by Chris Holm
“And what, pray tell, is this pest’s name?”
“I wish to hell I knew,” said the man, “but if I did, I wouldn’t have had to call you.”
“Ah. I see. I trust, then, that you’ve no idea where I might find him, or even what he looks like.”
The man bristled. “Not specifically, no.”
“Then perhaps we should begin with what he’s done to so offend.”
The man gestured vaguely toward the oak vanity behind him. “Check the left-hand drawer.”
Engelmann did. Inside was a manila envelope with a string-and-button enclosure, fat with documents. Engelmann unwound the string and lifted the flap. Not documents, he discovered—or at least not mostly.
Mostly, they were pictures.
Some were glossy black-and-white eight-by-tens. Some were color copies of police reports, blown up so large the images had pixelated, and the typeset words around them were five times their normal size. On the back of each was a location and a date, scrawled in a tight, controlled script. The dates stretched back as far as three years. The most recent was just two days ago—the day Engelmann received the phone call summoning him here.
Each photo was of a murder scene.
No. Not just a murder scene. A hit. Cold. Calculating. Professional.
Engelmann thumbed through them, transfixed. Some of them, like San Francisco in October of 2010, or Wichita this January past, were precision long-range kills— needle-threading sniper shots from what had to be twelve hundred meters away. Some of them, like Green Bay or Montreal, were close and messy—the former a stabbing that took place past security in an airport, and the latter a garrote at the opera during a Place des Arts performance of Gounod’s Faust. Of the close kills, it was the former that impressed Engelmann the most. Smuggling a weapon past security, while not impossible, poses some degree of difficulty—but to then commit murder and vanish undetected is quite a feat indeed. Which clearly this man had done, for if his visage had been captured by security cameras, the Council would have doubtless obtained the footage. They had, after all, tracked Engelmann without difficulty.
“You believe this all to be the work of one man?” Engelmann asked.
“I do.”
“Magnificent,” he muttered.
“You sound surprised.”
“Most in my profession have a preferred method, something tried and true from which they never deviate. Whoever did these is proficient in a variety of techniques. Few in the world can claim such skill. Even fewer can make good on such claims.”
“You can,” said the man, steel creeping into his voice. Despite himself, Engelmann drew a worried breath, wondering for a moment if this had all been some elaborate setup to lure him here. But then, from beneath his towels, the man laughed. “Relax, Al—I didn’t ask you here so I could whack you. We’ve had an eye on you since this guy’s Reno job a few months back; we know you weren’t anywhere near Miami two nights ago when he last hit. He popped a guy from ground level across four blocks of busy city street, if you can believe it. Turned the poor bastard into a fucking smear.”
“These targets,” Engelmann asked. “They were La Cosa Nostra?”
“Some,” allowed the man in the chair. “Some were Salvadorans. Some Russian. One was Southie Irish. Truth is, there’s not an Outfit in the country ain’t been touched. Which is a good fucking thing as far as I’m concerned, ’cause if any of the families had been spared, everybody who got hit would be gunning hard for them, figuring it for some kind of power play. Shit, it’s just a matter of time before one family points the finger at another anyway, just ’cause they don’t like the look of ’em. This situation is a— whaddaya call it—a powder keg.”
“Hence the involvement of the Council.”
“Yeah,” the man said drolly. “Hence. Tensions among the families are running high. This don’t get resolved soon, there’s gonna be a war. Which is why we’re willing to offer you a million flat to find this guy and seal the deal. That, and whatever resources are at the Council’s disposal.”
One million dollars.
One million dollars, plus the combined resources of every crime family in America.
Engelmann could scarcely contain his excitement. But he managed. One does not attain a reputation such as his without mastering one’s emotions.
Engelmann smiled, showing teeth. “Euros,” he said.
“ ’Scuse me?”
“One million euros.”
The man in the chair was silent for a moment, and then he nodded his assent, his towels bobbing.
“Excellent,” said Engelmann. “Consider me in your employ. I’ll send you the number of my Cayman account, and you can wire the money at your convenience.”
