Blood in the Water

by Michael Prescott

  Newly armed, she explored the premises, checking for signs of intrusion, finding none. In what might or might not have been an excess of caution, she shut the curtains so she couldn’t be seen from outside. She was all for target shooting, but not when she was wearing the bull’s-eye.

  The power was still on in the duplex, though considering how the lights were flickering, she guessed it wouldn’t stay on for long. The place was a mess, but she couldn’t blame that on trespassers. She’d never had any illusions that her house was a showplace. It was located a few blocks from the railroad tracks and decorated in early garage sale.

  Her neighbor, Mrs. Biggs, wasn’t around; she’d left yesterday to stay with her daughter’s family fifty miles inland. The usual noises of activity from next door were absent, but the storm more than made up for them—the thrash of leafy branches against the roof, the piston-pounding rain, the bagpipe skirls of the wind.

  Satisfied that she wasn’t risking a Bates Motel moment, she took a shower to wash off the residue of bloody water from the cottage’s basement. She lingered under the spray, aware that it might be her last hot shower for days. Once the power failed, all bets were off.

  Afterward, she changed into fresh clothes, choosing a T-shirt that bore the words I’m A Classy, Sophisticated Woman Who Says “Fuck” A Lot. Truth be told, she was neither classy nor sophisticated. But she did say “Fuck” a lot.

  To go with the tee, she picked out a denim skirt and a smart little bucket cloche. Her ensemble was gray and black. She generally favored dark tones because they blended into the shadows, which was always helpful. You never knew when you might want to disappear.

  Mindful of the coming blackout, she peered into her fridge to see what might spoil. There was nothing inside except some takeout leftovers and a couple of tubs of Ben & Jerry’s.

  In the living room she switched on her TV, muting the volume, and tuned to News 12, which predictably was going crazy with the nonstop stormapalooza. Reporters planted themselves on beaches, defying wind and spray, and made faces at a foam-flecked camera lens. Weather maps displayed the menacing storm track. Harried public officials sweated under TV lights. New Jersey’s governor, who in Bonnie’s opinion bore a striking resemblance to Jabba the Hutt, was telling people to get out of harm’s way while they still could. Either that, or he was ordering a Double Whopper and fries. With the sound off, it was hard to tell.

  The silent images flickered past her, registering only on the periphery of her attention. Massive power outages. Regional airports closed. Beaches eroding. Plywood boards nailed up over windows and spray-painted with messages taunting the storm. Worries about voters’ access to the polls next Tuesday. Bonnie didn’t give a fig about politics. She never voted. She was half convinced the elections were rigged and the Illuminati ran everything. What the hell, it made as much sense as any other theory.

  The Long Fong Boyz. That was what she focused on, while the rest of the stuff shuttled past her between commercials for car dealerships and pizza joints. What the hell could she possibly have to do with a bunch of Chinese-American gangsta types? She didn’t even know any Asian people. Well, there was the proprietor of the Thai takeout place down the street, but his worst crime was using too much MSG.

  Bradley had said they operated out of Jersey City. It couldn’t be a coincidence. She’d spent a fair amount of time in Jersey City recently, tailing the late Alec Dante.

  She remembered the first thing he’d said to her in the basement: Did Chiu send you?

  Opening her laptop, she Googled the name Chiu in connection with the Long Fong Boyz. A handful of new stories came up. Twenty-four-year-old Patrick Chiu was the gang’s head honcho.

  The guy’s age didn’t surprise her. Gang leaders were younger than ever. Chiu, though, was a special case. According to one article, he was reputed to be smart, college educated, a young man who’d gone a long way toward a mainstream career before detouring into the gang scene. He’d been active for only three years and already commanded one of the toughest crews in north Jersey. Their strength was estimated at between twenty and thirty soldiers, and they were into the protection racket—lucky money, it was called in Chinese neighborhoods—and the drug trade.

  Chiu was clearly an up-and-comer. Bonnie had never heard of him. But Dante had. He’d half expected Chiu to come after him. That was why he hadn’t been all that surprised to find an assassin in this house.

