by A. J. Mayall
He approached Phoenix, his dress shoes clicking on the wooden floor, the sound echoing in the still room. He stepped behind the detective and placed his hands on the redhead’s shoulders.
He spoke softly, hissing: “What exactly are you looking for? What kind of a case brings you to me, asking about my finances, my businesses and my employees…?
Phoenix sat still. He stared at the plate, feeling those hands on his shoulders unmoving until he took a bite of ravioli. Warm sauce left his lips; Donatello grabbed the napkin before him and wiped off Phoenix’s cheek.
“I’m investigating a missing person’s case.”
The hands clenched, then relaxed and Donatello stepped back, his voice hollow. “This case involves my business, my finances and various projects?”
“It does.”
Bellacino inhaled sharply through his nose and held his breath as he walked back to his chair and sat.
“Have you been to the police about this, Mr. McGee?” he asked, a bit weakly.
“I have, to little effect.”
Donatello kept his eyes averted as Phoenix cocked a brow, leaning in a bit. A shaky hand grabbed a piece of bread, his other for the knife, gathering butter on it.
“You’re a part of this, and I’m not going to stop until I find what I need to know. Tell me and I’m gone.”
Donatello looked forward, his eyes clouded with rage, a hint of steel will holding it back. His left hand crushed the bread to crumbs as the butter knife dropped to the floor.
“This conversation is over, Mr. McGee. You have no idea how lucky you are I let you talk to me like this. You come here demanding this of me? Go to hell, detective. We are even. We meet like this again, I’ll send you there myself.”
“I’m not leaving without know what happened to…”
“Get,” he hissed, rising again from the table, “out.”
“Donatello, it doesn’t have to be like this.”
“It does now, detective. You being here, this changes the equation. This changes the agreement. Go back home. You have my solemn word, you and yours will be safe, because we are even, now. Go back home and see how fucking with me changes things. I can tolerate a lot, everything that came before this. Leave now while we are even…”
Phoenix looked into the face of rage and fury, nodding and standing. He could use his power on Donatello, try to rough him up. He knew it would do no good; the man was untouchable. If he did anything too severe, the Bentons would be hurt, if they hadn’t been already. If Donatello was this shaken by the question, acting on it would only make it rain fire and brimstone in the streets of Rouge Mal.
“I’ll be in touch, Donatello.”
“I expect you will be sooner than you think.”
Phoenix turned and drew up his collar, exiting the room. Joe was waiting for him with his order to go. “On the house.”
“I think I made a mistake coming here, Joe. Sorry about the troubles, I expect I’ll be barred from your establishment.”
“I warned you to leave when you had the chance; nothing can save you now.”
“He said he’d leave me and mine alone, gave me his word.”
“Then you’ll be left alone. You’ll wish he put a bullet between your eyes though, if you pissed him off as much as I expect you did. All said and done, you did your damnedest to be peaceful, took the fight outside. If it’s any consolation, you’re welcome back, kid.”
“Thanks, but I have bigger problems now.”
“I bet you do.”
Phoenix walked out of Harley’s on Hudson, finding a few stragglers from the previous fight reaching for their phones. McGee waved a hand, his anger rising, causing a localized malfunction of the data streams as he took to the air.
Donatello Bellacino took a few minutes to calm down, before grabbing his phone, seeing the signal crash and slowly reset after a few moments. He tapped a contact and hissed into the microphone.
“We have a fucking problem; either O’Halloran just sent me a message, or we have a leak.”
He stood and turned toward the wall, nodding a few times.
“Then how the fuck did some guy waltz in here asking about Emma?!”
It felt like hours before Phoenix walked back into McGee Investigations. Suzette was there waiting for him. His eyes were glazed over, slightly sunk in.
“How did it go? You get my food?” she asked.
He handed over the bag and fumbled with his jacket, letting it fall to the floor. Suzette chuckled and picked it up, tossing it over a chair.
“You were right, Suzette. I made a mistake.”
