Delta Ghost - 02

by Tim Stevens

  Venn looked at Harmony. She shook her head.

  “This isn’t ours, Venn,” she said. “It’s for the narcotics guys.”

  “If there’s a link with O’Dell, then I’m interested.” Venn handed the card back to Righteous. “Call the number. Say you need a delivery. Usual address.”

  “Dammit, Venn,” Harmony groaned. “I’m not going back in there. One week living in that hole and I’ve had enough.”

  “Then I’ll do it alone.” He nodded at Righteous, who found a phone in the pockets of his coat and thumbed the keys.

  An instant later, a tinny voice came from the other end. Righteous yelped and dropped the phone in surprise.

  Venn caught it before it hit the floor.

  “Hello?” snapped a man’s voice.

  Venn stayed silent. Down the line, he could hear cars in the background. Voices, too, lots of them.

  “Hello? Who’s there?” The voice was abrupt, authoritative. A cop’s.

  Venn said, “This is Detective Lieutenant Joseph Venn. Who’re you?”

  “Patrolman Jenkins, 44th Precinct. Who did you say you were?”

  “Venn. Division of Special Projects.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “I’ve never heard of you,” said Venn. “How did you get this phone?”

  The cop sounded flustered, like he had a thousand things on his mind and wished he’d never answered the call. “I can’t just tell you –”

  “You on traffic patrol?” said Venn.

  “No, I –”

  “You will be if you don’t lose the attitude. Now... how did you get this phone?”

  There was a pause. “Lieutenant, I apologize. The heat, I guess.” Another voice said something nearby and the patrolman muttered a reply before speaking into the phone again. “We’ve had a street shooting here. Mott Haven, in the Bronx. One guy dead. We just got here. The phone was in the guy’s hand, and I just picked it up when it started ringing.”

  “Any ID on the guy?” said Venn.

  “Yeah. Driving license says he’s, uh... Stefan Kruger.”

  Kruger. The name of the furniture store on the card.

  “What happened?” asked Venn.

  “Well, the handful of eyewitnesses give conflicting accounts, but it seems it was a drive-by. A half-hour ago. Guy was strolling along the sidewalk, talking on his phone, when this car pulls up. Bam, bam. Looks like three shots. Professional ones.”

  “You get a description of the car?”

  “Yeah. Lots of them.” The patrolman’s tone was sour. “Let’s see... it was either a dark-gray Taurus, or a silver Toyota Camry. Or maybe a black Chrysler Neon. Hell, I can just see how those cars could be mistaken for each other.”

  “Not everybody’s as observant as New York’s finest,” Venn said.

  “Got that right, Lieutenant.” Jenkins spoke off to the side again. Then: “Sir, you mind if I end this call? I’ve got crowd control issues starting up here.”

  “Sure,” said Venn. “And thanks.”

  He tossed the phone back to Righteous, who fumbled and dropped it. To Harmony, Venn said: “Guy who owns the furniture store is dead. Shot from a passing car a short while ago.”

  “Yeah, I gathered.”

  As Venn stood up, she said, “Where you going?”

  “We’re heading back to the office. Righteous here is going to give Walt a description of the guys who delivered the smack to him. Meanwhile, you and I are going for a ride.”

  “Venn. It’s not our turf –”

  “We’re gonna check out this furniture store. Before the precinct guys are all over it like a rash.”

  Chapter 3

  There were two things Danny Clune resented about being mugged.

  The first was that this was New York City. It was supposed to be one of the safest cities of its size in the world, a far cry from the seedy, violent hellhole depicted in Taxi Driver and other seventies films. He wasn’t even trespassing on a rough area late at night. Instead, it was broad daylight, the July sun blasting down, and he was strolling down Vandam Street, earbuds in place and the Rolling Stones’ Let It Bleed playing at full volume on his iPod, when the mugger stuck a gun in his face.

  You just weren’t supposed to get mugged in New York any more. Especially if you were a British tourist.

  The second thing that bothered Danny about the mugging was the nonchalance with which it was carried out.

