SURVIVORS (crime thriller books)

by T. J. Brearton

  Sloane was looking at him, still perturbed that he wasn’t explaining things.

  “St. Luke’s-Roosevelt is spread out over a couple different sites,” he said. “The St. Luke’s part is up on 114th street. The whole center is a teaching hospital. This is where a lot of med students cut their teeth.”

  “That’s great. But why are we here?”

  “We’re going to go see someone,” Brendan said. He walked around the car and held out his hand to her.

  She looked at it. She seemed to be deciding whether she was pissed off at him or not – for what happened at the club, for dragging her all the way to the city, for making her take a DNA test.

  “Just come on,” he said. “It’s better, it’s easier, if you just see.”

  She glanced up at him. He could see she was trying to hold on to her anger, but she also looked tired. It had been a crazy couple of days. She was tough, she was a survivor, but she was human. He noticed how she looked off to one side of him, her eyes following the scar that ran from his temple to his jawline. Then she took his hand.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE / Monday 4:09 PM

  Those who served were from varied backgrounds. They each had their reasons for joining the military, but one thing Jennifer Aiken found they shared was an immense difficulty readjusting to civilian life.

  So, many veterans sought jobs that resembled the life they had grown so accustomed to overseas.

  They became cops. They worked security details. If they didn’t, as Jennifer saw in the prison statistics she pored over, they often wound up incarcerated.

  Some of them became bodyguards. Men like Eddie Stemp.

  Jennifer had come across Eddie Stemp while researching Wyn Weston’s files on the Heilshorn case. Stemp had been briefly married to the victim, Rebecca. He’d met her when she’d been working as an escort, often chauffeuring her to meet with her clients. Weston had plans to depose Stemp, and get the born-again Christian man talking, just before Weston had to back out of the investigation for reasons Jennifer was not privy to. Maybe, Jennifer speculated, there was a relationship between Stemp and Argon, too. The more she considered the connection of Seamus Argon to the Heilshorn murder and the HTPU task force, the more it seemed like the grizzled cop was conducting his own off-grid investigation.

  Stemp had served his country and rotated back and found a place for himself, albeit one of dubious morality. But he’d been born again, and got out. He’d also tried to convince Rebecca to leave.

  Jeremy Staryles, on the other hand, represented the soldiers who you could take out of the war, but you couldn’t take the war out of them. There was a dark world of employment opportunities waiting for them, a world like the one Stemp had ventured into. But Staryles had gone even deeper.

  And the man holding a gun on her – the one who called himself Apollo – he had been drafted into this. Perhaps because it was the only thing he knew.

  Maybe some sort of bogus mission statement had been dreamed up by the ones who stood to gain the most, but it probably didn’t matter to a man like Apollo. He had no dog in this fight, whether it was protecting the black markets which fed the economy, or making sure the “right” people were in power for the corporations.

  He looked at her like she was meat. Nothing but another target to eliminate. To appeal to his humanity would be pointless – he’d been trained to think of the enemy as some kind of subhuman species. That was the only way to effectively motivate thousands of human beings to kill thousands of other human beings. You had to drive the innate compassion and empathy from them.

  No, he wouldn’t be able to see her as human, really, or muster any emotion for her.

  But she could do that for him.

  “What’s your real name?”

  He looked at her blankly. The man who had struck her as somewhat educated and even articulate was gone. This was a machine. He had a 9 mm pointed at her. He didn’t respond.

  “What harm can it do to tell me? You’re going to kill me.”

  She was trembling all over. From the poison, and from the fear. Yet Jennifer felt this strange warmth inside of her, as if some internal furnace had kicked on deep within her being. Nevertheless, her arms and legs shook. She hugged herself.

  He took a step toward her. A second later, something snared his attention. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. He scowled as he read the message.

  “What does it say?”

  His eyes flicked back to her, cold and empty. She thought he would remain silent, but he spoke. “It says you’d better be telling me the truth.”

  “About what?”

  A grin spread across his dark face. “I asked you before what you knew about Titan. You gave me some clever shit about cosmology and mythology, but you avoided the question. Time is up. Answer me now. Not what you can prove in fact, but what you think. What you believe.”

  Jennifer recalled the conversation from the day before with Olivia Jane. You can’t possible believe what you’re saying, Jane had said. And later, They are blind to their own evil.

  “What I think? I think that all conspiracy theories aside, Titan is a cabal, a league, a group of mega-corporate and geopolitical moguls, world bankers, and high-ranking military officials. It’s not the Illuminati. It’s not the frigging Knights Templar. It’s a very real, very hegemonic, proficient coalition of forces.”

  Apollo offered no objection, though his eyes narrowed in scrutiny. “Why?”

  “Why? That is the eternal question, isn’t it? Why do men seek power? In cultures throughout history, people who took more than their share were considered to have a psychological or spiritual disease. Sociological experiments have been run at MIT, Princeton, Harvard, evaluating behavior in environments where some subjects have fiscal advantage over others. It does something to the person’s humanity. Not everyone – there are philanthropists and plenty of charitable, well-meaning people of influence. But when you start with someone who already has . . . tendencies . . . something from their past, some early developmental influence that makes them vindictive, angry, obsessed, delusional . . . then wealth and power only exacerbates their tendencies.”