  Generally speaking, if you expected a visit from an assassin, you’d engaged in some violent misbehavior of your own.

  She jumped to the website of the Star-Ledger, which covered Hudson County, and searched the archives for recent news items involving the Long Fong Boyz. She found one.

  On October 22, a certain Joey Huang, believed to be a member of the gang, was shot to death in the Crossgate Gardens housing project in the Greenville section of Jersey City. Huang was described as a “willowy nineteen-year-old,” reputedly active in heroin distribution. He’d been killed by a single shot to the face. Neighbors hadn’t heard a thing.

  Now it was starting to make sense. A little bit of sense, anyway. Because Bonnie had been in that housing project on the evening of October 22—and so had Alec Dante.

  She had followed Dante from his condo that night. He’d surprised her by taking his car; normally he used public transportation in the city. She’d tailed him into Greenville, a slum neighborhood at the south end of town, where he’d disappeared inside a multistory low-income project. Though she’d gone after him, she hadn’t been able to track him down in the maze of corridors and stairways.

  At first she had thought the location offered a promising opportunity to complete her assignment, but there were too many open doors, too many potential witnesses hanging out in the stairwells and hallways. She’d been seen by plenty of people, and she knew she stood out—white, blond, female—not somebody who’d ordinarily be wandering around the labyrinth of Crossgate Gardens, unless she was a cop or a fed.

  Since she couldn’t find Dante and wouldn’t have been able to do anything even if she had, she left the building, returning to the parking garage where she’d dumped her Jeep just in time to scare off some layabouts who’d been eyeing her puke-green baby with the intention of swiping or stripping it.

  She hadn’t known why Alec Dante was slumming in Greenville. Visiting a whore? Buying drugs? But now she knew. He’d been killing Joey Huang—one shot to the face.

  Why the hell Dante would do that, she couldn’t guess. But he’d done it, all right; and the Long Fong Boyz, questioning the locals, must have gotten a description of a suspicious woman who’d prowled the project during the right time frame. The police wouldn’t know anything about it; those witnesses would never talk to the cops about a gang shooting.

  She didn’t know how the Boyz had ID’d her by name. Maybe someone remembered her Jeep’s tag number, or maybe her underground rep as a hitter had reached someone in the gang. Anyway, they thought she’d aced Joey, and they were out for blood.

  And ironically, the only person who could clear her was Dante himself—and she’d just shut his mouth permanently.

  “It’s a pickle,” she said grimly.

  She was considering the implications when the lights went out.

  And yeah, she jumped a little.

  Of course, the power outage was no real surprise. Wind gusts had knocked down power lines, and storm surges had flooded switching stations, all along the Jersey shore.

  There was zero likelihood the lights would come on again anytime soon. Before long it would be night, and she would be alone in the dark, listening to every rustle of leaves and slap of a branch, wondering if it was the storm she heard—or the footsteps of a ninja death squad. Wait, weren’t ninjas Japanese?

  Whatever. The point was, Bradley’s story had spooked her. More than that, it had depressed her. Was this really all there was to her life—kill or be killed? She’d shot a guy to death this morning, and there was a crew of homicidal urban youth on her trail th
is afternoon. She could kill them, or they could kill her. And even if she survived, how long until the next threat presented itself?

  And then there was Buckington, Ohio. Just thinking about it made her physically tired. With eyes closed, she wondered if maybe she should simply let Maguire build a case against her. Let him come for her with handcuffs and an arrest warrant. Let him frogmarch her to jail and make her pay the friggin’ piper. It would provide closure, at least. An ending.

  Things couldn’t go on this way. Something had to give. She felt trapped like a wolf in a snare. Maybe she should try chewing off her own foot. Yeah, like that would help. Nothing would help. She could never be free. Never.

  She listened to the wind toss the branches of the maple tree outside her living room. An ominous sound, like the flapping of monstrous wings. She shivered.

