Viper jk-2

by Michael Morley

  'The stuff he showed me was smart. He knew all about Criminal Geographic Targeting techniques, jeopardy areas, overlapping distance-decay functions. He'd certainly done some studying.'

  'So we can't rule out that he's just genuinely interested in solving these cases?'

  'No, we can't. At this stage, I don't think it wise to rule anything out – or rule anything in, for that matter.'

  'Which makes him one of two things -' said Massimo.

  Jack finished the sentence for him. 'I was thinking the same. Misunderstood or murderous.'

  All three reached for more pizza. They needed the comfort food.

  25

  Centro citta, Napoli The black Mercedes S280 slid silently through the streets. Its heavily glazed windows stifled the snarls of city traffic.

  Bruno Valsi rode in the back, Sal the Snake beside him, Tonino Farina up front and Dino Pennestri behind the wheel. Farina and Pennestri were both made men in their late twenties. Trusted members of the Finelli Family who'd been delighted to become the first members of Valsi's own crew. In the mind of the new Capo Zona there was nothing that Farina couldn't extort with his brutal fists, and no wheelman that Pennestri couldn't better.

  But Valsi's mind wasn't on them. As they drove to his first business meeting of the new week, he was preoccupied with the growing tension between himself and the Don. Having Sal the Snake as a shadow was bad enough, but being denied the right to recruit Alberto Donatello and Romano Ivetta was much worse. It was disrespectful. And then there was the old man's less than coded warning about making sure his fat daughter wore a permanent smile on her face. Prison had taught Valsi to be patient, but he wasn't sure how much longer he could bite his tongue and swallow his pride.

  'This is it, boss,' said Pennestri, pulling up outside one of Italy's biggest call girl agencies. The driver stayed put as Farina peeled out of the passenger door. He opened a rear door, his eyes scanning the street before Valsi eased himself out and put on his black suit jacket.

  The building in front of them was made of crumbling unpainted stone. It was five storeys high, each storey boasting a row of windows that opened inwards behind rusty iron shutters.

  The stairs stank of dog piss. The lighting was so dim they couldn't see their feet. The Finelli Family owned the entire block, spending little on appearances while maximizing the money they milked from sex lines and escort bookings.

  Valsi had stayed up all night, studying the operation's payment books. The manager, Celia Brabantia, was on the take. The accounts showed an unusually steady flow of income. There were no ups and downs. No surges during times when the hotels were filled with conventions, exhibitions and tourists. No falls during the bleak winter months. Valsi figured that Celia passed on what she thought was a reasonable whack and then had the nerve to keep the rest for herself. Mussa! Now he'd teach her a lesson. One she'd never forget. The thought pleased him. Excited him. Violence was his drug. It didn't matter whether it was a man or woman who was suffering, just providing he got his fix.

  Farina didn't so much open the office door on the top floor as bang it off its hinges. Half a dozen bored and bedraggled women slumped over silent phones jumped in their seats.

  'Where's your boss?' hissed Sal.

  The girls looked terrified. They all guessed who their visitors were and understood this wasn't a social call.

  A Czech woman with short blonde hair and a long nose that spoiled an otherwise pretty face slid out of her seat. 'I'm Kristen. Celia's in the office at the back. Shall I get her for you?'

  'We'll get her ourselves.' Sal pushed past her. Farina followed.

  Valsi smiled. Sal had no style. No flair. 'You have to excuse him – Mondays are not his good days,' he said as he drew level with her. 'In fact, he doesn't have any good days.'

  Kristen smiled back. He had a nice mouth. Good body too. 'Shall I get you some drinks?'

  Valsi shook his head. 'Not now. But I'll get you one, when I'm done here.'

  Kristen tried not to look too interested. 'I'm working late, and I'm not sure my boss will give me time off.'

  Valsi laughed. 'By the time I've finished with your so-called boss, believe me, you'll be able to take the whole damned week off.' He turned away, cracked his knuckles and headed to the office.

