by Nancy Holder
“It can,” Cat assured him.
But as they walked out of the office, Tess gave her a look that told her she understood what the redheaded security guard had warned them about: if the FBI agents did make any mistakes, they’d try their hardest to lay them at the door of someone else.
Guess who.
CHAPTER EIGHT
3.51 A.M.
Tess and Cat called ahead to the club and verified that it was closed. No one answered repeated calls and given the gridlock, they decided to table a visit for now. The traffic had gotten worse, and it would take them forever to return to the precinct, so with Captain Ward’s blessing they assisted in minimizing the looting in the vicinity of the DeMarco Building. Interestingly enough, the looting already was minimal—further evidence of the powerful reach of the DeMarco crime family.
They decided to patrol a few blocks northeast of the DeMarco Plaza, away from the glitz and glam and into an older neighborhood. There were fewer businesses and more residential blocks. Their flashlights traveled over shabby buildings fronted with tidy squares of snow-covered ground. Lights flickered in windows—candles, lanterns. A sign over a padlocked gate announced that this was the DeMarco Community Garden, for local residents only.
Snowflakes drifted down. Cat hoped no one was burning charcoal indoors to stay warm. That would lead to death by carbon monoxide poisoning, and she and Tess had observed more than one of those sad scenes.
They continued northeast. The buildings became progressively shabbier and many of them looked completely abandoned. They had reached the outskirts of civilization and by tacit agreement were about to turn back when Cat heard the trill of some kind of flute. Disconnected notes hopped up and down the scale. The tuneless playing made a counterpoint to the slightly fainter but still incessant honking of car horns a few blocks away.
Beyond the garden, several rusted-out cars created something of a wall; the flicker of orange flames was visible in the spaces between the metal hulks. It was a campfire, Cat guessed. The flute “song” was coming from there.
They moved around to the right, to see an old man seated in a rotting beach chair with a blanket draped over his shoulders. He had long, scraggly gray hair that had been combed away from his face, and he was playing what appeared to be a pennywhistle. In his large ham hock hands, the metallic cylinder looked as tiny as a pencil.
When Cat and Tess stepped into the firelight, he stopped playing. Then he laughed and said, “Well, hello, angels.”
“Hey,” Cat said affably. “How are you doing?”
“Fine, fine.” He scratched his cheek with the plastic mouthpiece of the pennywhistle. “You’re here, right? I haven’t had my medication in a while. I want to be sure I’m not dreaming.”
“We’re here,” Cat said. “You’re not dreaming.”
“Did the boy come with you?” He moved sideways and craned his neck. “Haven’t see him in a while. Did he die?”
Whoa, Cat thought. “The boy,” she repeated carefully.
He blew a note on the pennywhistle. “Gave me this. He said when he was little he couldn’t say ‘tin whistle.’ So he called it a tordemacto.” He cracked up. “He’s a good boy. Did he send me some food?” “Not tonight.” Tess looked around, then climbed up to sit on the hood of one of the cars and dangled her hands between her knees. Cat leaned against the same hood and crossed her feet at the ankles.
The man sadly shook his head. “He died, then. I’m going to miss him. He brings me food.”
“What’s his name?” Cat asked.
He blew on the whistle. “Dead Boy, now.”
“What did it used to be?”
“He give me all kinds of things. You want to see my place?”
“Love to,” Tess said. She slid off the hood of the car.
The man gathered the folds of his blanket and tried to rise from the chair. He grunted and shook his head. Tess and Cat approached and each held out a hand. He gave the flute to Cat.
“Just to hold,” he said. “I’ll want it back.”
Cat shone her flashlight on the instrument. The word Famagosta was printed in gold letters of the side of the whistle. Italian.
“Is the boy’s name Angelo? Is that why you called us angels?”
He grunted and held out his hands so they could help him get up. Tess took one hand and Cat wrapped her fingers around the other. They both tugged and he nearly flew into the sky along with the sparks from the fire. He was feather-light, clad in oversized sweatpants and a drooping sweatshirt. The only part of his body that had any significant flesh on it was his hands.
