Never Go Alone

by Denison Hatch

  “Here a lot?”

  “My favorite place. Favorite girl, too . . .” The old man yelled, “Right, Nikki!”

  “In your dreams, Pastor!”

  “You’re a pastor?” Castle asked the man.

  “Without a congregation. But I still write my sermons,” the man gestured to the work in front of him.

  “You ever seen a guy named Jake Easton here? He’s a thinner guy. Skinnier than me. Wears leather. Blond hair, like a vampire?”

  The pastor pondered Castle’s question. “I dunno . . . Maybe. Now that you mention it, I think I have, in fact.”

  “What’s that guy do?” Castle asked.

  “What’s he do?” the pastor started to cackle, which turned into a cough. He took a sip of beer, calming his throat. He followed that up with a puff from his cigarette, which only exacerbated the situation.

  Castle waited patiently until the man had regained control of himself.

  “What’s he do? He drinks!” the pastor said. He began laughing again.

  “You know who I’m talking about?” Castle asked.

  “John. Yeah. John!”

  Castle sighed as Nikki approached him with the beer in hand.

  “Why do you want to know about Jake?” Nikki asked.

  “You know him?” Castle said.

  “What’s it to you?”

  “I just want to know what he’s about. He’s been rolling with one of my friends lately.”

  “That girl?” Nikki said.

  “Mona.”

  “I don’t know . . .” Nikki shook her head

  “Her name’s Mona. I just want to make sure he’s the real deal. Not going to mess her life up.”

  “If you care about that girl, you’re real lucky you came here.” Nikki smiled coyly. “’Cause I can guarantee you he’ll turn her heart to mush. Then right when she’s in the palm of his hand, he’ll close it and crush her.”

  “He have a job?” Castle asked.

  “Don’t think so. Not a real one anyway. He was rolling with a bunch of bikers that were slingin’ out of this place called Fireblade. That’s all I know. He likes to sing.”

  “Sing?”

  “Yeah. He’s in a band. What’s up with the questions?”

  “I’m just lookin’ out for my girl.”

  “So they’re dating?” Nikki asked.

  “I wouldn’t call it that,” Castle said.

  “I don’t think that he’d be thrilled I’m talking to you. Jake’s a . . . He keeps to himself,” she said. “That’s . . .” she trailed off.

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Listen, Mona and I go way back. She never picks the right ones. So if this cat does anything you don’t like? You think she should know about it? Call me, babe,” Castle said as he stood up from the bar. He’d only taken a tiny sip of the Coors. He slipped a piece of paper with his cell phone number across the bar.

  “Funny way to give a girl your number.”

  “Text me—anytime,” Castle said with a grin.

  “Don’t bet on it, bucko,” Nikki replied. But she swiped the paper anyway and jammed it into her hip pocket.

  FOURTEEN

  EMANUEL VIPA PREFERRED VIDEO GAMES over babes. Although a couple of well-dressed ladies sat in the back of Vipa’s living room, he was focused on digital murder. He and his buddies were playing Call of Duty on a massive screen at the end of the room. This was a party if you wanted to call it that. But in reality, it was a few male Homo sapiens sipping on medication-enhanced juice and glued to the giant rock in front of them, while their ladies sat in the back of the room on their phones.

  “This dude’s gotta be using cheat codes!” Vipa’s buddy, Sammy, yelled at their digital opponent across the globe.

  “You are such a pussy,” Emanuel laughed, “I guarantee you homie’s a twelve-year-old kid with his eyes closed and he’s still crushing you, bro.” After his character died in a bloody flux of pixels, Emanuel put aside the controller. He picked up a huge bong, sparked a lighter, and hit it as hard as he could. A huge plume of smoke erupted from Emanuel’s mouth. He giggled. He was quite stoned. There was nothing more pleasurable to Emanuel than a sudden burst of tetrahydrocannabinol directly into his brainstem. It also had the added effect of making the 4K resolution of his television screen particularly vibrant. Of course, deep down inside he knew that Valeria might be pissed later tonight when he couldn’t get it up. The drug made his video games better and his sex life worse. But there was a time and place for them both, and he was celebrating tonight. She’d stick around. Because underneath the bong, there was a huge stack of cash sitting on the coffee table. The easiest money Emanuel had ever made. And his new friends were more than willing to pay for what seemed like no work at all. It made Emanuel feel good. He wasn’t a thug, he was an information worker now. He was working his way up the food chain, shoulder to shoulder with big hitters. Heavies—like he’d always wanted to be. No. Like he could be. Like he was.

