Epsilon Creed (Joe Venn Crime Action Thriller Series Book 5)

by Tim Stevens

  The sex afterwards had been repulsive to her, like a medical procedure, but necessary. Shelly had given Cronacker a taste, and like any pusher, she knew he’d be desperate for more.

  “You still like me, Wayne?” Shelly put her head on one side and smiled coquettishly, the tip of her tongue caught between her teeth. At the same time she leaned forward a little. Cronacker’s bleary eyes dropped down the front of her blouse, and widened a little.

  Yep. He was whipped.

  She pushed a plate of bacon toward him. “Eat.”

  “I... can’t,” he whispered hoarsely, each word rasping excruciatingly and making him wince.

  “Come on.” She jabbed a fork into a rasher. “You need some grease. Soak up all that stewed crap in your system.”

  Dumbly, Cronacker picked up a piece of bacon and bit into it. His glance darted to the gun again, then to Shelly’s face.

  “So the reason for all of this,” she said, waving at the gun, “is that you saw something on Friday night, Wayne. Something you shouldn’t have seen. Somebody. You took photos of this somebody. And now they want to know what you’ve done with the photos, and what exactly you saw.”

  His mouth hung open and crumbs of overcooked bacon dropped from it to scatter on the counter. Shelly grimaced.

  “Have some manners, Wayne.” She brushed the crumbs onto his lap with the back of her hand. “Anyhow. You know what I’m talking about, huh? Don’t tell me you were so wrecked that night you’ve forgotten it.”

  Cronacker nodded slowly.

  “You were at the Ignatowski woman’s place. The woman who was murdered. And you saw somebody leaving the house. You took a photo of him. Then saw him drive away, and probably got his license plate too.”

  She searched for recognition in Cronacker’s bloodshot stare, and found it.

  “So you’re a reporter, Wayne. An investigative journalist. You’re thinking about what to do with what you saw. How you can use it to your advantage, make it into a big scoop. But I know you haven’t told the cops yet, because otherwise they would have made an arrest already, if you got the license plate. So I’m wondering just what, exactly, your plan is.”

  Cronacker’s mouth worked. Whether he was chewing bacon, or trying to speak, Shelly couldn’t tell. She let her right hand slip a couple of inches closer to the pistol on the counter. Nothing overt, just a subtle ratcheting up of the menace.

  “My guess – and please tell me if I’m wrong about this, Wayne, because I don’t mean to underestimate you – my guess is that you don’t have a plan. You woke up the next day scared shitless. Because you realized you were out of your league. You were sitting on one of the most explosive stories of any journalist’s career, and you suddenly understood that you didn’t know what the hell to do next.”

  Cronacker blinked slowly. Shelly could see she’d touched a nerve. She was right: he hadn’t had a clue what to do next, and he was embarrassed about it.

  “So,” she said, picking a bit of bacon from the plate and popping it into her mouth. “Here’s the deal, Wayne. ’Fess up. Tell me everything that happened that night, everything you saw. Tell me what you’ve done about it. Don’t try to bullshit me at all, because you’re in no state to lie artfully, and I’m a good detector of the truth. After that, we’ll see what we need to do next.”

  “Who are you?” His voice, far from strengthening, had dwindled to a tiny croak.

  Shelly considered the question.

  “I could be many things,” she said breezily. “I’m the hot chick whose bones you jumped last night, and if you play your cards right, I’ll let you do it again. Many times. I could be a friend to you, a friend who understands you and your loneliness in a way nobody else ever has.” She leaned forward, this time not to give him a glimpse of cleavage. “On the other hand, Wayne, if you jerk me around, I may well end up being your worst nightmare.”

  She didn’t move her hand closer to the gun this time. There was no need.

  Shelly pushed the coffee pot toward the half-filled cup at his elbow. “Now eat and drink up. Get some strength back. And start talking.”

