by David Nees
“Maybe he wants to make you sweat for a while before he takes you out,” Frank said without humor.
Joey looked over at him. “Why the fuck you say that?”
“He shot Angelo in the head in front of the restaurant. Angelo was standing right next to you. Now he shoots out your windshield. You think he’s that bad a shot, he missed you twice?”
Joey sensed Frank enjoyed twisting a knife in his ribs.
He turned to look ahead. “I don’t know what to think. All I know is I’m the only one getting targeted.” He paused. “You really think he’s playing with me?”
“Question is, when is your number up?”
“Maybe we should give the police more help?”
Frank looked over at Joey with those dead eyes. “You think Vincent’ll go for that?”
“So I just wait around to get shot? That’s fucked up.”
Frank shrugged and drove on in silence. Joey got on his nerves. Frank knew killing…close up. It didn’t bother him. He knew he was different but he didn’t care. He’d rather be a cold son-of-a-bitch than a punk like Joey. Joey was all bluster and toughness when the deck was stacked in his favor. Now he was beginning to wilt under the pressure.
A smile almost cracked open on his face as he thought about how Dan was messing with Joey before he killed him. Frank was sure that was the end game. In a way it was a shame that he couldn’t do it, but he didn’t doubt Dan could…and would.
When they arrived at the Gardens, Detective Marty Singleton was there talking with Vincent.
“Joey, come in, you’re one of the people I want to talk to,” Marty called out.
Joey walked into the back room looking at Vincent. His boss’s expression gave no clue as to what was going on.
“Where were you this past Tuesday?” Marty asked before Joey could ask Vincent anything.
“Why you want to know? Who cares where I was?” Joey was buying time until he could figure out what to say.
“I care, answer the question,” Marty replied, now less friendly.
“And if I don’t? What are you charging me with here? I do something wrong?”
“Joey, just answer the question. I can take all of you down to the station for questioning, get your lawyer involved, maybe get other people involved. I’m sure Vincent here doesn’t want to go to the station and I’m sure he doesn’t want some other people brought into the act.”
Vincent nodded to Joey, who stood for a moment, still not knowing what to say.
“We were all hanging around here at the restaurant,” Frank said.
“Who the fuck asked you? And who are you?” Marty shot back.
“That’s Frank Varsa,” Vincent said. “He works for me, keeping an eye on the restaurant, especially with what’s been going on lately.”
“That’s convenient,” Marty replied. “Vincent, we have some of your guys in the morgue from that shootout at the warehouses. This is getting out of hand. I’ve got five people killed and two wounded.”
“I know. I visited those guys yesterday. It’s a shame. Someone seems to be attacking my business. Did you check on my competitors?”
“You’re the only one I know who competes this way in business.”
Vincent pointed a finger at Marty. “You may not think that could happen, but you should still check them out. We need the police to protect us from attacks like this.”
“I’m touched. So all of you were here minding your own business when this shootout occurred?” Everyone nodded. “If that’s so, what were those guys of yours doing at the warehouse?”
“They were keeping an eye on things…you know, since all this started.” Vincent spread his hands in an expansive gesture.
“What about the weapons I found on them? They’re not registered.”
“Lieutenant, I don’t know anything about them. I hire the guys to watch out for my business, I don’t supply them with weapons. If they get them without licenses, I don’t have anything to do with that. You have to ask them.”
“You mean the ones that are still alive. I plan on doing that as soon as they’re able to talk. In the meantime, if I find any of your finger prints on the weapons or car, I’ll have you arrested for supplying false testimony.”
“We ain’t under oath,” Joey finally spoke up.
“I can arrange that real quick if you want. Now, you want to change your story?”
Joey shook his head.
Marty turned to Vincent. “Vincent, get these guys out of here, I need to talk to you alone.”
After the others left the room, Marty continued, “Look, we know what’s going on. We don’t have to be coy with each other. We’re aware of this guy Dan and how he might be connected to these shootings. The question is whether or not you’ll help me get to him and put a stop to this. Captain Donovan is very nervous and so are a few politicians, some of whom are regulars at your card game.”
Vincent stared straight back at Marty. He wasn’t all that bad and brighter than most. “You must be getting near to retirement. I’m sure this isn’t what you wanted.”
“Don’t worry about my retirement, but you can be sure, this isn’t what I want to spend time on—one criminal going around killing other criminals. It’s starting to look like a gang war. And the next thing you know, civilians are going to get killed. That’s what I really don’t want to happen. So help me out.”
“I’d like to, really. But you know it don’t work that way—”
“You take care of your own dirty laundry, right?”
Vincent nodded.
“Well, he’s not part of your dirty laundry, so this is different. And, another thing, the FBI is involved now.”
Vincent looked at him with sharper interest.
“Yeah, they came in after the card game holdup. What they’re after I don’t know, but it isn’t the players. There could be a lot of heat coming your way. Now what can you give me? Help me shut this down.”
Vincent thought for a moment. He figured it could be a dangerous move, but he needed something to change the balance, something to start putting Dan on the defense. “Lieutenant, you’ve interviewed my guys who were ripped off, did anything stand out?”
