A Thousand Years of Darkness: a Thriller (29 page)

“Is that your little insurance notebook?” she asked him.

“It’s private.”

“Like a diary?”

“What am I—a school girl?”

“You sound like you could use some Maalox.”

“Judy, what I can
use
is to go out for a drink and forget about Illinois.”

Unperturbed, she continued to brush her hair. She glanced at the TV.

“I seen it when that nasty bitch hit you square dab in the face with the pie. You looked so awful I almost cried.”

“Judy, if you’re ready, let’s go.”

She paused with brush in hand to study him. “Dennis, you’ve changed like day to night since you started running for Congress.”

“Politics is nasty business.”

“I seen you on TV and your wife—”

“Let’s not do this again,” he interrupted. “I’ve told you, it’s all show for the campaign.”

“You don’t never let me finish what I got to say. I see ya’all on TV and she’s all giggly and hanging on your arm. But you look miserable. I hope you ain’t looking like that when you and me gets together.”

“Stop it, Judy. Just stop it.”

He stood up abruptly, stuffing his pen into his shirt pocket. On their way out, he absently-mindedly left his notebook on the dinette table. They locked the door. Then he unlocked it again and returned for his notebook. He didn’t want to forget it there. He trusted Judy no more than he did Marilyn not to open it. They were both women, weren’t they?

Chapter Fifty-One

New York

Nail knew it was the end if he let himself black out. He bounced up from the ground on nothing but raw grit, still gripping the .38 in his fist. Fu Manchu took his little Fu Manchu and hauled ass. The other Fed was down for the count, his legs twitching in death spasms.

Nail’s only thought was to put distance between himself and the “crime scene.” He stumbled off in the blinding downpour. Police in Manhattan were quicker to respond to gunfire than were cops in Harlem or the Bronx where they heard it every night.

He dropped Fu Manchu’s Beretta in the first trash receptacle he came across and shambled on, hunched over his wound and attempting to hold himself together with his hands and arms. Cold rain soaked him to the skin, but his ribs felt wet and warm. He didn’t know how hard he was hit, but he was bleeding pretty badly and getting short of breath. At least he wasn’t stretched out like the other guy waiting to be slabbed and tagged.

His intentions had been to scare the piss out of the Fu Manchu guy; let his bosses know Sharon was protected, not kill him. It hadn’t worked out exactly that way. The black raincoat guy was the fourth man he had killed since all this had started—more gunplay than during
Desert Storm
and his years on the TPD put together. No regrets, just making note of it. Connie would have been horrified.

He had to keep going. It was all over for Sharon if the Homies captured him—or he died. The predators were circling. They weren’t about to let up until they destroyed her as they had Jerry Baer.

He dared not seek medical help. Doctors were required to report bullet wounds. He mustn’t let the Feds make the connection between the dead man and Sharon and bring all this down on her. The Homies were looking for a reason to arrest her.

Out of breath, panting from pain and loss of blood, he leaned against a wall in the drenched shadows and looked back. Lights were flashing on all over the apartment complex. He opened his shirt and gingerly examined his wounds, discovering with his fingers a puncture entrance on his right side and a ragged exit in the meaty part of his back. Pressing against his ribs produced crackling, grating sounds of shattered ribs, accompanied by piercing pain. He feared he might be hemorrhaging internally and that shock was imminent.

Scattered traffic passed in the dark rain with headlights diminished and driver vision restricted. He moved on in his awkward, limping side-to-side gait. Sirens wailed in the distance. He headed for Central Park and managed another block before flashing blue lights telegraphed the approach of a police car. He ducked for the nearest alley as a prowl car squalled around the corner of the intersection ahead. Its headlights washed across him briefly before he blended into alley shadows. Emergency lights slapped buildings on either side of the street as the cruiser slowed and stopped.

There were always Dipsy Dumpsters in alleys. Nail clambered painfully into the nearest one and pulled the heavy lid down. He was somewhat relieved to find himself waist deep in plain household-type trash, probably apartment house wastes, rather than garbage from some restaurant or grocery store.

