Frenzy (31 page)

"That's got it. Nice work."

"Call me anytime."

"Will do." Fucking idiot. They broke off.

Spain went back to the house and put on a leather coat, got a hat, some other things. Drove out to Lake St. Charles.

The Park Avenue was sitting about a hundred and fifty yards from the front door. Visible from the house and to passing traffic. It was't ideal but he'd handle it.

He walked up in plain sight, noticing the guy move slightly. Probably had his hand around a piece.

"Yeah," the man in the car grunted, putting a question mark on the end of it.

"Sir, please place both your hands on the steering wheel," he said, letting the leather ID case flop open. A hunk of fancy enamelwork and gold and a well-done laminated photo card flashed into view. "You have the right —"

"Ay, what the fuck is this shit?" the guy said, but bringing his other hand up empty on the wheel. "Who'd —"

"— to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney." He brought the silenced pistol up and shot the man in the temple. A bright fountain of hot, red blood gushed out of the head as he fell to the right. "You have the right to a mortician." Spain kept talking into the car as he slid the piece back in a pocket. "If you wish a mortician but cannot afford one . . . . " He stopped and got back in the car and drove up to the front door. He got out and rang the buzzer.

A thin, pale man with dirty blond hair answered the door. "Yes?"

"Your name?" The shield blinked out again.

"MY name?"

"Yes, sir. State your name please."

"My name is Dorn."

"Sir, we have a search warrant to inspect these premises in relation to a federal investigation." He was moving past the man as he spoke, "Well, just one minute here .... And he shot the man in the face moving quickly into the room even before the man dropped, holding the piece on Kriegal, a nice firm double-handed hold like in the movies.

"Blue," he said, "you're under arrest, asswipe. And here come d' judge." He laughed, feeling good for the first time all day.

And then he saw the pictures on the walls.

He thought for a moment it was a hallucination. Those weren't really pictures of little kids in each other's arms and in the embraces and oh my God in the embraces of adults and in the positions and in the savage postures and in the bound and screaming punishments and in the awful, ah, the vileness of it, in the commission of obscene acts frozen by a camera, professionally mounted and matted and framed under glass.

He whispered to the stocky, balding man seated on the long sofa, "I'd like to slice that filthy head off and shit down your neck hole, you —" He really couldn't think of anything foul enough to call him. He'd run out of words. He moved forward and kicked the man in the stomach, being very careful, kicking him as precisely as he could so as not to allow his emotions to run unchecked. He knew if he let loose now it'd all be over in thirty seconds, and that would be a shame. That would defeat everything he'd been working for. The whole point was to make the scum crawl. To drag their tortures out and turn some of the suffering back around in their direction.

The one picture of the two little girls kept nagging at him, and against his judgment he let himself steal another glance at it. One little child about nine, ten years old, doing something to another one. The one on the receiving end reminded him of Tiff in a favorite scrapbook shot, and just for a few seconds his rage bubbled over beyond the rim of control and he kicked Blue Kriegal about twenty times as hard as he could. He had to get him out of there or he'd waste him. Spain didn't even bind his hands. He had such disdain for him he just went out and popped the trunk, came back and rolled the unconscious body onto a small throw rug and dragged Kriegal out past the body of his slain companion, and unceremoniously horsed the dead-weight into the car.

William Kriegal awoke in darkness and in intense pain and fright, but then the trauma took him under and he woke up much later with that choking sensation you get from smelling salts, but when he tried to pull his face away from the gagging spirits he could not move.

"Aaaaaaaaaa, pleeeeease," he begged the man snarling into his face.

"Good morning. Did you sleep well?" He capped the small bottle.

"Jesus, buddy, I'll give you anything please don't —"

"Blue, Blue, BLUE, shut your asshole a second. My name is Frank Spain. Did you ever hear of me?" he asked pleasantly.

"Uh —" The man's brain was going a mile a minute. Where the fuck was he and how was he going to get out of this one?