  ▪

  Electronic wavelengths zipped and ricocheted through the ether surrounding Emanuel’s apartment. Somewhere between the Wi-Fi, cell phone, radio and infinite other frequencies on the spectrum, close attention was being paid to Vipa. The watchers were police officers, and they were stuffed like sardines into a cable van across the street.

  Inside the vehicle, a flatscreen flickered as it displayed a heat-sensing “FLIR” system. The forward-looking infrared radiometer screen portrayed a mirror image of what was occurring in Emanuel’s apartment, but displayed as a heat map. Bodies burned the brightest red, and the corners of the room faded from green to blue. Tony Villalon sat on the chair closest to the monitor, his elbows leaning against the counter in front of the unit. His wrists ached. He’d been listening to the banal conversation of Emanuel and his crew for the last three hours—the sound ferried into the van through another contraption, a volume-penetrating mic system the CIA had recently unloaded on them. Vipa, Sammy, and the others seemed to occupy a space somewhere between your average urban pothead and low-level drug dealer. But neither of those classifications deserved the utilization of an advanced rig like the cops were rocking.

  Jake sat behind Tony, paying slightly less attention. While he listened to Emanuel’s conversation filtering through the cheap speakers on each side of the FLIR monitor, he also had a headphone earbud in one ear. He was surreptitiously vibing to the mastered cut of “Out of the Mist.” He liked what he heard a helluva lot. Music had always drowned out reality for Jake. He used to muffle the loud diatribes of his father, but now he was avoiding the cynical cacklings of lowlives. The application was different but the effect identical. It was utterly cathartic.

  Next to Jake were two more undercover agents who worked out of the safe house in New Rochelle: Markle and Fonger. Markle was a compact, 0-percent-body-fat warrior from Texas who spent all his off-time watching reality television. He was on loan from SWAT and had worked with Jake many times in the past—one of the most intelligent and kinetic operators in the department, bar none. No one called Dennis Fong by his first name, if they even remembered it. He was a big guy with a past in the special forces who for all intents and purpose should have been a bruiser like Markle. But Fong was actually a technical expert. He’d worked in Afghanistan but couldn’t talk about it. Nor could he tell you about his time in Libya, or Syria, or Yemen. He was held in particularly high regard by Tony and Susan because of his unflagging work ethic and dedication to the job. Ironically, given Fong’s refrigerator-like build, he was as stealthy as a mouse and could be counted on to break through a window or drop himself down an air-conditioning vent in pursuit of an ethernet router, with more proficiency than practically anyone else on the force. By this point in the night, even the zen-like Fong was getting antsy. It was cold in the van, and they weren’t able to run the engine. They had a small heater on the floor, but these four men had been stuck in a room the size of a closet for hours, and they were straight miserable.

&nbs
p; “I’m getting a lot of high school flashbacks right now,” Fong said.

  “You smoked weed?” Tony asked.

  “Yeah, till my Mom found out and I went out and drove around the park and smashed my bowl into a million pieces and sent myself to the military.”

  “For real?” Jake asked.

  Fong nodded. “I felt guilty.”

  “So you joined the military because you felt guilty about smoking weed? That’s a pretty big swing the other direction . . .”

  “Still feel the guilt?” Markle added.

  “Nah. Now I’m just waiting till I don’t work for the government,” Fong grinned. “I do want to bust this punk and get it over with, though.”

  “I just don’t see it,” Jake said, shaking his head.

  “What do you mean?” Tony said.

  “Maybe Vipa’s the type of guy who’d want to do a primo heist. But come on,” Jake gestured to the screens. “These bozos don’t have the chops for that.”

