Newbury let it sink in. As if there could have been any doubt, Kane had just told him who was the mastermind behind Operation Flashfire and, if it succeeded, in the driver’s seat for leadership of the Sons of Man. Dealing with Crawford would have been one thing, but as an adversary, Kane was on another level entirely. One I will not be able to control, he thought.
“I can see you’re disappointed in my resurrection,” Kane continued. “Now that hurts. After all, I was once your protégé when that disloyal son of yours got himself killed in that war we started. How ironic, the Sons of Man go through all that trouble to foment revolution in the sixties and one of its favorite sons dies as a result. But that’s all ancient history. A more immediate concern is that you seem to have replaced me so quickly as to be unseemly with your nephew, V.T. Of course, I have no idea why in the hell you think he can be trusted.”
“I had hoped that blood would be thick enough,” Newbury replied. “And if not, I have my own uses for him.”
Kane frowned. “I had best not find that your uses ran counter to my plans,” he warned. “Even your old cronies on the council won’t save you if you interfered with an approved plan. And even if you didn’t, but your nephew turns out to have been a spy, you’ll be held personally responsible.”
“I’ll take care of my nephew in whatever way is appropriate,” Newbury replied. “I killed my own brother, didn’t I?”
The decision on V.T. came with a small pang of regret. He’d come to recognize that an old man’s desire to have the Newbury name continue on in a leadership role with the Sons of Man had clouded his judgment. V.T. was a liability and would have to be removed. Still, he’d enjoyed their dinners and conversations.
Just that afternoon, he’d walked in on V.T. as his nephew was playing with a remote-controlled truck in his office. “What’s this? Goofing off on company time?” he’d pretended to scold.
V.T. looked up, embarrassed. “Oh hi, Uncle Dean. Yeah, sorry, I should be slaving away over torts, but I just bought this little beauty off a street vendor in front of the building. I always loved these when I was a kid and couldn’t resist.”
“Quillian did, too,” Newbury said, surprised that the memory caused a pain in his chest. “Anyway, don’t worry about it. You’ve been working a lot of late hours. As a partner, you really don’t have to do that all the time, you know.”
“Now how would it look if I let my dear old uncle put in more time than I did,” V.T. said with a smile. “An ingrate, that’s what, after all you’ve done for me. When I think that I could still be working at the DAO even worse hours for a mere pittance of the pay and little or no thanks, I thank my lucky stars you stepped up to the plate.”
“I’m glad I could talk some sense into you, my boy,” Dean had replied with a chuckle. “I look forward to many more years together.” He’d known that was a lie—he’d already decided that V.T. would never be completely trustworthy—but it sounded good at the time.
“I’d be happy to take care of him for you,” Kane said. “I have some old scores to settle with your nephew. You do know he led Karp’s white-collar crimes bureau that started all my troubles.”
“I said I’d take care of him myself.” Dean scowled. “It’s a family matter, and the family will deal with it.”
Kane grinned, a ghastly look on his ruined face. “Got to love that old-fashioned concept of family justice; I know a little bit about that myself. But just make sure you do deal with it. One of the first orders of business when I assume my rightful place at the head of the council will be a general housecleaning. I’m afraid we’ve gotten soft, even a little dotty, and we’ll need to be a lean, mean fighting machine over the next few years. The problem with hereditary seats on the council is eventually you get a lot of deadwood, like Crawford; it’s time for some fresh, young blood.”
“Careful, Kane, you’re not sitting in my chair just yet,” Newbury said. “And in the meantime, what are you going to do about Karp? The cowboy was spotted in New Mexico this past weekend, and then took a plane back to New York. So we have to assume that they know Lucy Karp never arrived. That’s going to turn up the heat.”
“I’m not worried about District Attorney Butch Karp,” Kane said. He held up a cell phone. “We’re in constant communication. It’s as if I can reach out and touch him.”
“What about David Grale?” Newbury asked, and for a moment thought he saw fear in Kane’s eyes. But the man quickly recovered.
“Grale is a madman,” Kane replied. “He’s in no position to do anything about my plan. And if he tried, well, I still have Lucy Karp in my possession. He won’t do anything to endanger her life. Unfortunately, the spy I had embedded with these so-called Mole People is dead. I had hoped to use him to hunt them all down in their filthy sewers after things had settled down again. But it doesn’t matter, I’ll find another way to settle my debt with Grale.”