  He stopped dead, a frozen knot deep in his bowels, as the barrel of the foreshortened gun swelled to the width of a tunnel entrance in front of his eyes.

  Oh my God, he thought. This is it. After everything that I’ve been through, I’m going to die like a stray dog on a Manhattan street.

  Then the muzzle dropped a fraction, and Danny saw what was behind it. A young man, perhaps twenty, only three or four years younger than Danny himself. The mugger wore baggy low-slung jeans and a 50 Cent T-shirt under an unbuttoned check shirt. He too had buds in his ears, and his hair was buzzed short.

  “Wallet, yo.” He said it almost indifferently, barely making eye contact.

  Danny’s fingers scrabbled at the Velcro seal on his bumbag (fanny-pack, he was learning to call it). He reached in delicately, trying to demonstrate that he wasn’t drawing a gun of his own. Awkwardly, he tossed the wallet towards the other man. The mugger caught it deftly, prised open the compartments one-handed, peeled out the single credit card and the trio of twenty-dollar bills.

  “Jesus, man.” He threw the wallet on the pavement. “That’s all?”

  “Honest.” Danny turned out the pockets of his cargo trousers, letting keys and used tissues and loose change spill on the ground. He remembered suddenly the container of Mace in the fanny-pack. He’d bought it on arrival in the US because it seemed the sort of thing you did as a long-stay tourist. But the mugger would see him fumble it out, and probably shoot him before he could figure out how to use it.

  The mugger said: “Let’s see that watch. And your phone.”

  The watch was a cheap Timex, but the phone... bloody hell. Danny’d bought it on his arrival in the States five weeks ago, his first treat to himself. It was a top-of-the-range Samsung, and already a part of him.

  The mugger pocketed the phone, dropped the watch. Danny heard its face crack on the pavement. “That an iPod?”

  “Yep.”

  “Fuck that old crap, dude. Jesus.”

  A ringtone sounded – Danny recognized Pharrell’s Happy – and the mugger pulled a bud from his ear and raised his own phone. “Yeah.”

  Briefly, Danny considered using the distraction to make a run for it. But what would be the point? The man already had his phone, and his Visa card. He wasn’t going to shoot Danny - at least, Danny didn’t think so. So he’d gain nothing by fleeing, except maybe a bullet in the back in a fit of pique.

  The mugger was grinning into his phone. “Later, yo. I’m gettin’ a little extra cash right now.” He glanced at Danny. “Nah. Some douchebag tourist. Foreign. Like from Australia or Europe or some country like that.”

  He put the phone away, lowered the gun.

  As he backed away, he said, “Word of advice, man. You might want to lose the T-shirt. Makes you look seriously gay.”

  And he was gone, loping round the corner on suspiciously new red All-Stars.

  Danny stood for thirty seconds, the adrenalin reaching its peak and beginning its slow ebb.

  He stooped, his hands and knees shaking, and picked up the keys and the empty wallet and the cracked watch. As he did so, he glimpsed the front of his T-shirt. It featured the cover image of Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited.

  What was so wrong with that?

  When he trusted his legs to carry him without tipping him face-down onto the steaming tarmac, Danny set off, heading nowhere in particular, shaken by the encounter but aware all the time that it could have been worse.

  Much worse.

  It could have taken place two hours earlier.

  Chapter 4
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br />   The office of the Division of Special Projects was located in Midtown, off Ninth Avenue. Technically it was called the head office, as though there were others, which there weren’t.

  Venn parked the Mustang in the lot behind the building, a square of asphalt so small it had space for only four cars. The junkie, Righteous, looked about him in wonder as Harmony hustled him out of the backseat. Venn wondered if Righteous had ever actually been to Manhattan before. It never ceased to amaze him how parochial some of New York’s denizens could be, given the cosmopolitan nature of the city.

  The office was on the second storey. Venn led the way through the empty lobby and up the stairs. He never took the elevator if he could help it, a habit he’d developed during the months of physical therapy when he’d been trying to build up the strength in his legs again. Like many addicts, Righteous was out of condition even though he didn’t carry any excess weight, and by the time they reached the office he was sweating and out of breath.

