Storm Demon

by Gregory Lamberson

  Carrie turned on the TV. Lilian’s message had disappeared, and an old black-and-white movie played. She switched to Manhattan’s twenty-four-hour cable news channel.

  A woman in a rain slicker stood beneath an umbrella. “John, this downpour shows no sign of letting up, making it difficult to clear East Twenty-third Street, where the tornado struck two hours ago, killing six people and injuring a dozen others. Two tornadoes touched down just outside the city as well.”

  The broadcast switched to a newsman in the studio. “Thank you, Karen. We’ve just received word that JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark airports have shut down due to the extreme weather conditions.”

  “She’s making sure we don’t fly out of Dodge,” Laurel said.

  “We don’t know how bad this storm is going to get,” Jake said. “Let’s all take showers and turn this office into a dormitory. We could be here for a while.”

  Jake showered first and changed into fresh clothes, then waited with Carrie and Laurel in the reception area. When Ripper emerged from the shower, the two men moved Carrie’s desk across the room, then the sofa bed out of Jake’s office to where the desk had been. The rain, lightning, and thunder continued.

  “You can take my bed,” Jake said to Laurel as Carrie made the sofa bed. “I’ll sleep in my office. I plan to do a lot of research tonight anyway.”

  Ripper pointed at Thunder Ranch in Jake’s shoulder holster. “I want a gun.”

  “So do I,” Carrie said.

  “You can’t shoot the rain,” Jake said.

  They both stared at him.

  “You don’t want one, too, do you?” he said to Laurel.

  She shook her head.

  “I’ll be right back.” He went into his office and closed the door. As he removed the painting from the wall, he wondered if Carrie knew about his cache of weapons. He selected two weapons and the appropriate ammunition, then returned to the reception area and handed Ripper a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver and Carrie an M22 semiautomatic with a four-inch barrel, both in holsters, and set the ammunition on the desk.

  Ripper slid the .38 out of its holster and snapped the revolver’s cylinder open. “You don’t have anything heavier? We should have brought that cannon back.”

  Jake regretted leaving the ATAC as well. “You’re not leaving this office, right? These will do in here.”

  Carrie pulled the small gun from its holster.

  “Do you know how to use that?” Jake said.

  “I’ll show her.” Ripper tucked the .38 into his belt, then picked up the cartridge for the .22, took the gun from Carrie, and slapped the magazine into the gun.

  “Do me a favor and don’t sleep with those. Keep them on the floor under the bed.”

  “You got it, chief.”

  “Try to get some sleep. I’ll watch the monitors from my desk. I may wake you to take over when I get too tired.”

  A weather map on TV caught Jake’s attention.

  “In addition to airport closings, we’ve just received an alarming report from the national weather bureau,” the newsman said. “Unexpected storm conditions in the Atlantic are heading for the Northeast. According to projections, a category 1 hurricane could reach Manhattan by lunchtime tomorrow. Viewers are advised to batten down their hatches, stay off the streets, and stay tuned for updates.”

  Lowering the volume, Jake felt uncertainty swell in his stomach. The fear in Laurel’s eyes told him he had reason to be afraid.

  That only gives us until noon, he thought.

  “It could be a coincidence,” Ripper said. “That storm could break down or miss us altogether.”

  “It won’t,” Laurel said.

  Carrie paced. “What the hell are we going to do?”

  “Like the man said, we batten down the hatches.”

  Jake closed his office door, which he locked with as much discretion as he could muster.

  “Maybe we should have let them go,” Laurel said.

  “I’m not taking any chances. I saw too many people killed on Pavot Island. There’s got to be a way to deal with Lilian.”

  “You can’t kill her.”

  “You keep saying that. I’m not convinced.”

  She looked around the office, stopping at the chair facing the empty space where the sofa had been. “You don’t need to sleep out here.”

  “It’s a small bed.”

  “We can manage. I really don’t want to sleep alone.”

