Jungle Of Steel And Stone vk-2

by George C. Chesbro

  "I know that Nagle was ordered to execute Vito Ricci, because it was Ricci who was responsible for trying to squeeze the Nal-toon through an otherwise secure smuggling pipeline. Do you know why Ricci did it?"

  Vahanian shook his head. "Not really."

  "Not really?"

  "No. To tell you the truth, we—or I, at least—don't really care what Ricci was up to. My assignment is to help the NYPD get Nagle. As far as the city and state are concerned, we'd just as soon all those Mafia bastards shot each other out of existence. Still, for what it's worth, Intelligence did pick up rumors that the heads of the other five families were planning to shut him down—forcibly retire him, you might say. Hell, he was pushing ninety. Maybe he went senile."

  "Thanks, Vahanian."

  The detective hesitated a moment, then came back across the loft and extended his hand to Veil, who gripped it. "You watch your ass, Kendry."

  "I have some very skilled friends watching my ass for me, Lieutenant. You're the one riding the back of the tiger. You watch your ass."

  "I will. See you."

  "See you."

  * * *

  "Veil!"

  Veil turned off his flashlight, crossed the width of the empty boxcar in two long strides, and leapt through the open door. He hit the ground in full stride, darted between two uncoupled cars, and ran toward the sound of Reyna's voice. He rounded a car, slowed when he saw that Reyna was not in danger.

  Reyna was thirty yards farther down a stretch of empty track, crouched down beside the rails and staring at something on the ground. Veil jogged down the tracks, squatted beside Reyna—and winced.

  Two broken teeth jutted from the middle of a pool of dried vomit that was marbled with streaks of blood. More blood had stained the surrounding gravel a dull brown.

  "Toby's sick," Reyna said, her voice catching. "And he's hurt."

  "Take it easy," Veil whispered, taking Reyna into his arms. "We don't know for sure that it's Toby's."

  "It's Toby's," Reyna said, her voice thick with grief and anxiety. "I know it's his. It's on the route." She drew a deep, shuddering breath. "The vomit isn't that old. Toby was here."

  Veil led Reyna a few yards away from the spot, then held her until she stopped trembling. He gently sat her down on a rail, then slowly walked up and down the tracks, studying the ground. Fifteen yards to the right of the vomit he found wood splinters and a streak of white powder.

  "Reyna," Veil said evenly, "please come here."

  Reyna rose and walked unsteadily to Veil, who handed her a few of the wood splinters. "What do you think?" he continued. "Could these be from the Nal-toon?"

  Reyna studied the splinters, turning them in her fingers, •smelling them. "Three of them are," she said tightly. "You can still smell the campfire smoke, and they're bleached from heat, sand, and wind. The other two aren't."

  Veil wet the tip of his index finger, touched it to the white powder, then put his finger to his tongue. Instantly the tip of his tongue went numb, and the back of his throat was filled with a bitter, medicinal taste. "Well, I'll tell you what this is," he said, spitting out the taste. "It's pure heroin—top-quality white stuff, not the Mexican brown." When Reyna didn't respond, Veil turned and looked up at her. The woman was standing very straight, eyes closed, hands curled into fists at her sides. "Reyna?"

  "What?" the woman responded through clenched teeth.

  "Are you all right?"

  "Yes," she said, turning away.

  Veil rose and brushed off his jeans. "Vito Ricci's old-age pension award to himself," he said absently. "This certainly shows the old man wasn't senile. He wasn't about to be dependent upon the kindness of strangers—or his former business partners. He was just a little bit stupid and a big bit unlucky."

  "What are you talking about?" Reyna asked in a subdued voice.

  "Vito Ricci is the man who tried to slip the Nal-toon through the Mafia's smuggling pipeline."

  "Because of the heroin inside." Reyna's voice now sounded haunted.

