Wolf's Deal: A Nick Lupo Novella (The Nick Lupo Series)

by W. D. Gagliani

  He pressed Charlie: “You have connections with other security heads? You guys coordinate at all?”

  “Some, but not at this level. We… tend to share info on known cheats and other banned patrons, we do some cross-training, some team-building exercises, and we do trade personnel when they want to transfer…”

  “Even tribe to tribe?” Lupo asked.

  “Sure, far as I know it’s common. The training works from place to place, so we’d be stupid not to take pre-trained employees when they can be vouched for.”

  “Would you guys trade info on bad employees who got fired and the like, too?”

  “In some cases, sure. More with bad customers, but occasionally employees we think are going to try their luck at another tribe’s joint.”

  “See, that could feed into this guy’s persecution complex,” Lupo mused. “You know: ‘The system’s stacked against me. One place rejected me, now they all will. I hate the one – I hate them all.’ I can see it as a motive. Maybe not practical or logical, but who knows how this guy’s gears mesh?”

  “Yeah, I get your point,” Charlie admitted.

  “All right, see if you can find out if your HR – and any of the others you talk to – hang on to the applications of rejects. Get lists. Should be easier for you to request this stuff than if I do.”

  Charlie chuckled. “They’d make you get a court order.”

  “Which would take too long. We’d have a third, maybe a fourth victim by then. This guy’s escalating. I just have a feeling this is a spree, not a one-two deal. I really think he’s enjoying himself and he’s only gonna stop when we put a bullet in him. I’d rather stop him in the act, fuck the research, but our chances of that are about nada. Unless we get very fucking lucky. Do you gamble yourself?”

  “Nah, I like to keep my money. Buy things that make me and my family happy. Watching wheels spin and numbers flash is for suckers.” He chuckled.

  “Not what your bosses would like to hear, I bet.”

  Charlie laughed too. “No, probably not. So what do you think’s gonna happen next? More vics?”

  “Right now I’ll bet he likes his new name. Like a comic book supervillain. Thanks to those idiots on TV. He’s rolling it around in his mind, getting comfortable with it. Then he’s gonna do what he can to make it splash all over again.”

  “So we don’t have much time.”

  Lupo sighed. “No, I don’t think we do.”

  But I’d like to be wrong, he thought.

  JESSIE

  She barely remembered entering the mothership. It was like having been kidnapped, sucked up on a tractor beam like those old sci-fi movies Nick watched when she was sleeping. She would hear him laugh and chatter to himself like a kid on a playground, reciting dialogue back at the screen and chuckling when he beat the actors to it. She’d feel all safe and snuggled even alone in bed, knowing he was in the other room and enjoying himself. Those movies – she’d probably seen more of those than she thought, because she sometimes got up and silently went to watch while leaning on him, enjoying the feel of her body on his – had always struck her as over-the-top silly. But now it was almost as if she had closed her eyes in the bright parking lot and then opened them and she was in the center of all the action, and it wasn’t silly but disorienting. For a second or two she swayed with a vague sense of dizziness.

  The electronic drone was playing here too, a never-ending C-major chord, soaring over the jingles and TV theme songs and the canned sound of virtual coins dropping into metal baskets. Apparently these were the sounds of all modern casinos, and when she heard coins drop nearby, she watched a winner just punch a button and wait for a claim ticket to squirm its way out of a blinking slot.

  Where’s the romance in that?

  A claim ticket instead of coins seemed disappointingly mundane.

  She watched the winner, an elderly man almost too stooped to walk, fight his way across the hindering carpet, cane clutched tightly, to another beeping slot machine into which he slid his winning ticket. He started to play, his face almost devoid of emotion.

  Jessie watched a little longer. He was clearly not getting much of a charge from playing, and while she stood nearby she never did hear the jangling coin sound again, until he stood up and walked away – minus a ticket, or presumably any money left on it.

  Joyless.

