by Allen Steele
Brooks’s eyes had wandered to an invisible object above and to the left of Bigthorn’s head. Perhaps he was checking Bigthorn’s file. He blinked and turned his attention back to the sheriff. Well, your guess is correct. The Bureau is concerned about a person we’ve confirmed is now aboard the colony, and we need your department’s cooperation in this matter. Another pause. This is a closed channel, isn’t it, Sheriff?
It was unless Blind Boy Grunt managed to unscramble the signal and was eavesdropping. Bigthorn decided not to bring that up, either. “Yes, it is. Go ahead.”
Okay, Brooks continued. The Organized Crime Division has been investigating for the past several years a mobster in St. Louis named Anthony Salvatore. Perhaps you’ve heard of him?
The name only vaguely registered with him. “Sort of,” Bigthorn admitted. “A big wheel in the Midwest. Wasn’t he under indictment from a federal grand jury?”
He was, in very much the past tense. For tax fraud, before his lawyers managed to swing an acquittal on legal technicalities. If you’ll consult your screen, please …
Bigthorn looked down at the screen embedded in his desk. Several photos were displayed of a lean, hawklike man in his late thirties or early forties. The photos looked as if they had been taken by hidden cameras: street scenes, party scenes, a picture of him in riding clothes on a country estate somewhere. As Bigthorn watched the montage blur across his screen, the FBI agent continued his briefing.
Tony Salvatore is the head of the Salvatore crime family, the largest underworld syndicate in the Midwest, one of the biggest in the U.S. Besides peripheral interests worldwide, which run from arms smuggling to the international software black market, the syndicate accounts for much of the criminal activity in St. Louis, Chicago, and Kansas City. Drugs, prostitution, gambling, counterfeiting, protection rackets … you name it, the Salvatore family has a controlling interest in it. Unfortunately, nobody … not us, not Interpol or the IRS … has been able to nail so much as a parking ticket on him. The money is laundered through legitimate offshore banking and real estate corporations, and they’re careful to use several cut-outs in every operation which keep the family from being directly connected to anything. For almost a decade the FBI has been trying to get something on him, but it wasn’t until a few days ago that we finally got a break. See that woman …?
The montage stopped with a photo of Tony Salvatore, in a black tuxedo, walking through the door of what appeared to be a swank restaurant. On his arm was a beautiful young woman in her twenties—brown hair piled high on her head, wearing a strapless gold lamé evening gown cut high on the thigh. Bigthorn raised his eyebrows. “I can’t help but notice,” he commented.
I’m glad your eyes are so sharp. Her name is Macedonia Westmoreland, Macy for short. She’s been Tony’s live-in girlfriend … his mistress, if you prefer … for about the past four years. From Massachusetts originally. Good Boston Brahmin family. Rather spoiled and reckless. She was a student at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, before she met Tony on the party circuit. Tony moved her into his compound, but she’s never really been part of his inner circle.
“Hmmm,” Bigthorn murmured. “At least you can’t say he’s got bad taste.”
Maybe, but our intelligence says that his appetite is a bit on the violent side. He’s into the rough stuff with her. When she’s not been with him, she’s been back at the Salvatore mansion recuperating from the last beating he gave her. That’s not a very happy person you see there.
The picture switched to a split-screen image. On the left was a close-up of Macy Westmoreland; on the right, a distant shot of a huge stone mansion half-hidden behind a brick wall. We’ve been keeping the Salvatore mansion under constant surveillance, as a matter of routine, for the last couple of years. Last Wednesday night, it paid off. One of the St. Louis field agents, Milo Suzuki, spotted Macy climbing over the wall while Tony was gone from the compound. She met a cab on the street which she had apparently called in advance, and Suzuki trailed her to the international airport. Obviously, the girl had gotten fed up with Tony’s sick shit and was making a break for it. Then …
“Let me guess the rest,” Bigthorn interrupted, looking up at Brooks. “She caught a shuttle to Matagorda Island, where she got on the TexSpace shuttle and came here. Now she’s in Clarke County. Right?”
