by Tim Stevens
“I’ll do it.”
“He’s a banker,” said Mykels. “Heavily protected.”
“I’ll do it,” Shelly said again, more emphatically.
“First,” said Mykels, “I’ll need evidence that these photos are real. That you’re not tricking me.”
“No problem. I’ll text you some samples.”
“Oh,” he went on. “And I’ll need proof of the other thing. That you killed the journalist. Cronacker.”
Shelly glanced at Wayne beside her. His face was pale in the strobing of the streetlights as they passed by. But he hadn’t heard what Mykels had said.
“Sure,” said Shelly. “Just give me a moment.”
She ended the call. Drove another mile, until the traffic began to thin out and the main road started to give off dirt tracks on either side, leading into the fields and the forest.
Wayne blinked, as if registering that they’d slowed. “Where are we going?”
“Little detour, Wayne,” said Shelly.
She turned down one of the tracks.
*
A half hour later, Shelly sat behind the wheel of the parked station wagon, surrounded by the darkness of the fields, and attached two photos to a blank text message.
One picture was of the rear of Mykels’ Lexus, from Wayne’s collection. It showed clearly the license plate, and enough of the area in front of Ignatowski’s house to identify the place as hers.
The second photo, taken on her phone camera, showed Wayne Cronacker sprawled on his back in a ditch. His eyes were wide. A single splotch of blood adorned his forehead. The flash from the camera lent an ugly, harsh quality to the picture.
She sent the text, waited a minute, then dialed. This time Mykels picked up on the first ring.
“You get it?” said Shelly.
“Yes.” His voice was neutral. “Our agreement still stands? You’ll hit Torvald?”
Shelly said, “For sure. Give me as much as you have on him.”
“I have very little,” said Mykels. “Just his home and work addresses.”
“That’ll do for now.”
After she’d taken down the details, Shelly said, “Where are you now?”
“I’m not going to tell you that.”
She smiled. “Fair enough.”
“I’m under police protection,” he said. “I have officers with me round the clock. If you call me and I can’t immediately answer, it’s because they’re too close by. Right now I’m out on the balcony, out of earshot.”
“Police protection?”
“The cops already know I’m the target of a hit,” said Mykels. “Anyway, I just wanted to let you know, in case you call. How soon do you think you’ll be able to do the job?”
It’ll take as long as it takes, thought Shelly. But she said: “Within twenty-four hours.”
“All right. I’ll have the money by then. Same account you specified before?”
“The same,” said Shelly.
“If you don’t succeed –” began Mykels.
“I’ll succeed.”
“If you don’t,” he went on, “I’ll need some security to ensure those pictures don’t get into the wrong hands. Which means any hands.”
Shelly thought Mykels was hardly in a position to be dictating terms. But she said, “I have the journalist’s, Cronacker’s, camera, in an anonymously rented safe deposit box. The hard drive on which he enhanced the pictures is there too. Nobody will have access to it if I disappear. I’ll delete the copies from my phone.”
“So I’ll have to take your word.”
“’Fraid so,” Shelly said cheerfully.
She put the phone away.
Then turned to the passenger seat.
“Buckle up, Wayne,” she said. “We’re back on the road.”
He looked almost relaxed again, not the panicking wreck he’d become when she’d turned off the main road. Probably his relative calmness was a result of relief. He’d gone along with it well, sprawling artfully in the ditch and making a convincing corpse. He’d even allowed Shelly to cut his arm a little with her pocket knife, to produce some blood to daub his forehead with.
Yep. Wayne Cronacker was well on the way to becoming something approximating her accomplice.
They resumed the drive back to New York, and on the way Shelly told him of the plan.
Chapter 26
Like wind shivering down the tendrils of a spider’s web, the word began to spread.
It crept through the restaurants and the dime stores and the grocer’s shops of Chinatown. Through the gaming arcades and the back rooms where the illegal poker games were getting underway for the night. Down the alleys and through the tenement blocks, the laundromats and the massage parlours.
