Omega Dog - 01

by Tim Stevens

  Opening his eyes, seeing nothing but a stinging, soupy haze, Venn rolled hard and fast, coming up against the wall of the building. He groped blindly with his free hand, clutching the Beretta in the other, till he felt the cold metal of the fire escape. He hauled himself beneath it. The guy wouldn’t be able to hit him from up there, and if he started coming down the fire escape, Venn would at least hear him.

  The sirens were getting closer. The cops would be here any minute, and Venn was going to have a hell of a lot of explaining to do if they found him there. Especially if they’d encountered the girl, and she fingered Venn as one of her attackers, which she clearly thought he was.

  Venn rose to a stoop under the metal framework of the steps. His eyes still stung like hell, the tears were streaming down his face, and he felt as though acid was eating into his cheeks. But each time he dared to open his lids a crack, he saw a little more clearly. The blurred shapes around him - fire escape, wall, trashcans - were taking on a little more definition, bit by bit.

  The girl couldn’t have hit him squarely with the blast of Mace. The stream must have been angled so that his eyes hadn’t taken the full force of it.

  Venn ground his teeth. The man up there with the gun was the best lead he had so far. Someone who could well lead him to Professor Lomax, or at least give him an entry in. But there was no chance Venn could get near him now. Even if the cops weren’t about to arrive round the corner, guns drawn, even if Venn could somehow get up that fire escape and confront the guy, he could barely see him. The guy would put a 9 mm bullet between Venn’s eyes before Venn even heard the shot.

  Snarling in frustration and pain, Venn took the chance and began to lope down the street away from the sound of the sirens. He half-expected a fusillade of bullets to come raining down on him from above, but nothing happened. At the end of the street he glanced back, once. Through the filter of agony he saw that the cab driver who’d brought him there had long gone. And as he rounded the corner, he observed the first splash of police car lights across the walls as the cops arrived.

  Thrusting his gun back into its shoulder holster, Venn straightened and strode off down the street, losing himself in the crowd that was starting to mass there, drawn by the gunfire.

  Chapter 15

  DeeDee Rosetti was sixty years old, and had spent the last twelve of those years without the use of her legs.

  This was courtesy of a drive-by shooting in the Bronx by a rival crew. Her capo di tutti capo, the man she answered to in the pecking order of the mob family she belonged to, had been taken out in the shooting. In fact the only reason Rosetti had survived at all was that the capo, Rudy Cardinale, had landed on top of her as the Uzi fire had ripped through him. He was a big man, Rudy – no, a truly vast man, bloated by a lifetime of pasta and rich gravies and fine wines – and his corpse had shielded Rosetti from the worst of the assault.

  Still, a lucky shot – lucky for the other crew, not so lucky for Rosetti – had entered her spine and severed the spinal cord in the lumbar region. She lacked all movement below the waist, and had only partial sensation there.

  Which meant that knowing when she needed to piss or take a dump was something of a lottery.

  This went some way to accounting for Rosetti’s crabby outlook and explosive temper. So did the psychological effects of not being able to walk anymore. So did the fact that she was always on the verge of suffering withdrawal symptoms from nicotine.

  Mostly, though – and Rosetti would have been the first to admit this herself – she was the way she was because she came from a long line of unpleasant, antisocial and volatile personalities. Her father had been a mean, vicious asshole. Her mother had been a meaner, nastier asshole still.

  And Rosetti’s grandfather on her pa’s side had been an out-and-out psychopath.

  When DeeDee was twelve years old, an unruly tomboy on the streets of Hell’s Kitchen, she and a couple of her pals had taken her grandpa’s Buick for a joyride. There was alcohol involved, and by the time the car was dredged out of the Hudson it wasn’t good for much but engine parts.

  DeeDee had returned from hospital after three days, bruised and bloodied but mostly unhurt. Her grandpa had been waiting for her when her ma brought her home. Her ma had disappeared quietly, and Gramps had gone to work. With his fists, with a strip of tanning hide, with his boots.

