SURVIVORS (crime thriller books)

by T. J. Brearton

  Just a glare from Heilshorn.

  “Argon’s body probably then had to be adjusted posthumously to make it look more in line with death from a traffic collision. We’ll have to see how he looks at the funeral tomorrow.”

  Brendan glanced at Sloane. If she was nervous or scared she wasn’t showing it. If anything, she appeared to be concentrating, like she was working to catch up with Brendan’s theory. He felt a surge of compassion for her. Even something – crazy as it seemed – that felt like love.

  “Argon was killed because of his relationship to Sloane, partly, but moreover because of what he knew about you.”

  He took a breath, and continued. “You have become one of the most powerful men in the country. You started out as a doctor, but now it’s just a front. You got into investing in medical companies and other businesses. Those companies lobby heavily, and so you’ve befriended a number of high-ranking government officials. You were friends with Philip Largo, for instance, until he didn’t step to your tune anymore.

  “You and several others held a meeting just after the Wall Street crash. In my estimation this meeting was not unlike JP Morgan whisking everyone away to dream up the Federal Reserve. You decided something quite radical; that the black markets were a way to prop up the economy. The black markets give the economy exactly what it needs – liquidity. This is how it works – crime necessitates police departments and prisons. Sickness creates hospitals. The war on drugs keeps the commodity scarce, and the gravy train rolling. But bitcoin and the black markets can also become unstable. So you and your cronies find some friends in low places. Form a conglomerate called Titan. On the surface, the company incubates medical technology companies, does general contracting, and other things. Behind the scenes, it controls a range of nefarious markets: drugs, contract killing, gambling, and human trafficking. This is the ‘new mafia’ and it is in bed with the government. And you’re one of its bosses.

  “But then, your daughter gets mixed up with things. Or, maybe she knew what she was doing all along, and she got involved in order to stop you. Both your children knew what you were doing. So, you did what you do best. You leveraged her, too. You took her own child from her. Kept her working and silent. But when she kept trying to get out, you made the call. Maybe you didn’t want to. Maybe there is something slightly human in your reptile body. And you used that tiny bit of humanity to try and convince me to back down, to stay away from Reginald Forrester. This was only after, though, you made the call to Taber, who you also control, and had him take me off the case. And then, you even arranged to have yourself there, as if you were a victim too. You even took some hits – had some charges made against you. But, of course, these were all dropped. Just a misunderstanding in the course of upholding justice, right?”

  During Brendan’s speech, hate had settled into the furrows of Heilshorn’s face. His eyes glinted with malice. The air in the room had turned sour, that smell of cigars now stank like excrement.

  “You were supposed to be in that car,” Heilshorn said. In his voice was pure enmity.

  Brendan felt something roll through his stomach again, a milky curd, followed by a bright lance of pain, calling to mind the ulcers he’d suffered from. “What did you say?” His mind started to race in a different direction. Which car was Heilshorn talking about? In Argon’s car? Why would he be in Argon’s car?

  No, no, he thought. It was at once both plaintive and something like denial. He glanced at Sloane. Her face now finally betrayed fear. It was as if some presence had joined them in the room, something cloying, something which gave off that fecal odor.

  “You stupid drunk,” Heilshorn sneered. “You had to sit there at the bar and drink some more. You were supposed to be in the car.”

  Brendan felt a ringing in his ears. He realized his hand had slipped under his coat and grasped the handle of his revolver. His thoughts blurred, his mind protested the words coming out of Heilshorn’s mouth.

  Only some small, remote part of his brain that still seemed to be functioning offered something coherent. It was just a fleeting thought, a notion about how groups like JSOC went into the Middle East and eliminated threats to America. Killed them, their wives, their children.

  Brendan got up. Heilshorn remained seated, his eyes tracking Brendan.

  “Brendan,” said Sloane in a small, faraway voice.

  “You’re just like your father,” Heilshorn went on in that hateful tone of voice. “He was smarter than you, though. You’re too stupid to even realize what happened to him – or maybe you just blocked it out. Instead, you’re full of self-loathing, you blame yourself for your wife and child’s death. You’re pathetic.”

