Alpha Kill - 03

by Tim Stevens

  They watched the entrance.

  Two minutes later, Vincenzo emerged. He’d pulled on some clothes and loped with a drunkard’s determined pace. He reached the row of phones on the corner of the street and busied himself there.

  A few seconds later, Venn’s cell phone rang.

  Surprised, Venn picked it up. “Yeah. Detective Venn.”

  Vincenzo said: “I get some kind of immunity for this, okay?”

  “For what?” Venn leaned over so that Harmony could hear.

  “For what I’m about to tell you. Promise me that I’ll be taken care of.”

  Venn said, “I’ll do what I can. Sure.”

  There was a pause. Then Vincenzo said: “The man you want is William Soper. He’s a big-shot doctor at Revere Hospital.”

  Venn nodded at Harmony, flicked his fingers in a go, go gesture. She opened the door of the car, closed it carefully, and walked quickly across the street.

  “Okay,” said Venn. “I’m listening.”

  Vincenzo was silent again. When he spoke, it was with confusion. “I’ve told you. You need to talk to Soper. He knows where Drake is.”

  “Where does he live?” Venn said. “Why are you giving him up?”

  Through the windshield, he watched Harmony reach Vincenzo at the phone booth. He saw the minor struggle as the man whirled, heard the muttered curses as he dropped the receiver.

  Watched Harmony march the guy back toward the car.

  “Hey, Charles,” he said, as Harmony dumped Vincenzo into the backseat and sidled in beside him. Venn shifted over behind the wheel. “Let’s take a drive.”

  Chapter 37

  The call came when they’d been back at the safe house an hour, the twins sprawling Zen-like on the sofas, Rosenbloom and Walusz taking care of the coffee, and Skeet pacing as usual, like a maniac.

  Drake thought: the hell with this.

  He needed some air. Some alone time, away from these crazy people with their quirks and their hangups and their sick motivations.

  So he said, “Lemme take this outside,” and strode through the door of the apartment and down the stairs without waiting for a response. He thumbed the green key just before the call would have gone to voicemail, and as he headed for the doors he said: “Yeah.”

  The man said, “I have details on Joseph Venn.”

  Drake stepped out into the cold night and turned down the street. This was the Bowery, the armpit of the city. Or maybe even the asshole. He saw rows of buildings and people making their way along the sidewalk, no worse than he’d known in Chicago. Maybe he was at greater risk of being mugged here than anywhere else in New York City.

  Let anybody try.

  The man said, “Venn is a detective lieutenant in some kind of special department. I’m going to give you his home address and the address of his office. But once again, just like with the Colby woman, neither of them is going to be of much use to you. He won’t go home. Not tonight. And his office is likely to be staffed. You won’t be able to get to him there.”

  Drake took out the pen he’d found earlier and scribbled the two addresses on his sleeve.

  “So you’re being real negative about my prospects,” he said. “What ideas do you have?”

  “You need to lure him.” The voice was clipped, business-like. “Lure and trap him. Here’s how. Listen carefully.”

  Ahead, Drake saw a homeless person slumped against a wall. A mangy dog that looked like one of its parents was a rat huddled close to him. Drake stopped, looking down. Absently, he scooped the plastic can out of the bum’s outstretched hand and emptied the change into his fist, before walking on.

  “I’m going to feed Venn the name of one of the people in my organization. He’s a fairly minor player. Venn will head straight for this person’s address. You’ll find him there, in around thirty minutes. He may have support, which you’ll just have to deal with. But you can finish the job there.”

  Drake took down the new address, scrawling it higher on his shirtsleeve.

  He said: “How are you going to give Venn this guy’s name?”

  “Don’t you worry about that,” said the man. “Just focus on getting to the address and taking Venn out.”

  “How do I know you’re not just sending me straight into a trap?” Drake snarled. “After all, I’m the one who wants Venn. Not you. Why would you help me like this?”

