Epsilon Creed (Joe Venn Crime Action Thriller Series Book 5)

by Tim Stevens

  Venn recognized him.

  He was tall, Venn’s height of six-three or maybe even an inch more, and in his late forties, possibly, though he looked younger. Slimly built, he wore his beautifully tailored dark suit with style. His skin was smooth and the color of mahogany, and his facial features – the high cheekbones, the aquiline nose – suggested a rich ethnic mix in his heritage.

  Beth turned to follow the direction of Venn’s gaze.

  The newcomer reached them. In a soft, perfectly modulated bass, he said: “You must be Dr Colby.”

  Beth was a confident woman – Venn had never met a physician of her status who wasn’t – but she seemed momentarily lost for words.

  He knew the man because he’d seen him on newsstands and on TV, though he hadn’t made the connection previously.

  Louis Q. Mykels.

  “The man himself,” Venn found himself murmuring.

  Mykels’ gaze shifted from Beth to Venn. A trace of amusement played about the man’s delicate lips.

  He doesn’t look like an artist, thought Venn. More like an evangelist preacher. Or a senator.

  “And you’re Detective Lieutenant Joseph Venn.” Mykels’ tone was intrigued.

  Venn was surprised. “Have we met?”

  Mykels smiled. It was as though a light had been flicked on. Venn could have sworn that heads turned in response.

  “I don’t believe so, Lieutenant.” He looked at Beth. “Dr Colby’s name I figured out by process of elimination. I’ve been running through the guest list, and greeting my visitors one by one.” Did his gaze linger on Beth a fraction of a second too long? To Venn, he said: “But I keep up with current events, Lieutenant Venn. And so do you. In the sense that you often are current events.”

  Beth seemed to have gotten over her initial reaction and was back to her usual unflustered self. “It’s an honor to be here, Mr Mykels.”

  “Please. Louis.” He held out a manicured hand, and she took it. This time there was no lingering. Mykels offered his hand to Venn, who shook. The palm was surprisingly rough, another turn-up for the books. “I trust you’ve been well fed and wined?”

  Beth said, “The exhibition is stunning, Mr Myk – Louis. Enormously powerful.”

  Mykels studied her with genuine interest. “Thank you. I’ll admit, the reception so far has been very positive.”

  “There’s a lot of violence in the pictures,” said Venn.

  This time Mykels stared into his eyes. Again, he seemed to be considering Venn’s comment with the utmost seriousness.

  “A perceptive remark.” Mykels half-turned to the picture on the wall nearest to them. It was the one with the tangled black lines and the blue, scythe-like arc. “This one, for example. I call it College.”

  “Why?” said Venn.

  “The assault of knowledge on the confused, half-formed mind.”

  “You don’t believe in education?” Venn was aware of Beth shifting uncomfortably at his side. She was used to his bluntness, but she probably didn’t think this was the best time for it to be on display.

  Mykels turned on that smile again. “On the contrary. I can think of little that’s of greater importance. But the learning one gains in college, and in other educational settings, can shape one’s mind permanently. That’s a wonderful and terrible power.”

  They stood gazing at the painting for a few moments. Then Mykels glanced at Beth.

  “You’re a physician at Revere Hospital?”

  “Yes.”

  Mykels began to ask her about her work. Once again, his interest in her replies appeared entirely authentic. Venn was reminded of President Bill Clinton. Those who had met him agreed that his enormous charisma stemmed from his ability to make you feel like the most important person in the room.

  Mykels’ agent, Veronique, bustled over, giving Venn a tight, wincing smile. She murmured something in Mykels’ ear and he straightened.

  “Forgive me,” he said, fixing Beth and Venn in turn with his gaze. “I have to mingle. It seems there’s a potential buyer in the crowd. It’s been a genuine pleasure. I hope we get the chance to meet again, soon.”

  This time, his eyes lingered on Venn rather than Beth.

  Side by side, they watched his tall figure disappear into the crowd.

  “Wow,” said Beth.

  Venn looked at her. “He’s got presence, I’ll grant him that.”