  Brendan pulled the revolver out and pointed it at Heilshorn’s head.

  Sloane cried out and rushed towards the door. In his peripheral vision, Brendan could see her take the doorknob into her hand. She wanted to leave. He didn’t blame her. But she didn’t. She stopped there. “Brendan,” she whispered. “Don’t.”

  Heilshorn continued to stare into Brendan’s eyes. “You should have died in that crash with the two of them. So you wouldn’t be standing here, pointing that silly gun at me as though you’re going to use it.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Where is who?” But Heilshorn’s face revealed that he knew where she was.

  “Jennifer Aiken.” Brendan’s lips felt waxy and numb. “The woman from the Justice Department. She found out about you, and you took her.”

  “She’s dead by now.” No remorse in the old man’s face.

  “Where?” Brendan thumbed back the hammer on the revolver.

  Heilshorn didn’t flinch.

  “You own buildings in the city,” Brendan said. “She’s in one of them. Probably one that’s empty; maybe under construction. That’s your M.O.”

  “You won’t do it,” Heilshorn smirked. He looked down the barrel of Brendan’s gun.

  Brendan squeezed the trigger. One more shiver of pressure and the weapon would fire.

  Sloane huddled against the door.

  “Get out of here, Sloane.”

  But she didn’t move.

  Heilshorn remained stony-faced, his features contorted in a hideous grimace, but a runlet of sweat coursed down his temple. He swallowed. “She’s on Second Avenue. Second and Eighty-second. I wish you were dead. Just like them.”

  Brendan leaned over the desk and put the gun to Heilshorn’s head.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN / Monday, 4:28 PM

  She had seconds to live. She remembered hearing that the smell of a dead body was something a person could recognize even if they had never experienced it before – something deep and limbic within the system. An ancient knowledge.

  There was another primordial experience like it; knowing you were going to die. The air became thinner, somehow, the skin oily, senses sharpened to crystalline points.

  She struggled to use the tools she had developed throughout her life. She had her words, she had her knowledge. They were her only defenses, and they were now failing her. It was hard to think with an automatic handgun pressed to your head.

  She’d offered Apollo what she knew about both Alexander Heilshorn and Brendan Healy. Yet there was still some connection Apollo had been relentlessly fishing to see if she had made – and if her department had made it, too.

  Lebenslüge.

  She wracked her brain for what Agent Petrino had dug up on Healy. She knew his father had made some controversial moves at the end of his medical career. He’d become a kind of convert; his life had followed the standard trajectory of a cardiologist until the end, when he’d started publishing on the web about heart disease and preventative healthcare and alternative medicines. Was that it? Was Gerard Healy entangled with Alexander Heilshorn?

  She had still been uncovering the records, but her instincts now told her that Gerard Healy had partnered with Alexander Heilshorn on investments, probably in medical companies like Titan Med Tech.

  Titan Med Tech specia
lized in the types of medicines and procedures which treated the symptoms – putting its money into stents and arterial bypass research. Dr. Healy’s outspoken views late in his career would’ve no doubt rocked the boat.

  The poisonous chemical that was winding its way through her body, causing dark spasms of pain in her arms and legs, stiffening her joints, making the back of her head – where she’d been struck by her captors – feel like it was a growing mass of needling insects, looking to burrow into her brain.

  “Please,” she said to Apollo. She had come to the end of her resources. “Hurting me, killing me, won’t help you.” She nearly choked on the words, her throat was so parched, her tongue felt like it had been swabbed with wire wool. “It will only alert everyone. If I go missing, they’ll know why. There is a whole task force coalescing around Titan.”

  A new expression broke over his emotionless features, and Apollo grinned hideously.

  “You people just don’t get it. All that shit from history? Now there are real gods. This is not some myth, or whatever you want to call it, these are the realities, the predictions coming true. The Bible, Nostradamus; the Mayans. The Kali Yuga. The Titans? Part of life now. It all comes around. The shit I seen out there? It’s not just drones; it’s machines – terminators, man – invisibility cloaks. No shit. The Chinese made an invisibility cloak. These are the times, now. Revelations is upon us. Lebenslüge. You don’t know? Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t know.”