Ten minutes later, after a quick review of the plans, Kane said he was leaving.
“And al-Sistani?” Newbury said. “Are you going to let him go?”
“What, and have someone out there who can tell the world what we’re really up to? Hell no,” Kane said. “As soon as our package is delivered, he’s toast…so to speak. The idiot almost got us followed by that madman Grale; he actually had a GPS tracking device in his shoe. It was from a dog collar, if you can believe that shit. My man Abu found it with a hand sensor before we got home, but that could have been bad. I’m going to enjoy watching the little towelhead fry for that alone.”
Newbury squinted at Kane as the younger man walked toward the door. “I don’t understand why you wanted to meet in the first place,” he said. “This was an unnecessary risk.”
“You don’t understand?” Kane replied, as though surprised. Then he laughed. “Why, to gloat, old man, and tell you to your face that your time is almost over. Soon you’ll be put out to pasture…and that’s if you’re lucky. Myr shegin dy ve, bee eh, right? What must be, will be.”
Marlene looked up from the old couch in the back of the Housing Works Bookstore. It was ten o’clock, she’d been there for an hour, and there was still no sign of the Walking Booger.
She was trying to decide whether to get another cup of coffee—guaranteeing that she wouldn’t get any sleep tonight, if worrying about Lucy wasn’t already going to do it—when she heard the little bell above the front door ring. An enormous shaggy head poked in to survey the place, which was followed by the body of the Walking Booger.
There was no mistaking him. He was a giant of a man, even taller than Karp and Treacher, and probably as heavy as both men combined, though there was some question as to how much of that bulk was man and how much was the layers of filthy clothing he piled on. He appeared to be covered in thick, dirty hair from head to foot—if the tufts that jutted from his sleeves and covered his hands, neck, and face were any indication—and resembled a bear. A dirty, smelly bear.
Apparently homeless and preferring it that way, the Walking Booger got his nickname due to the fact that he usually had a grimy finger shoved up his nose. Such was the case when he spotted her. “’arlene! ’ood to ’ee you,” he shouted in his usual muffled Booger-speak, and smiled. He shuffled forward but instead of stopping where she sat, he moved right on past to the counter, where he told the barista, “A ’reat and a ’ot chocolate, pleas’. The ’ady will pay.”
The barista looked over at Marlene, who nodded. “Whatever he wants. Nice to see you, too, Booger.”
When he had his brownie and hot chocolate, Booger shambled over to where Marlene was sitting and plopped down across from her on a chair that groaned under his weight. His unmistakable odor washed over her and for a moment she wondered if she might pass out.
She forgot about how he smelled, however, as she watched him break off a piece of brownie between two crusty fingers, one of which had been involved in the recent nasal excavation, and pop it into the hole that appeared in his beard below his nose. As he chewed, he looked at her and smi
led, or at least she thought he was smiling—it was difficult to tell through all the hair.
“So I had a message from Lucy that you wanted a treat?” Marlene said.
Booger nodded enthusiastically as he pinched off another piece of brownie and devoured it. “Yes, ’reats are ’ood…. ’ucy a great ’irl.”
“Yes, she is,” Marlene agreed. “But I can’t find her. Are you going to help me?”
Nodding, the giant stuffed the rest of the brownie into his mouth, licked his fingers, and then slurped noisily at his hot chocolate until it was gone. He then stood up, wiped his hands on his filthy coat, and said, “Come ’ith me, ’arlene.”
Halfway to the door, he stopped and leaned over to look her in the eye. “’oh-one ’ollow us, ’kay?”
“No one will follow, I promise,” Marlene said, and followed him out into the night air.
Thirty minutes later, after dodging through a maze of alleys and dark streets, they arrived at the Bowery Mission in the East Village. Booger pointed to a side door in an alley and said, “’ock on the door. ’avid wants to ’ee ’ou.”
“Uh, thanks, Booger,” Marlene said, and did as she was told. The door opened and she found herself looking at the magnified blue eyes and pointed nose of Dirty Warren.
“Fu-fu-fucking ass tits…there you are,” the little news vendor said. “Booger sure took his sweet time getting you here. Oh boy, oh boy…!”