He laughed. “Whoopsy daisy!”
Then he flexed his fingers, requesting his flute. Cat gave it to him. He held it like a scepter, turned, and walked away from the campfire. His blanket dragged in the dirt.
Cat and Tess followed as he led the way toward a dilapidated metal shed with the faded words KEYS MADE painted on the side. The man stopped and gestured at the shed with the flute. Abracadabra. He trundled along, then stepped into the shed via a door that squeaked and protested when he opened it.
The interior was pretty much as Cat expected: a profusion of canned food, a can opener, dirty paper plates and napkins, a sleeping bag. Also, incongruously: several bottles of Chianti in their woven straw cozies. She picked up a bottle and shone her flashlight on it. It was full, hadn’t even been opened.
“Did Angelo bring you the wine?” she asked him.
The man sank to the floor much more gracefully than she would have anticipated and began playing the flute. He said around the plastic mouthpiece, “This is called a tordemacto.”
She reached in her purse and pulled out the glossy photograph of Angelo. She held it out to him.
“Is this him?”
The man stopped playing again. He leaned forward and kissed Angelo’s picture.
“He’s dead.”
“How do you know?” Cat asked gently.
“He didn’t come. I need my medicine.”
She followed his line of reasoning. “Did he always bring you medicine? Were they pills or bottles of wine?”
A single tear ran down the man’s weathered cheek. Then he fished around in his sleeping bag. He showed them an old digital tape recorder and turned it on.
Music began to play. It took Cat a few seconds to place it—“Ave Maria,” played on an electric guitar, not too well, but with a lot of emotion. Reverential, haunting. He set down the tape recorder and began to tootle along on his flute, his notes entirely out of syncopation and discordant… but no less heartfelt.
“Is that him?” Cat asked. “Is that Angelo playing the guitar?”
“She’s an angel,” the man said. “She’s dead.”
Variations on a theme.
The man picked up one of the Chianti bottles and shook it, then yanked the cork out with his teeth and began to throw it back.
“Sir, it’s going to be very cold tonight,” Tess said. “Let us take you somewhere warm.”
He gave his head a quick shake. “I have to wait here.”
Cat tried to take the bottle from him but he held it indignantly against his chest.
Cat said, “People are looking for Angelo. They’re very worried about him. We’ll get you some hot soup and warm clothes.”
Tess pulled out her phone. “Should I call the DeMarcos?”
“Given the blackout, I don’t think we have a choice except to take him there, if they’re agreeable,” Cat replied. “And it sounds like he’ll be able to provide information if he just gets a little encouragement. Can you walk, sir? Hey, what’s your name?”
“I can walk. He calls me ‘Buddy.’”
“Yes, hello,” Tess said into her phone. She lowered her voice and walked a distance away. Cat walked slowly beside the man as he shuffled along.
“How did you two meet?” she asked.
“He came by.” Shuffle shuffle shuffle. “Playing his guitar.”
Tess rejoined them. “They’re bringing a gol
f cart.”
It didn’t take long for the cart to arrive. A man Cat didn’t recognize was driving it, and it was a two-seater. It took some convincing to get the man to sit in the cart, and he only agreed to it if the driver would go slowly enough for Cat and Tess to walk beside him. He began to play his flute and Cat felt unaccountably protective of him. She hoped no one would confiscate his tordemacto, if it was indeed Angelo’s.
Soon they were back on the busy, noisy thoroughfare. The dedicated uni was still faithfully guarding their squad car. His breath wreathed around him like a ghostly presence, and Cat waved at him. He waved back.
The cart stopped at the lobby entrance and Cat helped the old man out.
“Come with me, sir,” the cart driver said.
The driver didn’t invite Tess and Cat back in. Cat expected the old man to insist that they accompany him. But he shuffled away without looking back at Tess or her. To his escort, he said, “I need medicine.”
