.”
Cefalu smiled. “All right, you can keep looking into Lamburt, but not until after we check off all the boxes in this Newburgh investigation. That has to take precedence.”
“Roger, sir.”
Cefalu jotted down some notes on a legal pad and handed the sheet to Leo. “Two more bodies turned up in a basement in Newburgh. The landlord discovered the remains when he went to fix the washing machine in the basement. Said the door was locked from the inside, had a hell of a time getting in. Interview him and this lady named Mariana, who lives in the building. She claims that she met the man who killed the two guys.”
Leo took the note, read it, and stuck it in his pocket. He nodded and left.
32
After a long day of policing I stopped by the Red Barn, looking forward to having a few cold ones and seeing my Debbie. It was just after happy hour, and the parking lot was almost empty, most of her fans having had their fill of one-dollar beer specials and gone home.
I opened the door and sat down at my usual spot at the bar. Frances waved to me and raised her whiskey with a wink and a smile.
I waved back, all the while praying that Debbie would come and rescue me from my biggest fan.
I caught the swinging half doors to the kitchen popping open, and Debbie sped through them, balancing chicken fingers and two icy mugs of beer on a tray. She placed them at a table of two men, had a few words with them, and walked away. Their eyes followed her ass until it was hidden behind the bar. She looked at me and smirked, and I knew that something was wrong.
She brought me over my favorite beverage, a Molson XXX in a frosted mug, and placed it on front of me.
“Thanks.” I raised my mug and toasted her.
“We got trouble,” she said. “The doctor found a lump in Catherine’s breast.”
“Oh no.”
“I’ll say. He took an X-ray, and it’s not natural.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“He’s positive it’s a foreign object.”
“What the…?”
“Yeah. I had a long talk with her, and it turns out that Cosmo paid for her to have a breast job.”
“I knew it! Tits that perfect couldn’t—”
She punched me in the shoulder. “Shut up, Patrick. Don’t talk about my sister that way.”
“Oh, uhm.” I shrugged my shoulders and smiled. “Sorry.”
“The doc thinks that the foreign object could be a GPS tracking device.”
I stopped midswig and looked at her. “Are you messing with me?”
“No.”
Damn, that’s bad. If the doc was right, the ramifications were gigantic. “So Cosmo could know where she is.” I frowned and put my beer down. “This is bad. Did he remove it?”
“No, but he’s going to first thing in the morning. She’s spending the night in the hospital so the doc can finish running tests on her.”
“If Cosmo drives up here tonight, she’s a sitting duck. Even with all the HFS firepower, I can’t find him. For all we know, he’s already on his way up here. Or worse.” I stood up and downed the rest of my beer. “He could have a record of everywhere she’s been, including my house. And here. I need to get over to the hospital. I’ll stay all night and make sure she’s safe. You go to my house with Saber and Buddy. Soon as you get there, pop the safe and grab a Glock.”
“I’ll walk you out.”
She gave me a big hug and a kiss in the parking lot. I opened the gun safe bolted to the floor of the extended cab section of my truck, took out two Derringers, and handed them to her. She checked that they were loaded and shoved one in each front pocket. She smiled, kissed me again, and went back inside.
The Derringers would help in a sticky situation, but I was still worried about her safety tonight. Once she got to my house with my Glocks, Saber, and Buddy, she’d be fine. Catherine, on the other hand, was a sitting duck.
I hopped into my pickup and sped over to the hospital in Cobleskill. I drove around the near-empty parking lot a few times looking for out-of-state license plates, but I didn’t see any. That was a good sign, but Cosmo and his merry band of assassins could have driven up here, r
ented a car with fake ID, and be inside killing Catherine right now.
I parked, screwed my Osprey silencer on my Glock, and stuck it in my belt, where it was well hidden under my untucked flannel shirt. I walked over to the entrance and badged my way past the unarmed afterhours security guard, who seemed to be more interested in his smartphone than anything else. I made small talk with the receptionist while she looked up Catherine’s room number.
I took the stairs to the third floor two at a time and stepped out into the empty hallway. The lighting was dim and it was eerily silent, about what you’d expect in a quiet small-town hospital at night. I still had to be cautious, though. There was no telling what Cosmo would do. I knew from HFS research that he was a stone-cold killer. He’d been responsible for eighteen murders in a single night and valued his street cred more than anything else in his life. Which meant that if he thought that Catherine had double-crossed him, she was as good as dead.
I eased my way down the hallway until I reached Catherine’s room. I didn’t knock. I stepped into her room, and my cell phone rang. Shit!
I reached own, grabbed the sides of my iPhone through my pants, and squeezed the silent button. The ringing stopped, and I stood there for a second, listening for a sound, but I didn’t hear any. I peered around the privacy curtain that surrounded Catherine’s bed. She was sitting up and wide awake, looking right at me, emergency call button in her hand.
“What the hell are you doing here?” She held the call button device in front of her. “Get out, or I’ll call for help.”
“Easy.” I held my hands out, “I’m just here to make sure you’re all right.”
“I was just dandy until you came along and killed all my friends. You’re a freakin’ psycho. I could have you thrown in jail. All’s I got to do is press this little button.” She smirked at me, all proud of her ace in the hole.