She looked down at the other range stalls; three were occupied by men. None of them were paying her any attention. Good. She rolled the bright orange foam earplugs between her fingers until they were small enough to fit into her ear canals. She smiled as she remembered Uncle Rock’s voice instructing her to “always double bag your ears or you’ll be like me, a deaf and dumb old man.”
It was a cheesy joke, but it always made her giggle. Occasionally he would even crack a rare smile over the comment.
She plugged her ears with hard ear protection and slid her specialized clear plastic protective eye goggles over her eyes. The black gloves were the last step. She worked her fingers into the leather gloves; she hated shooting with gloves because it made getting her rounds on target and in the five rings a bit more of a challenge. But Uncle Rock warned her hundreds of times about the dangers of lead particles getting all over her hands, contaminating her skin and blood.
Candice set her jaw and stomped her left foot, angry at herself for getting all mushy. Candice swiveled her neck and cracked her knuckles. She needed to toughen up for this war. “This is all for you, Daddy. Uncle Rock, I’m going to make you proud. I’m going to do everything right this time,” she whispered to herself.
The sound of rounds being fired from the adjacent shooting lanes gave Candice the push that she needed. She pulled down the gun rest and placed her perfect plastic case on it. The handmade case had been created by Uncle Rock to house what Candice considered the best gift she had ever received. Candice slowly unlatched the case and pulled up the top in a dramatic fashion, as if unveiling the Hope Diamond. When the case flapped open, Candice’s eyes sparkled and she smiled down at her uncle’s gift. The feeling of excitement that Uncle Rock’s beautiful AR-15 had given her many years ago was even stronger today.
Candice moved to the left and put the weapon on her support-side shoulder. She blew out a cleansing breath and tried to relax. She closed her eyes for a few seconds and imagined Uncle Rock guiding her movements. She placed her support-side ear on her shoulder.
“Candy, you gotta get your head down behind the sights or else this will jump back and hit you in the face. Grip it here, like your life depended on it. C’mon, Candy, now take this. Get your head behind those sights. Get a firm grasp and learn how to treat this baby like it’s your own.” Uncle Rock’s voice guided her from the grave and beyond.
Candice let her legs go soft and bent her knees slightly, with her back straight. She got into the correct stance and positioned the gun properly. Closing her weak eye and keeping her dominant eye open, Candice tugged on the trigger. When the first couple of rounds exited the end of the gun in rapid fire, Candice looked down range at the ripped-up target. She carefully pulled the trigger back again and again. Finally she was satisfied as she called in the obliterated target.
“Well, DeSosa, you better be fuckin’ ready because your time has run out.” Candice didn’t care who heard her or who watched her. She was completely in her element, and single-minded in her objective.
* * *
Arellio DeSosa opened the strange manila envelope left on his car windshield. He read the strange writing on the front. It was his name spelled out in letters that were cut out from magazines and newspapers. Curious, he turned the envelope over and dumped out its contents.
Arellio doubled over like he’d taken a powerful gut punch. His heartbeat sped up; his hands were racked with tremors. He looked at graphic 8x10 glossy photographs. He frantically flipped through them; each one was worse than the previous one. Finally he arrived at the last picture.
“No!” Arellio let out a guttural scream, dropping all of the pictures to the ground. Cyndi came rushing out the front door and down the long, circular driveway. She found her husband sitting on the ground next to his car, sobbing like a woman. He shouted “No! No! No!” over and over again. A cold chill shook Cyndi to the core. Something very bad had gone down.
“Arellio? What is it?” she asked, touching him on the head. She quickly discovered his source of distress. Cyndi went to her knees to retrieve the scattered photographs. Her chest tightened and tears burned behind her eyes. She picked up the photographs and was overcome with a mixture of grief and disbelief.
The first photo depicted her brother-in-law, Guillermo, with his head thrown back and eyes closed as another man took in a mouthful of his manhood. Cyndi felt sick as vomit crept up her throat.
