Gray Widow Trilogy 1: Gray Widow's Walk
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Gray Widow’s Walk
Dan Jolley
Copyright © 2016 by Dan Jolley
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be copied or transmitted in any form, electronic or otherwise, without express written consent of the publisher or author.
Cover art: John Nadeau
Cover art in this book copyright © 2016 John Nadeau & Seventh Star Press, LLC.
Editor: Linda Sullivan
Published by Seventh Star Press, LLC.
ISBN: 978-1-941706-40-4
Seventh Star Press
www.seventhstarpress.com
info@seventhstarpress.com
Publisher’s Note:
Gray Widow’s Walk is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are the product of the author’s imagination, used in fictitious manner. Any resemblances to actual persons, places, locales, events, etc. are purely coincidental.
Printed in the United States of America
First Edition
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would not have been possible without the help and encouragement of my family and friends. It’s gone through many different forms, spent far too many years sitting on a shelf, and wouldn’t have existed at all without...
Josh Krach, an invaluable first editor
Belinda Glenn, who spent long, laborious hours scanning every single page of the physical manuscript into an optical character recognition program
Joan & O.C. Jolley and Clint McInnes, who have always been stalwart, supportive fans no matter what
Linda Sullivan, who went through the manuscript with a fine-tooth comb and saved me from a number of embarrassing mistakes
And Stephen Zimmer, who decided to take a chance on a book that other people had described with words such as “too far out there,” “too cross-genre,” and “what the hell were you thinking.”
My gratefulness to you all knows no bounds.
Dedication
For Tracy
My Reason. My Queen.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Dedication
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
EPILOGUE
About the Author
From Bram Stoker-Award-winning Michael Knost
From Bram Stoker Award-winning Michael Knost!
CHAPTER ONE
Preoccupied with thoughts of body armor and blunt instruments, Janey Sinclair locked her apartment door and walked down the ninth-floor hallway of the LaCroix Building to the elevator. It opened with a thunk and an off-key chime after a brief wait, and Janey stepped inside.
Tonight’s the night. Tonight’s the debut.
She knew she was ready for it. Still...her stomach had been uneasy all day, and she had a few hours to go yet before sundown.
A pair of college students already stood in the car, a boy and a girl sharing each other’s personal space, and Janey nodded to them neutrally. They didn’t respond except to stare at her, so Janey watched the red electric numbers until the doors opened again on the ground floor. She suspected the students had stared at her the whole way down; they moved past her toward the entrance, and she deliberately turned her head to avoid any further eye contact. The girl started giggling as the couple left the building.
Janey stopped outside the office door and pulled her rent check from her shirt pocket. She was dressed as she usually did: loose, faded jeans, running shoes, and a hugely baggy button shirt. Her only jewelry, aside from a wristwatch, was a simple silver cross on a steel chain around her neck.
Janey touched her recently and drastically shortened chestnut locks. For as long as she could remember, she had worn her hair in a glorious, curly mane that floated around her head and cascaded down her back. Now the mane was gone, and what hair she had left clung to the top of her head in a thatch of tight, springy coils. She couldn’t deny the functionality—the mask fit much better this way—but she still felt self-conscious about it.
Not that she needed anything new to help her feel self-conscious.
At her first showing she had overheard a buyer talking about her, so she ducked behind a faux Greek column and listened. The buyer, a woman in her fifties with skin baked into leather by years of tanning beds, said, “Not exactly what you’d call a beautiful woman, but she’s got a lot of character, doesn’t she? And so tall!”
Janey put her hand on the office doorknob and began to turn it when a voice from inside stopped her. A man’s voice. Through the door she heard him say, “It doesn’t matter what’s on your work order. I’ve got two tenants ready to move in tomorrow.”
Janey stayed outside and listened, thinking lightly of her behind-the-column eavesdropping at the show. A long pause stretched out, presumably as the owner of the voice paid attention to the speaker on the other end of the line.
“Look. Mr. Hayes. Our check has already cleared. Do you understand me? We have already bought those refrigerators. They are on your truck right now, and I want you to bring them here. To me. Today. All right?”
Another long pause, then a few terse monosyllables, then the sound of a handset slammed back into its cradle.
Janey cautiously pushed the door open.
Behind the desk, which was normally occupied by an affable middle-aged Indian gent named Raj Kapoor, a young man with a mop of black, wavy hair sat with his elbows on the desk and his face buried in his hands. Reams of paperwork almost hid the desktop from sight, and his lean, dark-bronze arms disappeared behind the stacks.
Janey said, “Um...”
The young man looked up at her, and she forgot why she was there.
He was beautiful. Like something out of a myth. His straight jawline and long, thin nose led up to a pair of eyes like the blackest ink. Janey stared at him, and couldn’t stop even as she realized she was staring, and that he saw her staring, and still she stared.
Irritably, the man said, “Yes? Can I help you?”
