by Tim Stevens
OMEGA DOG
Tim Stevens
Copyright 2013, Tim Stevens
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License Notes
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Cover by Jane Dixon-Smith at JD Smith Design
OMEGA DOG
Chapter 1
Joe Venn caught the eye of the man across the bar, and knew with weary resignation that the evening was going to end in a fight.
Every bar in every country he’d ever visited was the same. There was always at least one guy there who’d arrived looking to work up a hate after a couple of drinks. Venn had supped in Sarajevo and San Francisco, in Naples and right here in New York City, and guys like this appeared on cue.
Maybe they’re the one thing that unites the cultures of the world, Venn thought.
It was a profoundly depressing notion.
The guy across the bar was a slab of raw beef with a nose like a potato and ears like cauliflowers. A walking dinner. Maybe he bled gravy.
Venn had a feeling he was soon going to find out.
Venn had caught the guy’s eye for the first time when he’d been sweeping his gaze casually across the bar, the way you do when you’re sitting alone and enjoying a drink but not burying your head in a book or morosely contemplating your crappy life.
Both of which Venn had done recently, but not tonight.
The second time they’d made eye contact, again purely by accident on Venn’s part, the guy had twisted his features into incredulity, and raised his palms skyward in a What the hell? gesture. Venn looked away, but the die was cast. He could feel the aggression radiating off the man.
Well, he might as well enjoy his drink first.
Venn took a couple of swallows from the long-necked bottle of Corona. It was his third, and he’d chased the first and second with a shot each of Jim Beam. Not enough to render him roaring drunk, but he wasn’t exactly stone-cold sober either.
Never mind. He might not be able to throw a punch quite so accurately, but he’d feel the pain less acutely when the other guy hit him.
The man across the bar was already clambering down off his stool. Venn watched him as he lumbered unsteadily up one side of the horseshoe-shaped counter. The guy really was a big bastard, maybe six five, maybe two hundred and sixty pounds. Not all of it gut. Venn was a big man too, but this ape had two inches and fifty pounds on him.
The guy jostled plenty of other drinkers on his way round the bar. Several of them were too drunk to notice. One or two whirled in outrage, ready to retaliate, but took a look at him and thought better of it.
Venn stepped down from his barstool as the guy approached. He thought sadly of how he’d have handled the situation just eighteen months ago. One flash of his shield and the guy would have backed off, unless he was nuts. Nobody in their right mind tried to beat up on a cop in a public bar.
But that was a year and a half ago, when Venn actually carried a badge.
The guy stopped a few feet away from Venn and glared at him, his head lowered. Close up, his lips looked like strips of wet liver, his little eyes like cranberries.
‘Smatter, muhfuh?’ he slurred. ‘Yuh gotta prollem wimme?’
‘No problem,’ said Venn. ‘How about I buy you a drink?’
The look of outraged astonishment on the man’s face was comical. ‘You cummin onduhme? You a fag?’
Oh boy.
From the corner of his eye, Venn saw Gary, the bartender, hurrying over. He glanced across, saw Gary’s worried expression, and shook his head, pointing with his thumb to the door.
To the slab of meat in front of him, Venn said: ‘How about we step outside and discuss our differences like gentlemen.’
Without waiting for a reply he strode to the door, aware of several pairs of eyes on him. Venn wasn’t worried about getting cold-cocked from behind. The guy wouldn’t move fast enough for that.
The bar was on Bleecker Street, one of many in this part of the Village. It was a Tuesday night, a little before seven thirty, after the restaurants had opened for their evening sittings but too soon for people to be leaving. Although the street was busy, it wasn’t bustling like it would later.
Venn turned right, then right again down an alleyway that ran alongside the bar. He pressed himself back into a service doorway set in the wall of the alleyway, and waited. He was wearing a black leather jacket, sweater and jeans. He slipped his right hand into his hip pocket and found a handful of change there, mostly quarters. Deftly he arranged the coins into a roll and curled his fingers round them.
