Was it all in his head?
Some kind of short-circuit, the same circuit that usually let him see Ghost Sam.
If it was in his head, how could he fight against it?
Was he blind for life…and therefore no longer a werewolf?
Chapter Twenty
DiSanto
Shit.
This wasn’t going to help him here or at home. He was already paranoid, fearing he had Heather Wilson’s musky smell all over him, and now Jessie—Doc Hawkins, as he liked to refer to her—had a little problem.
Okay, a major problem.
She’d killed a guy. One of them.
“Christ,” he blurted out when she told him. Now he understood why he’d had so many voicemails and missed calls from her, but he hadn’t been paying attention to his phone.
No, last thing he’d been paying attention to.
“Christ,” he repeated. “What the hell was he doing?”
“Well, I didn’t ask him, did I? He was clearly about to turn. He was naked. I…I had no choice. Did I? I’m so confused. I thought maybe we’d gotten rid of them.”
“Werewolves?” he whispered. “Hell, not hardly. I’ve got a feeling Nick’s just poked the hornet’s nest with a very short stick. He keeps winning these little skirmishes, but don’t you feel there’s more going on than we can see?”
Shit, what was he rambling about?
“Maybe…” she said, tentatively.
He got back on track. “Listen, what did you do with the body?”
“Nothing.” She paused. “Well, I covered him up with leaves and drove his truck to a remote spot on one of the old logging roads up here. Otherwise, I just left him. Usually I’d be on the phone to the sheriff’s office and report what happened, but I can’t very well do that and expect anyone to believe me, can I? And even if I could spin it that he was threatening me, there’s too much weirdness. The fact that he’s naked, the silver in the wounds.” Her voice softened. “I really don’t think I can do anything but get rid of the body, and I don’t know how.”
“Did he have a phone?”
“Yeah, I got it. He made some calls just today, to a 702 area code.”
“Crap,” he said. “That’s Las Vegas.”
There was a pause as that sank in. “Oh…”
“Has it gone off?”
“No, not that I’m aware, but it could be in silent mode. I’ll check, but if it goes off I’m not going to answer it, so…”
“Okay, we better assume somebody’s noticed your guy’s not answering, or will notice soon. Somebody else might show up.”
“I have the Vatican blade—one of them, Nick has the other—so I can deal with it, I guess. But Rich…” Her voice cracked. “I don’t want to have to do this again.”
“I know, Doc, I know.” He felt stupid, but what else could he say?
Did this mean the Bastone family, what was left of them, was making a move for the casino again? Or was this personal, just a little payback for the Doc’s role in thwarting their last bid? He had to talk to Colgrave—organized crime was her beat. He told Jessie.
“Okay, that makes sense,” she said, sounding calmer. “Then what? What do I do?”
“Then I guess I’ll have to come up. You tried Nick how many times?”
She told him.
Shit.
Either he’d gone off the grid—and off the books again!—about something, or something had happened to him. Lupo was not one to ignore phone calls, especially not from Doc Hawkins. He’d made her life miserable and complicated, sure, but he was crazy about her. Hell, DiSanto could have been crazy about her himself, so he understood. Although his problem was the size and shape of one Heather Wilson. Still, it applied. Sometimes the course of true love just doesn’t run so smooth, right? Paraphrasing the Bard.
None of this could help Jessie, though.
“So maybe we got two problems,” he said, reiterating what he’d just thought through.
There was a long hiss of exhaled breath. She said, “Okay, I’ve got enough to worry about, and now you’re saying something’s happened to Nick.”
“Not saying that, but you had to be thinking it.”
Her silence confirmed it.
“Okay,” he continued. “I’ll check with Colgrave, tonight or tomorrow if I can’t find her, then get on the road as soon as I can. And Doc?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t panic. We’ll figure it out.”
They clicked off.
He drove way too fast from the Third Ward and that damned loft where he had left his pride and self-esteem and hit the precinct, hoping the goddamned task force guys were out in the field, or getting laid, or eating brats and cheese somewhere.
First thing he did was check his locked drawer, where all that circumstantial evidence against Lupo was stashed. It was secure.
Better find a new hiding place for this shit.
He didn’t know what he was going to do with it, if anything. Ever. But he had it anyway, and he planned to keep it.
Time to check for Colgrave. She sometimes pulled some night duty or stuck around late to finish up something.
He stood from his desk, exited his cubicle, and within a half-dozen steps he found Agent Barton blocking his way.
Fuck.
Just the person he wanted to see…not.
He tried to go around the Fed, but the guy danced with him and he was stuck.
Barton was smiling, the predatory non-smile he always seemed to display when dealing with either DiSanto or Lupo.
DiSanto had no choice but to stop. He could see from the corner of his eye that the new IA guy, Roman, was standing in his doorway, obviously interested in this tableau.
Christ, everybody was hanging around.
“Heading somewhere important, Detective DiSanto?”
“Yeah, the can.”
Crooked smile. “Isn’t it that way?” He pointed in the direction from which DiSanto had come.
“I need the special stall,” said DiSanto, pointing the other way and smiling back with the same bullshit grin.
