Delta Ghost - 02

by Tim Stevens

  He stepped out into the morning sunshine. All around, local New Yorkers were strolling or jogging or hurrying to work, sweating in the so-called heat. Again, Salazar felt contempt, this time for the masses teeming in this vile city like hive insects. He despised them and their narrow, cramped opinions, their self-absorption, their belief that this constituted hot weather. Salazar had toiled in the Mexican sun until his skin blistered, had faced the worst the desert could throw at him, and had triumphed. He flared his nostrils in disgust at the stench coming off the East River a few blocks away. There was no purity here. The minds, the bodies, the environment, were as polluted as a sewer.

  And if they chose to pollute their veins with the product he supplied to them in abundance, so much the better. There were times when he imagined himself as God’s agent on earth, helping to cleanse His wretchedly fallen creation by eliminating those too morally weak to deserve to survive.

  One of his men emerged from the house behind him, and Salazar turned.

  “Sir,” said the man. “Danny Clune. We have a sighting.”

  *

  “I’m telling you,” said the girl. “It was him.”

  “He fell out of a tree,” added her boyfriend.

  The pair of them stood close together, looking bewildered and not a little frightened. They were in a stinking alleyway, somewhere in Hell’s Kitchen. All around them were Salazar’s men, forming a circle, with Salazar directly in front of them.

  His man had given him the message – there’s been a positive ID on the British kid – and Salazar had said to stay put and headed directly to the location to the northwest, three of his people in tow. They’d found three more of his men with the two white kids. They looked like college dropouts, and reeked of booze even at eight in the morning.

  “We found them drinking here in the alley. Showed them the picture, and they said they’d seen him,” said one of his men.

  Salazar didn’t try to pretend he was police, didn’t bargain or entice or cajole. Instead, he allowed the menacing demeanor of himself and his men to speak for itself.

  The kids were talking in a jumble, random statements overlapping. Salazar held up a hand.

  “Slow down,” he said sharply. The girl appeared the more sober of the two, and Salazar addressed her. “Start at the beginning.”

  She took a deep breath, brushed tangled hair out of her eyes. “Kyle and I were partying last night with a couple other guys,” she said carefully, as though trying not to slur. “Meatpacking District. We decided to head north to find a party we’d heard of there. Didn’t have enough money for the subway, so we walked. Dumb mistake. We got lost somewhere west of the park. Started arguing about which way to go. Next thing is, we’re next to this house and this guy falls out of a tree in the garden, with this other guy – the homeowner, I guess – leaning out the window and threatenin’ to shoot him.”

  “He did shoot him, I think,” said her boyfriend, looking annoyed at being excluded. “’S why he fell out the tree.”

  “Shut up,” said Salazar. To the girl: “It was the young man in this picture?”

  She squinted at it again, wrinkling her nose. “Yeah. That’s him. Scrawny little mother. He’s tryin’ to get up, but he’s hurt his ankle. Then this big dude comes out the door, big and scary-lookin’, waving a gun. Hauls the skinny guy up and drags him inside. Guy’s yellin’ at us to help him, that he’s being attacked. He was a burglar, I reckon. But a pretty shitty one.”

  “What time last night?” said Salazar.

  “Jeez, couldn’t tell you.” She looked at her boyfriend. “Eleven?”

  “No, we were still at Ronnie’s then. More like midnight. Maybe later.”

  Salazar said, “You remember where this happened?”

  “Now you’re asking.” The girl seemed to become aware that her blouse was half-unbuttoned, and began to fumble with it. “Like I said, we were lost. A few blocks west of Central Park. That’s all I recall.”

  Salazar nodded at one of his men, who reached into a pocket and produced a billfold. He extracted a wad of notes.

  Both kids’ bleary eyes lit up.

  “Let’s go look for it,” said Salazar. “Maybe something will jog your memories.”

  Without waiting for a reply, he turned his back and walked up the alley. Behind him, he heard his men hustle the pair of kids along.

