Gamma Blade (3 page)

One word escaped his mouth:
“No.”

He turned, staggering as he did so. Now, Brull thought, his saucer-like eyes didn’t resemble those of a caged animal so much as those of a man who’d just gazed into the pit of hell itself.

The text Brull had sent contained no words. Just a short, five-second video clip.

Brull had memorized the clip, frame by frame. It showed a little boy, seven years old. Ordinarily he would have been cute, with his chubby cheeks and cowlick hair. But in the clip, his angelic features were distorted in a terrible howling rictus of fear and despair.

There was no pain in the child’s face.

Not...
yet
.

Fuentes’ jaw was working, but no sound came from his mouth. He resembled to Brull a marionette, one wielded by an inexperienced puppeteer.

Brull said, in a tone of serene reasonableness: “Like I said, Carlos, I’m not going to hurt
you
.” He glanced at the clock on the wall. “I tell you what. Let’s make it
ten
a.m. on Monday. An hour extra. Since I’m in a pretty fuckin’ positive mood today.”

He beamed. He had a way of doing it that ensured the light flashed off the diamond crucifix embedded in his left upper canine. He knew such an adornment was regarded as a cliché by some, which was why he sported it. It was a kind of ironic statement, a massive
screw you
to anybody who might make the mistake of taking Brull for a lightweight, a mere wannabe gangbanger.

South Miami was his turf now.
His.

Ernesto Justice Brull’s.

EJ’
s.

*

Brull had worked his way up through the ranks of the city’s Cuban underworld doing the usual things: protection money collection, a little extortion here and there, a modicum of loan sharking. Sure, he’d gone along on a robbery or two, a couple of burglaries, but from the outset he’d distanced himself from the grunt work, the kind of stuff which often ended up in a shootout with the cops.

From the beginning, Brull had seen himself as a
boss
. And bosses knew when to delegate. Knew when their skills were better employed working things behind the scenes, rather than putting themselves in the line of fire.

When he’d at last branched out, and put together his own business, seven years ago, Brull had made a conscious decision not to follow the herd. Not to compete in the crowded marketplaces of gun-running and narcotics-pushing and the shaking down of local minor politicians. That kind of thing was for the mediocre. The unimaginative.

The small-thinkers, destined forever to be footnotes in the history of the Miami underground entrepreneurial sector.

Instead, Brull had begun building up his own unique operation. One which took years of exquisite, painstaking planning. One which hadn’t yielded immediate dividends, because he’d never expected it to.

Like a fine Bordeaux, his operation had matured over more than half a decade. Been carefully nurtured, kept in the right conditions and allowed to ripen, when other, more impetuous men would have cracked it open earlier and derived some pleasure from it, while squandering its potential.

At last, three summers ago, his business had started to turn a serious profit, and Ernesto Justice Brull had finally, fully arrived.

The other players on the Miami scene had tried to muscle in, of course. His particular niche was an underexploited one, and his business rivals had been quick to see the potential in it. Brull had been equally quick to show them, in no uncertain terms, that he wasn’t going to tolerate competition, at least not in this endeavour. He’d responded with maximum, wholly disproportionate force, and the city had seemed on the verge of all-out war when the other bosses had decided against letting everything go up in flames and had, grudgingly, conceded that Brull was the master of this particular game. They’d left him alone since then.

But Brull knew he could never, ever let his guard down. And so he displayed his unflinching authority at every turn, knowing that, according the principle of zero tolerance which had been employed so effectively by the New York Police Department in the 1990s, there could be no such thing as a minor offense, no transgression that could be declared too petty to be worth bothering about.

Which was why, when Carlos Fuentes, the grocery store owner, was unable to come up with the four thousand dollars he owed Brull, it was to be viewed as a matter as serious as if Fuentes had insulted the memory of Brull’s mother.

You tore up the weeds as soon as they first poked their shoots up through the cracks between your driveway’s paving stones, because if you didn’t, they were apt to form a network which would eventually undermine the foundations of your house.

*

Elon and Pedro ‘escorted’ Fuentes from Brull’s office, which meant they strong-armed him down the stairs and threw him headfirst through the door and onto the sidewalk.