“We’ll take care of you, sir,” the driver said. Then they went together into the lobby and, from there, into an elevator.
Gonzales leaned out of the elevator, gave Tess and Cat a wave, and mouthed “Thank you.” But he made no move to invite the detectives inside as well.
“Well, humph,” Tess said, “and why am I not surprised?”
“I second your humph. Let’s call in.”
Tess and Cat walked over to the uni just as two more officers approached him. They were also being released from the DeMarco building. The streets were just as busy, the car horns just as deafening. A sharp wind tore through Cat and she shivered.
Cat said, “You guys up for patrolling together? We’ll come too.”
Everyone nodded and Cat and Tess voted that they go past the DeMarco Plaza in the other direction. As the group began to move, Cat got through to Captain Ward.
Cat hung back and asked, “Are there any new developments on Agent Reynolds?”
“All I know is that there’s a case number and an APB,” Ward said. “If there are any leads I’ll let you know. What’s the status of the DeMarco case?”
She told him everything, from the booze for Mrs. DeMarco to the guitar collection, the visit to the sub-basement and finding the old vagrant. She was frank about their reception and Robertson and Gonzales’s behavior.
He sighed and muttered, “I really hate the FBI.”
“You’re not alone, sir.”
She heard a scream; the others did, too. She told her captain she had to go.
They ran en masse in the direction of the scream, car headlights dissecting their forms into bands of light and dark. Flashlights bobbing, they followed a second scream down the steps of a rank public toilet, to find two men cornering a terrified woman inside a pitch-black ladies’ room.
“Stop! Police!” Cat yelled. She drew her weapon; the others did, too, and they pointed their beams directly into the faces of the two scumbags. The woman ran toward Cat and threw her arms around her. Cat held her, and it was probably the best thing that could have happened, because she was so exhausted and furious with the DeMarcos and her father and now these two slime buckets that, looking back later, she had to admit that she’d been on the verge of pistol-whipping them. All she wanted to do was hurt them. She didn’t want justice, or to protect a defenseless victim, or to stop them. She just wanted to deal pain.
As the unis cuffed them, her savage impulses ebbed but didn’t disappear. The primitive part of her saw herself doing horrible things to them, sadistic acts she couldn’t unsee. And she thought, If this is what happens when I’m pushed, how can I expect Vincent to do any better?
CHAPTER NINE
4.12 A.M.
Ding.
Wreathed in darkness, J.T. stared at the laptop screen in disbelief. His stomach dropped to the floor. This could not be real.
It was his worst nightmare. And Vincent’s, too. Cat… God, did she know? With the blackout and all the chaos… but it was on the Internet. She would know.
Had she reached Vincent?
He tried to breathe but his chest was too tight. He could barely think. It had to be some sort of sick joke. But no one J.T knew would do something like this. It would be like telling your best friend you had a terminal illness… to be funny.
This is like a terminal illness, exactly like it. It will be the death of us.
He leaned forward, examining each pixel as if by sheer force of will he could make the image disappear or change or be something else.
“No,” he said aloud. “No, no, no. Wrong.”
He took a screenshot. At that exact moment, the front door began to open. The glare of a flashlight blinded him. He pushed away from his desk, grabbed his baseball bat, ran at the door, and swung.
The intruder must have ducked. J.T.’s bat smashed into the wall.
“I guess I should have knocked,” Vincent said, turning his flashlight on himself so that J.T. could see his face. J.T. also saw that he had taken out a vintage sconce, but better a shower of old, powdered plaster than Vincent’s skull and brain matter.
* * *
“You should have called,” J.T. said, and then he shook his head. “But you couldn’t get through, am I right?”
“Right,” Vincent concurred. “All I got was a message from our cell phone company that there is no service available at this time.”
“There’s signal gridlock same as out on the streets,” J.T. said. He swallowed nervously, appraising Vincent’s mood. He didn’t look like he was turning into a rage-monster. So he must not know.
And I have to be the one to tell him? J.T. thought, not loving that idea at all. Really?
