Viper jk-2

by Michael Morley

  'Fuuuuck! ' was all the guy with the gun could manage as Howie crashed him into a brick wall, taking down his buddy at the same time. He heard the gun scatter across the ground and took the chance to pound a meaty fist into the face of the youth trapped beneath him.

  Somehow the kid wriggled free and was damned well upright while Howie was still struggling to get up off all fours.

  Howie knew a blow was coming but couldn't stop it.

  A boot smashed into his face. A screen of eggshell-white light slammed down behind his eyes. More blows battered his body.

  'Get the fuck outta here!' shouted one of the hoodies. Their feet slapped off into the distance.

  The big guy lurched to his feet. Vision blurry, heart trying to bust through his chest. He rocked unsteadily. Caught half a glimpse of the woman – running safely the other way down the alley.

  Then it hit him.

  Sharp and hot. A numb pain that caused him to cramp before it exploded into white-hot agony.

  Howie staggered. Put a hand on a wall to stop himself passing out. Reached back to find the source of the pain.

  He'd been stabbed.

  The smaller punk, the little bastard without the gun, had stabbed him in the ass. And the blade was still there. This was both good and bad. Bad because someone was going to have to pick the metal out of his butt, and that sounded a long way from fun. Good because he guessed the wound was so deep that if the knife had come out, then he might already be bleeding to death.

  I mean, Howie asked himself, how the fuck can you put a tourniquet on your own ass? In fact, how can anyone put a tourniquet on an ass?

  He steadied himself against the alley wall. Realized he was barely able to move, let alone walk. He had to think his way out of the jam.

  'Are you all right?' asked a woman's voice.

  Howie peered to his side. It was the dame with the big package. She'd obviously seen her attackers hightail it and come back to help.

  'Sure,' he grunted through clenched teeth, 'apart from this blade in my butt, I've never been better.'

  The woman looked around, and then disappeared behind him.

  'No! Don't touch it! For fuck's sake, don't lay a finger on that friggin' knife.' And to make sure, he awkwardly turned himself away from her.

  'You don't want me to pull it out?'

  'No, no! I most definitely do not want you to pull it out.'

  'Okay, okay!' she sounded panicky.

  Howie could see the shock of the attack starting to roll in on her. 'Take it easy, lady. They're gone. Everything's fine. But I'm gonna need your help now. Okay?'

  'Christ!' she spluttered. 'They could have killed us. I mean, they had a gun and I don't know if it was real but it sure looked real and I never even saw the knife, but God, that's real, I mean, you… they've stuck a knife in you… and you're bleeding, and…'

  'Yeah, lady, I'm bleeding – like a stuck pig,' said Howie, cutting her off, 'and you think we might be able to do something about that? Like maybe call an ambulance and get a paramedic here?'

  'Yes, oh yes. God, I'm sorry. That must hurt, doesn't it?' She glanced to her left and right. 'Oh my, oh no! They've taken my purse! My phone, my cell was in that bag. With my keys, my house keys and things, personal stuff and pictures, and…'

  'Whoah!' shouted Howie. 'Use my phone and ring a goddamn ambulance, and please be quick!' He painfully produced his cell from his jacket.

  'They could have killed me. They could have raped me, or anything.'

  'Lady, the phone!' Howie held it out to her, then steadied himself against the wall again.

  The woman looked as though she was in a trance. She extended her hand in slow motion and took the phone. She flipped it open and stared at the keypad, like she'd never used one before.

  And then, just as Howie thought she was about to punch in 911 – she fainted.

  31

  Campeggio Castellani, Pompeii Rosa Novello.

  Franco had seen her full name written down in his grandfather's Visitors Book. He kept suggesting they get a computer but he was told they were too expensive. A computer would be a relief for Franco. He'd had a stolen laptop for a while, bought it cheap from a Romanian gypsy staying on the camp. It had an aircard and pre-paid Internet access. But the real owner had cancelled the subscription after a few days and Franco had thrown it away in case the police traced it and caught him. For the brief time he'd used it, it had been a window on to the wider world. He'd looked in detail at his own disease, without the staring faces and probing lights of doctors around him. And he'd also tentatively explored the cyber underbelly of sex sites and chat rooms.

