Nom de Guerre

by Gulvin, Jeff

  That evening, Valentin was back in the same bar, seated on a high-backed stool, while two young guys shot nine ball pool behind him. The room was dim, with a dark wood counter and an array of brightly labelled bottles standing high against the mirrored glass behind it. Valentin drank rum with a beer chaser, and watched the sport on ESPN. Boese slipped in quietly. He had a moustache, long hair dripping over his shoulders, and wore a fur-lined denim jacket. He took a stool two seats down and ordered a glass of beer. The bartender looked at him out of pink and bloodshot eyes, then placed the drink before him. Boese gave him a two-dollar tip and he rapped his knuckles against the counter.

  Valentin nodded to lots of people, but kept himself to himself; a small man, with thin hands and pockmark scars on his face. The bartender flicked the TV over to the Six O’Clock News and suddenly there was the younger Henrique Valentin, with a ‘Have you seen this man?’ question coming from the lips of the news anchor. Nobody paid much attention; the bar was quite crowded. One group of young bucks around the second pool table were being particularly noisy. Boese saw Valentin’s face blanch, though, and a minute or so later, he slid off his stool and stepped back on to the street. Later that evening, Boese watched his lights burning on the top floor of his tenement. Again he was the bum on the street, lying in the doorway opposite.

  Angie Byrne was making love to her husband. The windows were open slightly, allowing in just enough breeze to cool the heat in their bodies. Byrne lay under her, holding her by the soft flesh just above her hips, as she arched her back, palms behind her on his thighs. The phone rang and she looked down at him, thrust some more, then sighed and rolled off. She leaned over to pick it up, but Byrne moved against her, reaching over her shoulder.

  ‘Byrne,’ he said, the receiver to his ear.

  ‘Louis Byrne. Storm Crow hunter. Have you found him yet?’

  ‘Boese.’ Byrne leaned against his wife as he moved one elbow under him, his grip tight round the handset. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Me. I’m in New York. The Big Apple, Louis. If you talk to your technical boys, they’ll confirm it. I called to talk to your wife.’

  ‘You’re not talking to my wife. You’re talking to me.’

  ‘Shape-shifter, Louis. Has she figured it out? Have you?’

  ‘What’re you trying to prove here, exactly?’

  ‘Prove. You mean you haven’t figured it out yet? You of all people.’ Boese sighed in his ear. ‘Anyway, tell Angie I called. Oh, and by the way, I saw the Six O’Clock News tonight. Valentin’s in Spanish Harlem.’

  He hung up and Byrne leaned over his wife again to put down the phone. Angie was lying on her side. Fear snapped in her eyes. She could feel a sharpness against her shoulder. The wedding ring that Louis wore round his neck cut into her flesh.

  25

  NO SOONER HAD BOESE hung up, than Byrne’s cellphone rang. It was the technical team in the SIOC. ‘We got a trace, sir,’ they told him.

  ‘Don’t tell me. New York City.’

  ‘Payphone. Spanish Harlem.’

  ‘Somebody on their way?’

  ‘Field office and NYPD.’

  ‘OK. You better get hold of Kovalski.’

  Byrne called Logan in her hotel room. She pushed moist hair out of her eyes and picked up the receiver. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Get your clothes on, Cheyenne. Then get to Andrews airforce base as fast as you can. Boese’s in New York City.’

  They woke Harrison, or rather they didn’t: he was lying in his room watching TV. Within five minutes, they were in a car to the airbase, siren blaring, lights flashing and the police package kicking in. Swann rode up front, Logan in the back, already tapping away at the keys of her lap-top computer.

  ‘Why ring and tell us?’ Swann was saying. ‘What’s he playing at now?’

  Harrison looked sideways at him. ‘Valentin’s dead already.’

  They met Byrne and Kovalski at Andrews airforce base, where a fifteen-seater, propeller-driven fixed wing was already on the runway. The three of them got on board and Harrison and Byrne exchanged a glance, as the engines started and the big three-pronged props began to whip the air.

  ‘Have we heard anything from the NYPD?’ Logan asked Byrne.

  He shook his head. ‘They’re trying to locate Valentin.’ Swann sat in one of the single seats on the other side of the aisle, Harrison in the row behind him. He looked out across the lighted runway. One a.m. and cold. His jacket was buttoned to the neck and his thoughts were suddenly of England and the children he hadn’t seen for what felt like ages. He looked across the aisle, where Logan was busy with her lap-top again, scrolling through the prison program she had downloaded. She glanced up, caught his eye and smiled.

