Darwin's Nightmare (10 page)

I walked the four blocks, alone, back to the car. I drove, listening to the Volvo as it accelerated through its gears. I was forever connected to a maniac and his girl in the murder of seven people, and I was out of a job. I had pushed a group of very dangerous people toward another group of very dangerous people. There would be bloodshed for what I had done. I tried to console myself with the idea that war with the Russians was inevitable, and that the fight would be over quickly with the Italians rallying around the memory of Tommy Talarese. But I was wrong.

Paolo began a war with the Russians that raged for years. More lines were drawn, and the city became more divided than ever. I was wrong about being out of a job, too. I was working again less than a month later.

The dashboard clock read 4:23 as I slowed on the street where the Volvo was parked. Steve got out and told me he'd meet me back at the bar. I rolled Steve's Range Rover down the street and watched 22 Hess out of the corner of my eye. There weren't any squad cars yet, so Steve was good to go. I used the cell phone Steve left on the seat to call him.

“It's all clear,” I said.

“I can see that. Let's meet at the bar.”

Back at Sully's Tavern I ordered a Coke and waited for Steve. I made small talk with Ben and Sandra and went over the events of the day in my head. I showed up at 22 Hess to find out about what I stole from the airport and to figure out how to get those amateurs off my ass. The computer nerds stole accounting information from someone working for what looked to be the Russian mob. They blackmailed the accountant and set up an exchange at the airport. When the airport exchange didn't happen the accountant likely had to ‘fess up to his employers about
what was going on. The Russians had their own way of dealing with blackmailers that didn't involve airport hand-offs. They came looking for the geeks and their property at the same time I did. So now I was in a Mexican standoff, with two big guns pointed at my head.

The first gun was in Paolo's hand. According to the dingy Guinness clock on the wall, I had just over a day and a half to get everything in order before Paolo decided to cut his losses. If I were viewed as a liability when Julian returned to see me, Paolo would turn him loose on me in an effort to keep himself insulated from the airport job.

The second gun belonged to the Russians. They were after their property and they had no problem killing a whole office staff to get closer to what they wanted. The Russians were real thugs, not amateurs, and they probably had my scent because Mike had not been dead when I left the office. They would gladly grind what they needed out of me to get to what had been taken from them.

I decided that when Steve brought the car back, I would go to the office. It was the only option. There I had a chance to pick up someone doing surveillance, or wait for the Russians to find me. I would be next on the Russians' list and I had no way of finding them without drawing attention to myself. There was no way the Italians would help me. Paolo had no interest in helping me when it was just the amateurs who were following me. There was no way he would help me deal with the Russians. I had to play defence — alone.

Steve pulled in twenty minutes after my second Coke and tossed the car keys at me as he walked to Sandra. He kissed her on the cheek and asked her questions in low tones. They both smiled and talked for two and a half minutes while Ben tended bar; no one complained about how slow service had suddenly gotten. When Steve finished
talking to Sandra, he kissed her on the cheek and came over to me. He leaned in, resting his knotted forearms on the bar.

“They had guys at the corners scanning the cars,” he told me.

“I never saw them,” I said.

“They were around the streets. I saw one stop what he was doing to stare at me getting in the car. I guess I was okay in their eyes ‘cause no one tailed me.”

“You sure?” I asked.

“Yep,” was the only response I got.

I told Steve I'd see him later and left the bar to make my way to the office. I found the car on a side street. It hummed to life without any problems, and the tank was full. I smiled at my friend's wordless act of kindness. As I drove, I tried to clear my head of all the thoughts I was having. I couldn't be afraid or hesitate. I had to walk head up into a trap and make it work to my advantage. This was the opposite of everything I wanted, everything I was trained to do. The situation also had no real plan to go along with it. I always planned everything or at least had an idea about how I wanted to spin a situation. I remembered the words of my uncle: “Planning separates the living and the dead, boy. Don't forget it. The morgue is full of guys who thought they could handle anything.” I knew that deep down he was talking about my parents; they didn't have a good plan and in his eyes and it killed them. The events of the past few days had left me without any control, and it pissed me off. I was struggling to keep ahead of people who all seemed to know more than I did about what I was involved in.

