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

by Tim Stevens

  “I have an idea,” said Venn.

  “I’m all ears.”

  “I need to play Mykels and Torvald off against one another. Make each one nervous that the other’s talking to us. Make them think the other guy’s cutting a deal. That might provoke one of them into jumping in with a better deal, before he gets cut out.”

  “How do you propose to do that?” Harpin sighed. “You’re the political guy, Joe. You know how sensitive this stuff is. We can’t pull Torvald, or Mykels for that matter, in on some jumped-up excuse and start hounding them. These guys are high-profile. Connected. The moment either of them feels he’s being harassed, he’ll slap a restraining order or a lawsuit on us. The Department will take some major heat, and you or I, or both of us, will get canned.”

  “I’m not planning to bring them in,” said Venn. “I said make them nervous. There are ways to do that which will ensure they don’t raise a complaint against us.”

  And he told Harpin what he had in mind.

  *

  Venn kept an assortment of prepaid, untraceable, single-use cell phones in a locked drawer in his office. He got out two of them and checked they had sufficient charge.

  He had Mykels’ number, but not Torvald’s.

  Putting his head round the door, he called: “Hey, Fil. Do me a favor? Get me Carl Torvald’s personal cell number.”

  “No problemo,” said Fil, without looking up from his computer monitor.

  It was the kind of request that would have been met with surprise and incredulity in most ordinary precincts. A guy like Torvald would keep his personal contact information intensely private, and it would take a lot of effort to obtain it, especially since Torvald wasn’t officially a suspect or accused of any crime. But Fil had ways of obtaining data like that. Venn didn’t ask how. He trusted Fil to stay within the letter of the legal process, if not quite the spirit.

  Fil tapped on his door less than ten minutes later. He handed Venn a Post-It with a scrawled number.

  “Good work,” said Venn.

  “The final image of the woman in the freeze-frame is nearly done,” said Fil. “I’ll let you know when it’s as good as I can get it. Still not much of her face to see, I’m afraid.”

  He closed the door behind him. Venn looked at the two numbers before him, Mykels’ and Torvald’s.

  He’d already called Harmony a half hour earlier, telling her to get back to the office. She’d sounded hyped up, as though she’d been waiting impatiently for his call. He knew how she felt. There was a sense that things were moving into the end phase, and when that happened with a case, you couldn’t rest until you’d seen it through.

  Venn picked up one of the single-use phones and dialed Mykels’ number.

  The phone was answered after four rings. Venn had been prepared for the call to go to voicemail. He knew the guy would need time to make his excuses and get out of earshot of the cops sitting with him.

  Mykels said: “Hello?” He sounded cautious, but not jumpy.

  Venn had already rehearsed his voice. He’d grown up in Illinois, and had retained his flat, Mid-Western accent despite living almost four years in New York. But he’d developed an ear for the Big Apple’s speech patterns, its dialect, and he sometimes tried on a Brooklyn voice with Beth, which amused her no end but which she also said sounded pretty authentic.

  Raising his pitch a little, from his normal bass baritone to something approaching a tenor, Venn said nasally: “It’s off.”

  After a beat, Mykels said, “Excuse me?”

  “It’s off. The thing with Torvald. He knows what you’re planning. It’s not gonna work. And the cops are calling him in right now.”

  “Who is this?”

  Venn killed the call.

  Next, he picked up the second cell phone. He dialed the number for Torvald which Fil had given him.

  The phone rang six times before the voicemail message kicked in: “Carl Torvald. Speak after the tone.”

  Venn thumbed the red key.

  He waited twenty seconds, then dialed again.

  This time it was answered at once: “Yes?” The curt tone of a high-flying businessman with no time to waste on small talk.

  Again, Venn put on his Brooklyn accent. “Listen up. Louis Mykels is talking to the cops. About you, about him, about Martha Ignatowski.”

  The sound at the other end became muffled, as if Torvald had put his hand over the phone and was muttering to somebody else. Probably his wife, and he was telling her he had to take a private call.

  Torvald came back, his voice low and urgent. Just as Mykels had, he said, “Who are you?”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Venn said. “But that hit you organized on him? The Chinese guys? He’s wise to it.”

  And Venn hung up.

  He sat back in his office chair – a high-backed, studded-leather model, one of the few luxury items he’d indulged in for himself – and swiveled this way and that.

  The cats were now running riot among the pigeons.

  It was time for step two of his plan.

  Chapter 29

  Louis Q. Mykels gazed out across the expanse of Central Park, at the illuminated night skyline of Eastern Manhattan on the other side, and thought about the precariousness of existence.

  It was a theme he’d captured in his art over the years. Not one he was especially drawn to - it wasn’t something a sane person would want to dwell on, and he considered himself sane by any legal or psychiatric definition - but it was interesting, nonetheless.

  Mykels was from Atlanta, the son of solidly middle-class parents: his mother a junior school teacher, his father an accountant. He hadn’t grown up in the ghetto, the doomed product of a drug-addled, violent world. Sometimes he thought that such a background would have enhanced his image, lent a degree of street-cred to his mythology. But he didn’t care.

