by Ty Patterson
‘I didn’t. I asked politely,’ he growled back, enjoying the relief the back and forth provided.
‘Hell, Bwana, you walk like that without even saying a word, and mothers take their children and run to the hills,’ she threw back at him.
‘How’s he?’ she asked Bear once they were driving back. Bear was tending to Tony in the rear.
‘I was a Ranger, ma’am. I’ll be fine, just some flesh wounds,’ Tony mumbled through cracked lips. ‘Should help me land the girls now.’
Broker snorted. ‘I can just imagine the stories that you’ll spin out of that, Tony. Enough fodder for a few years, I reckon.’
Women fell for Tony, finding something in his average appearance and shy demeanor. It helped that once he lost his reserve, he was an incredible raconteur.
Bwana, driving, glanced balefully at Roger. ‘You never told me that bruises will help with women. You always said all I had to do was dress sharp and the women would come running. I did, and none came.’
Roger looked pityingly at Bwana. ‘Nothing can help you, Bwana. You’ve seen those Hulk movies, haven’t you? You figured out that there’s a reason for Hulk not having a mate?’
Chloe and Bear, listening behind them, knew this was their way of letting off their tension, helping the needle move from red to normal. She squeezed Bear’s arm, conveying all that she felt in that small gesture.
Broker let them have their moment and then asked her, ‘What happened? How did you get out?’
Chloe shook her head, puzzled. ‘I’ve been trying to figure that out for some time. Those goons took us to that place and started on us when they couldn’t raise Cruz. Well, both of us were going to hold out as long as we could, and then someone joined the party.’
She told them what she’d seen and heard. Which wasn’t much.
‘But I retrieved these.’
She dug into the pockets of her fatigues and brought out the knife and the playback gadget.
Broker inspected them for a long while and then sighed. ‘The blade… millions like it sold in Walmart and Target. We won’t get anywhere with that. The device is more interesting. Home-made with components from RadioShack, but those components are fairly common, and we won’t be able to track the source store.’
He went silent, thinking, and finally gave voice to what had been going through his mind for a long time.
‘You know, if this is our same ghost, he isn’t your ordinary vigilante or gun nut who’s developed a Batman syndrome.’ He held the playback device. ‘This is an amateur device, but sophisticated enough to have hundreds of recordings in it that play back authentically. There’s shooting in a desert, shooting in a corridor to give echoes… he’s got shooting on a mountain, for crissakes. The way he appears and disappears, the way he took those guys out – the first time he’s shown his hand. If it’s him, of course.’
‘He’s a professional. Like us.’
They digested his words, nodding in acknowledgement. They had reached the same conclusion.
‘Better not be one of those navy boys,’ Bwana muttered.
Roger waved a hand dismissively. ‘Question is, why is he helping us?’
Broker got there before them and waited for their light bulb moment.
‘Clare?’ Chloe asked.
‘Well done. She’s the only one I can think of who’s got a vested interest in looking after our hides.’
‘If it was her, why wouldn’t she tell us? And looks like this guy is so good, how about bringing him in our fold?’ Bwana broke in.
‘All in good time, Mr. Patience. As long as this ghost isn’t in our way, he’s not hindering us in any way.’
Chloe twisted around to peer in the back of the Escalade. ‘Where are those two? What did you find out from them?’
Broker sobered. ‘They had suspected Shattner of being a plant after several of their deals went down badly, and after the cops had barged in on their last deal, which was there’ – he nodded in the direction of Southport – ‘they were even more sure.
‘They hadn’t plugged him till then because he fit into their façade perfectly, good mechanic, white guy, all that shit. And get this – they were thinking of using him as their own double! However, when the deals started going south, they couldn’t risk having him around anymore and decided to lift Shattner.
‘They brought him here, maybe the same place that you were held in, going by what he mentioned in his journal, their description of it, and your mentioning it.’
‘Shattner didn’t break.’ Broker’s voice softened and slowed, his words hanging heavy in the air.