  He gestured at his computer. “I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

  “It will go faster if I help you.”

  He held her gaze. “That isn’t a good idea.”

  A hint of a smile formed on her lips. “I’m glad for you but you could just hold me.”

  “I’m not sure Maria would view that as an innocent gesture between friends.”

  “Judging by the scene she made, I’d say you’re right.”

  “She has a temper.”

  “You haven’t made any commitment to her.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “All right, I understand. Try to get some sleep. If you need me for anything, you know where I’ll be.”

  “Good night.” He watched her go into the bedroom and close the door. Loyalty to Maria wasn’t his only reason for declining Laurel’s offer; he wanted to keep his thoughts to himself.

  He walked to his safe, manipulated the combination dials, and withdrew the laptop. Leaving the safe door open, he set the laptop on his desk, popped in a battery, and raised Afterlife. He glanced at the security monitors, which showed empty hallways and a quiet lobby, then turned the television on and found the weather channel.

  “The hurricane forming in the Atlantic has been upgraded to category 2,” said the meteorologist standing before a screen that showed an animated depiction of the hurricane, “and appears to be heading to the eastern coast of the United States. Hurricane Daria will touch down in New York City sometime after rush hour and before noon.”

  Lightning flashed and thunder boomed, causing Jake to jump.

  It was a dark and stormy night, he thought as he opened Afterlife’s search engine.

  20

  Lying in bed half-asleep thanks to the storm, Ramses tried to ignore the ringing cell phone until Alice kicked his thigh.

  “That’s your phone,” she said.

  Sighing, Ramses sat up and grabbed for the phone but knocked over a bottle of Bacardi instead. “Shit,” he said, grateful he had screwed on the bottle’s cap.

  “Just turn the light on, fool.”

  He hated when Alice spoke to him like that. It was hard enough playing second in command to a woman, let alone one he had to sleep with to attain that rank, but suffering her insults was a true test of his patience.

  Switching on the bedside lamp, Ramses picked up his phone and glanced at its screen. He didn’t recognize the number, which meant it was a new burner. He pressed the Talk button. “Yeah?” He spoke just one word so as not to give himself away to any unfriendly callers.

  “Yo, it’s me,” said a boy with a high-pitched voice.

  Ramses glanced at the clock, which flashed 4:45 a.m. “You just woke me, motherfucker. Be a little more specific.”

  “Sorry. It’s me, Amazon.”

  Ramses had assigned the code name Amazon to Wonder Girl to use over the burners. She was seventeen and ambitious, so he had promoted her to corner boss at the new spot on Avenue B, located two blocks from where Kevin Wilmont and Sapo had killed Darryl Hughes and A-Minus.

  “What up?”

  “It’s been raining all night.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Business is down—way down—and there’s a hurricane coming.”

  “So what you want me to do about it?”

  “We’re soaking wet out here and freezing. Can’t we go home?”

  “Hell no. We just took that corner. Now you want us to give it up without a fight?”

  “I’m just asking. We cold and shit.”

  “Hold that corner and don�
�t be calling me with any more bullshit.” He ended the call, set down his phone, and picked up the bottle of rum.

  “Take those ignorant motherfuckers some umbrellas and hot chocolate,” Alice said.

  “Now?”

  “No, when the rain’s stopped. Of course now. You’ve got to know when to show your people some compassion. Amazon’s new. She don’t know any better.”

  “So I got to go out in this storm because she don’t know to bring a raincoat to work?”

  “No, you got to go out in this storm because I say you do. You’re the one who put her in charge of that corner.”

  Biting his tongue, he got out of bed and pulled on his clothes from the day before; there was no point in showering. He turned off the lamp and crossed the condo, ignoring Shana’s bedroom door and cursing Alice beneath his breath. She wasn’t even that good in bed.

  As he strode through the rain to the garage—he didn’t need an umbrella—Ramses reminded himself that he put up with Alice’s abuse for the same reason he enforced her wishes: he intended to leave her corpse in an abandoned building in the Bronx for rats to feed on and take over her empire.

