Gamma Blade

by Tim Stevens

  Estrada said, “We’d like to ask you gentlemen a couple of questions.”

  They looked past her to O’Reilly. Venn said: “You don’t need to wait for his permission.” He nodded toward the stern of the deck. “How about over there?”

  Estrada turned toward O’Reilly. “Thank you.”

  He gave her another mirthless smile. Then he signaled something to the two men, and began walking down the gangplank to the pier.

  Venn and Estrada faced the two men. The detectives had positioned themselves so that their two interviewees were facing the sun, forcing them to squint a little.

  “What are your names?” asked Estrada.

  The Hispanic man spoke first. “Julio Jiminez.”

  “Bart Forrest,” said the other guy. He barely moved his lips when he spoke.

  “What’s your association with Mr O’Reilly?”

  Jiminez said: “Personal security.”

  “You work through an agency?” said Venn.

  “No,” said Jiminez. “Freelance.”

  Estrada: “Were you on this boat last night?”

  “Yeah,” said Jiminez. “Looking after it while Mr O’Reilly was in Orlando.”

  “You see those men lined up on the pier?” asked Venn. “Around eleven pm?”

  “No.”

  Venn glanced at the other man, Forrest. “How about you?”

  Forrest gave his head the minutest shake.

  “Not particularly effective guards, are you?” said Estrada. “Five guys, possibly gangbangers, right outside the boat, and you didn’t spot them?”

  The two men stared at her in silence. They didn’t shuffle awkwardly, or look embarrassed in any other way.

  “You hear the disturbance here on the marina last night?” asked Venn.

  Jiminez said, “Yeah. A little shouting, but when we looked, we didn’t see a lot. Then an ambulance arrived, and the cops. Looked like someone had collapsed, or been rolled by a mugger. Wasn’t our concern.”

  “How long have you been working for O’Reilly?” said Estrada.

  Jiminez shrugged. “Two years.” He looked at Forrest. “Bart here a little longer.”

  “You need to get rough with anybody, ever? Anybody who was a threat to O’Reilly?”

  “Sometimes.” Jiminez didn’t smirk. His tone was flat. “All kinds of scumbags try to get a piece of a businessman like Mr O’Reilly. We caught a couple of them trying to burglarize his office once. Another time, an asshole in a bar started hassling him. Son of a bitch won’t be doing that again in a hurry.”

  Venn looked at Forrest. “You don’t say much, do you?”

  The man said nothing.

  Estrada and Venn watched the two men for ten seconds more. They didn’t give an inch.

  “All right,” said Estrada. “Let’s go.”

  They turned their backs ostentatiously on the men and walked toward the gangplank.

  “Damn,” said Venn, as they stepped off onto the pier and began making their way back to the car.. “What I wouldn’t give to toss this boat, from top to bottom.”

  Estrada shook her head. “Even if we got a warrant, which there’s no chance of... O’Reilly wouldn’t keep anything incriminating on board. He strikes me as too smart for that.”

  “You think drugs?” said Venn.

  “Maybe. Or contraband of some other kind. Cuban cigars are an obvious possibility, but it could be stolen jewelry. Or fine art. Or boosted spare parts from a car factory, for all I know. Miami’s like the illegal eBay of America.”

  They got into the station wagon. Venn said, “What you got on O’Reilly so far?”

  “Not a lot yet.” Estrada started the engine. “He’s from Ireland, like I said, but he has US citizenship. Been living in Miami a couple of years. He has an apartment here. No rap sheet. Not even any minor transgressions, like tax stuff.”

  “Okay.” Venn took out is phone. “I’ve got a guy up in New York who’s great at research. Let me give him a call.”

  He thought Estrada might object to bringing somebody else in, but she said nothing as she pulled out into the traffic.

  *

  Venn caught Filiberto Vidal on his personal cell phone. Sometimes the guy came into the Division of Special Projects office on a Saturday, but today he was home.

  “Hey, boss.” Fil sounded cheerful. “How’s Miami?”