  Oh hell. Life was tough enough without sitting around and waiting for a bunch of Bruce Lee wannabes to put a bullet in her noggin.

  She threw a few items into a suitcase, locked up her place and reset the alarm, which would run on a backup battery, and headed over to Des’s house.

  He might be grateful for a friend tonight, anyway. Not that he needed her help to get around. That chair of his was maneuverable enough to pop a wheelie, and the fact that his upper body resembled the chiseled torso of a Greek god didn’t hurt.

  But nobody liked to be alone in a hurricane. Or so she told herself. It seemed as good a reason to crash on his couch as any.

  The real reason was a whole lot simpler. Alone in the dark, she would have only her memories—and her fears. She wasn’t sure she could deal with either tonight.

  CHAPTER 10

  Des met her at the door and ushered her inside, out of the screaming wind. The sprint from her duplex to the garage and from the Jeep to his porch had left her drenched. She smelled like wet laundry. A thread of rain slithered into her nose, and she sneezed.

  “Messy afternoon,” Des observed from his wheelchair. He was casually but impeccably dressed, and immaculately groomed. He lived alone and somehow did everything himself. She never had been quite sure how he got his shoes and pants on, and she had yet to find the right opportunity to ask.

  “Sorry to barge in. I thought maybe you’d like company.”

  “Always welcome.”

  “Figured I could help out a little when it gets dark. Maybe stop you from stubbing a toe or something.”

  “One of the few advantages of my condition is that even if do I stub my toe, I won’t know it.”

  “Point taken.”

  “You don’t have to justify coming over, Parker.”

  “No. I guess I don’t.” She felt she did, though. She wasn’t sure why.

  His power was out, too. Everybody’s power was out. They fixed tea in the kitchen, heating the water in a fondue pot over a can of sterno. She found herself talking about the hurricane.

  “Sandy’s not a good name for a monster storm. It makes me think of Sandy Duncan. Or is it Sandy Dennis? I always get them confused.”

  “What name would you pick?”

  “Helga. Call it that, and you wouldn’t need the governor flapping his chins about mandatory evacuation. Nobody would hang around if Hell Storm Helga was bearing down on them.”

  Des sipped his tea. “So I take it you prefer female names for hurricanes?”

  “Oh yeah. All hurricanes should be girls. That’s just common sense.”

  “Come to think of it, is Sandy male or female?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe … transgendered?”

  He lifted his mug. “Here’s to transgendered hurricanes,” he said grandly.

  She studied him. “Someone’s in a good mood.”

  “I like to entertain.”

  “No, you don’t. You once told me having people over is a pain in the ass.”

  “Couldn’t have been me. Ever since I flipped my Vette, my ass has felt no pain.”

  “Quit it with the lame jokes—and yeah, I’m aware I just made a pun. What’s got you so freakin’ cheerful?”

  “Oh, I just made a little sale. Something I’ve been trying to unload for a long time.”

  He had a gallery, Luminaire, in downtown Brighton Cove and earned his living by selling art—his own paintings, and other people’s. It was a hell of a lot more respectable livelihood than shooting people. Less dangerous too. He didn’t have a crew of crazed gangbangers after him.

  The thought brought her down. “One of yours?” she asked, staring into her tea.

  “No.” He refilled his cup. “No, it’s a piece I acquired years ago. Never liked it, really. Someone finally took it off my hands, and for a pretty penny too.”

  “A pretty penny? What are you, English?”

  “I’m articulate.”

  “Hard to believe anyone would be shopping for art in a hurricane.”

  “It’s not a hurricane yet. Actually, I was having the gallery boarded up when this guy from Englewood Cliffs waltzes in and makes an impulse buy.”

  “Cool beans.” She lifted her mug. “Here’s to the rich getting richer.”

  She heard the sour note in her voice and didn’t like it.

  He eyed her warily. “I’m not exactly rich. And you’re in a shitty mood all of a sudden.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Something you want to talk about?”

