by David Hosp
He dialed the number and waited. The line rang twice before it was picked up.
‘Do you have it?’ the man on the other end of the line asked as soon as the call was connected.
‘Not yet,’ Fasil said, working to keep the contempt out of his tone.
‘Why not?’
‘Because,’ Fasil said slowly, ‘my assets are inadequate. I was told that you were in control of the situation. That does not appear to be the case. I was told that the relic would already have been recovered before I arrived.’
‘That was supposed to be the case,’ the man said. ‘Sirus failed us.’
‘He did. And now there is another party involved.’
‘Another party?’ The voice on the other end of the line sounded calm. ‘Who?’
‘I do not know. That is what I need for you to find out. He claimed to Sirus that he was with the police, but I suspect that was a lie. Do you know who this person is?’
The line was silent for a moment. ‘You don’t need to worry. I can take care of him if necessary.’
‘It is necessary now,’ Fasil said. ‘You will take care of him now, or I will. I assume I do not need to remind you what would happen if people were to discover your role in this. It would cause great damage. For everyone.’
‘Is that a threat?’ the man on the other end of the line demanded. ‘Are you threatening me?’
Fasil remained calm. He was used to American bullying. ‘I am merely reminding you of the information I have, and the consequences for all of us if I fail.’
‘No one understands that better than I do,’ the man said. ‘But you should remember that we’re not friends and we’re not allies. Our short-term interests are complementary, but we will always be enemies, and in the end I will destroy you. Do you understand that?’
Fasil clicked off the satellite phone and put it back into his bag. ‘I understand that, too, better than anyone.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
They were on the third floor. Going door to door starting from the ground, Detective Morrell had begun to wonder whether the couple he’d seen earlier had slipped out the back. They hadn’t, though. When the door to apartment 3B opened, he was standing face to face with the girl he’d seen entering the building fifteen minutes before. There was something familiar about her, but he couldn’t place what it was. She had an older, weathered version of a face that echoed in his memory.
He observed her for a moment before saying anything.
‘Can I help you?’ she said at last. She sounded annoyed.
He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his shield. ‘Police, ma’am,’ he said, holding it up. ‘Detective Morrell.’ He watched her closely, saying nothing more.
The change was instant. She straightened, pulled her shoulders back, and retreated ever so slightly from the threshold, adopting a defensive posture. The door, which had been opened a foot, closed to half that. The reaction wasn’t entirely unusual, even for an innocent person, but it was universal from those who were hiding something from the authorities. It reinforced Morrell’s hunch.
After a moment’s tension, she said, ‘What do you want?’ The encounter had officially become confrontational, which was fine with him. Often he could tell more about someone when they felt their backs were against the wall.
‘We’ve had a report of a shooting,’ he said. He let the silence set in briefly again.
‘And . . .?’ she said. ‘What do you want from me?’
That was the tip-off. The natural reaction of someone told there had been a shooting in the vicinity was almost uniformly to seek information. Who was shot? Where did it happen? When? Was anyone hurt? There were a thousand natural questions that came into the heads of most people. This woman wasn’t looking for any of this kind of information. That meant, in all likelihood, that she already knew something about it.
‘Can I come in?’ Morrell asked, moving toward the door as though there was no question that he could, in fact, come in.
The door opening went from six inches to three. ‘I’m busy,’ the woman said. ‘Is there something that you need from me?’
Morrell stepped back. ‘The first thing you can give me is your name.’
She rolled her eyes, looking put out. For a moment he thought she wasn’t even going to give him that. ‘Cianna,’ she said at last. ‘Cianna Phelan.’
He squinted at her. The name didn’t mean anything to him, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d seen her before. ‘Have we met?’ he asked. ‘You look familiar.’
‘You hitting on me?’ she said sarcastically. If he seemed familiar to her, she was concealing it brilliantly. He decided to move on.
‘Can you tell me whether you heard anything.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I didn’t.’
‘Don’t you want to know when?’