Phoenix passed by her, looking upstairs and rubbing his eyes with his right hand, the left reaching for the rail.
“What happened, Phoenix?” She paused as he turned to look at her, tears welling up in his worried face.
She took a step away from him, a perplexed and angry look crossing her face.
“Phoenix, what have you done?”
CHAPTER 14
Two bodies were found on Tuesday. Both individuals were human traffickers, working for the O’Hallorans. Rouge Mal’s desert placement attracted vultures; the police arrived to find the remains carried off as in a Tibetan Sky Burial. O’Halloran found it hard to deny involvement; the bodies lay on the roof of one of his businesses.
Phoenix knew it was the answer Donatello had promised him. He felt responsible, hard as it was to empathize. He sat in the waiting area of McGee Investigations with Suzette, who tapped away at the keyboard on her desk. Though business hadn’t changed, Suzette could see how the events at Harley’s weighed on Phoenix. She stretched, rolling her shoulders a bit, the prior night’s workout with Jack having left her sore.
“Let this go. People are getting hurt now. I mean for fuck’s sake,” she pointed at the news.
“Bellacino did this because I asked about the Bentons. If his thugs hadn’t fucked up, I’d have been dead too.”
“All the more reason to let this drop,” she said, the stern tone in her voice rising as she brought him a cup of decaf.
“Listen, people are getting killed because of what I did! Dammit! I shouldn’t have gotten so damn eager with pissing off the cops when I caught them…” He looked at her, crestfallen. Soon, his gaze travelled up the staircase. “You were right Suzette. I should have at least asked for help.”
“Oh, now you’ll visit the Cloister? Figures.”
“You wanted me to!”
“I wanted you to get backup before shit got real!” she shouted, pointing to the newscast. “You always do this, McGee. You get in over your head and leave when it gets uncomfortable. You could have just left Mrs. Benton to her buddies, but you had to put yourself in there. You had to snoop around instead of cutting your losses. Now, a Mafioso is pissed at you, taking it out on a rival family. This’ll have fallout, and innocent people will get hurt. Is getting paid for a simple job worth a damn turf war?!”
Phoenix was taken aback, his expression incredulous. “You think this is about getting paid for the Benton case?!”
“Isn’t it?” she spat, crossing her arms over her chest.
“No! Maybe that’s how this started, but I’m not about to let anyone go missing on my watch, not when they came to me for help and I…I used them. That fucking video.” The detective stormed past her, heading up to his room, slamming it shut.
“Should I tell walkins you’re taking a sabbatical?!”
“What walkins? I don’t care what you tell them, Suzette! I have to think.”
Phoenix took a moment to sit on his bed, hugging the plush raccoon on his pillow as he let his mind wander.
Time to see what the Cloister wanted; they won this round.
He raised a hand, letting his focus narrow on it, as his senses expanded. He felt the pull of gravity on himself. Then his senses expanded further, feeling the spin of the Earth, standing so tiny on that whizzing ball of rock. He pushed his boundaries outward and inward, focusing on how he affected the atoms around him.
“The planets turn and the atoms spin and it is all the same,” he muttered to himself, a mantra he learned from his previous mentor, Jeremiah. “All the same, the turning gears of a great, immaculate machine…”
He felt the energy arc through him, focusing on the wall, feeling the space between atoms, the vast emptiness inside of them swell and spread, pulling the boundaries of reality. He gazed into the vast opening infinite, with a liquefactious pathway of flowing solid light.
Everything snapped back like a rubber band when Suzette knocked on the door, the energy pulse knocking him back onto his bed, where he toppled over like a rag doll, landing on his shoulders.
“Phoenix, I need you to come out here.”
“I thought we agreed…” he groaned, pulling himself up and rubbing his sore jaw.
“It’s the police.”
Five minutes later, Phoenix stared down Officer Dorian Franklin, the other members of The Pack sipping coffee provided by Suzette. She was at her desk talking with Jack, visibly shocked to find her working at McGee Investigations.