  Rosa emerged from her caravan carrying a black sack of garbage. It was full and sharp corners of hidden trash were stretching it to bursting point. He wanted to go over and offer to carry it for her. That's what would happen in the films. That's how the hero would break the ice and get to know the girl of his dreams. Only real life wasn't like that. In real life she'd look at him and be scared. The shock would show in her eyes and she might even drop the whole sack. That's what others had done.

  Rosa wore blue jeans and a red jumper. They didn't meet in the middle and her tummy showed. It stuck out like the top of a muffin, peeping above the rim of its greaseproof paper. He longed to touch her. Press his cheek against her muffin top. Smell it. Lick it.

  The garbage bin was full so she dropped the sack alongside it and sashayed away. Her tight jeans showed her firm legs and what looked like the top of some tattoo on her back. Franco wondered what it was. Whether it stretched down into the crack of her bottom. What it would be like to run a finger over.

  He was still thinking about the tattoo as he picked up her sack of trash and took it away. Precious treasure. He couldn't wait to be alone with it. To be able to secretly touch parts of Rosa's life.

  32

  Ristorante di Rossopomodoro, Napoli Lunch was a first for the three eleven-year-old street kids. Before today, none of the boy soldiers had ever eaten in a restaurant.

  The three friends forked pasta and meatballs into their mouths, barely pausing to gasp for air. They looked at the parents and kids around them, laughing and chatting. They couldn't believe that people lived like this. Happy, full, fat. Stealing from bins at the back of the kitchens was the closest to restaurant food they'd ever been. Opposite them were their heroes, Alberto Donatello and Romano Ivetta. The Camorristi were not eating; they were sipping espresso and talking in hushed tones. Soon the kids would be back on the streets, running the rounds, delivering their small plastic packs of heroin and cocaine. They got no pay for their labour, just food, the hint that one day they could have a future within the System and the most valuable thing of all, respect from their peers.

  'You want some wine? I think maybe I'm gonna take a glass of red.' Donatello poured himself some. He was twenty-seven and looked like a young Al Pacino with a beard.

  'Not me.' Ivetta put his palm over his glass. 'I think I'll go to the gym.' He rolled up the sleeve of his black T-shirt and a tattooed male angel in chains grew in stature as he ostentatiously flexed his biceps. On the opposite arm was one of St Michael slaying a demon. Ivetta's body bore another twenty, all forms of angels and demons, ink-on-skin illustrations of his own mental struggles.

  It had been a good morning. The boys had done well. Their deliveries had grossed a cool three thousand euros. Not a fortune, but the day was only half done and the kids were only one group of the six that Donatello and Ivetta ran. The boys pulled in an average of 5k per day per gang – 30k in total – and they worked six days a week. All in all, it added up to a chunky 180k a week, just short of three-quarters of a million per month. And, if the two Camorristi pushed the kids a little, they should gross almost ten mill for the year.

  Running smack and charlie through a pipeline of juveniles was smart practice. If the kids got caught, they landed tiny sentences, maybe even just court warnings. But if any of the adult clan members were arrested, then they were looking at lock-ups north
of five, sometimes ten years.

  A waitress with blonde hair and dyed black ends cleared plates and handed out dessert cards to the boys. They were barely able to read the menus but the pictures lit up their eyes. They were still pointing and deciding when Ivetta suddenly snatched the cards from their hands and told them to get back to work.

  The kids made no complaints. They grabbed their Nike rucksacks and headed for the door. The youngest doubled back to take a final gulp of his cherry Coke.

  'You should have let them finish,' said the tall, dark-haired man joining them. 'I'm sure we all remember from prison that a well-fed workforce is much more willing.'

  The two henchmen, aware that they were merely older versions of the boys they'd just sent away, ordered more coffees and settled back to hear Bruno Valsi's plans.

  33

  Campeggio Castellani, Pompeii Franco took Rosa's sack to the pit.

  It was long and deep and located in a field at the back of the campsite, more than a kilometre away from the last of the caravans. Grandpa Toni had been rich once and had had big plans for the land. Plans which, like most things in Grandpa Toni's life, had never materialized.