“No need,” said the man. “We’ve got the number.”
Engelmann, unnerved, swallowed hard, and then changed the subject. “His victims,” Engelmann asked, “have they any commonality? Apart from their employers’ extra-legal status, that is.”
“Yeah. They’re all hitmen. And every one of ’em was on a job when they got whacked.”
For a moment, Engelmann thought he’d misheard, then realized he hadn’t. That one man had perpetrated such a variety of kills was impressive. That his victims were themselves all hired killers made the accomplishment all the greater.
“You are telling me you’ve a hitman killing hitmen, and now you’re hiring a hitman to hit him back?”
“I’m telling you I’ve got a problem, and you’ve got one million reasons to fix it.”
Engelmann smiled again, for he in fact had more than that. For the first time in a decade, he had a job that posed a significant challenge and a quarry worthy of pursuit. For the first time in a decade, he had reason to fear for his own safety—reason to question whether he was equal to the task. Of course, this man would not have the combined resources of every crime family in America at his beck and call—but then, it seemed his wits had served him well thus far in the face of such resources.
This man, thought Engelmann, was not to be trifled with.
This man, whoever he was, would be an honor to square off against.
This man, he would have killed for free.
5
Special Agent Charlotte Thompson flinched as her cell phone chimed. She knew before she glanced at it the text was from her sister; she’d texted fifteen times today already. Jess was Charlie’s baby sister—just three years out of college. A waitress who fancied herself an artist and insisted her meds quieted her muse.
Usually, when Jess was in a manic phase, it fell to Charlie to talk her off the ceiling. But today, she had neither the patience nor the time. She’d spent the past seven hours crammed into the back of a surveillance van with three other FBI agents and a tangled heap of audiovisual equipment. Seven hours of listening to the tinny patter of Albanian played through headphones, and the Bureau’s translator—a slight, olive-skinned man by the name of Bashkim—converting it into flat, dispassionate English beside her. Seven hours with no AC and no fan, the van amplifying the August heat until the cabin reeked of sweat and the agents’ clothes were plastered to their skin. Between the dehydration and the constant discordant input of two languages at once—not to mention her new partner Garfield’s inane chatter before she finally told him to shut up—Thompson’s head was pounding. The last thing she needed was a dose of Jess at her most tightly wound.
Thompson silenced her phone with a sigh and stuffed it into the glove box. Thirty seconds later, she heard it vibrate—rasping against the van’s registration like a rattlesnake’s warning.
“Lovers’ quarrel?” Garfield quipped, his eyes glinting with mischief. He’d been making pointed comments like that all day long. She wondered what he’d heard—how much he knew. But she didn’t want to get into it with him, especially in a van full of potential witnesses. Besides, they had a job to do. Bad guys to catch. That’s what her dad, now a captain with the Hartford PD, told her as a kid every time he left for work. It had never faile
d to make her smile back then—and much to her father’s consternation, it turned out to be the only thing she’d ever wanted to do when she grew up.
The surveillance van was parked on one of the narrow side streets off Allegheny Avenue, in the Port Richmond neighborhood of North Philly. It was a working-class neighborhood—Polish, mostly, though the Albanian population had been on the rise of late, as had that of the Latvians, Ukrainians, and Lithuanians—and, in contrast to the swanky, condo-studded neighborhoods that’d been popping up all over Philadelphia, the only concessions to luxury in sight were the ass-ends of several windowmounted air conditioners, dripping onto the concrete below.
The sign in the storefront window declared Little Louie’s closed, but there’d been two men inside all day. Armed men, if the outlines of their tracksuits were any indication. Mostly, they just sat and drank, the better part of six hours spent shooting the shit about soccer, vodka, and assorted sexual conquests both real and imagined.
It wasn’t until Petrela showed up that their conversation turned to the missing girls.