Micky Wong, chief of the Shadow Dragons, was dead.
To some, the news meant little. Chinatown was a big place, a town in its own right, and many if not most people hadn’t heard of Micky Wong. When these people, the innocent majority, heard of the killing, they were mostly relieved that another gang leader had met justice, but they were also a little scared about what his death might mean.
About the repercussions.
To others, the news represented an opportunity. One dead Triad leader meant one less member of the opposition.
To the remaining members of the Shadow Dragon Triad, thirty men in all, the news meant one thing.
His death had to be avenged.
The power struggle would come later. Probably very soon afterwards. But the priority was to strike back at whoever had done this.
The news came distorted, with some versions claiming the cops had killed Micky. But when the actual news reports began to filter through, the ones on TV and the online newspapers, it started to become clear that the cops had merely found Micky. He’d already been killed, shot dead, by persons unknown.
A man and a woman, said the reports.
There was no obvious Shadow Dragon member to assume command of the Triad. Charles Ho and Stephen Smith, Micky’s de facto seconds-in-command, were out of the picture: Smith dead, and Ho in police custody. The rest of the members were in hiding throughout the city, aware that their safety was jeopardized now that one of them was being interrogated by the cops and was probably being offered deals in exchange for giving up names.
Johnny Lee, the driver who’d shouted a warning to Micky just before he’d died, and who was the last of them to have seen Micky alive, automatically attained a mystique. A credibility which, whether justified or not, made him the leader, at least for now.
And Micky stepped up. Within two hours of Micky’s killing, Johnny was rallying the troops. Rounding up as many members as he could find by phone, and telling them to spread the word.
It was still a hell of a risk. Any one of them could get pinched by the cops at any moment, and that would compromise the rest of them. But they owed it to Micky to meet up, and to plan their strategy.
*
They convened in a disused basement in the Bronx, its dusty floor lit sparsely with the few overhead lights which still contained working bulbs. Johnny Lee counted them as they came in, deliberately preventing them from conversing until they’d all arrived. He didn’t need idle speculation or foolhardy ideas to start spreading, not until they were all there and able to put their heads together.
They stood in a circle around Johnny, grim, truculent, some of them appearing numbed. Twenty-nine men, apart from Johnny himself, who were of variable quality, he thought. Some of them as hard as granite, others weaker and more likely to prove cowards. But there were a lot of them, and a lot of people with the same purpose could often make up for any weak links in their midst.
He told them what he’d seen at the apartment block. Namely, Micky disappearing round the side of the building, and a few minutes later the cops showing up.
He recapped what the news reports said. That Micky’s body had been thrown out of a red VW Passat – the reports provided the license plate number – with a gunshot wound to
the head.
That a man and a woman had been witnessed in the red car.
None of them knew who the man or the woman might be. But the fact that they’d been waiting there to abduct Micky suggested they had something to do with Mykels, the target. The man Micky had been hired to kill.
“Which means,” Johnny said, “the man who hired Micky may be able to help us.”
The problem was, they didn’t know who the mysterious hirer was. Didn’t have a phone number for him, since Micky alone had been dealing with him.
Their discussion went on into the night. Every so often, the siren of a cop car would go blaring past, and the atmosphere in the basement would become tenser than before. Mostly, though, they kept their focus on the problem at hand.
By the time midnight came round, when the fug of cigarette smoke in the basement threatened to asphyxiate them, they’d come to a decision.
Their best shot at making contact with the man who’d hired Micky, at finding out who it was that had killed their boss, was to complete the job.
Carry out the hit on Mykels.
The finalizing of the decision triggered a collective release of tension, as if a pressure valve had been released. It didn’t matter for now that they didn’t know where Mykels was. Or that he’d be under heavy protection, wherever he was. Or that every one of them in the basement was probably being hunted by the cops at that very moment.
What mattered was that they were a team. They had a sense of direction, of purpose.