As I drove, I breathed deep and counted down from ten until my mind was empty. I turned off Duke Street onto James Street and circled the office a few times. I let my
mind take in the area, waiting for recognition of anything that stood out. I didn't see people loitering in the shadows, and there were no strange parked cars concealing occupants hunched low in their driver seats. To be safe, I went up a block and parked on a side street. I turned off the ignition and checked the Glock. I reloaded the gun so that I had eleven in the clip and one in the chamber. I took off the safety and tucked the gun into the holster at the small of my back. I made sure my shirt was out over the holster, and got out of the car.

I didn't enter the building at first. I was bait, but I planned on surviving my predators. I wanted the Russians to take a run at me on my terms, in a place where I had control. That meant I had to make it past the front door and anyone waiting. I walked on the opposite side of the street, past the office, into a variety store five doors down from my building. It was the best spot I had to watch the street. I bought a paper and a coffee and walked over to the video wall by the door. I stared over the video rack of soft-and hard-core pornography through the window to the street. I spent twenty minutes sipping my coffee and pretending to split my time between the paper and the porn.

I left after the clerk started to cough a little louder than he needed to over and over again. I hadn't noticed a thing yet, but it had been less than half an hour — nothing in the grand scheme of things. I walked back up the street and used an alley to cross over James Street, the second-busiest street in the area. I hailed a cab and gave the cabbie a story about a cheating wife. I told the driver to cruise the area so I could catch her in the act. I told him I would pay whatever the fare came to, and settled in to watch the neighbourhood roll by. The cabbie spoke about his own cheating wife and how much he hated the bitch and
her
kids. I ignored the story, speaking up only to tell him
where to turn. I watched the cars and the people as we cruised; I was looking for solitary figures sitting low in car seats, or random pedestrians who strode the sidewalks too long. In the hour I spent in the cab I saw no human forms in the shadows of cars or alleys. I paid up the cabbie when we ended up back on James Street for the twelfth time, and walked the streets again.

I carefully navigated the side streets and narrow alleys. The reek of garbage from the corners accented the putrid fumes being spewed by the sewers. I walked past the convenience store I had been in earlier, then I went past the office. No one looked at me twice, and no one stood out — yet. I knew deep down that Mike had squealed on me back at the office. People were coming.

After a few more strolls around the area, I went up the steps to the building. It was almost six, after office hours; the few other rented office spaces in the building were empty. I had the key ready, and I opened the locked door and entered the building without losing a step. No one shot me in the back; no one was waiting for me inside. I moved down the hall past the elevator and entered the stairwell. I closed the door quietly behind me and waited. I waited for three minutes, listening to the hum of the fluorescent bulbs. I strained to hear any other noises above me, but there were none.

Before I started climbing the stairs, I took off my shoes. I held them in my left hand with my thumb and forefinger; my right was on the butt of my gun. Quietly I climbed the stairs. At first, my damp feet made quiet suction sounds, but the noise faded as my soles absorbed the grime and grease of the stairs. I passed each floor until I ran out of stairs at the sixth floor. No one was waiting for me on the top floor. I leaned over the stairwell and saw nothing below me, so I moved back down one flight to the fifth
floor — my floor. Slowly I pressed the thumb latch on the door handle using the hand that was carrying the shoes. The first attempt was a little unsteady, so I put down the shoes and tried again. I opened the stairwell door and spied the dimly lit hallway for two minutes. Every office was dark, including mine. I didn't hear a single cough or shuffle of feet.

I picked up my shoes and moved down the hallway, making sure to stay low under each door so no one could shoot me in the back from a hiding place in one of the dark offices. I knelt to the right of my door and silently slid my key in. I turned the key, and slowly pushed the door open. I knew the score right away. The door moved too quickly; it moved open on its own and slammed against the door jamb because inside a window was open.