  Or maybe he was just scared.

  At the front desk, Shawna looked up, an Emery board poised at the tips of her green nails. Green eyeshadow complemented them, and was set off by her suspiciously red hair. She was forty-seven, but the layers of pancake makeup and the carefully landscaped eyebrows made her look ten years older.

  “Lieutenant Venn. You’ve brought a guest.”

  Venn had hired her out of a field of prospective secretary/receptionists a year ago, when the Division had first been set up. He’d been impressed by her typing speeds, her surprisingly engaging manner on the telephone, but what had given her an edge over the other candidates was the way she could be utterly obstructive to an unwanted caller or visitor while making it seem like she was fully cooperating. It was a skill that had since come in useful when various local politicians had phoned the office, trying to throw their weight around and strong-arm Shawna into granting them an audience with Venn.

  “You want I should send out for lunch?” Shawna said, eyeing Righteous sympathetically. “Your friend looks like he could use a decent meal.”

  “Yeah,” said Harmony. “Don’t skimp on the caviar.”

  Inside, the open-plan office held three workstations. Venn had his own personal office behind a glass door, but when he was working with the others he mostly sat out with them at one of the desks. A framed picture of Beth smiled at him from the workstation. In the photo she was holding up a commendation she’d gotten for her work at the hospital where she had attending privileges.

  There was one occupant of the room, seated at his computer.

  Walter Sickert was the third member of Venn’s team, not counting Shawna. Like Harmony, he held the rank of Detective Sergeant. That was where the similarities ended. Six feet one, only a little shorter than Venn, he was, in every sense, gross. He carried his pendulous belly with a certain swagger, as if he was proud of his girth rather than apologetic about it. A mop of curly black hair on top of his head segued down the sides into an unkempt scraggle of beard that gradually petered out down his thick neck. His teeth were crooked and, in several cases, rotten. He favored shirts in garish primary colors and vivid pastel neckties. Today, both shirt and tie were lime-green, the tie with a paisley pattern. The jacket slung over the chair behind him was tweed, and Venn could see sweat stains at the armpits.

  “What you got?” he asked. His voice was roughened by the unfiltered Camels he was partial to.

  Venn introduced Righteous, filled Walter in on recent events. Walter chewed gum as he listened, his gaze boring into Righteous until the man began to shuffle from foot to foot with discomfort.

  “Okay,” said Walter, when Venn had finished. “Let’s you and me have a pow-wow, Righteous, while my two colleagues here go do their thing. The sooner you tell me what I want to know, the sooner you get out of here and spike up.”

  As Venn and Harmony headed for the door, Walter said: “Wait. We gonna tip this guy afterward?”

  “Take something out of petty cash,” said Venn.

  Walter snorted. “There’s hardly anything in there.”

  “Then quit raiding it for your goddamn cigarette money,” said Harmony.

  *

  At two-thirty in the afternoon, the heat smothered the city in a shroud. Venn took the Mustang across the Willis Avenue Bridge into the Bronx.

  “So, Venn,” said Harmony, in the seat beside him.

  “Yeah.”

  “Your doctor lady. You going to make an honest woman of her any time soon?”

  Venn sighed. It was a question Harmony asked from time to time. Like, every week or two.

  He’d first met Beth Colby two years earlier, and it hadn’t been the most romantic of introductions. He’d come up behind her, held a gun to her head, and taken her hostage from the two NYPD cops she was with. One of those cops had turned out to be a freelance assassin on the side, and Venn’s motives at the time had been to protect Beth. But it had taken a while for him to convince her of that.

  Beth had been a senior resident in internal medicine at the time. She’d saved Venn’s life at the conclusion of the whole episode, and had taken six months out of her career to help him with his subsequent physical rehabilitation. At some point they’d moved in together. Now, Beth was a junior attending physician at Bellevue Hospital, and making a name for herself in the academic world. Her career was going great guns, and he was developing one of his own after the false starts and dead-ends since he’d left the Chicago PD.