‘They shot out his knees, but he stuck to his story. Diego went to work on his insides, and by then he was screaming, calling out his kids’ names. He must’ve lost his senses by then.
‘But he didn’t break.’ Broker wiped his face with his hand, slicked back his hair, and took a deep breath.
‘Of course, everyone breaks. Cruz and his sidekick knew this. So did Shattner. When Diego was cutting him, he lunged inside not away, and the knife went too deep. Diego said he was smiling as he died. They were kicking him and screaming at him as he lay there, asking him to confess.’
Chloe shut her eyes, willing her imagination to stay silent, not throw up images of Shattner broken and bleeding, the deep driving urge in him not to escape, but to die before the truth spilled out. She drew a deep breath and looked at the men around her, the cold, hard light in their eyes comforting her.
She rested her head against Bear’s shoulder, which was hard as a rock. ‘The kids. Elaine Rocka. They need to know he wasn’t a loser.’
Bwana’s voice rumbled in the vehicle. ‘They will. We would’ve been proud to know him.’
‘What’ve you done with them?’ she asked after a long time.
‘They’re alive, but Broker came up with a unique disposal system,’ Roger deadpanned, lightening their mood.
She looked curiously at him and turned to Broker.
‘Eric’s taking them.’
‘To Oborski.’
Chapter 38
‘Five of them, hundreds of us, and look where we are,’ the speaker said softly. He didn’t need to raise his voice, not when he was Agon Scheafer. Scheafer’s hawk eyes surveyed the four of them seated in front of him around a small conference table in the dim lighting of a hotel room.
The room had hitters outside the doors, in the corridor, and a few of them in the lobby, looking just like hitters should, reinforcing the message to guests and onlookers that the hotel wasn’t a place they should spend too much time in.
A fifth chair was empty, which Cruz would have occupied. Cruz had dropped off the grid for more than a day. The last they knew was him heading to New Jersey for a deal. And then silence.
The gang had scoured all parts of Gloucester City and within a radius of a hundred miles, but had come up empty-handed. The New York chapters had banged doors, knocked heads, and hadn’t had any success either.
‘Is HE worth all this?’ Hamm ventured, choosing his words carefully. He had seen Scheafer disembowel another chapter head in front of them and sip delicately on a glass of claret as the man died.
The full force of those eyes turned on him. ‘That’s not for discussion. You haven’t answered me. How have five people done this to us?’
Hamm had once been in a firefight with three SWAT agents and, after running out of ammunition, had taken them on with just a blade. He had come out on top. Just. His entrails tied back in with his shirt, he had walked a mile to the nearest residence, killed the occupants, and had called for help.
Feeling that gaze on him, he preferred taking on that SWAT team again than sitting in that room, answering to Scheafer.
‘Our size doesn’t count for much when you consider their abilities and that they’re always on the move. They attack directly, and our men aren’t used to that. They’re used to cops crashing down doors, other gangs picking them off at night, but these guys attack swiftly, in the open, disappear before
our guys have woken up, and when they do, they’re dead or dying. They use lures and decoys, and our guys get sucked in. We tried taking them down at our sites, but they attacked us so fast and so unexpectedly that they got away.’
‘All I’m hearing are excuses. You know how I view failure.’ Scheafer looked intently at each one of them. ‘We’ve recruited guys with military experience. These tactics shouldn’t be a surprise to them.’
Kelleher, Sancada, and Morales fidgeted in their seats but kept quiet, happy for Hamm to take the heat and continue talking for them now that he had the ball. In any case, their chapters hadn’t been hit so far.
‘Their military experience doesn’t count,’ Hamm said, biting back the for jack shit that nearly slipped out of his mouth. ‘Except a few, including us, none have served more than two years, and they were the worst soldiers. Against other gangbangers, their experience counts, not against these guys. These guys… you blink and you’re dead. You don’t blink, that’s because you’re already dead.’
