by Adam Dunn
“More, what the fuck’re you doin’?”
The center of the grommet came free, revealing a hollowed-out compartment behind it. More reached inside and pulled out what appeared to be an unmarked disk case. He cracked it open for a moment, then shut it and tossed it to Santiago.
Who spake thus: “Holy shit.”
The mother lode, trails of tabs. There was enough in this one disk case alone to put the kid down for decades. Santiago wondered how big the Narc Sharks’ haul was. Whoever the kid’s boss was, his operation must be huge.
More came down off the swivel chair in one fluid silent motion and stood beside Santiago at the desk. Beside the keyboard was a crumpled printout of an e-mail conversation between the kid and a woman, probably the Boricua chick judging from her name, the top line of which read: THERE’S REALLY NOTHING MORE TO SAY. Beside this, along the paper’s edge, which was wrinkled from having had something colorless spilled on it and later dried, was scrawled a single word: vivisection.
More was standing on the bed probing at the ceiling plaster when the kid came through the door, behind which Santiago silently stood. He recoiled in horror from the ragged-looking man on his bed holding a huge knife and turned for the door, only to find two hundred twenty pounds of Dominican blocking it. The badge on a chain around the big man’s neck did not seem to register. The kid spun back to face the white guy, maybe to try to reason with him, as Santiago knew he would.
“You’re the one who got thrown out of that party behind the library,” said the mangy-looking maniac with the evil-looking knife. His voice sounded wet and rusty.
The kid spun back around toward Santiago.
Someone had definitely worked the kid over, Santiago thought. Greenish bruises, several days old, covered almost one whole side of his face, while the other was misshapen by fresh swelling. Farther down, on the side of his neck, was a livid flesh wound only partially concealed by gauze, the tape coming loose. Over the years, Santiago had seen plenty of burns, both self-inflicted and the other kind.
“You’re the one from Barneys,” he stated. He couldn’t believe it; he’d seen the kid less than a month ago, flirting with a cute Latina saleswoman on the fourth floor named Janet Nuñez, who’d loudly and bilingually declined Santiago’s own advances the previous week. “Guess what we just found.” Santiago waggled the disk case at the kid.
Who looked like his head was going to explode. He opened his mouth to say something, but only a sickly sort of gurgle came out. More stepped silently off the bed and came up behind him. Although he hadn’t seen him do it, Santiago was greatly relieved to see that More had sheathed the knife.
“Who’s Nightclub Guy?” asked the bum through a throaty rattle.
“Y-y-you’re the one from the bar, Broome Street,” the kid sputtered.
“Who is he?” More repeated.
The kid turned and raised a finger toward Santiago. “And y-y-you were in the cab, F-F-Ford H-Heifer—”
More drove the stiffened fingers of his right hand into the kid’s right kidney, folding him up like a lawn chair. More caught him on the way down, wrapping his left hand around the kid’s jaw and cheekbones. He bent him backward over his knee. The kid made a noise that Santiago had heard before.
“More.”
Fingers tightened around the kid’s face, driving the insides of his cheeks between his teeth. “Who’s Nightclub Guy?”
The sound coming through the kid’s nose went up two octaves.
“More, you’re hurting him.” Santiago took a step forward.
“No, that’s not hurting him. This is hurting him.” More slipped a thumb around the kid’s jaw, under his tongue, then drove it straight upward toward the soft palate. The kid screamed through his nostrils as tears coursed down his face.
“More, stop it!” Santiago was halfway to them. He saw More pull something out of his pocket with his free hand. Santiago’s gun was already out, but he wasn’t quite sure who to aim for.
“Get some whiskey,” More rasped, “we’ll have ourselves a down-home barbecue.”
And he flicked open a battered old Zippo (Santiago could make out an eagle, a globe, and an anchor on one side) and thumbed up a huge blue-tinged flame two inches from the kid’s bulging eyes.
