Desperate Souls (22 page)

Looking his partner in the eye, Gary poured rum over the entry wound.

Frank snorted coke and glared at his partner. “You’re enjoying this,” he said.

“That’s where you’re wrong.” But he really did enjoy seeing Frank in pain.

“Okay, so I fucked up. Maybe you should have been down there with me. It was three against one, you know.”

He’s right.
“I’m not blaming you. It was a difficult situation. Right now, we have to worry about stitching you up.”

“You don’t look like a seamstress.”

Gary took out his cell phone. “You’re an excellent judge of character.”

“Who you gonna call?”

“Our friend, the doctor.”

“Metivier? He costs a fortune. Who’s gonna pay for that?”

Gary frowned. “I insist that we split the cost.”

Frank beamed. “You’re all heart, partner.”

Gary’s cell phone rang in his hand, startling him. Checking the display, he did not recognize the number. His stomach tightened. He never recognized the number when Papa Joe called him because Joe and his lieutenants used burners: disposable cell phones. “Hello?”

“I just saw a disturbing news report on TV,” Joe said without identifying himself.

The uncomfortable feeling in Gary’s stomach worsened. “There’s never any good news these days.”

“Ain’t that the truth? There was a shoot-out in the parking garage of a luxury apartment building on Roosevelt Island called The Octagon. Maybe you know the one I’m talking about.”

“I think I do.”

“Security cameras recorded two vehicles leaving the scene. One of them was registered to an ex-con named Laird Black, whose street name is Six Pack. There’s an APB out for him now.”

“If the police are looking for this guy—”

“—then his boss will likely take him out of the game. Exactly what I was thinking. The most disturbing part of all this is that no bodies were found in that garage.”

Gary ran one hand across his brow. “I guess things didn’t go as the shooter had planned.”

“One shooter? I thought there might have been two.”

“You said there were two vehicles, right? One belonging to the target, the other to the shooter. I assume each car had its own driver.”

“I’ll call you right back.” He hung up.

Gary powered down his phone and slid it into its holder. Then he held out his hand, and Frank took out his cell phone and handed it to him. A moment later, that phone rang, and a different number appeared on the display. “Yeah?”

“Sounds like a real botched job,” a new voice said.

Chess, Papa Joe’s right hand.
“I have to agree.”

“That royal pain in the ass knows he’s in trouble now. If he was hard to find before, he’ll be impossible to find now.”

“I understand.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that there’s a million-dollar bounty on his head.”

Oh, shit!
“That would turn the five boroughs into one big shooting gallery.”

“It is what it is.” The line went dead.

Gary handed the phone back to Frank, who said, “What?”

“Papa Joe just put out a million-dollar bounty on Malachai’s head.”

Frank raised his eyebrows.
“What?
Jesus!”

“Joe’s running scared. He knows that Malachai knows who sent us after him. That means Malachai’s gunning for Joe.”

Frank shrugged. “He always was. It was just a matter of time.”

Gary’s mind raced. “We need to find Malachai again and take him out.”

“You won’t catch me arguing about collecting a million-dollar bounty.”

“No, we need to take him out and forget about the bounty.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Joe and Malachai are the only drug lords left in this city. We work for Joe. If Malachai does him, we’re out of work.”

“Unless we take out Joe for Malachai,” Frank said in an ice-cold voice.

Gary stared at his partner.
What are you thinking in that coked-up brain of yours, little man? You just spent the last hour telling me you’d kill Malachai for free.
“We know Joe. We can deal with him. As I see it, no one can trust Malachai. Switching teams would be a big mistake.”

“Yeah, whatever. I need some more blow.”

Gary refrained from shaking his head as his partner headed to the bedroom.

A minute later, he heard Frank screaming for his life.

Frank strolled into his bedroom, where he kept his stash hidden in a bureau drawer. Sometimes Gary really pissed him off. They were partners, which meant Frank had a say in what they did whether Gary had seniority in the department or not.

Opening his favorite drawer, he removed the bag of cocaine and the plate with his works. He spooned coke onto the plate, chopped it with a razor blade, and snorted two lines with a half straw. Damn, that was good shit! Massaging residual powder into his gums, he considered that if the street situation continued on its current path, pretty soon coke would become completely impossible to find in New York. He could only fly on what they’d stolen from the bakery for so long.

Fuck it. I’ll fly to Miami if I have to.
Hell, if it came down to it, he’d join Miami PD and drive around town in a cool car like Don Johnson on
Miami Vice.
To hell with New York. Manhattan was crawling with zombies and scarecrows anyway.

While waiting for his bloodstream to absorb the coke, his ears clogged up as if the air pressure on the fifth floor had changed. He swallowed and heard a popping sound as his ears cleared. Then he heard a strange, rhythmic sound.

My heart? No
—
drumbeats!

Then his guts knotted up, expanded, and writhed. Pain spread through his body like white-hot fire, and he screamed.

Gary bolted into the bedroom and froze in the doorway. Frank stood over the bureau, a plate of cocaine on the wooden surface beneath him. He gripped his stomach in both hands, his face turning beet red.

“Frank?”

Frank looked in his direction. Gary had never seen such fear up close. Then Frank’s stomach heaved, and he turned back to the bureau, vomiting a stream of chunky white fluid, like spoiled milk, at the mirror.

Gary’s eyes widened.
Oh, my God!
He looked at the plate of cocaine again. How much of that had Frank snorted?