  Only Franco came to the pit. Paolo would help him tour the shops and restaurants, collecting the trash in their old white van. But back at the site, only Franco would drive through the fields, dump the bags and spend hours burning the garbage. He loved nothing more than his fires. The flames soothed him. They broke chains in his mind and let his thoughts fly free.

  Rosa's bag in hand, he slithered down the steep banking, his feet skating in wet mud that had been scorched black. Birds and rats scuttled and flapped, loath to leave the scraps they were feeding on. He put the sack down for a moment and dug beneath his anorak for Grandpa's pistol. The old man had several guns, including a hunting rifle, but the old Glock was perfect for the rats. A fat one spun towards the outside of the pit, running around the circumference like a furry grey ball on a clay roulette wheel. He watched it scarper anti-clockwise, took aim in front of it and squeezed. Boom! Perfetto! Franco felt a surge of adrenaline as blood and skin sprayed into the mud banking. But no sooner was the animal dead than it was forgotten. He'd not come to kill. Not this time.

  The centre of the pit was where he normally built his fires and the far left-hand corner was where he hid his trophies. He sat there now, perched on a giant wooden bobbin that had once been wound with heavy-duty cable. He plucked at the black skin of the bag until it came away. Milk cartons, cereal packaging and tea bags tumbled out. He put them to one side. A cigarette with lipstick on the filter, a teenage fashion magazine, cotton wool with make-up on – he made a separate pile for those. Gradually, he built up a stack of anything he thought might have come from Rosa. Things touched by Rosa. Having items she'd owned made him feel as though he was part of her life. Even if it was only part of what she didn't want any more.

  He unfolded a tissue. It was lightly perfumed and bore the pink outline of her lipstick. He lifted it so the dull daylight illuminated the place where her lips had been. Then he put his mouth against the imprint and closed his eyes.

  Inhaled her perfume. Tasted her kiss. Slowly the tissue paper dissolved in his mouth. He ran his tongue over his teeth and swallowed. A trace of her inside him. Heavenly. Like Holy Communion. A micro-particle of the body and blood of Rosa Novello.

  Franco took more than an hour caressing and sorting Rosa's garbage. He hid his trinkets in the bottom drawer of an old wooden bedside cabinet that he kept in a corner of the pit, beneath a makeshift shelter of boarding and clear plastic sheeting. His den. His sanctuary.

  Finally, he gathered the rest of the garbage from the sack and put it in the centre of the pit. He balled up the pages of an old newspaper and set them on fire. As the flames rose and the smoke spiralled skywards he put his finger to his lips and thought once more of Rosa and how sweet she must taste.

  34

  Grand Hotel Parker's, Napoli Jack finished dinner in his hotel room and waited for Sylvia to collect him. He wanted to see the crime scene at night. See it in the same way he guessed the killer had visited it and left it.

  They met in reception and he saw how, despite her naturally pretty face, the strain of the inquiry was starting to show.

  She came straight to the point. 'The ME's notes are in. You were right. The burning was ante-mortem. Francesca was set on fire while she was alive.'

  Jack soaked it up. 'It takes a special type of monster to kill someone like that.'

  'Special? Is that what you call them?' Sylvia led the way to the garage at the back of the hotel. It was hewn out of a giant hillside, high above the city.

  Jack saw her point. 'I should have said the worst kind of monster. Organized. Sadistic. Relentless.'

  She knew what he meant. 'The kind that doesn't stop unless they're caught. The kind that's probably killed before.'

  'That's exactly the kind.'

  Sylvia lit a cigarette as they waited for the valet to find her car. 'You're not a smoker, I can tell. I'm afraid I'm an addict. I know it's bad. And the more people tell me to stop, the more I have to continue.'

  'Says a lot about your personality.'

  She smiled. 'All Neapolitans are like that.'

  'How so?'

  'Grazie mille,' she tipped the valet as they got into her Alfa. 'We don't like being told what to do.' She stubbed the cigarette out in the tray on the dashboard and sparked up the engine. 'Take seat belts, for example. Hardly anyone in Naples wears one. Even though it's illegal not to. When it became law, the best-selling fashion accessory was a white T-shirt with a fastened seat belt painted on it. When you wore it, it looked like you had your belt on, even when you hadn't. People who had been fastening seat belts for years stopped doing so when it became law.'