  "Of course. He cared nothing for the idol; in fact, he probably didn't even know what it was. What he did care about was the fact that he was being pushed out of the organization. These people eat their own. Ricci was justifiably afraid of not only losing everything he had, but also of being killed in the bargain. So he made a private deal—a huge one—on his own, enough in itself to get him killed if it were found out. Ironically, whoever was handling things for him on the other end must have thought that a statue like the Nal-toon was a perfect item in which to send the heroin to Ricci; after all, the Nal-toon was just another piece of primitive art. Who would even notice it, much less bother to try to trace it? Just hollow out the statue, fill the space with a few million dollars' worth of pure heroin, drop it in the pipeline as a 'personal' item for Ricci, and forget about it."

  "Lord knows what Toby will think when he sees that stuff trickling out of the Nal-toon," Reyna said in the same haunted voice. She swallowed hard, rubbed her eyes. "He'll die if he eats it, won't he?"

  "If he eats enough of it, yes—which might not be too much. It's incredibly pure." He watched as Reyna bowed her head and clasped her hands in prayer. He waited a few moments, then stepped close to her and touched her shoulder. "Reyna," Veil continued quietly, "I don't mean to be insensitive, but prayers aren't going to help Toby now."

  "That isn't true, Veil," Reyna whispered without opening her eyes. "Toby is sick, he's badly injured, and the Nal-toon is filled with death that Toby is almost certain to think is something else, some gift sent to him by the Nal-toon. God's intervention is Toby's only hope now."

  Veil gripped Reyna's wrist and gently but firmly pulled her back along the way they had come. "Pray on the way to the cemetery," he said curtly.

  * * *

  It was dark when Veil drove the rented car back over the Queensborough Bridge into Manhattan. He glanced sideways at Reyna and could see that she was barely able to hold back tears. "Tomorrow's another day," he said softly. "We'll go into the other cemeteries—New Lutheran and Zion. We'll just keep at it until we find him."

  The tears finally came, and Reyna brushed them away with the back of her hand. "What haunts me is the possibility that we could have passed within a few feet of him, and Toby was passed out or too sick to respond."

  "It's possible, sure—but it's just as possible that he's farther to the southeast, gone to ground in one of the other cemeteries. Or he's simply ignoring us because he's not ready to come out yet. The good news is that if we can't find him, it's not likely that anyone else will, either."

  "Until he comes out below the golf course," Reyna replied hoarsely. "Somebody will be sure to spot him, and he'll be trapped. I told you he won't be taken alive, Veil."

  They drove in silence for almost ten minutes before an accident in the center and outside lanes of the FDR Drive brought traffic to a crawl. Veil looked at Reyna, who was sitting bolt-upright in her seat, staring straight ahead. In her face was a terrible fear, and Veil suspected that it was more than fear for Toby. He said, "Let's talk about a gutsy friend of mine by the name of Reyna Alexander."

  "Thank you for calling me your gutsy friend," Reyna mumbled in a flat monotone, "but let's not talk about me."

  "I think it's time, and I think you want to. Let's you and I exorcise a few of your ghosts—and I'm thinking of a big, fat, ugly one in particular."

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  Veil reached across the seat and plucked at the left sleeve of Reyna's beige, long-sleeved blouse. "There are needle tracks under there, right?"

  Reyna's head snapped around, and her eyes were wide in terror before an old haunt. "Yes," she breathed, and in the sound of that one word was a universe of guilt, shame—and relief.

  Veil edged over into the inside lane where traffic had slowly begun to move past a cordon of blinking lights from a patrol car and tow truck. "Jesus, Reyna, I hope they're not fresh."

  Reyna shook her head. "They're not. It's been years."
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  "How did it happen?"

  "Veil, I really don't want to talk about it."

  "Yes, you do. Tell me about it."

  There was a prolonged silence. Veil waited, certain that the words would eventually come—and they did.

  "I told you I was twelve when my parents died," Reyna said in a low voice. "It was in the Kalahari, with the K'ung. A warrior party of Bantu attacked. It was . . . horrible. My parents went down in each other's arms while they were being . . . poked to death by Bantu spears. Poked to death. All over."

  Veil reached out for Reyna's hand and squeezed it tightly.

  "I escaped by running into the desert," Reyna continued. "By that age, I was at home almost everywhere in the desert. I had enough lore to find my way back—except that I didn't want to find my way back. I was out of my mind with terror and horror, and all I wanted to do was die. I almost did. I had no water, and after a while I just lay down in the trough of a dune. Toby came after me and found me. He'd brought a water-egg for me. They carry water in ostrich eggs, you know."