“So, ah, to what do I owe the honor?” J.T. said.
“Someone took a shot at me. I don’t think it was me personally. But I got worried about you and I decided to come over.”
J.T. studied him. He had known Vincent for most of his life, and he had delivered horrible news to his best friend many times—that their latest attempt to create an antidote had failed, or that Vincent’s DNA was mutating and he was becoming more beastlike. Now J.T. fidgeted and weighed the pros and cons of not telling him. But if Vincent didn’t know, Cat might not know, and someone was going to have to be informed real fast, if they were going to do anything about it.
“Want a beer?” he asked Vincent. “How about a bottle of scotch?”
“What’s wrong?” Vincent asked warily.
J.T.’s smile stumbled before it was even out of the gate. “Huh, see, you aren’t supposed to answer a question with a question.”
Vincent was not amused. “There’s something seriously wrong. Your pulse is skyrocketing and you’re sweating.”
“Please don’t smell my sweat. That’s just…” At Vincent’s withering look, he caved in.
“Okay.” He crooked his finger in a “follow-me” gesture and walked Vincent over to his computer. Wordlessly, he pointed at the All Points Bulletin announcing that Former Special Agent Robert Reynolds had escaped from Rikers. There was a description of the event, Reynolds’ mug shot, his case number, and the name of the Special Agent in Charge, one Gayle Thurman.
Vince was eerily quiet. J.T. started completely freaking out.
“It just showed up. Just now,” J.T. said. However, according to the FBI data sheet, Reynolds had escaped hours ago. “I was looking for information on the blackout, you know, what the police are doing.” He looked a little abashed. “To see about Tess, and wow, luck of the keystroke…”
“Reynolds.” Vincent said the name like a curse. And Reynolds was a curse. He dogged them and he dragged them down and he wouldn’t stop until Vincent was dead. “She didn’t tell me.” Vincent’s voice was dangerously close to a growl.
“How could she? Maybe she doesn’t know.”
Were Vincent’s eyes beginning to glow? The tranq gun, where was it? J.T. had stopped keeping track of it because it no longer seemed necessary. Vincent was in command of his beast side. Or so J.T. had thought… until now.
He was definitely changing—veins bulging, jaw extending, those teeth…
“Vincent, they’ve gone after him. See? They’re looking for him. Not everyone in the FBI is corrupt. There are good people, professionals, and if they’re hunting him…”
“How did he get out?” Vincent raged. He turned his back on J.T. and flung his flashlight across the room. It hurtled end over end, a strobing projectile, and from the thunderous crash and the smell of more plaster dust, J.T. guess that it had smashed through the wall. The room was dark except for the faint light emanating from his laptop screen. He wasn’t even certain that Vincent was still there… then his bones vibrated as Vincent let out another deep growl.
“Hey, big guy, stop. Think. Vincent, you can’t beast out. You need your human side for this.”
Suddenly, J.T. couldn’t breathe. His feet were dangling off the floor. Panic surged through him like an electric shock. Vincent was losing control in a way that J.T. hadn’t seen in over a year—when Catherine had come into his life.
His arms windmilled and then he grabbed wildly at the hand around his throat. His best friend’s hand. He couldn’t speak to Vincent, couldn’t reason with him. The beast side was dominant, and J.T. was starting to pass out from lack of oxygen.
Then suddenly he was dropped to the floor and Vincent fell beside him with an anguished cry. J.T. contracted, making himself as small as possible, and tried to roll out of Vincent’s reach.
“J.T., man, I’m sorry.” Vincent sounded entirely human. But J.T. was too terrified to respond. “Oh, God, I can’t believe I did that.”
I don’t want to believe you did that.
Vincent got up and went to J.T.’s computer. He sat at the chair and peered disbelievingly at the screen, just as J.T. had done.
“How did it happen?” Vincent muttered.
“Maybe he wasn’t rescued,” J.T. offered. “Maybe he was abducted.”
“And killed,” Vincent said. “God, if he was killed…” His voice trailed off.