"You're not feeling so hot, right?"

"Huh uh." He felt like he was going to go under again.

The man said, "I'm going to give you something to make you feel better, okay? My name's Frank Spain. But you can call me Mr. Spanhower. Say, Hello, Mr. Spanhower."

"'Lo, Mr. Spanhower."

"Good."

"Please, Mr. Span —"

"Now, Blue. See what I've got for you. Vitamins," he said brightly. "This'll put some lead in your pencil." Kriegal flinched when he saw the hypodermic needle.

"Oh, hey — Blue, don't sweat
this.
This is just something to get you feeling in the pink again." He shot a minute amount of fluid into the air, "Don't want to shoot an air bubble into your bloodstream and
kill
you, for heaven's sake." Spain deftly found a vein in Kriegal's meaty arm and plunged the spike in.

"Mmmm." The man made an involuntary fear noise as Spain depressed the syringe.

"Yes. I understand. Blue. Nothing is quite as potent as tetrodotoxin. Especially
this
little mix. Hot as the Orinoco Basin, baby. Quirky as a Shuar poultice. Heavy-duty as voooooooodooooooooooooo," he said, playing with the man.

"Please, listen mister, I don't know how come you're doin this, but I got over two hundred thousand in a —"

Spain shut him up by simply shoving his palm over the man's mouth. "Hmm-ummm. No talking. Just take it easy. You're going to need all your strength. Don't guess you're hip to brugmansia? Datura?
Zombie's
cucumber? Jeez, Blue, what am I going to do with you? Ain't you gotcher ethnobotani-cal, ophiological shit together? Well? Speak up, man. Cat got your tongue?"

"Jesus. Please."

"Oh, relax. I was just jivin' witcha' about the zombie stuff. That's just plain old gasoline. But Blue, I didn't scrimp. It's
PREMIUM.
Does it smart a little, Blue?" Suddenly he lost the grip on his control and started screaming
"DIE DIE DIE
YOU PIECE OF vile
shit!"
He was screaming into the face of the man as he picked up the stolen trocar, which is a sharp thing embalmers use to insert a cannula into the torso of a cadaver to drain the body cavity, and drove it again and again into the living, screaming body of Blue Kriegal.

"I had all these plans for us, Blue," he sighed, calming down. "But I don't think we're going to be able to keep you around long enough to turn you into a zombie, damn it. I believe you're fucking dead. Blue. What do you say — eh?" His voice was loud in the small enclosure, as he watched the lye down in the drainage culvert take the dark, red whirlpool. He stood there for a long time, staring with cold eyes, transfixed, as if awaiting further word from the high oracle.

And that night in his sleep, Anubis, jackal-headed god of the ancients. Protector of Graveyards, presided over the Weighing of the Heart at the Last Judgment Rites.

The distinguished-looking man locked his study door and walked over and sat down behind the massive desk. He bent over and did something to one of the legs and the front of what appeared to be the desk leg came off in his hand. He reached in and took out an instrument with red and black telephone receivers on it. He pressed a button, a light came on, and he placed the red phone in the central cradle section and picked up the black phone and dialed.

"Yeah .... I wanna order a sit-down. The whole council. Emergency session." He barked a hard response back into the phone. "I know that, for fucking shit's sake. I'm not an idiot. Listen. All the dons. I don't care if it's fucking Apalachin all over again I want reps from ALL the fuckin' families. We got a war on our hands and it ain't what everybody thinks. I know who's behind all this shit. It could only be one man." He let air out in a sigh of anger and frustration.

"Now listen. Here's what I want. I want you to get a crew . . . No, a crew, shit, I want a fuckin' PLATOON of soldiers. I'm going to give you an address in Ladue, Missouri ..."

