Watt-Evans, Lawrence - Predator 01

by Concrete Jungle (as Archer Nathan) (v5. 0)

  Contents

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  1

  New York was sweltering through the worst heat wave in years. The descending sun reflected off a million windows in orange fire, turning the asphalt and concrete oven hot. Heat shimmered over the streets like an enormous translucent ocean-but felt more like a swamp.

  As any cop will tell you, tempers fray when the temperature rises. The normal aggravations of life in the Big Apple are all a little more aggravating when it's 90 degrees Fahrenheit and ninety percent humidity, especially when the air-conditioning quits, or was never there in the first place.

  A disagreement that would end in a quick apology or a grumbled curse in February isn't so easy to stop in August, when the thick hot air is holding the traffic fumes and the stench of uncollected garbage close around your face. Little things that wouldn't mean much on a calm spring day get in there with the sweat that's sticking your shirt to your back, and itch and itch and itch and they just won't go away until you find a way to scratch.

  It was all just the little things that finally got to Al Napolitano, that drove him over the edge. They were nothing, really-the last beer gone from the fridge, the unwashed dinner dishes, the noise and stink of the city spilling in through the wide-open windows, Rose sitting there in front of the TV with the remote in one hand and that last can of beer in the other, and Christ, she wasn't even finishing it, she was letting it get warm, what a goddamn waste that was . . . they were nothing, really, just little meaningless annoyances, Al could have handled it, he was pretty sure he could have handled it, they were adding up all right, they were getting on his nerves, but they weren't too much for him, even with the heat. He could have handled it-if it weren't for what she was watching as she sat there letting the beer get warm.

  If she'd been watching the Home Shopping Network, he could have taken it, no problem. Her bowling shows, hell, those would've been just fine, he'd have maybe even pulled up a chair himself.

  But she was watching Green Acres, some goddamn idiot cable channel had programmed reruns of Green Acres back to back, and she wouldn't switch channels or even turn down the sound, she wanted to hear it over the traffic, and it was when the second one came on, with that idiot theme song, that Al Napolitano couldn't take it anymore, and scratched that awful itch with a twelve-gauge shotgun at point-blank range.

  Both barrels. One for Rose, one for the TV

  Detective Rasche, there to collect Al and otherwise do his bit toward keeping the peace, looked over the blood-spattered wreckage of the TV, and of Rose, after Al had explained it all to him.

  "Dumb son of a bitch," Rasche muttered to himself. "I like Green Acres."

  Then the uniforms cuffed Al and led him down to the street, Rose's blood still red on his sweat-soaked undershirt, and the ambulance crew collected what was left of Rose on a stretcher and followed.

  Rasche had given Al his Miranda rights, not that it made a whole hell of a lot of difference in a case like this, so he walked alongside and listened to whatever Al had to say, just in case the poor bastard said something that could be used to screw the inevitable insanity plea-anything Al said now was admissible.

  "First time we'd had decent reception all week," Al shouted as they left the old brownstone, "and she had to watch that, for God's sake! I mean, Jesus, when I heard the part about `fresh air, Times Square,' something just went!"

  Rasche mopped sweat from the back of his neck with a thoroughly saturated handkerchief. No question, there wasn't any goddamn fresh air within twenty miles of Times Square, but so what?

  "Everybody's a goddamn critic," he said.

  He hated homicide work. So much of it was like this-no mystery, no suspense, just some poor son of a bitch who lost it for a moment. There was nothing for a detective to do but try to clean up the mess, and who needed a detective for that?

  He hated Homicide.

  Narcotics, now-he'd liked narcotics work. There you were doing something positive, stopping the stuff from reaching the street, not just mopping up when it was too damn late to help anyone. You were saving kids, maybe kids like his own two boys, you were saving lives, not just watching the victims get carried out in a bag or under a blanket.

