The Storm Protocol (20 page)

Franco looked at them levelly for a couple of minutes and then seemed to make a decision
.

‘Okay,’ he replied
finally. ‘I'll tell you what I know.’

‘Shut up, Franco,’ said Mario. ‘They’ll look after us, you know they will.’

‘Who will?’ asked Dale with interest.

‘It’s not your locker they found the stuff in,’ said Franco
, with eyes only for Mario. ‘Someone's trying to stitch me up. How do I know it's not them?’

‘You’re making a big mistake
, Franco,’ stated Mario.

He made as if to leave.

‘You ain’t going anywhere,’ said Dodds, barring his way. Dale pulled over some chairs and the four of them sat in a huddle, like alcoholics at an AA meeting.

‘Look, I’ll tell you what I know,’ said Franco. ‘It ain’t much, I’m warning you now. Most of this stuff is just rumours and conjecture
; titbits that we pick up from some of the jobs we do.’

Mario shot him a warning glance.

Franco threw up his hands.

‘Hey, I’m just being honest here,’ he
added.

‘Go on,’ said Dale, anxious not to break Franco's train of thought.

‘How do you guys know about Storm?’ asked Franco suddenly. ‘Was it from your mysterious snitch?’

‘Him
, among others,’ said Dale. ‘I have my sources.’

‘It seems to be working then,’ said Franco
, with a smile.

‘What does?’ asked Dale.

‘We were told Storm was a new drug,’ said Franco. ‘We were told to get the word out on the street; that
Storm
was coming.’

‘Were you given a timescale?’ asked Dale. ‘Were you told any details; what type of drug it was maybe?’

‘No, nothing that specific,’ said Mario, joining in. ‘Just that a new drug was going to hit the streets. It was going to blow everything else away.’

‘We
were
told something,’ said Franco suddenly. ‘We were told that with this drug there was no risk. They even wanted us to use a particular slogan;
all the highs with none of the lows
. I thought it was kind of catchy.’

‘Did you believe it?’ asked Dale.

Franco thought about it for a second.

‘I’d no reason not to believe it,’ he said.

‘So, Storm is a drug,’ said Dale, almost to himself. ‘We’ve no idea of the timescale; do we know where it’s coming from even?’

‘No,’ said Mario. ‘We were just told it was coming.’

‘So, anything else?’ asked Dodds.

‘On S
torm, no,’ said Franco. ‘But there is one other piece of information you might be interested in.’

‘Go on,’ said Dale.

‘Well, two pieces of information really,’ stated Franco, correcting himself.

‘We’re waiting,’ said Dodds, nodding impatiently.

‘I heard the first piece this morning,’ said Franco. ‘Apparently an East River warehouse was blown up. Everyone knows who it belongs to of course, but the speculation on the street is focusing on the motive.’

‘How so?’ asked Dodds.

‘Did they destroy it themselves; covering their tracks if you will, or is there some sort of feud or vendetta starting against them?’

Dale and Dodds looked at each other. Dodds raised his eyebrows and Dale nodded
, but neither of them spoke.

‘The other thing I heard about two or three days ago,’ said Franco. ‘According to the rumour, someone has gone missing; someone very high up in their organisation.’

‘Can you stop talking in riddles,’ said Dodds in exasperation.

Franco shot him a look.

‘This may be off the record,’ he responded slowly, ‘but I ain’t incriminating myself to no one.’

He waited to see if he would be interrupted again
, before continuing.

‘All I can give you is a name.
’

Franco paused and then corrected himself.

‘No, in fact, all I
will
give you is a name.’

‘We don’t even know if this guy exists,’ said Mario, directing himself to Franco. ‘The guy is an urban myth; a ghost.’

Franco looked hard at Mario, who shrugged and backed down.

‘It’s your funeral,’ he said.

‘The name is
The Street
, sometimes shortened to
Street
,’ said Franco. ‘He’s rumoured to be their top
internal security
man, if you get my drift?’

‘Is that it?’ asked Dale. ‘Is that all I get?’

‘Like I said,’ stated Franco, ignoring the outburst, ‘that’s all I know. How you choose to use that information is up to you.’

He turned back to Dodds.

‘Are we cool now?’ he asked.

Dodds looked at him for a second.

‘Yeah, we’re cool,’ he said at last. ‘But look at it this way; we now know who you both are and where you are hiding. My advice would be to keep your noses clean and out of trouble.’

Franco indicated the bag of pills in Dodds hand.

‘Any chance I can get my property back?’ he asked with a straight face.

‘Nice try,’ snorted Dodds.

He got up and slipped the bag into his inside jacket pocket.

‘It’s been a pleasure doing
business with you guys,’ he said with a smile.

#

Dale sat at his desk. He looked slightly depressed.

‘So we’re no furth
er along really are we?’ he asked morosely.