And they had access to weapons. Several of them knew about the caches Micky had accumulated over the years, because he’d shown them off, proudly.
They had the numbers. They had the weapons. They had the target.
Above all, they had a burning thirst for vengeance.
Chapter 27
Venn took out his phone and dialed and when it was answered, said: “Can you talk?”
“Yeah,” said the man at the other end. His name was Lance Lovett. Harmony said it sounded like a gay porn star alias, and Venn couldn’t entirely disagree.
“Nothing to report, though,” Lovett said. He was from New Orleans, and his lilting accent was unmodified after nine years in the NYPD. Venn had met him while working a case involving a suspected security leak at the Mayor’s office a year earlier. Lovett was a Detective Second Grade working out of the local precinct covering where the Mayor was based. He’d been investigating the security leak himself, and resented Venn’s muscling in on his investigation. Venn had found Lovett abrasive, hostile, and quite brilliant at what he did. They’d solved the case together, and by the end had formed a kind of grudging partnership.
Venn had wanted to approach Lovett to ask if he’d be interested in joining the Division of Special Projects, but there’d been no funds at the time to hire an additional staff member. Today, though, Venn had remembered Lovett and thought he’d be ideal for what he had in mind.
After Mykels had left the office with his temporary police escort, Venn got on the phone to his boss, Captain Kang.
“I need a favor,” Venn said.
“Shoot.” Kang sounded stressed. Venn guessed he was under pressure over the Ignatowski murder.
“Louis Mykels requires a twenty-four-hour protection detail,” said Venn. “I’d like one of the team to be one Detective Lance Lovett.”
He explained that he needed somebody to report back on Mykels’ behavior, his movements, the phone calls he made if possible. Venn couldn’t send Harmony because Mykels had already met her and would be wary of her. And Fil had been in the office when Mykels arrived, so Mykels would know he was part of Venn’s team, too.
“Lovett’s good,” said Venn. “He’s a ball-breaker, but he’s shrewd. I need him attached to Mykels ASAP.”
“What’re you thinking he might observe?” asked Kang.
Venn said, “I don’t know, exactly. But Mykels is being evasive. He was a little edgy when I told him he needed a police escort. Like he’d rather be on his own, like he had stuff to do.”
Kang thought a moment, then said: “Leave it to me.”
An hour later, while Venn was noodling around the office, getting on Fil’s nerves by asking him for updates, his phone rang.
“Yeah. Venn.”
“Lance Lovett here.” The Louisiana accent struck Venn once more. “My boss got a call from your boss. Tell me what you need.”
Venn briefed him on the Ignatowski murder, the connections with Mykels and Torvald, and the Triad’s attempted hit on Mykels.
Lovett listened without interruption. Afterward he said, “Hell of a mess.”
“Yeah. Tell me about it.” Venn told Lovett what he wanted him to do: observe Mykels’ manner, his mood. Note how often he made and received phone calls, and if possible what he talked to the caller about. And, of course, keep a record of where he went, if he left the hotel he was staying at.”
“But be discreet,” warned Venn. “The last thing I want is Mykels realizing he’s being spied upon.”
“Jeez,” said Lovett. “I didn’t think of that.” The sarcasm wasn’t lost on Venn.
He said, “Thanks. I owe you, Lance.”
“Got that right.”
Venn called Beth, told her he’d try to be home in a couple of hours. There wasn’t much of the weekend left, the weekend they’d been planning to spend together, but maybe they could salvage part of Sunday evening.
He sent Harmony home. “I’ll call you if anything goes down,” he said.
Fil elected to stay. He wanted to complete the dossier on Ignatowski’s life history, in case there was something significant in the later years. Plus, there was the closed-circuit camera image of the woman which he was still refining.
Venn stepped out into the cool spring evening air, to stretch his legs and get a bite to eat. He bought a club sandwich with pastrami and pickle at a deli a couple of blocks away and took a stroll down Tenth Avenue, savoring the sandwich and the noise and buzz of the city.
