Hard Shot (A Jon Reznick Thriller)

by J. B. Turner

  Sheerin rolled up his sleeves and leaned back in his seat. “We have the blood of dead cops running in the streets of the Bronx. Don’t tell me you didn’t know anything about these guys. You’re insulting my intelligence.”

  The atmosphere in the interview room was suddenly incredibly charged. The tension palpable.

  “Listen, you might want to check with an NYPD detective I know. Detective Acosta, Nineteenth Precinct. Upper East Side. A year ago my daughter was a victim of a hit-and-run that put her in a coma. Acosta will vouch for me.”

  The younger detective scribbled down the details as Reznick sketched out the story of the corrupt diplomat who’d knocked down his daughter while speeding through the streets of New York last year. He’d ended up working alongside the FBI and the NYPD to bring the diplomat and his illegal activities to a halt.

  Sheerin stared at him long and hard. “Seems like trouble just follows you around when you’re in New York, Jon. Why is that?”

  “Sometimes, that’s just the way it is.”

  Eventually, the interview ended for a second time and Reznick was escorted, still handcuffed, to the bathroom. He returned to the interview room, a fresh bottle of water at his side of the desk. He opened it up and took a drink. The cold water felt good; on such a blazing hot day, even the air-conditioning inside the precinct building couldn’t keep up. He sat back down in his seat.

  They left him there for hours.

  He was given a sandwich. A couple of coffees. The detectives finally returned just after three p.m. This time, they were accompanied by Special Agent Leon Cortez from the New York field office.

  “Hey, Jon, you OK?” Cortez asked.

  Reznick was glad to see him again. He remembered Cortez from the previous summer. The special agent exuded a certain confidence, although his eyes seemed a bit bloodshot now, as if from lack of sleep. But he looked sharp in his well-cut navy suit, white shirt, pale-blue tie, and shiny black shoes.

  Reznick nodded. “I’m fine. You want to get me out of here? I’m done.”

  Just before four p.m., Reznick was released by the NYPD into the custody of the FBI. He was taken directly to the FBI’s New York office in lower Manhattan and up to the twenty-sixth floor and into the conference room. Martha Meyerstein was sitting on the edge of a desk, arms folded. The big screens behind her were showing spectator cell phone footage from outside the stadium as the sniper attacks erupted.

  “What the hell took you guys so long getting me out of there?” Reznick asked.

  Meyerstein pointed to the screens. “Eight NYPD officers dead. That’s what. They’re on the warpath. And the fact that you got right in the middle of everything has heightened their suspicions that there was a connection. They’re pissed, Jon.”

  “Yeah, well, so am I. Having to sit and listen to those guys grilling me as if I was involved in some FBI operation up in the Bronx.”

  “Look at it from their point of view. It doesn’t look good. And while we appreciate you risking your life to go after these guys, we’ve been forced into damage-control mode with both the police and the media. No one wants to believe that you’re just a John McClane good guy in the right place at the right time.”

  “I need to find out if Lauren is OK. I need to call her.”

  “Go right ahead,” Meyerstein said.

  Reznick headed over to the window and called his daughter’s cell phone. He stared out over the lower Manhattan skyscrapers as he waited for it to ring. It had been nearly five hours since the attack. And he was worried sick for her.

  Lauren’s cell phone rang six times before voice mail picked up.

  Reznick left a message, asking for her to call and confirm she was OK.

  Meyerstein said, “No luck?”

  Reznick shook his head.

  “She’ll be fine, Jon. She’s a tough, smart girl. I’m sure she got out of there.”

  Reznick wondered if he had made the wrong call. Should he have stayed with his daughter instead of going after the snipers?

  As if reading his mind, Meyerstein said, “It was great work getting those guys. Really great.”

  Reznick’s gaze was drawn to the huge screens showing the two white guys he had taken out. The shooters. He stared long and hard at the close-ups showing heavily tattooed forearms and necks and dead blue eyes on both. “Is that them?”