‘At least your hunches are confirmed,’ said Dodds. ‘You should be happy about that; those were some intuitive leaps of faith you made there.’

‘But they rejected the whole scenario before,’ responded Dale. ‘The special agent in charge laughed at me, remember? Just because a couple of self serving kitchen porters rubberstamped it, I don’t think it’s going to make a whole hell of a difference to my case.’

Dodds threw him a Twinkie across the desk.

‘Well shit, Dale,’ he said. ‘I wasn't promising anything concrete. I just thought it was a lead you might like to follow-up on, that's all.’

‘Hey, I’m sorry,’ said Dale. ‘I appreciate it, I really do.’

A thought suddenly struck him.

‘Anyway, there is that
other stuff they told us isn’t there? The one piece of info that we didn't know before.’

Dodds clicked his fingers.

‘Yeah, you’re right,’ he said. ‘What was his name again?’

Dale closed his eyes and massaged his temples as he concentrated.

‘I should have written this stuff down,’ added Dodds. ‘I’m not a rookie after all.’

‘They wouldn’t have
disclosed everything they did, if we were recording it in any way,’ said Dale.

‘You may be right,’
replied Dodds.

‘The name was
Street
,’ said Dale eventually. ‘They said the name was
The Street
.’

‘Well, look it up then,’ said Dodds through a mouthful of Twinkie.

Information technology was one of the areas where Dale truly excelled. He signed on to the federal portal. It was a reporting interface; he had been one of the volunteers to test and develop it. You could query and cross reference any of the federal databases with simple searches. He typed in
Street,
because he knew the search would strip words like
the
from the sentence.

After two pages of fruitless searching, he realised it was probably going to be a little more difficult than he had first anticipated. All that was returned from his search were federal agency locations.

‘All it’s giving me are addresses,’ said Dale morosely.

He sat back in his chair with his hands behind his head.

‘Yeah, you need another word to give it context,’ replied Dodds.

Dale shot him a look of surprise.

‘I may be old, but I’m not completely stupid,’ said Dodds.

He thought for a second.

‘It’s just that the word escapes me for a second. What was that show? It was a cowboy show; late sixties or early seventies.’

Dale looked at him blankly.

‘Smith and Jones,’ responded Dodds at last. ‘Alias Smith and Jones.’

‘Of course,’ said Dale, slapping his head. ‘Alias; why
didn’t I think of that?’

The word prompted anothe
r phrase into his memory; a.k.a, also known as. He typed
alias Street a.k.a.
and then hit the return key. As Dodds watched, he sat forward intently.

‘Maybe not an urban myth after all,’
added Dale.

‘So he is real,’ said Dodds.

‘According to this,’ said Dale, ‘not only is he real, but he is extremely dangerous; a known associative of guess who?’

‘The M
ancini's maybe?’ offered Dodds.

‘Dead on the money,’ said Dale.

‘Anything more?’ asked Dodds.

Dale scrolled through the lines.

‘This guy is positively Teflon,’ he said. ‘Suspected of homicide; suspected of double homicide; suspected of racketeering; suspected of another homicide.’

He kept scrolling down.

‘Jesus, this guy has killed more people than I have friends,’ he said; and then he stopped and stared for a while.

‘What?’ asked Dodds
impatiently.

Dale picked up his airline tickets; the envelope had been dropped into the office about an hour previously. He tapped them thoughtfully on the back of his hand. At the end of the database
, one phrase stood out in flashing green;
real name Thomas Eugene O'Neill
. There was no address entered in the birthplace section, just a city and country, but as he absorbed the impact of those two words, it appeared to him that all roads seemed to be leading to Cork.

‘Looks like I’ll be taking those two weeks of vacation after all; just like the boss suggested,’ he said thoughtfully.

14
th
May 2011 – Four days after the Storm.

A man is hindered and distracted in proportion as he draws outward things to himself. – Thomas
à
Kempis.

Roussel sat back in his chair and regarded the whiteboard on the wall of his office. It had been an exceptionally frustrating three days, not least because neither of the victims appeared to be local.

If there was one thing about
the southern states that still annoyed him, it was that politics and law enforcement were still very parochial.

Ordinarily in a homicide, the c
aptain would come under ruthless pressure from both the mayor and the local council, but this case was different. This was just two out-of-towners killing each other; an annoying loose end, rather than a vote-loser or vote-getter.

He went back through the events chronologically, scanning the board thoughtfully to make sure he had made no mistakes.

The coroner had been as good as his word. He had autopsied both bodies that same morning, with the results sitting in a file on Roussel's desk by mid afternoon. Victim number one had died, as suspected, of a single gunshot wound to the head. DNA and blood samples had been taken. There had been no matches to any of the locally stored files, so the coroner had sent them off for comparison with the major federal databases on Roussel’s behalf.

