Fear City

by F. Paul Wilson

  How weird. A maternal madam.

  “So someone grabbed her between calling you Wednesday night and noon on Thursday.”

  “Noon? How do you—?”

  “We were scheduled for lunch and she never showed, never called. That wasn’t like her.”

  “I know. I was worried sick about her when she didn’t answer her phone yesterday. I was trying to confirm a date for her that night. The client called later to say she never showed.”

  He glanced at the top name on the list. “That would be this Edward Burkes.”

  “Another regular.” She sobbed. “Poor Cristin. I can’t imagine anyone doing that to her.”

  “And no Arabs?”

  “That’s the second time you’ve asked that. Why? Do you know something?”

  “I wish I did.”

  She rose and slipped past him. “I need that wine.”

  Jack knew exactly how she felt.

  She ignored the broken glass and spilled wine and removed two more glasses from a cabinet.

  “You want some?”

  “Got any beer?”

  “Afraid not.”

  “Then wine is fine.”

  Not really. He wasn’t a wine fan but any port in a storm. And this was one major shit storm.

  But how weird was this scene? A little while ago he’d been shouting and pointing a gun in her face. Now she was pouring him wine. Surreal.

  “How did Cristin get involved with you?” he said.

  “Referral. A lot of my girls do modeling too, and they often meet FIT students. She and Cristin wound up in a threesome and my girl was impressed by her enthusiasm. She suggested Cristin give us a call. She came in for an interview, said she’d try it, and was an instant success.”

  She handed Jack a glass. He took a sip. Kind of puckering but it didn’t totally suck.

  “What qualifies as ‘success’ in your, um, industry?”

  “Callbacks. One date with Danaë—as she’d decided to call herself—and they all wanted another. Well, almost all.”

  That surprised Jack.

  “Who wouldn’t?”

  She shrugged. “Cristin was uninhibited but not kinky. No B-and-D, no S-and-M, no rough stuff, no anal, no bareback. If you were into that, then Danaë was not your gal.”

  Jack found himself nodding. Even with him, Cristin had always insisted on a condom.

  She was staring at him. “How did you become involved with her?”

  “We bumped into each other a couple of years ago. She’d been my girlfriend’s best friend back in high school. We had dinner, then went back to her place. After a tequila or two she said, ‘Now let’s fuck.’”

  Rebecca laughed. “That sounds like her.” She sipped. “I take it you broke up?”

  Jack nodded. “A few months back.”

  “Why?”

  “She was afraid I was getting too attached.”

  “Were you?”

  “Probably. Hard not to.”

  Rebecca’s face scrinched up and tears began to slide down her cheeks.

  “I know,” she said through a sob.

  And then it all became clear.

  “You and Cristin?”

  Another sob and a nod. “For a very short time.”

  Jack sipped in silence, at a loss for words.

  When she pulled herself together with a deep shudder, Jack said, “I hate to ask you this, but could Cristin have known something she shouldn’t have known?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “According to the medical examiner, she wasn’t tortured just for fun—it was an interrogation.”

  “Oh, God. I don’t know. She never mentioned anything to me. What could she know?”

  “Maybe someone said something he shouldn’t have during sex. I don’t see her as the blackmailing type but—”

  “No! Never!”

  “Okay, then. But think on it. What could she have known that someone would torture her for?” Jack couldn’t get the DAMATO image out of his mind. “If you come up with something—anything—write it down. I’ll call you every day to check.”

  He gulped his wine.

  “Gotta go.” He folded the list and shoved it into his back pocket. “I’ll leave by the front. You should lock your garage window.”

  She frowned. “Really? I don’t recall ever unlocking it.”

  “That’s how I got in.”

  “Are you going to tell the police who the Dahlia is?”

  “Already have.”

  Her eyes widened. “When?”

  “Around noon. I don’t think it’s hit the news yet.”

  “The police will be tracing her every move. I’ve got some housecleaning to do.”

  “Your computer?”