  26

  Laboratorio di Scienze Sorrentino, Napoli Forensic anthropologist Bernardo Sorrentino put his freshly manicured hands around the back of his head and shook out his long, black curly hair. The shoulder-length mane was his trademark. That and the black Gucci sunglasses he always wore whenever there was a photographer or TV camera around. The forty-two-year-old double divorcee had recently had one ear pierced, and wore a small thousand-euro diamond in it. Much to his disappointment this hadn't attracted a single column inch of comment.

  The man the media called Il Grande Leone stared down at the monstrous mosaic of blackened bones laid out before him. On one brightly lit, large white marble table, lay the partially articulated skeleton of the woman who had been identified as Francesca Di Lauro. On an adjacent worktop were more of her blackened and splintered bones, some as small and fragile as pieces of eggshell. Given that the police had an ID there was now no point in piecing them together, but Sorrentino would do it anyway. To him it was like not completing a five-thousand-piece jigsaw, you didn't give up just because you could see what the picture was halfway through. His personal assistant, Ruben Agut, was already exhausted but was also committed to finishing the job. Sorrentino had picked the twenty-four-year-old straight from university. He was gay and Spanish and the anthropologist considered him to be yet another exotic accessory that would draw attention to himself. 'I'm going to get a lab coat,' he told him. 'Then we'll take those photographs and shoot more video.'

  Ruben let out a deep and telling sigh. He was bored rigid with being the Great Lion's not-so-great gofer and was planning to quit and return to his native Barcelona. He and Sorrentino had had sex once. 'Purely an experiment in bisexuality,' his boss had called it. It had left Ruben feeling cheap and worthless. Before getting the camera he opened the recently arrived lab reports. He and Sorrentino had managed to unearth not only bone, but also dried organs and semi-fried muscle. These had been testable, they'd both been certain of that. It was a common mistake to presume that fire was the best means of destroying a body – far from it. The flames never destroyed everything of evidential value. Nothing did.

  Ruben flipped open the paperwork. The results lifted his mood. He'd correctly identified pieces of liver, kidney and lower intestine.

  But what he saw next almost brought him to his knees.

  The young assistant slumped over the documentation and double-checked the summary. His stomach turned. At times like this, he was sure he should be doing something else.

  Ruben was still catching his breath when his boss returned. Sorrentino was buttoning up his newly starched and pressed lab coat, watching his own reflection in the window as he walked past. 'What is it? What's wrong?' he asked, almost sensitively.

  Ruben moved back from the worktop and pointed towards his discovery. 'You were right. The material you picked out was from a uterus. The extra DNA profiling confirms that Francesca Di Lauro was pregnant.'

  27

  Campeggio Castellani, Pompeii The black waterproof anorak and trousers that Franco Castellani wore for garbage collection helped him disappear into the rainy darkness of the night. He slid from shadow to shadow around the campsite, checking on the safety of the guests. Or, at least, that's what he told his grandfather he did. For years he'd been prowling. Feeding on any flash of naked female flesh that he could find. Summer was best. Many young couples came to the site to be alone and he'd often see them lost in their lovemaking. He longed for the same. Ached for the sensation of sex. The mysterious closeness he'd witnessed.

  In the past, Paolo had brought him hookers. The first had been his age, maybe even younger. She'd fled as soon as she'd got a good look at him. The second had been in her forties. As old and cold a
s his runaway mother. She was drunk and ridiculed him. Laughed at his withered face, his buck teeth and birdlike body. Asked if Bird Boy had got a worm for a cock? He'd have killed her if Paolo hadn't stopped him. At times like that – times like now – he felt more dead than alive.

  Franco was poor and he was ill, but he wasn't stupid. He understood much of what the doctors had told him. Werner Syndrome was a rare and cruel disorder caused by missing proteins and damaged genes. It made him look old – very old – long before he should. It was responsible for him being smaller than most kids at school, but it hadn't really kicked in and done its terrible damage until he'd reached puberty. Then it had turned his body to Plasticine. Reshaped him in its own terrible way. His hair was already greying and thinning. His hands were becoming clawlike and mottled. The sickness would only get worse with age and would soon make him vulnerable to a range of cancers, heart disease and diabetes. Doctors wanted to carry out regular checks and tests on him, but he shunned them. The worse it got, the less care he took of himself. The more he needed to stay warm and infection free, the more he desired to wander in the freezing rain.