  “That’s not a good enough hunch for me. You said he’s got a gun. He’s a hothead, and he’s shown aggressive tendencies in the past. He’s considered a talented explorer. He’s either our guy or he’s part of the puzzle,” Tony announced.

  “It’s really a grand irony, isn’t it? This dorknut. Breaking New York State laws. But because they’re not bad enough laws, I get to sit here and watch my skin crack,” Jake said.

  Tony shrugged. “All of us are on Vipa now. That means you too, Jake. This man,” Tony leaned back and pointed to the FLIR machine, “is our primary target.”

  “Retarded,” Jake said.

  “And if you’re cold? Smoking heats the body up.” Tony pulled a blue e-cigarette vape from his pocket. “Tell me if the smell bothers you. It shouldn’t. It’s raspberry. Uses oil droplets—or something. Whatever. It said on the back of the box that it’s much safer than cigs. Johnathan still hasn’t figured out where the smell comes from, which is also nice.”

  Fonger patted Tony on the back. “You’re my type of man, Tony.”

  “Don’t know if you mean that exactly,” Jake grinned.

  “I like people who do what they want . . . and just don’t talk about it.”

  “Me too,” Jake replied.

  ▪

  Fifteen miles south, blue and gray glass spilled down the side of the SoHo Modern building like an undulating river. The exactingly perfect building was one of the phalanxes of nouveau architectural projects that had sprung up in the city post-recession. It was an artistic movement that didn’t even have a proper name yet. With the fall of the financial titans, the modernist and postmodernist styles which had dominated the city from the sixties until the early two thousands had fallen out of style. What emerged from the rubble was just as 2.0 as everything else; it was completely computer powered and idealistic and utterly individualistic. Frank Gehry personified the new wave of architecture, but even he was a senior within the new realm. The SoHo Modern could never have been erected ten years earlier, because disruption had not occurred. It was disruption that had created the numerous new material compounds necessary for a building like the Modern to go up. But now that the Modern was a few years old, a few hundred other projects like it were emerging. They were slick. They looked like a dream. The glass bent, the metal warped, and yet the whole thing stood like bedrock. The Modern wasn’t for the public. It was a boutique residence with forty ultra-expensive units. The cheapest apartment in the building was a one-bedroom that recently traded for north of three million dollars. The most expensive? Who knows? New records were being set every day.

  ▪

  Across the street from the SoHo Modern, a night watchman switched the lights off inside a bank’s office building. He was about to leave when he stared across the street and towards the shaded glass of the Modern. He had noticed a Sprinter utility van stopped in an alleyway next to the Modern a few minutes earlier. As he gazed out the window, it was still there. Now the back doors were open. Three men jumped out of the van. But none of that was what stopped the night watchman in his tracks. It was what they had in their hands. Each man was holding a long ladder—with large hooks welded to the ends. Their tops curving around, the ladders now resembled giant fishhooks.

  “What the . . .” the watchman muttered under his breath. It wasn’t his job to protect the building across the street—only to admire it. But he reached for a phone in any event. They were too close for comfort, and he’d heard some things in the news recently.

  ▪

  The first person in the crew leaned his ladder against a cement wall that supported the bottom of the Modern. The second man, still holding his own ladder, raced up the leaner. Once his feet were at the second-to-highest rung, the second man extended the ladder he was holding. He reached upwards and locked the J-hook of his ladder onto one of the rippling glass surfaces of the SoHo Modern’s façade above. The curved end of each J-hook had been wrapped with dense tape for grippage. Once the ladder was secured, the second man climbed it. He moved up the undulating side of the building and pulled himself onto a tiny ledge. He balanced then pulled the ladder up from below him. The man glanced to his side. About four feet right—and eight feet vertical—was another ripple in the surface of the building. The man took a deep breath, sidestepped, and careened into blank space. Holding his ladder like an extension of his own arms, the man flew laterally and latched the J-hooks onto the ridge above him. He slowly moved up the side of the building; hooking the ladder, climbing, pulling it up, and repeating. Below him, the first and third men followed his lead with this “salmon ladder” move, like contestants on American Ninja Warrior. Within a minute, the three dark figures were forty feet in the air and ascending quickly.