After thirty seconds, and just as Venn was beginning to think the guy had stomped off in the other direction, his bulk appeared at the mouth of the alley. He peered down, his tiny eyes glittering in the light from the streetlamps. Then he stepped into the alley and began to pick his way gracelessly among the beercans and bricks strewn along its length.
Venn waited till the guy drew alongside, then stepped out of the doorway and hit him in the side of the head, hard, with the fist full of coins. The man staggered but didn’t go down, swiveling his head and staring stupidly at Venn. Venn swung his knee up and around in a half-kick that ended in the man’s fat belly, doubling him over with a noise like a whale’s mating call. Venn brought his clasped hands down on the back of the guy’s thick neck and he crashed to the ground.
Venn stood over him, watching, listening. The man gave a hoarse groan, tried to lift his head, then slumped flat, the breath snuffling through his rubbery lips.
And that was it.
Surprised, mildly disappointed, even, that the guy hadn’t put up more of a fight, Venn rubbed his sore knuckles and stepped over the snoring bulk, heading back up to the street. He didn’t feel like going back into the bar. In fact, he didn’t feel like visiting another one, either.
New York City at his feet, and Joe Venn decided to go home.
Home was a fifth-floor apartment in the East Village, which Venn reached on foot. Out of habit, he had put a triple lock on the door, even though he didn’t have much worth stealing. He hadn’t bothered securing the windows.
Venn had moved into the apartment six months earlier, when he’d come to New York from Chicago. Just before he’d set up as a private investigator, and just after he’d left the force.
Who was he kidding?
Just after he’d gotten kicked off the force.
Venn sank into a threadbare old armchair, one which like all the furniture in the apartment he’d bought at various sales around the Village, and flipped on the TV. He surfed channels listlessly, wondering whether to have another drink. No. What was the point? He’d feel no better, and would just end up hungover and in a shitty mood in the morning.
Venn worked from home. He advertised his PI service in various outlets, including Time Out and the Village Voice, and prospective clients called him on his cell. He met them in coffee shops, in bars, in parks. One day, after the business had started to take off, he’d spring for an office of his own.
But it hadn’t taken off yet, and he was living off his police payout. Which wasn’t exactly generous, and wasn’t going to last forever.
He glanced around the apartment. Apart from a pair of handcuffs hanging on a nail on the wall, and an orthopedic walking crutch he’d had to use for a few weeks after getting shot in the foot while trying to stop a robbery – both of which items he’d kept as souvenirs – there was little to remind him of his days on the force. Little visible, that is.
But there were plenty of memories...
The booze he’d consumed must have gotten to him, because when Venn jerked awake the clock on t
he wall said it was nine o’clock. He’d dozed for an hour. He sprang out of the chair at a crouch, the adrenalin singing through him, every sinew taut. Combat ready.
After a few seconds the hammering at the door, which is what had woken him up, began again.
‘Open up,’ came a voice from the other side. ‘Police.’
Venn strode over to the door and peered through the fish-eye. Yes, it was the cops. A whole bunch of them.
He unbolted the door and turned the keys in quick succession, opening up and stepping back. He spread his hands to show he was no threat. Even so, the uniforms surged into the room, surrounding him. Four of them, and two men in plainclothes.
‘Joseph Venn?’ said one of the plainclothes guys.
‘Yeah.’
‘You’re under arrest.’
As the uniforms moved swiftly in, pulling Venn’s arms behind his back to cuff him, the detective began to read him his rights. Venn interrupted him. ‘What’s the charge?’
The detective said: ‘Murder.’
Chapter2
They took Venn not to the local precinct house as he’d been expecting, but to a Midtown station off Third Avenue. He rode between two cops on the backseat of the squad car, one of the detectives up front, the other following. Nobody said a word on the journey, except for the police dispatcher whose tinny voice came in blurts of static over the radio.
At the station he was fingerprinted, searched, and dumped in a room on his own. The only furniture was a scarred wooden table and two chairs on either side of it, bolted to the floor. Venn stayed standing.