  Hell, he would have done it already except Alice still had some moves to make, and her upscale life in this tony building had created a layer of security for her that he didn’t feel comfortable penetrating just yet. That was the problem with so many players in the drug trade. They were in such a rush to escape the street they forgot that was where they made their money in the first place.

  It took less than a minute for the downpour to soak Ramses head to toe, which only made him angrier. The rain striking the pavement reminded him of gunfire. He entered the paid garage, his sneakers squishing, got into his SUV, and pulled onto the street. Even with his windshield wipers going at full speed, he had trouble seeing ahead of him.

  He drove downtown through the rain to an all-night pharmacy, where he bought four umbrellas. Then he stopped at Mickey D’s and ordered five hot chocolates at the drive-thru.

  Shopping for youngsters, he thought.

  “Would you like whip topping?” a female voice said over the speaker.

  Fuck the whip topping. “No, thank you.”

  “Drive up, please.”

  The cashier was a pretty black girl with straight hair. He gave her a tip and a smile and fantasized about coming back to see her once he had removed Alice from the picture.

  With one hot chocolate snug in his cup holder and the others in a tray holder on the seat beside him, he encountered little traffic as he drove to Avenue B. He eased down the ratty street with caution, peering through the rain on the windows to find the stoop where Wonder Girl had set up shop.

  A figure detached itself from the darkness: Wonder Girl’s lookout. He didn’t know the boy’s name. Then he saw Wonder Girl standing inside the vestibule of a run-down apartment building, silhouetted by dingy yellow light from a low-wattage bulb.

  A Puerto Rican boy appeared at the passenger window, which he lowered. “Whatchoo want?” the boy said, rivulets of rain running down his face.

  Ramses flicked on the dome light. “You just opened this here shop for business. Is that how you talk to a potential customer?”

  “Sorry. I didn’t know it was you.”

  “Of course you didn’t know. That’s the point. Get away from my car. You’re dripping all over the leather.”

  The boy stepped back, and Wonder Girl, who stood a foot taller than him, took his place.

  “You belong in front of the building, not inside it,” Ramses said. “How are these fiends out here gonna see you?”

  “What fiends?” Wonder Girl said. “Ain’t nobody out here, and if they was, they’d be seeing me inside the building, not outside it.”

  Ramses knew she was right, but he wasn’t about to admit it. He passed the umbrellas to her through the window. “Here. Distribute these to your people.”

  “Thanks.” Wonder Girl took the umbrellas, opened one, and handed the rest to her lieutenant.

  Ramses held the tray of the hot chocolates up as well. “This is for y’all, too.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about.” Wonder Girl beckoned to her second lookout up the street, who came running through puddles. She gave the hot chocolates to the boy, who wore a red hoodie. “Keep one of those dry for me.”

  The boy nodded and shuffled over to the one holding the umbrellas.

  Wonder Girl turned back to Ramses, who gave the last hot chocolate to her.

  “Things will get better,” Ramses said. “Business will be booming.”

  “I hope so.”

  Thunder cracked and Wonder Girl’s face split open, spewing blood all over her hot chocolate and Ramses’s leather interior. As she toppled to the sidewalk, her two lookouts drew their Glocks.

  In the rearview mirror, Ramses saw two figures running across the street, firing handguns of their own, spilling the lookouts across the sidewalk. Ramses flicked off the dome light, shifted the SUV into Reverse, and stepped on the gas. Looking over his shoulder, he sped right into the shooters, hurling their broken bodies aside. Then he stepped on the brakes, which squealed.

  A third shooter ran into the street and fired one shot after another at Ramses’s windshield, which separated into three distinct networks of cracks.

  Sliding down in his seat, Ramses shifted the gear again and stomped on the gas, roaring forward. The SUV slammed into the shooter, who rolled over the hood in a blur and crashed through the fractured windshield like a hit deer.