  Chapter 23

  “Name?”

  Clune stared up at Venn. “You know my -”

  “Tell me your damn name.”

  “Daniel Clune. Danny,” he whispered.

  “Louder.”

  Clune repeated himself.

  Venn glanced at Walter, who was staring into the kid’s eyes. Walter nodded.

  “Okay.” Venn rose from his squatting position, took a turn round the room, came back. “That’s a start. You’ve told us your real name. Now, was that so hard? Was it so difficult to tell the truth?”

  “No,” said Clune.

  “Good. Just keep on doing that, and we’ll be fine.”

  In his pocket, Venn’s phone rang. He looked at it. The number displayed was the one for headquarters. One Police Plaza.

  Oh God, thought Venn. The post-shooting interview. He still hadn’t made an appointment.

  He considered ignoring it. But there was a real risk he’d be visited by a bunch of goons, maybe from Internal Affairs, who’d strong-arm him across town. He couldn’t afford it.

  “Just a minute,” he said to Harmony and Walter, and he went into his own office and shut the door and took the call.

  It was headquarters, but it wasn’t about the interview.

  “Lieutenant Venn?” said a woman’s voice nervously. “Sorry to bother you, but a lawyer called, asking after you. Said he needed to speak with you urgently, and he didn’t have your number. I didn’t make him any promises but said I’d try you.”

  “Who’s the lawyer?” said Venn.

  “His name’s, uh, Peter Franciscus.”

  Franciscus. O’Dell’s attorney from yesterday.

  “He say what it was about?” asked Venn.

  “No sir. Just that it was urgent, and had to do with his client’s apparent suicide, and that it concerned something that might be useful to you. He also told me to mention the name Kruger.”

  Venn’s ears pricked up. The timing wasn’t great, but... “Okay. Give me his number,” he said.

  He dialed the cell phone number. It rang twice before he heard Franciscus’ voice: “Hello?”

  “Venn here.”

  “Lieutenant.” The man’s tone was measured, serious, with no trace of either the hostility or the fake heartiness he was used to in his dealings with the legal profession. “Thanks for calling back. Can we meet?”

  “It’s kind of difficult at this time, Mr Franciscus. How about we talk now?”

  “I’d really rather we spoke face to face, Lieutenant. It’ll take fifteen minutes, tops. I’m downtown, near Wall Street. If you’re nearby, I could meet you.”

  After a pause, Venn said, “All right.” He gave the address of the Division of Special Projects office. His watch said it was a quarter of eleven. “Can you make it here for 11.30?”

  “Surely.”

  Venn went back into the outer office. Walter and Harmony were staring at Clune so intently the guy seemed to have wilted like a plant under merciless heat.

  “O’Dell’s lawyer’s coming by. Says he’s got something to discuss.” Venn pulled up a chair opposite Clune. “So let’s continue.”

  *

  They took the kid through his story yet again, from the beginning. Venn reckoned he was pretty good at sniffing out a lie, but he deferred to Walter every time. Walter had been an interrogator with the homicide squad up in Harlem when Venn had recruited him, and although his career was on the up, he’d agreed to jump ship because he liked the uniqueness of the Division of Special Projects, the sense that he was joining some sort of elite.

  Plus, his antisocial dress sense and personal hy
giene habits hadn’t exactly endeared him to his fellow cops at the Harlem precinct.

  Clune told them about his arrival in the US, his cross-country trip to Seattle, his passage down the West Coast. Every now and again Venn would glance at Walter, and Walter twitched a finger, indicating that in his opinion the kid was telling the truth.

  When he got to the part where previously he’d said his contact in LA had put him in touch with Flowers, Clune paused, glanced at each of the detectives in turn, and Venn had the sense he was about to take a plunge into the unknown.

  “The bloke in LA, Gary, did tell me about Flowers,” he said. “But he said he was looking for a driver, not a computer whiz.”

  “A driver,” said Venn.

