“Don’t you think I would be better off doing what you do, rather than either sitting at home worrying, or gambling for no goddamn reason, or…or getting myself raped by people who are after you, not me at all?”
And then they’d traded barbs until they had separated and let their night degenerate into grunted responses and cold shoulders. The heat of their tryst had escaped through the walls, and the chill in the air represented nothing if not the sudden feelings between them.
Lupo replayed the whole thing in his head, assuming he’d pegged her thoughts, her motives. He guessed they were the same, both stubborn, both seeing their own point of view as the safe one. He had been determined to talk to either Anders, the psychologist, or Colgrave, his fellow cop. He shrugged off the feeling that it might be a small betrayal, because he needed to talk to somebody, and DiSanto wasn’t around. And if he was, he would have just uttered some atrocious cliché.
He had seen the door to Anders’s office closed. Maybe she was in session. Whereas Danni Colgrave’s door had been open. Even though he had the urge to talk to Anders, and not only because she was attractive (if a little odd), he chose Colgrave. Who was also attractive, if you were keeping score.
In fact, she reminded him of Jessie—but he hadn’t really noticed before. A rawer, sharp-elbowed version of Jessie, maybe, but cut from the same cloth—as DiSanto would have said.
And now Colgrave knew his secret, though not absolutely all its elements. But she knew the ramifications, and the implications. She had been more patient than he had expected, however. He could hardly believe it, after she’d seen what happened at the northern Minnesota drone house, where she and DiSanto had rescued Heather Wilson. They’d blown it up after finding it bizarrely empty of most of the Wolfclaw organization, but she’d been strangely willing to go off the books on his behalf. At least for now. He hoped she wouldn’t change her mind after thinking about it, and especially after what he had told her.
Hell, Lupo himself still couldn’t put it all in focus. And it made his head hurt when he tried. He had become so reactive, so unable to go out there and shake things up the way he was used to on the street.
He had walked right past the empty office Ryeland had given Barton, the Homeland Security guy who was investigating the bus shootings after the horrific last one in downtown Milwaukee. His door was closed, too, and Lupo had wondered again what the guy was really up to.
And that new Internal Affairs head, the mysterious Lieutenant Roman.
No wonder he sensed the sharks circling. He was leaking a whole lot of blood in the water. There wasn’t a lot out there to dig up about Roman, or Barton for that matter. How they’d stayed mostly off the grid he had no idea.
He had shrugged slightly, made sure he played up his false limp a little, and headed for Colgrave’s office. And he had found himself telling her everything, even some things he had intended not to. It felt good to get some of the shit off his chest, to have someone else to spill it to. Could he trust her? He thought so. Not sure why, but he did. There was something unconventional about her, and it made her a viable…collaborator, maybe?
Barton didn’t really want him on his task force, but he looked at Lupo like a fisherman sizes up the fishing hole…like, what could he get out of there? But why? Lupo wasn’t going to ask—you didn’t mess with DHS guys, even if you wanted to, because they could get secret paper and crawl up your ass and spend a lifetime there gathering evidence, and then you could disappear. He didn’t doubt that black prisons still existed, despite all the chatter to the contrary—they would always exist, because bad stuff always had to be done by someone.
Not that Lupo didn’t think he could handle Barton, but if things got to that point he might as well go on the lam and never come back.
He spent some time pushing paper, working on reports both old school and on-line, filing some overdue shit Ryeland had been on him to do, all the while feeling the itch to get out of town.
Sometimes the Creature inside just wanted to roam, to hunt, to romp.
He redoubled his efforts on the routine stuff. Not being on the bus shooter task force meant he could just work on his own cases, and right now pretty much everything seemed to be stalled. With DiSanto distracted, he didn’t have a clear way to do anything at all—unless the phone rang and he caught a murder. Fortunately violent crime was down in Milwaukee, if you didn’t count Wolfpaw assholes and their buddies doing their sinister thing.
Ah, crap, why think about it? They’d knocked the drone-stealing house out of its foundation and the mob was in full retreat when it came to the casino.
He pushed paper almost gleefully, which was surely a sign of the coming apocalypse.
He saw a bunch of cops and feds head to Colgrave’s Organized Crime wrap-up and silently wished her well. Better you than me, he thought.
Later, he bothered to check and saw yet another email from Marla Anders, asking him to stop in and see her. Sent right when he was in the middle of spilling some of his guts to Colgrave. She’d been trying for days, but he had managed to evade her sorties. How could he explain that he wasn’t traumatized by this stuff? But then again, maybe he should pretend that he was affected—like his limp, which he so often forgot to do.
He thought about it for a while, but the Creature inside him was starting to bounce off whatever passed for walls in there, and Lupo sensed he shouldn’t tease it too much.
Anders would have to wait.
He was heading north.
Chapter Five
Franco Lupo
On the Freighter Zeniča, crossing the Atlantic Ocean
December 1945
They were all seated at the two tables that were both referred to as the captain’s table in the officers’ dining mess hall, the captain himself and the ship’s dozen junior officers. The seven passengers didn’t represent the entire roster of civilians making this crossing to South America—they heard in the early chatter among guests that there were at least three other passengers who had in true hermit fashion elected to take their meals in their cabins. The galley staff weren’t thrilled about it, having to serve the meals while negotiating several pitching companionways whenever the weather turned stormy.