“Ah, don’t let me stop you.” Barton waved the detective past. But as they drew even, the Homeland Security agent added, “You know where Lupo might be hiding? He’s ducking us.”
“No, I don’t know. He doesn’t check in with me.”
“You sure? I thought you guys held hands while pissing.”
DiSanto blanched but walked away without slugging the bastard. He noticed that, farther away, Roman was still interested, staring at him.
He decided to avoid Colgrave for now and instead hit the washroom as he’d said he was doing. When he exited, Roman was right there, apparently about to head in. But blocking his way.
This is ridiculous. Now what?
“Detective DiSanto, isn’t it?”
He knew damn well it was, but DiSanto just nodded.
“You’re looking a bit harried. Something going on? Anything I can help you with?” He grinned in a way that made DiSanto’s buttocks clench in a most unmanly way.
So far Roman was filling old Griff Killian’s shoes perfectly, as no one DiSanto had talked to liked him one tiny bit. But then, that was Internal Affairs—cops weren’t supposed to like the cops who watched them. Still, the guy did have a way of skulking around like Dracula or something…
Shit, is he one of them?
DiSanto realized suddenly that he would forever have to think in such terms, because his whole world had changed when Lupo had come out, as it were, and then suddenly the fuckin’ creatures were everywhere.
For now, though, he had Jessie Hawkins to help. Lupo wasn’t anywhere to be found. Really, other than talking to Danni Colgrave, what else could he do?
“Uh, no thanks,” he said to Lieutenant Roman, who was giving him some kind of vulture-eye. “All good and quiet on the Western front.” Stupid clichés, sometimes they bugged even him.
“Just wanted to mention that you can feel free to come talk to me anytime,
Detective.” There was that grin again. DiSanto shuddered imperceptibly. He hoped.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“See that you do.”
Whatever that meant. DiSanto sidled away and finally decided it would be best to call Colgrave from a safe location. Maybe best not to be spotted together right now. He went out to the lobby and dialed her phone, then spent fifteen minutes on the call. They managed to get on the same page after a bit of wrangling, and he hung up thoughtfully.
The music made him jump.
His phone again.
Jesus!
He glanced at the screen before answering. Marla Anders? The new shrink? Now?
“Uh, hello?”
Colgrave
That call was disconcerting in more than one way.
What had Lupo stumbled into?
She’d told DiSanto his partner had decided to head north, stealth-mode. But she didn’t figure he would refuse calls from the love of his life, either.
So the conclusion had to be that something had happened to him. Maybe he’d been in the crosshairs and they just hadn’t figured it. But they should have known. And what DiSanto said the doc had been forced to do…for one thing, it meant they had been moving on her. Maybe moving on them both.
She ran her hands through her hair, worrying at the scalp until it hurt.
Sometimes she was her own worst enemy, especially when she was about to embark on something bad. Something not quite kosher, as DiSanto would probably say.
She’d agreed to help, though, so now she had to make a plan. For all she knew, it was too late. But she couldn’t let DiSanto swing in the breeze. Off the books was the only way to go—there was just too much they couldn’t tell anyone.
They’d lock me up if I tried to explain.
She had to find a way to shove this whole dark op under the umbrella of the new concern regarding organized crime’s push into the state’s Indian gaming. The chatter was there, all she had to do was hook into it. She had some connections, and the most of the nation’s law enforcement community was keeping an eye on resurgent mob activity, so the changes to the Bastone Family had been noted.
Hell, she knew this monitoring by both feds and locals was on-going, so she was only getting ahead of it, and if it could serve as an excuse for her to get involved with whatever was going on with Lupo, then all the better. What he’d told her before leaving was startling, not least because of how far back his story stretched, and how wide the implications were. Or might be. Even he wasn’t sure how much was folklore of one sort or another, and how much was reality.
But she had seen a fair share of reality that didn’t seem possible, so who was she to wag her finger at it?
She unlocked the large file drawer of her desk. Inside was a gym bag with some of her off-book gear. She’d been involved in more than a few questionable ops in her career, always willing to skirt the law, the end justifies the means. Dirty Harry Syndrome, a former lover had called it…
Maybe.
Inside the bag there was an Uzi submachine gun with a dozen loaded 32-round magazines, plus a couple off-duty weapons, .40-caliber Glocks and extra mags for them. And there were a few more goodies not currently endorsed by the Milwaukee homicide division, but she’d always had connections.
She zipped the bag closed and pulled it out, then selected a heavy military-style parka from her old-fashioned wooden coat tree. Gloves, a heavy sweater, a knit cap…she was almost ready.
DiSanto said he was driving overnight, but they should meet at one of the Mexican diners just south of downtown.
Lupo had indicated he was heading north, flying solo, clearing his head. So now she was going to join DiSanto on a trek to find out if he’d fallen prey to some mobbed-up guys looking for revenge. She noted that Joe Rabbioso had fallen off the radar pretty quickly, and if Lupo was right and the guy had healed up, now she now knew where he might be. Even so, she checked on the BOLO she had put out on him, but there was nothing yet. As for the rest of his prior Bastone crew, they were either dead or scattered to the winds, which meant either he had no one or had recruited anew. When she’d told DiSanto this, earlier, he had gasped.