  She searched Venn’s face. Then a mischievous smile broke over her face.

  “Joe Venn, I believe you’re jealous.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “You are.”

  “No I’m not.”

  He took her hand. Grinned back at her.

  Beth said, with mock-nonchalance, “He’s a good-looking guy.”

  “Is he? I can’t tell these things.”

  “Educated, intelligent, well-spoken...”

  “All overrated qualities.”

  Beth hugged him. “But he’s not Joe Venn.”

  Venn hugged her back. Well, maybe he’d been just a little jealous.

  Beth took his hand and pulled him along. “Come on. I haven’t seen all the paintings yet.”

  As they examined another picture, this one depicting a series of monochrome whorls with a faint pink underlay – like someone doodled on a sheet from which the bloodstains hadn’t been properly washed out, thought Venn – Beth said: “Seems like a nice guy, though.”

  “Mykels? Oh, sure.”

  And on the surface, Mykels was a nice guy. He didn’t have that aura of pretentiousness Venn associated with artistic types. He seemed more interested in talking about other people than himself.

  But there was something about him that rubbed Venn up the wrong way. It wasn’t his suaveness. Or his weird art.

  It was the sense Venn had gotten, in a way he couldn’t quite put his finger on, that the guy was... toying with him.

  In his pocket, his phone buzzed.

  Venn stuck a finger in his ear to cut out the background noise and said, “Yeah.”

  Beside him, Beth looked only mildly reproachful. As a doctor, she was used to getting calls at inopportune times, and in inappropriate settings. Venn held up a hand in apology and stepped away to a corner of the gallery.

  It was Harpin, the detective who’d caught the Martha Ignatowski homicide.

  “We got a development.”

  Venn listened as Harpin explained.

  “Hot damn,” said Venn, when the man finished.

  “Yeah,” said Harpin.

  Venn glanced at his watch, thought quickly.

  “Give me one hour.”

  Chapter 5

  Venn made his way to his Jeep, waving away a valet who hurried over to offer to get it for him.

  He’d offered Beth the use of the Cherokee while he took a taxi, but she’d insisted that he take the car. She’d taken his announcement that he had to leave without too much fuss. She seemed to be enjoying herself, and he left her among a group of guests who were engaged in an animated discussion about one of Mykels’ paintings. One of the guests was a woman Beth knew slightly, and she’d offered to give Beth a ride home afterward.

  “I won’t be late,” Venn said, kissing her. “Promise.”

  As he got into the Jeep, he thought about what Harpin had said on the phone.

  “The first toxicology results are in,” he’d announced without preamble. “Martha Ignatowski’s system contained high levels of thallium. Looks like she was poisoned.”

  It didn’t make sense. Poisoned as well as beaten to death? Unless she’d taken the poison knowingly, in a suicide attempt. But that would be a hell of a coincidence.

  Venn knew there wasn’t a hell of a lot he could do tonight. But he still felt an urge to go visit the morgue with Harpin, to speak to the pathologist himself.

  He fired the engine and pulled out of the parking lot.

  After leaving the Ignatowski house that morning, Venn had swung by the Division of Special Projects’ office in Midtown, just off
Ninth Avenue. Shawna, the receptionist, didn’t work weekends and wasn’t there. Venn found both his other detectives, Sergeants Filiberto Vidal and Harmony Jones, waiting for him. He’d called them earlier, as soon as Kang had informed him of the Ignatowski killing.

  Venn filled them in, then set them to work separately. He asked Fil, the computer guy, to dig up every scrap of information on earth about Martha Ignatowski. To Harmony, who was more of a street cop, he said: “I need you to trace Ignatowski’s movements over the last week. Every store she visited, every cab driver she hailed.”

  “You think she hailed cabs herself?” said Harmony. “That she didn’t pay some flunky to do it for her?”

  Harmony was a petite African American cop with a cranky outlook which hadn’t been improved by what had happened to her four months earlier. During the investigation into the Sigma serial murders, she’d been shot twice by the killer. She’d gotten lucky, suffering a collapsed lung and some internal bleeding, but avoiding damage to any nerves or major blood vessels.