  By the time Grandpa Rosetti had finished with her, DeeDee had five cracked ribs, a busted nose, a burst eardrum, and internal bleeding. Back to the hospital she went.

  This time she was in three weeks.

  ‘No hard feelings,’ Gramps had said, giving her shoulder a manly squeeze and looking her straight in the eye. ‘You got what was coming to you. No more, no less.’

  DeeDee quoted those exact same words back to the old man when, twenty-five years later, she dropped a live radio into the tub while the old bastard was taking a bath. She did it mainly because her pa was next in line for the top job in the family and Gramps was taking too long to die.

  But she also did it because she’d never forgotten. Or forgiven.

  Now, Rosetti was the boss. Head of the Manzullo family. She had been since the death of the capo Cardinale twelve years earlier. In a world where the East Coast mob was largely a spent force, a cowed and beaten thing, squeezed out of existence by the Feds, the Manzullos were old-school. Big, bold, and unashamed. Rosetti made sure of it. Her crew didn’t confine their operations to petty embezzlement, money laundering, a little dope dealing. No way. The Manzullos under DeeDee Rosetti went in for spectacular heists, wholescale loan sharking, major narcotics distribution. They were the kings of New York, the emperors of the Empire State.

  Rosetti feared nobody else operating in the city. Not the Chinese Triads, the Japanese Yakuza, the Russian mafiya who were making inroads from their growing base in Little Odessa. They were all third-rate wannabes, Johnny-come-latelys, as far as DeeDee Rosetti was concerned.

  And the FBI? They could kiss her ass.

  It was this attitude, this temperament, that faced Zach Infante as he stood on the carpet before Rosetti’s huge mahogany desk. Infante was immaculately dressed in a cheap-looking, shiny suit, his eyes hidden behind mirror shades even though he was indoors.

  Rosetti thought he was trying not to piss his pants.

  ‘Run that by me again,’ she snarled.

  They were in Rosetti’s office on the top floor of an office block in the Meatpacking District. It was after two in the morning. Rosetti didn’t sleep much, not since the injury that had robbed her of her legs. She knew death would probably come to her before her three-score-and-ten was up – not a lot of people in her position enjoyed especially long lives, given the nature of what she did – and she wanted to be awake to look death in the eye when it came knocking.

  Infante raised the cell phone in his hand. ‘He says the target got away.’

  ‘Got away.’ Rosetti was disbelieving.

  ‘Yeah, boss.’

  ‘A civilian.’

  ‘Yeah.’ There was a quaver in Infante’s voice, despite his impassive expression.

  ‘A girl.’

  ‘I know, boss.’

  Rosetti was silent a moment, staring at Infante. Then she held out her hand across the desk. ‘Give me that.’

  ‘Boss –’ Infante stepped forward, but hesitated.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Royle said to tell you he won’t speak to you, or anyone else associated with you, till he’s got the job done.’

  ‘What? He can’t do that. I decide who fuckin’ speaks to me and who doesn’t.’ Once again Rosetti silently cursed her crippled legs for not allowing her to stand up and tower over the desk.

  Infante shrugged apologetically. ‘I’ve tried calling him back, boss. He doesn’t answer. He just said he wanted to let us know there’d been a hitch, but he’s working on it. He also said that if you’ve put someone else in the field to compete with him, he’s going to kill them along with the target.’

  ‘Son of
a –’ Rosetti held out her hand again. ‘Gimme the phone.’

  ‘Boss –’ She knew he knew what was coming.

  ‘Give it to me, dammit!’

  Wordlessly, Infante handed the cell phone across the desk to her. Rosetti took it, hefted its weight.

  Then she hurled it at Infante’s head.

  He ducked, but too late. The phone caught his forehead with a crack and he yelled and stumbled back. The phone flew in pieces across the carpeted floor. Infante held his hands up to his forehead. They came away bloody.

  Anybody who didn’t know Rosetti might have said: don’t shoot the messenger. But anybody who did know her would understand.