  Tonight the downpour was so cold it made his face burn. Through the gap in the curtain of a caravan that people had just moved into, he saw the most beautiful woman in the world. Her hair was damp from the shower and she wore a white towelling robe. Franco slid back and felt his heart pound. From inside the van he heard someone shout her name. 'Rosa. Rosa, your dinner is ready.'

  Rosa.

  Franco spoke her name in the dark, cold wetness of the night. Rosa. His breath smoked white in the light from her window. Rosa. Even saying her name excited him.

  His thoughts ran wild.

  Rosa.

  He knew exactly what he wanted to do to her. And he could barely wait for the chance to do it.

  28

  Grand Hotel Parker's, Napoli Jack kicked off his shoes and slumped on to the hotel bed. It needed new springs or a better base. He'd barely slept last night. Before he'd left New York he'd filled Howie in on Creed and why he was heading to Naples. As he dialled his number he hoped his old partner wasn't too juiced to remember.

  'Hi there, H. You sober?'

  Howie Baumguard croaked a laugh back down the line. 'You joking? I left sober 'bout the same time you left charm school.'

  Jack checked his watch, it would be just after seven p.m. in New York. 'What wild evening are you cranking up for yourself?'

  'A couple of trays of Chinese slop. A few Buds. And I'm twenty minutes into Apocalypse Now.'

  'Terrific. "I love the smell of Napalm in the morning."'

  '"Smells like victory,"' returned Howie.

  'Man, that's a grim movie.'

  'Grim, but brilliant. You wait two friggin' hours for Marlon Brando to come on screen and, when the thing's over, all you can remember is him.'

  Jack recalled the classic Coppola epic and Brando's chilling Colonel Kurtz. 'Wouldn't you be better with something lighter?'

  'Only other thing I've got is The Grinch Who Stole Christmas,' said the big guy. 'My son left it on top of the TV after his last sleepover.'

  'You up to helping me with something?'

  'Sure, what d'you want?'

  'Remember the creepy Italian guy I met at the conference – Luciano Creed?'

  'Kind of.'

  'He stayed at the Lester. You know the place?'

  'Yeah, I know it. Not exactly Trump Towers.' Howie found a pen down the side of the settee and used the cardboard lid from the Chinese food tray to write on.

  'And that's a bad thing?' Jack would rather sleep on the street than at Trump. 'Would you take a ride out there and have a look around the nearby bars, clubs, check out the hotel again? See if he had any friends, visitors, such like while he was there?'

  'You mean friends that get paid by the hour and never stay for coffee?'

  'Yep, those are the ones I mean.'

  'Okay. What's he look like?'

  'Shit. He looks like shit. Small, thin, bony, five-five maybe, a hundred and ten to a hundred and twenty pounds, really dark beard line -'

  'Designer stubble?'

  'No, more Bluto black. Like this guy could never shave clean. I've got a picture from the cops over here; I'll email it to you.'

  'Fine. I'll hit the street tomorrow. That okay?'

  'That's great.' Jack's voice grew serious. 'Howie, I need a break here. Girls have been going missing. Maybe even getting murdered. It would be good if you gave up the sauce – good for you too.'

  His friend let out an exasperated sigh, the kind he used to reserve for his nagging wife – now his nagging ex-wife. 'Don't worry, I won't screw up on you. My fat ass will be on the case and will do good.'

  29

  Secondigliano, Napoli Luciano Creed stood by a window in a slum apartment he'd rented in an area that the locals call Terzo Mondo, the Third World. It bore no relation to the false address he'd listed at the Lester in New York. For the moment he wanted to stay away from the cops. Soon he'd be ready to show himself again. But not yet.

  His mind drifted as he watched neighbours in the street below. They were all dressed in their best clothes, heading off to church for a wedding.