  “Sunny,” said Venn. “Fil, could you do a little digging for me? Guy named Mark O’Reilly. I’ll text you his address in a minute. He’s based here in Florida.”

  “No problem,” said Fil. “Anything in particular I’m looking for?”

  “Connections to organized crime,” said Venn. “Or any other suspicious dealings that might have been covered up.”

  “I’ll call you later,” said Fil. “But... you’re working, boss? I thought this was supposed to be like a vacation for you.”

  “The best-laid plans, Fil,” said Venn.

  He hung up.

  To Estrada, he said, “You got any ideas what to do next?”

  “Drive around a little,” she said. “I can think best when I’m driving.”

  She appeared restless, edgy. Venn knew the feeling. You wanted to take action, any action, but the lack of obvious leads made it difficult to know what to do.

  After a while, Estrada said, “You know, part of me just wants to go and shake Brull himself down. Confront him. It won’t get me anywhere, but he’ll know I’m on his back.”

  “You know where to find him?” said Venn, mildly surprised.

  Estrada glanced at him. “Oh yeah. He runs an office down in . An employment agency. It’s a front, of course, but he keeps it clean as a whistle. Here’s there a lot during the day.”

  “You’ve been there?”

  “A few times. I’ve interviewed him there. So he knows me.”

  Venn thought for moment. Then he said: “Let me go there.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll talk to him. I’ll show up at his office and try get an audience with him. If he was the man in the alley last night, he’ll recognize me. It might rattle him. At the very least, I’ll get to hear his voice again, and be one hundred per cent sure he’s our guy.”

  Estrada gazed through the windshield, her expression doubtful.

  “I don’t know, Venn.”

  “Come on. It’s worth a shot.”

  After a few moments’ pause, she said, “What the hell. Okay.”

  Chapter 15

  Once again, just like yesterday, Carlos Fuentes stood before Brull in his office.

  This time, the man wasn’t pissing his pants. He even looked a little composed, though his underlying nervousness was impossible to conceal. He’d called Brull’s guy, Elon, and asked for a meeting with the boss. Elon had been all set to kick the grocer’s ass for him, but he’d checked with Brull anyhow.

  And Brull had said yes.

  He was curious as to what Fuentes had to say. He expected the guy to plead for an extension, to argue pathetically that the deadline for his payment was unrealistic. In which case, Brull had a new video clip to show Fuentes. Once which, again, starred his son.

  During his meditative moments, when he was practicing his yoga or simply gazing at a clear blue sky, emptying his mind of business concerns, Brull sometimes wondered if there was something clinically wrong with him. Wrong with the thrill he got in seeing another person suffer. He decided that it didn’t matter. Let society, with its know-it-all psychiatrists and its pious, hypocritical rules of morality pass judgement on him.

  He was outside all of that. Above it.

  So he waited in his office for the call from the reception desk downstairs, to tell him that Carlos Fuentes was here to see him. It was possible, he thought, that the little man would try to threaten him. Would say he’d gone to the cops or something.

  Brull would enjoy that even more.

  Now, Fuentes stood on the rug with his hat in his hands before him, and his head slightly bowed. He didn’t look defiant. Mor
e like a supplicant.

  “Hey, Carlos,” said Brull. “Long time no see.” He frowned, peering all around Fuentes as if looking for something. “I can’t see it.”

  Fuentes raised his head a fraction, glanced about himself. “I’m sorry... Mr Brull, you cannot see what?”

  “The suitcase with my six thousand dollars,” said Brull cheerfully. “I got to say, Carlos, I’m impressed. Never thought you’d pull all that cash together so quickly. Still, I guess you had a pretty strong incentive, didn’t you? And where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

  Fuentes met Brull’s gaze once again. His face was lined in anguish, his eyes haunted.

  “Mr Brull, I do not have the money for you yet.”

  Brull pulled a comically exaggerated face of disappointment. “Ah, jeez. And here I was, hoping for a little extra to be able to spend on a Saturday night. Oh, well.” He shrugged. “No harm done. My bad.” He folded his hands on the desk again and smiled at Fuentes. “So. What is it you wanted to see me about?”