The captain was ill-tempered and glared at everyone from the head of Table One. Half the officers were seated at each large table, and the serving staff—mostly made up of other sailors—was forced to continue moving food in and out of the double cabin from the galley itself, where they prepared and heated up hearty Yugoslav and Czech peasant fare which was representative of most of the crew and that suffered only from occasional lack of fresh ingredients. Otherwise the shipping lines were coming back strong after war’s end, and food was actually more plentiful aboard ship than in most cities.
Franco had learned to mask his nerves in public, so even though he wanted to bolt from the social situation—something he had little experience with—the priest had talked him into joining the dinner crowd.
“How else are we going to figure out who is doing what, and which are cursed wolves?” Tranelli had said. “We can only try to guess, and if we don’t watch them we’ll never know. Besides, we’re both underfed.”
Franco agreed and the priest gave him quick lessons on table etiquette. “You must fit in,” the Jesuit explained, “or you’ll be tagged a fraud no matter what your passport says.”
How many of the diners at the tables were werewolves? How many were simply escaping Nazi concentration camp guards? How many were war criminals? These thoughts had taken hold of Franco, and he had not been able to let go of them. He stared at each in turn, but it was not obvious. Perhaps the only two had been those he and the priest had replaced.
Franco sat fidgeting next to Father Tranelli, who didn’t let the tense situation faze his appetite. Franco himself had never seen so much food in one place. Even when living with Corrado Garzanti’s partisan brigade, there had barely been enough food on the table at any one time to as much as dent his hunger. His body had gro
wn lean, almost gaunt, during those days. It had been helpful, training himself to require less food, because the retreating Germans were less likely to barter with Italians who might or might not knife them in the back. Indeed, Corrado’s men had accounted for a fair number of hungry Wehrmacht soldiers who abandoned caution at the dangled bait of a fresh egg, or fresh meat. Their bodies were routinely rolled down hillsides so they could litter the twisty roads that led out of the coast city, a grim message to the occupiers that their day was done.
Unfortunately, Corrado’s men had also taken a terrible toll when the wolves came out at night and ambushed partisan patrols. They, in turn, left mutilated, butchered human carcasses throughout the countryside, their bellies slit open and entrails consumed by ravenous jaws. Many were left at crossroads to invoke the old legends and strike fear in the minds of the partisans. It was whispered that the German Army had created werewolves in a last-ditch effort to shrug off the Allied invaders and turn the war around. The number of victims grew and villagers withdrew their support of the partisans, refusing to provide them even the lean food supplies they had sacrificed from their own tables.
The situation had grown dire and it appeared the German forces, reinforced by the hell-spawn monsters, would succeed in holding off the Allied advance by cutting the throat of the partisan brigades who had been clearing the way.
But then the tide had changed again. Slowly, partisans began to win battles against the Nazi werewolves, and it was all because of Father Tranelli.
Well, not so much the Jesuit himself, but what he had given Corrado’s brigade.
Now Franco watched surreptitiously as the Jesuit drank more than his share of the cheap table wine and brutal slivovitz, the Eastern European plum brandy. Franco worried about the drinking, which made the old priest much too talkative—and he was now engaged in a theological debate with the ship’s first officer, who sat on his other side. The table had settled on Italian as the language of conversation because most of the passengers and officers spoke it well enough. The other table had settled on French and German, so Franco had to abandon the hopes of eavesdropping. His own table was interesting enough, with the captain and most of his ranking officers seated there. He sensed some secretive glares in his direction—after all, he was so young, he must be from a rich family.
If they only knew!
Franco was still biologically a teenager, but the last two years had hardened him and fashioned him into a formidable fighter, one who appeared much older than his years. His eyes had seen much, and reflected the knowledge of the darkness he had faced. One of the Vatican daggers was hidden in his boot, its silver blade shielded by the strange wooden scabbard so werewolves could not sense its presence.
He had used that dagger to murder his own father.
As a boy, Franco had shed many tears in the early days. But then he had directed the sadness and anger and guilt and turned the blade into a weapon of revenge, and Nazi werewolves had fallen under its wicked edge. It was a legacy his father left—even though he had been infected by a German werewolf, he had accounted for many more before being unmasked and banished. One way to identify the wolves at this table, Franco mused, might be to unsheathe the blade and wait for a reaction, but what if they were all wolves? No, the priest was right. It was better to tackle them one at a time. And unprepared.
“But you must admit, my dear Kamil, that the war was a catastrophe for many countries, not only mine!” Tranelli said loudly.
“Yes, but your country was one of the instigators!”
“You would dare compare the gentle Italian with the warlike Hun?”
Franco kicked the priest under the table.
His mother used to kick him like that when she wanted to warn him that his father was in a foul mood. At first he had reacted too obviously, which inevitably led to an argument between his parents. Eventually he learned to do it subtly, and now he did the same to the priest. And hoped the priest would not give it away.
