Gamma Blade (2 page)

Maybe he was learning to be a husband.

Around them, Miami Airport was heaving. It was early Friday afternoon, and Venn supposed a lot of people were arriving or heading out for the weekend. Just like him and Beth. He swung his suitcase so that the handle popped out and he could pull it on its wheels behind him. Then he reached for Beth’s case.

“I can manage,” she said, deftly holding it out of his reach.

“It’s okay,” he said. “Give it to me.”

She smiled, sighed. “Venn,” she said. “I said I can manage. I’m not an invalid.”

No, but you’re pregnant
, thought Venn.

Around eight weeks, if the scan was accurate. Neither of them had told anybody yet, Beth wanting to wait until she was past the first trimester.

Venn’s response to Beth’s news had stunned him a little. He’d found himself overwhelmed by a feeling of protectiveness - of her, and of the dividing ball of cells inside her - that was so intense, he’d been a little scared of it. Now he didn’t want to let Beth out of his sight. If she sneezed, he got worried. When she was a little late home, he felt the dread rise up and catch him by the throat.

He lay awake nights, Beth sleeping peacefully beside him, and wondered how the hell anybody coped with being a parent. How you could ever let your kid step out of the house. Was this how things would be for the rest of his life? A constant state of anxiety, of wanting to wrap your family in cotton wool and never let them go?

At the same time, he felt an elation that was as great, if not greater, than the fear. He’d be brushing his teeth in the mornings, catch sight of his face in the mirror, and feel sheepish at the broad, goofy grin he saw. His urge to tell his work colleagues was so powerful that at times he’d had to excuse himself and leave the room. He didn’t know if he’d be able to hold out for another four weeks.

He watched Beth heft her small suitcase, and told himself he was being ridiculous. She was a healthy woman, barely two months into her pregnancy. And she was a doctor. She knew far better than he did what was risky and what wasn’t. He’d been horrified when she’d suggested they fly to Miami rather than drive down, and she’d told him the airlines only got nervous in the third trimester. (Even so, he’d looked that up online afterward.)

But he couldn’t shake it. The alpha male’s instinct to preserve and protect those nearest to him.

*

The hotel was a twenty-minute drive from the airport, but Venn took a wrong turn, unfamiliar with the Miami streets, and so the journey took them closer to an hour. As they cruised along the seafront, Venn felt his spirits lift even higher at the sight of the glittering water, the yachts, the sailboats.

It wasn’t a vacation, quite. Beth was an attending physician at Revere Hospital in Lower Manhattan, and had booked a few days’ leave to attend an American Medical Association conference here in Florida. She’d told Venn a few of her colleagues were going along, and at first Venn assumed he was staying behind. But then she’d said, almost shyly: “Why don’t you come? We can make a weekend of it.”

And Venn thought:
yes. Why not?

As a Detective Lieutenant heading up the Division of Special Projects, an NYPD unit whose remit it was to investigate crimes with a political angle, he was largely his own boss, though he did answer to his Captain, David Kang, who adopted a relatively hands-off approach. Venn hadn’t taken any time off so far this year, and he had no problem securing a couple of days.

They hadn’t had a vacation together, Venn and Beth, since they’d gotten together almost three years earlier. Venn felt guilty about that, though he reassured himself that they had a big one coming up in the fall.

Their honeymoon.

The day after Beth told him she was expecting, Venn proposed to her for the second time. He did it right this time, rushing out to a jewelry store on Ninth Avenue near his office with one of Beth’s rings he’d swiped for sizing purposes. He’d cooked dinner – a tuna bake, one of the few dishes he could make a passable stab at without screwing it up – and had gotten down on one knee.

And she’d said yes. Immediately, without hesitation.

They decided on a low-key affair. Venn was a lapsed Catholic and didn’t feel comfortable asking the Church to accommodate him, so they settled on a non-denominational church in Brooklyn. They’d invite a few friends on both their sides. They set the date for August.

Beth’s friends were ecstatic for her. Venn’s work colleagues, who were the closest he got these days to friends, were pretty pleased, too, though they expressed themselves differently.

“And I always thought Beth was smart,” said Harmony.

