Delta Ghost - 02

by Tim Stevens

  He turned down a tree-lined sidestreet along which a market had been set up, and pushed his way through the crowds. He approached a canopied kiosk advertising phones. The vendor was Middle Eastern and greeted Clune cheerily.

  “Step right up, sir! How may I help you?”

  Venn explained what he was looking for. A smartphone with no contract, but rather a pay-as-you-go plan, for under fifty bucks.

  The guy’s hearty laughter followed Clune as he stalked away up the street.

  The next vendor was a sinister-looking skinhead with a spider’s web tattooed around one eye. When he informed Clune he couldn’t help him, Clune murmured conspiratorially, “Got any that have fallen off the back of a truck?”

  “What?”

  Damn. The English idiom didn’t translate.

  “Have you got any stolen ones you’re selling cheaply?” tried Clune.

  “Fuck off.” The skinhead reached for a baseball bat.

  Clune passed along the rows of stalls and kiosks, the heady aromas of assorted international foods flooding his mouth and causing his belly to growl. When another phone outlet presented itself, he approached it without much hope. The man beneath the canopy was older, sixty or so, and he regarded Clune glumly.

  Clune repeated his request.

  Wordlessly, the man rummaged in a box at his feet and came up with a handset, which he handed over. It was a clunky Samsung, a few years old, scuffed at the corners and with a cracked screen.

  “You’re joking, right?” said Clune.

  “Works,” said the man. “Try.”

  Clune switched it on, watched the display appear sluggishly on the screen. He poked about. Yes, it was functional.

  “Thirty,” said the man, his shoulders drooping as though two syllables were about as much as he could manage.

  Clune handed over the cash, holding the phone up and away from him to try and improve the signal.

  The phone exploded in a million fragments, wrenching his hand as it blew apart, and for a crazy moment Clune thought the old man was a practical joker.

  Then the crash of the shot assaulted his ears, and the screaming began, and Clune was propelled forward into the front of the kiosk as the crowd went berserk.

  Chapter 8

  Venn saw the tails peel away from the crowd and set off after the kid fifty yards ahead.

  They’d split up, Venn and Harmony, because the kid would be more likely to notice them if they were together. Harmony took the east side of Ninth, Venn the west, directly behind Clune. The kid was twitchy and nervous, casting his gaze about, but he was no trained operative and tailing him was easy.

  The kid turned sharply and Venn increased his stride to keep up. He saw Clune’s head bobbing through the throng of the market, watched him stop at a stall, negotiate, move on. Since he’d slowed, Venn felt confident hanging back a little.

  That was when Venn noticed the two men. Both Hispanic, both intense and hard-looking, moving with a prowling stealth that marked them out as fighters. Killers, maybe.

  Quickly Venn looked around and behind him. He couldn’t see Harmony, and assumed she’d gone on up Ninth and was going to cut down a parallel street to the one the market was on and arrive ahead of the kid, boxing him unobtrusively. He debated calling or texting her, but he didn’t want to take his attention off the two men who were weaving and shouldering their way through the throng.

  Venn picked up the pace, almost colliding with a couple of browsers and earning muttered rebukes. His height gave him a clear line of vision ahead. He saw the kid pause at another market stall, linger, check out something that might have been a phone.

  The two men homed in. One pushed his cotton jacket aside, and at his hip Venn saw the black curve of a pistol grip.

  Venn grabbed the shoulder of the person in front of him and heaved her aside, his right hand moving inside his jacket and drawing the Beretta from its holster as he yelled, “Police. Get down.”

  The man nearer him turned, his own gun coming up. He hadn’t fully extended his arm toward Venn before Venn fired.

  The crash of the Beretta sent up a collective scream from the crowd like a flock of birds disturbed by a hunter’s shot. The gunman jerked backward, a red rose blooming in the centre of his white T-shirt, and collided with the second man, who also had a handgun drawn. The second man’s gun went off, the shot singing wild, and beyond him Clune yelped.

  He’s hit, the kid’s hit, was Venn’s first thought as he charged forward at a crouch, the Beretta aimed squarely at the second man. His second thought was: Civilians around me. Scores of them. In the crossfire.