  She’d fought ferociously to get herself through rehab and back into shape, and she’d been back at work now a little longer than a month. But Venn knew she was still in pain, and caught glimpses of her face twisted in discomfort from time to time, especially when she twisted her torso too rapidly. She’d never admit it, though, and Venn had learned not to express any sympathy or concern for her.

  Venn remained in the office for a couple of hours, catching up on some paperwork now that he was there anyway, before taking off around four p.m. He and Beth had salvaged some of their day off together, before getting ready for the exhibition.

  And here he was, getting ready to go out again.

  Venn took the Jeep out onto the main street which ran past the entrance to the Desiderata Gallery. It was ten after nine by now, and the event would wind down in a little while, though he supposed there’d be some kind of drinks party afterward. He didn’t think Beth would go along to that, assuming she was invited at all.

  As he cruised along the street, he looked at the front of the building. A few people milled around outside, smoking and chatting, forced out by the tobacco ban.

  He passed a car parked up on the curb. A Range Rover. A Chinese-looking man sat behind the wheel.

  Venn thought nothing of it, until he passed another parked vehicle, this one a Toyota, and saw another Chinese guy inside.

  Venn braked.

  It probably meant nothing. Two cars with Chinese drivers. There were a half-million Chinese Americans in New York City. It was a public street, and a free country. Anybody could park there.

  But as he reversed until the Jeep was level with the Toyota, the driver turned his head to look at Venn, and Venn knew his instinct was right.

  There was something wrong here.

  Venn made eye contact with the driver. The man stared back, unblinking. He was young, no more than thirty, with a hard, cold face.

  Venn rolled down his window, motioned for the man to do the same.

  When the guy failed to do so, Venn fished his shield from his inside jacket pocket and held it up.

  The man’s face hardened further.

  Below the level of the window, Venn slipped his other hand inside his jacket and took hold of the grip of his Beretta.

  A cop never leaves his gun behind.

  Venn stared into the man’s eyes, with a look he’d worked on as a Marine and perfected as a Chicago beat cop. The look wasn’t meant to challenge the recipient. It was meant to overwhelm him. It said: You cannot hope to beat me.

  Venn mouthed, slowly and clearly: Lower your window.

  The window rolled slowly down past the man’s face until it was three-quarters open.

  Venn said: “Place your hands on the steering wheel.”

  Without averting his stare, the man complied. Even from where he sat, Venn could see the cracked, scarred knuckles. They were the hands of a fighter.

  A tightening in the man’s face, in the taut muscles of his neck, triggered a reflex in Venn.

  He threw himself forward, ducking below the window, and in the last image he had of the other car the driver had himself bent to the wheel and the man on the other side of him, in the passenger seat, was extending his arm.

  The shots came in a quick one-two, the blasts trailing in the wake of the shattering sound as the passenger window of Venn’s Jeep blew out on the other side of him. Fragments of safety glass speckled down on his back like hailstones.

  Through the ringing in his ears, Venn heard the Toyota’s engine fire up.

  He counted down rapidly from three.

  Then lifted his head and aimed the barrel of the Beretta across the door through the shattered window and fired.

  He saw the silhouette of the man in the passenger seat twist away and the driver’s blurred face as the Toyota screeched off the sidewalk. Felt the jolt as the Toyota clipped the fender of the Jeep.

  He’d hit the man in the passenger seat, he knew.

  Venn flung the door open and leaned across it and took aim at the Toyota as it veered out past the Jeep into the road. Horns flared angrily as cars swerved to dodge the Toyota, but it kept going.

  Venn fired again, twice, through the rear window of the Toyota. In the instant before the starring glass obscured his view, he saw the driver slam forward against the dashboard. The Toyota swung wildly toward the sidewalk again and its wheels mounted the curb.

  Venn registered the crump and the tearing of metal and fragmenting of glass as the car’s front end barrelled into a lamppost and came to an abrupt halt. But he didn’t have time to linger, because he heard the scream of tires behind him.