  Chapter 13

  Blowfly had had mornings like this before. Many of them. Mornings in which he functioned at something less than the human level, and possibly below that of the higher primates. Mornings when his movements were dictated by instinct rather than conscious thought, because he was incapable of the latter. Usually he was on his own at home during such mornings. Sometimes, when he’d been particularly reckless the night before, he was at work. It possibly explained why he’d never held down a salaried job for longer than a few weeks at most.

  But he’d never had a morning quite like this one. Where a cute girl with whom he’d slept the night before interrogated him at gunpoint over bacon and coffee.

  His muzzy head and bodily agony somehow made it easier for him to talk freely, without calculation. Despite the agony in his head and his throat every time he uttered a syllable, he felt the story pouring out of him.

  About how he’d staked out Ignatowski’s home, desperate for a salacious paparazzi picture. How he’d seen the silhouetted man emerge from the house, turn and stare at him, then escape in his car.

  And how he’d gotten no further the next day, apart from improving the quality of his photos so that the license plate was identifiable.

  Blowfly considered briefly whether he ought to withhold that last piece of information from Melinda. But he quickly decided against it. She’d said nothing got past her, and something about her convinced Blowfly. The girl was clearly batshit crazy, and crazy people were dangerous. He had the feeling that if Melinda detected the merest hint of a lie, she’d pick up that pistol and give Blowfly the mother of all headaches with it.

  When Melinda asked to see the pictures he’d taken, Blowfly remained parked on his stool. He realized he didn’t dare to get up.

  Melinda laughed. “Come on. Let’s take a look.”

  Unsteadily – his hangover was rapidly dissipating, thanks to the wonderfully focussing effect of adrenaline, but it hadn’t completely gone – Blowfly picked his way toward the drawer where he kept his laptop. He took it out and carried it back to the counter, where Melinda sat watching him.

  He opened the file with the pictures he’d taken and turned the laptop slightly to allow her to look.

  “Mmm,” she said. “Not bad. You got a steady hand, Wayne, I have to admit.”

  Despite the situation, Blowfly felt a swell of pride.

  He noticed her peering at the pictures he’d blown up, of the rear end of the white car with its license plate. He got the feeling she was memorizing the number.

  “That’s it?” she asked, when he’d finished flipping through the pictures on the screen.

  “That’s it.”

  She nodded and he closed the laptop. He watched her nervously. Was it enough for her? Was she expecting something more?

  Melinda studied Blowfly, her head cocked to one side. He couldn’t read her eyes. That scared him.

  Oh God, he thought. This is it. She’s gonna grab that gun and spray my brains across the wall.

  He waited for his life to flash before his eyes. It didn’t. He wondered if that was because it had been a life so insignificant his mind hadn’t even bothered to record it.

  Then she said: “Can I trust you, Wayne?”

  Again he did that stupid open-mouthed thing, which he guessed must have made him look like an imbecilic fish.

  “Trust you not to do anything dumb while I make a private phone cal, I mean,” she said.

  “What? Sure.” He pointed to the phone on the wall above the counter. She shook her head, took out a cell phone.

  “Would you mind going in the bathroom?”

  He stumbled off his chair and headed for the john – he needed to pee anyway; all the coffee he’d drunk had gone through his parched system quickly – and after he closed the door behind him, he toyed briefly with the idea of trying to squeeze out the tiny window and reach the f
ire escape beyond. But the window was far too small to fit his girth. He realized she’d probably already checked out possible escape routes, and had concluded the same thing.

  Blowfly pressed his ear against the bathroom door. He could hear her murmuring, but couldn’t make out the words.

  A minute later, pain exploded through his head as she hammered on the other side of the door.

  “Okay, Wayne. You can come out now.”

  He emerged nervously, once again expecting her to be aiming the gun at his head. But she’d left it on the counter behind her.

  Melinda was smiling. It was a mirthless sort of smile.

  “Wayne,” she said, clapping him on the shoulder, “you and I are going to have another little talk.”

  Chapter 14

  Micky Wong snapped off the portable TV set and said, “Let’s go.”

  The other two men in the room, Charles Ho with his one eye, and Stephen Smith, got up. They watched their boss carefully.