Luftar Petrela was perhaps the single unlikeliest proprietor of an Italian restaurant who’d ever lived. Ghost-pale and wire-thin, he looked as though he’d never felt the kiss of the Mediterranean sun on his cheeks or experienced the warm comfort of a bowl of spaghetti Bolognese. His hair and eyebrows were thick and dark, but in a manner that suggested Slavic, not Italian. And of course, there was the fact he’d never actually learned to cook—he’d been too busy hurting people at the behest of his uncle, Tomor Petrela, local capo of the Albanian Mafia.
None of which mattered much to the clientele of Little Louie’s, who to a one worked for Petrela, and mostly showed up so his list of people who needed hurting didn’t include them.
A burst of rapid-fire Albanian, followed by Bashkim’s uninflected translation.
Petrela: “Have they eaten?”
Purple Tracksuit: “They claimed they were not hungry.”
Petrela: “They must eat. They will not fetch a decent price if they’re malnourished.”
Lime-Green Tracksuit: “The blonde was acting up again. Gouged at Enver’s arm when he opened the door.”
Petrela: “We’ll raise her dose. Soon she’ll decide she likes the junk more than she likes fighting back. And there are some who’ll pay a premium for such feistiness.”
Bashkim looked to Thompson, as if to ask if this was enough. Thompson removed her headphones—her hands trembling slightly from anger and adrenaline. The moment was three months in the making. Three months spent canvassing homeless shelters, arresting pimps and street thugs, and chasing wire transfers—all to connect a dead runaway from Duluth to the men who used her until there was nothing left to use.
Thompson gave the order.
In moments, the sidewalk was alive with agents, armed for battle and wearing body armor head to toe: FBI SWAT. They moved into position with silent precision. The three men inside had no inkling and no chance.
When the battering ram connected with the door, Petrela and his men scattered. Purple Tracksuit broke left, diving behind the faux-mahogany bar as if three-quarterinch medium-density fiberboard was going to protect him from a fully automatic Heckler & Koch. If he hadn’t fired on the agents as they fanned out through the dining room, he wouldn’t have needed protecting. But he had, and was quickly silenced.
Lime-Green Tracksuit had better instincts, if not more smarts. He took off for the back door at a sprint. Why the idiot thought a team of highly trained federal agents would neglect to cover the alleyway behind their intended target, Thompson had no idea. Maybe she’d ask the guy someday, since he was apprehended without a shot.
Petrela, though, was another matter. He didn’t stick around to shoot it out. He didn’t flee. True to his reputation, when the SWAT unit made its move, he beelined for the girls, determined that if he was going down, he’d take as many of them with him as he could.
“Ma’am,” the call came over the radio, “Petrela’s retreated into the basement! The door’s reinforced steel; it’ll take a sec to cut through!”
Thompson swore. “He armed?”
“Affirmative!”
But by the time the answer came, Thompson didn’t need it. The distant pop-pop-pop from somewhere below street level was answer enough.
Thompson dashed from the van, the other agents close behind. She leapt onto the street, the stiffness in her limbs momentarily forgotten, and wheeled around, frantic to find some way to reach the girls while there were still some of them left. Her eyes lighted upon the sidewalk basement door.
The door comprised two dented, rust-streaked panels of checkered steel, set into the sidewalk a few feet from the front entrance—intended to allow direct basement access for deliveries. There were no handles or other outside access points, but thanks to frost heaves and foot traffic, the seam between the panels was far from flush.
“Hey!” Thompson shouted to one of the tactical agents nearby. “You carrying a Hallagan?”
The man removed the tool from his belt and tossed it to Thompson. Hooked at one end like a fireplace poker, with a flat, forked end like that of a pry-bar, a Hallagan is a favored tool of SWAT and firefighters both. Thompson jammed the hooked end into the space between the panel doors and yanked. Rusted hinges shrieked, and one panel moved, but not enough to get a man through. Two SWAT agents joined her, wrapping gloved hands around the ex
posed edge, but the damn thing wouldn’t budge.
And that’s when the new guy had a bright idea.