Lance Lovett, the newest recruit to Venn’s team, stared at him rudely. “You’ve knocked her up, haven’t you?” he leered in his Louisiana drawl.

Only Fil Vidal, Venn’s tech guy and the quiet, polite one of the group, congratulated him effusively.

Captain Kang organized a surprise party at Venn’s office and the squad proceeded to get roaring drunk. All except Venn. He’d had his share of wild nights in the past, but he was going to be a husband now. And, though he didn’t let on, a father.

He had new responsibilities.

And damn, if that didn’t feel good.

*

As a delegate to the AMA conference, Beth had gotten a discounted booking in the very hotel in which the conference was taking place. Venn stepped out of the elevator into the lobby and stared around him. Like most of the walls, the high, domed ceiling was made of glass, towering above a plush reception area crowded with people who looked to Venn like medical professionals. An intricate ocean-themed mosaic dominated the floor space. Potted palms, beautifully tended, lended a subtle impression of a treasure-laden cave deep in some tropical jungle.

It was the kind of five-star place Venn had visited often enough while pursuing a case, but had never actually stayed at himself.

“Beth!” cried a bespectacled, middle-aged man who was part of a knot of people congregating near the reception desk, and she trotted over to him and hugged him. Venn recognized him vaguely as a doctor at Revere whom he’d met at some social gathering or other back in New York.

He watched Beth chatting with her colleagues, and felt a sense of warm pride and satisfaction wash across him. Three years ago, his life had been on the skids. He’d been a private eye in downtown Manhattan, living from hand to mouth, a veteran of the US Marine Corps and a disgraced cop with his law-enforcement career seemingly a thing of the past. He’d been alone, and jaded, and life had looked pretty damned pointless.

Then Beth came along, and everything had changed. Granted, they’d been thrown together in the most frightening of circumstances, with her on the run from a hired assassin and Venn trying to escape a murder charge for which he’d been set up. They’d had their ups and downs since then, he and Beth, with a short-lived but horrible period of separation last fall when he’d thought he’d lost her forever.

But now here he was, engaged to be married to this beautiful, brainy, feisty girl who was carrying their baby, and who was rocketing ahead in a career she loved. And Venn himself was doing work he got a kick out of, with a bunch of staff he genuinely liked, to a man (and woman).

And he was in Miami for an extended weekend, in a swanky hotel, with the spring sunshine blazing outside and the prospect of a good meal tonight and a lazy day tomorrow, noodling around the city while Beth attended the various talks and seminars at the conference. He’d check out the marina, maybe chat to a couple of the yacht owners about their rigs. Take a browse through a bookstore or two. Buy himself an ice cream and wander down to the beach, dip his toes in the sea.

Life was a four-lane highway stretching to the horizon and beyond, with nothing blocking the way.

Later, after it all happened, Venn would recall how he’d felt at that moment in the hotel lobby. Recall it, and marvel at how things could turn on a dime.

Chapter 3

The guy was a fat, balding grocery store owner named Carlos Fuentes, and the most noteworthy thing about him was the fact that he’d pissed his pants.

Brull stared at the dark stain at the front of the man’s slacks.

He allowed his gaze to linger long enough that Fuentes began to squirm in shame rather than just fear.

Two of Brull’s men, Elon and Pedro, held the guy by his arms. One of them alone could have kept him prisoner, easily. But the presence of two of them ramped up the terror factor.

Ernesto Justice Brull was seated behind his desk in the small office he rented in south Miami. The office was where he conducted a small part of his business, most of his interactions taking place on the street. More importantly, the office served as an address for tax and other legal purposes. It was nominally the premises of the Columbus Employment Agency, a front business which Brull had set up seven years earlier. The agency’s finances were in tip-top shape, every penny of the laundered money that passed through it accounted for, every inch of its neatly furnished quarters meeting the requirements of both Federal and State sanitation and safety legislative
diktat
.

At last, Brull raised his eyes from the man’s crotch to his face. Fuentes’ eyes were like dull bluish eggs swimming above the pouchy lower lids. The mouth was a wide rictus of terror. Under the weak chin, his throat was speckled with gray stubble, like blackheads on a wino’s nose.

Brull thought:
Disgusting.