They reappeared a minute later.

Elon said: “You want we should kill the kid now?”

Brull thought about it. The kid would die, of course. Fuentes hadn’t yet been punished for failing to deliver the four grand on time. But he might play hardball - it was highly unlikely, but possible - and so Brull needed the boy alive as leverage.

“No,” he said. “Once we get the money, then you waste him.”

“Fuentes, too?” asked Pedro.

Brull stared at him, appalled.

“You nuts?
No.
Fuentes stays alive. He needs to suffer. And to spread the word, about what happens to guys who don’t pony up on time.” Brull shook his head. “Pedro, I swear, when the good Lord made you he got so carried away with all the muscles - and the dick, if what I’ve heard is true - that he ran short when it came to brains.”

“Sorry, EJ,” said Pedro. He didn’t sound sorry at all. None of Brull’s senior guys were grovelers. Brull didn’t care for fawning yes-men, and those who tried to suck up to him found themselves swiftly unemployed, or sometimes worse.

Brull checked his watch. It was a fine specimen, a Patek Philippe, and Brull had bought it for himself as a reward when he’d made his first ten-thousand-dollar deal. That had been three years ago. Now, ten grand was chickenfeed.

It was three fifteen in the afternoon.

“Take off, guys.” He nodded at Elon and Pedro. “Get some down time. Make sure you’re fresh for tonight.”

They acknowledged him with a bow of the head each, and left the office.

Brull sat alone, listening to the sounds of the city beyond the double-glazed windows. Tonight was going to need fresh men, that was for sure.

It wasn’t the biggest meeting Brull had ever attended. But it would be one of the most crucial. And the potential for double cross was great.

Yet, if it went according to plan, it would end up netting Brull and his organization the biggest haul in their short history.

Brull got up after a few minutes. He made sure his cell phone was switched off, and the phone on his desk was unplugged. He locked the door to the office.

Before his desk was a rug, worn threadbare from countless pairs of feet. And knees. Sometimes Brull thought it would be good to get that rug replaced, maybe with one of the fine handwoven Moroccan ones he had at his home. But the office was a front, of course, and any overt display of wealth or even good taste might attract suspicion.

Besides, he liked the existing rug. It was an emblem of his success. Blood had been spilled on that rug, and men had groveled there before him in supplication.

Now, he eased himself into the lotus position. He’d taken up yoga years ago, and was astonished and delighted by the way it relaxed him, helped him empty his mind of all worries and fears and concentrate simply on
being
.

His eyes closed, Ernesto Justice Brull allowed peace to soak him in its soothing balm.

Chapter 4

Beth’s face appeared beside Venn’s in the mirror. He was stooping a little, to allow himself to examine his reflection, and it put him on a level with her.

“My,” she murmured. “Lieutenant Joe Venn. You do look dapper.”

Venn tried on a playful scowl. But he had to admit, she was right.

He
did
look sharp.

Venn had never been a fashion hound, and would be the first to admit it. He couldn’t understand the obsession most people seemed to have with clothes. To him, clothes were something that protected you from the elements, or, in the case of uniforms, identified your job easily for people. Wearing them to make a statement, or to feel good about yourself, had always seemed to him to be narcissistic in the extreme. So all he needed was a pair of jeans or chinos, a plain shirt, and one of his trusty leather jackets. Nothing more.

Tonight, though, he’d gone the full nine yards. He was wearing a navy Brooks Brothers suit which Beth had gotten for him last Christmas and which he’d worn exactly once before - when he’d  tried it on for size - as well as a cream-colored shirt from Calvin Klein, also provided by Beth, topped off with a red silk necktie. His shoes, which he hadn’t yet put on, were brown Italian loafers, quite unlike the boots he was used to.

Venn felt awkward, and acutely self-conscious.

But he thought it all hung together okay.