“If he’s recruited from Wolfpaw, then we could be dealing with a bunch of them…” he said.
“And they don’t die easily,” she muttered.
“No, they do not.” He looked around, making sure no one could hear, and raised an eyebrow. “But I do have a stash of the right kind of ammo.”
“Hope it’s 9mm,” she said.
“Most of it. We’re good.”
Then he had called Jessie Hawkins, Lupo’s lady friend. Colgrave liked her—liked her a lot—but she felt funny, since she’d started to feel that uncomfortable pinprick at the pit of her stomach when thinking about big, gruff Nick Lupo.
Felt a little like betrayal. Did she want to go there?
“Well, let’s go see if we can get him back.”
“Hopefully he’s just sitting on his couch, chillin’ with one of those fancy drinks of his, watchin’ a movie, and his phone fell in the toilet.”
“Yeah, I don’t buy that either.”
DiSanto was grim-faced. “Hey, we can hope.”
They discussed a plan. They couldn’t very well simply take off together without some sort of reasonable excuse.
“I’ll drive up first,” DiSanto said. “Jessie’s problem won’t solve itself, unfortunately.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’ll figure it out when I get there. Lupo taught me to stop playing by the rules, ‘cause the rules are made by people who don’t know the score. I mean, I wouldn’t have agreed a year ago, but now I think I do.”
“Hell, I wouldn’t have agreed a month ago,” said Colgrave. She smiled but it held little humor. “Even so, I’ve seen and done enough to know where I stand when it comes to rules.”
“Yeah, I thought you and Nick were more on the same page than you even knew.”
He was sitting on the edge of her desk when he said it, and somehow the mundaneness of what was happening started to register. As if they were discussing last night’s episode of whatever the hell people who had time watched on television. She didn’t have time, really, but she could at least grasp the feeling.
By the time DiSanto had left, she had spelled out just how she would get them cover with the new OC chatter. She’d been given a fair amount of latitude, and she meant to use it. He had promised to call, and now that he had, their plan was coming together.
“Where the hell are you, Lupo?” she muttered now. They’d both continued trying his phone, but it went straight to voicemail. Between the two of them—and probably Jessie Hawkins—they’d left a hundred messages by now.
It was time to figure out what had happened to Lupo.
Before it was too late.
Maybe it already is, she thought. She wanted to beat back the thought, but it was out there in her brain, rattling around. She tasted a bitter taste on her tongue. She’d bitten it.
Chapter Twenty-One
Franco Lupo
On the Freighter Zeniča, crossing the Atlantic Ocean
December 31, 1945
Christmas came and went and the ship slowly steamed across the Atlantic, bearing southwest to begin aiming for the South American coast.
Things had cooled between Franco and the priest, who now acted as if he were a prisoner while the young man stalked the ship’s corridors and attempted to make friends with the crew. Havlav had kept quiet about their shared midnight mission, and if anyone missed the two original passengers, no one said.
A scratchy radio in the officers’ mess played some Christmas music, and that was the extent of the festivities, along with a more or less festive meal of some kind of fowl and various side dishes based on potatoes and root vegetables, of which the larder had plenty.
The woman did not show for dinner, but continued to take her meals alone, although occasionally she donned a full-length fur with a hood and made he
r way to the ship’s railing to smoke long American cigarettes. When she bumped into Franco she smiled and nodded, but conversation was kept to a minimum.
Franco was bursting. Every time he saw her his groin reminded him painfully that she was the most beautiful, sultry, and stimulating vision of a woman that he had ever seen, on the screen or off, and he wanted her. For her part, she sometimes winked at him and half-smiled as she sidestepped him and walked away to be on her own. He ached to follow her, to grab her and run his hands over her, his lips finding her neck, her cheeks, her lips opening…
Is she one of them?
The question burned in the pit of Franco’s stomach—and lower—and he began to sweat through his sleepless nights, wearing hooded eyes the rest of the day, walking the cold corridors as if her image was summoning him to her but he could never reach her.
At mealtimes, the officers had subsided their conversation when it came to politics, and soon it seemed the voyage itself and the often inclement weather that surrounded them were the only safe topics. For his part, Tranelli ate his meals in silence after a quick silent prayer and stumbled away from the table to return to the cabin. Franco made small talk with his elders, but his attention was elsewhere and soon they began to talk amongst themselves without addressing him at all.
On New Year’s Eve, everything changed.
The dinner was mostly a repeat of the Christmas meal, with the addition of various sweets afterwards such as dried figs and nuts, crumb cakes, and a surprise: two well-preserved panettoni, the traditional tall Italian holiday cake. There was some cheap French champagne and Italian moscato, beer for the nonbelievers.
Franco’s heart skipped more than a beat—a whole measure of beats—when the woman entered the mess hall wearing one of her furs, long woolen trousers and fuzzy fur-trimmed boots. All conversation faded away as she looked around (never yet having visited the mess), located Franco, and immediately approached him…to the accompaniment of an immediate pained jealous gasp uttered by most of the other men in attendance.
Wolf's Blind (The Nick Lupo Series Book 6) Page 16