  His parents had been ambitious for him, wanting him to pursue a career in law or medicine, or business. Perhaps even politics. But from an early age, pre-teen, possibly, he’d understood that art was his calling.

  His scholarship to Harvard had been hard-won, and while a degree in Art might not have been exactly what his mom and dad had in mind for him, they’d been as supportive of him as any kid could hope his parents to be. What neither of them had grasped was that their handsome, thoughtful, quietly spoken son was every bit as ambitious as a junior intern in Washington aiming for the job of President of the United States.

  Louis was going to be an artist. And not just any artist, but one of the most feted of his generation, in New York, in America, in the world.

  By the age of thirty-three, he’d appeared on the cover of Time magazine, and been profiled in the New Yorker. He’d conducted a sell-out tour of Europe, with his latest exhibition featuring in London, in Paris, in Milan.

  By forty, he was being hailed as the Jackson Pollock of his generation.

  There was talk – just talk, at the moment – of his being invited to the White House this summer, as part of the Fourth of July celebrations. The President would present him not only as a sterling example of America’s continuing contribution to worldwide high culture, but also as an ambassador for the melting pot that was the United States: the first African American to achieve truly global superstar status as an artist.

  And now, as he approached the pinnacle of his career, Louis Mykels was staring into the abyss.

  His fall would be spectacular, more so than his rise, because it would be faster and more sudden. All he’d achieved after years of sleepless toil, of inner despair, would be drowned out by the screaming clamor of a night more than a quarter-century earlier.

  He wouldn’t even retain the glamor of a tragic hero. Shakespeare’s characters - Lear, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth - were all great men who had been brought down by a fatal flaw in their characters. An undeniably romantic notion, and one that didn’t diminish any of these people but rather enhanced their status.

  But Louis Q. Mykels didn’t have the saving grace of
a character defect.

  What would prove to be his downfall was an incident. A single, sordid incident, of no importance in the grand scheme of things, but as potentially deadly to him as a single bacterium entering his bloodstream.

  Mykels wasn’t a self-deluding man. He responded well to criticism, he believed, accepting it graciously before examining it and deciding whether or not it was justified. In this way, he’d learned a great deal while he was growing as an artist, and he’d come to a sound understanding of just how prodigious his genius was.

  So it was without any trace of defensiveness that he recognized where he’d screwed up.

  He should have left the man on the wall alone.

  In the delirious, almost euphoric haze after he’d left Martha’s house, he’d felt his senses heightened, so that the slight movement on top of the wall had drawn his eye in a way it probably wouldn’t have under normal circumstances.

  He’d seen the figure crouching on top of the wall, under a canopy of leaves, with something glinting in its hands.

  And he’d panicked. Something he never did. When, with hindsight, he should have just stayed calm and waited for the figure to go away.

  Instead, he’d climbed into his car and driven off, and realized only as he reached the gates that the man with the camera, who couldn’t have gotten a clear shot of his face in the darkness, would now have photographed his car.

  And its license plate.

  Mykels had kept his head together enough to turn down the road running alongside the wall where he’d spotted the man. And he’d seen the car there, parked down a side road.

  He’d pulled up some distance away and killed the lights and watched as the indistinct figure climbed down the stepladder and collapsed it and carried it to the car and dropped it in the trunk and drove away.

  And he’d noted the license plate.

  If he’d left it there, probably he’d have been safe. The guy was a paparazzo. A hack. He might have photographed Mykels’ car, but he’d want to hang on to the story for himself, and probably wouldn’t go to the police.

  Even if he did, Mykels could lose his car. Claim it had been stolen.

  Instead, he’d overreacted. Reached out through a friend of a contact of an acquaintance of a crony. Found the professional hitman. Or hitwoman, in this case.

  He didn’t know her name.

  He’d promised her a million dollars to find the driver of the car, track him down, and kill him. No questions asked.

  And, in his naiveté, he’d thought that would be the end of it.

  Now, she knew his identity. She had information about him that could destroy him.

  And he couldn’t even focus right now on what to do about her, because he needed her to bring down Torvald before Torvald did the same to him.

  Behind Mykels, the police officers lounged about. Two of them were playing cards, and the third, the loner – Lovett, that was the name he’d given – read a paperback book.

  Mykels thought about the phone call he’d just received. As luck would have it, he’d been in the bathroom when it had come, so he hadn’t had to make his excuses and disappear out of earshot.

  The voice was one he didn’t recognize.

  It’s off. The thing with Torvald. He knows what you’re planning. It’s not gonna work. And the cops are calling him in right now.

  Nothing more. Of course, there was no caller ID.

  Who in the hell was it?

  He’d immediately called the hitwoman’s number. It felt absurd referring to her by that title, but he didn’t know her name. She’d answered at once.

  “Yeah.”

  Mykels debated telling her about the anonymous caller a few seconds earlier. But he decided against it for now. Instead, he said: “Remember. You don’t get the money until I have proof you’ve done the job.”

  There was a disbelieving silence. “You called me to tell me that?”

  “Just checking,” said Mykels.

  “Yeah, well, don’t bother just checking. In fact, don’t call me at all. I don’t need distractions.”