With her eyes wide she shuffled to the next picture. “Oh God!” she gasped. It was a frontal shot of Guillermo, his face clear as day. He was on his knees, a man mounting him from behind. Guillermo’s face seemed contorted—whether in pain or pleasure, Cyndi could not tell. She felt light-headed. How could she comfort her husband through this disgrace?
The next picture showed Guillermo picking up a man and handing him money on a dark street corner.
The following picture felled her completely. Guillermo had a look of pure shock and terror on his face. His eyes bulged almost out of his head, and his mouth hung open in a terrified O shape. A severed penis was shoved between his lips.
Cyndi let out a loud screech. If this had been some kind of nightmare, she would have hoped she’d wake up soon. With trembling hands she flipped to the last picture in the stack. Cyndi twisted her body away from her husband and vomited on the driveway. The eviscerated remains of her brother-in-law were too much for herself and her husband to handle. How could they offer comfort to one another when they both were in so much pain?
* * *
“You motherfucker!” Tucker boomed, rushing toward the old man, spit flying from his mouth. “You fucked with my family? I’m going to rip your fucking head off and shit down your neck, you old bastard!”
Three black suits stepped in Tucker’s path, forming a wall around their charge. Grayson Stokes didn’t even flinch, his icy eyes remaining steady and calm. He folded his wrinkled hands on the table in front of him like he was watching a boring variety show rerun.
Avon struggled against a wall of muscles. “I’m gonna kill you! Fuckin’ white devil!” he barked. The walls of the room felt like they were closing in on him. “Face me like a man!” Avon challenged.
“Is that why you asked to meet me, Agent Tucker? So you could curse at me? So you could make yourself look like a total fool?” Stokes said calmly in his throaty, phlegm-coated voice.
“No, I asked to meet you so I could fucking kill you, you piece of shit! What type of fucking games are you playing?” Tucker could barely contain his anger. Veins throbbed at his temple and in his neck. He felt like he was having an “Incredible Hulk” moment.
“What makes you think it was me that tried to harm your family, Agent Tucker?” Stokes asked, peering around the broad backs of his protectors. “Do you really think you are that important to me?”
“Who else would do it? Who else would have a reason to do it?” Tucker contorted his jaw so hard he gave himself a headache.
“Did you ever think that DeSosa would do something like that? He is a fucking criminal, Agent Tucker. He knows you were undercover, infiltrating his top drug-dealing thug. Don’t you think he has a reason to go after your family?” Stokes painted these scenarios for him to make him think twice about his current conspiracy theory.
“DeSosa wouldn’t even know where to find my family!” Tucker boomed, jutting a trembling finger at Stokes. Stokes chortled and then was overcome with a fit of coughing.
Tucker felt like he’d been bitch slapped by Stokes. His patience snapped. Tucker bulldozed into the three Stokes protectors. “You think it’s funny, you half-dead motherfucker!” he screamed as he dived across the table with his hands outstretched.
He wasn’t fast enough. He was roughhoused by the suits and put into an arm bar, his arms raised over his head and locked behind his neck. The pain that rushed down his spine as a result rendered Tucker helpless. He had no choice but to calm down. Breathing like a captured animal, he finally stopped flailing and fighting.
With a deadpan
expression Stokes watched Tucker’s face; the old man’s demeanor was as calm as a placid river. Finally he waved his right hand in the air like it was a magic wand. “That’s enough,” he called out, snapping his fingers as though calling off well-trained attack dogs.
Tucker was released. He collapsed onto a chair and waited for the feeling to come back into his arms.
“Another hotheaded Tucker.” Stokes shook his head in disappointment, as though Tucker was simply a lazy student who didn’t do his homework.
Tucker was back on alert; his eyes were hooded over with ill intent.
“You think I didn’t know about your hero daddy? Agent Tucker, I know everything. But do you? I bet you didn’t know your father wasn’t really the undercover narcotics detective shot dead in a buy and bust,” Stokes said cruelly.
“You shut the fuck up!” Tucker growled. His teeth were clenched together tightly; his words were barely audible.