“Like what?”
“They all gave different descriptions. Yet we both figure it was one guy, Dan Stone. He’s using disguises.”
“Really?”
“Seems obvious to me. Check with the victims, get their descriptions and start looking for those people. It might help.”
“Why wouldn’t he just change disguises?”
“He probably does, but I’m thinking he has a limit.” Vincent shrugged. “You asked me to help. This is what I got. What else you gonna do?”
Late Friday night, Dan slipped up to Joey’s front door. In a plastic bag he had a dead cat—road kill he found on the street. He took it out and fastened it onto Joey’s front door with a large wood screw. Joey would find it in the morning. On the cat, he pinned a note saying, “I’m coming for you.” Dan figured the gesture might help spook Joey further.
That same night, Dan drove out to Vincent’s house. He lived in a newer suburban neighborhood, large homes with large lots. Some of the homes, like Vincent’s, had walls and a gated driveway mimicking a more palatial estate, but the effect didn’t quite work out on the lots. Instead of an impressive statement, it looked contrived.
Weeks before, Dan had followed Vincent home. Vincent had gotten lazy over the years—lazy or careless. He drove home by the same route every day. Dan just followed him part of the way and then dropped off. The next day he waited near where he dropped off and, sure enough, Vincent’s town car would come along. In a matter of four days, he managed to track him all the way to his house.
It was three in the morning. Everything was dark and quiet. Being Saturday morning, the whole neighborhood would be sleeping in. Instead of everyone rising around six to head off to work, people would be getting up around eight to enjoy a moment of relaxation before the family weekend activ
ities began. He parked a block away from the house and carefully approached it on foot, keeping to the shadows. He was dressed in black jeans and a black hoodie covering his face. Vincent’s gate was strong and locked—not there just for decorative effect. He scanned the house with his night vision scope. There were motion sensors mounted high on the walls, aiming at the yard. From what Dan could tell they had overlapping fields of cover. Probably go around the whole house. Detectors and flood lights. Trip the sensors and the lights go on, along with an alarm inside.
There would be no outside alarm to wake the neighbors. If Vincent was smart there would also be cameras which would provide live video record of the intruder.
Looks like I leave my calling card on the front gate for now. He took out a dead skunk he had collected days earlier and put in his freezer. It had a note pinned to it which read, “Are you next?” Dan hung the skunk on the gate and quietly retreated back to his car.
He drove over to New Jersey and parked in the rented garage space. It would be 7 a.m. before he got back to his apartment. Fatigue pressed heavily on him, dragging him down emotionally as well as physically. He was wreaking havoc on Vincent’s crew, disrupting their cash flow, killing or wounding their soldiers and making life unpleasant for everyone around Vincent. And he guessed he was beginning to terrorize Joey. The game had to end in Joey’s death. Yet, as he moved closer to that moment, he felt no rush, no sense of anticipation. Killing Joey had begun to lose its emotional energy. It now seemed to be something he had to do, a task to complete. What lay beyond, he couldn’t tell and didn’t want to think about. There was no “beyond” for him…not yet.
Chapter 32
It was a small, cramped office in a corner with no view, but it was better than a cube. Jane Tanner smiled at the thought that this tiny space measured her ascendance in the world of the CIA. Small indicators, small victories. We take joy in them when we can. She had worked for the agency for almost ten years now.
Jane had grown up looking for excitement. After college she tried some teaching jobs, but got bored with them. Always a good researcher, when she saw an ad for Internet research, she answered it and found herself working for the CIA. Of course her family and friends couldn’t know. As far as they were concerned, Jane worked as a network administrator in some consulting firm. Something boring and, if questioned, it had the cover of a government contract complete with security demands so she could not really talk about it.
When she had tired of reading wire reports, looking for kernels of information, threads that could lead to something important, she lobbied to move over from the DI, Directorate of Intelligence to the National Clandestine Service, formerly the Directorate of Operations. She was elated at being accepted, but wondered three months later during her training at the Farm whether or not she had bit off more than she could chew. She relished the excitement of field work and was good at collecting assets. There was something about being a woman that made it easy for her to connect with the strange misfits she handled in the spy business. The informants were a mixed bag and often needed a delicate, even empathetic hand. Good, bad, or mediocre, they were out there alone and she was sensitive to that isolation and danger. Many opened their hearts to her and became more effective under her guidance. Now after six years overseas, Jane was back at Langley.
The modern CIA was less and less involved in gathering human intelligence, HUMINT it’s called. Assets were not as carefully selected and they often were unreliable. Worse, there were incidents of double agents penetrating the system and compromising operations. The culture at the agency evolved more towards trolling the internet and sending out drones to do the dirty work—wet work. But drones were not always the best solution, in spite of their ability to strike from a distance. They sometimes created collateral damage. And now Congress was beginning to get all righteous about their ever-increasing use. The program was getting its teeth pulled and the bad guys were not being taken down.