  “Paper records too. It’s a cold night. Good time for a fire.”

  He left her, exited through the front door, and cut across the lawn. He’d just reached the hedgerow where Ralph waited when two dark forms darted from the shadows and grabbed him by the arms.

  “Hey!”

  After the initial shock wore off, he struggled and kicked at the two silent men but could not free his arms.

  “Bugger! He’s just a kid,” one of them said with a British accent.

  “Well, we’re taking him anyway.”

  They were strong as hell and, despite his struggles, easily dragged him to the black van parked across the street. The side door opened and he was pushed inside and pinned to the floor while his wallet and his Glock were removed from his pockets. After his wrists and ankles were bound with plastic zip ties, he was hauled to a sitting position. A shadowy figure swiveled in a chair to face him.

  “Who the bloody hell are you?”

  He had a deep voice that sounded a little like Sean Connery. Only more so.

  11

  Exhausted, Kadir stumbled into his apartment with Yousef close behind. Yousef fell onto the couch where he slept and Kadir dropped into a chair. His skin burned where it had been exposed to the fumes of the nitric acid. His eyes too, despite the goggles he’d worn all day. His clothes were spotted with holes from where the acid had splashed and eaten through, occasionally burning his skin. Tomorrow would be more of the same. But all he wanted right now was a shower and—

  The phone rang. Kadir looked at Yousef, hoping he’d get up and answer it. But Yousef didn’t budge. He knew it wasn’t for him. The hour was too late for his jihadist contacts in Hamburg or the Middle East to be calling.

  Who would be calling me? Kadir thought as he pushed himself from the chair and stumbled across the small front room.

  “Hello?” he said in English.

  “Kadir?”

  “Yes. Who—?”

  “At last I find you,” the voice said in Arabic. “This is your friend from Qatar and I have been calling all day.”

  The man from Qatar. Why was he calling?

  “I have been busy.”

  “Yes, and you have no answering machine, so I’ve been calling and calling.”

  “Why?”

  “A matter of mutual concern. I have information that I think you and your imam will find extremely interesting.”

  “I am listening.”

  “Not on the phone. It is known only to a select few and cannot spread further.”

  Did he suspect that the apartment’s phone was tapped? Possible. The FBI was everywhere.

  “I am very busy—”

  “You will want to make time for this. I have startling information and an offer of assistance. Shall we meet, say, outside your mosque tomorrow morning? And be sure to bring your friend Yousef. He will want to hear this too.”

  “Yes, but early. As I said—”

  “You are very busy. I appreciate that. But you will be glad you made time for this. Eight o’clock then?”

  “Yes. Eight.”

  Kadir hung up, wondering what could be so interesting.

  … startling information and an offer of assistance …

  He had to admit he was intrigued. />
  12

  “What do I call you, laddie?” the man said as the van lurched into motion.

  A tensor lamp attached to the wall clicked on and beamed light over his shoulder. He was on the heavy side, with short brown hair and a trimmed beard; most of his face remained in shadow. Jack’s wallet lay open in his hands.

  “Jeff Cusic? That’s you?”

  Only on paper.

  Jack’s first thought was that he’d fallen into the hands of Cristin’s torturers, but he was too confused to be afraid. Besides, he didn’t sense any menace in these three. The two big guys up front had been very casual about grabbing him. They radiated professionalism—soldiers or mercenaries of some kind, he guessed. And the guy in the chair, the boss man, seemed relaxed, used to being in control. What the hell had he stumbled into?

  Jack said, “How about telling me what this is all about.”

  The boss held up Jack’s pistol. “Look, it’s a wee Glock. What’d you do, leave it out in the rain?” He checked the breech, then dropped it on the carpeted floor. “That’s not a pistol.” He reached into his coat and removed a big 1911 .45. “This is a pistol.”

  Jack couldn’t resist. “Okay, so you’ve seen Crocodile Dundee. Good for you.”

  One of the guys up front snickered.