  Secondigliano was a poor, drug-infested neighbour-hood in a north-eastern suburb where unemployment and crime were high and cops never came unless their sirens were wailing, their guns cocked and they had a big supply of body bags. This was a neighbour-hood where drive-by shootings weren't uncommon. Where any attempted arrest could result in officers facing a mob of hundreds of violent protesters. Put simply, for many cops, this area was out of bounds. A strict no-go zone. Creed had grown up here. He knew its alleyways and escape routes better than any cops, even the carabinieri. Naples was an obligatory posting for most of the military, a rust-belt city that they were sent to for a year or two while they clawed their way up the promotional ladder towards the big jobs back in Rome as Colonello, Generale or even Comandante Generale.

  Years back he'd dreamed of being a law enforcement officer, using his brain and his energy to catch the bad guys. Now, well, now things were different. Very different.

  Loud cheering and clapping in the street broke his thoughts. The bride appeared from the neighbouring building. Confetti blew in the chilled air. Voices shouted their best wishes. Kisses on her cheeks. A considerate friend gathering the train of her long white dress. A proud father waiting in the back of a rented black Bentley, ready to give away the apple of his eye. Creed turned his back on the merriment. On the floor of the rented apartment, beneath an unshaded light bulb dangling from an exposed flex, lay his collection. Photographs of all the missing women, old photocopies of police reports dating back years, a map of the Bay of Naples marked with the places where they'd lived and small faded clippings from local newspapers reporting their disappearances. None of them had even warranted more than a paragraph in the local paper, let alone made the headlines. He thought long and hard about the women, their murders and what the police were now doing.

  Nothing.

  That's what they're doing. Nothing.

  And that big-shot Jack King had no idea what he was up against.

  No idea at all.

  Well, he'd teach him. Teach him and the carabinieri not to ignore him. He'd give them a lesson they'd never forget.

  30

  New York City Howie Baumguard woke with a hangover the size of Grand Central Station. It was so big he reckoned it could be seen from space. But despite the pain, he hit the streets. All day he pressed flesh and pounded pavements. He re-interviewed the Polish receptionist who had taken a shine to Jack. He bought coffee for beat cops who worked the neighbourhood. He shook up informants who infested the local strip joints and pick-up bars.

  By mid-afternoon he wasn't only clear-headed, he was enjoying himself. Back to your roots, Big H, this is what you do best. And he wasn't just bragging, he really was good at it. Somehow people opened up more to fat guys with a sense of humour. It was something he'd learned long ago and
he'd regularly shared these words of wisdom with every FBI medic that had tried to get him to diet.

  As the afternoon clouds darkened, he was satisfied that he had enough scraps of information to start to put together a good picture of Luciano Creed.

  Then things took a turn for the worse.

  Three blocks from home he cut through a back alley to save time. And that's where it all went wrong. He stumbled straight into a good old-fashioned New York mugging.

  Two black teenagers in hooded sweats had cornered a tall woman with short, spiky blonde hair. One was barking orders and holding what looked like a gun. Howie knew the hoodies had at least theft on their minds. If they felt lucky, then they might just roll the dice and go for rape as well.

  The woman was holding a thin cardboard carton, literally hanging on to it for dear life.

  Howie took a deep breath. No longer an FBI agent. No longer the bearer of a badge or a gun. All he had was fifty pounds more weight than both of the punks put together. That, he decided, would have to be his weapon of choice.

  'Give it up, an' your fuckin' money!' screamed the bigger perp. 'Fucking bitch. Give it me, lady, or I'll put a fucking cap in your shitty white head!'

  Howie slid along the shadows. Stuck to the cover of some overflowing dumpsters. He could tell the muggers were as jittery as hell, no doubt crackheads desperate for their next score. 'Jus' fuckin' whip the bitch and get her money!' shouted the smaller one.

  Howie was still pinning down a game plan when his cellphone rang.

  The hoodies' heads cranked towards him.

  He had no choice but to break cover. Rush them now or get shot at.

  Howie found he had all the speed of a rhino with a hernia. But, fortunately, about the same weight and strength.