  “A nice analysis. What are the means to power?”

  “Same as they’ve always been. Exploit the lower classes. Subjugation, enslavement, extinction.”

  He rocked back on his heels. She couldn’t tell if he was satisfied or incredulous.

  “And you believe Alexander Heilshorn is a part of this . . . what did you call it? Cabal?”

  “He’s a doctor at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center, an OB/GYN. He had a daughter and a son, both deceased. His daughter went to school upstate where she met a fellow student and a teacher who eventually got her into pornography and prostitution.”

  His eyes narrowed a bit. “Is that what you think is true? You think this girl, from a wealthy family, with a solid education, just ‘fell in’ to the porn business?”

  “It happens. It’s incorrect to assume that all women who work in that . . . industry . . . are from poor families or abused. Sometimes it starts ‘innocently’ as a form of expression, maybe rebellion. But then they get in further, and it can be tough to get out. It’s hard to make the move from prostitute to pre-school teacher.”

  Again, he seemed to scrutinize her. “So that’s why she stayed. Difficultly transitioning to a new line of work?”

  “No. I don’t think so.” Jennifer could hear her voice quavering. Her body continued to shake. Yet her mind was clear. “She stayed in because once you get into servicing high-end clients, whether they’re congressmen, sheiks or shahs, some of them are particular, and like the same girl – may even fall in love with them, or think they have. Most men prefer variety, I guess, but some don’t. There’s obsession. It becomes like a game – it’s more than sex, it becomes a powerful addiction to a certain woman.”

  “So you think that was why she was murdered. She was trying to get out.”

  “Yes, and because she had two chil
dren.”

  “One that her own father delivered. Did you know that?” His eyebrows raised slightly.

  In fact, she hadn’t. She hadn’t confessed everything she knew about Alexander Heilshorn to this man, but that was one thing outside of her information.

  “Do you believe he had something to do with her death?”

  “Listen to me. I’ve done a lot of research on the effects of war. I can help you. You don’t have to do this . . . this line of work. There’s so much more out there. Do you have a family?”

  “It’s a yes or no question.”

  “Just talk to me. The man you’re working for is . . .”

  Evil, she wanted to say, but that was too simplistic.

  “. . . is not well. There’s a chance for you here to break away from that.”

  He took the firearm from his side and had it to her head so quickly she barely saw him move. He pressed the cold metal against her forehead. “Too late,” he said.

  She could hear his measured breathing. He was as calm as someone doing laundry. Her silly hopes of appealing to his humanity dissolved.

  “One last time,” he said. “Do you think Alexander Heilshorn is responsible for the death of his daughter?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  He remained in front of her, a man cut from stone, the gun pressed into her cranium.

  “What do you know about Lebenslüge?” he asked.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX / Monday 4:20 PM

  Brendan and Sloane stood in the main reception at Roosevelt Hospital. They waited for Heilshorn, who had been paged at Brendan’s request.

  Sloane was fidgety. She spoke in a low voice. “You still haven’t told me why we’re here.”

  He led them to a waiting area off to the side and they took a couple of seats next to a large, potted fern. A pile of magazines sat on a table between the chairs. Sloane picked one up and rapidly thumbed through it, making a show of her irritation.

  “Okay,” said Brendan.

  She looked up at him, her gaze receptive.

  “This is the hospital where Alexander Heilshorn works.”

  “Really.”

  “Heilshorn is father of the girl who was murdered in Oneida County, my one and only homicide investigation.”

  “Okay.”

  “Heilshorn knew my father.”

  Sloane seemed to be perking up. “Interesting. And we’re here to reminisce?”

  “Bear with me. This took me some time to put together. Mostly I’ve been trying to avoid it. But I can’t any longer. Heilshorn is wealthier, and more powerful, than I first thought. More than fifty percent of the money in the world is now digital. It’s online. That means a few different things: security breaches – like what happened with Target – 40 million people with jeopardized credit cards and debit cards; it means fraud, and it means theft. Bitcoin theft is the new top cybercrime, and some people, like Coindesk, are crying that ‘Bitcoin is dead,’ owing to all the hacks and thefts. In this world, money can be moved anywhere, hidden. You don’t go to the bank and make a withdrawal. There’s no paper trail – it’s a digital trail. And with the right technicians, you can conceal it completely. You can pump it into anything. And the money you make, you can have it appear like just about anything. Now, a lot of that money online – and I’m talking about the ninety percent of the internet that you and I never see, that you have to access with Tor and all of that – a lot of that has come from the black markets on the deep web – the hidden stuff that is all drugs, contract killing, human trafficking. The money is being pulled all over the place. And it needs to be protected.”

  “I’m trying to follow you, but . . .”

  “I think the government needs the flow of money from the black economy. Economics is all about flow. And by government I mean Wall Street, the IMF, the World Bank. The dollar is under pressure. And when the dollar is dead, there’s going to be unprecedented chaos in our country. Around the world. The government is tacitly supporting the black markets to maintain American power by being a leader in bitcoin.”

  “Can’t we just switch to gold? The gold standard, or whatever?”

  “There’s a big difference between digital currencies and money not being backed by assets. People are investing in gold, sure. But it’s not a solution, and it is as speculative as everything else. The price of gold can be seen as just another bubble. And it’s not something everyday people can rely on. People rely on the grocery store. Municipal services. Highway departments, schools, state-funded and federally-funded support. Privatizing everything is not possible – there’s no voice but the voice of the dollar.”

  “But I thought you’re talking about the dollar failing.”

  “Yes. But black markets are a major source of revenue. Crime is major money. Untouchable, better hidden than offshore. I think it’s a last desperate attempt to inject money back into the system to keep the corporate, financial, real-estate interests in play.

  “Not to mention, everyday people are waking up. People are learning about what’s happening to our world. The economy is hemorrhaging – has been since 2008. Now bitcoin is getting torched. The US is slipping out of the world leader spot. India, China, are taking over. Developing nations in Africa. But the old, white men of the hegemony, men like Heilshorn, will do anything to keep their money, keep their power.”

  Sloane looked over his shoulder. Brendan turned and saw Heilshorn standing behind a row of chairs, watching them. Brendan walked over to him. He was even smaller then Brendan remembered, standing perhaps only five foot five, and thin as a rail. He was dressed in his doctor’s white coat. The only thing missing was the stethoscope around his neck.

  “Alexander,” Brendan said, unsmiling.

  Heilshorn did not smile either. He took Brendan’s hand in his dry, leathery grip, leaned towards him, saying, “Let’s go talk in my office.” Then he stood back and regarded Sloane, who had stood up from her seat but not approached. He gazed at her with the naked contempt with which a man might regard a mosquito.

  “She comes too,” Brendan said.

  Heilshorn turned his attention back to Brendan. The men locked eyes for a moment, Heilshorn’s hand sliding out of the handshake. Then he grinned, dark and cunning. “Of course she does.”

  * * *

  Staryles was angry. He didn’t like not knowing, he didn’t like being wrong, and he hated being angry. The heart was an electromagnetic generator – his father had taught him that. It sent signals to the entire body, including the brain. Man had long considered the brain to be the center of intelligence, but it wasn’t the case. The heart was the true epicenter of the human experience. The brain did the heart’s bidding. And when the heart was angry, and pumping hard and vicious, the brain didn’t work optimally. It was short-circuited, disrupted by the waves of ire.

  It was a relief then, when he was contacted by one of Heilshorn’s bodyguards. Heilshorn had three – one posted to the hospital, one to his penthouse on the Upper East Side, and one at his home upstate.

  The bodyguard informed Staryles that Brendan Healy and the girl, Sloane, were at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt.

  Staryles had felt a hard, dark stone settle over his heart. Now he drove the Cutlass down the Major Deegan, headed for Manhattan. Healy wasn’t as bumbling as Staryles had first thought. He must have known that he was being surveilled, and purposely thrown Staryles by telling Colinas he was going to Westchester Med, when he wasn’t. He was going straight into the lion’s mouth. Bully for him, thought Staryles. He almost admired Healy, almost, but the detective had made him look foolish.

  He would suffer.

  * * *

  Heilshorn couldn’t take his eyes off the girl. They sat in the doctor’s private office, on an upper floor of the Roosevelt. It overlooked 11th Avenue. The room was lined with bookshelves; Heilshorn sat behind a heavy oak desk. Everything was neat and organized, like the man himself. There was a large black phone, the push-button kind with multiple lines. The room smelled faintly of cigar
s; perhaps the jacket hanging near the door was perfumed with the smoke.

  There was no emotion in his eyes – not like their last meeting, when he had pleaded with Brendan to drop his investigation into Rebecca’s murder. He’d possessed a grim determination and a kind of deep sorrow then. Or so it had seemed.

  “This is Lawrence Taber’s daughter,” Brendan said, nodding towards Sloane.

  “I know.”

  Heilshorn looked at her again. All pretense of benevolence had been dropped. The old Heilshorn would have praised this girl for surviving. He would have eloquently outlined how abortion was wrong, and what a testament she was to that fact. But those days were gone.

  “Is that why you’re here? To boast about what you know? I’m a busy man.”

  “I know. You’re very busy.” Ordinarily, this kind of confrontation would have been very difficult for Brendan to handle. Those days were gone, too. For the past two years Brendan had faced each day with a profound indifference. Not caring if he lived or died. There was nothing Heilshorn could take from him. Nothing anyone could take from him, because there was nothing for them to take. He was already a ghost.

  “I’ll be brief. I want you to know what I know, and ask you one question, and then we’ll leave.”

  Heilshorn glowered from behind his desk. He said nothing.

  Brendan proceeded. “Someone was paid to purposely crash into Seamus Argon two nights ago. Someone, like so many others in this mess, leveraged into action. But, it didn’t go perfectly. Argon survived the crash. Until someone else, someone who drives a dark blue Cutlass, showed up and finished the job.”