  Some part of her which was still able to observe and think critically responded. It was absurd, having some sort of philosophical conversation under these conditions, yet here she was. She tried to conjure some spit. Her whole body ached and trembled. He held his weapon on her.

  Lebenslüge. It was a German word. She didn’t know what it signified.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never heard that term. What I know is that the Olympians, the younger gods, overthrew the Titans in the Titanomachy.”

  He narrowed his eyes and his grin widened. “Who do you think we are?”

  “I think you’re poor suffering men who have been institutionally corrupted. I think you need help.”

  Apollo threw his head back and laughed. In doing so, he pulled the gun away from her head. She could feel the indent it left. Then he straightened himself up and said more conversationally:

  “You all say the same thing. You react the same way. You can’t stop it. No one can change it, no one can stop it. You fight with your Right and your Left, and it’s all mixed up. Oh yeah, you got your rednecks out there with their own TV channel, building underground bunkers and stockpiling weapons. We have machines more powerful than any soldier. We have total surveillance of everyone on the planet. What good are shotguns and freedom of speech going to be against drone strikes? You’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg. That’s all. One picture in the slide show. If I let you live, you’ll slip back into the life of denial that everyone else lives. Everyone who chalks this up to conspiracy, paranoia, whatever. Kill you? Would be doing you a favor. You should be thanking me.”

  Her mind worked feverishly. She had goose bumps, her limbs throbbed. She was on her knees before Apollo, his gun pointed at the floor now. It was something. It was progress. “If you believe that, then what does any of this matter? Why does this coming of the end need your help? What does it matter what I know? What does it matter what Brendan Healy knows? If what you describe is inevitable, if the entire world is on its way to being one giant, fascist global market, why bother? Why do anything?”

  Apollo grew somber. “Because there is no choice. You serve, or you die.”

  “Why live? Why live in a world like this? Why would you go on?”

  For a moment, Jennifer felt a tiny glimmer of hope. Apollo looked away from her and stared out the window, over the tops of the neighboring buildings.

  “Because,” he said softly, “that’s Lebenslüge, in a way. Now you know.”

  And a second later she heard it. It was faint, and it could have been for any number of reasons, but Jennifer thought she heard the sound of police sirens.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT / Monday, 4:35 PM

  Brendan tossed Sloane his cell phone. He kept the gun inches from Heilshorn’s head.

  “Dial 911. Give them that address. Tell them a federal agent is being held hostage.”

  Sloane did as she was told. He listened as she spoke into the phone. There was a tremor in her voice, but she was efficient and clear. Brendan felt another surge of emotion for her, something like love, and then it was gone, drowned in the darkness that enveloped him.

  “Do it,” said Heilshorn. Some of the menace had gone, but he still spoke in a growl. “Pull it.”

  Brendan aimed the .38 at Heilshorn’s head. He felt the pulse of the scar on his face, as if the wound had come alive and were writhing beneath the surface of his skin.

  He breathed. In and out. The air in the room was thick and still, recalling that hot summer two years ago when all this had begun with Heilshorn’s own daughter, dead in a farmhouse.

  He leaned closer to Heilshorn, and pushed the tip of the .38 against his forehead.

  Brendan had killed this man’s son, Kevin Heilshorn, who had grown up seeing God knows what. A kid so screwed up he hadn’t known who to trust, or where to turn. Law enforcement that couldn’t be relied on, leaders and politicians that couldn’t be believed. There was no telling the good guys from the bad guys.

  Brendan pulled the gun away. The tip of the barrel left a red crescent on Heilshorn’s temple.

  Brendan holstered the gun and stepped away from the desk. He backed toward Sloane, never taking his eyes off of Heilshorn, or moving his hand too far away from his weapon. Heilshorn could have his own firearm.