  “Oh no.” She wagged a finger at him. “You’re not putting me on the couch again.”

  He was always analyzing her psyche, and the really aggravating thing was that he was always right.

  “Why not? The sessions are free. And I’m a distant relative of Dr. Freud, you know.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “That’s Dr. Bernie Freud, the proctologist.” It was his turn to wag a finger. “I saw it. A tiny little smile.”

  “It was a wince of pain.”

  “I’ll take what I can get. Come on, Parker. Open up. We’ve got all day, and there’s nothing on TV. I mean that literally—the electricity’s off.”

  “Well, okay.” She sighed. “I guess there is something on my mind.”

  She told him about the Asian gang, omitting why they suspected her—omitting any mention of Alec Dante at all. Des listened, his hand on his chin like that statue of the guy thinking; she forgot what it was called.

  When she was through, he commented, “It’s a pickle.”

  “Hey, that’s exactly what I said. So what do you think I should do?”

  “It’s not my call. Whatever you come up with will be the right way to play it.”

  “I’d like to believe that.”

  “Don’t kid yourself. You do believe it. You wouldn’t have survived this long if you didn’t trust your own judgment.”

  She stared out the window and listened to the groaning of the wind. “You’re right. For a long time, I didn’t trust anybody except myself. But now …”

  “Now?”

  “I trust you, Des. You know I do.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “I trust you,” she went on, forcing herself to say it, “and I’m starting to think you understand me. Which is a little scary.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m no angel. Far from it.”

  “Who is?”

  “You just might be.”

  “Me? I’m hell on wheels.” He sounded uncomfortable. Apparently he wasn’t any more accustomed to compliments than she was.

  “I’m just being honest,” she said. “Don’t let it throw you.”

  It still amazed her that they could talk about this stuff. For a long time she’d held off telling him much about herself, because she was sure he’d freak out. Of course, he’d had suspicions—lots of people did—but suspicions could be ignored if you worked at it hard enough. Knowing for certain was a different story. After Pascal, she’d told him openly that her sideline was killing people—but only people who deserved it, she was quick to add. She’d expected him to back up his chair and roll the hell away from her as fast as his wheels wou
ld carry him.

  He hadn’t. And that was the miracle of it. He’d only nodded and said, “I figured it was something like that.”

  Since then, she’d shared things with him. Not everything, but more than she’d shared with anyone else, ever. Having been alone for nearly her whole life, she was hardly in the habit of opening up. But she was starting to get the hang of it. What the hell, maybe it would even make her a better person, or at least slightly less of an asshole.

  And for the first time, they’d begun circling the idea of intimacy, making jokes that weren’t quite funny, and stray remarks that led nowhere. Neither of them wanted to broach the subject, but it was there, and they knew it.

  “So … just what exactly are you going to do?” he asked.

  “Worry. Then worry some more. And when the bad guys show up—I’ll improvise.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “It’s not a plan,” she said irritably. “What part of ‘improvise’ don’t you get?” She shook her head, dispelling the subject. “So … you got anything to eat around here that doesn’t require electric power?”

  “I have steaks in the fridge, and a propane stove.”

  “You’re my hero.”

  “I’ve also got wine. So I say we eat steak and drink wine and hope the Long Fong Boyz get washed away at high tide.”

  Bonnie smiled. “Now that’s a plan.”

  CHAPTER 11

  The Grove Street Tower was a luxury high-rise in Jersey City’s rapidly gentrifying downtown. Underground parking garage, twenty-four-hour security, on-site gym, indoor pool. Frank knew the building well. A couple of years ago, not long after the Tower had gone up, he’d plunked down more than a half mil for a two-bedroom unit, which he’d handed over to his nephew as a gift—the same ploy he’d pulled with the cottage on Devil’s Hook. For Alec, it was a sweet deal; he could live in style, mortgage-free, with a view of the Manhattan skyline and a short walk to a PATH station. Frank had hoped the setup would help keep the kid out of trouble.

  That was the problem with Alec. There was always trouble.