by Tim Stevens
Venn strode to the door, went into the second bedroom next door. At the window, he peered out. The tree was off to the left. The streetlight behind it picked out a human silhouette, crouched among the leaves.
Holding his breath, Venn reached for the latch of the window. He’d set off the burglar alarm, but there was no time to go downstairs and disable it.
With one movement he flicked the latch and opened the window. The alarm began pealing immediately, a high repetitive whine that jarred his senses.
He extended his arm with the Beretta through the open window and yelled, “Drop it. Drop it right now or I swear to God I’ll shoot you.”
The figure in the tree jerked so hard the boughs shook violently. Venn heard a yelp, before the shape tumbled out of the tree and dropped to the scrap of lawn below, landing hard and with a cry.
The drunks on the street beyond the wall turned groggily to stare.
Venn stared down, the Beretta trained on the fallen shape. It tried to rise, gasped, dropped again.
He recognised it.
“You gotta be kidding me,” he muttered.
Chapter 14
The agony shot through Clune’s ankle as he landed on it directly. It gave beneath him and he hit the carpet, his face turned sideways so that the material was pressed up against his cheek.
He tried to roll on his back but he felt Venn’s foot in his back.
“Uh-uh. Stay down.”
He knew the gun was pointed at his back, even though he couldn’t see it.
Clune had made a half-hearted attempt to get up and hobble away as soon as Venn disappeared from the window, but he knew it was a waste of time as soon as he heard the house’s burglar alarm snap off suddenly and the front door open. Venn was on him in seconds, gripping the collar of his shirt.
“Hey,” Clune called feebly to the collection of drinkers on the street. “He’s assaulting me. He’s got a gun.” When they merely gaped at him, he added: “Help.”
One of the women laughed. “Hell, dickhead,” she slurred. “You’re treps... trespassin’. Lucky you ain’t dead.”
With a snarl, Venn dragged Clune backwards across the porch so that his heels banged painfully on the stone.
Inside, he was half-pushed, half thrown along the entrance hall and into the living room. He tried to object, to point out that he couldn’t, in fact, walk, because his bloody ankle was broken, which was Venn’s fault because he’d given him such a fright Clune had fallen out of the tree. But the words wouldn’t come, nor would anything but a frantic, incoherent gibbering.
Close to his ear, Venn hissed: “Start talking. What are you doing here?”
Although his mouth was bone-dry, Clune felt wetness running down his cheek. He realized it was snot.
“Let me up,” he whispered. “Please.”
“Say what?” Venn jabbed the gun into his back, producing a jolt of pain. “No, I reckon you’re fine just about there.”
A woman’s voice said, “Venn.”
Clune turned his head and saw her. She was in a dressing gown, her hair loose and in disarray. Her face was pale, but her posture was calm, confident, her arms folded as she stood in the doorway.
Dr Beth Colby. Clune hadn’t realized she was so good-looking.
“Beth, go back upstairs,” said Venn.
She ignored him and took a step into the room, staring down at Clune. He attempted a smile, which he intended as beseeching but which probably came across as sickly. “Danny Clune,” he said.
Venn said, “Shut up,” and shoved a foot in his back again.
“Clune?” said Dr Colby. He saw her glance at Venn. “The British guy?”
“Yes,” Clune said, feeling a vague excitement. She knew who he was. That had to mean something, though he wasn’t sure what.
She gazed back at him. “Venn,” she said. “Put the gun away. He’s harmless.”
“He was trying to get into the house,” said Venn. “That, by definition, makes him a threat.” He addressed Clune again. “Where’s your gun?”
“What? I haven’t –”
“I saw it. When you were in the tree. You were holding something.”
“You mean this?” Clune felt down his body for his pocket. It earned him increased pressure in the back from Venn’s foot.
“Get your hand away.” Venn stooped and reached into the pocket. Pulled out the phone, a cheap replacement Clune had bought for the one that he’d been considering buying before it had been shot out of his hand.
Venn flung it across the room. “Piece of crap.”
