24 Declassified: 07 - Storm Force

by David S. Jacobs

  The draftsmanship was adequate but the enthusiasm unmistakable. The technique identified the artist as the painter of the life-sized nude portrait of Vikki that hung above her bed in the apartment over the Golden Pole club.

  The wooden floor was marked with red stains that weren't paint. Bloodstains.

  Off to one side of the room, against the wall, was a man-sized object wrapped in canvas. Jack, Pete, Dooley, and Buttrick all stood there silently for a moment, looking at it.

  Vikki said, "I didn't do it!"

  Jack absently patted her shoulder. "You've held up fine so far, don't get hysterical now."

  He crossed to the big bundle, crouching down beside it. He peeled the canvas back from the head area, unmasking it down to the neck.

  The corpse was that of a middle-aged man with a roosterlike shock of black hair and a long, bony face. He had a mustache and a scruffy three-day beard. A single bullet hole had been drilled through the middle of his forehead. His eyebrows were lifted, as if in surprise at being dead.

  Dooley sidled up alongside, peering down at the body. "Yep. That's him, all right. That's that artist fellow, Marcel."

  Jack rose, straightening up. As the others were doing, he turned his gaze on Vikki. She said, "I didn't do it, I swear!"

  He said, "Who did?"

  "I don't know! Maybe Marty, or some of Beltran's people!"

  "You'd better tell us all about it."

  Pete said, "Tell us outside, in the car. We could all use some fresh air."

  * * *

  They all sat in the SUV, which was roomier than the Crown Victoria. Jack had the idea that Vikki would be more forthcoming in the CTU vehicle than she would be in the police car. Possession being nine-tenths of ownership. She was CTU's now.

  That was okay with Dooley and Buttrick. They didn't care who had possession of Vikki, as long as they got credit for her discovery. This was going to make them the fair-haired boys of the NOPD. Which was fine with Jack and Pete.

  The vital lead had been furnished earlier that night by Dorinda, the busty, brunette exotic dancer second-billed after Vikki on the Golden Pole lineup. Being detained for questioning at CTU Center since early morning had helped concentrate Dorinda's recollection. She finally volunteered information about a male friend of Vikki's, some "crazy artist" who hung around on the fringes of the star dancer's orbit.

  Dorinda had barely remembered him because he was a down-at-the-heels bohemian type who didn't have much money, making him a less than negligible figure in her eyes. After being questioned and cross-questioned about Vikki's associates by CTU interrogators, Dorinda had at last recalled the artist.

  All she knew of his name was that it was "Alan, Alan something." One item that stood out in her memory was that he was always trying to get the dancers to pose in the nude for him, so he could paint their pictures.

  She claimed she wasn't interested: "Honey, I could never sit still that long."

  But Vikki's narcissism had overcome her fidgetiness, according to Dorinda, long enough for Alan to paint her portrait, "in the altogether." Armed with that clue, CTU investigators had examined Vikki's portrait in her apartment, signed by the artist, "A. Marcel."

  They were in the process of checking with gallery owners and art dealers to track down his name and address right around the time that Dooley and Buttrick had showed up at the Kwik-Up mini-mall in the aftermath of the van bombing and shootout.

  That was a little off their bailiwick, which was generally centered around the strip joints and dives of Bourbon Street, but the events of the day, starting with the Golden Pole massacre, had quickened their interest in the fast-developing big picture. And its promise of big publicity for those who played their cards right.

  Nothing if not live-wire opportunists, they had hastened to the scene when the police dispatcher began broadcasting a general alert about the action at the Kwik-Up.

  There, as Colonel Paz and Hector Beltran were being carried away dead on stretchers, the two cops had encountered Jack and Pete.

  Dooley said, "Whoo-whee! You boys are sure cutting a swath through town, I don't mind telling you."

  The CTU agents let that pass without comment. Word had just reached them from Center about one "A. Marcel," and Pete gave the lawmen a quick sketch of the artist's background and asked them if they'd ever heard of him.