  And you were up against people who fought back, not some poor schmuck with a glazed look in his eye who'd barely had the wits to drop the shotgun when the cops burst in. It took some real detecting to move up the chain following the drugs back to the source, to know what was going down, to know who was important and who was nothing, to know where to be when; it took guts, too.

  Of course, you could get carried away in narcotics work. Rasche knew that, no question. He'd seen it. He'd been there when his partner had pitched the district chief of the Cali cartel off the roof of that fancy brownstone apartment house, and he had to admit that Schaefer had been just a bit over the line, doing that.

  Schaef hadn't been out of control or anything; Rasche didn't think he'd even been angry. Heaving the guy over the parapet had seemed like a good idea at the time, under the circumstances, and the switchblade that was still in the smarmy bastard's hand when he landed, despite all the bones in that hand being broken, had convinced the powers that be in the NYPD that it wasn't that much of an overreaction.

  But it had gotten Schaefer and Rasche transferred to Homicide, because that little incident had struck a nerve in the coke-dealing community, and things had gotten just a little too hot-even before the stinking heat wave began. The two detectives were on the hit list of every ambitious dealer or desperate doper in the city; anyone who wanted an in with the Colombians and could point a gun would be only too happy to blow them both away.

  The captain had figured that if they stayed on the street working narco, it was just a matter of time before someone got lucky, and though losing Schaefer might simplify Captain McComb's life in some ways, it wouldn't be good PR, and it wouldn't help morale.

  So Rasche and Schaefer were working homicide and hating every minute of it.

  At least Rasche was; Schaefer had no comment.

  Generally speaking, Schaefer wasn't much for unnecessary comments on anything. Rasche respected that.

  Rasche got Al Napolitano properly on his way, safely tucked into the back of a prowl car, then found his own unmarked vehicle and climbed into the passenger side. Shadows had stretched across the streets and were climbing the buildings; the streetlights were coming on.

  Schaefer and Rasche were on the evening shift at the moment; they wouldn't be getting off for another five hours, and that was assuming they didn't pull any overtime.

  Schaefer was behind the wheel, staring straight ahead. He hadn't bothered to come up to the Napolitano apartment.

  Rasche didn't mind. Schaefer was always there for the important stuff, and he did his share on the paper pushing, so Rasche didn't care if he blew off some of the little things on occasion.

  "Yo, Schaef," Rasche said. "You want to take care of the paperwork now, or let it wait and get some coffee?"

  "Cof
fee," Schaefer said, putting the car in gear.

  Rasche nodded. He sat back in the seat, wishing he'd never seen Al Napolitano, and wondering what was happening on their old beat a little farther south on the Lower East Side. What were the druggies, the gangs, the dealers, the importers up to since Schaefer and Rasche's transfer? Had the Colombians managed to take any turf from the local outfits, the way the word on the street had said they wanted to? Had that slimy little cipher Lamb patched things up with his chief rival, Carr, to keep the Colombians out? The two had been fighting over market share for two years now, Lamb running his organization with calm, cool precision, Carr keeping up his side through sheer psychotic violence.

  Carr had always been a lunatic.

  Rasche wondered where Lamb and Carr and the rest were, at that very moment.

  And as he wondered, Carr and four of his lieutenants were marching down a fifth-floor corridor six blocks farther downtown, in a boarded-up tenement. A holstered .357 hung on Carr's hip; three of the others carried sawed-off pump-action shotguns, while the last cradled an M-16.

  The two men who met them at the door to the meeting room were armed as well-one with a .38-caliber semi-auto, the other with an Uzi. The weapons were all conspicuously visible, but not aimed at anyone.

  Yet.

  Carr stopped, his garishly painted face inches from the guard with the .38.

  "Tell that pussy Lamb I'm here for the peace talks," he said.