“Mr. McGee, all things aside, we’d like for you to come with us,” Dorian rumbled, turning to the other members of The Pack. “These are Officers MacKenzie and Hargrove. We’ll be escorting you.” He turned to look back at Jack. “Officer Hoffman will stay behind.”
“Thanks, but I’ll stay here. If I remember correctly, last time we were in a room together, it didn’t end well for me, Officer. Forgive me if I don’t feel like cooperating without a warrant. Am I under arrest?”
“No, Mr. McGee,” Dorian growled, not liking the scents coming from Phoenix. There was fear, but more than that; frustration, rage under the surface. It was the scent of a fox cornered; push it the wrong way and for too long and it could be more dangerous than expected.
“Then why should I consider going with you?”
“Because…” Dorian growled, “right now I’ve been hearing your name in some interesting circles. The longer your name pops up, the less likely it ends well for you. Rumor has it you did something to trigger this and I think you can stop it.” Dorian left the room, returning with a single headline from Phoenix’s collection on the wall.
“Private Investigator Foils Mob Takeover!” faced Phoenix.
“Some people are holding grudges and looking for an excuse to take advantage of a bad situation.”
The damn Basseri case, when he made his first imprint on the Underworld. The case where he met Suzette and their friendship started. Dominic “The Bastard” Basseri made a play to sweep out the old families, and build a digital Mafia anonymously. Dozens died by his hand, with no evidence.
It wasn’t his first case solved, but it had been a major stepping stone for his reputation as an investigator. If Basseri sensed a weakness to exploit, Phoenix knew he’d jump at it. He’d managed to avoid a long prison sentence because he was good at erasing his tracks. He was still out there, waiting like a viper in the sand.
“Basseri is starting his game again? Fucking opportunistic ass.”
“Will you come with us?” Dorian growled, looking at his Packmates and back to Phoenix.
“Yeah, I’ll come with you. Answer me this; last time I dealt with anything involving Basseri, he had gotten his fingers into the police. How do I know you aren’t working for him?”
“You don’t.”
Phoenix walked to his whiteboard; all those clues, all those empty bits. This trip could fill some of those blanks. If anything, pushing Basseri and his digital Mafia back was worth it. Every few months, Phoenix checked in on the black market, to make sure Basseri knew he hadn’t been forgotten.
“I don’t have much of a choice if I want this to stop, do I?”
Dorian simply shook his head. Phoenix made a small cough to get his attention.
“Yes?” Dorian asked.
“I just need to grab a few things from upstairs.”
“Take your time, but not too long.” He remembered the layout of the building from outside. “No flying off either. Hurry up; we’re on a schedule.”
Phoenix grabbed his jacket and necklace. This was going to occupy a good chunk of his day, so he grabbed the closest book. He checked his hair once more, straightening out his lapels and pocketed the novel.
Jack spoke first as the investigator returned. “Whatcha reading?” he muttered. Phoenix noticed he and Suzette were facing away from each other. Lover’s quarrel, he mused.
“Seymour of the World. ’Bout halfway through.”
Jack’s face lit up. “Oh! Have you gotten to the scene with the conversation with the neighbor?”
Phoenix soon matched his excited expression. “I know, right?! Then the damn pterodactyl!”
They shared a smile and burst out in unison, “Still in his pajamas!”
The gave a knowing nod that only fandom geeks and sociopaths could share with each other as Dorian and Suzette performed a synchronized eye-rolling.
McGee and The Pack sans Jack piled into a large black van. Phoenix half-expected to see Basseri waiting inside with a gun. Instead, two other members of The Pack, Lee and Cortez, were waiting in plain clothes. Dorian took the wheel and drove toward Eastside.
“Let’s cut to the chase,” he said after a few minutes. “Let’s say some members of the police force take orders from individuals outside RMPD. They would like to see the events unfolding on the streets come to a peaceful end before they get too violent.”