Janey said, “Uh...”
He cocked an eyebrow. Somehow it made him even more appealing.
“Um, I...”
The young man stood up from the desk. He wore dark jeans and a tucked-in polo shirt that highlighted his narrow waist and flat stomach. Janey tried one more time to speak, and managed to say, “The, uh...I...”
“I guess that’s your rent?” The man moved around the desk toward Janey, who still stood in the doorway, and held out a hand to take the check.
“Yes...uh. Yeah. Yes it is. Who, uh...where’s Mr. Kapoor?”
“Oh.” The man rotated his outstretched hand, a shift from taking her check to offering a greeting. Janey shook his hand dazedly. “I’m his son. My name’s Tim. Dad had to leave for a while, so I’m filling in for him.” He gave her a lopsided grin. “Sorry, I don’t mean to be grumpy. I’m just really new at this, and it’s been a long day.” He paus
ed, and carefully took the envelope out of her hand.
“Oh, sorry.” Janey felt her cheeks burning.
Tim went back to the desk. “Do you want a receipt?”
“Uh...sure, yeah.” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other and tried to find a place to put her hands.
Tim took her check out of its envelope, and when he read her name his whole face changed. He dropped the check on the desk and said, “You’re Janey Sinclair!”
Janey’s forehead wrinkled up. She said, “Uh...”
He bounded around the desk and again stuck out his hand, and when Janey took it, Tim clasped it with both of his as if it were something precious. “I’ve been dying to meet you! I saw your name on the tenant list when I got here a couple days ago, and I couldn’t believe it! Janey Sinclair, living right here in our building!”
“Wuh...um. Yeah?”
He let her hand go and stepped back, as if to get a better look at her. “I saw your paintings! At the Slade Gallery, last week! You’re amazing. That one, that one you did with the little mice? You know which one I mean?”
“Um...yeah—‘Mind of a Field Mouse.’”
“Yes! That was so incredible! I took some art appreciation courses in college, so, y’know, I sort of know a tiny little bit about it, probably just enough to make some horrible mistake and sound like a moron, but your painting reminded me of El Greco. Y’know, ‘View of Toledo?’ With those deep blues and greens?”
Janey started sweating.
Tim said, “I’m sorry. You must have people bugging you about your work all the time. I didn’t mean to attack you like that.”
Blood rushed through her ears. “No...no...actually you’re the first. Outside the gallery, I mean.”
“You’re kidding! Wow.”
Janey started edging toward the door. Her face felt hot. Blazing.
He followed her.
“Listen, I don’t mean to be a nuisance or anything, but I’d love to chat with you more about your work. Would you like to maybe go get a cup of coffee, or a drink, or maybe a milkshake or something after the office closes? And talk?”
Janey’s hand trembled as it closed around the doorknob.
“Um, you’re not being a nuisance, don’t worry, but, I really can’t, I’m sorry, I really need to go now.” She opened the door, quivering like a rabbit.
Tim’s eyes widened. “Oh—no, no, no, I’m the one who should be apologizing, I didn’t mean to—”
Janey darted out into the hallway, and couldn’t look back at him, wouldn’t, would not. As she walked swiftly away, trying not to break into a run, she said over her shoulder, “It was very nice meeting you.”
Tim came out into the corridor after her, but she’d already pushed open the glass door to the street. “Hey! Do you want your receipt?”
“Please leave it in my mailbox,” she called back.
Janey walked very quickly down the street, almost running. Running from him? Better believe it, running from him. She clamped her teeth together and shook her head, appalled at herself. What was that? Flirting?
Shame built up on her shoulders.
Still...
How long had it been since she’d actually sat down and talked with someone? How long had it been since she’d had any significant human contact at all?
She knew how long. She could count it out in years, months, days, hours, minutes. And it could go on longer. Would have to. For Adam’s sake. Still...
With hardly any effort she could see him. Tim Kapoor. His image flashed on the insides of her eyelids.
She’d have to drop her rent checks in the mail from now on. Avoid the office if she could.
Janey stared at her feet as she shuffled down the sidewalk. She didn’t need this. She couldn’t afford the distraction, so soon before her first...what? First foray? First time at bat? She tried to concentrate on her checklist for gear and weapons. It wasn’t easy.
Her fists clenched and unclenched, and the long, steely muscles in her arms bunched and rolled under the skin.
CHAPTER TWO
Hours passed, and light fled from the city.
Muted sounds of late-night Atlanta traffic drifted over the Hargett Theatre’s wrecked walls as two men stood silently, waiting: one very tall, chalk-pale, and pitifully skinny, the other shorter, black, and nearly twice as broad as his companion. Standing side by side, they looked a little like the number 10. A mingled stench of garbage and urine drifted around them.