  That was the word she came up with.

  She shook her head and moved on.

  LUPO

  He parked as close as he could get to the crime scene without blocking the way and let his badge do the talking at the perimeter. He ducked under the tape and barreled past a couple barriers, to where another portable screen kept the crime scene from the growing crowd of gawkers. He nodded at a uniform he recognized and said into his phone: “DiSanto, you have to get back here.”

  “You gotta be shitting me, Nick, I only just left. I barely managed to nap twenty minutes…”

  Lupo told him about the dead croupier.

  “Ah, fuck,” his partner moaned, but then he grumbled: “All right, all right… I’ll get my ass in gear.” DiSanto loved his clichés.

  Lupo surveyed the area and said, “I think we got a loony who's wearing a hard-on for the casino. He’s not hitting anywhere else, sticking around here almost like he’s taunting us. Daring us to catch him, using that crossbow to make every news broadcast…”

  “Yeah, sounds right, this sick guy loves the attention,” DiSanto sighed deeply into his phone. “But we’ve been checking for disgruntled workers, and you know, reported misconduct and all that. Nothing so far. He might as well be a ghost. Or he’s just not connected to the casino thing at all.”

  “Yeah, there’s that possibility too,” Lupo said. “But get this, though. Jessie drove down last night—”

  “Yeah?” DiSanto sounded as if he were smirking.

  “Get your mind out of the gutter, DiSanto. Your mother wouldn’t approve.” Lupo paused a beat. “Well, maybe, knowing you she would…”

  “Okay, okay… You mean you found time to do something other than…?”

  “Better just stop right there, bud.”

  DiSanto chuckled.

  Lupo ignored the leering laugh. “I keep telling Jess she should switch careers, be a cop instead. She’s always got good instincts and she had a good thought. What about disgruntled rejects?”

  “Huh?”

  “That’s what I said. She meant, anyone who couldn't get a job. Tried to, but got rejected. I’ve got them trying to make me a list of recent interviewees.”

  “Okay—”

  “And I’ve got Charlie Bear requesting the same from his old employer up in Watersmeet. There may be other casinos we should talk to, but I figure we should be concentrating on these three for now. See if they’ve shared some information.”

  “So maybe the guy’s pissed off at casinos who stiffed him on a job he wanted and he just decides to start offing other hourly workers? Here?” DiSanto sniggered a little. “That's your theory? Or Jessie’s theory?”

  “Listen, Chuckles, call the Great Northern and get them on it. You know, if any name shows up on more than one of these lists…”

  “What if it’s only two out of three?”

  “Good enough for me. I’d try to get a warrant based on that. Even a desk jock like that idiot Killian in IA would have to admit a single name that popped up a couple times would be worth owing a favor for…”

  DiSanto paused, then: “So you want me to – what?”

  “We’ve got two vics now. I bet this guy’s just warming up. Maybe we can predict the next target. I don’t really buy the random argument. Maybe they’re random in a specific way, you know, but they’re both here. Not other random locations. No, there’s some connection. He’s targeting casino dealer-types, people who handle money. Might be subconscious, but there might be something there. Plus if it’s worth it for him to take a risk hanging around, maybe it implies he’s not done, and maybe we can use that to get him.”
/>   “Okay, on my way.” DiSanto sighed. “I didn’t need any more sleep anyway.”

  Lupo turned and surveyed them. They’d gathered to gawk and he didn’t blame them, but he was getting an itchy feeling. The thought might have been nibbling at the edge of his consciousness, until it reared up and bit him. He’d just told DiSanto the guy was taking risks…

  Could it be?

  Sometimes the Creature’s senses overflowed.

  Could this asshole be back here already, soaking in the atmosphere? Watching the spectacle? Enjoying it?

  That would take some guts. Or insanity.