The last thing he wanted was to draw attention to them. His passport had been a gift from Corrado, a hasty forgery done when Franco had horned his way into Corrado’s group again. Now he hoped that it wouldn’t be too closely scrutinized—on Italian soil, it would have passed most cursory examinations. But now that it would be shown abroad, there was much to fear. Customs police from any number of countries might well deduce its bearer was himself an escaping Nazi, an irony that wasn’t lost on Franco. To this point only the Captain had seen the passport, when Franco had identified himself as a passenger, but theoretically there would be customs police at the far end of the voyage, though he had been told no one knew for sure how many formalities would be followed in South America. Plus a palm-greasing could avoid close scrutiny of the passport—a lot of that went on. The Zeniča’s captain was an unknown. He was clearly involved in the smuggling operation that helped escaping Nazis, but how much he knew about their nature was anybody’s guess.
Franco was a hothead. He would easily have killed the captain and worried about leading the ship’s crew later, if at all. Tranelli had stayed his hand.
“If you kill the captain,” the priest had whispered once they’d returned to Franco’s cabin that first day, “you can’t be sure the crew will simply continue to perform their tasks. They might mutiny, if they don’t like the first officer. And the officers could very well investigate and, if they determine you are the culprit, clap you in irons until they can turn you over to the authorities.” He coughed—he was coughing a lot more as of late, Franco thought—and continued, “My boy, you have to be patient. We know the werewolves are fleeing Europe in various ways, on numerous routes. This is only one, but we can shut it down if we follow the trail.”
“Like detectives?” Franco said, smirking. He was a man of action, not investigation.
Show me a werewolf and I’ll gut him like a fish and feed him his own intestines.
He suspected this was why Corrado had stuck him with the priest, to keep an eye on him and to keep him muzzled.
But sometimes the priest was the one who needed muzzling!
Right now, Tranelli’s debate opponent said, “The ‘gentle Italian’ caused his share of havoc, my priestly friend. The ‘gentle Italian’ did not find genocide outside his capabilities, certainly not in Ethiopia…”
“You are confusing Mussolini and his gang of cutthroats with the majority of the Italian people…”
“No, you are confusing a nation of war instigators with a nation of peaceful souls like my Switzerland…”
Franco kicked the priest again, the table masking the movement.
Did the Jesuit mean to get them killed?
“Let us agree to disagree, then,” said Tranelli, deftly moving his leg out of range. “Can you pour me another finger or two of that robust red?”
Franco sighed in relief. Maybe drinking would occupy the priest well enough to keep him out of trouble.
“And you, young gentleman, what takes you to the far southern shores?”
It was the Second officer, a rather unsavory individual with a bushy beard and pig-like eyes. He referred to Franco now, having been cheated out of a scene by the priest and his other tormentor.
Franco glanced at the captain from the corner of his eye. He seemed to have turned his head to better catch the conversation. Suspicious?
“I am on the way to inspect my father’s business interests,” said Franco, giving himself the needed self-importance (they would expect it). Inside, he shook with fear. What if they exposed him, right here, as a fraud? What would happen to them, to him and the priest? He attempted to put it out of his mind. “Before the war he bought a ranch in the south.”
They’d agreed it sounded plausible enough, and he could be forgiven for knowing very little, as a city boy. He could claim he was there to learn the business.
“Well, boy, you’re lucky to be leaving that mess back there,” growled the captain.
Franco knew well that the captain was aware he was no innocent, no
t with the package and cash exchange they’d conducted while in harbor, but they’d gambled that he was only interested in his own financial angle. How much of a stake did he have in the smuggling operation? If they’d guessed wrong, they would be in trouble.
Franco was young, but he understood the possibility that their chain-wrapped bodies could go overboard late one night and no one would ever be the wiser. So soon after the chaos of the war, people disappeared with frightening ease.
“It’s how the bastards are able to operate,” Corrado had once told him. “The entire world is so fucked that people are disposable and go missing all the time. Quei bastardi tedeschi hanno fatto la festa a millioni!” Those German bastards wiped out millions. What was one more, he seemed to be saying.
“Yes,” Franco answered the captain—what was his name, Marek Nepovim?—but he hesitated, for it was best not to express how big a mess his life had become. Best to act as if he’d been privileged as they suspected. “Yes, but my father says we were able to salvage our family business by moving some of it to South America…”
“A lot like those Nazis, eh?” said Kamil with a guffaw, spittle flying from his mouth, somewhere inside his beard. “I heard Perón himself is opening the doors to take them in.”
Tranelli’s eyes widened at Franco. Don’t take the bait.
It didn’t work. “I don’t know about that, but plenty of Italians would have gladly danced on Hitler’s grave,” he said, much too quickly. “Unlike plenty of Yugoslavs who were only too happy to suck his dick.”
The dinner talk quieted. Everyone at the table wanted to see how the gruff Kamil would respond to this young snot-nose.
They were dining on cabbage rolls drowned in thick gravy that also smothered mounds of dumplings. But forks and spoons halted the general din of the meal as passengers and officers waited to see what would happen.
The captain glowered at him, while Kamil seemed pensive rather than incensed.
Wolf's Blind (The Nick Lupo Series Book 6) Page 6