  “Mr Brull.” Fuentes’ mouth worked. His throat sounded dry, so that there was an audible click as he swallowed. “I cannot possibly obtain six thousand dollars for you by Monday morning. So I am here to offer myself to you.”

  Brull let the silence stretch out. It was so acute that he thought he could her drops of sweat from the man’s face hitting the carpet.

  Very quietly, Brull said, “Come again?”

  Fuentes cleared his throat. He drew himself up to his full height, which wasn’t much. A little more boldly, he said: “I offer myself, Mr Brull. My life. Kill me. Torture me. Enslave me for as long as you wish. But release Hector. Let my boy go. I beg you.”

  He looked ready to drop to his knees, if Brull told him to beg properly.

  Brull stared at him in genuine amazement.

  “Your life?” he said. He was too shocked even to laugh. “Carlos, what makes you think your life is worth anything to me?”

  What composure Fuentes had been clinging onto was starting to slip. The muscles in his cheeks began jumping.

  “Mr Brull, please -”

  “Your life,” Brull went on, as if the other man hadn’t spoken, “is mine anyhow, whether you offer it to me or not. I could have killed you, or tortured you, or enslaved you, whatever that means, whenever I liked. I can still do so now. Your agreement to it is beside the point.”

  He leaned a little further across the desk.

  “But here’s the thing, Carlos. I’m owed six thousand dollars. That’s worth a whole lot more to me than your useless, insignificant life. And I know I’m going to get my money. You’re pathetic, but you’re also resourceful. You run that grocery store of yours with a shrewd head. How you’re going to get the money, I have no idea. And I don’t really care, either. But I know you’ll come through, Carlos. I know, because you’re not in a position to fail.”

  He kept Fuentes pinned to the spot with his gaze, like a butterfly with a needle through it.

  After ten seconds’ silence, which was punctuated only by a single whimper from Fuentes’ throat - he really was doing a good job of holding it together this time, Brull thought almost admiringly - Brull slapped his palms on the desk. The sound made Fuentes jerk as if he’d been shot.

  “So. Enough of this nonsense. I’ve got things to do this morning, Carlos. And I sure as hell know you have, too.”

  He waved a careless hand, like a boss dismissing his secretary.

  Fuentes stumbled a little on the way to the door. Brull considered calling him back to show him the new video clip, but decided against it. He’d keep that little treat for the next time Fuentes showed up. Which he suspected would be before the weekend was over.

  Brull cleared his mind of the grocer within seconds, and focussed on the problem he had right now. Which was rescheduling the rendezvous from last night, the one they’d had to abort.

  The difficulty was, he couldn’t simply rearrange the meet. The cops would be watching the marina, and if the boat, the Merry May, took off for the open water, they’d get even more suspicious. First, Brull had to spend some time finding out exactly how much the cops knew.

  And he had to find the mystery man who Elon had knocked unconscious.

  So far, his guys had been unsuccessful in locating the hospital where the guy was being kept. Brull was almost certain he’d been admitted to a ward, rather than sent home the same day. Brull’s cousin was a nurse down in , and she was a useful source of information about all things medical. She’d told him once that people who’d lost consciousness following a head injury were always admitted for observation, at least overnight.

  The trouble was, Brull was running out of time. If the man was okay this morning, he might be discharged. And then the trail would go cold. So Brull had gotten up early, at six o’clock, and had gone into overdrive, pulling his men off all but the most essential business across the city and directing them toward the hospitals. Each of them had a copy of the photo Elon had taken of the guy the night before.

  Brull thought about his cousin the nurse. Probably the most interesting thing he’d gotten from her, though she didn’t know it, was the name he’d given himself.

  She’d been working in an oncology department once, and had told him about the gamma knife. It wasn’t a surgical instrument, as the name suggested, but rather a machine used to treat brain tumors with radioactive agents. Most of what she’d told him had been lost on him, but that name stuck.

  Gamma knife.

  He played with the term in his head, tossing it around, until he decided that an even better-sounding name was gamma blade.