  Meyerstein nodded.

  “What do we know about them?”

  “Interesting crew. These are the O’Keefe brothers. The guy on the right, Travis, age twenty-four, was the guy you killed outside the bodega. The guy on the left, Ryan, age twenty-five, was the one killed on the subway platform.”

  “Where are they from?”

  “Upstate New York, originally. We have a previous address, a walk-up in the East Village, few months back. But they’ve served serious time over the years.”

  Reznick ran his hands across his face. “So what’s the motivation? Are we talking far-right anti-government nuts? Militia?”

  “Maybe. The O’Keefes are serious methamphetamine dealers. Very dangerous. They’re linked to the Aryan Circle.”

  “Who the hell are they?”

  “It’s a prison gang that broke away from the Aryan Brotherhood. Aryan Circle also believes in race purity, white supremacist ideology, but they’re far more dogmatic about it.”

  “Sounds like a nice crowd.”

  “Back in 2007, some of their guys were responsible for killing two police officers down in Louisiana.”

  “So these O’Keefe brothers have done time. For what?”

  “Take your pick. Methamphetamine dealing, knife fights in jail. Nasty pair. Also did time for stealing a trailer full of guns. Got out three months back. We believe they were targeted for recruitment by Aryan Circle leaders because they were only in for six and seven years respectively, which meant that when they got out, they could carry out whatever it is the leadership wants carried out.”

  “What’s the motivation? Eight police officers dead. Why?”

  “As I said, the group they are associated with has history. Gang experts are working on this as we speak. The officers killed today were white, Hispanic, and black. So they didn’t discriminate in that sense. Whatever motivated this, it transcends their race-hate message. That’s something we’ll look closer at in the coming hours and days.”

  “Have they been on the FBI’s radar at all?”

  Meyerstein cleared her throat and shrugged, as if she didn’t yet know the full facts herself. “We had a task force looking into their activities.”

  “The cops seemed to think the FBI knew about these guys. You’re not holding back something, are you, Martha?”

  “We’re trying to find out more about that and exactly how much we knew about them.”

  Reznick thought her answer sounded defensive. Not like her.

  “They’re not on a watch list or anything, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  Reznick looked at the screens and shook his head. “What else do you know about these two—family, personal lives . . . ?”

  “Mother still lives upstate. Alcoholic. Father abandoned them when they were young. Brought up ostensibly by their stepfather.”

  “And where’s he?”

  Meyerstein sighed. “You’re asking a lot of questions, Jon.”

  Reznick looked at her. “Martha, am I missing something? Is there a problem?”

  “No, no problem.”

  “So tell me about the stepfather.”

  Meyerstein shifted on the desk. “The stepfather is dead.”

  “When did he die? How did he die?”

  She looked away, seeming irritated by the questions. Her gaze wandered around the room for a few moments. Finally, she said, “He died about three months ago.”

  “Three months ago? So, I’m just guessing here, but if the attack didn’t seem to be about race, is this stepfather’s death connected in some way to the actions of these two crazies? Have they been triggered in some way by it?”


  Meyerstein shrugged. “We’re getting off base. We don’t know what the motivation for this was. The fact remains that they were members of a neo-Nazi prison gang that has been linked in the past to the murders of police officers. Those are the facts.”

  She sounded more abrasive and impatient than he’d ever heard her, as if she didn’t want to reveal the full extent of her knowledge. Reznick wasn’t offended. He didn’t think her caginess was anything to do with him personally. But he was curious. “What about their associates?”

  “We’re working on that. They didn’t have wives, steady girlfriends, that kind of thing. Constantly on the move. There’s an older brother on Long Island.”

  “What does he know about it?”

  “He’s the smart one in the family. He got out and went to college. Got a good job working as a stock market analyst in Manhattan.”

  Reznick contemplated the information. The brother might not know anything, but they needed to question him.

  “So that’s three brothers,” Meyerstein continued. “A smart one who got the hell out when he could. And the two crazies you killed today. But there’s a fourth brother.”