  When you worked for DeeDee Rosetti, you accepted you could get shot at any time, and for any reason. Or have a full ashtray dumped over your head. Or a cigarette stubbed out on the back of your hand.

  It was an occupational hazard, a risk you took in exchange for the privilege of being part of the most prestigious crime family in New York City.

  ‘Get the fuck out!’ Rosetti raged at Infante.

  He went.

  Alone, Rosetti alternated between drags on her unfiltered Camel and bites of her nails. She was angry, all right. But she was also calculating.

  How could a civilian, a simple doctor, and a woman at that, have gotten away from a professional assassin of Marcus Royle’s caliber?

  Either she’d been tipped off, or someone had helped her somehow. But what did that mean?

  And what had Royle meant when he’d said that if Rosetti had put someone else in the field to compete with him, he’d kill them too?

  Had he come into conflict with some unknown person?

  Rosetti knuckled her forehead in frustration. Without hearing Royle’s account of what happened, she had no way of knowing. She couldn’t even call him in, cancel the deal and hire somebody more competent to do the job, because she had no way of contacting him now.

  Unless...

  Rosetti sat bolt upright in her wheelchair, a move that never failed to send stabs of pain down her arthritic neck. She had an idea.

  And ironically, Royle himself had given it to her.

  She’d never tried it before. Had always sent only one assassin into the field at a time.

  But there was no reason why she shouldn’t hire somebody else, even if she couldn’t call Royle off. After all, she’d only end up having to pay one person. Only one of them would get to the girl first.

  Humming tunelessly around the cigarette jammed between her lips, as she always did when she was pleased with herself, Rosetti picked up the phone.

  Chapter 16

  Beth ran.

  She ran as fast as the pumps she was wearing allowed, which wasn’t fast at all. But the alternative, running in her bare feet, wasn’t an option. These were city streets, and she’d cut her soles to ribbons in no time.

  The familiar streets and sounds and sights around her apartment block took on a new, terrifying air of menace. Suddenly every passerby posed a threat, every building loomed monstrously into her path. Every blaring car horn yelled aggression at her.

  Terror drove Beth on. The primal, instinctive need to put as much distance as she could between her and the source of danger.

  Between her and the man – men – who were trying to kill her.

  Beth had put up with her fair share of abuse and violent behavior, as all doctors did. She’d been punched in the face before, by an alcoholic going through the DTs. She’d been half-throttled by a criminal on the run who’d tried to escape from the ward when the cops arrived.

  But in all of these cases, it hadn’t been personal. Beth just happened to be in the way of someone who needed to lash out randomly, for one reason or another.

  Nobody had ever deliberately tried to kill her before.

  Right up until the man had come bursting through into the bathroom, she hadn’t really believed it. Even as she was dragging herself painfully through the narrow window space, hanging onto the fire escape which all of a sudden seemed terrifyingly high above the ground, some part of her mind refused to grasp the fact that somebody was actually trying to end her life. Had in all probability killed poor Herman down in the lobby, and was now going to do the same to her.

  The she’d glanced back over her shoulder as her arms took the strain of her weight, and she saw him.

  He was at first little more than a silhouette against the faint light from back inside the apartment. From what Beth could see from her awkward position, suspended from the metal latticework, he was tall, with a full head of hair. Quite lean in his build.

  And he held a gun, pointed straight at her.

  That was when she screamed. And that was when she became aware of the other man, below her, also armed.

  Events after that became a blur of panic and confusion. The men both started firing, the exchange shockingly loud, the echoes of the crashing guns bouncing off the walls lining the street. Somehow, on autopilot, Beth managed to clamber down the fire escape and not get hit, even as the bullets sang and whined about her.

  She’d dropped, twisting her ankle sharply (but, her doctor’s detached eye noted, not breaking it), and somehow in her pain and terror she retained the presence of mind to grapple inside her purse and close her fingers round the can of Mace, even as the second man crawled across to her.