  Dooley said, "Now that you mention it, that does ring a bell." He knew all the characters on Bourbon Street; he didn't know Marcel's name, but he did have a vague recollection of a painter who hung around on the fringes of the Golden Pole and other like establishments, who was always trying to hustle the girls into posing nude for him.

  "That's his come-on," Dooley said. "Hell, once he's got 'em in his place with their clothes off, he's more than halfway there, eh?"

  He didn't know where Marcel lived, but he knew someone who knew someone who did; a short time later, the Crown Victoria was pulling up in front of the Belle Reve address, with the SUV containing Jack and Pete right behind.

  Dooley had used the police vehicle's public address system to call out Vikki because, as he put it, "it beats walking in there without knowing if she's half out of her head and has a gun or whatever."

  He had no objection to Jack and Pete taking the lead in that department, however.

  Vikki Valence indeed had been there, and she now told her story.

  * * *

  Some people are police buffs, civilian amateurs with a fascination with the world of cops and their doings. Al Marcel's interest was politics. He'd painted Vikki in the nude when she'd first started going out with Raoul Garros. During the sessions when she modeled for him, she'd gossiped about Raoul and his friends and associates and their doings. Marcel hung on her every word and encouraged her to tell him more.

  Later, when Raoul passed her along to Marty Paz, she'd had to be more circumspect in her meetings with Marcel. Paz was the jealous type. His busy schedule at the consulate and at LAGO left her with a lot of free time on her hands, especially in the daytime. She managed to keep on meeting regularly with Marcel for coffee and drinks in little, out-of-the-way places that high rollers like Garros and Paz wouldn't be caught dead in. She kept Marcel entertained with plenty of gossip about the comings and goings of her rich, powerful Venezuelan "friends."

  A couple of times, Paz had used her apartment to meet with an older man, a white-haired old gentleman. He gave her money to go shopping so that she'd be out of the apartment during those meetings. That was fine with her; she wasn't interested in his boring deal making and mysterious meetings and whatnot.

  Once or twice, Paz had slipped up, and while talking to his bodyguards when Vikki was in earshot had mentioned the old fellow's name: "Beltran."

  The name meant nothing to her, but Marcel had been very excited when she'd mentioned it. He wanted to know everything about this Beltran, when he met Paz and for how long, was he alone or was someone with him; no detail was too minute for Marcel when it came to this Paz.

  The way he carried on, Vikki suspected that Beltran was a lot more than the polite, gentlemanly old geezer she'd taken him for, which now piqued her interest in him, too. She could never really come up with much, though, because Paz's meetings with Beltran were few and far between, and he made sure she was out of the apartment during their conclaves.

  Only recently, in the last week or so, a change had come over Marcel. He wasn't his usual breezy self; he was a worried man. Scared. The change in his demeanor threw a scare into her, too.

  The last time they'd met for coffee — on Thursday, only forty-eight hours ago — Marcel had been a frightened man indeed. He was a mess, with dark rings under his eyes, nervous, jumpy, constantly looking over his shoulder and giving a start each time a stranger entered the little coffee shop where they were meeting. He sat at a rear table, facing the door.

  He warned her that she was in danger, too, due to her closeness to Paz, that "sinister forces" were closing in on the Colonel, and if she wasn't careful, she might be
caught up in events that were about to overtake him, events with dire and possibly even fatal consequences.

  He refused to say more than that, telling her that she was better off not knowing and what she didn't know couldn't hurt her. He did hand her a matchbook with a name and telephone number written on the inside of the cover.

  The name was a set of initials unknown to her: CTU. She'd heard of the FBI and CIA, of course, but never of CTU. Not that she followed current affairs much; her interest in the news extended to what headliners were playing at what clubs.

  Marcel didn't go into any long explanations, merely telling her that CTU was a U. S. government agency, like the Department of Homeland Security, only tougher — much tougher, was the impression she got. If something happened to him, Marcel, or to Paz, or if she ever felt herself in danger, she should call the telephone number he'd written down, the number of CTU's public hotline.