Brooks nodded, but he hardly seemed pleased. Your intuition’s correct, but you’re getting a little ahead of yourself. We found this out the hard way, because Suzuki failed to report in after he reached St. Louis International. We discovered him later in a phone booth inside the airport, dead. At first it looked as if he had suffered a heart attack, but the autopsy revealed that he had been hit with a dart. Crime lab figures that he had been injected with a lethal biotoxin which stopped his heart. Also, though he had logged into the field office computer through the pay phone, his datapad was missing. Someone murdered him for that pad. I don’t think I have to tell you who did it.
Bigthorn shook his head. “So, I take it, you suspect that the Salvatores figured out where the girl was going, then killed your agent to get the info he had collected in his datapad.”
We were able to reconstruct her trail from following the paperwork she left behind her and by checking with TexSpace. She was on the shuttle in First Class, booked under the name of Mary Boston. It’s a good lead, but Tony’s people got a head start on us when they got Suzuki’s datapad, and it took us until today to verify her whereabouts. So while Macy Westmoreland is definitely in Clarke County, we’re not sure whether she’s safe there. There might have been enough time for the Salvatores to put somebody on that shuttle with her.
“To bring her back?”
Brooks’s face didn’t change. One of the reasons the Bureau hasn’t been able to get anything on Tony Salvatore is because people who defect from the family rarely live long enough to talk about it. If Macy Westmoreland ran away from Tony … and that seems to be the case … then Tony wants her dead before he wants her back.
Bigthorn took a deep breath. “Oh, shit.”
I couldn’t have put it better myself, Brooks agreed. On the other hand, the Bureau is vitally interested in making contact with her. She may be able to provide information which can help us break up the family and put Tony behind bars … maybe in the deep freeze, if we’re lucky. We’ve got an agent scheduled to arrive in three days on the next shuttle, but until then, we’ve got to have someone there to protect Westmoreland. Brooks pointed a finger towards him. Which is where you and your department come in, Sheriff.
“I figured as much,” Bigthorn replied. “Okay, I take it that you want me to put her in protective custody?”
Brooks hesitated. The opinion is split on that. If she’s being hunted by a Salvatore torpedo, that may be the best solution. On the other hand, she’s apparently frightened out of her wits. She may bolt if anyone approaches her, even you. You need to use your best judgment here, Sheriff. In the meantime, you’ve been deputized for the indefinite time being to act as a U. S. federal marshal. The usual paperwork will be faxed to you, of course.
The sheriff nodded again. He was familiar with the routine from federal collars he had made in the past. The difference between those instances and this one, of course, was considerable. Nabbing bail-jumpers and tax-evaders was one thing. Protecting a possible FBI informant was quite another.
“Let me try to make something clear, Sherman,” he said. “I’m a small-town cop, when it comes down to brass tacks. This is a small-town cop shop. We had trouble this morning just capturing a couple of stray goats from the livestock area. Our idea of a big bust is nailing a tricycle thief. This department has seven officers, including myself, and we’re only armed with nonlethal weapons. What makes you think we can do the FBI’s job?”
Brooks gazed back at him stoically. Do you have someone better in mind?
Bigthorn started to reply, but Brooks went on. There’s something else you need to know. If the Salvatore family did put a hit man on the shut
tle with Westmoreland, it could be any one of a number of their soldiers. However, one person in particular is a leading candidate. You want to check your screen again, please?
A blurred, enlarged photo of a big, middle-aged man had appeared on Bigthorn’s desktop screen. That’s Henry Ostrow. He works under a variety of aliases … rarely the same name twice … but in the Midwestern underworld he’s sometimes known as the Golem. He’s Jewish, incidentally, so his nickname is a reference to a creature from Hebrew mythology.…
“He has my sympathy,” Bigthorn commented. “I’ve got nickname trouble, too.”
You should take this guy a little more seriously, Sheriff. He’s suspected of being Tony’s main enforcer. Like Salvatore himself, we’ve never been able to peg anything solid on him, but he’s rumored to be the guy Tony picks for wet jobs which are … well, personal, for lack of a better term.
Bigthorn studied the picture. The photo looked as if it had been taken from an extreme distance as Ostrow was getting out of a car. His face was half-turned towards the camera. His eyes were hidden behind wraparound sunglasses, but the face looked hard and mean. “He looks like a really nice guy,” the sheriff said dryly.