He considered his words for a moment. ‘I warned you this might happen, many years back.’
‘You seem to be full of admiration for them.’ The hawk eyes burned, sighting prey.
‘They’ve ruined my chapter, brought heat on me, made a fool out of me,’ Hamm replied savagely. ‘I want to rip their hearts out and drink their blood. Admire them? Fuck no. But I have respect for them.’
The eyes didn’t move, staring at him, and he wondered if those were the last words he’d utter.
‘We should go nuclear, but there’s a risk,’ Hamm suggested cautiously. If he had to die, at least it would be after having his say.
‘Speak.’
Hamm outlined his plan, and they considered it silently. Scheafer looked at it from different angles and then finally nodded.
‘Set it up. I shall warn our friend.’
As they were leaving, Scheafer said in a silky voice, ‘I hope, for your sake, this plan works. If it doesn’t…’
He didn’t have to complete his sentence. They all knew the price of failure was death, and not an easy one. Scheafer had many ways to cause a slow, painful death and enjoyed inflicting them.
‘We’ll hit Hamm’s garage again; it’s reopened now,’ Broker announced.
Chloe looked at him skeptically. ‘Won’t they be sorta expecting that? For us to retaliate for taking me.’
‘Yup, and that’s why we won’t hit immediately. We’ll wait a week. Let them stew.’
They were back at their base, relieving Pieter and Derek, Rocka and the kids able to have some kind of normal life as the kids had started going to a nearby school. Broker had thought about moving base again, but this house was so well located that the benefits outweighed the risks. They had decided that the five of them would spend the least time in the house. Tony, when he was ready, Eric, Pieter and Derek would provide protection for the family.
Broker made another announcement, more triumphantly. ‘My boy’s come up with something more.’
They looked at him, puzzled. Broker scowled back at them. ‘You think Werner doesn’t have feelings just like us? It responds to motivation just like us.’
Bwana whispered, ‘Next he’ll be feeding spinach to the computer.’
‘I heard that.’ Broker waggled a finger at him.
‘You were saying something.’ Roger brought him back to the subject. Broker could go on for hours extolling the virtues of Werner, giving it human traits, if he was allowed free rein.
‘Floyd Wheat changed a pattern about three years back. He started going to a café on the way back from his station.’
He paused, waiting for them to congratulate him. He got astonishment.
‘That’s fucking it?’ Bear, normally not given to swearing, asked him.
Roger rolled his eyes, and Bwana went further. He threw his hands up and mentioned something about a straitjacket.
Broker sighed. ‘How can I expect you guys to connect dots the way I do. Any change in pattern is what we look for since that could be a clue to something that’s a life change, a motivation change, a behavioral change.’
‘We get that, Broker.’ Chloe played peacekeeper. ‘Hard as it might be for you to believe, we are able to think for ourselves.’ Chloe defending a couple of Mensa members.
‘But this is so insignificant… it means nothing. He could’ve just liked the look of a barista there… you mentioned he was divorced and single. I remember I used to frequent one, back in the day, because the server had a nice smile. Just as I was nerving myself to ask her out, I got deployed. Maybe he liked their brew. There’s no way of extrapolating a coffee-drinking habit into a mole’s activities,’ Bear rumbled.
Broker, his arms crossed across his chest, sat back and listened to them protest. When all of them had their say, he waited another beat. ‘You guys done quibbling? Well, hear this…’
He stopped when Bwana raised a hand. The sight of the six-foot-plus hulk behaving as if he was back in school made him smile. He erased it, got in the groove, and pointed at Bwana. ‘Yes, boy?’
‘You got that because he used a charge card, right? Or a credit card, at that café.’
‘Yes, boy, and before you go further, Wheat used plastic everywhere. Newsagent, McDonald’s, cafés, grocery stores, home furnishing, car… wherever he had to spend, the card came out. He always used cards right from since when time began.’
Bwana deflated and gestured at him to carry on.