  They’d ditched the Range Rover in a quarry on the outskirts of Hoboken the night before, and had set fire to it. The serial number on the chassis had been filed off long ago, right after the vehicle had been stolen from a Secaucus street.

  Once Micky was satisfied that the cops wouldn’t find any trace of him or Stephen in the burned-out wreck, they headed back to Manhattan in Charles’ Honda.

  Micky didn’t sleep that night. He paced and he smoked and he debated with the other guys, his inner crew. There were six of them, including Stephen and Charles. They went over what had gone wrong, and how things could possibly go wrong further.

  At midnight, Micky learned from the news that two men of Chinese ethnicity had been killed during the episode outside the gallery. That meant James Xing and Tyrus Yee were dead. Micky breathed more easily.

  He didn’t think the cops would be able to link James and Tyrus to the Shadow Dragons or to Micky, at least not directly. The Triad wore no distinctive tattoos, unlike some. They didn’t boast about their exploits. Micky insisted they keep a far below the radar as they could. Both James and Tyrus had rap sheets, and there was no way those could be kept secret from the cops. But lots of New Yorkers had criminal records. It didn’t mean anything.

  On the other hand, Micky was aware that the NYPD were a smart bunch. They might well have spies within Chinatown, undercover people who’d succeeded in gathering intelligence on the Triads, including the Shadow Dragons, which Micky didn’t know about. So he couldn’t relax entirely.

  He spent the night putting off the phone call he knew he’d have to make.

  At five in the morning, his head hazy with nicotine and caffeine, Micky took out his cell phone and dialed.

  It rang at the other end for so long that Micky expected the voicemail function to kick in. Then an abrupt, low-pitched voice muttered: “Yes.”

  “The attack had to be aborted,” said Micky. The shame flooded through him as he said the words.

  “Aborted.” The man at the other end sounded like he was on the move. Micky guessed that his call had woken the guy, who was hurrying downstairs to get out of earshot of his wife or somebody. “Is that what you call it?”

  “Yes. There were unforeseen –”

  “I’d call it botched,” snapped the man. “A hit on an unarmed man, outside an art gallery, for crying out loud. And it ends in a gun battle, and two dead men, and from what I’m hearing you didn’t even get near the target.”

  Anger now wrestled with the shame in Micky. Nobody spoke to him in that tone.

  He said: “I repeat. There were unforeseen circumstances, and the attack had to be aborted. The job is ongoing. I will succeed next time.”

  “Next time.” The man’s voice was icy with fury and contempt. “What makes you think you’ll get a second chance? Mykels knows now that someone’s trying to hit him. He won’t go anywhere without protection. Maybe from the police, maybe from private bodyguards.”

  “He can’t know somebody was after him,” said Micky. “There were a lot of VIPs at that gallery. Any one of them could have been the target.”

  “He knows, believe me,” said the man. “Listen. You have one more chance. If you fail again, not only do you not get the rest of the money, but I’ll put word out where it matters that your outfit is worse than useless. That you’re a bunch of incompetent Keystone Kops who couldn’t hit a dairy cow with a telescopic rifle.”

  Micky’s face burned. His fist gripped the phone so hard he felt metal and plastic squeak.

  “I will succeed,” he said again.

  The man at the other end killed the call. A new wave of anger surged though Micky. Nobody hung up on him.

  *

  By early afternoon on Sunday, Micky realized the news broadcasts weren’t changing. No further leads had been identified in the Desiderata Gallery case, at least none that were being revealed publicly.

  While they’d been seated around the TV, Micky and Charles and Stephen had talked tactics, and strategy. The man on the phone had had a point, Micky knew. The target, Louis Q. Mykels, would have been warned by the bungled attack, and would now be far harder to get at.

  The man who’d issued the contract on Mykels had told Micky when and where he could be found: namely, at the Desiderata Gallery on Saturday night. Now that the hit had failed, Micky didn’t know how he was going to find Mykels, or what his opportunities would be to get to him. He could find out, he knew. Mykels was famous. Although Micky didn’t care for art, or for celebrities, he was aware that Mykels was a big name in New York, and in the public eye. Unless he truly went into hiding now, spooked by the attack, he’d surface soon enough.