He gets the job done, and he doesn’t get caught. No bullshit code of sportsmanship, either. The Golem’s style is efficiency. If he can kill someone by shooting them in the back from a distance, that’s the way he does it. Door bombs are another of his favorite means of assassination. We’re still trying to find out whether he made it on the shuttle, but we …
Brooks was saying something else, but suddenly Bigthorn was no longer paying attention to him. The photo of Henry Ostrow had disappeared from the desk screen, to be replaced by several lines of type:
HENRY OSTROW IS CECIL JACOBSON.
CECIL JACOBSON JUST CHECKED INTO HIS ROOM AT THE LAGRANGE HOTEL.
I DON’T THINK HE’S HERE ON VACATION.
—BLIND BOY GRUNT
“Oh, for crying out loud,” Bigthorn whispered. “How could he possibly know …?”
Excuse me, Sheriff? Brooks said.
Abruptly, the message vanished from the screen. Bigthorn looked up from his desk. “Ostrow is here,” he told Brooks. “He’s in Clarke County. His name is Cecil Jacobson.”
For the first time during their conversation, Brooks appeared nonplussed. He shook his head and held up his hands in confusion. What … how could you know …?
“A reliable source,” Bigthorn said quickly. Already his own shock was wearing off. He stood up and started to move from behind his desk. “We’ll be in touch, Brooks.”
Sheriff, wait! Brooks was half-rising from his own chair. The Golem is extremely dangerous. You can’t …
“I can when I’m in a hurry. Talk to you later.” Bigthorn stabbed a button on his desk which broke the connection, and Brooks disintegrated in a sparkling haze, leaving behind the blank corner of the holotank. Already the sheriff was out the door and in the outer office.
“Rollie!” he yelled. The officer jerked behind his computer terminal, spilling coffee into his lap. “Call the hotel and find out the room numbers for two people, names Cecil Jacobson and Mary Boston, Boston like in the city. Do it now!”
“I’ve picked up a Grunt worm in our system,” Rollie said. “I traced it to …”
“Never mind that now. Wade, get over here!” Hoffman was reading his magazine again. He dropped it and jumped out of his chair as Bigthorn pressed his left palm against the weapon cabinet’s lock and tapped in the authorization code with his right hand.
The armored door slid aside, exposing virtually the only arsenal in the colony: a rack of Taser pistols, stunrods, sedative rifles, concussion and smoke grenades, and body armor. As Hoffman hurried over, Bigthorn buckled a gunbelt holstered with a stunrod and his personal, handprint-activated Taser around his belt. He reached for the body armor, then drew back his hand. It was better to keep this quiet; wearing body armor into a hotel would only make them look like a SWAT team.
“Problems?” Hoffman asked.
“Big time. Taser and rod for you.” He snatched the weapons out of the cabinet and tossed them to Hoffman. “Get ’em on and follow me. We’re heading for the hotel.”
“John, what’s …?”
“You’re going to find a woman named Macy Westmoreland, a.k.a. Mary Boston, and take her into protective custody,” Bigthorn continued. “I’ll be at the hotel, too, going for a guy named Henry Ostrow, a.k.a. Cecil Jacobson. I don’t have time to explain everything now. C’mon!”
As Hoffman struggled to strap on his weapons, Bigthorn rushed past him, heading for the back door, where the department’s cart was parked outside.
If Blind Boy Grunt’s right about this, he thought, I’ll kiss his ass. And if’s he’s pulling my leg, I’m going to find him and throw him out the nearest airlock.
7
Conversation with the Golem
(Saturday: 12:34 P.M.)
Henry Ostrow lay on the bed in his small room in the LaGrange Hotel. He had showered and shaved, and now he was resting on his back in his undershorts, staring up at the ceiling as he prepared himself for the transformation.
Ostrow had lost count of the number of assignments he had taken on behalf of the Salvatore family over the years. Most had been fairly routine, yet this time the job was more than a simple hit on someone who had welshed on a loan or an untrustworthy syndicate member who was trying to leave the family. This time it was Tony’s own girlfriend who was going to take the bullet. There was also the matter of the small bundle of floppies which Macy had stolen.