  Lupo slowly scanned the faces arrayed nearby. All ages, races, types. About an equal number men and women. But they were different from a few minutes ago…

  Some faces he had registered before had since then moved around, and some were gone, moved off. Others were the same. A few avoided his gaze, but most were too busy trying to gawk to bother with him. Still, he felt watched.

  Fuck, does our guy have the balls to hang around at the scene and watch the show?

  DiSanto had hung up, but Lupo kept his ear to the flat phone, pretending to listen.

  There.

  Was that young guy shifting his gaze away from Lupo’s whenever they were about to meet?

  Caucasian, slight of build, wearing some kind of dark hoodie. Well, that made him a criminal right there, didn’t it? In some people’s eyes, anyway.

  Lupo slid his eyes over the guy quickly and spotted two more hoodies in the crowd. One was a woman. He dismissed the woman, a sexist bias he acknowledged, but this kind of perp was almost never a female. Crowd was probably thirty people, two-thirds males. Probably they were mostly casino customers side-tracked by the rotating lights at the crime scene. People wear hoodies all the time…

  Only a couple of them held his gaze a few seconds before turning back to stare at the spectacle behind him. He half-turned and realized the ME’s people had unfolded a gurney and the crowd was humming a little in expectation. There was a body to see, after all. They mostly seemed to have lost interest in Lupo.

  He turned, splitting his attention between the crowd and the clean-up going on behind him, forgetting all about pretending to talk on his shut-down phone.

  When he looked up again and scanned the crowd, the younger guy in the dark hoodie was gone.

  Shit.

  He tucked the phone in his pocket and followed his hunch.

  THE ARCHER

  He felt the tingle when the cop’s eyes moved over him.

  It was like a spark, zapping his skin sharply, and then it was gone.

  But no, the spark actually lingered, and he felt a flush spreading across his face. It was unintentional, but he almost panicked. Would the damn cop notice?

  Is that cop seeing inside me?

  He wasn’t psychic or anything, but the flush was the tip of a feeling that washed over him and made him uncomfortable. Made his skin itch. As if the cop could nose out his guilt just by glancing at him.

  But that’s ridiculous. Isn’t it?

  A couple times he averted his eyes from the big cop’s gaze just as they were about to meet. He pretended to be really interested in the crime scene techs. Well, he was really interested. He was enjoying the circus his action had set off, that he actually had created. Like art. Sure, he was taking a chance sticking around here to watch. Didn’t they say criminals always returned to the scene of the crime? Who said that? They did. What the hell was he doing here, just inducing a painful boner? But he figured it also worked in his favor – would a criminal really return to bask in his crime when everybody expected him to? Most people would say no.

  And yet, he had done it. He was a criminal, he was willing to admit it.

  Was he out-thinking them, or would they out-think him? But they couldn’t, could they? He was The Archer. The name was fitting him better and better. And he did have a boner.

  Still…

  Maybe best to head on over to the casino, pretend to be a customer and move along before some pimply kid in a too-big uniform told him to get going…

  He melted away from the crowd even as the number of gawkers increased when the casino disgorged a group of depressed gamblers and they spotted the activity nearby. The Archer faded through the approaching curiosity seekers and entered the casino from one of the remote corner doors, allowing himself to be barraged by the stale smoke stench and hypnotic slot machine symphony he loved so much. There was nothing better in the world, which was why he had wanted to make working in a casino his life.

  Until the bastards took it all away from me.

  Blacklisted.

  Unfit to be hired at any state tribal casino, and by extension, probably nowhere else. These fuckers shared information like anybody’s business. So much for privacy.

  He could barely contain his rage.

  A conspiracy. Against him.

  He stood inside the doors and took it all in, loving it – and at the same time hating it so much that he wished he could detonate himself with a terrorist vest and take it all to hell with him. If he had been wearing one, he had no doubt he would push the button and enjoy the final nanosecond's knowledge that he was melting all these people and machines and haters into slag.

  He smiled, looking back at the reflected squad car strobe lights lined up near his latest handiwork.