St. Louis Mob Figure Charged In Child-abuse Case Missing
St. Louis, Mo. Missouri News Service Wire, Eichord read, skipping M08-44-29173301 and reading,

A one-time foster parent for the Missouri Division of Family Services, recently targeted in a federal investigation of St. Louis area mob activities, was charged with abuse in two counties after police found what was described as "thousands of porno photos and films involving children." The evidence was confiscated at his home in Jefferson County.

William "Blue" Kriegal, 41, of the 12000 block of DeSoto, was charged Tuesday with six felony counts of child abuse in Warren County, and two counts in Jefferson County. He was released after posting $75,000 bond, authorities said, and is believed to have fled.

Police have been searching for Kriegal since Wednesday, and a warrant has been issued for unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. Kriegal's family declined all comment.

Kriegal was targeted as a "principal suspect" in a federal investigation centering on the alleged "crime family" of Salvatore Dagatina and other unnamed individuals who are believed by authorities to control the child-pornography and narcotics rackets in the Midwest, according to Assistant Jefferson County Prosecutor Kenneth Wales.

"We're still developing pictures, and establishing venue, in addition to statutes of limitations," Wales said at the time of the child-abuse charges, "as Missouri has a three-year limit for prosecuting this type of a case."

Kriegal was a certified foster parent for the Division of Family Services at one time, and was responsible for the care of several children ranging in age from nine to thirteen in the Columbia, Missouri, area, according to Melinda Zook, the agency's deputy director. She refused to discuss Kriegal's record as a foster parent.

Zook said that prospective foster parents were always investigated as thoroughly as possible but she conceded to reporters that "picking good foster-parent homes is an inexact science."

Authorities believe that Kriegal is involved in the production and distribution of so-called "snuff" films, pornographic films in which actual scenes of beatings, torture, and murder are also seen. Kriegal is believed by authorities to have been responsible for films in which children were tortured and killed, according to a source in the Jefferson County Prosecutor's office.

He read the words aloud to himself, and even though they were words meant to be read silently, to speak them gave them impact.

Eichord was on trail now. He had the voice. And now he had a hint. Something nudging him. This was what he lived for. His inviolable work ethic: the elemental foundation, catharsis, curative, analeptic. The restorative and stimulant to his soul as he hunted through the sewers and putrefaction and corruption and evil. And reading the words chilled him as he felt the familiar vectors beginning to cross.
He
was out there somewhere. Waiting to kill again. A death master. And now there was a voice. And a pattern. And vectors crossing.

He knew his next move for once. He should have done it earlier when he picked up on the pattern of the kills. Eichord no longer knew or cared if the Floyd Streicher SEE NO EVIL wise guy was involved in this. He got Bud Leech and got him away from the Homicide Bureau.

Leech was sensitive to the maneuver and wanted to know, "How come you don't wanna talk up there?" gesturing to the cop shop. "Come on," Eichord said. "Let's walk." 

"You worded about a rocking bug?" 

"Forget about that. I got something, Bud." 

"Yeah?"

"I think so," he said. And he told him what he needed. About the surveillance he wanted.

"Hell, let's put the damn van on it."

"No way," he said. A decision he'd immediately regret. "I want this just you and me, podnah. Let's just you 'n' me handle it."

"Shit, okay," the big man said with a shrug, "you got it." Implicit in the shrug was a question. You think the Special Division is dirty.

Eichord just said, "I just want to be careful. VERY careful. This is . . . . Well, hell, I don't know WHAT it is. But it's something more than warring gang factions." He didn't say it to Leech but he thought, SUPERKILLER.

Two days later a "professionally made bomb containing a large quantity of high explosive" blew up the stretch limo in which one of the sons of "Jimmie the Hook" Russo, Phillie Russo, was riding with his chauffeur/bodyguard, Bugs DeVintro. Homicide, Intelligence, and Arson rolled on it, as did Eichord, and it gave him his first close look inside the St. Louis mob.

He was at the crime scene and a massive, Italian-looking man with swarthy features and a face that looked like the dark side of the moon came up to him and said, "You d' one from d' Tass Force?"