  The boss said, “You’re in no position to be haverin’. You just committed an armed home invasion.”

  True enough, but Jack doubted Rebecca Olesen would be pressing charges. And since the best defense was a good offense …

  “So you say. But you’ve just kidnapped me. One’s a local crime, the other’s federal.” Counterjab done, now the haymaker. “And how’d you manage to get into the morgue this morning?”

  He saw the man stiffen, then laugh. “That’s the way we’re gonna play it, eh?” He stared at Jack. “So you were Danaë’s bidie-in.”

  “What? First off, there was no Danaë. Danaë was a fiction. There’s only Cristin.”

  “I knew her only as Danaë,” he said in a somber tone. “I’m honored to know her real name.”

  “One of her clients.”

  A nod. “I was very fond of her.”

  “So was I. And what the hell’s a bidie-in?”

  “Boyfriend, bedmate.” He shook his head. “You’re just a wean. I thought she’d go for someone more experienced.”

  “‘Wayne’ being…?”

  “A child. How old are you, lad?”

  “Twenty-four.”

  “Rob, Gerald,” he said to the guys up front. “He look twenty-four to you?”

  “Not a chance,” said the driver.

  “Twenty, tops,” said the shotgun.

  The story of his life since he’d come to the city.

  The boss said, “You’re a gutsy one, I’ll give you that. But you have something I want.”

  “What would that be?”

  “The list the lady gave you.”

  The list? How could he know about—? And then it all came into focus.

  “I don’t know anything about a list, but let me guess how you spent your day. You saw the comment in the paper about the skin missing from the Ditmars Dahlia’s neck and had the same horrible suspicion I did.”

  He nodded. “Especially when she didn’t show up Thursday night. Not like her slaggin’ me off. When I called Celebrations, they had no explanation. They offered to send a replacement but…” He shrugged. “No one could replace Danaë—sorry, Cristin.”

  He’d said sorry. That was something. And he’d also said he was scheduled for Thursday night. Pleased to meet you, Edward Burkes.

  Jack remembered what Ron had said about the guy with an accent being from some embassy.

  “So you used your embassy connections—”

  “Wait-wait-wait! Did you say ‘embassy connections’?”

  Jack’s mind bounced over the possibilities. The guy was a Scot, but Scotland didn’t have an embassy because it was part of …

  “Yeah. The UK.”

  Wash from a passing streetlight showed a craggy face, smiling as he nodded. “Close, close. What else?”

  “You turned her over and saw that the place where her tattoo had been was missing. You knew it was Cristin. You used more embassy–NYPD connections to learn that Rebecca Olesen ran Celebrations and lived up here. So while she was in the city today, you or one of your guys came up here and bugged her house.”

  The guy in the passenger seat clapped three times. “Young Sherlock Holmes.”

  “You broke in through the garage window,” Jack added, remembering Rebecca’s remark about never opening it. He was on a roll and wanted to maintain momentum. “By the way, I appreciate your leaving it unlocked on your way out. Made things a lot easier for me.”

  “It wasn’t neglect,” Burkes said. “Easy enough to pop open those things with the right tool, damnably hard to relock them from the outside.”

  “So then the three of you sat out here and waited to see if she’d give anything away.”

  “Well, there you’re wrong. Rob and Gerald were in the city. When she showed up here I set them to work bugging the Celebrations office.”

  “I guess I wasn’t in your plans.”

  “Not at all. I thought you were some perv peeper or someone going to rob the place. I was sure you were going to bollocks up everything. When I heard your gun go off, I was afraid you’d shot her. Then I heard her talking again.”

  “Put a hole in her kitchen floor.”

  “That was when I told these two to get up here. I thought we might have to go in and grab you. Fortunately you came to us.”

  “Yeah, fortunately.”

  Jack shook his head in disgust. He hadn’t dreamed anyone would be laying for him near Ralph.

  “I keep thinking about her missing tattoo,” Burkes muttered. “Probably working its way through the gut of some East River fish.”