  Micky didn’t know why his employer wanted Mykels dead. He hadn’t asked, because he wasn’t interested. The money Micky had been promised was considerable. Better than that, actually. It was a half million dollars, of which he’d already been given ten per cent as a down payment. Even if he walked away now, he’d get to keep that. Fifty grand. It was more cash than Micky had ever seen in his life, and there was a hell of a lot he could do with it. He could build up the Shadow Dragons into one of the biggest of the Triads. Earn some serious interest and respect from Hong Kong.

  But he wasn’t going to walk away. He couldn’t. It wasn’t just about the rest of the money. It was about honor.

  When he said to Charles and Stephen, “Let’s go,” Micky had no real plan. No lead to help him find Mykels. He just needed to get out of the apartment in which they were hiding out, above a grocer’s store just south of Little Italy. The time for laying low was past.

  On the way down the stairs, his cell phone rang.

  It was the man he’d spoken to earlier that morning. The anger was gone from his tone, to be replaced by a clipped curtness.

  “Here’s the target’s home address,” said the man.

  And Micky had the lead he needed.

  Chapter 15

  When Venn and Harmony got back to the Division of Special Projects office, at three in the afternoon, Venn was surprised to find Fil Vidal there at his desk.

  “Fil, man,” said Venn. “What happened to spending the day with the family?”

  “Wife kicked me out,” said Fil, glancing up from his computer monitor.

  “Jeez,” said Harmony. “Sorry to hear it.”

  Fil shook his head. “No, it’s nothing like that. I mean she couldn’t stand how antsy I was. She knew I had work on my mind. So she told me to get back to the office while she took the kids to the park. Told me to get the job out of my system and then ask you for a day off in lieu, boss.”

  “So what’s on your mind?” said Venn.

  “Martha Ignatowski,” said Fil. “That stuff I gave you on her took us up to her marriage. But that was twenty-five years ago. I figure any information relevant to her murder is likely to be in the later history.”

  He handed Venn a fresh sheaf of paper, though he hadn’t bound it the way he had with the earlier information. Venn flipped through it again.

  “Lot of stuff here
, Fil.”

  “I’m up to five years ago now. Got a way to go still.” He seemed to remember where Venn and Harmony had been heading that morning. “How’d it go with the banker? Torvald?”

  Venn told him. “Harpin’s gonna be sending across the list of attendees at the fundraiser. To be honest, I don’t think we’ll learn a lot from it. We can’t interview all three hundred people.”

  “I’ll run them through the databases,” said Fil. “See if anything gets thrown up.”

  Venn told him also about their chat with Jimmy Chiu in Chinatown. Fil brightened.

  “I did some research into the Triads a year or two ago, when I was investigating an honor killing,” he said. “Let me take a look at my files.”

  A couple of minutes later, he shook his head. “Nope. Nothing on the Shadow Dragons. Either they’re a new outfit, or they’re too minor to have shown up.”

  Venn thought about it. He said, “Try the guys who died last night. James Xing and Tyrus Yee.”

  Fil worked for a while. Then: “Here’s something.”

  Venn and Harmony stepped around to look over his shoulder.

  “James Xing used to run with the Golden Dawn crew. Well, run with them might be a stretch. He had a loose association with them. He was arrested after a swoop on the organization’s leadership threw up his name. There was nothing to connect him with any of the group’s crimes. By the look of it, the cops assumed he was just a gofer for them.”

  “Golden Dawn,” said Venn.

  “They don’t exist any longer,” Fil Said. “At least, if they do, they’re a whole new organization. The cops shut Golden Dawn down eighteen months ago. Busted their leadership on extortion and laundering charges. They all got serious jail time.”

  “Okay,” said Venn. “But we got a slim lead. Fil, forget about the Ignatowski stuff for a while. Get as much as you can on James Xing, and on some of the other guys who got fingered after this Golden Dawn got canned. Guys who may not have been indicted.”