Rarely had the Golem been asked to do more for Tony than snuff someone. This time, killing Macy was only half the job. The rest of the floppies could be burned, Tony had told him, but Disk 7 had to be returned to him at all costs. Even the girl was second in priority to the recovery of that particular diskette.
Ostrow didn’t inquire as to why bringing home a computer diskette was more important than knocking off someone who had embarrassed the head of family. It was not in his nature to ask. The Golem was an instrument of vengeance, pure and simple … and now the time had come for Ostrow to summon the aleph bearer.
His suitcase lay open on the bureau. In a few minutes, Ostrow would take out the case’s false bottom, exposing the scan-deflecting weapons cache. Fitted into the cache were the weapons he had picked for this trip: the syringe-gun with its sea wasp biotoxin, the Ruger T-512 automatic with the attached silencer, and the M-61 Skorpion submachine gun, all with their respective ammo, each shielded from automatic scanners by stealth chips. Concealed within the suitcase’s fabric liner was one pound of plastic explosive, flattened by a kitchen rolling pin into thin sheets and wrapped in cellophane; the detonator and fuses were hidden inside an innocent-looking electric shaver.
Yet before he unpacked the weapons, there was the ritual. Murder, when performed well, requires its own rites to keep the mind clear and the deed from becoming meaningless. For Henry Ostrow, that ritual was becoming the Golem.
Henry Ostrow: the Golem. It was a far more serious matter than simply having a nickname.
Although there is more than one “definitive” golem story in Hebrew mythology, it was the most widely known fable which characterized Ostrow’s alter ego: how the Rabbi Loew created an artificial man out of clay to protect the persecuted Jews of medieval Prague. According to legend, Rabbi Loew had summoned his clay man to life with an incantation involving the Hebrew letter aleph.
Henry Ostrow had been called the Golem since he had been in the Marines during Gulf War II. At first, it had been only a nickname, but as he had taken his knack for killing back to the world with him, his self-image as an unstoppable force of nature had evolved until he had realized that he was, indeed, the Golem. The fact that the mythical golem was the protector of a defenseless people, or that it later ran amuck and had to be destroyed, wasn’t important to him. It was the gestalt vision of an unemotional, indestructible force of nature—the ultimate hit man, the killer that could
not be stopped—which had long ago coiled itself within Ostrow’s imagination.
In time, his belief was formed into a sacred ritual. At first, Ostrow had merely traced an aleph on his forehead with his fingertip before an assignment. Then, over the years, a more complex ritual of cleansing his mind and body evolved from that practice. First, Ostrow bathed and rested, to clear his mind of all tangential matters except The Job. While he bathed, he washed his mind as well as his body. Hatred, pity, fear, empathy, friendship, jealousy—these feelings caused the eyes to waver and the hands to hesitate when the moment came to render death, so it was necessary to rinse them down the drain.
Once he had showered, Ostrow relaxed for a short while, to prepare himself for the second part of the ritual. Now, supine on the bed, he shut his eyes and thought of transformation: his flesh hardening, turning darker, becoming clay like the mud on the banks of the Dead Sea. Dark red clay: the Golem’s skin, incapable of bleeding. His body: an animate sculpture, incapable of feeling pain.
The Golem’s right hand rose—a hand that was no longer flesh but living clay—and his index finger went to his mouth, resting for a moment on his tongue. His finger tasted like clay. The wet clay finger went from his mouth to his forehead. The final station of transformation was at hand, the moment of the aleph.…
BAM! BAM! BAM!
A hammering at the door. Someone knocking. Suddenly, he was flesh again. The aleph had not been traced on his forehead. The ritual interrupted at the crucial moment, the transformation was instantly erased, and Henry Ostrow was himself again.
Irritated, he sat up on the bed. “Who is it?” he called out.
“Housekeeping,” a man’s voice responded, muffled by the door. “I need to check your room, sir.”
“Sure. One moment, please.” Ostrow stood up, pulled on his pants, quickly rezipped his suitcase and entered the security code on the touchpad. Bloody nuisance, he silently grumbled. No tip for this kid. Wearing only his trousers, he walked to the door, turned the antique brass knob and swung open the door.…