He had no idea what was going on. Clearly there’d been some error, an instance of mistaken identity.
After a couple of minutes the door opened and a man came in. He wasn’t one of the detectives from earlier, though he was in plainclothes. He didn’t even look like a cop. Of medium height, rake-thin, and smoothly bald despite his age – he couldn’t have been older than his middle forties, Venn guessed – he resembled a slightly more human version of the actor Klaus Kinski in the Nosferatu remake. He wore a rollneck jumper under a suit jacket.
‘Mr Venn,’ he said. His voice was surprisingly deep for such a slight body, a rumbling bass. ‘My name is Corcoran.’
He didn’t offer his hand, but indicated a chair. Venn sat, and the other man did likewise opposite him.
On one wall was a mirror, which of course was one-way. Venn had watched interrogations through such glass countless times when he’d been on the force. He knew there’d be a host of cops on the other side, keeping an eye on him. Still, he was surprised that this Corcoran guy had come in alone. Especially if Venn was being accused of murder.
Corcoran sat back in his chair, perfectly straight, his hands flat on the tabletop in front of him. With water-pale eyes he watched Venn, who returned his gaze.
‘You’re wondering what’s happened to the usual process,’ said Corcoran.
Venn said nothing.
‘Wondering why you haven’t been offered your phone call. Why your questioning seems to have begun before you’ve been given access to a lawyer.’
Venn remained silent. He glanced at the mirror on the wall to his right. Corcoran caught his look, nodded, and rose from his seat. Going over to the mirror, he flicked a switch in the wall beside it. Immediately the room beyond became visible, the mirror no longer a mirror but a window.
On the other side, the room was empty.
‘Nobody’s watching us,’ said Corcoran, sitting back down. ‘Nobody’s even listening in. The only security I have in place is a panic alarm, which I’m carrying on me. If you attack me, I’ll hit the button, and this room will be full of cops in five seconds. Apart from that, we’re completely alone. Just you and I.’
‘I didn’t murder anyone,’ said Venn.
‘Perhaps not,’ said Corcoran. ‘Perhaps a jury would accept manslaughter. Either way, it won’t look good for you. Especially with your track record.’
‘Manslaughter? But I haven’t killed anyone,’ said Venn.
Corcoran raised his thin eyebrows. ‘But you have, Mr Venn. His name is – was – Clarence Smith. And there’s a bar full of people who’ll testify that you and he stepped outside for a fight, just a couple of hours ago.’
Venn stared at the other man. ‘What?’
‘He was found in an alleyway down the side of Hogan’s Bar, on Bleecker, at seven forty-five this evening.’
‘I didn’t –’ Venn stopped abruptly.
‘Didn’t what?’ said Corcoran. ‘Didn’t hit him that hard? Yes, I’ve heard that one before. Drunken bar brawls that get out of hand.’
That was in fact exactly what Venn had been going to say. But it was true, nonetheless. The guy had been breathing, and loudly, when Venn walked away. And he’d been face down, so he wouldn’t have choked on his own puke.
‘Joseph Venn,’ said Corcoran, in a voice like he was reciting from memory. ‘Age thirty-six. Single, no dependants. Served in the US Marine Corps, 1996 through 2000. Saw action in Bosnia and Kosovo. Then followed in your father’s footsteps and joined the Chicago PD. Fast track to Detective, then all the way up to Lieutenant. Then, of course –’ he made a flicking movement with his fingers – ‘it all got blown away.’
Despite himself, Venn felt his anger rising. Damn it, would he always be this sensitive about it? Would he never be able to hear somebody talk of his dismissal from the force without feeling needled?
He clenched his fists. Although he held them beneath the table, out of sight, Corcoran seemed to sense his fury.
‘Little touchy there, Joe?’ There was the hint of a smile in his voice.
The familiar use of his name provoked Venn further. ‘I did my god damn job,’ he muttered. ‘And I did it well.’