Peering through the crack between the lid and the receptacle, he saw the shadow of the cop stretched long in his direction by the headlights of his parked cruiser. A Kell flashlight probed the rain-swept alley, flaring against the dumpster. Nail cringed away from it, holding his breath and trying not to give himself away in his suffering.

Rain howled against the metal lid above Nail’s head. Water dribbled down his back. For what seemed an eternity, the patrolman’s flashlight beam searched and picked at the dark. He must have left his car door open or his window partially down, for Nail heard a continuous stream of police calls crackling from the cop’s radio.

The cop was entering the alley for a closer inspection. Nail left his gun stuffed in the waistband of his trousers. He could never take another street cop’s life. This was just an average Joe, not a Homie. A flatfoot fighting crime and evil with little or nothing to do with the vast federal apparatus that was on its way to taking over the nation.

He wondered if Sharon’s God would listen to him if he prayed.

His vision blurred and split into various sight patterns, like that of a spider. The cop morphed into four or five images, all of whom were headed directly for him. He realized he was losing consciousness. He’d probably wake up in a jail cell or, as his granny used to say, he’d wake up to find himself dead.

The officer walked past the dumpster and shined his light behind it. He hesitated as though uncertain whether he had seen anything after all. Maybe he had had enough of the rain, perhaps he heard himself being paged over the radio. Whatever the reason, he gave up and returned to his car. Blue lights still flashing, it left in a hurry toward the scene of the shooting. Darkness returned to the alley.

Nail toppled backward into the trash. Shock was setting in. He fumbled for the TracPhone in his front pocket. He couldn’t recall Big C’s number. Then he remembered it had been programmed in. He felt for the dial button and pressed.

Homeland Agent Ambushed

(New York)—
A Homeland Security agent was shot to death tonight in an upscale apartment complex where Rightwing talk show hostess Sharon Lowenthal is believed living. Authorities identified the agent as Roth Bennett, 37.

A second agent, Walter Roland, witnessed the murder. He said he was working a case in the Hampton Arms Apartments when a man with a gun confronted him and questioned him about Lowenthal. When Agent Bennett came to Roland’s assistance, he was gunned down in cold blood. Bennett had not drawn his weapon...

The assailant’s description, plus other details surrounding the crime, lead police to believe the assailant may have been former Oklahoma Police Detective James Nail...

Chapter Fifty-Two

Birmingham, Alabama

Big Corey Brown sat in
Ruby’s Ribs
at a Formica table with two other crew who had lost their previous jobs and were now doing road construction under a Federal Stimulus Plan. One was “Skinny Jim” Jefferson, the other “Squeaky” Talbot, both as dark as Big C but rougher looking in a southern country boy sort of way.

Big C’s TracPhone buzzed, but there was no one on the other end when he answered it. The callback said “unidentified caller.”

“That you ol’ woman, Vernon?” Squeaky teased.

Skinny Jim guffawed. “Keepin’ tabs on his black ass, wonderin’ why he ain’t home. I bet she six-foot-fourteen and with an ass broad enough to last till sundown next year.”

“Vernon” was Big C’s cover name. Vernon Smith. He figured his best bet of blending into the population until things cooled off—or heated up, whichever came first—was to find a big southern city full of African-Americans. First day in Birmingham, “Vernon” hooked a job working on a mostly-black crew for a minority construction company with a federal contract. The crew, it seemed, survived on barbeque, fried chicken and beer. KFCs and B-B-Q joints down south also served collard greens and fried okra. The only thing missing was watermelon. Posing as Vernon, Big C felt like he was living the stereotype.

He got up from the table, which was littered with soiled paper towels,
Ruby’s Ribs
boxes, bones and beer cans. “Gotta go make this call,” he excused himself.

“Oh, yea-a-ah,” Skinny Jim cackled good-naturedly, rolling his eyes. “He gotta check in, what he gotta do.”

“You got me,” Big C said over his shoulder as he hurried toward the door. “She one bodacious woman.”