  And from that day on, Ernesto Justice Brull had regarded himself as the Gamma Blade. He was a precision instrument, striking skilfully and excising his opposition.

  He never told anybody else about the name. But he found that, whenever he doubted himself - which wasn’t often - the words rose in his mind once more, and reminded him of his power.

  Gamma Blade.

  *

  The phone on his desk buzzed, snapping Brull out of his thoughts.

  “Yeah.”

  It was the receptionist downstairs, Maria. She was sullen and downright hostile to most callers, by default, and loyal as hell to Brull. “Got a man here wants to see you, sir.”

  Brull was surprised. He didn’t get a whole lot of cold callers asking to see him personally. Usually people who showed up at the reception desk were deadbeats, unemployed and normally unemployable. They came looking for work, and Maria either referred them to one of the Brull’s guys in the downstairs offices, who’d go through the motions of taking their details but never contact them again. Or, more often, Maria would tell them to get lost, or ask for references up front which few of them were able to provide.

  “Who is he?” asked Brull.

  “Says his name, uh, Robert Smith,” said Maria. “White guy, big. Looks like a thug. Says he’s got some information you’ll want to hear.”

  Brull sighed. Another wannabe informant, claiming to have insider access to somewhere he imagined Brull couldn’t go.

  “Tell him to fuck off,” said Brull. “Be reasonably polite about it.”

  Maria put her hand over the phone. Brull didn’t replace the receiver, because if the guy downstairs started getting abusive, he wanted to know about it quickly so he could intervene.

  She came back a moment later. “He says he wants to talk to you about the boat, whatever that means.”

  Brull was immediately alert. He felt adrenaline flood his system, was aware of his senses heightening in acuity.

  Was this an attempt to set up a new rendezvous?

  “Okay,” said Brull. “Send him up. First, who else is in the building?”

  She knew what he meant. “Jimmy Martinez, and Alberto.”

  “Tell them to get up here and meet this guy by the door. Tell them to frisk him.”

  “Got it, sir.”

  Brull opened a drawer of his desk. Inside lay his . He left the drawer open, w
ithin immediate reach but hidden from the other side of the desk.

  He sat back and waited.

  Chapter 16

  Estrada parked up a side street, two blocks from the office. The neighborhood was quite different from the ones Venn had encountered in the city so far: potholed, neglected asphalt on the roads, garbage spilling out of splitting sacks lined up along the walls of tenement buildings, young men hanging around on street corners.

  You found it in every American city Venn had ever been in.

  Estrada said, “The moment there’s any shit, hit speed dial.”

  Venn grunted. “If I get a chance.”

  He got out and strode the two blocks until he saw the office halfway down the street, its name in cheap, garish paint on the awning: Columbus Employment Agency. He was in his comfortable clothes, jeans and leather jacket and boots, so he didn’t think he stood out all that much. Other than that he was white, in an almost exclusively Latino neighborhood.

  The lobby was cramped and smelled of stale cigarette smoke and sweat. The smell of despair. A single, battered-looking elevator was straight opposite the doors, alongside the stairs. To the left, a receptionist sat behind a counter. She was grim-looking, and glared at him balefully as he entered.

  Without preamble, Venn said: “I need to speak with Ernesto Brull.”

  She didn’t do anything at first except stare at him.

  At last, she said, “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No.”

  “Then he’s not available.”

  “He will be when he hears what I have to say.”

  That didn’t make sense, and Venn saw her trying to work it out.

  He took out his wallet, seeing her tense as he reached into his pocket. He peeled off two twenties and dropped them on the desk.

  She stared at them as if they were a couple of dead fish.

  “How about it, honey?” he said.

  After a moment, she took the bills with one hand and made them disappear, while she reached for the phone with the other.

  Venn heard her end of the conversation. As he waited, he saw a man come down the stairs next to the elevator.

  The man was holding onto the handrail, although he looked neither frail nor all that old. It was as if he didn’t trust his legs to support him. His head was bowed, his posture slumped. He looked utterly broken.