“Venn,” said Dr Colby, more insistently this time. “Let him sit up. You can’t communicate properly with him like this.”
After a few seconds of silence, Clune heard Venn move away behind him. “Turn around.”
Clune hauled himself hesitantly into a sitting position and swung round so he was facing Venn, his back against a couch. The movement sent a bolt of pain down his ankle.
“I think... I think it’s broken.”
Dr Colby came forward, again ignoring Venn’s warning. She knelt at Clune’s feet and gently probed the ankle with first her fingertips, then her palms. He winced as she manipulated it carefully.
Over her auburn head, he saw Venn glowering at him, several feet away, the gun down at his side.
“There’s no fracture,” she said. “You’ve sprained it. I’ll get a cold compress and a support bandage.”
With a warning look at Venn – I’ll be able to hear you through the door – she left the living room.
Venn stood watching Clune for a few moments. Then he walked over and squatted in front of him.
Clune recoiled from the menace in the man’s stare.
Venn said between clenched teeth: “You never come to a cop’s house. Never, ever.”
“Let me just -”
“No. Before all of that. Before you give your reasons, before you explain how, exactly, you found out where I live. Understand me. You never follow a cop home. You never approach his family. And you never try to break in. I’m not saying this for me. I’m saying this for you.”
Venn’s face was so close that Clune could smell toothpaste.
“Because we’re jumpy, us cops. We’re paranoid. And for good reason. Day after day, we put away lowlife. Murderers, rapists, child abusers. And most of them, the vermin we wash off the streets, they hate us. Us. The cops who got them. Not the judge who sentenced them. Not the jury members who brought in a guilty verdict. Certainly not the prosecutor. On some level, they recognize all those people are part of the system. They’re just doing their jobs. But us cops... we’re the ones they have a personal relationship with. We’re the ones who screwed up their lives, ultimately, and it’s us they hate. Us they’re out to take revenge on.”
Venn eased back a little, and Clune breathed again.
“So when somebody encroaches on our personal space – approaches our home, or our loved ones – we assume, immediately, that they’re armed with a submachine gun. Or they’re a suicide bomber, wrapped to the gills in explosives. We assume the worst, because we’ve seen and dealt with the worst, and we react accordingly. And the hell with the consequences. We shoot, and ask questions later, while everybody’s wringing their hands.”
Clune blurted: “In Britain a policeman could be prosecuted for that.”
He regretted what he’d said even as the words were spewing from his mouth. Why hadn’t he kept it shut? He wasn’t even drunk.
Venn leaned forward again. “You’re not in god damn Britain now. You’re out west. The Wild West. Don’t you forget it.”
Dr Colby came back in, then, and to Clune an angel arriving in a shaft of heavenly light accompanied by a host of seraphim and cherubim couldn’t have been more welcome.
She took off his shoe and bandaged the swollen ankle with cool, efficient expertise, like a mechanic carrying out a quick and not-too-difficult job on a clueless car-owner’s transmission. She pressed a pack of ice against the side of the
ankle and secured it in place with a further twist of bandage.
“Stay off it overnight,” she said. “But don’t go too long without using it, however much it hurts. It’ll just stiffen up.”
Clune watched her mouth, her eyes. It’s stiffening up, all right, he felt the urge to say, but didn’t.
He’d come to accept over the years that he was a bit of an idiot. But he wasn’t insane.
Venn, who’d retreated into the background when Colby had approached – Clune found it interesting, despite his predicament, the way the terrifying and aggressive cop deferred in the face of the doctor with her unique skill-set – advanced again.
“Okay, son,” he said. He’d put the gun away, but it was still there, in Clune’s awareness, just as if it had been pointing in his face. “You heard the doc. Stay off that ankle. Which means, get your ass up on that couch, and don’t move.”
Clune glanced at Dr Colby. He held out a hope that she might assist him, her injured patient, up onto the couch. Grab his legs, perhaps put a shoulder under his armpit, and hoist him.