Victim number two was also confirmed to have died of a single gunshot wound to the head. The complicating issue in that particular case for Roussel was the injury to the wrist. It was impossible for Guilbeau to tell him whether the injury was pre or post-mortem. At this stage, he was going on the assumption that it was some type of punishment shooting, for no other reason than he could not work out what else it could be.

The lead he’d picked up himself, the pattern of strange tyre marks, yielded as little satisfaction as the coroner’s findings had. All of his colleagues, including the captain, had agreed with his deduction of erratic driving to explain the differences in the tracks, but he’d had less luck with the maker of the tyre. Pirelli fitted their P series tyres to so many makes and models of cars, most of them non-American, that it was impossible to narrow down the search.

Strangest of all was the house. They had done a full and comprehensive sweep of the building and grounds; Roussel himself had co-ordinated it. He knew that no shortcuts had been taken
, because he knew the house like no one else. It was as thorough a search as he had ever been involved in, but they had found nothing. He smiled humourlessly to himself, especially when he saw the word in capitals and double underlined on his board;
nothing
.

They had found lots of furniture. They had found suits, clothes, underwear, consumer electronics, but
arranged as you would find in a show property. There was not one shred of personal information in the house. No bills, no photographs, no driving licences, credit cards or passports. No books, no magazines, no recent history of any kind. But there was one thing that had surprised and shocked Roussel the most. Any vaguely personalised items attached to the house, seemed to be derived from his family’s belongings, some of which were still dotted occasionally amongst the more modern furniture and bric-a-brac.

The forensic techni
cians had gone through the place with a fine tooth comb. They’d found five sets of prints in the house. It had been a difficult conversation to have with the chief.

Captain Moreland had listened in stony silence
, as Roussel had detailed four of the five sets they would find, including his own.

In fairness, the captain
had been more annoyed that Roussel had not told him at the start of the investigation. He didn’t care that Roussel had a personal tie with the house; he was more pissed off that Roussel had felt he couldn’t confide in him.

However, the c
aptain was not a man to hold grudges or stay annoyed for long, and at least it meant they could eliminate Roussel, his parents, and Jeremiah Bell, the second owner of Augustine Mansion, from their enquiries.

Then, just when all appeared to be heading for a dead end, he seemed to get the breakthrough he was looking for. The last unidentified set of prints did not match the two victims. Whoever owned the house had not died violently that night. They’d also got a hit from one of the two DNA and blood matched samples they’d sent for evaluation against the federal databases.

He’d been excited as he’d driven into the office that day. He’d opened the envelope like a child at Christmas. The slip of paper told him only two things. Firstly, he was able to identify the sample from the information provided, as that belonging to victim number two. Secondly, and more importantly, it informed him in large black letters that it was from a
restricted federal database; authorisation required.
He’d thrown them on the floor in anger and then passed them on to the captain in frustration. He’d been fruitlessly waiting ever since.

He’d also been trying to track down the ownership of the house. He had exhausted all the solicitors, banks and financial institutions
, both in the town and the wider locality. He tipped himself forward and thumped the desk in frustration; nothing but dead ends.

There was a discrete knock on the door and then it opened without him say
ing anything. It had to be the captain; nobody else came into his office like that.

‘Got a couple?’ asked the c
aptain, parking his backside against the window-sill.

‘Sure b
oss, what’s up?’ asked Roussel in turn.

‘That stuff you asked
me to follow up on,’ replied the captain shortly. ‘You ain’t gonna like the answer.’

‘I take it that’s a no then,’ said Roussel resignedly.

‘I don’t understand it,’ said the captain, with genuine bemusement. ‘This has not happened to me in twenty years of law enforcement. A request to the Feds! Hell, this type of thing doesn't happen in a town like ours.’

He paused.

‘Not only was I told to lay-off, but I got a personal call from the CIA, detailing the effect it would have on my career if I decided to continue with my line of investigation.’

Roussel looked at the captain, his jaw dropping.

‘The CIA: Jesus, Captain, what happened here? None of this makes any sense.’

‘If the CIA is involved, all I can tell you is that it is way out
of our jurisdiction,’ said the captain. ‘I must say it does piss me off, these arseholes telling us to back off. They think we’re just a bunch of good ole boys, only useful for traffic tickets and parking violations.’

‘We just need one break,’ s
tated Roussel thoughtfully.

‘Good luck,’ said the c
aptain, patting his shoulder as he made to leave.

‘So you’re not asking me to give up, Captain?’ asked Roussel, with a roguish twinkle in his eye.

‘They told me to back off on the databases; maybe good old-fashioned police work is the way to go on this one,’ he said with a wink.

Rouss
el smiled. He really liked the captain. He looked again at the board. The man was right though; books, notes and shoe leather were the way forward. That's where the breaks were going to come on this one.