“Why can’t they work out their differences like adults?” murmured Phoenix.
MacKenzie piped up, his nervous voice eager to be heard, “Normally, they would. It’s become a standard practice for the heads of the underworld to use an outside arbiter to negotiate things like this. An expert who knows all the details of all the families, but has no ties to them.”
MacKenzie passed Phoenix a folder. Phoenix found a photo of a slightly overweight Asian man inside.
“That’s Joel Tanaka, a local expert on Mafia relations and history.” Dorian grinned. “Your secretary used his website for getting the data on Bellacino, between what I saw on your wall and her browser history. Tanaka is known in these circles as ‘Mr. Quick’, mostly because of how fast he can reach a middle ground.”
“Why am I in this van and not him?” he grunted. He rubbed his temples when the realization hit. “The Pack handles Missing Persons.”
“Bingo.”
McGee turned to Dorian. “I need to know what’s going on. What do you need me to do?”
Dorian filled the van with laughter, turning onto an off-ramp onto the highway and heading into the northern desert area of the city, at the top of the cliff faces.
“Officially, you’re helping us find out exactly who is behind the disappearance of Mr. Quick. You’ll report to us what’s going on in the various syndicates.”
Phoenix knew what the answer was going to be before he even asked the question. “And unofficially?”
“Unofficially, you’re the new Mr. Quick until further notice. You wanted to get involved, set things right? Now you get your chance.”
“You work for him. He made us look like fools.”
Jack Hoffman walked in circles. Suzette crossed her arms and leaned back on the filing cabinets. Angry boyfriend was her favorite show.
“Is it a werewolf thing, pacing back and forth like that?” she asked in a raspy, uninterested voice. She stepped forward and grabbed him by the arm. “Yes, I work for him. Yes, I saw what your Pack did. On top of that, I’m the one who suggested Phoenix head off there when he did. Now, Phoenix tells me you weren’t privy to it and you stayed outside the whole time. I tried to tell you before and you didn’t…”
“Seriously, why do you even have coffee if all you drink is decaf?”
“Blame Phoenix. I’d bring in my own, but that would involve spending my money. His office, he buys the coffee.”
“Fair enough.”
“You and Phoenix have more in common than I think you want to admit. Seriously, you’re reading that Se
ymour of the World trash?”
Jack exhaled through his nose as his lips curled into a weak smile.
“What are you reading?” he asked, snatching the book and holding it out of Suzette’s reach.
“No. No. Suz. I get to see…” he chuckled and looked over the cover. “The Art of Madness…”
“Put that down! It’s not your kinda book…”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” Jack said with a smile in his voice, opening up the book and reading a few passages. His eyes glittered a bit and he closed it, looking back to Suzette. “Oh really?”
“Shut up…” she said, turning a slight shade of pink, balling her right hand into a fist.
He turned it around and looked at the cover sleeve. “A study on tribalism, mental disease, and the effects of altered states on the collective whole…” He read more passages, chuckling. “Really…?”
“Okay, I admit it, I like it.”
He reached into his pocket, pulling out a small jewelry box. Her eyes twinkled as she popped open the lid, pulling out the long silver chain.
“You and the silver. Why is it always silver?”
“Because you know it’ll hurt me to give it back.” Jack embraced her passionately embrace. He winced slightly and looked down, finding a slight red welt on his arm where the necklace had pressed on him.
“Oh, Jack…I’m sorry!”
“Don’t be. I should have waited for you to put it away.”
She settled into his arms and reached around behind him, smile turning into her usual look of aloof frustration. “Why didn’t you go with them?”
“What they’re doing might go bad. I’m the safety net. I get a text with a code word, I report immediately to the precinct. Right now, The Pack doesn’t look good. Another major fuck-up and we’ll be up to our neck in Internal Affairs.”
“Can you tell me what they’re planning to do with my boss?”
“Sorry, I’m not at liberty to share.”
“Plausible deniability?”