  She rang off abruptly.

  Mykels put the phone away and flushed the toilet. He’d called her to make sure she was still alive. The anonymous caller might have meant that she was compromised, that she’d been discovered. Clearly she was still committed to the job.

  So who was the man with the thick Brooklyn accent?

  Like the whorls of paint on the canvas of a newly started artwork, Mykels felt his world assume a chaotic, unpredictable character.

  *

  Lost in his thoughts, he didn’t realize the cop was talking to him until the man nudged his elbow.

  Mykels turned, and saw Lovett. He was an unsavory-looking fellow, unshaven, with lank black hair that needed a wash. His yellow eyes peered up at Mykels, and in his hand was a phone.

  “Seems you’re out of danger,” Lovett said.

  Mykels frowned.

  “Just got a call,” Lovett went on. “They busted the rest of the Shadow Dragon Triad. Six guys. They’ve revealed everything but the identity of the person who hired them. Cops are working on that now.”

  Mykels didn’t say anything, processing the information. Lovett must have taken his silence as a sign that he hadn’t registered, because he continued, with the impatience of a teacher who’d gotten tired of explaining something to an especially dimwitted kid: “The threat to you is over. You don’t need a security detail any longer. We’re pulling out.”

  The other two officers were already pulling on their jackets.

  Lovett said, “We’ll leave a couple of uniformed guys downstairs at the front of the building, on the off-chance. But I reckon you’re safe. Now that the outfit which was gunning for you has had its back broken, it’s unlikely the hit is a going concern any longer.”

  Mykels tried to look relieved. He shook Lovett’s hand.

  “Thank you, Detective.”

  He escorted the three men to the elevator down the corridor, watched the doors close.

  Back in his room, Mykels poured himself a Scotch, just a small one. He took it to the balcony and gazed out again, trying to make sense of all of this.

  He knew why Torvald wanted him dead. And he knew also that Torvald wouldn’t stop, just because the incompetent gang he’d hired to do the job had failed.

  It probably wasn’t such a good idea to be standing out here in the open.

  All of a sudden the city Mykels had called home for almost twenty years, became a source of menace. Every building he saw potentially housed a sniper. Every car on the street below carried a new group of hoods, planning to storm the hotel and gun him down.

  He’d left his phone on a coffee table inside, and he heard it buzzing, saw it sliding on the glass, as he came in again. Mykels picked it up.

  No caller ID again.

  Gingerly, as if the phone might be boobytrapped with a bomb that would blow his head off, Mykels held it to his ear.

  “Hello.”

  This time he recognized the voice.

  “Louis,” said Carl Torvald. “We need to talk.”

  Chapter 30

  Venn called Lovett just as Harmony appeared at the door of his office. He held up a hand to indicate he was on the phone, and she disappeared back out again.

  “Lance,” said Venn.

  “Nothing new to report,” Lovett interrupted testily. “Shit, Venn. You’re like a fussy old lady.”

  Venn said, “I’m calling to change the plan. Tell Mykels we’ve caught the rest of the Triad guys. He doesn’t need police protection any longer, and you guys are going to pull out. Except maybe for a couple of patrolmen down in the street.”

  “What you got in mind?” Lovett said.

  “I just spooked Mykels by calling him anonymously and telling him I knew what he was planning with Torvald,” said Venn. “Whatever that is. Now, I want to wrong-foot him by pulling you guys out. I want to see what he does.”

  “You need me to tag him?”

&n
bsp; “Yes,” said Venn. “Watch the exits, see if he leaves. Follow him.”

  “Okay.”

  Venn ended the call, then went out into the main office area. He updated Harmony and Fil.

  “Harm, let’s you and I go for a drive,” he said. “Cruise around a little, wait for Lovett to call.”

  Fil moved over to one of the monitors. “Want to see the woman’s face before you go?” he said. “It’s about as good as I can get it.”

  Venn and Harmony went to look.

  The fuzzy, grainy camera image had been sharpened to a quality Venn hadn’t imagined possible. Still, though, there was only the curve of the woman’s pale cheek and her single averted eye, the rest of her face obscured by her sweep of hair.

  Venn gazed at the image.

  Somewhere, deep inside his consciousness, something stirred. A resonance.

  A recollection.

  He tried to focus on it but it danced away.

  “Okay,” he said. “Can you run this through your face-recognition software?”

  “Done,” Fil said.

  Venn and Harmony went down to the parking lot and got into Harmony’s Crown Vic. As she started the engine Venn’s phone rang.

  It was Harpin. “I called Torvald’s home like we agreed,” he said. “Got his wife. She said he’d just left and was going into Manhattan for some meeting at his office. On Sunday night.”

  “When was this?” asked Venn.

  “Fifteen minutes ago. I told the wife I needed to ask Carl a few more questions. She was real frosty with me. Said it’d have to wait till tomorrow. I leaned on her. She said she’d try calling him on his cell, but wouldn’t give me his number. Then she called back. Said she couldn’t get hold of him, that his phone was switched off and he was probably on the road or in a tunnel.”

  “Okay,” said Venn. “He’s on the move. I guess my call rattled him.”