Beth hadn’t asked him to dress up, but he’d decided to do so spontaneously, and he could see from her expression that she was both surprised and delighted. She was attending the keynote address which kicked off the AMA conference. Venn wasn’t coming along - even if he’d been on the delegate list, he’d have been utterly lost among all the medics in the audience, and wouldn’t have been able to fathom what the professor delivering the address was saying - but he had been invited to the meal afterward. He figured many of the other people at the dinner would have spouses or significant others present who, like Venn, weren’t in the medical field, and there were sure to be a few of them he could find common ground with. Maybe even a cop or two.

Venn turned to Beth. He’d shaved this evening, something he never normally did after the morning. Beth reached up and rubbed a licked finger across his chin.

“Nicked yourself a little,” she said.

He breathed in her perfume. As always, she looked, and smelled, fabulous. She didn’t often go for the whole glamour thing, but when she did, she achieved with seeming effortlessness a radiance that made her resemble a catwalk model or society lady. Tonight, she wore a light summer evening gown, and had her auburn hair loose around her shoulders. The tiny sapphire-chip earrings Venn had gotten her as a sort-of engagement present highlighted the blue of her irises.

Hot damn
, thought Venn, for maybe the millionth time.
You’ve landed on your feet here, boy.

And:
don’t screw it all up
.

While Beth finished getting ready, collecting her purse and what-not, Venn took a look around the hotel room, marveling once more at its splendor. It was a suite, rather than just a room, with a colossal couch and matching recliners and a sumptuous carpet and a wholly redundant marble fireplace.

Until he and Beth had bought their Manhattan townhouse together, he’d only ever lived in apartments that weren’t much bigger than this place.

He felt kind of guilty, and though he knew it was irrational, he couldn’t help himself. He’d grown up in a small town in western Illinois with a tired, worn-down single mom and two siblings, a brother and a sister. His mother had held down a day job as a secretary and a night-time one as an attendant in a laundromat, and while her kids had never gone hungry, there hadn’t been a lot of money to spare. Young Joe had escaped the grinding, stifling prison of Nowheresville life by heading for Chicago when he was eighteen. It was only when he’d enlisted with the Marine Corps six months later that he’d discovered a sense of purpose.

So the kind of opulence, of easy, casual wealth, that he saw around him in this hotel, and in this room, felt uncomfortable, like an outsized sweater bought as a gift by a well-meaning but clueless aunt.

Still. He had to admit, he was enjoying it all a little.

The keynote address was taking place in the hotel’s main conference center at seven o’clock that evening, an hour from now. Afterward, the guests would make their way to a restaurant on the marina, within walking distance of the hotel, for an eight-thirty start. Venn had arranged to meet Beth in the lobby of the hotel at eight. He’d spend the hour before, while she was listening to the speech, taking a stroll outside.

“Okay,” Beth said, looking at her watch. “I need to get moving.”

Venn headed for the door with her. She turned in surprise.

“I’ll escort you down,” he said.

Beth smiled. “Venn... it’s here in the hotel. You don’t need to come.”

He held up his hands. “I’m not saying you need to be protected, or anything. I just thought I’d ride down in the elevator with you.”

She put her arms round him. “Sorry. Yes. I was being oversensitive.”

*

He left her to join the funnel of people heading toward the doors of the conference center, and began to make his way to the hotel entrance.

At the elevator, he stopped.

He’d brought his gun along, a Beretta. It was in the safe in their room upstairs.

He was only going for a stroll along the marina. And he was here on a weekend vacation.

Still. A cop was always a cop, even off-duty.

And a cop never left his gun behind.

Venn took the stairs, ignoring the elevator as was his custom. In the room, he retrieved the Beretta in its shoulder holster, took off his jacket and fitted the holster.

He looked at himself in the mirror. A slight bulge in the suit jacket. That was another reason he favored looser-fitting clothes like leather jackets. The cops he knew who wore suits tended to need to get them tailored to conceal their firearms.

He headed downstairs once more, and out into the balmy evening air.

Chapter 5

“You ever think about living somewhere like this?”

Venn looked down at Beth. They were strolling along the marina, watching the lights from the yachts glittering off the undulating surface of the water. The city pressed in on one side, just like in Manhattan, except that Miami felt more spread out to Venn, without the towering presence of downtown Manhattan’s skyscrapers.