“Thanks, but am I supposed to be meeting David?” she replied.
“Yeah, down the end of the hall…scumbag douche…first door on the right.”
Marlene walked to the end of the hall and knocked on the door. She didn’t bother to wait for the reply before entering.
David Grale sat in a large chair across the room next to an ancient floor lamp that cast dim light and did little to reach the dark circles beneath his haunted eyes. He looked worse than ever, she thought, gaunt and emaciated. “Hello, Marlene,” he said. “Sorry about the walk, but I can’t be too careful. Everybody wants a piece of this poor boy.”
“Hello, David. Where’s my daughter?”
Grale looked at her for a moment with his glittering dark eyes. “I don’t know just yet, but I have reason to hope that all is not lost. However, I have to tell you some bad news…Kane’s alive and he has Lucy.”
Marlene groped for a chair and sat down, feeling suddenly nauseous and dizzy. “Kane has Lucy? How did it happen?”
Grale sighed and tried to explain. He said that he’d known in his heart that Kane wasn’t dead. “I could feel him, like a malignant tumor you can’t see but know is growing inside of you. But I wanted to believe that it was just my imagination, all those years of trying to catch and kill the demon that inhabits that body. But I was distracted by these other evil plots and evil men.”
One such plot involved the Sons of Man, and Amir al-Sistani was the key to finding out what they had planned and stopping them. “I decided to use him to draw them out, but I couldn’t just let him go and follow him. They’d know that something was up. I was trying to think of a way to accomplish this when Lucy asked to talk to me. We met the night her boyfriend left with Jaxon. I was waiting in the alley near the loft when she came around the corner with Gilgamesh.”
Lucy’s original goal was to ask him to release al-Sistani to Jaxon. “We think he may have information about a large-scale terrorist attack on U.S. soil,” she’d pleaded.
“Where is Jaxon?” he replied. He didn’t trust law enforcement agencies; they’d all been infiltrated by agents for the Sons of Man, and it had nearly cost him his life several times. “How do I know they won’t just let al-Sistani go? Maybe that’s part of their plan…make sure he lives to fight another day.”
“Jaxon’s different,” Lucy replied.
“Maybe,” he said. “I’d like to think so after working with him to stop the attack on the stock exchange. But what about his men? And just because he has al-Sistani doesn’t mean he’ll be allowed to interrogate or prosecute him. But why not ask me himself? Why send you…doesn’t he know I’m a dangerous lunatic…a ‘murderous vigilante,’ I believe the Times called me?”
“He doesn’t know I’m here,” she replied. “In fact, he ordered me not to try to contact you. You’re right, he does think you’re mentally unstable and, perhaps without even meaning to, hurt me.”
Grale’s face saddened as he finished relaying that last sentence, and Marlene saw how the comment had cut him. She also heard it in his voice when he said, “I told her that I could never hurt her. Nor, if I could help it, would anybody else ever harm her.” He sighed, part of which came out as a deep, rumbling cough from his thin chest. “But I’m afraid I may have failed at that.”
“What happened?” Marlene said.
“I told her about my idea of following al-Sistani to the source of the danger. She thought about it for a minute and then came up with her plan. She said she wanted me to feign increasing madness”—Grale laughed—“not a very far stretch, and that I was growing obsessed with her. I knew that I had a spy among my people who was reporting to his unknown master about al-Sistani. We’d followed him one night to a meeting with his contact, who we later abducted and…made him want to talk to us…he didn’t have the name of who he worked for, just some powerful person, who I now know is Kane but didn’t then.”
Grale had been hoping to use the spy to reach this mystery terrorist when Lucy came to him with her idea. She wanted to be “kidnapped” by the enemy and held hostage until exchanged for al-Sistani. “They’ll believe they have the upper hand,” she’d said. “And not suspect that al-Sistani is a Trojan horse.”
Grale leaned forward and looked earnestly into Marlene’s eyes. “I hope you’ll believe me when I say I told her no. I said it was too risky. But that feisty girl I once knew has turned into a tough-minded young woman, who told me that she was willing to risk her life if it meant saving hundreds or thousands of other lives. She gave me a choice. I could hand over al-Sistani to Jaxon, and she’d go happily home to New Mexico, or she was going to find a way to get herself kidnapped and then I’d have to make the exchange. At least this way, she said, I could protect her…. But she was wrong.”