But he looked back at Venn’s face, saw the expression there, and clambered up with a speed that surprised him.
Venn took a seat in the armchair nearest Clune.
“Start talking.”
Chapter 15
“I’m a hacker,” said the kid.
Venn folded his hands.
He said, “Big deal. So’s everybody else your age, these days.”
“No.” Clune shifted on the couch, grimacing. Beth had taken care over his ankle, and Venn was prepared to accept that the guy really was in pain.
Didn’t change anything, though.
Clune went on, “I’m good. Really, really good. Like, I’ve hacked the Ministry of Defence back in Britain.”
“Bullshit.”
“Honestly, I have.” Despite the pain he was in, the nervousness, Clune’s tone was proud. Almost smug. “Didn’t stay there long. I’m not stupid. I grabbed a few pieces of data, the significance of which I still don’t know, and I was out. Before they knew I was there. I did it to prove to myself I could. That was all.”
“So you’re this whizz kid. So what?”
“That’s how I found out where you lived.”
Venn took a moment to think about it.
“You hacked the NYPD’s database.”
“Yes.”
“To find my address.”
“Yep.”
Venn said, “No way. That data’s secure. Encrypted. Buried under a ton of, I don’t know, firewalls or whatever you call them.”
This time the kid’s expression was definitely self-satisfied. “As I said. I’m good.”
Venn glanced at Beth. She was watching Clune, her face intent but mostly unreadable.
He said, “Okay. So all that crap you fed me about your, uh, your PhD study into rock music. That was a lie.”
“No.”
“Come again?”
“No. I am working on a thesis about the history of rock.” Now Clune’s eyes were alight, enthused. “But that’s not the reason I’m in New York.”
Venn waited. The Beretta was on a coffee table next to his chair, the safety on. He was sorely tempted to reach for it.
“I’m here,” said Clune slowly, and not a little grandly, “because I’m on the run. From a man called Salazar.”
For the first time, Venn felt a stirring in a place he called his investigator’s brain. It wasn’t the normal detached cop interest in everything an interrogation suspect was saying. It was a tingling, intuitive sense that something of significance, something critical, was being imparted.
“Salazar,” said Venn. “He got a first name?”
“Probably, but I don’t know it.” Clune wasn’t so much lying on the couch now as lounging. Enjoying the fact that he was the center of attention. That he had the upper hand.
The seconds ticked by.
Venn cracked his knuckles. “Listen closely to me, kid. Keep it flowing. None of this drama queen bullshit. Tell me everything about why you’re here, what you know, or so help me I’ll pick up the phone and call you in as a multiple felony catch. Breaking and entering, obstruction of justice, fleeing the scene of a crime, and that little matter, ancient history, of spraying gas in the face of a police officer. And don’t think you’ll get a free pass by being deported, back into the arms of your bleeding-heart British criminal justice system. No. We’ll nail your ass to a New York penitentiary wall so hard it’ll take a goddamn Blitzkrieg to prize you free.”
He got a reaction.
Clune sat up straight, gritting his teeth as his ankle twinged. “All right.” He didn’t look as scared as before, but he’d been knocked down a peg or two in the cockiness stakes.
He drew a long breath.
“I came to the USA nearly two months ago. For the reason I told you: I’m writing my thesis. I decided to start in Seattle, with the whole grunge thing. My plan was to head down the West Coast, do the San Fran and LA tour, then come east to New York. Then double back to Nashville. Kind of do things out of order, you know? Shake up the sequence a bit. Have you read Dylan’s memoir, Chronicle? Brilliant, subversive stuff. It’s all over the place, chronologically. I wanted to -”
“Shut up,” said Venn. “Stay focused.”
“Okay,” said Clune hastily. “So I reached Los Angeles. I was trying to blag my way onto a tour of the Sunset Sound Recorders studio, the Mecca of the West Coast, when a contact I’d made there told me of a potential source of income. By this time my money was, um, running low.”
“Your university grant,” Venn said.