It was his opinion that a man who didn’t have a beard, yet couldn’t take the trouble to shave in the morning, was as low as a pig.

Brull himself sported a fastidiously groomed mustache and thin jawline strip of beard, with carefully sculpted parallel trails connecting the two. He didn’t like hair much. Didn’t like it in his women, certainly, except on their heads, which was why he insisted on complete denudation elsewhere. He himself shaved his head. He stipulated that all his male employees do the same.

But facial hair, well-tended and tasteful, was the mark of a man. Brull allowed it.

The grunting, sweating pig, Fuentes, staggered before his desk. If Elon and Pedro hadn’t held his arms, he’d have collapsed onto the carpet. His slack, repulsive mouth, with its flailing tongue and shitty yellow teeth, spewed drool on the edge of Brull’s desk.

Brull ignored it, even though his skin crawled, and even while his mind calculated how often he’d need to wipe the wood before he was satisfied the contamination was gone.

Twenty times
, he decided.

He folded his hands on the leather desktop and smiled ruefully and said: “You’ve been a naughty boy, Carlos.”

Fuentes released an explosion of words in Spanish. Brull held up a hand, turning his head away.

Pedro slapped the side of the fat man’s head, rocking it back.

Brull said, “Please, Carlos. You know my rule. This is America.
English
only. ”

Fuentes looked dazed. He peered at Brull, trying to regain his focus. Brull nodded encouragement.

Fuentes said, “Please, Mr Brull. I pay you nex’ week. Four days, most. Tuesday. No later.”

Inwardly, Brull recoiled. The man’s accent was atrocious. He’d been living in Miami for probably a quarter century. Yet, despite all of the opportunities the United States had given him, he hadn’t bothered to perfect the
lingua franca
.

He made Brull ashamed to be a Cuban.

Brull said, still in the same affable tone: “The problem we have, Carlos, is that I needed four thousand dollars
today
. May twenty-second. Not next week. Not Tuesday, or even tomorrow.”

“Nex’ week! Nex’ week!” Fuentes began to blubber. “Monday! Monday morning you have the money!
Please
, Mr Brull! I -”

“Okay,” said Brull, quietly. “Monday morning. I’ll allow that. Shall we say nine a.m.? Give you a chance to have a good night’s sleep before. And let’s make it six thousand. Because I’m a reasonable man, and I believe in giving a hardworking small business owner a break.”

In the few seconds’ silence that followed, Brull could have sworn that Fuentes’ eyes swiveled through three hundred and sixty degrees in his head.

“
Six
thousand?” The man’s voice cracked. “
Six?
Mr Brull, I cannot -”

Pedro slapped him upside his head again. A flick of blood from Fuentes’ mouth lanced onto the carpet. Brull winced.

“There’s no need for that,” he chided.

He stood up. On the other side of the desk, Fuentes recoiled.

“Relax, Carlos.” Brull patted his hands in the air, palms down. “I’ve stated my terms. There’s no need to worry. I’m not going to hurt you. You can go now.”

Fuentes’ eyes stopped roving. He watched Brull, like a caged animal anticipating a sudden trick.

Brull nodded briefly to Elon and Pedro. They released the man’s arms. Fuentes lurched, but held his feet.

He stared up at Brull through his rheumy eyes.

Brull spread his hands.

“Carlos, man. You’re free to go. No games. Just walk out that door, and I’ll see you Monday morning.”

The man’s shirt was untucked at the back, his gait was awkward because of his urine-sodden pants, and his sparse hair was in disarray. But, after a quick glance at Elon and Pedro, he turned and began to stumble toward the door of the office.

Brull gazed at Fuentes’ back. He didn’t smile. He reached for the cell phone on the desk in front of him and thumbed it on and sent the text message he’d prepared earlier.

However desperate Fuentes was to get away from the office, to put as much distance as he could between him and his tormentors, he couldn’t help but reach instinctively for the phone in his pocket as it emitted the familiar
ting
of an arriving message.

He paused, halfway through the door, and stared at his phone.

Brull watched his motionless, ungainly form.

The seconds passed.

Two.

Three.

Fuentes began to shake. It wasn’t the hand tremor of nervousness. Rather, it was the full-body convulsion of a man wracked by abject, unremitting terror.