“Your father was no more than a dirty drug cop who was taking payments from drug dealers. He got shot because he wanted out—just like Easy Hardaway. He wanted to get into a game he knew nothing about, and there was no turning back. There’s never a way out, only a fucking way in, A-gent Tu-cker!” Stokes spoke like a preacher in the pulpit; his eyes were dilated and flashing with malice.
Tucker shot up out of the chair. He was faster this time and managed to catch Stokes around his frail turkey neck. Tucker squeezed as hard as he could from across the table. “You’re a fuckin’ liar! I’m gonna kill you, once and for all!” Tucker howled, snot pouring from his nose. His brain felt as if it would burst through his skull with all of the pressure building inside his head.
The men in black were on him in a matter of seconds. He held on as if his life depended on it. Stokes was making a horrible rasping noise, like a grating car engine that wouldn’t turn over.
“Die!” Tucker hissed.
Finally the men were able to pry him off Stokes. His body shook with angry tremors. Tucker was forced back down onto his chair. He held his head in his hands, while his chest rose and fell rapidly.
Stokes was ruining his life and tainting the memory of his father. Nothing in his life was off-limits. Everything that was holy and sacred had been desecrated by this bastard.
Stokes coughed through his maniacal laughter. “Now, Agent Tucker, are you ready to hear everything? Are you ready to talk so we can work together to find the girl and protect your family?” Stokes asked.
They appeared to be back at square one.
With his chest heaving and nostrils flaring, Tucker narrowed his eyes and glared at Stokes. He would at least hear him out. If it involved his family, there was nothing he wouldn’t do to protect them.
“All right, then. Now that I have your full attention, let me start from the very beginning,” Stokes said, sliding a file in Tucker’s direction. “I know you’ve already seen these, but you only have the Hardaway files. I don’t think you know much about Joseph Barton or Rolando DeSosa . . . or the government for that matter,” Stokes said.
“I don’t wanna read any more of your fuckin’ lies! Be a man. Tell me the truth, eye to fucking eye! Tell me how you manipulated a man into selling drugs that poisoned his own fuckin’ people. Tell me how the fuckin’ government sells drugs to buy weapons for fuckin’ militants in other countries.... Yeah, tell me!” Tucker growled. He wanted Grayson Stokes to know he was not on his side now, and he never would be a part of his fucking games.
“All right, then, Agent Tucker, I can do that. But you have to be able to handle the truth,” Stokes replied. The old man then steepled his fingers together, allowing the pad of each digit to match with its counterpart on the opposite hand. Stokes began to narrate, cleansing himself of it all and taking Tucker on a journey through the past.
He might hate Stokes’s guts, but this was exactly the kind of information Tucker needed to help Candy.
Chapter 24
Players and Traitors
New York 1984
“Hit him again,” Grayson Stokes growled, circling the victim like a buzzard over a dead body.
Stokes possessed the body of a U.S. Marine and the face of a Calvin Klein model; yet he was as ruthless as a black widow spider. His new mission had come directly from the director of the Central Intelligence Agency—an honor for an agent as high as being knighted by the queen of England.
At his direction a huge gorilla-shaped man approached. The man’s meaty hands held the opposing ends of two battery cables; the clamps squeezed open like the hungry mouth of a shark. Stokes nodded at the man, giving him the signal.
Without any facial emotion the man roughly clipped the menacing metal clamps onto the victim’s exposed nipples.
The other man fiddled with a box; soon there was a crackling electric sound, like an old transistor radio. Guttural screams emerged from the victim’s diaphragm and echoed off the walls. Stokes rubbed his chin, contemplating his next move.
“Rolando DeSosa . . . the Dominican kingpin of New York City,” Stokes said sarcastically, circling again. “Are you going to tell me to go fuck myself again, or are you going to get with the program?” Stokes pushed DeSosa’s suspended body, causing it to swing like he was a slab of meat in a butcher shop.
DeSosa’s body was racked with tremors; he was a far cry from the cocky, slick-talking Tony Montana–wannabe who had strode into the room earlier.
“Fuck you,” DeSosa rasped, his throat feeling like he’d swallowed acid.