  “Yeah. Someone who’d do the odd transporting job, here and there. Sometimes passengers, sometimes goods. Not heavy stuff, not haulage. Small loads, like suitcases and packages. With discretion, and no questions asked. In return, it would be cash in hand, untaxed, at generous rates. I agreed, and just as I said, Flowers’ men turned up and took me to San Antonio.”

  “No computers, then,” said Venn. “No money transfers.”

  “No. I did work for Flowers, driving mostly, occasionally other things. He paid me well, enough that I could rent a decent apartment.”

  Harmony said: “‘Occasionally other things’. What other things?”

  Clune looked sheepish. “Collecting personal items for him. Dry cleaning, stuff like that.”

  “You were a gofer,” said Walter.

  Clune frowned, as if he wasn’t familiar with the term.

  “An errand boy,” said Venn helpfully.

  The kid looked embarrassed.

  “Go on,” Venn said.

  “So one day I’m taking a pickup truck with some boxes in the back to a spot in South Texas, near the Mexican border. At the collection point there are these scary Mexicans. I mean, really menacing. Looked at me as if they wanted to chew me up and spit me out. The guy in charge stopped me before I left. Wanted to know who I was, how I came to be working for Flowers. He made me nervous. Even more nervous than you guys. I answered him as honestly as I could.”

  “Which isn’t saying much,” Harmony muttered.

  “The guy listened to what I had to say, then took out a wad of cash. A fat one. And a cell phone. He tossed both the money and the phone in the dirt at my feet, and said, ‘You work for Salazar now. Every day, you call me and tell me where Mr Flowers goes.’ He walked away. I called after him that I couldn’t do it, that I didn’t have any way of keeping constant tabs on Flowers’ movements. He didn’t turn round. One of his thugs just stepped forward, drew his finger across his throat. I got the message. So I took the phone and the cash, and got the hell out of there.”

  “Did you tell Flowers?” Venn asked.

  “God, no. That Salazar geezer was far more frightening than Flowers. I didn’t dare mention what he’d said. I knew if I did, somehow he’d find out. So I tried my best to do what he’d asked. I hung around Flowers’ office every day, asking if he had any jobs for me. Started to irritate him a bit, I think, but eventually he started giving me more to do. And wherever possible I accompanied him, if he allowed it and needed an extra pair of hands. Trips to warehouses where packaged goods needed collecting. Business meetings, where he’d smarten me up beforehand, put me in a suit, and present me as his personal assistant. I think he was using my English accent to impress the people he met.”

  “These business meeting,” said Venn. “Did you sit in on them?”

  Clune shook his head. “I always had to wait outside in the car. They were with a variety of people, in a range of venues. Some of the guys he met were obvious gangsters, Hispanics or white people. Others just looked like ordinary small businessmen. But every time, the meetings were held behind closed doors, with me excluded.”

  “And you reported all of this back to Salazar?”

  “Every evening. Even when there was nothing to report, when Flowers hadn’t left his office all day, I rang in. There was only one number on the phone, and it was always Salazar himself who answered. I used to do a transport run down to the border about once every two weeks, and Salazar would be there with his men. He’d never say anything, just throw a clip of cash at me each time.”

  “Did he ask you to look out for anything in particular?” Venn felt there was, at last, the beginning of something significant in what the kid was telling them Something that might help make sense of all of this.

  Clune paused, remembering. “No... He always wanted detailed descriptions of the people Flowers was meeting. What they looked like, how they dressed, their accents, and so on. Even their cars. He sometimes asked me to describe the cars they arrived in.”

  “And all of this went on for how long?”

  “Couple of months. Six weeks, maybe.” The kid drew a long breath, expelled it through pursed lips. “Then... it happened.”

  Venn waited. Harmony shifted impatiently in her chair.

  Clune went on: “I was doing my two-weekly run to the border. Salazar was there, as usual. This time, though, he didn’t just give me money. He handed me a letter, told me to give it to Flowers. On the way back, I got curious. So I stopped at a petrol station and used the coffee machine there to steam open the letter. It was in Spanish, which I don’t know.”