  The second guy recovered quickly and whirled. Venn dove and rolled.

  Prone on the sidewalk, Venn took careful aim and shot the man in the leg, blowing his knee away in a bloody mist. The guy roared and tipped sideways, but his gun was still extended and seeking a target so Venn fired again, hitting him in the chest just like the first guy and putting a second shot through his throat.

  Venn was up and running toward the stall and he saw the kid sprinting away down the street, seemingly unharmed. He was about to yell at him to stop when he realized the danger wasn’t over, as two more men converged on Clune from ahead of him, both with handguns drawn.

  What happened next wasn’t clear to Venn at the time, though he pieced it together afterward.

  The kid seemed to drop as though shot. He lay face down, his hands behind his head.

  One of the men reached him and aimed his gun at Clune’s head in a two-handed grip.

  The other man dropped to one knee and took a bead on Venn.

  Venn fired, but his shot wasn’t good because the other guy opened fire at the same time and Venn had to dodge behind the stall. He emerged immediately and loosed off two shots. The man yelled as one of the bullets tore through the fabric of his shirt at the shoulder.

  Venn took a few steps forward, took aim for the kill-shot.

  A woman ran along the sidewalk, screaming, and the gunman grabbed at her and swung her across himself like she was a mannekin and jammed his gun against the side of her head and shouted, “Stay back. Stay the fuck back.”

  Venn stopped, took aim at the man’s head.

  To the right of the guy, his partner was dragging Clune to his feet.

  Harmony, Venn thought. Where the hell are you?

  The man with the gun to the woman’s head called, “I warn you, cop. Back down.”

  Venn watched the other man haul Clune away, toward the cars parked along the street.

  Behind and around him, he heard the first sirens. Over the man’s shoulder, he saw a figure loping stealthily from down the street.

  Venn took what he considered an executive decision. Others would have called it a crazy risk.

  He threw the Beretta aside. Raised his arms away from his body.

  “You got me,” he said. “Now let the woman go.”

  The man’s dark eyes flickered. He hugged the woman closer so that her hair obscured most of his face.

  Venn started walking toward him.

  “You deaf?” the man snarled. “I said to keep back.”

  Venn spread his arms wider. “Why?”

  In the distance, and off to the right, the other guy reached a car with Clune. He fumbled at the door handle with one hand.

  The man with the woman said, “Because otherwise I shoot her. Then you.”

  “Okay,” said Venn, not breaking his stride. He was ten yards away, and closing. “And then what? You become a cop killer. That’s like signing your own fast-track execution order. That cop behind you will riddle you so full of holes they’ll need to use putty to embalm you.” He nodded over the guy’s shoulder.

  It was a classic trick. Most people didn’t fall for it entirely. There was often the moment of instinctive doubt, the quick glance over the shoulder.

  This guy didn’t buy it at all.

  Harmony hit him from behind so hard that Venn heard the crack from where he was. At the same time she seized hi
s gun arm and wrenched it upward, in case his index finger twitched reflexively.

  The man sagged to the ground. The woman he’d been holding hostage collapsed to her knees, gasping, mewling, her hands scrabbling at her face and at her hair.

  Venn dove for his Beretta and broke into a run, not looking at Harmony or the man she’d taken down, sprinting across the street toward the car that was pulling away from the curb.

  It was a Honda Accord sedan, and Venn took a running jump and vaulted onto its hood without breaking stride, feeling it lurch beneath his sneakers as he steadied himself and pointed the gun downward into the windshield and fired, deliberately avoiding the driver but aiming at a point to his right in order to freak him out. The windshield exploded in a sunburst of glass and the car slewed, but Venn gripped the roof and held the Beretta steady and aimed directly down at the driver’s head and yelled, “Stop.”

  The driver moved fast, slamming on the brakes. Venn felt his grasp on the roof slip as his feet slid beneath him and down the hood. He was face to face with the driver and he brought the gun up and across but it was too late because the guy had the muzzle of his own gun against Venn’s nose.

  The man fired just as Venn reeled away, his back against the hood. The blast stung Venn’s cheek, the noise exploding into his ear. He rolled back immediately, and this time didn’t bother pointing the gun but instead rammed it blindly into the space he judged the driver’s face to be.