  Reznick shrugged. “What about him?”

  “The fourth brother, the youngest, is the one giving us real cause for concern. We’re trying to trace him. So far without success.”

  “And what do we know about the fourth brother?”

  Meyerstein shook her head. “Todd O’Keefe. Hard-core Aryan Brotherhood.” She picked up a remote control, pressed a couple of buttons. A mug shot appeared on the big screen beside a photo of a tattooed torso. Inked swastikas adorned the side of the guy’s neck, and an Irish shamrock and swastika spread across his chest.

  “This guy looks like a handful.”

  “He’s hyper-violent. And as luck would have it, he was also released from Leavenworth three months ago, two days after his brothers. Crazy coincidence, I think.”

  “Yeah, so where the hell is he?”

  “That’s the problem. We don’t know.”

  Reznick contemplated the situation. “I want to speak to the brother we do know about.”

  “Out on Long Island?”

  “Any objection to me asking him some questions?”

  “That can be arranged.”

  Eight

  Todd O’Keefe splashed cold water on his face and ran his fingers through his scraggly beard as he hunkered down in a run-down New Jersey motel. The curtains were already drawn, blocking out the late-afternoon sun. The room was bathed in a pale-yellow light. But it might as well have been the dead of night.

  He put on headphones, switched on a Ted Nugent playlist on his iPhone, and got down on the floor where he began a punishing workout, starting with push-ups.

  He felt a black anger beginning to consume his soul. His brothers were dead. His flesh and blood. He hadn’t envisioned it ending like that. He closed his eyes for a second. His mind flashed to a photo of Travis and Ryan as kids, arms wrapped protectively around their baby brother. The three amigos, they liked to call themselves.

  O’Keefe felt his muscles tighten as he continued the push-ups. He felt himself working up a sweat. The endorphins began to kick in. The blood was flowing. The sound of heavy guitar riffs was hyping him up for what lay ahead. But he didn’t feel as euphoric as he usually did during his physical exercises. He felt homicidal.

  The news images of his brothers’ bodies covered by police sheets, lying in separate locations in New York City, burned into his psyche. Like a branding iron.

  He tried to erase the image from his mind. He didn’t want to imagine their final moments. He would find out who was responsible. And he would avenge them. But at that moment, he wanted to remember them as they were. Warriors. Tough guys. Blood brothers.

  As he continued his push-ups, O’Keefe reveled in the exertion. His muscles being stretched to the max. As his limbs began to ache, he relished the pain. Pain was good. Pain would set him free.

  One hundred. Two hundred. Three hundred. When he began the sit-ups, he did two hundred straight, without stopping. His stomach muscles tightened. He felt ripped. His breathing edged up a notch. And then another, and another, the more he pushed himself.

  His watch’s alarm beeped, signaling that his thirty minutes of exercise time was up. No breaks. No letup. The way he liked it. The way he had trained in the yard back at Leavenworth. He had kept up the same fitness regimen on the outside. Up at dawn, running, punching bags, then heading to the gym. Sweating. Fighting. That’s what he did.

  O’Keefe sat up, cross-legged on the floor, back leaning against the bed. He reached over to his jeans and took his cell phone out of his pocket. He checked his messages. Still nothing. He switched off the music. Then he closed his eyes and began to meditate.

  He imagined a river. A cold river. And it flowed on through a beautiful meadow. He felt himself drifting off. Escaping in his mind. He felt himself walking down an alpine path, surveying the wildflowers and grass and fields. The smell of pine and moss lingered in his senses. When he was done, he felt mentally cleansed. His soul was free again.

  He began to order his thoughts.

  Meditation was something he had scoffed at when he had first entered the prison system. It wasn’t for the likes of him, he thought. He’d always considered meditation and yoga to be the habit of nuts in California. He began to change his mind when he saw a fellow inmate, a man he trusted, feared even, meditating as he sat in his cell. The man had told O’Keefe that he could escape the confines of his incarceration when he meditated. He could move wherever he wanted in his mind. He was free. No one could touch him. And it was true.