Her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t flinch. ‘I didn’t hear any gunshots at all,’ she said. ‘So I guess it doesn’t matter when it happened. I’ve been out for most of the day.’
He nodded. ‘I saw you coming back. You were with a man. Is he here? I’d like to talk to him, too.’
‘He doesn’t live here,’ she said.
‘Is he here now?’
‘He wouldn’t have heard anything either,’ she said. ‘He was with me for most of the day.’
‘Can I talk to him?’
She seemed to hesitate, turning her head as though listening to someone from behind her. ‘I’m very busy now. I don’t have any information, and I have to be going.’ She started to close the door.
Morrell’s phone started buzzing, but he ignored it for the moment. ‘I could get a warrant,’ he said. ‘Or take you down to the station.’ That often softened people up.
The door was little more than a crack now, but it was enough for her to look out at him. ‘You could,’ she said. ‘But you would need to swear out an affidavit saying you’ve got probable cause to believe I’ve committed a crime. Because I haven’t committed any crime, I seriously doubt that you could truthfully say that you have any kind of cause.’
He stared at her. She was right, of course, and it made him angry. ‘You’d be surprised how easy it is to get a warrant,’ he said. It was a bluff. Unless he was willing to lie, he’d never get a warrant, and there was nothing here worth lying about. Still, he hated the notion that she could get the best of him. His phone continued to buzz.
‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘I guess we’ll see.’
He frowned, considering his next move. To buy time, he grabbed his phone. ‘Gimme a sec,’ he said to her. Into the phone, he said, ‘Morrell, here.’
‘Morrell, it’s Scotty.’ He recognized the voice of Sergeant Will Scott.
‘Yeah,’ Morrell said. ‘What is it?’
‘We got a mess down here at the waterfront,’ Scott said. ‘Someone fucked up Miles Gruden and a couple of his boys pretty badly.’
‘Anyone dead?’ Morrell asked.
‘No. One shot, though. And Gruden and two others are gonna end up spending some time in the hospital. We could use your help.’
‘I’m a little busy,’ Morrell said. ‘Can you get someone else?’
‘Yeah, I could, but I figured you’d want to be called,’ Scotty said.
‘Why? I gotta pull the sheet every time these morons fuck each other up?’
‘No, but this happened at Spudgie’s. I figured . . . you know. I figured I’d give you a call on it.’
Morrell looked at the girl through the crack in the door. She was still staring back at him, her eyes sharp. ‘Anyone else hurt other than Gruden and his boys?’
‘No. Just them.’
‘Okay, I’ll be there in about two minutes.’ He turned off the phone, put it back into his pocket. ‘I may be back,’ he said to the girl.
‘I may be here,’ she snapped back.
She had balls; he had to give her that. ‘You should consider being a little more cooperative with the police,’ he said. ‘It’ll keep you out of tr
ouble.’
‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ she said. Then the door was closed, and Morrell was standing there like an idiot. He shouldn’t care, he knew. It was a bullshit call to begin with. In all likelihood McMurphy was probably right; it was probably fireworks. Still, he couldn’t help but feel the anger at having been ignored.
‘Fuck it,’ he said at last. He turned and headed back down to his car.
Cianna leaned her forehead against the door, and eye to the peephole, watching as the cop walked away from the door. ‘He’s gone,’ she said. It didn’t make her feel any better. ‘What now?’
‘We wait,’ Saunders said.
She turned to look at him. He was over by the window, looking out on the street below. He opened the window a little, stuck his head out, looked down both sides of the building. ‘Is there a fire escape?’
‘At the end of the hall,’ she said. ‘But I’m not sure I would trust it.’
He went to the door to the apartment, looked through the peephole. Once he was satisfied there was no one out in the hallway, he opened the door and looked down toward the fire escape, then pulled his head back in.
‘Is there any other way up or down from here, other than the stairs or the fire escape?’
‘I periodically think about jumping,’ she said.
‘I’m serious.’