  The barrel of the Beretta smashed past the man’s teeth and deep into his mouth. Venn heard it, heard the teeth buckle and splinter, and saw the bloodied lips around the gun’s muzzle. But what he also saw was the gaping hole of the man’s own gun, inches from Venn’s eye.

  Venn pulled the trigger.

  The interior of the car erupted in a burst of red and gray, wetness spattering Venn’s cheeks and forehead through the ruined windshield. Beneath the car the tires screamed on the tarmac, and Venn was thrown sideways, bouncing off the hood and onto the road.

  He rose, the aftershock of the shots ringing in his ears so that he thought he’d never be able to hear normally again, and he felt the ground tilt and veer beneath his feet.

  Venn moved round the stalled car to the passenger side. The door was open.

  He gazed about, disoriented.

  Behind the wheel of the Honda, the driver sat, headless.

  There was no sign of the kid, Clune.

  Chapter 9

  Harmony looked up at Venn as he approached. She recoiled.

  “Jesus, Venn. You look like a goddamn zombie. Like that Walking Dead shit, man.”

  He wiped his face with his hand, looked at his palm. Blood and other stuff was smeared across it.

  “It’s not mine,” he said.

  She’d cuffed the man on the ground. He was out for the count, poleaxed by the blow she’d dealt the back of his head. Like the others, he was Latino, Venn noticed. Puerto Rican, maybe, or Mexican.

  “You get the British guy?” said Harmony.

  “No. He’s gone.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  Further down the street, the cops had arrived, and were shepherding the dazed and hysterical crowds away. Four uniforms jogged over. Before they could speak, Venn and Harmony produced their shields.

  “What the hell happened?” said one cop.

  “Attempted abduction,” Venn said, distractedly. “Three perps down, plus this asshole.” He pointed a toe at the man cuffed on the ground.

  Venn gave the uniforms a brief account of events. Behind them, he saw more cars arrive, and a couple of plainclothes guys emerge.

  He turned to Harmony. “We screwed up. The kid we were tailing is gone. My fault. And we have no idea who the hell these guys are.”

  “We got one of them alive,” she said. “And I’m claiming the first crack at him.”

  Venn was about to reply when his phone rang. He fished it out of his pocket with bloody fingers.

  “Yeah.”

  “Joe. You need to get your ass over here. Like, an hour ago.”

  Venn closed his eyes.

  Everybody called him Venn. Nobody called him Joe. Not even Beth. Nobody except Captain Kang, his boss.

  Venn said, “Cap, you ought to know that I’ve just –”

  “I don’t care if you’ve just found out your mother and your sister had the same sperm donor. Get over here.”

  *

  Over here was Kang’s office in One Police Plaza, the NYPD’s headquarters on Park Row. Venn found a patrolman at the scene who had a package of Handi-Wipes in his car, and cleaned the blood and brains off his face and neck as best he could before he took the Mustang to Lower Manhattan.

  David Kang was a Korean-American whose jaw was constantly working on a piece of nicotine gum. He’d been chewing it for nine years, longer than he’d been a smoker. Venn had read in a magazine that the stuff gave you mouth cancer.

  “Been hearing about your afternoon while you were on the way over,” said Kang, after Venn had seated himself across the desk from his boss and Kang had shoved across a mug of coffee. “Three kills, yes?”

  “They were all good ones, Cap.” Venn meant they were all justified.

  “Oh, I don’t doubt it.” Kang chewed his gum, his face morose. “Hell of a lot of paperwork, Joe. One hell of a lot.”

  “Tell me about it,” said Venn sourly. Just discharging your firearm meant a legendary amount of red tape afterward. Killing three perps... it didn’t bear thinking about.

  “It’s got to be perfect, Joe. Buffed to a shine. Or else I’m gonna get reamed out over this.”

  Venn sighed. Kang was an okay guy, and mostly trusted Venn to take his own decisions without micromanaging him. But the captain was ambitious, politically, and it was typical of him that just after Venn had put down three gunmen, and come under fire himself, Kang’s first thought was of his own inconvenience.