  The two figures were a striking contrast-the guard stood almost as tall as Carr's six foot three, but weighed perhaps half as much; where Carr wore a sweat-soaked sleeveless T-shirt, jeans, and black biker boots, the guard was nattily dressed in a blue pinstripe suit and red power tie, his only concession to the heat being the lack of a vest. Lines of red war paint that might have just been lipstick were slashed across Carr's face, and gold rings gleamed in his nose and left ear; his red hair was receding, but what was left was pulled back into a foot-long braid. The guard's face was clean and redolent of expensive aftershave, his hair in a hundred-dollar razor cut. Carr's eyes gleamed with madness; the guard's were cool and dark.

  The guard was a man who'd seen dealing drugs as a way to earn money and respect; Carr, so far as anyone could figure out, had gotten into the drug business, with its guns, money, and violence, purely for the guns and violence.

  For fun, in other words.

  The guard nodded to his partner without turning away from Carr for an instant.

  The man with the Uzi knocked twice on the door.

  "Carr's here," he called.

  A muffled voice answered, and a moment later the door swung open.

  The room beyond was large, but as ruinous as the rest of the building; shards of glass were scattered on the floor, mixed with fallen ceiling plaster. Three empty windows were sloppily boarded over, with light from the lingering twilight and the remaining streetlights spilling in through three-inch gaps between planks. Enough air seeped in to layer the city's distinctive petroleum-based stench on top of the building's own dusty, mildewed reek.

  An overturned stove sat in the center of the room, and a dapper young man leaned casually on the stove. Four others stood ranged behind him, all of them armed.

  "Carr," the young man said coolly, "I'm glad you could make it."

  "Cut the shit, Lamb," Carr said, striding into the room. "We got nothin' to talk about. I'm just here because I figured you might want to surrender."

  "Wrong, Carr," Lamb replied. "We've got everything to talk about. We've got the whole damn city to talk about-not to mention our own survival."

  Carr stopped a yard or so away from Lamb, planted his feet, and folded his arms across his chest. His four men straggled in behind him and took up positions around the room, dividing it into two armed camps. Edgie and Bonamo took a corner near the door, Hatcheck stood at Carr's right hand, and Crazy Charlie settled himself onto an ancient radiator, his back to a glassless window

  "Carr, just look at the situation," Lamb continued. "The cops are taking us down piece by piece, and what they miss, we finish for them with this stupid turf war. We're both pulling down serious money with our street operations, and throwing most of it away on this crap-there'd be enough for both of us if we stopped shooting at each other. There's enough that the Colombians would just love to step in and grab it all."

  Even with the boards there was a faint whiff of a breeze there in the window, and Crazy Charlie was enjoying the feel of it on his back under his vest as he listened to Lamb's speech. He wasn't wearing a shirt, not in this heat, and even the vest was hot, and that air felt good. He was paying more attention to that, and to the taste of the Camel he was smoking, than to the little wimp's spiel. He could see sweat on Lamb's forehead, but he had to give the runt credit it was probably the heat that did that, not fear. Lamb might not be much of a man, but Charlie knew he didn't get control of half the local drug traffic by being scared.

  And Charlie knew that if he were in Lamb's position, he'd be scared-anyone who wasn't scared of Carr had to be crazy. Crazy Charlie was crazy, but not in that particular way.

  "So?" Carr said. He looked bored.

  "So we can do better, Carr," Lamb replied. "We can have it all."

  "Yeah?" Carr grinned briefly. "You got any suggestions as to just how that might work, Lamb?"

  Charlie took a drag on his cigarette and tapped ash on the floor.

  "Yeah, Carr, as it happens, I do," Lamb said. "I know we're never going to agree on boundaries, not and make it stick-you know that, too, and I'm impressed that you're here. It shows that maybe you're as sick of this fighting as I am, and you're looking for another way. And there is another way, Carr! "

  Carr just stared at his rival. Charlie allowed himself a grin. He knew that stare.

  "I'm talking about a merger," Lamb continued. "We put it all together, combine our organizations, you and I split the net even. Together we can set prices, consolidate the police payoffs-the savings on that alone will be enormous! And the Colombians-the only way the Colombians can get a toehold in New York is by pitting the gangs against each other. If we merge, we can keep them out until hell freezes over!"