  As she let loose with the Mace, she caught a glimpse of his face. Hard, twisting in surprise and agony, with dark eyes and a neat goatee and mustache. A big guy, not stocky but sinewy and rangy. Then he collapsed back, hands clasped to his burning eyes, writhing.

  And she was free, and running, sucking in great lungfuls of the night city’s air.

  Dimly she registered that she was heading west, toward the Hudson River. Was that wise? But was anywhere safe?

  She had no idea who was after her, or how many of them there were. Or why they wanted her dead.

  Something to do with Professor Lomax? It must be. But she couldn’t figure out what.

  And now wasn’t the time to do so. What mattered now was survival.

  Rely on instinct now. Figure things out later.

  Looming ahead of Beth, like a beacon in the night, she saw the familiar insignia of the New York Police Department over an arched doorway.

  A precinct house.

  Almost faltering, sobbing drily with relief, Beth forced her legs to take her the last few paces to the steps leading up to the station house doors. She stumbled on the steps, felt them crack painfully against her shins. The discomfort drove her on, and she dragged herself up to the glass doors and pushed them open.

  Chapter 17

  ‘From the beginning again, please, miss.’

  Beth gripped the Styrofoam cup as tightly as she dared without causing it to collapse, the lukewarm coffee inside threatening to slop over the edge. She glared at the two cops.

  Again? she thought wearily. For the third time?

  She’d blurted out her story in fragments to the desk sergeant, who’d been sympathetic but had difficulty following what she was saying. Beth didn’t blame him, because she wasn’t making a whole lot of sense to herself either. She’d allowed the sergeant to lead her to a side room, where he brought her a little water and asked her to wait. She sat, sipping gratefully, but with every minute that passed she became increasingly nervous.

  What if the two men had tailed her to the precinct house? What if they came in, posing as staff from a psychiatric ward, there to recover their escaped patient and take her back to safekeeping? Would the cops simply hand her over?

  Telling herself she was letting her imagination run riot didn’t make it any easier for Beth.

  After what seemed like an hour but was probably only fifteen minutes, a uniformed policewoman came in and escorted Beth to an interview room. The woman was blocky and tough-looking, with a swagger that said she was making a point in a man’s world, but she had a kind manner.

  She explained that a pair of detectives would be along in just a minute to take her s
tatement. “Just a minute” turned out to be a half hour. The detectives, two tired-looking older guys who looked like they’d been assigned the night shift and weren’t too happy about it, took down her more or less coherent statement with barely a word.

  Then they left, and Beth sat with the uniformed female cop once more. The woman didn’t seem inclined to make small talk.

  Finally, after another forty-five minutes, two new plainclothes people came in. They nodded at the uniformed cop and signaled her to leave. She did so, giving Beth a reassuring smile on her way out.

  The new detectives were younger than the first two. One woman, one man. The woman introduced herself as Detective Anderson. She was small, petite, maybe a little over five feet one or -two. Short blonde hair in a pixie cut, the look enhanced by an enormous pair of green eyes.

  ‘Detective Gomez,’ said the man. He was maybe thirty-five. A craggy, pockmarked face that looked like a bomb had gone off in it. Grim mouth, hooded, hawklike eyes.

  That was when they asked her to recite her story again.

  ‘Where are the other two detectives?’ Beth asked. ‘The ones who I spoke to nearly an hour ago? I told them everything.’ She tried to keep the tremor out of her voice. Delayed shock was setting in as the adrenalin ebbed from her system, leaving her feeling washed-out and fragile.

  ‘We know, miss,’ said Gomez, in a voice that sounded like a rake being dragged through a bed of gravel. ‘But we’re from across town. We’re investigating a Missing Person case and we think you might be able to shed some light on it.’

  Beth frowned from one to the other, confused. The woman detective, Anderson, was by far the more sympathetic of the two. She smiled warmly at Beth, nodding slightly as if to say she understood how scared and bewildered she must be feeling right now.

  ‘Ms... Colby, right? May I call you Elizabeth?’