Clune glanced away awkwardly. “Yeah. The grant. I’d misjudged my budget a fraction, in Seattle and San Francisco, and was a bit strapped for cash.” He looked back at Venn. “Have you ever been to LA? Do you know just how expensive it is out there?”
“For God’s sake...”
Clune held up his hands. “This contact said there was a bloke in Texas, a businessman, who needed help with managing various transfers of money between bank accounts. My contact knew I was good with computers – I’d proven it to him by getting him access to certain free internet content which he’d normally have had to pay for – and so he’d passed on my details to this man in Texas. I agreed to go and meet the man, as long as my expenses were paid. The next thing, I was being escorted in a Cadillac by four silent geezers, wearing shades and chewing gum, to San Antonio.”
Clune paused. He looked at Beth.
“Could I bother you for a drink of water, Dr Colby? I’m a bit parched.”
Before Beth could reply, Venn said, “Wait. Wait. How do you know her name?”
Clune touched a fingertip to his head. He smirked.
“It’s all on the police database, Lieutenant.”
Venn stood. He took a step toward Clune, who cringed away.
“Sure. You can have all the water you need. Filtered through a cloth, that’s smothering your face.” He grabbed a cushion, brandished it. “Because that’s what we do, here in the US of A. We waterboard people. We drown them, to get them to talk.”
Venn sat back down. He didn’t look at Beth.
The kid seemed finally to collapse after that. His bravado disappeared, his posture changed to a huddle.
He said, in a dull monotone: “In San Antonio I met the businessman. Oscar Flowers. A Hispanic guy. I put his money into various bank accounts in the Cayman Islands, Geneva, Cyprus. I never asked where the money came from, and he never said. He set me up in a nice apartment, sent me a girl or two, paid me well. I put my studies on hold, and became a fully fledged employee.”
Clune stopped. His expression was distant. Fearful.
Venn said, “Then what happened?”
Clune’s eye rolled toward Venn.
“Then, one day, I decided to follow him on one of his business trips. I’d hacked his own email communications, of course, and I learned he was going to meet this Mexican, Salazar. The name had come up a number of times b
efore, and I gathered Salazar was some kind of big shot. They never mentioned in their emails exactly what kind of business they were transacting, but I assumed it was illegal. Drugs, maybe, or guns. This meeting they were setting up, it sounded as though there was some hostility between them. I was curious. I thought that if I overheard something, got a sense that Salazar was asserting some kind of authority over Flowers, I might be able to take advantage of it. Jump ship, and join Salazar’s side.” He broke off, as if in wonder at his own stupidity. “I got greedy, I suppose.”
“Go on,” said Venn.
“So, I rented a car and followed Flowers and his entourage to some remote spot in South Texas. He took a bloody army with him, I tell you. Turned out Salazar had brought an army of his own. Sharpshooters with rifles. There was an argument between Salazar and Flowers. Then Salazar shot him dead, right before my eyes. Then all hell broke loose. The two sides went to war.”
He drew a deep breath, remembering.
“I decided enough was enough. I wasn’t going to stroll up to Salazar, introduce myself, and ask if he had a vacancy for a computer geek. Instead, I cut and run. But Salazar saw me.”
“Saw you.”
“Yeah.” Clune shuddered. “As I was running for the car. He yelled at his men to get me, but they were caught up in their shootout with Flowers’s men. I didn’t look back till I’d reached New York. Ditched the rental car along the way and swapped it for another. I was all set to arrange a flight back to Britain when I got mugged, and all my money and bank cards got taken. Now I’m stuck.”
“Hold on,” said Venn. “Back up a little. So you think this Salazar is hunting you? Because you’re a witness? Those guys who attacked you were Salazar’s men?”
“They must have been,” said Clune.
“How did he track you to New York?”
Clune raised his palms in a shrug. “They probably caught one of Flowers’s men and tortured him, got him to tell them who I was. I’d left a bit of a paper trail. The car rental firm, for one thing. Maybe they got my bank details, tracked the withdrawals I made from cash machines along the way.”