After another hour he called Lovett.
*
Lovett had nothing to report yet.
He was at the Mount Jackson Hotel on Central Park with Mykels and two other plainclothes cops. Two patrolmen were down below, parked outside. Mykels had ordered room service for all of them, and had been courteous and even humorous throughout, chatting with the cops in an easy manner that wasn’t at all patronizing.
“Likeable enough guy,” said Lovett. “But I know what you mean. Too nice. Too obviously interested in us and our work. Like a politician, schmoozing us. He does it well, though.”
“He appear nervous to you?”
“Not really. Not as much as you’d expect a guy who was the target of a mob hit to act. Hold on a minute.” Lovett spoke away from the phone, something Venn didn’t catch. Then he came back: “Okay, the guy’s gone out on the balcony now. Answering his phone.”
“Can you get closer?”
“Yeah.”
Venn waited. “Is the balcony door closed?”
“Jeez, man. Don’t micromanage me, okay?”
“Sorry,” Venn said. “Listen, why don’t you call me back?”
He’d returned to the office by the time Lovett called.
“Okay,” said Lovett. “I went to the john, which has a window that opens out on the same side as the balcony. I caught some of what he said.”
“Go ahead.”
“He said, and I quote: ‘I have very little. Just his home and work addresses.’ Then he listed them. You want them?”
“Sure,” said Venn, grabbing a pencil and a yellow legal pad from the desk.
Lovett recited two addresses.
One was an address in Oyster Bay, Nassau County.
“Hot damn,” said Venn. “That’s Carl Torvald’s place.”
“Yeah?” said Lovett.
Venn said, “You catch anything else?”
“No. He moved away then, or the wind changed. Then he came back inside.”
Venn thought quickly. “Stay on
him, Lance. This is good.”
“What does it mean?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Lovett said, “Gotta go. I stepped out saying I was going for a smoke, and the other guys are going to get antsy if I don’t come back.” He paused, then said: “Venn?”
“Yeah?”
“Whyn’t you just bring this guy in again? Mykels? Give him a proper shakedown? If he’s got nothing to hide, you can always apologize afterward.”
“You know,” said Venn, “I’ve been thinking the same thing.”
Chapter 28
Venn called Harpin to update him. The detective sounded disgruntled.
“All this went down today, and you call me only now?” he said. In the background, Venn could hear a woman’s voice, and the sound of cutlery clinking.
“You having supper?” Venn said.
“Yeah, but never mind that,” Harpin said. “I want in on the investigation, Venn. It’s mine, and you know it.”
“It’s kind of gotten a little complicated now, with this Triad business,” Venn said. “But we catch Ignatowski’s killer, and you get the credit. I’ve got no problem with that.”
“So what do you have in mind now?” said Harpin.
“Mykels and Torvald have got some kind of relationship,” said Venn. “I don’t know what it is, but it relates either to the hit on Mykels, or the Ignatowski murder, or both. My guy here is working on the connections between them, but there’s nothing obvious yet. They were all at college together, and knew each other socially to some degree. They were all at the fundraiser on Friday. Beyond that, I don’t know.”
“Some kind of love triangle?” suggested Harpin. “Mykels and Ignatowski were an item, Torvald got jealous, and he poisoned her?”
Venn had considered it. “It’s possible. And maybe Torvald is the man who hired the Triad guys to take out Mykels.”
“Seems a little extreme,” said Harpin. “Poisoning the woman who jilts you, and then paying a hit squad to whack your love rival.”
“I know,” Venn said. “So I don’t think that’s the answer.”
“Then what?” Harpin sounded like he was moving into another room, out of earshot of his wife or whoever. “We’re making too many jumps here, perhaps. We like Torvald for the Ignatowski poisoning. I still think he’s responsible for that. But we can’t allow ourselves to get too speculative. Even if he and Mykels and Ignatowski have a history together, it doesn’t mean Torvald’s the one trying to get Mykels killed.”