  "I know," Veil replied softly. "It was in the newspaper articles."

  "Toby half dragged, half carried me back to the camp. By then the battle was over. The Bantu had been driven off, and the K'ung—out of respect for my feelings—had already buried my parents. They'd even . . . even . . ."

  "Reyna?"

  Reyna sobbed once, then brought herself back under control. "They'd even made a cross out of firewood and put it up over my parents' grave. In all the time—the years—that my parents had spent with them, with all the subtle and not-so-subtle proselytizing they'd done about Jesus Christ, this was the first time the tribe had shown even the slightest interest in the meanings or symbols of Christianity. They'd loved my parents, Veil, even as my parents had loved them."

  "Yes. It doesn't surprise me."

  "The wireless in the Land-Rover was broken, so there was nothing to do but wait. After two call-ins were missed, the Missionary Society had the South Africans send out a helicopter to check on things. They found me and took me back to Johannesburg." Reyna paused, sniffed. "Toby saved my life, Veil. It's so terribly important to me that I save his."

  "I understand. What happened to you after they took you out of the desert?"

  "It's pretty much as I told you. I became a ward of the Missionary Society. I was given the best schooling, then brought back here to attend college. But I couldn't get those . . . images out of my mind. Always, night and day, I would have these flashes of memory, see my parents holding on to each other while they went down under the spear thrusts . . ."

  "It's okay, Reyna. It's over now."

  "Yes. Except . . . like you, I guess, I was an extremely troubled adolescent. I'm ashamed to say it, but God wasn't enough solace for me in those days. Nothing seemed to be able to block the memories—except drugs. Eventually I became hooked on heroin."

  "And you were eventually arrested by Carl Nagle."

  Reyna uttered a sharp cry, then doubled over in her seat and clutched at her stomach, as if a knife had been plunged into her. "It was horrible, Veil. Horrible. He did things . . . I don't think I'll ever feel clean again."

  "You're clean, Reyna," Veil said gently as he stroked her back. "The sin and the filth are his, not yours. Know that and accept it."

  Veil continued to stroke Reyna's back, and finally she began to relax. She sighed, straightened up. Then she took Veil's hand, kissed it, held it up to breast. "I guess you could say that my experience with Nagle was almost therapeutic," she said with a quick, nervous giggle. "That . . . man was so terrible, fear of him became even stronger than my craving for drugs. The Society stood by me, of course. They put me in a rehabilitation program, supported me all through withdrawal. But I swear it was fear of him as much as any treatment program that kept me off drugs after that." Reyna let herself fall over onto Veil, who wrapped his arm around her. "I'm still so afraid," she added quietly.

  The security guard at the gate recognized Reyna and waved Veil through. "Don't be," he said as he drove slowly through the narrow streets of the campus. "I have a strong feeling that Mr. Nagle's clock is about to be cleaned good for him. I wouldn't be surprised to see him put out of everybody else's misery permanently."

  Reyna shuddered, the muscles in her body rippling like a physical prayer. "Why do you say that?"

  "It's just a strong notion. Nagle's not going to bother you again, Reyna."

  "Oh, Veil," Reyna breathed into his side. "Can you promise me that?"

  "I promise you that."

  Veil parked the car at the curb in front of Reyna's dormitory, got out, and walked around the car to open Reyna's door. Reyna stepped out, clasped both of his hands in hers. Suddenly she seemed older—no longer a frightened child but a beautiful woman who was still very anxious but far more in control of her fears. Even her face looked fuller, as if her body had gained weight with the unburdening of her soul. She was, Veil thought, quite lovely.

  "Veil, thank you so much."

  "For what?"

  "For somehow understanding that I needed to talk about that—even now, in the midst of all this other terrible business."

  "It's precisely because of all the other things going on that I knew you needed to talk. There were a lot of things pressing on you besides Toby's situation. It was time to ease some of that pressure and show you that you don't have to carry it alone."

  Reyna grinned coquettishly. "Are you interested in sin?"

  "Not nearly as much as I am in salvation."

  "Would you stay with me tonight?"

