Gray Night (30 page)

 “That too.”

 We stepped off the gangplank onto the top deck, which was already cleared for the evening’s event taking place below. A coppery-skinned young woman, dressed in rose quartz, ascended one of the stairs from below and greeted us.

 “Good evening gentlemen,” she said smiling. “Mr. Vitale welcomes you. Please allow me to escort you to the main hold for tonight’s Auction,” she said, turning and descending the stairs she’d just come up.

 Argento went first and then Jack. I took rear guard. The rose quartz woman took us two or three levels down before the stairs ended in a small hallway with a single closed door at the end.

 “Please do not hesitate to signal anyone in gray should you require anything. They are willing and able to provide whatever you desire,” she said, smiling again before heading back upstairs.

 “Anything I desire?” I asked Jack.

 “Quite,” he nodded. “I hope you don’t blush easily, Mr. Knight.”

 Argento opened the door out into the main floor of the cargo deck and we followed him in.

 It opened into a large area of grated metal flooring. The whole area, a good six or seven thousand square feet in this one compartment alone, was decorated like a brand new, upscale studio apartment. Dim track lighting lined the steel beams above us, illuminating dozens and dozens of glass tables and bars and mirrors with strategically placed old movie posters. I spotted Bogey no less than three times. Everything else was covered in sheer curtains of differing shades of gray.

 Vitale did love his gray and there was no doubt about who was working the event. Women in ash, battleship, xanadu, slate, charcoal, cool, davy’s, and silver flitted around, offering drinks and hors d’oeuvres. Some of the women offered more than that, slipping out of their gray restraints and leading their guests behind the curtains, which didn’t leave much to the imagination.

 One of the women was showing off her box of cigars for a group of men. I recognized one of them, Ukrainian or not.

 What the hell. Blend in, right? Mingle. I left Jack and Argento, who were already engaged in small talk to the side, and went to Djimon.

 “Mr. Chekhov, isn’t it?” I asked Djimon, who was lighting one of the cigars.

 “That’s me,” he said, wise enough to not even attempt the accent. We shook hands.

 “And who is that I saw you arrive with?” he asked.

 “Diamond Jack, that is,” said a stocky, rugged man in a bastardized British accent. “Curious, he ain’t ever come to the Auction since Vitale took over.”

 “That’s right. I’m here with Jack,” I said.

 “In what capacity, precisely?” asked a shorter man next to the pseudo-brit. He had dark chopped hair and was wearing a black silk shirt with a red stitched, flaming dragon up one side. I thought he looked Korean, but it was hard to tell with his sunglasses on.

 “Consultant,” I said, shaking hands with him. “Didn’t realize the World Series of Poker was in town.”

 He grinned wide. “Oh, I’m always up for a game if the stakes are right.”

 “I’ll remember that,” I said.

 “Please do,” he replied. “Now if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I believe we’re about to begin.”

 He and the brit walked off together, leaving Djimon and I alone for the moment.

 “Anything interesting?” I asked.

 “Lots, but nothing to suggest the whereabouts of Dr. Spurling. I believe the artifacts are here, though. It seems more than one potential buyer had them analyzed for authenticity,” Djimon said.

 “I expected as much.”

 “What is your plan?”

 “Stick to your role and take care of everything we discussed earlier. Jack knows what to do also.”

 “And you?”

 “Me? I’m playing free safety in the back. Sounds like this will be a long night. I’m going to take a look around the ship once things get started and see what’s what. If Claire’s here I’m getting her out first. If not, everything’s been building towards tonight, so I think it’s time someone knocked it down.”

 Massive doors opened an entire wall on my side letting in bright blue light. Everyone else had already gathered by the opening and made their way out into a much larger area.

 I let Djimon go in alone and held back to go in with Jack. The room, if you could call it that, wasn’t even a hold. It was the main floor section of the ship, several stories deep, and open to the sky. Fifty or sixty thousand square feet easily, and filled with hundreds of tables and shelves and crates lined along each of the walls, with a few large tables, bars, and other displays in the middle. Industrial lighting was anchored to the railing along each of the floors above us.