Corcoran tilted his head. ‘So well, that the Chicago PD got hit with a record lawsuit. It nearly crippled them. They couldn’t hang on to you after that, Joe. Be reasonable.’
‘Who the hell are you?’ said Venn, fighting the urge to stand up and yank the guy out of his chair by his scrawny neck.
Corcoran held up both hands, palms down, in a placating gesture. Venn kept his seat, still seething.
‘You’re not a cop,’ said Venn.
‘No. You’re right. I’m not.’
‘So who are you?’ repeated Venn.
‘I’ll tell you in a minute. Promise.’ Corcoran stood, and began to pace, reciting again. ‘You were finally let go of, after almost a year’s suspension from the Chicago force. And you upped sticks and came here, to Manhattan, six months ago. You’re now sole proprietor of Diagram Consulting Services. A gumshoe. Your pre-tax profits for the financial year just ended were exactly one thousand, three hundred and sixty-nine dollars, and thirty cents.
‘You were the alpha dog. A decorated Marine, a detective lieutenant in one of the biggest and most respected police forces in the United States. And now you’re reduced to this. You’re no longer the alpha dog, Joe. You’re the bottom of the pile. The omega dog.’
‘Wait a minute.’ Again Venn battled with an impulse to stand, one he didn’t give in to. He still wasn’t convinced the cops weren’t watching. ‘How do you know what I earned? All of that other stuff you could have gotten from my police records. Not my earnings.’
Corcoran nodded, as if it was a fair point. He continued to pace back and forth as he spoke. ‘I work for an organization, Mr Venn – may I call you Joe?’
‘Mr Venn’s just fine.’
‘An organization that has access to the IRS records of anybody it’s interested in. Their health records, too. Their third grade school reports, if necessary.’
‘You’re a spook, then? CIA?’
Corcoran appeared to be laughing silently, though his face remained impassive. ‘Something like that. Anyhow. Your income for the past year was less than fifteen hundred dollars. Hardly a fortune. And I know how much of a payout you got when the Chicago PD cut you loose. That wasn’t exactly an earth-shattering amount, either. In fact, unl
ess your private eye business sees major progress in the coming year, you’re likely to be out on the streets.’
Venn glared at the skeletal, smooth-pated apparition stalking up and down before him. Where in God’s name was all this heading?
Corcoran went on: ‘So. You spend your evenings in bars, drowning your sorrows. Getting into fights, to release some of that pent-up frustration, that bitterness you’ve been harboring toward the world. One night – tonight – things get out of hand. You end up breaking some fellow barfly’s neck down a dark alleyway.’
‘Just a minute.’ And this time Venn did get up. Corcoran stopped pacing, but didn’t flinch, just watched him. ‘I didn’t break his neck. That I know for sure.’
‘Really.’
‘Yeah.’ Venn drew a deep breath. ‘I socked him upside his head with a fistful of quarters, kneed him in the gut, and bashed him over the back of the head for good measure. But I didn’t break his neck. He was still breathing when I left him. I know how to break a man’s neck. If I’d wanted to, I would’ve. I didn’t, so I didn’t.’
Corcoran gazed at him in silence, his pale eyes betraying nothing. Then he took out a cell phone and murmured some thing into it.
A moment later the door opened and another guy in plainclothes came in with a buff envelope. He handed it to Corcoran and left. Corcoran opened one end and pulled out a sheaf of glossy photographs. He handed them across the desk to Venn.
Venn took them and shuffled through them. They were black-and-white crime scene shots, of the kind he’d seen countless times as a detective. Venn recognized the background as the alleyway he’d been in a few hours ago, with its beer cans and fried chicken bones and rubble.
He also recognized the man lying on his back, his ugly mug that of the guy from the bar. His neck was bent unnaturally backwards and sideways, and his open eyes had the dull glaze of death.
Venn had left the guy face-down. Yet here he was, on his back.
And Venn knew he’d been set up.
He dropped the sheaf of glossies on the table, sending them fanning across the scarred surface. Slowly he raised his eyes to Corcoran’s.