Frank projectile vomited again. This time blood splashed over the mirror and plate of coke, turning the white substances uneven shades of pink.

“Jesus!” Gary said as Frank fell backwards onto the carpet and writhed on the floor, red, white, and pink fluids streaming from his nostrils and mouth.

What the hell do I do?
Gary thought.
He’s overdosing! Do I call an ambulance? It will probably be too late. Do I just leave him here to die?
The idea certainly had its merits.

Frank’s eyes turned to him, pleading for help.

Gary took a step forward, still uncertain what course of action to take. Frank’s neck appeared as thick as his entire head, and his body turned spastic, arms and legs flopping around as if he lay upon the most powerful vibrating bed ever constructed, his hips humping the air. Frank opened his mouth wide, and Gary heard an unnatural sound, something not human: a hiss. And then Frank’s tongue, swollen and covered with white paste, protruded from his mouth. Only it wasn’t a tongue.

Oh, dear God in heaven …

The head of a great albino snake emerged from Frank’s mouth. Its eyes and skin were pure white, like the cocaine Frank had been snorting, but streaked with Frank’s blood, which appeared bright red on the serpentine palette. The snake rose from Frank’s corpse, coiling its body beneath it, hissing at Gary, its white tongue flicking in and out of its mouth, and its blood-soaked eyes staring at him.

A snake made out of cocaine,
Gary thought, incredulous. He took a step backwards, afraid to turn his back on the creature, and reached for the butt of his Glock.

The snake shot forward, launching itself at Gary, a line of white streaking through the air. Gary saw its jaws open wide, and he groped the thick, scaly body with both hands. But the snake buried its fangs into his cheek even as he pulled on it. He felt a jolt of pain, and then his cheek turned numb. Crying out, he stumbled backwards and landed on the floor. His hands closed into fists, the snake seeming to evaporate, and cocaine poured into his face and over his shirt. Gary sat up in a panic and saw the white powder scattered over his torso. The creature had crumbled into its original state!

With a cry of disgust, he leapt to his feet, no longer caring about Frank or Papa Joe or Prince Malachai. He cared about only one thing: survival. Sprinting across the room, he hurled open the front door and charged into the hallway. He raced for the elevator, heart pounding.

What the hell’s wrong with me?

Sticky sweat formed on his forehead as the elevator opened.

Oh, Christ, I’m high!
The snake must have injected him with liquid cocaine rather than venom. But how much?
Enough to overdose like Frank?
Boarding the elevator, he stabbed the button for the first floor and tried to regulate his breathing as the elevator began its slow descent. Hearing a rubbing sound, he looked up at the elevator’s ceiling.
What the hell is that?

Not a rubbing sound.

Drumbeats. Who was playing drums?
The drumbeats reverberated through his entire body.
Ah, shit. What now?
He reached out for the wall with one hand, steadying himself. He wanted to vomit, but the image of Frank painting the mirror with his projectile barf turned him off to the idea. Was a magic cocaine snake trying to chew its way free of his body?
God, I hope not.
He made up his mind to do everything he could to keep that from happening.

The elevator door opened, and he raced across the lobby. Through the glass lobby front, he saw that the sky had turned black. Flinging the door open, he ran outside, glad to be free of Frank’s house of horrors. Jesus Christ, what had caused all this to happen? The drumbeats continued to pound in his head and rattle his ribs. He bolted down the sidewalk, scanning Fourth Avenue for the unmarked police SUV. His clothes felt soaked with sweat.

Heart … racing … no good…

He slowed to a stop, his SUV only yards ahead.

Can I make it?

His body did not respond to his mental commands.

Oh, God. I’m going to die right here in Bay Ridge. Not even in Manahttan.

His stomach felt even worse. Something inside him was … growing. He staggered to the car and doubled over its hatch. Cars passed him in the darkness.

“Oh,
Go-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!
“

Gary rolled over onto his back. Staring up at the black sky, with his elbows pressed against the metal, his hands opened and closed, his fingers digging into his palms. The mass in his body seemed to be expanding in different directions, like tree roots.

Or like a nest of snakes …

The drumbeat in his head came at a steady rhythm—

Thrum … thrum … thrum… THRUM!

—while his heart jackhammered at a much faster rate. Tendrils of agony continued to blossom through his body, spreading like weeds.

It isn’t fair,
he thought. What had he done to deserve such an indescribable fate? He knew the answer, and thoughts raced through his mind.

I’ve lied to the people I love. Stolen from criminals. Accepted money from other criminals. Committed murder. Betrayed my shield. Sold my soul for drugs.

His stomach shook, and pain crawled up his throat and through his colon.

“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck! “

He thrashed from side to side, then rolled his face against the glass and vomited all over the hatch. Solid matter hurled out of his mouth and rained down on the rear windshield wiper. He gasped in horror at the black and gray chunks mixed in with his blood.

Realization dawned on him like a ton of bricks.
Tumors … cancer!

Then his stomach heaved again, and something solid obstructed his windpipe. Gary tried to expel whatever it was, but pain ripped through his ass, causing his body to go spastic. What looked like a thick tree branch covered in fat slithered out of his mouth. Dripping blood, it curled and uncurled like a tentacle. Still he could not breathe. Worse, he felt the tentacle throbbing in his throat and through his sternum to his belly. Another tentacle ruptured through his sphincter, sending shock waves of pain through his body like broken glass.