 “Welcome,” a voice boomed through a speaker above. I entered and had to step several feet further inside to get a good look up at our host.

 Joe Vitale stood at the railing two floors above looking on the crowd with a group of men around him. All of them were dressed in the same shades of gray the women were.

That seemed strange, but I didn’t know why. He could be trying to send a message to someone, but if that was it, I couldn’t figure it out. Then again, maybe he just liked color coordinating everything.

 Vitale gestured to the man beside him and the massive doors we’d come through closed.

 “Most of you have enjoyed these with me for years so I will keep the preamble to a minimum. We have some new faces this evening I would like to recognize for all those who may not know them. One of them is Ms. Ferreira joining us all the way from Brasilia,” he called.

 A woman in a long, green, hooded cloak stepped into an open area and acknowledged our host. Those closest to her began introducing themselves.

 “From Mumbai, Mr. Saigal,” Vitale said. I stopped paying attention and tried to make my way to the back of the crowd to get a better look at the room around me, as well as getting a chance to see more of the displays set up.

 This place had it all. The tables had stacks and stacks of crates behind them where men and women in gray were opening one or two each and setting whatever was inside out for display. The guns were expected, the drugs came in amazing variety, but the other merchandise surprised me. I didn’t follow new technology, but since being gone for a decade, I made it part of my new routine to do some catching up. Which is how I knew some of the electronics I was seeing weren’t even for sale to the public yet. The next table showcased artwork from the renaissance all the way to post-modern. Nice.

 I walked along the back as Vitale introduced another woman, from Los Angeles, and the Korean looking fellow, who was, in fact, from South Korea, just so you know.

 I passed tables with lists of brand new cars, and order forms specifying price, quantity, and address to be delivered, complete with discounts on orders over five million dollars.

 A lady in gray stopped and offered me a manila envelope. “Are you interested in seeing our girls this evening? Information on each is listed according to the order they’ll be shown. Bidding begins in half an hour outside the main port corridor.”

 “Thank you,” I said, taking the envelope. The gray lady produced another manila folder and engaged someone else.

 I turned towards the nearest table to open the envelope, curious if I would recognize any of the girls. Vitale was a heavy weight in human trafficking and was behind the Gray Night. Gray Night. Heh. I looked around again at our hosts color coordination under the open night sky and understood exactly who the message was for. Everyone.

 I felt more and more comfortable calling it an epidemic. Operating under the assumption everything might be connected, all the disappearances in the Bronx would be lumped in with the drugs. Maybe Vitale was selling girls to fund his territorial expansion. He wouldn’t have to kill Claire to get her out of the way with a system like this already in place. He could sell her.

 I spun around looking at the Auction. Everything I needed to piece it all together was here, somewhere.

 Glass shattered behind a table a dozen feet further down along the wall. I looked and saw someone had dropped a box. Whatever was inside had broken. Two men close by laughed and clapped at the performance. The man picking up the pieces on the floor stopped when I glanced at him.

 The table he was under buckled as he kicked himself up and went for the door he’d come out of behind the row of tables.

 It was sleazy ponytail guy. Right then I gave him a new nickname. Dead man.

 He stumbled back over the fallen box and grabbed the door handle, throwing it open and darting through.

 I slipped behind the row of tables, jumped over the box, and followed him through the door.

 I flew down the stairs. At the bottom was a dark corridor, leading to a T-junction, where a shadow at the end jumped off to the left. I went after it.

 Four turns and three hundred feet later, I caught him and dove for his back, tackling him to the metal grating beneath us in a crash.

 “W—” was all I heard before smashing his face down into the grated floor. He threw his elbows back wild, catching me in the face on the third or fourth time. I grabbed him by his ponytail and stood up, dragging him back and turning him over to face me.

 “Where is she?” I screamed into his face. “What have you done with her?”

 “You’re a dead man, Knight. A fucking dead man!” he spat blood as he spoke.

 I twisted his hair tight into my fingers and held him forward, delivering crushing blows to his face with my knee until I felt him start to go limp under his own weight.

 “You son of a bitch. The only way you’re leaving this ship alive is if you tell me where she is right now,” I whispered through gritted teeth.