There was a low-pitched wet rumble, accompanied by a noise like cardboard boxes being torn open, and the kid’s pants and the carpet around his feet turned wet and dark. The smell stopped Santiago in his tracks. For the first time ever, Santiago saw a true emotional expression on More’s face: rank disgust. More let go and stood up and back, and the kid sank into his own product, crying and babbling incoherently.
Santiago looked at More in disbelief. He had never seen someone literally scare the shit out of someone else, and the hollowed-out gnawing sensation he’d felt in the interrogation room came back over him. Time lost meaning for him again, and he wasn’t sure how long they stood there, watching the kid in his fetid puddle. But at some point, Santiago waved More off and holstered his weapon. Gingerly, he helped the kid to his feet. “Come on,” he said numbly, “come on.”
The kid eventually did stop crying, although he continued making vague noises somewhere between sobs and gasps to himself. He made odd little clicks as he got to his feet, and strange wet sounds as he made his way to the bathroom.
And he screamed like a dying rabbit when he tried to close the bathroom door behind him and More kicked it down, hinges, hasp, and all.
Now it was Santiago’s turn to be mute. Everything he had seen, heard, and found himself robotically participating in since they’d broken into the kid’s apartment conspired to rob him of speech. A cold, logical part of himself had looked at the various angles and permutations and deduced that More’s plan made sense, especially given the manpower constraints. The self-preserving, rationalizing part of him held that this was a sure way to get his Second Grade. A purely avaricious part of him said, Hey, fuck it, think of all the credits you’ll rack up when this is all over. OCID, here we come!
But a larger, amorphous part of him, one that he thought of as the gray area connecting mind and heart, was shocked and cringing. This was not police work as he had been taught it. More’s actions were well beyond ordinary regulations, even beyond drag rules. They cast aside even basic empathy. More had gone Afghan on the kid. Never mind that it was totally illegal. More had broken all the rules he said he was operating by, the ones he’d supposedly promised McKeutchen to observe. It was … cold. Santiago shuddered to think what might have happened in that apartment if he hadn’t been there to intervene. And now it was only going to get worse.
Once the kid had cleaned himself up and pulled himself together long enough for transport (Santiago insisted that More drive, while he himself sat in back with the kid, who wouldn’t even sit behind the driver’s seat, and huddled in a corner trying to keep out of More’s line of sight in the rearview), and McKeutchen had a chance to talk the kid down, it all came spilling out, or enough for McKeutchen to start mobilizing his troops.
“Nightclub Guy is Reza Varna, our primary target. Bulgarian national, here legally since 1991. He’s behind the brothel Liesl and Turse just took down, maybe some others. Our intel is that he’s also behind the Century Club.” The Century Club was an incongruity, a plush startup in the midst of wrack and ruin. Varna (the kid wouldn’t call him anything other than Reza) had somehow scooped up the space formerly occupied by the big Barnes & Noble on Twenty-first and Sixth. Two floors, over fifteen thousand square feet. And he’d turned it into one of the city’s hottest new restaurant-lounges, with one simple rule: a C-note got you in. Booze, live entertainment (they couldn’t wait to see what that was), whatever was on the menu, one Ben Franklin covered it all. The place had been going gangbusters, there were write-ups everywhere, it had been hailed as a new business model for the times. “But intel reports Varna’s command center is around the corner, behind a copy shop on West Twentieth,” McKeutchen finished.
“Intel” was sitting in one
of the interrogation rooms guarded by Santiago, who told More he’d open fire if he tried to come inside. The kid was a complete wreck. He was rocking in place on a chair, his eyes were pinwheeling, and he was whispering to himself. Every so often he’d blurt out the names of cows and some of the cabbie suspects they’d been questioning, and Santiago eventually put it together that the kid identified different taxicabs by different breeds of cattle. He wondered how long the kid had been frying his brains off Varna’s pills; there couldn’t be any other explanation for how he’d ended up so far gone. The kid’s forthcoming re-up under the Manhattan Bridge, that was a joke; Varna had obviously set the kid up to be killed, and probably would’ve killed the two cabbies they’d picked up if they hadn’t been safely in custody. Which was why he was sitting on the kid for God only knew what madness More was cooking up next, while the Narc Sharks and a mixed CAB–uniform team took the Century Club and a nearby copy shop, supposedly Varna’s HQ.