Hank Garfield had only been with the Organized Crime Section a couple weeks—he’d transferred over from the MS-13 Task Force, where he’d been working undercover. He’d spent the past two years trying to infiltrate the brutal Mara Salvatrucha street gang, followed by six months rehabbing from a shoulder through-and-through after someone loyal to the gang spotted him meeting with his handler at a sidewalk café two hours north of the gang’s turf. It was a wrong-place, wrong-time bit of bad luck that illustrated just how far Mara’s reach extended, and it nearly cost him his life. Garfield’s handler wasn’t so lucky—he wound up in the ground. Word was that the two of them were close.
It probably would have been better had Garfield asked—or, failing that, warned her at least. But he hadn’t; he just yanked a flash-bang grenade off one of the SWAT guy’s belts and lobbed it through the narrow aperture of the jammed sidewalk door. Thompson barely had a chance to shield her ears and turn away before the thing went off, loud as a firework and bright as the goddamn sun. Even though she’d closed her eyes, a ghostly green afterglow danced in Thompson’s field of vision for a good five minutes afterward.
“Garfield, the fuck was that?”
Garfield grinned. “It stopped him shooting, didn’t it?”
Thompson strained to listen over the ringing in her ears. I’ll be damned, she thought. The crazy bastard’s right.
Moments later, SWAT breached the inside basement door to find Petrela lying unconscious in the middle of the concrete floor, both ears bleeding, his eardrums blown.
Turned out the shots they’d heard hadn’t been directed at the teenaged girls held captive there, but at the padlock fixed through the walk-in freezer’s latch. In his haste to get downstairs, Petrela’d forgotten to grab the key; it hung on a hook just outside the basement door. Once SWAT popped the lock, they found the freezer wasn’t so much a freezer as a holding pen—sweltering and smelling of human waste— full of very frightened and very loud teenaged girls. They were destined for the sex trade, or white slavery. But with time, Thompson hoped, they’d be all right. The human mind and body were more resilient than they were given credit for.
What a sight it must have been for them, these goggled, helmeted, armed men streaming into the walk-in after weeks of cramped captivity and ushering them upstairs, where ambulances waited to take them to St. Joseph’s for treatment.
It was no wonder they wouldn’t stop screaming.
Thompson stood in Little
Louie’s squalid kitchen, massaging the bridge of her nose with thumb and forefinger to soothe her aching head as one by one the girls came up the stairs. Garfield was inspecting the pots bubbling away on the massive cooktop, seemingly oblivious to the filth and the girls’ racket.
He removed a lid, dipped a spoon into a stockpot, and fished out a meatball covered in red sauce. Though it was piping hot, he stuffed the whole thing into his mouth, sauce dribbling down his chin.
“The hell you think you’re doing?” snapped Thompson.
Garfield chewed and made a face. “Hey, gimme a break—ain’t like a meatball’s evidence. Besides, I’m starving; we’ve been in that van all goddamn day, and I ain’t had so much as a bite to eat since dinner last night. Which—no disrespect to Petrela here, ’cause he seems like a real good guy and all—is the only reason I could even choke that fucking thing down. No wonder the poor bastard turned to a life of crime—his meatballs taste like ass.”
“Bold play back there with the flash-bang,” was all she could think to say.
Garfield shrugged. “It worked.”
“This time,” Thompson amended. As far as she was concerned, Garfield was dangerous, stupid, and too cocky for his own good. His swagger no doubt served him well going up against street thugs, but it could prove a liability chasing down the more established crime families their unit covered. Those families didn’t survive on guts and brutality alone—they were businesses, and they ran like multinational corporations. They had deep pockets and long reaches, patience and subtlety. Going up against them required patience and subtlety, too. “But what if the girls hadn’t been locked up?”
Garfield nodded toward the storefront windows, through which Thompson could see Petrela—strapped unconscious to a gurney and flanked by armed agents—being loaded into one of the waiting ambulances. The girls were loaded into the others in twos and threes. “Guess then they would’ve been easier to carry out.”