Stokes’s eyebrows arched high at DeSosa’s bravado. “Fuck me, huh?” Stokes laughed. Then his smile faded as fast as it had formed. Stokes quickly nodded to his henchmen. One of the suited thugs came forward with a scalpel.
DeSosa moaned. There was only so much pain a man could tolerate in his lifetime. “No, no, no,” he mumbled, his battered eyes assessed the torture tool. His mind was barely able to comprehend the cruel trick that fate had played on him, for surely he would suffer dearly for his sins before he died.
The thugs made several small incisions on DeSosa’s chest, like tribal initiation markings. Then they poured salt and alcohol onto it. DeSosa didn’t have any sound left in his voice box; his mouth just hung open in sheer terror.
Stokes turned his back, anxiously rubbing his fingernails on the breast of his suit. He closed his eyes as DeSosa finally got enough wind in his lungs to let out a bloodcurdling scream.
“Now, Rolando. Again, let me tell you who I am. Maybe your English is not too good, so you didn’t understand me the first time. I work for President Ronald Reagan. You do know who that is, right? He’s the man who allowed scum like you to enter our country, only to find out that you came here to get rich by selling drugs,” Stokes said condescendingly, addressing the top of DeSosa’s downturned head.
DeSosa couldn’t and wouldn’t dare answer. He’d had enough.
With the flick of his hand, Stokes’s people were pulling DeSosa down from the chains and relocating him to a cold metal chair. His head was fighting a major battle with his neck; eventually it lobbed forward until his chin hit his chest. Stokes stood menacingly in front of him.
“You feel better sitting on the chair?” Stokes continued, not giving DeSosa a chance to even respond. “So, now, this little thing we want you to agree to. It’s sort of like an immunity deal. We take you out of prison. We give you access to the newest spin on cocaine, and you do our good president a favor by finding the right people in the worst neighborhoods to distribute this new phenomenal wonder drug—which we call crack cocaine—to. You following me, DeSosa?”
Stokes grabbed a handful of DeSosa’s thick, dark hair so that he could look him directly in the eye. DeSosa could barely keep his battered eyelids open long enough to stare back.
“Rolando, I have about twelve more ways to make you say yes. Why don’t we avoid using those methods? All you need to do is just open your mouth and repeat after me: ‘I, Rolando DeSosa, will agree to help this great country of the United States, which allowed my cockroach spic a
ss to come here and make money off its people,’” Stokes dictated. “Or should we start with that machine right there? I believe it does something permanent. Tell me, how much do you value your eyesight, Rolando?” Stokes threatened in a maddeningly calm tone.
DeSosa still did not acquiesce right away; instead, it took four more methods of torture before he finally cracked. In the end he agreed to the CIA’s program to distribute crack cocaine in low-income neighborhoods in New York City and Los Angeles.
At the time no one, not even the CIA, knew the distribution was being used to fund Reagan’s Contras. Stokes had only agreed to the program because he was told that controlling the distribution of this new and cheap spin on regular cocaine would help the government rid its country of the worst ghettos, like a self-inflicted genocide.
Stokes had signed on because he was a loyal employee of the government. He had thrown his moral compass in the trash compartment many years ago, and had no intention of retrieving it anytime soon.
Easy Hardaway was recruited into Operation Easy In, after his name had been passed to DeSosa by an NYPD detective named Francis Moore. Francis Moore was a decorated police hero; he was a rising rank-and-file detective, street legend and hard-nosed narc, who had put the worst of the worst behind bars for life.
Rolando DeSosa knew Moore differently. He knew Moore as the dirty detective he had kept on his payroll for years. Their relationship had proved very beneficial to DeSosa. Each and every time he had a run-in with the NYPD, his name would be cleared; then he’d be back on the street in a matter of days, and sometimes hours, thanks to Moore’s diligent work.
Until Moore’s only daughter, Corine, had begun dating a scraggly street kid known to every cop and detective as Easy, his life had been pretty uncomplicated. As the protégé of Early, a longtime criminal, Moore naturally had concerns about the safety of Corine in the presence of Easy.
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