Jane’s new boss, Henry Mason, had read a research paper about using unorthodox methods—some would say old fashioned—to do some of the dirty work that had to be done. The service could call on the guys in the SOG, Special Operations Group. They were mostly ex-military people and their operations were done following those protocols. They did fantastic work but they were not the type of operators that could mingle in the streets of different countries, locating and removing targets. That was assassin work and it needed a special kind of operator.
So now Jane was back in Langley trying to start a new program, one involving great risk to her and her boss in this new politically correct climate. Henry didn’t seem to care. He was old school and would be out in five years. He worked in the NCS. Henry was under the Special Activities Division (SAD). He directed black operations under the Psychological Operations sub-section. Black ops were operations that could not be attributed to the CIA or the US. Sometimes they were aimed to mislead and point to a different organization or country.
Henry had decided to start a new deep cover operation under his section, one that had a specific purpose and one that no one but he and the person he would put in charge to run the op would know about. He wanted to strike back at the enemy before he was put out to pasture. What Henry was going to try to implement was a program to take the fight to the terrorists. To eliminate dangerous operators that SAD identified. There would be no attempt to turn them, or even spy on them. He was going to take them out: terrorists, gun runners, and the people who financed those operations. It was to be a disruptive program, eliminating key people that allowed the terrorist networks to operate.
Henry was deep enough in the CIA structure that his work would not involve the Deputy Director of the NCS or others at even higher levels. The program was small enough to avoid their oversight. The compartmentalization also gave them cover which suited Henry’s purpose. With his long tenure and good record he was able to get the head of SAD, an old colleague, to approve a modest budget for a “research” program in black field operations that could be buried within the larger field ops budget.
Henry had come to know Jane from her days running assets overseas. He had liked how well she supported them and how well they had performed under her care. He had sensed in Jane a similar desire to take the fight to the bad guys, so he had pulled some strings to get her back to headquarters to put her in charge of this new operation.
After some discussion, Jane signed on. It may have been career suicide, but Henry had guessed right; she was frustrated and wanted to strike the enemy. Now for the past two months, Jane’s challenge had been to find capable assassins who were not so amoral that they would turn on her or the agency when a better offer came along. It had been a difficult search so far; she needed something more than just mercenaries.
She stared at the file on her desk, thinking it might be the key to moving this new operation forward. Maybe the answer was in here, however unlikely that seemed. It was a stretch, but Jane was frustrated and ready to try stretch options.
Someone was taking out members of the mob in Brooklyn. The press kept talking about multiple people, but the file indicated that others thought it was the work of one person. Whoever was involved was very good at what they were doing. There were sniper level shots and a gun battle that had left five mobsters dead and two badly wounded. The file even had a name for the probable shooter, Dan Stone. He was an Iraqi veteran and had been a trained sniper. The problem for the police was that no one could find him. He had to be good to do what she read in the report, and he had to be good at avoiding detection and capture with both the mob and the police looking for him. But she wondered what his motivation was for what he was doing? The answer to that question would go a long way in determining if he was the right guy.
Just then her phone rang.
“Tanner, here.”
“It’s me, Fred,” said the young man who had given her the file. “I just wanted to update you on the file I dropped off. It seems the FBI is now working on the case. Not sure what t
heir interest is at the moment, but I thought you should know.”
“Thanks, Fred.” Jane hung up and went back to the file. After some minutes, she made a decision. She needed to find this guy before the cops did.
Chapter 33
Vincent’s wife, Sheila, opened the front door to see her girls off to school. She had turned off the security system and unlocked the gate. The security rituals were something Vincent insisted on. Sheila thought they were excessive, but had acquiesced years ago.
She had met Vincent sixteen earlier, when he was a street hood looking to join the mob. Becoming a “made man” —a wise guy—was the only goal Vincent ever had. They always got the best tables at restaurants and didn’t wait in line at the clubs. Even the hoods who weren’t made men enjoyed some of the privileges if they were connected to a known mobster. In fact, that was how Vincent met her.
Sheila and some girlfriends were standing in a line on the sidewalk one night, waiting to get into one of Brooklyn’s hot clubs when Vincent and his buddies walked right past them to the front of the line. After a few words with the doorman he let them in like they were VIPs.
Two nights later, Vincent and two other guys had walked up, while Sheila and her girlfriends were again standing in the same line. Sheila smiled at the recollection. She had called out to him, “Hey, big guy, how about gettin’ us in?”
Vincent had turned to look at her. She knew what he was seeing—a well built, dark haired beauty smiling at him with a bold, saucy look in her eyes. She was with three other girls, all bleached blondes with big hair. Sheila stood out with her dark, curly hair in proud contrast to the dime-a-dozen, fake blondes in the line. Vincent had been intrigued by her looks and attitude so he went over and within a minute, Sheila and her girlfriends had been escorted into the club.
One thing had led to another and Sheila had found herself thinking about Vincent more and more. She had found out from some friends that he had been thinking about her the same way. She was different, he told her later. She wouldn’t let him get her in bed. She would say, “My momma told me a man won’t buy the cow if you give him the milk for free.” She smiled at the memory. What she said might have confused Vincent, but the practical effect was that he wasn’t getting laid.