  Boese lay huddled in the doorway once more, blankets wrapped round him, hood pulled over his head, and a paper-wrapped vodka bottle beside him on the top step of the tenement. From here, he could see the lights of Valentin’s attic apartment in the block directly across the street. Cold tonight, and not much activity. A couple of young hoodlums roamed the street, but they didn’t bother the bagman. He was lying on his side, knees curled to his chest, when the first police road unit cruised up the street. He could hear the crackle of radiospeak as the driver slowed, his window half rolled down. They stopped right by the phone booth he had used. One of the cops got out, shone his torch into the booth and went back to the car, letting the beam of his torch fall across the steps where Boese was ‘sleeping’. The torch shone in his eyes and he yelled at them in Spanish.

  ‘Hey,’ one of them yelled back. ‘Keep it down, or we’ll book you.’

  Boese muttered something unintelligible and rolled over. The cops called in on the radio and sat there for a moment. Boese knew the FBI would have passed Valentin’s name to them, and right now they would be running all kinds of checks to try and find his address. Knowing the kind of privacy that Henrique Valentin liked, they would have plenty of trouble. Boese lay there only until the cruiser pulled away from the sidewalk, then he got up, packed his belongings and made his way down the street.

  The ground team flew into JFK Airport and an agent from the airport resident agency was there to meet them. Vehicles had been laid on and the SAC was waiting for them in the Manhattan field office. The agent told Logan that both the police and the FBI had been patrolling the streets of Spanish Harlem in numbers, ever since they received the call. As yet, they had neither sighted anyone who could be Boese, nor located the address of Henrique Valentin. They drove with lights and sirens into Manhattan. Stanley Gerard, the SAC, greeted them. They got coffee and settled in the conference room, where he told them that he had scrambled agents from Staten Island, Bridgeport, Queens, New Rochelle, and Brooklyn; effectively the entire area.

  ‘The guy with the feathers, huh,’ he said to Byrne. ‘Storm Crow.’

  Byrne merely nodded. Nobody outside the working team knew what they really feared. Harrison shifted in his seat and spoke to the SAC: ‘Don’t you got a snitch up there in Spanish Harlem?’ he said. ‘Your hump agents must’ve got drugs connections and stuff. That’s the only way you’re gonna locate someone like Valentin, even if he’s dead already.’

  Gerard looked him up and down. ‘We’re working on it now. The word’s gone out to the precincts and we’re just waiting on a call.’

  Harrison stood up. ‘Well, if it’s all right with you guys, I’ll hit the streets myself. I got my own contacts in this city.’

  Byrne looked at Kovalski, who looked at Logan. ‘I got no problem with that,’ she said. ‘I guess it beats sitting around.’

  ‘You wanna come, Chey?’ Harrison asked her.

  She shook her head, pointing to the lap-top. ‘I got things to do here.’

  Harrison turned to Swann, who scraped back his chair. He glanced over at Logan. ‘Like you say, Cheyenne. It beats hanging around here.’

  Harrison made a phone call from one of the agents’ desks in the squad room. He asked for Detective Lopez of the 85th Precinct and was given
a pager number. He hung up, and looked at his watch: 5.30 a.m. He cursed softly and dialled, gave his number and hung up again. ‘I knew Lopez years back,’ he said, ‘when I was undercover in the Florida Keys. We worked for two weeks together on a Cuban connection up here. He’s drugs squad, great street cop. DEA have had their eyes on him for years, but he don’t wanna leave the job.’ The phone rang and Harrison smiled as he listened to the voice on the other end.

  ‘This had better be fucking good.’

  ‘Get up, ya lazy sonofabitch.’

  ‘Who the fuck is this?’

  ‘Feds, Rio. Don’t you recognize the number?’

  ‘The middle of the fucking night is what I don’t recognize.’

  ‘This is Harrison, Rio. I need a tour of Spanish Harlem.’

  Lopez picked them up at six-fifteen. There was snow in the air and the roads were crisp with frost. Swann looked up at the sky, little bits of it, broken and chipped between the square grey towers of downtown Manhattan. Already the city was busy. It had been busy all night, but he could see the gradual swell in the traffic, a flood of yellow cabs crowding the streets.