  She should call and be sure to mention the name Beltran. On that point, he was very specific. That name was a key sure to unlock their interest, and they would move quickly to secure her safety.

  She asked Marcel what he meant by something happening to him or Paz, but he wouldn't elaborate. He'd cut the meeting short and made a hurried exit, scurrying away, scuttling down the sidewalk with his head down and his shoulders hunched, as if awaiting a blow.

  He'd put the fear in her, and she couldn't shake it. Worried, she'd gone to his place on Belle Reve Street the following day, on Friday afternoon, determined to find out what it was all about.

  What she found instead was a corpse — his. He lay sprawled on his studio floor with a bullet hole in his head. No question about whether life lingered in him; he couldn't have been any deader. Terrified, afraid now for her own life, she got out of there fast.

  She was in a panic, not thinking straight. She walked around in a daze for several hours, in shock. Not until twilight approached, and with it the remembrance that she had a show to put on tonight, that her performance was imminent, did she return to some sense of herself.

  She'd used a pay phone to call the CTU hotline and pass on her message. Then she'd gone back to her usual haunts, to her apartment over the Golden Pole, trying to fake a semblance of normality that would see her through until CTU agents came to pick her up and take her to safety.

  It was torture, mental torture, for her to go through the motions of doing her act for several sets on Friday night going into Saturday morning. As was his custom, Marty Paz had come to see her last set and then accompany her upstairs to her apartment for an erotic tryst.

  She didn't know if he'd had Marcel killed, even done the job himself, or if he was merely an innocent party — innocent in the matter of the death of Al Marcel, that is. Marty Paz could be charming, even courtly, in his way, but innocent he could never be; he was a carnivore born and bred — a dangerous man, capable of extreme violence. Vikki knew the type; she'd seen enough of them in her years of working the exotic dancer circuit, and the milieu of vice, hoodlums, and gangsters in which it flourished.

  It had been an ordeal of a different sort for her to "entertain" Colonel Paz early that Saturday morning in the amatory fashion to which he was accustomed; as with her striptease act, which she'd performed flawlessly earlier that night, once again professionalism came to her rescue, as she did what came naturally. The Colonel certainly seemed no different than usual in his manner or attitudes, giving no sign that he suspected her of anything or intended to do her harm.

  Dawn was breaking that Saturday morning, when he'd finished dressing, given her a goodbye kiss, picked up the briefcase that he habitually carried with him and took everywhere he went, and exited her apartment, going downstairs and into Fairview Street — only to step into a whirlwind of violence, gunfire, and mass murder.

  Vikki had already been poised to run, and even before the last gunshots had stopped echoing, she'd thrown on some clothes, grabbed her bag, and slipped down the backstairs and out the rear exit of the building.

  She was on the lam. Luckily she knew Bourbon Street and the French Quarter inside-out, knew all the back alleys and cellar clubs and shortcuts. She knew better than to take a cab or hire a car, since the drivers were required to keep records of the destinations of their passengers. She avoided the buses and streetcars for similar reasons.

  She managed to put some distance between herself and the Golden Pole before ducking into an after-hours club, one where the action was still going strong when the sun was coming up. She'd managed to persuade a passing acquaintance to give her a ride to the riverfront. She had him drop her off several blocks away from Belle Reve Street, parting from him with promises of showing him "a real good time" the next time they met.

  She went to the one place she was sure was safe: Marcel's house. He was already dead; the killers, whoever they were, wouldn't be back. She'd lay low there, contacting CTU and waiting until they came to pick her up and take her to safety.

  It was pretty grim there, in the murder house. She couldn't bear to look at Marcel's corpse, so she'd rolled it up in a sheet of canvas, covering it up and pushing it across the floor to the far side of the studio.

  Her plan to contact CTU for help hit a potentially fatal snag when she reached into her bag for her cell phone and found it wasn't there. Frantic, she turned the bag upside down, emptying its contents on the floor. No cell. She must have lost it sometime this morning during her wild flight from the Golden Pole as she ran through alleys, climbed fences, and squirmed under guardrails to make her escape.