  “As we’ve discovered,” said Walter dryly.

  “I made a photocopy of the letter, then sealed it again and delivered it to Flowers. But later, back in my apartment, I typed the contents of the letter into one of those online translation service things. You know them? Yeah. The English translation came out a little weird and garbled, the way they usually do with these things, but the gist was clear. Salazar wanted to terminate his association with Flowers, and was summoning him to a rendezvous in order to discuss severance terms. The date of the rendezvous was the next day, and the location near the border.”

  “So you accompanied Flowers to this meeting?” said Venn.

  “No. He told me he didn’t need me to come, just took a group of his goons with him. He seemed tense. I was curious, so I followed him. It played out as I said before. There was a standoff, Salazar shot Flowers dead, then all hell broke loose and the two sides started blazing away at each other.”

  “And you fled, and Salazar saw you leaving?”

  “Yeah.”

  Walter heaved his bulk out of his seat, leaned forward and peered so closely into Clune’s face that the boy recoiled.

  “Nuh-uh,” said Walter, sitting back down. “There’s something you’re leaving out.”

  “Remember, kid,” Venn said. “Last chance.”

  Clune dipped his head in resignation. “Before I ran,” he said, “I snatched a suitcase. The money Salazar had brought along to pay Flowers off.”

  Venn: “You got away with it?”

  “Yes. Then hit the road, till I reached New York.”

  “How much money was there?”

  Clune grimaced, as though the memory was painful.

  “One million dollars.”

  Chapter 24

  Salazar and his six men roamed the streets of the Upper West Side, forming a phalanx around the two kids who were looking less enthusiastic and more fatigued by the minute. From time to time either the boy or the girl or both would raise a hopeful hand and point toward a block in the distance, but on arrival there their faces would fall.

  They hit paydirt, after an hour’s wandering, as they turned a corner somewhere in the low Seventies.

  The girl jabbered, “There.”

  Salazar saw a quiet, almost suburban street with apartment buildings on one side and a row of townhouses on the other. He grabbed the girl’s shoulder.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive.” She looked at her boyfriend. “Check out the tree, dude. It’s the one the guy fell out of.”

  “Uh... yeah, it is,” said the boy, who clearly had no recollection at all.

  “And the car across the street. That Oldsmobile
. It was there last night.”

  Salazar and his men marched the pair up to the house. The street was quiet, most of its residents at work or indoors sheltering from the growing heat outside.

  Salazar advanced onto the short driveway that led up to the door of a single-car garage. He examined the small rectangle of front lawn.

  It was well-maintained on the whole, but there were fresh twin gouges across part of the grass. As though a pair of heels had been dragged across it.

  He turned and nodded at one of his men, who produced the folded wad cash and handed it to the girl. She stuffed it into a cup of her bra.

  Salazar nodded again. Another man, this one standing next to the boyfriend, punched the kid in the gut. He doubled over, too shocked and winded even to yell. Salazar’s man kneed him in the face and the boy dropped.

  The girl backed unsteadily away, her hand over her mouth, animal whimpers emitting from between her fingers. Her eyes were saucers of terror.

  “The money’s for your help,” said Salazar. “That –” he indicated the dazed, writhing body on the ground – “is to remind you both to keep your mouths shut. You never saw us. You were never here in the Upper West, not today, not last night.”

  She nodded, too quickly, breathless with fear.

  Salazar jerked his head. “Get him out of here.”

  Two of his men hauled the kid to his feet. The girl stooped and put her arm across his back, supporting him. They stumbled away.

  When they were out of view, Salazar motioned with his fingers. Quick, precise signs, each with a specific meaning. His men fanned out efficiently round the house.

  Ten minutes later they reconvened. No obvious signs anybody was home. A front door and a kitchen door out back, together with a cellar reached by a short flight of steps. No dogs.