Behind my desk the blinds were up and the window was open. I kept low to the floor as I moved inside. Keeping the desk between me and the window, I pivoted to the blinds and released them. I didn't think anyone would shoot through the window at me; they would first want to find out what I knew. I was sure I had about two minutes until whoever was watching the window would be at the office door, so I got ready quick. I put my shoes on and went to the closet. The closet had a false back. I pulled out the painted wood piece that sat behind my clothes and took out a modified double-barrelled shotgun that I had sawn down to twelve inches. The shotgun was useless outside of ten feet, but up close it was like the wrath of God — scarring everything in its path. I stood, gun in hand, to the right of the door — out of the line of fire from both the hall and the window.

I was off on the time. The door was kicked open after five minutes. The bull who hit the door was a middle-aged guy with a beard, a beer belly, and scars around his eyes.
He used a shoulder to hit the door, leaving his gun pointed at the floor. The grey suit he wore pulled at the buttons under the strain of his gut. He must have weighed two hundred forty pounds; most of it was flab. The crash through the door brought him into the room three feet from the shotgun.

I stayed where I was and waited for the man to catch sight of me out of the corner of his eye. His head turned to mine, and I watched the realization hit his face. I saw it in almost slow motion. Each muscle twitched, turning his face into a look of shock. He didn't say a word, and he didn't move; he just stood in front of me. We looked at each other for a quarter of a minute until a voice came from the hall.

“Gregor?”

The Russians had found me. I didn't speak because I wasn't sure I would be understood. I motioned down with the shotgun and waited. Gregor put his gun down and lowered himself to his knees. I moved his gun to me with my foot, never letting the shotgun drift from Gregor's centre. The voice called again, more sternly; it had the severity of a man in charge. I butted Gregor on the side of the face, and he went down the rest of the way to the floor. The noise was a sick wet bump, and the groan from Gregor's lips brought the hallway man into the room with his gun drawn.

As the welt on Gregor's temple grew, the second Russian and I waited with guns pointed at each other. I broke the silence. “You want to sit down?”

A heavily accented voice returned my pleasant invitation. “Not with guns drawn.”

I'd had enough shit for one day. “Put yours down and we can talk — if you don't I'm going to do some terrible things.”

I planted my feet and got ready. I began counting down
from ten in my head. At one, I was going to kill him and risk the consequences. I figured the risk to be low: the shotgun blast would push him back and draw his shot wide. That was, of course, unless he was counting in his head too — with a lower number than mine. At four, he agreed to sit. He tucked his shiny gun into his pants and sat in the chair next to Gregor's body. I sat behind my desk and set the shotgun on the desk, the barrel pointed towards the Russian and Gregor.

“Now what do you and Gregor want?” I asked.

The second Russian was the new face of the mob: in his twenties, fresh-faced, dyed hair, gym membership. The new breed of mobster was unlike any of its predecessors. They were into their work for more than money, they were into it for a sense of identity. The lack of a war to fight in left many kids looking for a cause, and the mob was more than willing to let them enlist. These recruits served with a vicious devotion that would scare Germans from the forties. What these kids lacked in skill they more than made up for with brutality.

“Uh . . . money.”

“You already snuck in once and left the window open. You went through my shit too. You tried to make it look like you didn't, but I can see that things are out of place, so don't bullshit me with some story about a robbery. You were here looking for something and you didn't find it. You waited for me to come back so you could ask me some hard questions. Once you got your answers, you were going to kill me. I want to know why. Who are you working for? And what do they want with me?”

He took a few seconds before he answered. “I do not know what you are speaking about. Now please, call police.”

He looked unafraid of the prospect of involving the
police. Handcuffs were better than death, and he knew deep down that I wasn't the type of person who would call the cops. He started to smile, probably thinking I would let him go. I felt my face pull to the left and I grinned at his smile. His eyes lost their mirth and his mouth formed a small, confused O. His gaze drifted down to the shotgun on the table, then back to me, and then again to the gun. He sprang from his chair, like he was shot out of a cannon, and grabbed at the barrel of the gun. He was lifting the shotgun off the desk when my hand came out from behind my back with the Glock. My grin didn't fade when I shot him.