The taller of the men held a battered briefcase, and they both sweated in the August night’s brutal, steaming heat. They stood among piles of rubble, bits of the past cast off among broken beer bottles and discarded syringes. A light rain had fallen earlier in the night, and now the men stood, motionless and gray, as water collected sluggishly in foul puddles at their feet.
The tall man, a near-skeletonized junkie named Chooley, grunted and closed his eyes. “Steady,” warned the shorter one, and for the fortieth time glanced around, examining the place where they stood.
The Hargett Theatre shut down in 1995, slated for demolition less than a month later. Halfway through the wrecking job, the same absence of money that closed the theatre also canceled the demolition team’s contract. Through the next two decades the theatre lay, half-destroyed, its ragged brick teeth and rusted skeleton bared to the sky. Part of the stage still stood. A catwalk hung from a twisted girder thirty feet off the ground, chopped off like a mangled limb.
The two men waited in the center of the theatre’s dead body while the minutes scraped past.
Another hot breath of wind moved over them, the latest of several, and Chooley the junkie tried to fan himself with one hand. “Shit,” he mumbled. “They ain’t kiddin’ about global warming.”
The other man, Zach Feygen, didn’t respond. Feygen was burly, quiet, in his mid-thirties, with a naturally bald head and russet skin. His voice, when he chose to talk, came out slowly, deep and rough and rich.
After the better part of a year and a series of low-level buys, starting with ten bucks and working up to fifteen hundred, Feygen had finally set up this deal. Chooley, a regular customer of tonight’s target, played an integral part in the proceedings, which led to Feygen’s putting him on the list of departmentally protected informants. As near as anyone could tell, Chooley felt suitably grateful. Though he was articulate enough, for the most part, Chooley frequently lapsed into a kind of detached mumbling.
Over the long months, Feygen heard each link of the necessary chain slowly clink together. For the days leading up to the final deal he hadn’t slept more than three or four hours a night, but damn, he felt good. Along with all the condemning evidence he’d gathered from users and street pushers and wire taps, this buy would, at the very least, take Maurice Tell off the streets permanently. At most, it would get rid of half a dozen of Tell’s major contacts as well.
Almost certainly it would make Feygen’s career. He’d caught himself breaking out in a big stupid grin a couple of times just thinking about it.
Feygen heard the car first, at ten minutes after midnight. Its engine died outside the walls. Four doors opened and closed. Footsteps crunched through the brick and concrete debris, and five long shadows slid up onto a graffiti-covered wall.
Chooley said, “Here they come.”
Maurice Tell led the group of men rounding the corner. Tell stood just a hair shy of six feet, seven inches, and had at one time called himself “Breaker.” Now, at thirty-four, most of the people he dealt with called him “Mr. Tell.” The other men with him clearly deferred to him, and hung back like geese in a V formation, half-concealed by dense shadows.
Tell jerked a thumb at Feygen, but spoke to Chooley. “This the nigger you told me about?”
A muscle in Feygen’s jaw twitched. Chooley hesitated before nodding mutely.
“You’re alone?”
This time Feygen nodded. The microphone taped to his chest itched like a poison oak rash.
“And you brought the stuff.”
Chooley held up the briefcase. His hand stayed steady.
Feygen tried not to eye the case more than necessary. The money it contained was coated with a fluorescent powder, so that anyone who handled it, or even came close to it while it was being handled, would shine like a Christmas tree under UV light.
“It’s here,” Chooley said. “Want to count it?”
Tell smiled—
—like a carnivore—
—and as Feygen murmured, “Oh...shit,” Tell made a decisive gesture with one hand.
Two of the men behind him lifted sawed-off shotguns.
Feygen’s stomach collapsed into a stone-hard knot, and beside him Chooley started shaking so hard Feygen thought he might be having a seizure.
The shotguns leveled at them, and Feygen screamed, “Wait, wait, wait a minute!” but the gunmen already had their feet planted, and the adrenaline saturating Feygen’s blood didn’t seem to work on his abruptly jellied legs. Wide open, away from any decent cover, Feygen knew he and Chooley wouldn’t make it, couldn’t possibly get out of the line of fire, but he tried, turned and lunged to one side, and even as he moved he heard Tell say, “Now,” and screams lashed out against the theatre’s crumbling walls.
Feygen landed face down in scraping bits of broken concrete and pulled himself halfway behind a shattered brick column. He thought, What happened to the shotguns? and peered around the edge of the column at a scene of chaos. Men ran in every direction, fighting…what? One of the gunners, a pale guy with curly red hair, staggered backward and held up empty, bleeding hands.
Now one of the sawed-offs did boom out. Feygen saw the muzzle flash, a flower of fire in the darkness of an empty doorway, followed by another scream. The shotgun flipped out of the shadows and landed near Feygen, splintered and broken.
Curly-hair started screaming, and Feygen realized there was someone in the theatre besides himself, Chooley, and Tell’s gang. Something touched the ground—something gray—in the middle of Tell and his men, and things happened quickly.