‘I’m not?’
He looked sharply at her. ‘You think this is a game?’
‘No, I don’t. My brother’s the one who is out there being held by that giant psycho – which is why I have a hard time just sitting here and waiting.’
‘Sirus Stillwell is the least of your brother’s problems,’ Saunders said.
‘What the fuck does that mean?’ Cianna demanded. ‘What is going on?’
‘I don’t know yet,’ Saunders said. ‘But whatever it is, Stillwell is only a small part of it. According to the information we got from the terrorist communiqué, the Taliban believe your brother has stolen the “Heart of Afghanistan”.’
‘What’s that?’
Saunders shook his head. ‘We’ve never known for sure, but my guess is that it’s this dagger. All we know is that it is a relic that the Afghan people believe control their destiny. They believe it has great power.’
Cianna nodded to the dagger. ‘That knife has great power?’
Saunders walked over and unwrapped the shirt protecting the dagger. ‘It’s possible that’s what people believe. I don’t know why. I’ve been trying to decipher the markings along the edge; trying to figure out whether there is some significance I’m missing. I haven’t pieced it together yet. But I can guarantee you that there are people far crazier than Sirus Stillwell involved in this. And they are likely to show up here; so I need to know how many ways there are to get up and down from here. Do you understand?’
She stared at him. ‘Just the staircase and the fire escape,’ she said. ‘There’s no other way in or out.’
‘Good. Do you have a phone?’
She nodded.
‘Is your number listed in the phone book?’
Another nod.
‘Good. The only question, then, is whether they’ll call, or just show up here. One way or another, though, once they realize Charlie can no longer help them, they’ll reach out to you.’
‘Are you sure?’
Saunders nodded. ‘Are you ready to deal with people like this?’
‘Yeah,’ Cianna said. ‘I’ve dealt with them before.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Detective Harvey Morrell chewed on the inside of his cheek as he surveyed the wreckage inside the bar. Blood-covered broken tables and chairs, knocked to the floor. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said. ‘Looks like the 99 in Charlestown back in 1995.’
‘The Luisi hit?’ McMurphy said. ‘You were there?’ Morrell nodded. ‘I was low man on the organized-crime squad going after the Winter Hill Gang back then. I coordinated with the Charlestown force. I’m telling you, it didn’t look any worse than this.’
‘Except the bodies weren’t moving,’ McMurphy said. ‘You gonna talk to Spudgie?’
‘Yeah, in a minute. I want to talk to Gruden, first.’ Two of the wounded men had already been loaded into ambulances and driven to the hospital. Carlos McSorlly had lost around a gallon of blood from the gunshot wound and had gone into shock even before the paramedics got there. He was rushed to the emergency room, but the suspicion was that he would recover. One of Miles Gruden’s regular bodyguards had also been taken away unconscious. His head had hit the corner of a table so hard it had split open. His prospects for recovery were less rosy.
Miles Gruden was sitting on a chair, attended by a paramedic. His head looked like it had been stuffed in a blender, and his arm was hanging at an odd angle. He was being checked out before they moved him. Morrell made his way over.
‘Miles,’ he said. ‘How’s things going for you?’
Gruden looked up. ‘Morrell. You still on the job? I’d have thought you’d be dead by now.’
‘Says the guy without a face.’ He leaned down to get a closer look at the wound. ‘Holy shit, Miles, what the fuck happened to you?’
‘I was shaving,’ Gruden said. ‘I slipped.’
‘You were shaving your eyelids?’ Morrell pulled over a chair and sat down in front of Gruden. ‘C’mon, Miles, you’re really gonna protect the guys who did this to you? Jimmy’s in the hospital, and from what they say, if he ever gets out, he’s gonna have to have someone spoon-feed him strained carrots for the rest of his life.’
Gruden winced as the paramedic touched his face, shining a light into his eye. ‘Jimmy always liked carrots.’