  He whirled, half-out of the Jeep. The Range Rover, ten yards back, had gunned its engine and was surging out onto the road.

  Through the lowered passenger window, the muzzle of a gun protruded, looking huge as a cannon.

  Venn dropped beside the Jeep a split-second before the high-velocity rounds sung overhead and the hammering clatter of automatic fire tore through the night. He flattened himself, hearing some of the shots pound into the Jeep, feeling it rocking on its wheels against him.

  The tires continued to squeal and a new cacophony of horns rose up from the street. The firing had stopped. Venn rose to a crouch and peered over the hood of the Jeep.

  The Range Rover had weaved through the oncoming traffic, leaving a trail of stalled cars and ripped side panels in its wake. Its taillights were already disappearing round a corner.

  Venn grabbed his cell phone from his pocket and hit 911 and yelled into it, giving the location and the details he knew – a Range Rover, black, with a Chinese driver – and then he was running toward the Toyota at a stoop, the Beretta held low in both hands.

  The fender was wrapped around the lamppost so far that it almost formed a complete loop. Steam hissed from beneath the tented hood.

  Inside, the car was a mess of blood, like a stick of dynamite had gone off in a can of crimson paint. The driver was sprawled against the wheel, unrestrained by his safety belt. The back of his head was a crater of bone and gore.

  The man in the passenger seat had slid down into the footwell, where he was wedged by the crumpling of the front of the car. One of his eyes was visible, staring at Venn in glassy accusation. The other eye, and the entire side of his face, was gone.

  Venn straightened. People were pouring out of the front of the gallery, keeping back as if restrained by an invisible force field.

  He shouted, “Get back inside. Now.”

  Two guys were running toward him from the gallery, one of them the plainclothes cop he’d recognized earlier, the other presumably his colleague. They had their guns drawn.

  Venn looked around, at the sidewalk, the chaotic street. He heard the sirens approaching rapidly from all sides.

  His mind played the same loop over and over: What the hell?

  Chapter 6

  Micky continued yelling, “Go, go, go,” long after they were ten blocks from the gallery and speeding
down Broadway.

  He knew Stephen, his driver, needed to slow down, because they were attracting attention, but he was driven by an animal urge to flee until he could run no longer. As well as by a bestial sense of fury and shame.

  They’d screwed u. He’d screwed up.

  The bright theater lights shimmered all around. As if reading his mind, Stephen eased off on the pedal.

  Micky had screwed up, because although it was James and Tyrus who’d attracted the big man’s attention, and aroused his suspicions, although it was one of them – probably Tyrus, in the passenger seat – who’d panicked and opened fire on the guy... Micky was the one in charge. And he’d failed to pull off the hit.

  There was no chance of going back now and finishing the job. No chance at all. The cops would be all over the gallery and its environs like a heat rash.

  Stephen muttered: “Where to?”

  “Anywhere,” said Micky. “Anywhere except home.” He meant Chinatown, where they had their base. “Just drive. Head into one of the other boroughs, maybe.”

  Stephen didn’t say anything, but kept going.

  They’d parked two of the cars, the Toyota and the Honda, in the parking lot while Micky and Stephen had scouted the front of the gallery in the Range Rover. Once he’d noted that there was no overt police presence – though there’d surely be cops inside – Micky returned to the parking lot and briefed his guys.

  They’d cruise the front until parking places became available, even if it took an hour. Two of the cars would park there. The third would be used as floating support nearby, should it be necessary. Backup.

  He’d been sitting there in the Rover, watching the entrance to the gallery, and when the first few people had started to trickle out, Micky had felt his pulse quicken.

  Their target would be one of the last to leave.

  Then the Jeep had come idling past, and the big man had sussed them out.

  Who was he? A cop, probably. He moved like one, held his gun like one.

  If James and Tyrus had held their nerve, they might have been able to see him off. He had no probable cause to arrest them or search their car. Their licenses and registration documents checked out.