With the spy’s help word got back to Kane that Grale was mad and infatuated with Lucy. Then it was arranged to have her kidnapped by Kane’s men with the help of “an old friend…Edward Treacher. If there is one bright spot in any of this, Edward received a rather handsome advance for his treason, which has been largely donated to this mission, though Edward did need a new coat and boots.”
“That doesn’t tell me what happened to my daughter,” Marlene replied.
Grale looked down at the floor. “The plan was that an exchange of prisoners would be arranged. That I’d get Lucy for my connubial bed…which would make you my mother-in-law.”
“David, please, get to the point?”
“Ah yes, sorry, my mind wanders sometimes these days,” he replied. “Anyway, I’d get Lucy, and Kane would get al-Sistani…with one of those microchip GPS locators that can be found in pet collars inserted into a shoe.”
“So what went wrong? Why isn’t my daughter home in New Mexico?”
Grale shook his head. “I don’t know. The exchange was going along as I thought it would. I knew they would try to ambush me and keep Lucy, so we had their people in our sights before we began the prisoner exchange. They were no problem, but then for some reason, Lucy insisted on going back to Kane.”
“Why?”
“Apparently she has some plan,” Grale replied. “She passed a message to my man and then demanded to go back to Kane.”
“What was this message?”
“Hold on, I’ll let you hear it from the man who heard it,” he said, and then shouted, “Edward! Would you come in now, please?”
The door opened and Edward Treacher stepped in, ducking slightly as he passed under the transom. “‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do….’ That’s Luke 23:34 and I think a little more
than appropriate at this moment. Hello, Marlene.”
Treacher recounted how he’d led Lucy by a rope and collar to the clearing where he met up with Paulito, the dwarf, and al-Sistani. “Paulito was the spy,” Grale said. “But his purpose had been served, and we could not allow him to shout a warning to Kane.”
“‘The truth shall set you free…’ the truth and a slug from a .45 derringer,” Treacher said. “That’s John 8:32 by the way. Lucy told me there wasn’t much time, but she had to go back and needed me to remember her messages.”
Treacher’s eyes looked around wildly, as if he was back at Cleopatra’s Needle. “I told her there was no way. I begged her to go with me to David. But she wouldn’t listen. She said she was going to run back if I didn’t take her and that would look suspicious. She said she had a plan—that ‘he is the only one who can stop himself’ and that she was the only one who knew how to make him.”
“I still don’t understand,” Marlene said.
“I don’t think anyone does yet,” Grale said. “But there’s more…Edward, tell her the messages.”
“Of course, one was that she believed that she was being held in Brooklyn, possibly Brooklyn Heights. She said, ‘Somewhere with a view. He said I’d have ringside seats.’ And she said that her dad should expect a call from Kane on her cell phone and to tell Jaxon because he’d know what to do. Then she made me take her back. I’m sorry, I tried to tell her.”
“I understand, Edward,” Marlene said. “It sounds like she had you between a rock and a hard place. In fact, that was a big risk for you to take her back to Kane. How did you know he wouldn’t just kill you?”
“Lots of good people are taking risks for good causes these days,” Treacher said. “If Lucy was willing to risk going back to that monster, then I could make it look like I was trying to make a buck by cheating David. Plus, I used the ol’ Br’er Rabbit reverse psychology gambit.”
“Br’er Rabbit?”
“Yes, you know, from the Uncle Remus folktales,” Treacher said. “It’s not very PC these days, but remember the story about the time when Br’er Fox and Br’er Bear caught Br’er Rabbit and were trying to decide what to do with him? They talked about roasting him, and hanging him, and drowning him, which he said was fine with him—‘hang me as high as you want’—as long as they didn’t throw him in the briar patch. ‘Anything but the briar patch.’ So of course the two dummies threw him in the briar patch only to find out that Br’er Rabbit had been born and bred there. And that’s how he escaped. So I pleaded with Kane not to send me back to David Grale. I cried that I was only trying to make a buck and that Grale would have my head. ‘Please don’t make me go down there.’ Which, of course, got me flung into the briar patch.”
Capture (Butch Karp Thrillers) Page 36