  “So you remembered it?”

  “Can’t forget it. Used to study it as we did it doggie style. She liked doggie style.”

  Jack wanted to block his ears but his hands were tied.

  “Hey, back off of that, huh?”

  “Sorry, lad.” Burkes sounded like he meant it. “Forgot your relationship was different.” He sighed. “I’m never sure where I’m gonna be year to year, so I tend to hire my women. After a couple of times with Cristin it wasn’t like a transaction. It was like a friend.” His tone turned wistful. “Y’heard what I said—about how she liked it? That was how it was. You start out hiring a woman to pleasure you, but with Cristin you end up looking for the best ways to pleasure her.”

  “Can we change the subject?”

  Instead of replying, Burkes picked up Jack’s Glock, popped the magazine, then ejected the chambered round, catching it in midair. As the round and the mag disappeared into a pocket, Jack leaned forward.

  “So where do we go from here, Mister Burkes?”

  Burkes damn near dropped the Glock and the driver said, “Bugger! He is Sherlock!”

  “I doubt it,” Burkes said. “Gerald, cut him loose.”

  The guy in the passenger seat turned with a long dagger in his hand. Jack twisted to present his wrists. A second later they were free. His ankles followed. As he assumed a cross-legged position, Burkes thrust out his hand, palm up.

  “The list.”

  “What list?”

  He snapped his fingers. “Come now. No talking out yer fanny flaps. You’ll get it back, but if we’re going to find this guy—”

  “‘We’?”

  “Yes. As you’ve guessed, I’m not a U.S. citizen. I occupy a sensitive position.”

  “With the UK Embassy.”

  “Afraid not. That’s in D.C. Nor with the consulate on Third Avenue.”

  “Then what—?”

  “Since you already know my name, you can easily find out the rest: I’m Chief of Security at the UK Mission to the UN. Unfortunately diplomatic immunity does not come with the job, so I must be circumspect in my extracurricular activities. Bu
t as a result of my position, I have access to intelligence and data far beyond your reach.”

  Pretty damn impressive, if true.

  “You, on the other hand,” Burkes went on, “are a citizen and seem to have street smarts despite your lack of compunction about blindly barging into a situation. Our methods and resources complement each other rather nicely, I think. We share a common goal. If we work together we can achieve that goal.”

  Jack was sure of the answer but had to ask. “Which is?”

  They’d stopped at a traffic light. The red wash lit Burkes’s features, giving his hard expression and harder eyes a demonic glow.

  “Find the cunt who did this and make him pay.”

  All Jack knew about this guy was what he’d said about himself, and that could all be fiction. But if he was who he said he was, his “resources” could come in handy.

  Jack thrust out his hand. “You’re on.”

  As they shook, Burkes said, “Now let’s see that list. The name of our quarry is very likely on it. Or, if not, it has the name of the one who ordered it.”

  Jack pulled it from his back pocket and handed it over. Burkes unfolded the sheets and held them under the tensor. He smirked.

  “Look who’s first on the list.” The sarcasm thickened. “Brilliant piece of ratiocination, Sherlock.”

  “Hey, you guys brought him up, not me.” Jack reached over and tapped the pages. “D’Amato’s not on the list. Rebecca said—”

  “—he wasn’t a client. I was listening.”

  “Oh, right. Slipped my mind.” He found the idea of someone eavesdropping on him like that unsettling. “You believe her?”

  “I do. She seemed genuinely upset. As for the good senator, he was down in D.C. at a fund-raiser Wednesday night, after which he was dropped off at his home down there. He spent Thursday in his office or out for lunch and dinner. Da—Cristin’s body was found late Friday night. He never got within two hundred miles of her.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “I have contacts in the NYPD—lots of them—and they checked it out as soon as they heard about those scratches.”

  Jack leaned back. “Okay, let’s assume that’s all true: Then why would she scratch that name into her skin?”

  “You do know it was a torture-interrogation, right?”