  The topic of marriage had come up in their conversations, lightly and obliquely, but they hadn’t seriously discussed it yet. For now, they were content with life as it was. Or at least Venn was.

  But he knew the question would come up, sooner or later. And Venn, a man who’d served under fire in Kosovo, who’d faced down the worst the South Side of Chicago could throw at him, who’d hurled himself off the roof of an eight-storey building here in New York in order to escape certain death by gunfire... well, he was scared out of his pants at the thought of it.

  “Hey.” Harmony whistled, snapped her fingers near his face. “Quit daydreaming, will you? I’d prefer not to end up smeared all over the bridge.”

  “Sorry,” muttered Venn. “Just thinking, is all.”

  “Like I said. You’re whipped.” She shook her head. “Worse case I’ve ever seen.”

  Venn wasn’t all that familiar with the Bronx, and he navigated its streets slowly, prompting horns and annoyed yells whenever he braked suddenly or even slowed to peer at the street names. Harmony had Googled the furniture store, Kruger’s, but it had no website of its own and hadn’t come up at all. The business card Righteous had given Venn had an address on it, which the Mustang’s satellite navigation screen located the address in the middle of an industrial estate, access to which seemed Byzantine in its obscurity.

  At last, Venn pulled into a lot that appeared to be mostly warehouses and factory outlets. A couple of trucks sat around in the afternoon heat like basking lizards. There were, as yet, no cop cars in sight.

  “Waste of time,” Harmony said as they got out. “It’s a front. A shell.”

  “Yeah, you said that before.” Venn pulled on his leather coat despite the heat, to conceal his holster. Beth kept telling him in exasperation to wear a lightweight jacket in the summer months, but he’d become attached to the coat. “But it’s worth checking out anyhow.”

  They made their way through the shadows between the warehouses, encountering a sluggish person now and again, a deliveryman or a janitor. Half of the lots were derelict, a sign of the economic times.

  They rounded a corner and Venn stopped. “Here we are,” he said, checking the card. “Number sixteen.”

  It was a squat building, two storeys high, sandwiched between two taller warehouses. The windows were boarded up, the metal front doors bolted and padlocked. The walls were scarred with graffiti.

  “Yep,” said Harmony. “Told you.”

  “Take a look round the back,” said Venn.

  Harmony headed down
an alley to one side of the building, while Venn surveyed the front. Yes, she was probably right. This had never been a furniture outlet, or any other kind of business recently. It was just an address to make the business card look authentic.

  He squinted in the sunlight. Something wasn’t quite right.

  There. The wooden board covering one of the first-floor windows was ajar, tilted inward a fraction at one corner.

  Venn stepped closer. He picked up a length of metal tubing he found lying in the dirt and prodded the board. It gave. He took hold of the board and pushed it further. The lower end folded inward.

  The nails in the wood had been pulled out of the window frame, and the wood on his side held marks and dents as though somebody had battered at it. Forced their way in.

  Probably nothing. Probably a vagrant, looking for somewhere to sleep, or a bunch of kids up to mischief.

  Venn hauled himself onto the sill and eased through the flap of wood, lowering it behind him. He was in a dim, low-ceilinged room, thick with dust, and it took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust.

  He stared at the floor. There, leading toward the empty doorway opposite, was a trail. Not a neat set of footprints, but evidence that someone had made their way across the floor, and recently.

  Venn drew the Beretta.

  His sneakers were soft on the concrete, uncarpeted floor, and almost silent. That was how he came to hear the noise, up ahead through the doorway.

  A rolling sound, followed by crashing, repeated over an over. Like somebody was opening drawers and, finding them empty, ramming them shut again.

  At the doorway he paused, took a quick peek round. A corridor ran left to right. The noise was coming from the left.

  He stepped into the corridor. As he did so, his foot caught a tipped-over glass bottle on the floor, Before he could stop it, the bottle rolled against the wall, making a clink.

  Down the corridor, the noises stopped.

  Venn held his breath. He crept forward a couple of paces, the Beretta pointed upwards, stopped, listened again.