  Brendan backed up until he was next to Sloane. He didn’t have to tell her to open the door. The two of them slipped out, leaving Heilshorn there, a small man with glaring, coal-pit eyes, behind that large oak desk.

  * * *

  Staryles weaved through traffic on the Henry Hudson Parkway, doing his best to drive tactically and not just start ramming the Cutlass into these stupid meat-bags all around him. He missed being in-country, and driving with a gunner riding up top, able to just pick off the people in the way. Things were a lot simpler like that. Staryles liked simple. He looked forward to a simpler future.

  Heilshorn’s bodyguard had called to report that Heilshorn had gone into his top-floor office with Healy and the girl. Fine. Staryles was sure that Heilshorn had instructed the bodyguard to stay out of sight before bringing them up from the waiting room. The old man wanted to have a chat, Staryles could understand that – it had been a long time coming. Probably wanted to tell the detective about his wife and kid. Staryles hoped that would be enough for Heilshorn. Sometimes the old man didn’t know what was good for him. But that was Staryles’ job, to step in, to clean up; that was what the organization had hired him to do.

  He told the bodyguard to grab them as soon as they came out of Heilshorn’s office. It was all offices on the top floor, and usually quiet. It would be the perfect time to take them, and wouldn’t make a scene. The bodyguard just needed to hold them long enough for Staryles to get there and deal with them both once and for all.

  Staryles dodged left into another lane, and then back right, moving around an SUV that was hogging the road. In another world, he would’ve just had Parnell or Jackson thump that thing full of 50 cal BMGs, and watched it flip off to the side into whatever dusty pile of disgorged concrete was lying there alongside the road.

  That world wasn’t so far off from this one anymore.

  * * *

  Two large hands clamped around Brendan’s neck and shoulders, grabbing him from behind, as he exited Heilshorn’s office.

  A nurse and a doctor stood down towards the end of the hall, and an orderly was just stepping off the elevator when the bodyguard put Brendan in a hold.

  “He’s got a gun,” boomed the voice of the bodyguard.

  The woman a
t the end of the hall shrieked, and both she and the doctor dropped into a crouch. The orderly froze, looked around, and then stepped back into the elevator just before the doors closed.

  The bodyguard’s hold was vise-like. His forearm around Brendan’s neck immediately cut off the air flow, and Brendan gagged. The bodyguard’s other hand clamped over the wrist of the hand that held his weapon. The cinch of the bodyguard’s mighty fingers tightened, and Brendan’s grip on the gun loosened. With his free hand he reached up and clawed at the forearm slipped like an iron noose around his neck.

  His police academy training felt like a lifetime ago. Brendan remembered enjoying those days – working up a good sweat, learning a few moves; defensive holds, evasive maneuvers, and striking stances were part of it, but mostly he had benefitted from the cardiovascular fitness, feeling himself grow stronger and increase his endurance on mornings he would have ordinarily been slinking around inside the wasteland of another hangover. He hadn’t graduated top of his class – had only wound up somewhere in the middle of one hundred and twenty-two other candidates – but he’d appreciated the physical conditioning. The past two years, however, he’d let himself go, spending most of his time in front of the computer, subsisting mainly on junk food and soda. He was as out of shape as a flat tire, and he was no match for the bodyguard.

  The revolver fell from his grip and hit the carpeted floor with a muted thud. Brendan’s wide eyes found Sloane, who was still standing in the doorway, not quite cowering, but certainly keeping her distance from the two men. Heilshorn appeared, standing just behind her. Brendan could see the mark on the old doctor’s forehead where he had pressed the cold steel of the revolver. It was already fading, but it was there. Heilshorn’s eyes shone with nothing but antipathy.

  Brendan struggled, but the more he tried to break free of the bodyguard’s hold, the more the grip tightened around his neck. The bodyguard was sliding Brendan’s hand, behind his back, up towards his shoulder blades, wrenching the arm far out of its natural range of motion, threatening to snap the bones. Brendan stopped struggling. He was having trouble getting any air into his lungs. Spots, like confetti spinning at a New Year’s party, appeared in his peripheral vision. He was going to pass out.