  Ramses didn’t feel the pain in his chest until he tried to sit up to shove the shooter’s body off him, and then he saw blood fountain out of the hole in his chest.

  Ah, shit, he thought as he lost control of the SUV.

  Jake sat staring bleary eyed at his desktop with the TV on when Laurel emerged from his bedroom. He saved the Word document he was working on and closed it, then opened a file and sent it to his hard drive. Sheets of rain propelled by gusts of wind pounded the windows.

  “Did you sleep at all?” Laurel said.

  “It was hard with that wind and thunder, but I managed to grab a couple of hours.” He burned the document to

  a disc.

  “Did you have any luck with your research?”

  “Maybe.”

  She gave him a look. “I had two and a half years to look for everything I could on Lilian online and found nothing. All I did was become an expert on the superstars whose lives she usurped.”

  He said nothing.

  “Are you going to tell me what you found?”

  “Not yet. It’s more of a hunch than anything else.” Jake ejected the disc and deleted the file from his hard drive.

  On TV, Mayor Connie Krycek addressed reporters in the city hall press room.

  “What’s the latest?”

  “Our mayor’s telling people to get out of town or stay inside. The subways are already flooding and she’s shutting them down. Hurricane Daria’s scheduled to hit at 11:00 a.m. Daria.” Jake grunted. “It should be Hurricane Lilian.” He crossed to the safe and opened it.

  Moving the Glock aside, he set the disc on top of the laptop, then closed the safe and stood. “Let’s check on the kids and make breakfast.” He rapped on the office door, then unlocked and opened it.

  Carrie and Ripper sat at Carrie’s desk, eating cereal and watching the press conference while thunder rumbled.

  “You didn’t wake me up for my watch,” Ripper said.

  “I knew we were safe until Daria touches down,” Jake said.

  Ripper checked the time on his phone. “That should be in three and a half hours.”

  “I’m going to make sure that hurricane never reaches the city,” Laurel said.

  Jake arched one eyebrow. “Oh?”

  “I’m going to turn myself over to Lilian.”

  “The hell you are.”

  “Innocent people are dead because of me. That’s not the kind of atonement I was looking for.”

  “None of thos
e deaths were your fault or mine. Lilian bears 100 percent of the responsibility for them, and she needs to pay.”

  “That isn’t going to happen, and I can’t just sit by anymore. Those tornadoes and that waterspout were nothing; this hurricane could kill hundreds of people, maybe thousands. I won’t have that on my conscience.”

  “You won’t have to. I’m going to see Lilian.”

  “For what possible purpose?”

  “To negotiate with her.”

  “That’s a suicide mission. You have no leverage. Lilian wants me alive, not you. She’ll destroy you without giving it a second thought.”

  “I think I do have leverage.”

  “Tell me what it is.”

  “If I tell you that, you’ll only try to convince me I’m wrong.”

  “All the more reason why you should tell me.”

  Carrie stood. “Let her go. There’s no reason why you should die for something that’s between the two of them.”

  Jake smiled. “I’m not planning to die.”

  “What if you do?”

  Jake turned to Laurel. “You’ll know what to do.”

  “Do you want me to go with you?” Ripper said.

  “I appreciate the offer, but I need you to stay here to watch after Carrie and Laurel—and to make sure Laurel doesn’t come after me. For my plan to work, this is where she needs to be.”

  “The office opens in half an hour, but I’m sure Lilian’s already there,” Laurel said. “I’m willing to bet they all slept in their office, too.”

  “I bet theirs is fancier.”

  Maria entered the squad room dripping wet and blew hair out of her eyes as she hung her coat on a rack and set her umbrella beside it. “Sorry I’m late. The trains are crazy.”

  Reaching for his coffee mug, Bernie didn’t miss a beat. “Be glad you made it in at all. Krycek ordered the whole system shut down within the hour. At least you only had to come across town instead of from the Bronx.”

  “I came from my place.”

  “Trouble in paradise?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”