“Go!” McKeutchen shooed the troops out. He stashed More in his office, then came back into the interrogation room alone.
“This is beyond fucked up, Cap,” Santiago observed redundantly.
“This is true,” McKeutchen muttered. He was watching the kid with sadness in his eyes. Leaning one meaty paw on the table next to him, McKeutchen whispered, “Don’t worry, son. It’s almost over.”
“What is?” Santiago snarled, making the kid twitch. “Don’t tell me that crazy motherfucker sold you on this.”
“Indeed he did.”
“Are you fuckin’ kidding me? He can’t do this! Everything about it is—”
“Kid,” McKeutchen growled, laboriously turning his bulk to face Santiago, “I don’t like this shit any more than you do, but we’re stuck with it for now. This isn’t about Varna, it’s about who’s behind Varna. Whoever More’s handlers are, they’ve been after this guy for years. Right now, while we roll up Varna’s network here, there’s guys from DC working signal intercepts, Reale’s guys from Treasury are going through bank transfers, SAC Totentantz scrambled a priority watch on bridges, tunnels, airports, train and bus stations, and the ports. They’re coordinating with Interpol and Europol, who’ve been working on the routes for the dope and whatever else Varna brought over here. This is big, kid, bigger than me, bigger than you. This one here—” McKeutchen nodded at the kid, who had mucus running from his nose to his chin—“is somebody Varna might just want badly enough to pop up for. I know you wanted to roll with Liesl and Turse on this, but More figures that’s an empty nest. Varna’s probably in the wind by now, but if he’s not, if he sticks his head out for anything, it’ll be to get this kid in order to cover his tracks. You don’t wanna do it, fine. But something like this doesn’t just come along once a week, or once a year, or even once a lifetime. You want OCID, this is your ticket.”
McKeutchen put a hand on Santiago’s shoulder.
“I know you can protect him,” he said quietly, “and I know More will protect you.”
Santiago glanced at the kid—beaten, broken, maybe even insane—and thought, This is how I make my big plan work. Use this fucked-up kid as bait to flush a bunch of Russian gangsters, or whatever Varna’s crew is, so that More can fucking snipe or bomb their asses. And I get to dangle the bait.
Swell.
More said he lived out on the edge of Flushing near Kissena Boulevard, not far from where Victor used to take Santiago and his siblings to baseball games at Shea, before it was sold and torn down to make room for a development project long since gone bankrupt. His apartment was in a crumbling three-story building that stood alone on one corner of a block that had been bulldozed and graded for development, then abandoned when the money ran out. The nearest inhabited building was nearly a hundred yards away. The bottom floor looked like a crash pad for any derelict who—
“No,” More blatted, “I sealed all points of entry and egress. Don’t touch anything. The window frames are wired, the stairs are booby-trapped. Bring the weapons.”
“Wha-wha-what the fuck? Booby-trapped? You mean IEDs and shit?”
“Don’t touch anything,” More repeated in his crystal-clear voice, and Santiago wished the guns he was carrying were loaded. He struggled awkwardly up two flights of groaning stairs, peeling paint, and gouged-up carpeting. The place smelled of dust, old linoleum, and time gone by. Not unlike the inside of their Crown Vic.
“Careful there.”
Trip wires on the third flight. Coño, Santiago thought, I should be getting paid in gold for this shit. “What, ain’t you got a homing beacon for smart bombs someplace?”
“Here,” More said, opening four deadbolts on the third-floor door in a slow, deliberate sequence.