  “Because I, too, have an interest in removing Venn,” the man replied smoothly. “He represents a threat to me. If I didn’t think you had a more than even chance of killing him, I wouldn’t send you along there. You could make life very difficult for me if you were to start talking to the police.”

  Before Drake could answer, the man went on: “And in case you’re considering doing just that, turning yourself in to the cops to sell me out in exchange for some kind of deal... well, here’s a little reminder why that wouldn’t be such a good idea.”

  The call ended abruptly. Drake stared at the screen.

  A couple of seconds later, a new text message appeared. Like the one before, there was no content. Just a photo attached.

  The photo showed the same small boy, but this time, instead of laughing off to one side, he was gazing straight at the camera. His expression was terrified. A man’s hand rested on his shoulder.

  His heart pounding almost loose from his chest, the pressure in his head immense, Drake launched a kick at an overflowing garbage can by the side of an alleyway. The can clattered over, spewing its contents across the street.

  Instead of hurling his phone down the alleyway, as every impulse screamed at him to do, Drake punched in Skeet’s number, turning as he did so and breaking into a trot back toward the safe house.

  “Get your asses moving,” he said. “We’re heading out.”

  Chapter 38

  Despite the fact that he’d obviously been rattled by being dumped in the back of a police car, despite Harmony’s glowering face inches from his, Vincenzo managed to keep his mouth shut.

  All he told Venn and Harmony was Dr Bill Soper’s home address, here in New Jersey, in Newark. He didn’t say what his connection was with Soper, or why he was ratting him out. He didn’t even protest that he was being taken along against his will, without having been read his rights.

  “Okay,” said Venn, when his cajoling failed to work. “I guess you’ll just come along with us, then. We’ll pay Dr Soper a visit together.”

  Vincenzo appeared to be on the point of saying something, but he remained silent. His eyes looked scared.

  Venn checked the dashboard clock. Five forty-nine. He wondered if Soper would still be at home, or if he was an early riser like many doctors and was already on his way to work. Given his age and his seniority, Venn suspected the former.

  Soper’s house was in the affluent Forest Hill district of Newark, somewhere Venn had never been. He reached the street Vincenzo had specified, and cruised slowly down it, peering at the grand Victorian houses and their numbers.

  “That’s it,” he said to Harmony, pointing.

  The grounds sloped upward to the house itself, all landscaped lawns and ornate water features. A driveway wound up from an electronic gate set in the stone wall around the property.

  “How the other half live,” muttered Harmony.

  Venn drove the Crown Vic up to the gate and pressed the intercom set in the wall. It squawked to life after a few seconds, a man’s voice barking: “Yes?”

  “Dr Soper. It’s Lieutenant Joe Venn.”

  There was a pause. Soper said, “Lieutenant. What’s up?”

  “May I come in? It’ll just take a few minutes.”

  Again, there was a delay before Soper replied. “May I ask what this is about?”

  “It’s about Beth,” Venn said.

  The gates swung open a few seconds later and Venn drove through.

  He parked up on the forecourt outside the house. Before he killed the engine, the front door opened and Soper stood there. He was already dressed, but in his sh
irtsleeves. Venn recalled Beth saying that he was a widower, and lived alone.

  Soper’s frown deepened when Harmony got out of the backseat, all but pulling Vincenzo after her. Venn watched Soper’s face as the doctor stared at Vincenzo. He saw nothing there but puzzlement.

  “Is Beth all right?” Soper said.

  “Please.” Venn nodded through the doorway behind Soper. “Let’s sit down.”

  They trooped through a grand entrance hall into a living room which was equally lavish, an enormous bay window overlooking the front lawns. A Filipina woman in maid’s uniform was clearing away the dishes from the breakfast table. She looked up.

  Soper said, “You can leave that, Audris, thank you.”

  The woman hurried away, darting a startled glance at Venn and the other two.

  “Would you please tell me what this is all about?” said Soper again, a note of testiness creeping into his voice.

  Instead of replying directly, Venn indicated Vincenzo. “You know this man, Bill?”