He got up and moved to the empty half of the whiteboard. Maybe he was looking at it all wrong. Maybe the victim's identities were not the key to the house; rather the house was the key to the victim's identities. He sketched the front
of the house, a basic drawing. He’d followed up with every lawyer, every bank and every mortgage and finance company in the local area, but something was gnawing at the extremities of his subconscious.

He didn’t know why, but he twirled his Rolodex and dialled the number without thinking.

‘Yeah, can I speak to Tony Williams please?’ he asked, when the phone was answered.

He heard a few clicks and then Tony’s big booming voice.

‘Williams,’ he said, in his flat southern drawl.

‘Hey Tony, its Charles,’ he said. ‘Charles Roussel.’

‘Charles Roussel!’ Tony breathed excitedly. ‘Charlie, how are you doing? As I live and breathe; I was only discussing you with Marlene the other day.’

‘How is Marlene?’ asked Roussel.

‘She told me that she hasn't seen you anywhere near enough,’ said Tony.

Roussel could hear the slight hurt in his voice.

‘Especially since you got back from Boston a few years ago,’ he added.

‘Sorry Tony,’ he said. ‘It’s just I find it very difficult to revisit some of that stuff.’

‘So is this business or pleasure?’ asked Tony, changing the subject.

Roussel didn’t answer and Tony snorted.

‘Thought so,’ he said. ‘What exactly can I do for you detective,’ he said, putting huge emphasis on the word
detective
.

‘I was just wondering if you’ve had any dealings or correspon
dence relating to the old house?’ asked Roussel, trying to ignore the emotional blackmail.

‘Are you kidding me?’ said Tony, his annoyance temporarily forgotten. ‘That’s what I was talking to Marlene about. It was sold again, about a month back. The guy who was buying it contacted me directly; said he knew I had some history with the place and wanted me to handle both sides of the sale.’

He chuckled to himself.

‘He paid cash; a lot of cash.’

‘Any reason why he would choose somebody so far away?’ asked Roussel in surprise.

‘It’s only a couple of hundred miles,’ said Tony
, half-accusingly.

‘Even so, you’d think he’d go with one of the local firms,
especially if he was an out-of-towner?’ responded Roussel, ignoring the slight.

‘What made you say that,’ said Tony, and Roussel could imagine his lawyer’s eyes
, narrowing in suspicion.

‘Lucky guess,’ said Roussel speculatively.

Tony wouldn’t be drawn; the consummate lawyer.

‘Anyway,’ he stated
. ‘I
was
local, remember. We only moved here since the old house was sold; after you went north. We moved to be nearer Marlene's parents. I guess the vendor told him about me. Old man Bell was always a bit of a gossip.’

‘He was dead,’ said Roussel flatly.

‘Of course he was, it was an executor’s sale,’ said Tony. ‘How could I forget that, I handled the sale; knew all the history.’

He chuckled again.

‘Old age is a cursed thing.’

Roussel's heart rate increased slightly and he could feel the beginnings of excitement.

‘So you have all the documents from the sale?’ he asked.

‘Sure do,’
replied Tony. ‘Tell you what. Marlene gets you over to sample her cooking, I get a warrant, and you get your docs.’

‘Deal,’ said Roussel
, without even thinking.

‘To
night,’ said Tony. ‘Don’t be late.’

Roussel smiled for the first time since the call had begun. They always ate at nine; no exceptions.

He dropped the phone and spun back to the drawing of the house. He drew two stick men in front of it, with a further stick man inside it. Under the two in front of the house he wrote
victim1
and
victim2
. Then he drew a question-mark next to victim1 and wrote
CIA
in big letters next to victim2.

He wrote
owner
under the stick man in the house and wrote
not old man Bell
next to it. He folded his hands and studied it and then cursed; he’d managed to draw all over his clean white shirt with whiteboard marker. He was trying to remove the stain with a combination of his fingers, spit and a handkerchief, when there was another knock on his door.

‘It’s open,’ he shouted
.

‘Hey, Peeshwank,’ said a familiar voice. ‘Fancy a beer?’

Roussel looked from his marked shirt to the clock; four forty five.

‘If you’re buyi
ng, I’m talking,’ added Guilbeau, peeking around the door.

‘You got something for me?’ asked Roussel.

‘No beer, no talk,’ answered Guilbeau with a smile.

#

Guilbeau waited until the two beers were sitting on the bar in front of them. He poured his bottle into the frosted glass, the amber liquid making a chugging sound as he did so. He wiped the condensation away in a circular motion, an old habit, and then took a deep draught.

‘That’s better,’ he said.

Roussel ignored his drink, using his finger to write letters in the condensation on his glass. He didn't say anything; he knew Guilbeau would talk when he was ready.

‘About five years ago
, I went to a conference in Basel, Switzerland,’ said Guilbeau. ‘I'd never been out of the country before. I remember, because I had to get my passport; I was so excited. Turns out it was a really good week.’