  “Anyways.” Kang slapped the desk. “You can do the paper stuff later. The reason I called you down here is O’Dell.”

  Venn became alert. “The arrest was good, Cap. No irregularities.”

  Kang waved a hand. “Yeah, yeah. No problem with that. Congratulations, by the way. It was some result.”

  “Harmony did the actual takedown.”

  “But you’re the boss, Joe. Always take the credit when you’re the boss. It’s something you need to learn.”

  Venn fought the urge to roll his eyes.

  “Thing is,” Kang went on, “O’Dell wants to talk to you.”

  “I’m sure he does,” said Venn. “He’ll be pissed at me.”

  “No. I mean he’s offering to plea-bargain. Says he’s got some dirt to spill. Which was the whole point of arresting him, of course. But he won’t talk to the DA, yet. Says he’ll only speak with you.”

  Venn frowned.

  “Also,” said Kang, “he’s insisting on an immediate audience. Or the deal’s off.”

  “He’s setting ultimatums? That’s our job, or the DA’s.”

  Kang shrugged. “Yeah, well. It’s worth hearing him out.” He tipped his head. “O’Dell made bail, and he’s here at the Plaza. You can see him right away.”

  As Venn made to stand, Kang said: “Wait. Two things, before you go. Bring me up to speed on this afternoon’s shit.”

  Venn sat back down, gave a summary of events. Of Righteous’s information, of the call to Kruger’s phone and the discovery he was dead. Of the trip to the Bronx, and the encounter with the kid, Clune.

  Afterward, Kang sat, masticating slowly. “Huh. You see any picture emerging?”

  Venn shook his head. “No. Kruger supplies drugs to O’Dell’s tenants. Shortly after we arrest O’Dell, Kruger gets whacked. Could be coincidence. A rival dealer, maybe. We find Clune searching Kruger’s shell address. Clune spins us a bunch of crap about how he’s this tourist who got mugged. Then we tail Clune, and four Latinos jump him. They don’t kill him, which makes me think they wanted him alive for some reason.” He ticked off
on his fingers. “We need an APB on the kid, which I’ve already told the local cops to put out. And we need to squeeze the guy we caught. You’ve got to convince the local boys to let Harmony do it, or at least be part of it, Cap. I’d have done it myself if you hadn’t called me over here.”

  “I’ve already told the local guys to hold off until you’re through here,” said Kang. “You and Harmony can do it together.”

  “Okay. Thanks.” Venn rubbed at the bruises on his arms and shoulders where he’d rolled on the sidewalk. “How about you, Cap? You see a connection between it all?”

  “Nah,” said Kang. “But drugs are at the center. It’s usually about drugs.”

  “The thing is,” said Venn, “this kid, Clune – he wasn’t a junkie, or a tweaker, or a speed freak. He doesn’t feel like the kind of guy mixed up in narcotics. He definitely isn’t the one who whacked Kruger.”

  “But he knows something.” Kang raised his eyebrows. “You’ll find him. Now... you better go listen to what O’Dell has to say.”

  This time Venn made it to the door before Kang said, “Oh yeah. I said, two things.”

  Venn turned.

  “Take a shower first. And lose the jacket. You smell like an abattoir.”

  Chapter 10

  Danny Clune ran.

  It was easy to lose himself, because lots of other people around him were running, too: running away from the gunfire, and the screaming, and the blare of the police bullhorns. But Clune ran as though he was alone, and out on an open plain, and being tracked by a sniper rifle’s telescopic sight.

  He weaved between parked cars and dodged startled knots of pedestrians and stumbled down alleyways, leaving clattering overturned dustbins in his wake. He ran so that his breath sawed hotly and painfully in his chest, and his legs threatened to cramp to a standstill, and his empty stomach roiled and tried to expel its nonexistent contents.

  Clune was scared. Scared in a way he’d never been before, not even a week earlier.

  He was in a city of eight million people, a land of skyscrapers and boltholes and warrens. The easiest place in the world to disappear and never be found. Yet he felt as if that sniper rifle was tracking him from the heavens, its barrel trained on an invisible bullseye on his back.