  Striding past the first rank of slot machines and toward the center of the vaguely circular space, where one of the already crowded main bars was located, he began his search for a new target. Did it have to be here? Yes, for maximum impact he couldn’t afford to wait, to drive to another casino. They were too far apart. He wanted to strike again, soon. He wanted to be visible. He wanted to be discussed, He wanted to be hated.

  He wanted to be feared.

  He thought about it carefully.

  Maybe a reporter. They’re always so smug, because the crime is over when they get there. The death isn’t connected to them. They’re safe.

  A new message to deliver… direct from The Archer.

  You are not safe.

  He snickered. Reporters weren’t hard to find at a crime scene. Maybe that attractive reporter the big cop had been talking to after Tanya. The fidgety smoker chick.

  Except for the smoking, she was actually very attractive.

  Yeah… maybe that one. They would notice that one.

  LUPO

  Instinct.

  Sometimes, he had learned over his life spent with a monster, his monster, that the Creature inside had instincts better than his own. When such instincts made themselves known he’d started to follow them with less questioning, less rationalizing.

  Now the feeling, the sense, the instinctive twinge that made him try to find the guy in the hoodie took him toward the casino, whose walls towered over them all – it was a lot closer than he’d thought. He crossed what was left of the approach, a concrete apron interspersed with pebbly decorative slabs, and scanned the thin rank of people between him and the door. No twinges.

  Inside the main entrance atrium was a wide, round lobby full of people, none of whom looked particularly happy to be there. They gave off the feeling of facing a grim destiny, a looming encounter with the goddess of luck, Fortuna, already knowing it would not go well but seemingly stuck on an irreversible path.

  The interior of the casino seemed to extend across the horizon with three main aisles of beeping, jangling slot and poker machines. He knew they’d give him a headache if he was forced to work inside this vast cavern of pseudo-Indian clichés and ridiculous machinery of greed. Lupo could almost imagine electronic money flowing like digital blood into the veins and arteries of some huge, cackling Lovecraftian monster perched inside a brick cavern below the marble floor.

  Lupo shook his head to dismiss his brief philosophical foray. Stick to the task at hand. He scanned the people quickly, but there were no hoodies in sight.

  Problem was he had no idea where to go. He thought about compelling the Creature to help, but he cou
ldn’t quite imagine how or what the help would look like. And anyway the Creature was notably skittish about being conscripted – the wolf might be a part of him, but it did not always take his commands easily. After all the years, this still drove Lupo crazy. He felt he should be in charge, and if there was a way to take full control, he was still unaware of it. He dropped the idea… for now. Instead he finally selected a direction and stalked inside, suddenly understanding the casino’s mindset in making every aisle, every alcove, every rounded corner similar to every other.

  You could walk around for hours and never find the exit.

  That was one way to keep people playing games. And losing money.

  He looked over his shoulder and the round lobby had completely disappeared, hidden behind pillars tricked-up to resemble huge gnarled trees, and partial walls lined with banks of slot and video poker machines. Depressed, intense-looking people huddled over half of them, watching their own life’s blood disappear into the veins of the gigantic tentacled monster he visualized lurking below.

  Have to stop reading all that Lovecraft.

  He shook his head again and kept an eye out for hoodies, but every one he spotted was worn with the hood spread flaccid on the person’s back. So it would even be harder to find the guy he thought had eyeballed him and set off his “spider sense.” Wolf-sense?

  Whatever.

  Rage sparked lightning-like through his limbs. He slowed his pace so as to scan as many faces and jackets as possible, but the farther he got inside the enormous building the more he was forced to admit that he suspected he’d chosen the wrong aisle. So now what, angle toward one side or the other and try a different main aisle, or was it hopeless? The guy could be anywhere at all.

  Fuck!

  Chances were he was wrong and chasing his own tail. Would the fucking Archer really stalk his prey inside? Wasn’t he an outdoor killer?