‘Thank you, boy. Now what I was going to tell you before you questioned my deduction was that all those transactions are within a day or two of the bad busts the FBI was involved in. All of them.’
He smirked as they fell silent. ‘Still doubting me? Here’s another. He went to that café only when there was a bust coming up.’
‘That still isn’t conclusive, Broker,’ Chloe protested, though with less steam.
‘Agreed, and Isakson will want to have everything covered before he can make a move, all the I’s dotted and the T’s crossed and all that. Now I’m speculating here, but I think the café was either a meeting place or some kind of dead drop. For all we know he could have used the disposable cup to write a message that got picked up later.
‘I’m more inclined to think it was a dead drop,’ Broker said after a pause.
Bear caught on. ‘Because if he had met anyone, then Isakson would have known. He had all these guys shadowed for a long while.’
‘So, we check out the café and ask them if they remember his habits? If he was a regular over three years, chances are he’ll be remembered,’ Roger added.
‘Exactement,’ Broker beamed.
He brought up a map of the city and pointed out the café’s address. ‘Just off Hell’s Kitchen. I have no idea if that’s significant, but let’s assume it’s not and was on his way home. He’s renting in the Upper West Side and drives a rather noticeable Camaro, purple in color with afterburners and vanity plates.’ He recited the number.
‘The café might, just might, have CCTV cameras inside and outside,’ Bwana mused.
‘Yeah. I knew my brains would eventually rub off on you guys.’
He produced postcard-sized photographs of Wheat, different angles, and handed them over to Bwana, who passed them onward.
They drew straws on who would go to the café, and it fell to Bwana and Roger.
They took the same Escalade again, which now featured new number plates and sporty white streaks running down the doors on both sides. Makes it a different car, Broker had commented when he tossed the keys to them.
They set out in the evening, Batman time, bright light and golden hue in the city, and finally their luck ran out on Ninth Avenue, the law of averages working for the gang.
At the Garment District, the traffic had slowed due to a bottleneck created by a police cruiser stopping another car, lanes narrowing to two, their ride in the outer lane. They passed the slower-moving vehicles on the left, Bwana rolling down the window on the passenger side to get a bet
ter look at the offending vehicle.
They passed a rusted brown Ford, its windows down, driver and passenger nodding their heads as they talked with each other. Roger overtook them slowly, and it was the sudden double take of the driver at Bwana that registered on him through the corner of his eye. He raised the tinted window and tracked them through the mirror, saw the passenger pointing at them, the driver slapping his hand down, talking furiously.
The Ford slipped in their lane, a car behind, and matched their pace.
‘Rog,’ Bwana warned him, Roger needing no warning. He had noted Bwana’s stillness and had caught the car in his mirror.
‘Nix the café. Let’s give them a tour of the city and see if they have any more friends.’
He swung left at the next set of lights and headed to West End Avenue, and the wheels behind followed them, making no effort at concealing themselves. Half an hour of weaving in and out of traffic, sudden turns and using trucks and buses as cover, luck was still evading them.
‘They’ve been on the phone,’ Bwana said, pulling out his phone and donning his headset and mic.
‘Maybe they’ve ordered pizza.’
Bwana punched a number. ‘Broker?’
Broker responded immediately, ‘What’s up?’ and listened without interruption. They could hear him punching keys, bringing their trackers up on a real-time map.
‘You need backup?’
‘Nope,’ drawled Bwana, ‘we’ll see what happens, but you just might want to leave that place and find other digs.’
Broker was silent, knowing what Bwana meant. If they were captured, the gang could find out where they were holed up.
‘We’ll be out in half an hour. I’ll get Rolando to get a couple of cruisers to run interference, but you guys… give them the slip and get away. If they get more hitters, you’ll be in a tough place.’
Roger nodded, accelerated, looked in his mirror, and saw the Ford had disappeared. It appeared in the corner of his eye and overtook them slowly. The hitter closest to them was staring at them, his fingers made into a gun aimed at them.