  “Can’t say that I do,” said Soper abruptly. “Look, I need to get to work. If you –”

  Venn’s phoned buzzed. It was Beth.

  Venn couldn’t suppress a stab of panic. Was she being attacked? He said, “Yeah.”

  “Venn.” She sounded breathless, but with something other than fear or distress. Something closer to disbelief. “Can you talk?”

  Venn stepped away so that her voice wouldn’t carry. “Go ahead.”

  “Fil and I have been looking at the data. Paul kept records on the remaining flash drive.” She spoke quickly about the spreadsheets she’d found, and Fil’s subsequent searches.

  “The firms of Cryer and Greenbeck, whose names appeared on the trucks that visited the clinic regularly, don’t exist. There’s no trace of them. But Fil checked the license plates, and the vehicles belong to the shipping company Bruce Collins owns and uses for his exports.”

  She paused. Venn was about to ask what that proved, when Beth continued: “The trucks’ visits always followed the death of a patient at the clinic. Always within a few hours of the deaths being noted, and sometimes in the middle of the night. But not all of the deaths. Only those patients who were subsequently cremated, rather than buried.”

  “Hold on,” said Venn. “Let me get this straight. A patient dies. One of the trucks arrives. Later the patient is cremated.”

  “Right.”

  Realization was beginning to dawn in Venn’s mind. He stared over at Soper.

  As if sensing Venn’s thoughts, Beth said: “You need to intercept one of those trucks after it’s been to the clinic. Search it. I’ll bet you find body parts.”

  “What?”

  “Organs, Venn. The clinic is harvesting organs from recently deceased patients. Sending them overseas to paying customers. Olivia Collins was sending patients she judged to be terminally ill to the clinic, so as to make their organs available when they died. Paul must have gotten an inkling about what was going on, and was investigating it on his own. Gathering evidence he was going to present to the police. That’s why he was killed.”

  The pieces were tumbling into place faster than Venn could process them.

  “My God,” he said.

  Two things happened then.

  Soper broke into a run. Moving surprisingly fast for a man of his age, he darted across the room toward a door at the far end, knocking over a side table and sending a vase spinning and smashing to the floor.

  And the bay window blew inward in a hurricane of shattering glass.

  Chapter 39

  Venn flung himself forward and sideways and cannoned into Harmony and sent her sprawling as he hit the wood floor, hard.

  The noise was a violent assault on the ears, a rhythmic pounding that was accompanied by a cascade of smashing plaster and glass as the shots chopped apart the wall opposite and the expensive furniture and the windows.

  Venn heard a shriek and rolled and saw Vincenzo twist this way and that as the bullets slammed into him, dropping him onto the floor several feet away, his body a torn and bloody mess.

  Harmony was already scrambling toward the three feet high expanse of wall beneath the bay window. Venn reached her a second later, drawing his Beretta as he crawled. Shards and slivers of glass from the ruined window scattered down on their heads. The high-velocity bullets sang by above them, shockingly close.

  As the firing continued, Venn did his best to ignore it, lying prone, his eyes scanning the other windows and the doorway they’d come through. He knew the indiscriminate shooting wasn’t merely due to trigger-happiness. Rather, it was intended as a diversion.

  A figure darted past the half-open door out in the entrance hall. Venn loosed off a shot, heard it ricochet off one of the walls out there.

  Opposite the door, a man appeared at one of the shot-out windows and drew a bead. Venn and Harmony fired simultaneously and the man disappeared, too quickly to have been hit.

  Three of them, at least, then.

  The automatic fire stopped, the sudden quiet seeming to suck Venn in.

  They were pinned down.

  *

  Drake glanced back as he ran at a stoop round the side of the house, just as the firing started. He saw Skeet standing with his legs braced, his scrawny body surprisingly steady as the M16 bucked in his hands. Herman had gone in through the front door, while Walusz crossed round to the opposite side of the house.

  They’d come over the wall stealthily, using a row of trees as cover to shield them from the road. Back down the street, Rosenbloom sat parked in the SUV, as combined lookout guy and driver. He wouldn’t be much use in a fight.