  Carr shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "Only one small problem," he said.

  Lamb stopped, hands spread questioningly.

  Carr smiled. "One problem, Lambikins," he said. "I don't give a shit about the Colombian muchachos, and I couldn't care less about maximizing profits or cutting overhead or any of that crap. Screw your merger. I'm in this for the kicks, and you and your suits are bullshit, if I had to work with you, I'd go batfuck in a week."

  Lamb's hands dropped.

  "So," Carr said, "why don't we just cut this `peace' shit and get on with it? What say we have us a dainty little game of winner-take-all . . ."

  As Carr spoke, Lamb's hands were behind his back, and Crazy Charlie didn't think it was just so he could twiddle his thumbs, he'd have bet his eyeteeth that the sneaky son of a bitch had a piece back there, and besides, it sounded like Carr wanted to make this one big shooting gallery in here, which Charlie didn't think was that great an idea, if the truth be known, but Carr was the Man, and Charlie was just muscle.

  If there was going to be any shooting, Charlie intended to be on the sending end, not receiving; he started to bring his shotgun around, but as he did, he sensed something, he wasn't sure what. He turned and glimpsed three little spots of some kind of red light, like those laser beams in the checkout at the 7-Eleven, crawling across the window frame and onto his back.

  "What the . . . ," he began, interrupting Carr.

  And then white fire flashed and Crazy Charlie's chest exploded, spraying gore across the room as the blue-white blast tore through him.

  * * *

  2

  Everyone whirled at the sound of the blast; everyone saw Crazy Charlie's body twitch convulsively and fall to the floor, chest blown apart, bits of rib and heart and lung scattered like confetti in the plaster dust.

  "It's a set
up!" Carr bellowed as he drew his Magnum; a streamer of Crazy Charlie's blood had drawn a dark red line across his boot.

  "It's not, Carr, I swear . . . !" Lamb began.

  "Someone's outside," Lamb's second in command shouted. "Cover me!" He kicked a half rotted board off the nearest window and leaned out, assault rifle ready in his hands. "I'll take care of it, Lamb," he said. "Whoever the shooter is . . ."

  That was as far as he got; the sentence ended in a gurgle and a grunt as the man was yanked out, tearing more boards away as he was dragged upward, legs kicking wildly, spine arching unnaturally.

  Half a dozen weapons were cocked and ready now, searching for targets as Carr grabbed Lamb's tie and shoved the .357 up under his rival's chin.

  "You son of a bitch!" Carr roared. "We're five floors up! Who the hell is out there?"

  "I don't know!" Lamb shrieked. "Not my men!''

  Then realization dawned in Lamb's eyes. "Colombians!" he said.

  "Fuck the Colombians!" Carr replied. He shoved Lamb away and looked over his men, Hatcheck and Edgie and Bonamo, standing with their weapons ready, aimed at the windows, just waiting the word.

  Lamb's men were looking at him expectantly, and their weapons were aimed at the windows, too.

  "You and me'll finish up later, Lamb," Carr said. "Right now I'm for blowing the balls off whoever's out there, and I don't give a shit if it's the Colombians or the cops or fuckin' Santa Claus." He waved to his men. "Do it!''

  The room exploded in gunfire, in an unbearable chaos of sound and flash, as Carr's and Lamb's men all opened fire on the room's outer wall. Splinters flew; planking shredded under the hail of gunfire, and plaster showered from the ancient walls. Window frames cracked, sagged, collapsed, lath and studding shattered, and the brick veneer beyond crumbled as the barrage continued, round after round of high-caliber ammo blasting at the aging structure. Carr's delighted yelling as he pumped rounds from his Magnum was almost inaudible over the noise.

  At last, as ammunition was exhausted, fire ceased; the echoes died away, booming down through the streets below, and the last fragments of wood, plaster, and masonry rattled to rest.