He plopped down in a wooden rocker on one end of the rustic front porch where darkness concealed him. A constant stream of traffic headlights going past on I-65 reflected the concern on his face as he dialed Nail’s TracPhone and heard the vibrating sound it made. They had agreed to contact each other only in an emergency. He waited, but there was no answer. Cold seeped into the pit of his stomach.

He dialed again a few minutes later. Still no answer. He returned inside and made excuses that he had to get home right away.

“You pussy-whipped,” Squeaky decided, feeling his beers.

“I wear the pants. She just tell me which pair to wear,” Big C quipped back.

He was staying in an upstairs rented room on Crestwood. More stereotype. A rooming house with peeling white paint and police breaking up the family squabble next door every Saturday night. He locked his door when he got home to keep Bertha the live-in landlady from busting in on him unannounced; she had a thing for him. He settled on the bed with its rusted iron bedstead and squeaking springs and tossed his work cap in the corner. He had let his hair grow out to a length Pop would have called “nappy.” It changed his facial appearance, but there was little he could do about his size.

He began dialing Nail’s number every few minutes until he had to plug in his phone charger to keep the routine going. His distress grew as minutes turned into hours. There was nothing Big C could do this time to ride to his old friend’s rescue. For all he knew, James might be dead by now.

Although he couldn’t be certain, he suspected Nail had gone to New York to be near Sharon. He thought about phoning her, but dismissed the impulse. A call would only worry her and prompt her to do something reckless.

He kept dialing.

He turned the portable TV to a local newscast, as the rooming house had neither cable nor satellite. About one a.m., a streamer across the bottom of the screen announced that a Homeland Security agent in Manhattan had been gunned down by a terrorist.

By four a.m., he was ready to conclude James was either dead or in custody. He lowered his head into his big hands and sat there on the bed for a long time while he remembered the times Nail and he had had together. Other cops sometimes referred to them as “Salt and Pepper.”

He decided to make one last try before he gave up. He punched in the numbers slowly and deliberately, as if concentration might make the difference in getting through. He heard the vibrating sound. He started to press
End Call
when a feeble voice rose on the other end.

“C...I...I... It’s up to you to protect her... I’m dying...”

Chapter Fifty-Three

New York

Daylight like dirty gray dishwater seeped through the crack between the dumpster and its lid. James Nail stirred and painfully opened his eyes to discover, with some surprise, that he was still alive, although buried up to his neck in trash. He felt stiff and weak when he tried to move, but at least his wounds had stopped bleeding.

Rain no longer drummed on the lid; he was still cold and damp. He shivered and tried to stand, succeeding only in burying himself deeper in the dumpster’s contents. He finally gave up. Without the strength to get out of the damned thing, he figured his only choice was to lie right where he was like so much discarded spoiled meat until the trucks came and hauled him off with the rest of the garbage to be ground up and recycled.

He would rest some and try again.

His heart raced with apprehension when he thought about Sharon. Last night was further proof that
they
intended to shut her up. He still found it near impossible to comprehend how the U.S. Government had sunk to this. Dissidents in the old Soviet Union must have experienced the same disbelief at the knock on their door in the middle of the night.

Brisk footfalls approached in the alley. Nail reached for his S&W .38. It must have slipped from his belt during the night. He dared not rustle around for it. He lay perfectly still. The lid cracked open. Bags of trash and garbage sailed in on top of him. The lid slammed and the footfalls receded.

With an effort, he pushed the heavy bags to one side and caught his breath. He heard morning traffic picking up out on Avenue of The Americas, a cacophony of blaring horns and racing engines. The city was awaking, like an enormous monster stretching and coming to life.

He made another attempt to escape from the dumpster, but soon fell back exhausted. He rested, breathing hard, then sweating as the risen sun glared down the length of the alley and heated up his steel prison like an oven. He extracted his cell phone from his pocket with fumbling fingers. He was dialing by feel in the dark dumpster when the instrument vibrated, startling him.

“C?” he said into it.

“James, how you doing?”