  Drake and his team had reached the property a half-hour earlier. Peeking through the gates in the dim dawn light, Drake had been relieved to see no cars parked in the forecourt. It suggested Venn hadn’t gotten there yet. They parked the SUV down a side road at first, watching the intermittent early-morning cars go by. When an unfamiliar car, a Crown Vic, turned in at the gate, Skeet peered out his window and said: “Yeah. That’s Venn in the driving seat.”

  He hadn’t brought backup, it seemed, other than whoever was in the car with him. Still, Drake and the others would have to work quickly. Gunfire in a well-heeled neighborhood like this would bring the cops like flies.

  Now Drake reached the rear of the house, where an even bigger lawn stretched toward the woods, a kidney-shaped swimming pool off to one side. Outside the back door Drake saw Gudrun, who’d already positioned herself there.

  Gudrun wasn’t holding a gun. Didn’t favor them. Instead, she’d prized an ax out of a chopping block beside a pile of logs. She stood with the ax poised in her hands, by the side of the door.

  She winked at him.

  As Drake approached, the door burst open and a man came running out. He was stumbling a little, and looked old. His eyes widened when he saw Drake.

  Without hesitating, Gudrun swung the ax, the motion fluid and beautiful. The blade buried itself in the man’s chest with a chok, lifting him backward off his feet. With a flourish, Gudrun twisted the ax free before the man’s falling body could wrench it from her grasp.

  “Jesus,” said Drake, looking at the body twitching on the ground, a fountain of blood spraying from its chest and soaking the grass in ebbing pulses. “I think you just killed the homeowner.”

  Drake didn’t spare the old guy another thought – shit happened, after all – and stepped past the body. From inside the house, bursts of gunfire competed with each other. Skeet had finished with the shock tactic of the M16, and they were closing in for the kill.

  *

  Venn’s eyes flitted from the half-open door to the opposite window to the sill of the bay window above his head.

  They were trapped. Any moment now, the end of the rifle was going to come poking over the sill, and even if the man holding it fired blindly, Venn and Harmony would either get hit by a lucky shot, or would be driven out into the center of the living room.

  At which point, they�
�d be targets for three separate shooters.

  In the corner of the living room to Venn’s right, he noticed an upright piano. He looked at Harmony, whose face was inches from his, lying prone as she was beside him. With a jerk of his head he gestured at the piano. Then he pointed upward with one finger.

  She understood, nodded.

  Venn counted down on his fingers - three, two, one - and took a deep breath and rolled across the floor, bracing himself for the volley of shots. At the same time Harmony pressed against the wall under the bay window and aimed her gun upward and began firing, sweeping her arm from left to right so that the shots angled up and out of the ruined window, generating a barrier of gunfire to keep the man with the rifle back.

  Venn reached the piano and crammed himself behind it. At almost the same moment, the man at the door showed himself and fired three quick shots, two of them slamming into the piano’s body to produce a discordant jangling and the other whipping past the side of the piano near Venn’s elbow.

  From where he was, in the corner of the room behind the piano, Venn could peek out on either side and see the window or the door opposite. He was, however, exposed to the bay window behind him. But if the rifleman showed himself above the sill, he too would be exposed.

  The gunfire stopped, the silence hanging heavily.

  From somewhere else in the house, on the same floor but toward the back, came a man’s voice. One Venn recognized immediately.

  “Venn,” called Drake. “Just thought I’d let you know I’m here. Before I kill you.”

  Venn wondered if Drake’s accomplices had deliberately aimed wide, so as to leave the coup de grace to Drake himself.

  Far away in the distance, sirens began to sound, tiny as mosquito whines.

  “You hear that, Drake?” Venn called back. “Cops are on their way. The longer you draw this out, the smaller your chances of escape.”

  As he spoke, he glanced at the window. The early morning sun had emerged at some point from behind the clouds, and its slanting rays cast a shadow across the wall inside the living room beside the window.