  Lopez was about thirty, with bushy black hair and an engaging smile, where he showed you one gold tooth. He wore chains round his neck and a bracelet on each wrist, and the cut of his clothes was sharp. Harrison got in the front, and introduced Swann.

  ‘England, eh? You’re a long way from home, amigo.’

  Swann explained the situation and Lopez drew his lips into a little hole in his face.

  ‘Boese. I heard of him. Passes himself off as Spanish a lot of the time.’ He looked at Harrison. ‘What’s he doing in New York?’

  ‘We think he’s trying to kill, or more than likely already has killed, Henrique Valentin.’

  Lopez scrunched up his face. ‘Should I know the name?’

  ‘Henrique Corazon Valentin. Former FALN.’

  ‘Those guys went down the river years ago, Harrison.’

  ‘Valentin’s out. He was only busted for burglary.’

  Lopez drove them uptown to a diner, where they stopped for bagels and coffee.

  ‘What did Valentin do in the FALN?’ he asked Harrison, as he slid into a booth from where he could watch the car.

  ‘Bomb-maker.’

  Lopez smiled at Swann. ‘Guess you guys come across a few of them, uh?’

  ‘One or two. We always liked the ones that blew themselves up the best. Saved us a lot of trouble.’

  Lopez sipped coffee and winked at the Spanish girl serving. He chatted to her for a few moments and then smiled again. ‘So, we’re probably looking for a guy who can fix electronic stuff. An ex-FALN member and convicted felon ain’t gonna get a regular job, even round here. He’ll be working for himself someplace, that’s if he’s here at all.’ He frowned then. ‘How come you guys think he’s here, if you don’t where he’s at?’

  Harrison looked at him over the rim of his cup. ‘We get calls from Boese, Rio. But that don’t go no further than this table, you dig?’

  ‘Got it.’

  ‘He’s been calling Louis Byrne’s wife on the telephone and leaving all kindsa cryptic messages. He told Byrne himself that Valentin was here.’

  Lopez sat back then, a puzzled expression ringing his eyes. ‘Why would he wanna do that?’

  Harrison looked beyond him again. ‘Boese isn’t the Storm Crow, Rio. We think he’s looking for whoever is, and he wants us to help him.’

  ‘I don’t get it.’

  Swann spoke then: ‘Boese worked for Storm Crow,’ he explained. ‘He broke out of jail in England after Storm Crow double-crossed him. At least, that’s what we think. He’s been running round killing people, and at first we couldn’t understand why. But we’ve been piecing it together and we think he’s tracing the line of his own recruitment. If he’s doing that, he cannot be Storm Crow.’

  Lopez was silent for a few minutes. ‘Wait a minute, this guy Boese has been dubbed public enemy number one. And I mean, like worldwide, not just in the United States.’

  Swann nodded. ‘Right. And if he’s not Storm Crow, then there’s somebody else out there who’s twice as bad as he is.’

  Lopez sat for a moment longer, then he switched on his cellphone and stepped on to the street. ‘Good guy,’ Harrison said. ‘If he can’t find Valentin, then the guy ain’t here.’

  Lopez was still out on the sidewalk, talking into his phone. Swann could not help but note how many people he nodded to, and how many nodded or spoke to him as they passed. Lopez switched off his phone and came back inside. ‘Finish up and let’s roll,’ he said.

  Back in the car, they cruised the streets. Lopez explained that he had put the word out on Valentin and now it was a case of wait and see. All the hospitals had been checked for John Does, but none of them had any who might fit his description. ‘I tell you what, Harrison,’ Lopez said, nodding to various suited figures in Fords driving up and down the blocks. ‘Your guys hang around like this for too much longer and nobody’ll be on the street.’

  Boese could see them too—the FBI agents—from his vantage point, pushing the shopping trolley along the sidewalks, a stagger in his step, and his face puffy and hooded. He walked past the very coffee shop where Harrison, Swann and Lopez were talking in the booth by the window. He pushed his trolley up the street, then he turned and pushed it down again, passing their window twice. Nobody seemed to notice him. He watched vehicles. He listened for unexpected sounds. His sixth sense was alive and tingling, anticipating. This was why he was here. In Arlington, he had been deliberately spared. Why? Why not take him out then? Storm Crow dead and the case finally closed.