  Marcel had a cell, she knew; she'd seen him use it. She searched the bungalow, looking for it, but couldn't find it. She forced herself to examine the corpse, turning out the dead man's pockets in search of a cell. No luck. She became aware that another searcher had been through the place before her. Cabinet drawers showed signs of having been ransacked; pillows and cushions had been slashed open and the mattress stripped of its bed coverings and overturned. No doubt the culprit was Marcel's killer. Maybe he'd taken the cell.

  There was no landline telephone on the premises. Vikki was pinned in place for lack of a phone. She didn't dare show herself on the street in daylight to use a pay phone. She was afraid to stir from her hiding place, despite the macabre presence of Marcel's dead body.

  Who to trust? Not the police; she didn't trust them not to sell her out. Whatever was behind all this killing, it was something big. The Syndicate maybe, or major narcotics traffickers, or even something political. Whoever was big enough to unleash the violence outside the Golden Pole was big enough to reach inside police headquarters, put a hand on Vikki Valence, and place her among the missing.

  She told herself that she'd make a move when it got dark, that she'd have a better chance of getting away then. But she couldn't summon the resolve to make the jump. Bad as the Marcel death house was, it was better than whatever unknown fate awaited her on the streets.

  She sat around in a kind of shocked stupor, trying to summon up the will to make a move. Then the decision had been made for her, with the arrival of Dooley and Buttrick, and with them, CTU agents Bauer and Malo.

  * * *

  That was her story, the gist of it anyway. No doubt there was plenty more good intelligence to be gotten from her, but that was a job for the full-time interrogators at CTU Center across the river.

  Floyd Dooley said, "You can believe what she says about the NOPD being full of crooks and double-crossers. Except for me and Buck. You can trust us; we're your boys."

  Jack had contacted CTU Center early on, to let them know Vikki had been found. He and Pete got her story during the twenty minutes or so while they were waiting for a detail to arrive at Belle Reve to take her to Center for debriefing.

  The CTU vehicle arrived, Vikki being transferred to their custody. One of the agents was Hathaway, a field man who'd earlier been the spotter on the Sad Hill power trail, monitoring the progress of the kidnappers from the cemetery to the Kwik-Up parking lot and the blast that would ultimately send their remains to
another cemetery.

  Hathaway took Jack aside for a private word. "Quite a party at Center! Not only are those two other dancers from the Golden Pole, Francine and Dorinda, down there, but so is Raoul Garros and Susan Keehan, too. And now Vikki Valence!" He smacked his lips.

  Jack said, "I know that Garros was going to be picked up by our people as soon as he was released by the kidnappers, but what's Susan Keehan doing down there?"

  "Raising holy hell," Hathaway said, showing every evidence of having enjoyed the spectacle. "Sears balked at turning Garros over to our guys, until someone dropped a word in his ear about Susan Keehan being liable for obstruction of justice charges for helping Garros get away from us at the Mega Mart. Sears played ball after that. Garros hollered about diplomatic immunity, but we said we were taking him into protective custody to make sure nothing else happened to him before he was deported for acts of espionage against the United States of America."

  "How did Susan horn in?"

  "Oh, she insisted she be allowed to accompany him, to make sure that his rights weren't violated. Cal Randolph said okay, why not? She might spill something without even realizing it, something we could use," Hathaway said.

  He went on, "The Flea on Susan has been neutralized. The abort switch was thrown, turning it into a piece of plastic and metal junk."

  Hathaway got confidential, lowering his voice. "You should have seen what happened at Center when Susan came face to face with Raoul's former gal pal, Dorinda! Dorinda wasn't shy about letting Susan know that she and Garros were more than, er, just friends, if you know what I mean."

  Jack said, straight-faced, "I do, but does Susan?"

  Hathaway said, "If she didn't, she does now. Let's put it this way: if I were Raoul, I wouldn't go setting that wedding date anytime too soon!"

  19

  THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 11 P.M. AND 12 A.M. CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME