Epitaphs (Echoes Book 2)

by Knite, Therin

  Herrera whispers softly, a snake’s hiss in the quiet room. “By the old gods, look at you.” Two finger snaps, and two guards leave their corners and storm across the carpeted floor. For a brief moment of panic, I picture a gun to the head in my near future. But the two men walk right past me, sly eyes gliding over my skinny self, assessing the real threat level that lives beneath my pallid skin. And then they throw open the doors, trudge through, and slam them shut again.

  They’re going to ‘take care’ of the problems I just mentioned.

  I made a verbal hit list for a mob boss. Fantastic. But I shake the building regret away before it has a chance to anchor in my shriveled, blackened heart. I don’t have the room in my chest to spare for a half dozen fools willing, ready, maybe even ecstatic to consign their fates to the integrity of the Columbian mob.

  You steal from the mob, you pay the price. You cheat the mob, you pay the price. You embarrass the mob, you pay the price. You threaten the “sanctity” of the mob, you pay the price.

  Sort of, I realize, like EDPA.

  Herrera rises from her couch, red dress falling around her body in flawless draped arches. “Tell me, boy, what is your name?”

  I’d refuse the question if I didn’t think Herrera had a dozen plus contacts who could break into my restricted profile with ease. “Adem Adamend.”

  “Adem…Adamend?” She tests the syllables on her tongue. “Is that your real name?”

  “It is.”

  “Oh, my! How adorable!” She rounds the table in the center of the circle of furniture, slinking toward me in fine, shifting silk. “Well, Adem Adamend, let me tell you—if you ever find yourself in need of a job, or if Ms. Chamberlain here turns out to be an unsuitable match for a man of your…capacity, do stop by one of my establishments and let me know.”

  She halts her strut the second she steps inside my personal space, and I can sense her form, on fire underneath her skin, too close to my own for comfort. “There are a great many uses for a young man like you. A great many opportunities. A great many prizes to be won. A great many lives to live.”

  She is my height, the Crimson Snake, so I stare into her burning eyes and reply, “You’re wrong, Ms. Herrera.”

  “Oh?” A frown. The first of many for her night. “How so, pretty boy?”

  I take another step toward her, placing my face as close to hers as I dare (that is, as close as I can be without getting shot), and answer with a whisper, “There are no young men like me. I’m one of a kind. And as I’m sure you well know, unique things are rarely for sale.”

  A hushed gasp of amusement, and she smirks again. “You think I have qualms against taking by force?”

  “No, but I think you have fears of taking from Dynara. And Dynara will never let me go.”

  For the briefest second, a rash of ugly, warped emotions rip apart the beauty of Herrera’s face. Then she reins the hatred in and produces another slippery smile. “Pity that, boy. I’d treat you so well.”

  “People like you don’t treat pets well. They treat all things, flesh and blood and plastic, like toys to be disposed of at the first sign of inconvenience.”

  Herrera’s hands begin to form fists. “Is that so?”

  “It is.”

  “Well, then.” She sidesteps me to avoid backing up, showing weakness, and returns her attention to Dynara, pretending as if the last five minutes were a nonexistent gap in time. “Ms. Chamberlain, I see you’ve come for an unfortunately serious reason. What can I help you with?”

  Dynara eyes me for a moment, something twinkling in the green I might call admiration, and says, “I need Oscar Delacourt. On a silver platter. And don’t tell me he’s not here. And don’t tell me he’s too valuable. And don’t tell me he’s a trustworthy affiliate. He’s behind your back on a case of mine that has cost me more than I’m willing to write a dollar sign for, so I’d appreciate it if you ring him up and get him to a private room. We need to have a little chat before the night is out.”

  Chapter Ten

  Delacourt shoots me four times in the chest and once in the crotch.

  Only one of those actually hurts.

  When he’s brought into the small but luxurious billiard room tucked away in a narrow underground hall beneath Regan’s Vegans, he wears the look of a man who is ten feet from a firing squad. His skin is washed white, and his hair, dark and limp in the humid air, is plastered to his face by the sheen of sweat that coats his neck and forehead. The two guards manhandle him into the room, push him toward the pool table where I wait, cue in hand. The guard on the left pats him down (again, I can tell from his rumpled suit), searching for guns or knives or other tricks and traps that mobsters tend to wear like jewelry. Finding nothing, they backtrack to the doorway, nod to me, and shut the door.

  Somewhere down the hall, in a dining room of sorts, Dynara is lounging with the Crimson Snake, sharing “war stories” about the trials and tribulations of high-dollar business operations. I’d be miffed at the fact she’s drinking good wine and eating good cheese and salty crackers while I’m in a stuffy room with a man involved in murder, if I wasn’t one hundred percent sure that Dynara stayed with Herrera to keep the vicious woman calm in the face of deceit. Dynara knows how to handle volatile personalities. She deals with hyper-wealthy clients, stuck-up Board members, cranky military brass, and all other manner of the elite ruling class on a daily basis at Chamberlain Corp. She can hold the attention of the jilted mob boss long enough for me to weasel a few answers out of Delacourt.

  You know, before Herrera murders the man and tosses his body into the Potomac.

  “Freelancing” while under the mob’s umbrella, risking exposure, is a surefire way to end up being eaten by tiny, nibbling river fish.

  And that is what Delacourt has done. Conspired with someone outside the Columbian mob to make extra bank.

  He lingers on the other side of the pool table, eying the fancy red cue in my grasp. A bead of sweat runs from temple to chin. “You going to beat me with that, kid?”

  “Not unless you make me.” I point at the table, where a game is set up for play, all the balls in place. “I was hoping to get a round in while we talk. Last time I played was back in college.”

  “You look like you should still be in college.” He picks up the cue leaning against his side of the table and coughs, nervous. “You must be someone real special if Herrera and Chamberlain let you have me first.”

  “How do you know Dynara is here?”

  Herrera told us that Delacourt was in the “accounting room,” which I’m pretty sure is a codename for the room where they run the books on all their money laundering schemes. Delacourt is a deal broker, after all; he should have some command over the flow of money in and out of the Snake’s numerous businesses. But unless there are security cam feeds in the accounting room, Delacourt should not have known we were here. Herrera plucked him from his work without warning.

  “Because no one except Chamberlain could lead an investigation into the Snake’s den.” The man shrugs. “She’s the only fed welcome in these halls, and that’s only because she’s not really a fed. She’s a Chamberlain, which supersedes any other title she possesses, and Chamberlains are welcome anywhere they care to tread. No one in this city, especially not in the mob, is dumb enough to test that age-old rule. Not even the Snake.”

  He maneuvers around the table and takes the opening turn. His cue cracks against the balls, scatters them across the table. One skims a pocket but doesn’t roll in. “Plus, I have eyes and ears, too, kid. I know EDPA was snooping around GM Poly yesterday, and I knew it would only be a matter of time before they tracked me down here. No way those idiot sponsors kept their mouths shut, not to mention the family—family can’t ever keep secrets for long.”

  I aim my own cue and strike the white ball. It knocks against three other balls, and two of them roll home. “That raises three questions, I think, Delacourt—”

  “Oscar.”

  “Oscar, then.” I
try again, but my aim is off, and the white ball rolls to a stop in the middle of nowhere.

  “And you?”

  “Adem.” I motion for him to take his turn. “Three questions. First, you make it sound an awful lot like you know exactly what happened to DuPont, which means you know what EDPA does. How’d that knowledge come to you? Second, if you know how DuPont died, then do you also know who killed him? And third, if you knew we’d discover your connection to DuPont’s murder, then why are you still here? Why didn’t you run?”

  He sinks another ball into a corner pocket and wipes the sweat off his face with the back of his hand. “Five years ago, we had a rival clan with a lackey who could do some pretty creepy shit. Telekinesis. Pyrokinesis. Weather control. Magic, we were thinking at first. Either that or some crazy science way beyond any textbook. Turns out it was the latter, of course. The guy had the power to make his dreams come to life.

  “We found out all about echoes, us higher-ups, when the great Dynara Chamberlain came knocking to question us about the people that echo maker had killed with his dreams—our people. In exchange for our cooperation on the murder cases, we slipped into the know. With the stipulation being we’re required to report any potential makers in the underworld to Chamberlain and definitely not use them to our own ends.”

  One hand unbuttons his blue suit jacket to let in the nonexistent breeze. “That’s the relationship between those two nowadays, Herrera and Chamberlain. Long as we toe the line, Chamberlain looks the other way, even if we occasionally smuggle her own tech around. Echo business is apparently more important to the woman than the illegal trade of smart weapons and computers too powerful for the common market.” His next shot misses, and he nods at the table. “Your turn.”

  I align my cue again. “All right. So that answers question one. What about the questions regarding DuPont’s murder?”

  A snort, and he glances at a mysterious brown smudge on the deep red wall (that might be dried blood from a past altercation). “I didn’t run because there’s no point. Knew when I caught wind of DuPont’s death the jig was up. There’s nowhere I can go on the East Coast that Herrera can’t find and dispose of me with ease. And all my connections just happen to be on this side of the continent. And in Herrera’s pocket. Was my mistake, letting all my resources meld into Herrera’s scaly skin. A better broker than me wouldn’t have let that happen. But I became too complacent with my position over the years, thinking things would never change. I let myself grow dull and dumb. It’s why I took the deal in the first place.”

  “The deal with the third party?” I strike the white ball again, but it skims my target and bounces off the back end of the table, rolling to a stop in the middle. “The one who’s offering the big bucks to whichever group of college kids can build that special program first?”

  Delacourt tries to smile, but it collapses into a grimace. “Hate to break it to you, kid. But I don’t know squat about that computer program or about the guy who’s running the show. He messaged me on my personal profile out of the blue. No clue how the bastard got past my security—but he laid out a sweet deal for me. Huge broker fee. All I had to do was recruit some kids from various local universities to participate in his little programming competition.

  “That’s what he told me. So sweet I could smell the lies underneath the cloak of simplicity. Deals that good are always bunk. I knew it. But here I thought I was good enough to scrape some dough off the top even if the kids who got involved stumbled and fell.” He hits the white ball, but it slips by the target he aimed for and scratches.

  “Then let’s refocus on those kids, shall we?” I set the pool cue down on the edge of the table and lean toward the sweating mob broker who will probably die tonight. No reprieve for the wicked. “You skipped my second question. Who killed DuPont?”

  Delacourt runs his tongue across his bottom lip. “Don’t know.”

  “Really? Because I think you do know. I think you were more involved with the kids than you’re letting on, Oscar. You know why?”

  “Why?” A rough grunt.

  “Because of the paintings in your auction tonight.”

  The man drops his pool cue, and it bounces twice then rolls across the carpeted floor until it hits the wall. “You…”

  “Saw them? Sure did. And then I put a few key pieces together.” I stick my thumbs in my pockets and straighten my back, staring into Delacourt’s dark, round eyes. “Two weeks ago, a kid named Andrew Stiegel, a computer engineering student at the University of Baltimore, was murdered in cold blood in an abandoned warehouse out in the old industrial sector. Two days later, those lovely paintings you have for sale were stolen from the Museum of Old World Art, where they were in a special display for an upcoming gala. And here’s the funny thing: There is evidence that suggests Stiegel was somehow in on that heist. Stiegel, the exact sort of college student who would be invited to participate in this little programming competition.

  “So you must see why I find it interesting that the stolen paintings, related to Stiegel, who more likely than not is related to the competition, ended up here, in the Snake’s den. And I’m willing to bet the meager amount of money in my bank account that they ended up here thanks to you. Which means you were somehow involved in the heist, and, I’m willing to bet, Stiegel’s murder.”

  The man raises his hands. “No, no. I was not involved in that kid’s death. Swear to the old gods. That was an accident.”

  “An accident how? He was shot four times.” I slam my palms on the table.

  Delacourt jumps. “Don’t ask me. That’s what the kids said. The GM Poly kids. When they brought me the paintings the other week, they told me the truce with the Baltimore group went south, and Stiegel got axed for it by accident.”

  “Wait, what truce?” Sweat has started to collect under my armpits, on my chest, in this tiny oven room. “And did you say the GM Poly kids stole the paintings? Not their counterparts at the University of Baltimore?”

  He rubs his nose. “The GM Poly kids came to me for more money. They got a stipend from my mystery contact to fund their programming efforts, but they spent it all too quick, and none of them had the money to make up the difference. So they came to me for help. And I asked Finn—”

  “Finn?”

  “The contact. That was the name he gave me. Finn. No last name. And probably an alias.”

  “Right.”

  “Anyway, like I was saying.” He starts to inch backward, to the door, legs and torso tensing, and I can plainly see the resolve to stay and face his impending fate cracking with each word he speaks. He’s going to run. They always run. “I asked Finn for more funding for the GM Poly kids, but he said no. So…I might have told the kids—they were desperate, you got to understand—that maybe they could make some extra cash themselves. By doing a little job for me.”

  “Stealing the paintings.”

  “Yep.”

  “And how did the Baltimore kids come into play?”

  “Ah.” He locks his hands behind his back and whistles two notes. “That’s a story I don’t know much about. Baltimore came to GM Poly for some kind of truce. They wanted to combine forces and work together to beat out the other groups, I think, and then split the winnings between both teams. Even with ten people instead of five, two hundred fifty million dollars goes a long way.”

  The muscles in his arms tighten, as if he’s preparing a violent action. “So I believe how it played out was that the GM Poly crew brought Baltimore in on their heist plot, and they were figuring out the attack plan together. But then something went wrong, and Stiegel bit the bullet. And the Poly kids took the paintings for themselves.

  “I know that much because they showed up, DuPont included, with the paintings after the heist. No Baltimore kids in sight.”

  I lower my hand toward the holster strapped to my right thigh. “So what you’re telling me is that DuPont’s death is probably a revenge killing? Retaliation for Stiegel’s murder at the warehouse?”


  “That, Adem, would be my guess,” he says.

  Then he pulls out a gun faster than my eyes can follow (from where, I don’t want to know). And before my fumbling fingers can unclip the strap on my own gun, he shoots me four times in the chest. The bullets bounce off my underlining armor, large rounds bruising my skin, muscles, ribs. I stumble backward but don’t go down in a spray of blood like the man expects. When he realizes why, he switches tactics.

  By that, I mean he shoots me in the crotch. And sure, the bullet bounces off my dick, too, but…Gods. I collapse in a burst of hot white static, blinded, deafened, screaming, while Delacourt hauls the door open and runs away to delay his death for a matter of minutes.

  I’m still rolling back and forth on the floor, crying, moaning when Dynara skids to a stop in the doorway a few moments later. She takes one pitiless look at me and mutters, “Idiot.”

  * * *

  Once I’m sure my penis is still attached to my body, and I can stand without toppling over in agony, I hobble out of the billiard room and into the low-ceilinged tunnel lined with dim orange sconces on either wall. To the right, where Delacourt fled, is a three-way intersection, and there are no scuff marks on the slick tiles to indicate which way the broker turned.

  I press one hand to the wall to steady myself and listen for the sounds of harsh, gulping breaths or Dynara’s unmistakable voice, ordering Delacourt to stop running under penalty of death. But all I hear is the breeze blowing through a vent in the ceiling; the walls are too insulated to carry noise. (Intentional. So a raid party can’t follow a retreat.)

  A footstep behind me.

  I whip around to see Herrera in her slinky dress, a cigarette between her lips. “Oh, my”—she stares, unabashedly, at my crotch—“I do hope nothing down there was permanently damaged. It would be a pity to lose such lovely genes.” The hand holding her fancy gold lighter twitches, moves an inch upward, like it’s drawn to the sweat-soaked hair disheveled on my head. I fight off an impending shudder at the idea the Crimson Snake wants anything to do with my sperm or the mechanisms that create and distribute it. Because, well, ugh. (I can’t think of a more intelligent response than that.)