The paramedic stood up. ‘He needs to get more fully checked out at the hospital,’ he said. ‘He’s got at least three broken ribs and a mild concussion. The rest of it is superficial.’
‘You call that superficial?’ Morrell said, pointing to the carnage of Gruden’s face.
The paramedic shrugged. ‘It’s not going to kill him.’
‘Maybe not, but it’ll make it hard to get a fuckin’ date, eh Miles?’ Morrell chuckled at his own joke.
‘Fuck off, Morrell.’
‘Look, Miles, not for nothing, but the way I see it, your guys are the victims here. You let us know who did this to you, and we can go get ’em. Why not let us take care of this for you?’
‘We can take care of ourselves.’
‘Doesn’t look that way tonight,’ Morrell said. ‘You really want a war over this? That’s not gonna help Jimmy. He worked for you, what, fifteen years? You’re gonna let that go?’
Gruden looked away. ‘I ain’t letting shit go.’
At first Morrell thought Gruden was just looking off into space, but after a moment, he realized that the man’s attention was focused. Morrell followed his gaze and saw Nick O’Callaghan off in a corner talking with one of the officers on the scene. ‘Spudgie got something to do with this?’ Morrell asked.
Gruden’s eyes snapped back to the floor. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Spudgie didn’t have nothin’ to do with this.’
‘You sure? It looked like—’
Gruden cut him off. ‘Spudgie didn’t have nothin’ to do with this,’ he said adamantly.
‘Okay, okay,’ Morrell said. ‘But just so you understand, you say Spudgie doesn’t have anything to do with this, and then he turns up dead or missing next week, I’m coming after you, and it won’t be for an arrest. You get it? I’m not kidding about that.’
‘I get it, Morrell. Spudgie’s got nothing to worry about. This ain’t about Spudgie.’
‘What’s it about, then?’
Gruden just shook his head. The paramedic wheeled a gurney into the bar and stopped it in front of the man. ‘I gotta take him to the hospital now. You can ask him any more questions there.’
‘You gonna talk to me at the hospital, Miles?’ Morrell asked.
Gruden looked at him as he settled onto the gurney. After a moment he looked away. ‘No,’ he said.
The paramedic wheeled Gruden away, and Morrell watched him go. He hadn’t expected to get any information from the man. That wasn’t the Southie way. You didn’t talk to the cops in this neighborhood; that had always been the rule. But there was something in Gruden’s manner that was unusual. Walking into the scene, Morrell had assumed that he was dealing with a fairly simple gang rivalry. After his chat with Morrell, though, he was beginning to suspect that was wrong. There was only one gunshot fired, and most of the damage was inflicted by hand. It seemed there was something more at play. As Morrell walked over to talk with Nick O’Callaghan, he wondered what it was.
Sirus Stillwell sat in the car two blocks up from the little bar down by the water in South Boston. He was behind the wheel; Ahmad Fasil was in the passenger seat next to him. One of Fasil’s men was in the back seat. They all looked out at the lightshow down the street. It had died down a little; there were now only two police cars and one ambulance parked out front, the blue of the police lights tinged by the red of the ambulance lights. When they had first pulled up, there had been at least six emergency vehicles, and it had reminded Sirus of the Fourth of July fireworks displays they used to have in his hometown. It was his favorite holiday, and the celebrations of the American spirit every year had instilled in him a deep unconditional love for his country.
Now, though, the lights angered him. They were so close to completing their mission, and yet at every turn it seemed that fate was against them. He could feel Fasil seething in the seat next to him. Under different circumstances, the man’s displeasure might frighten even Sirus. Sirus had seen what the man was capable of when displeased. At the moment, though, Fasil needed Sirus, and they both knew it.
‘Maybe Phelan was lying,’ Sirus offered, to break the silence that seemed to suffocate them all.
‘He was not lying,’ Fasil said. ‘The relic is there.’
‘Maybe. Maybe not. Even if it was there at one point, though, chances are it’s not anymore. Not with all that activity.’