  'Shouldn't you know better? Set a good example?' asked Jack, lightly.

  'I do know better. And I'll never wear a seat belt again. Two carabinieri friends of mine were shot dead in their cars by the Camorra. They still had their belts on. The restriction probably stopped them even drawing their weapons.'

  'I'm sorry to hear it.'

  'One of them almost lived. The ambulance turned up really quickly – in fact, too quickly. The killer must have seen the paramedics set to work as they stretchered him away. After one block of lights the ambulance was ambushed. The assassin climbed into the back and finished the job.'

  Jack noticed she'd jammed her army issue Beretta between her legs. Clearly she wouldn't be caught off-guard in an ambush. 'Creed mentioned the Camorra. You think they could be involved in all this?'

  'Could be. They're like water. They're invisible, spread everywhere and hard to avoid.' The Alfa didn't so much join the traffic flow in front of the hotel as rocket into it. Horns blared and moped riders swerved, but Sylvia was unfazed.

  Jack put a hand on the dashboard to brace himself. 'Man, I thought New York was dangerous, but it's Disneyland compared to here.'

  Sylvia smiled. 'The secret of driving in Naples is not to care about what others are doing.' A moped zipped in front of their bumper. 'If you show any weakness or hesitation, then they will take advantage of you. Drive as though you are the only person on the road and you will be fine.'

  From the city they took the A3 autostrada out towards Salerno. Jack continued to ask about the Camorra. 'If the mob are into everything, then how does that affect the way you investigate murders and missing persons?'

  'It's a wall of silence,' explained Sylvia. 'If a Camorrista is involved then none of the clan will talk. Worse than that, if someone from the System is involved then you can bet no one in the city will talk either.'

  After fifteen minutes of congestion-free traffic they began a steep spiralling climb. 'Not far from here, over at Sant'Anastasia, one of the biggest Camorra arms caches was discovered. They'd hidden everything from Uzis to AKs, enough to equip a small army. In fact several armies. The System imports weapons for use here in Campania and also to supply much of the rest of the world.'
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br />   'You have regular contact with your anti-mob squads?'

  'Of course. And we'll reach out to them about this case – when the time is right. They're very busy right now and very difficult to deal with. We need to have more to go on before we knock on their door.' Sylvia spun the wheel expertly into sharp left- and right-hand bends that zigzagged towards the top of Vesuvius. 'During the day tourist coaches rule these roads. When they descend, everyone scatters so they don't get crushed by them.'

  'Is this route used only by tourists?' Jack peered through the darkness at signs advertising cheap restaurants and hotels.

  'No, not exclusively. There are houses, bars and businesses that locals frequent. Some of the workers in the park, or in the restaurants and snack bars, live around here.'

  'Workers on Vesuvius?'

  'Yes, on the volcano. Also in the national park where Francesca's remains were found. And further down in Pompeii and Herculaneum too. Work is hard to find and good housing even harder. If you get either, then you stick with it as long as you can. Nothing lasts forever. In Naples, nothing lasts very long.'

  It took five more minutes for them to reach a lay-by where Sylvia pulled over. They got out and she produced two high-powered military flashlights from the trunk. Jack had expected a big entrance to the park but instead they took a worn path that wound uphill through a cluster of trees.

  'Is this the main way in?'

  'There are several routes, but this is the closest one you can take if you come here by car. This is the way that the man who found Francesca had taken.'

  'The guy with the dog?'

  'Yes.'

  'So it's not necessarily the killer's route?'

  'No, not necessarily.'

  They walked in silence for a while, both wondering exactly who they were hunting. Jack thought of Creed. Had he been here with Francesca? Had he followed her out here? Perhaps approached her and been rebuffed? Had he killed her and returned her bones to the place where she'd rejected him? Or was Creed what he claimed to be – public-spirited and the only person so far to spot that a missing person was a murder victim? Had he not been so obnoxious – so sexually obsessed and twisted – it would have been easier to have believed him. Maybe one of the workers Sylvia had just mentioned was the killer? A tourist guide, bus driver or restaurant worker? They had local knowledge and, given how remote this place was, local knowledge was obviously a factor. Or could there be more than just an organic link to the Camorra, the evil and untouchable shadow that seemingly fell over everyone and everything in Campania?