  "If that's what you want, it would be my distinct pleasure."

  "We're between summer sessions, so there aren't too many people in there. Still, we'll have to be very quiet. Do you think that two skilled trackers like you and me can manage to make love in near silence?"

  Veil smiled as he put a finger to his lips. Then he put his arm around Reyna's shoulders and led her up the walk toward her dormitory.

  Chapter Ten

  Veil dreams.

  Veil is Toby.

  He turns his head at the sound of barking and sees two large dogs bounding toward him from his left. Dazed, Veil clutches his sling and stumbles toward the opening in the wooden object. As he reaches it he drops his spear, braces his forearms on the raised wooden floor of the object, and makes a desperate attempt to heave himself up to safety. Suddenly he hears a man shouting somewhere above his head, and Veil cringes; but the unseen Newyorkcity seems to be shouting at the dogs, hurling things at them in an effort to scare them away.

  Veil glances up at the Newyorkcity who has saved him, and he sees a short, heavy man dressed in ragged clothes. Without warning the man's foot shoots out and catches Veil on the jaw and the side of the head.

  "Get out of here, you son of a bitch! You'll have every railroad cop in the yard down on us!"

  "I'm sick," Veil whispers, still hanging on to the platform. He can see nothing now, and his head feels as if it is about to explode. "I need . . . help."

  A second kick knocks Veil to the ground. Dimly, through a shimmering orange haze, Veil sees the blurred images of two men emerge from the hole of darkness above his head. The Newyorkcities have him now, he thinks. He is finished.

  But they must not get the Nal-toon.

  Veil rolls to his right. He pulls the sling from around his neck and uses the last of his strength to hurl the Nal-toon into the darkness beneath one of the wooden structures. Then he passes out.

  * * *

  There is too much pain in this dream, Veil thinks. Too much misery and loneliness in imagining himself as the K'ung warrior-prince. He does not want to suffer like this, and he starts to roll away from the dream of Toby, drifting off toward the Lazarus Gate and the woman he loves trapped beyond it. Then he stops. His suffering is only imaginary, while Toby's is real. Only by entering the mind of Toby can he hope to understand what the man is thinking and perhaps anticipate his actions.

  ". . . Veil, come to me. Love me. Tang
o with me on the edge of time. . . ."

  ". . . Can't . . ."

  ". . . You don't have to suffer like this . . ."

  ". . . Dream is the key to finding him, must . . ."

  * * *

  Veil returns to Toby, once again becomes Toby as a squealing blade of sound seems to slice through his brain. He senses movement all around him, and he shakes his head in an effort to clear it.

  The Nal-toon! he thinks. Where is the Nal-toon?

  He lifts his face from the gravel and turns his head in time to see that the wooden object under which he lies is moving over him; one of the metal wheels is rolling toward his stomach, and in a moment he will be cut in two. . . .

  Veil pushes against the ground with his hands, rolls to his right, and lies flat between the thick strips of metal. A moment later the heavy wheel grinds over the place where he had been.

  The air is filled with nerve-shattering sound, but Veil is virtually oblivious to it; he feels the hard, familiar surface of the Nal-toon pressing against his ribs, and joy floods his being. Still keeping himself pressed flat to the ground as more objects roll over him, he reaches out and wraps his arm around God. As he does so, he feels a thin stream of powder trickling from His base.

  The blood of the Nal-toon! Veil thinks, turning his head and gazing in awe at the white streak on the ground. It is a bad sign; he has failed, and his punishment will be death in this terrible, flickering tunnel of darkness, movement, and noise.

  Then the darkness suddenly lifts, and the great roar dissipates, leaving Veil and chasing after the wooden objects as they move away. Bright, hot morning sunlight beats down on his back.

  The Nal-toon has spared him!

  Despite nausea and a hammering pain on the left side of his head where his eye is swollen shut, Veil manages to struggle to his feet. Cradling the Nal-toon in his arms, using the palm of his left hand to stem the flow of God's blood, he staggers toward the open, black maw of another wooden object. He knows there could be danger in the darkness, perhaps more Newyorkcities waiting to attack him, but he feels that he has no choice but to take the risk. He must find a place to hide.