  The man had turned O’Keefe on to weights. Tough weights. Lifting weights he couldn’t ever imagine lifting or shifting. But he did. The man was like a surrogate father to him inside. He seemed to sense O’Keefe’s mood swings. It was almost like the man had a sixth sense that allowed him to know what to say or do in any given moment.

  O’Keefe studied how the man carried himself in Leavenworth. The conditions, especially in summer, were extreme. The prison was known as “the hot house” because of the small, sweltering cells. He watched the way the man, who led the Brand in Leavenworth, ruled over the prisoners like a god. The fearsome crew surrounding the man fascinated O’Keefe. He wanted to be like them. All he had to do was make his mark, show that he could be taken seriously. That he would back up fellow brothers in the yard or outside. All he had to do was kill a Mexican or black inmate.

  He killed one of each. Those who were supposed to witness it did. Those who weren’t supposed to turned a blind eye. That was the way it worked on the inside.

  O’Keefe was in. He got the essential shamrock tattooed in the middle of his chest, alongside a swastika. He reveled in the reactions of other inmates. No one fucked with him anymore. The man he revered, who was on the ruling three-man Aryan Brotherhood Commission, showed him the ropes. How they ran the heroin in and out of the yard. Even the inmates in solitary were on H. It was all around. But the man didn’t touch it, so neither did O’Keefe. He focused on physical toughness. Grueling weight sessions in the yard. Martial arts techniques. His physique began to change. He began to bulk up. And he began to take steroids. He could lift heavier and heavier weights. But it was also like throwing kerosene on a fire: it ignited his latent rage.

  O’Keefe began to grow in influence among the Brotherhood. He was increasingly trusted. He began to organize the drug mules. Crooked guards, bent lawyers, prison visitors. Heroin, meth, marijuana, pills, cocaine. Swallowed in balloons or condoms. Instructions were sent out through coded messages via ordinary mail, bribed prison staff, or even inmates’ visitors. There was always a way. The money rolled in.

  O’Keefe began to realize that while the Brotherhood still touted its white supremacy, that ideology had been subjugated in favor of its enterprises. Drug dealing. Protection money.

  The more he got to know the man, the more he grew to respect him. The man was six foot s
even, brawny, and strangely charismatic. Like all the top AB guys, he was well read in Nietzsche, Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, and Tolkien, among others. The man’s personal favorite was Mein Kampf.

  The bond between O’Keefe and the man became even stronger.

  Not long after, the man revealed that he wasn’t just a member of the Commission. He was the shot caller. The guy at the top who gave orders. The rules were simple: you followed the orders to the letter, or you were killed. O’Keefe knew that. And when he was released after serving his sentence, he knew how it worked. He was given orders, he carried them out.

  But his orders for today, Independence Day, were more than just orders to carry out. This mission was also deeply personal.

  After his release, O’Keefe had talked at length with his brothers about avenging the death of Charlie Campbell. About meting out justice. They had talked of finding the cop who’d put him in the choke hold that had killed him and making him die a slow death in the same way. But those plans were cast aside when the man sent a coded handwritten message.

  It was delivered to a PO box near Ithaca. O’Keefe picked it up and deciphered the contents. He’d offered the job to Travis and Ryan as a gift, a way of demonstrating to the man that his brothers were as worthy as he was.

  O’Keefe felt devastated his brothers had died. He was partly responsible. But the reality was that all three of them had wanted to exact the same kind of blood justice in the name of Charlie Campbell. And all three knew there was a risk of getting killed if they carried out the attacks. Either that or being incarcerated until they died.

  His cell phone rang, snapping him out of his thoughts. O’Keefe didn’t recognize the caller ID. Which could only mean one thing: it was the man. He switched on the radio, playing some Eagles song, and turned up the volume to mask the sound of his voice from anyone in the room next door or outside.

  “Todd, how are you holding up?”