 He couldn’t breathe, and was coughing and choking trying to draw in air to speak.

 “Not—” he coughed out. He couldn’t help inhaling more blood as he tried to speak again. “Not here.”

 “What do you mean not here? Where then? What has Vitale done with her? Why did he—” the sudden sense of no longer being alone flooded through me. Footsteps on metal echoed through the dark.

 I thought ponytail was coughing again, trying to speak, before I realized he was laughing. It was unnerving as hell down here. So I kicked him in the face until he stopped.

 Two big shadows stepped around the corner, and the first thing I noticed were the sores on their arms. Fuck. Discretion being the better part of valor and all, I turned and ran.

 It didn’t work. The two massive shadows lunged forward, grabbing my shoulders and wrists, and slamming me to the ground. Ow.

 Each of them stepped off to one side and held my wrists out away from me. They used their inner hands to keep my head forced down.

 I didn’t have time to wonder why they weren’t redecorating the corridor with my insides as a sharp pain tore into me. A third man I hadn’t seen behind the two others removed a long needle from my neck.

 I didn’t know how long they held me down, but it felt glorious when I was able to move my neck again. I still couldn’t move my wrists. They were still held. I wasn’t in the hallway anymore either. I was in the corner of a small metal room. Light filled the front half from a port window high above, leaving my corner in darkness.

 I tried to twist my arms and jerk my hands free to the sound of metal clanking. My wrists had become shackled at some point. A long length of chain secured me to a steel beam rising up the wall. There was maybe eight feet of chain. Enough for me to reach most of the room, just not the door. Why the long chain?

 All the sudden movement made me dizzy and I involuntarily slouched down the wall until I was sitting in the dark little corner. What was wrong with me? What had they injected me with?

 I heard the door unlock, but when I opened my eyes, my vision made me nauseated. I thought I saw a man with a shiny face. A web of shining lightning bolts all over his face. That was odd. Wasn’t it?

 I had a difficult time focusing on what was going on around me. Someone asked if I was secure and checked my chains before the pain started. I was struck over and over again in the neck and forearm with the same sharp pain until I heard people arguing.

 “You said he was mine!”

 “Look at him, Mathews. He can’t keep his eyes open. He can’t stand. With so many heavy doses, in such quick succession, of the purest no less, he’ll be unstable in minutes. He may not even live.”

 “That’s the point.”

 “No. It isn’t. Think about it. Vitale’s Gray Night is about to begin and when the authorities come around to sort the bodies we don’t have to leave them with a mystery. We can leave them him.”

 “What do you mean?”

 “A known criminal, a killer if everyone is to be believed, caught red handed, literally covered in the blood of innocents and filled with toxin. Maybe he takes the fall for the whole thing, maybe he doesn’t. The point is no one is going to look real hard when they have someone so obvious that they can take credit for solving the whole incident. It’s almost too perfect. He came with Jack. Several people saw them together. He’s a part of it. All we need is a body to lay at his feet. And after Vitale and Jack are both dead I’ll call the police myself.”

 “I know the one.”

 “Get her.”

 The man giving orders took a few steps deeper into the room and addressed me.

 “This would be so much more satisfying if you could understand me. If I could remind you how the drug works. About the growing hunger that comes with too quick an addiction, the uncontrollable rage, the need to indulge. Oh, but I will have such a story to tell Dr. Spurling. To tell her how you were beaten, broken. How you have so graciously contributed to our cause. And no one is left to come for her,” he jumped back at the sound of my chains moving. I tried to reach him, but instead I fell.

 I could smell his fear and I wanted to taste it. I could smell…lilies. And sand. And stagnant water. Old blood. Burning flesh.

 He had Claire. He was right there in front of me! I threw myself forward again, painfully reminded of the chains holding me back as he scurried to the door. I wanted to taste his blood. Sticky and warm flowing down my chin. My enemy slain beneath me. I had done it before. I had done it so many times before, but now I reveled in the thought and let it fill me. I would tear into his flesh. I would shred to ribbons the next living thing to fall within my grasp.