  ▪

  Back inside the bank, the night watchman’s jaw was open. Dumbfounded, he finally came to his senses. The office phone was in his hands. He quickly dialed 9-1-1. Those weren’t residents—that much was clear. They were robbers.

  ▪

  Jake Rivett was still stuck in the back of the van—running surveillance on Emanuel. Vipa hadn’t moved off the couch for the last two hours except to take a bathroom break and gesture for beers from one of the girls.

  Tony sucked instinctively on his e-cigarette, which no longer lit blue. After many hours of constant use, it was out of charge. But that didn’t stop him. Like chomping on a cigar, he would do anything for the hit. The FLIR radar inside their van displayed the same image it had for hours: Emanuel and his buddies crowded around the television. Just another Friday evening. Then Tony noticed his phone vibrating on a small ledge in front of the monitors. The name: Susan. Tony tapped speaker.

  “What the hell are you doing? A crew of climbers are hitting a penthouse in SoHo as we speak!” Susan screamed.

  Tony didn’t even have to glance at Fonger—he was already on the move. Fong hopped out of the side of the van and raced around to the driver’s seat.

  A few seconds later, the previously sleepy cable van accelerated out of its parking spot like a bat out of hell.

  ▪

  The cavalry had already arrived. Two police cars and a SWAT truck were parked in front of the SoHo Modern as the surveillance van sped up to the entrance.

  ▪

  In the hallway outside the penthouse, SWAT prepared to breach entry. One member of the team crept towards the penthouse’s door and waved a keycard past a sensor embedded in the door. The lock mechanism disengaged, making a clunk inside the door. But when the point man tried the door’s handle, it wouldn’t budge.

  “We sure about this?” Jake asked as he joined the back of the column of assault team members.

  “Silent alarm was triggered five minutes ago,” Markle replied. “Van’s still in the loading zone. There’s a window that got jacked open with some sort of hydraulic up on this level, and last report from a security guard across the street had them entering the penthouse.”

  A hulking SWAT member ran alongside the column of specialists, holding a steel doorbuster. He swung th
e battering ram towards the penthouse door with all his might, crashing through the handle with one blow. The doorjamb splintered. After another two violent thrusts into the door, the door suddenly swung open. SWAT burst into the penthouse, checking angles and screaming loudly. As they canvassed the apartment, all was still. No one was there.

  Jake followed behind, his gun at attention. He took in the apartment’s posh surroundings. It had the uniformly exquisite look of the alien class. At this price point, it didn’t matter where in the world you were—everything looked the same. The residence dripped with money. The walls were adorned with velour-textured damask wallpaper, and crystal chandeliers tumbled from the ceilings of every room. The colors were never too obvious or in your face. They were calming, like the interior of a spa, accented with modern art and silver tables and floor-to-ceiling glass and white marbled walls.

  Jake padded through the kitchen. He admired the multiple sinks, the waterspout above the massive Viking stove, and the glass skylight above. But nothing seemed amiss. As he worked his way into the master bedroom, Jake carefully checked windows. These windows weren’t supposed to open, but he had noticed a draft drifting throughout the unit. He couldn’t find its source.

  Jake bounded into the walk-in closet aside the master. A jewelry case was open, along with desk drawers. The pieces were all in disarray. At the bottom of the jewelry island, a cabinet door had been ripped off its hinges. It looked like something large had been removed. Jake scanned. His eyes were instantly drawn to the lone window in the closet. One corner of the molding was splintered. The window had been shattered—levered open. He peered around the edges of the opening. Then his foot tapped something lightly. Jake looked down.

  A yellow tennis ball rolled on the ground—a rope had been secured through a hole in the tennis ball. The rope was sheared. Jake took in the window again. His vision was complicated by the reflective sheen of the glass surface dancing off the city lights. They weren’t in here. They were out there. Jake pushed his head through the opening.