“That was a joke,” Santiago reminded him.
“No, it’s not,” replied More.
The apartment was nearly empty. The western wall had most of the furnishings, if you could call them that. A workbench took up the majority of the lateral space, with two vise grips set into the edge. Some pegboard had been tacked up, and a variety of tools hung from it, most of which even Santiago the machinist’s son did not immediately recognize. On the far end was a laptop computer, encased in the same heavy-duty plastic as More’s cell phone, surrounded by what appeared to be language software modules. There was a green box with a thick antenna and brightly colored buttons on the floor next to this. Next to that was an afterthought of an open kitchen with a hotplate and an ancient refrigerator. On the opposite wall was a closet secured with another four shiny new deadbolts. There was a bedroll laid out in the center of the floor.
Aside from that, the only other things in the apartment were the maps.
Street maps. Tunnel maps. Sewer maps. County maps. Maps of all the waterways in the Tri-State Area (complete with data on depth and currents). Maps of all international, domestic, and commuter airports, heliports, airplane hangars, and flight schools. Maps of ports, docks, and dockside warehouses, marked with notes on offloading capacity, types of cranes, and locations of the railway terminus closest to each. Maps of bridges (large red X’s drawn on the caissons and stanchions, which Santiago figured indicated where explosive charges were to be placed; fucking More). Maps of power stations and electrical grids. Maps of subway and bus routes and traffic signals, with handwritten notes on duration and times of peak volume. Maps of all NYPD precinct houses and surveillance camera locations. Maps of MTA and DSNY motor pools. Maps of IRT railyards, Amtrak, LIRR, and Metro-North routes. Maps of all courthouses, City Hall, federal buildings, and post offices. Maps of hospitals (Santiago noticed a red circle around Mount Sinai, and, to his horror, Esperanza’s name and NTU extension jotted neatly in black beside it). Maps of TV and radio stations, cell phone towers, fiber-optic cable hubs, and wireless dead zones. Maps of every retail branch and corporate office of Urbank. Maps with locations of taxi garages.
“Motherfucker,” Santiago whispered, “you really are going to invade New York.”
“Maybe next year,” said More in a voice that could sell swimsuits in Alaska. “Put the weapons over there.” He pointed to the bench. While Santiago laid them out, he heard More unlocking the closet behind him. More appeared next to him with a hard plastic case with the letters JSCS stenciled on one side in white. Santiago found the speed and ease with which More stripped the Benelli to a handful of parts disturbing, so he turned toward the computer to calm himself.
“I love what you’ve done with the place,” he quipped, trying to sound more at ease than he felt. “You should hang out with McKeutchen, watch HGTV together, pick up some decorating tips.” A thought struck him. “No speakers. How you play your tunes?”
“No music,” More croaked.
A high-pitched keening, very faint, sounded in Santiago’s ears. “You don’t listen to music?”
“No.”
Santiago moved a bit farther down the bench. Farther away from More. Coming around the side of the computer, he noticed the only evidence of any human occupant in this spooky fucking place.
In the photo, More was kneeling, front row center. He was not smiling, but he wasn’t wearing his Fish Face either. He looked … content, or something like it. Santiago wondered how old the photo was.
“Nice picture,” he said breezily, trying for levity. “When was it taken?”
“Right before we were ambushed,” More mumbled. “Ninety minutes after that photo was taken, four men in it were dead. Three others were wounded, including me.”
Santiago felt about four years old. So much for levity. Absently he scuffed his left foot, which made contact with the green box on the floor.
“Don’t touch that,” hissed the Fish Face. Santiago jumped back from the box as though it were radioactive.
“Sorry, sorry, Jesus, man, what the fuck is it?”
“PLGR.”
“In English?”
“Precision Lightweight GPS Receiver.”
“And it does … what?”
More was reassembling the Benelli. “Gives coordinates. We use it for calling in airstrikes.”