  Valentin had also seen the gradual build-up of police officers. He had identified at least two FBI agents by the cars they drove, and he was considering his position. Not only had that old picture, taken when he was in prison, been broadcast on every TV station in the city, it was on the front page of the New York Times. But it was an old picture and nobody here knew him as Henrique Valentin. He had changed his name when he came back, so he could sink into anonymity. Now he was plain Rico; Rico who mended your electrical stuff when it broke. He sipped coffee and watched the street from his attic window, not wanting to venture out, but knowing there was work to be done, and if that work did not get done, then the rent would not get paid. He finished his coffee and hit the streets, wearing a black reefer jacket with the collar up, and a wool cap pulled tightly over his scalp. On the corner, he saw the homeless guy pushing his shopping trolley. He lurched into a doorway and squatted with his head on his chest. Valentin ignored him and crossed the street, skipping between the cars. Two blocks further on, he was safe in his basement workshop.

  He had not even bothered to consider what the FBI wanted with him. His past experience with the Feds was very bad. He knew he was clean, having served his time and not violated his parole. There was nothing anybody could pin on him. He even paid his taxes on time. His shop was messy and small, with very little sunlight creeping in. But he liked it, and the clutter gave him a sense of purpose as he worked on broken wiring or old valves and transistors. From his bench, he could see the street at about knee level. He settled down to work, with the heater on and a cigarette burning in the ashtray beside him. He heard the rattle of wheels and, looking up, caught a glimpse of a shopping trolley and then the grimy, half-laced boots of the old rummy that pushed it. He stared into space for a long moment, realizing that he had only been aware of that guy over the last few days. He had seen him every day during that time, but before that, he did not remember him at all. Insect legs tickled his spine and he went up on to the street. He looked left and right, but the rummy was nowhere to be seen.

  Byrne met Harrison and Swann in Spanish Harlem. Harrison introduced Lopez. They were still waiting for some information. ‘What you doing, Lou?’ Harrison asked him.

  ‘Thought I’d hit the bricks. Not been done in a while.’ Byrne smiled at Swann. ‘Logan’s got that office turning somersaults for her. She doe
sn’t need me there.’

  ‘You wanna hang out with us?’ Harrison said.

  Byrne shook his head. ‘No. Figured I’d take a look round for myself. I want to check in with the dicks at the precinct house, see if there’s anything they’ve come up with.’ He looked at Lopez. ‘Nobody’s been found dead that fits the description we put out, right?’

  Lopez shook his head. ‘Nothing that I’ve heard.’

  Byrne cocked one eyebrow. ‘He must be dead. What’s the point of dragging us all the way up here, if he isn’t.’ He left them then and walked off up the street, camelhair overcoat reaching almost to his ankles.

  Lopez looked after him. ‘Dresses well, don’t he. Even for a suit.’

  ‘Wife’s a big time attorney, Rio,’ Harrison told him. ‘Earns a million dollars a year.’

  Boese had changed clothes, and was sitting in Valentin’s favourite bar, watching the customers come in. His face was the same, still old and careworn, but he was now dressed in normal working man’s clothes, a Yankees hat perched on his greying head. FBI agents were crawling all over the place, he could pick them out a mile away. Valentin was at his work bench, doing whatever it was that he did, and they still had no clue where he was. He was not coming forward, not answering their pleas in the newspapers. Obviously, he had no idea that the one organization he hated most in the world was trying to save his life. Boese sat and nursed the beer as the afternoon wore on. The sun had finally broken up the clouds and sat in pale yellow against the sudden blue of the sky. But it was not bright enough or high enough to penetrate the fine spaces between the buildings, and the streets stayed chill and cold.

  And then Boese felt something, sitting where he was, staring at himself in the mirror behind the bar. Something moved on his skin, lifting the hairs on his cheeks. He sat very still, conscious of the leg holster and the waistband holster and the three knives in his pockets. He moved forward a fraction on his stool, and looked the length of the bar. It was long and dark and crowded now with drinkers. Every high-backed stool was taken and the bartender was serving fast and furiously. One man sat about eight stools down from him. Boese could not see his face without leaning much further forward, but he could see his hand as he lifted the glass of beer to his lips. FTQ tattooed in blue on his fingers. The tingling heightened in his veins and Boese swivelled on his stool again, perspiration gathering at his hairline. The same feeling he’d had in Arlington, with the rain beating down on him and the apartment blocks cast in shadow. Again he moved his head, almost imperceptibly, and again he saw the fingers, the inky-blue tattoo. He tried to use the mirror to match a head to the hand, but the rows of bottles were mounted on wooden shelves that occupied most of the glass.