Gamma Blade (12 page)

He kept Fuentes pinned to the spot with his gaze, like a butterfly with a needle through it.

After ten seconds’ silence, which was punctuated only by a single whimper from Fuentes’ throat - he really was doing a good job of holding it together this time, Brull thought almost admiringly - Brull slapped his palms on the desk. The sound made Fuentes jerk as if he’d been shot.

“So. Enough of this nonsense. I’ve got things to do this morning, Carlos. And I sure as hell know you have, too.”

He waved a careless hand, like a boss dismissing his secretary.

Fuentes stumbled a little on the way to the door. Brull considered calling him back to show him the new video clip, but decided against it. He’d keep that little treat for the next time Fuentes showed up. Which he suspected would be before the weekend was over.

Brull cleared his mind of the grocer within seconds, and focussed on the problem he had right now. Which was rescheduling the rendezvous from last night, the one they’d had to abort.

The difficulty was, he couldn’t simply rearrange the meet. The cops would be watching the marina, and if the boat, the
Merry May
, took off for the open water, they’d get even more suspicious. First, Brull had to spend some time finding out exactly how much the cops knew.

And he had to find the mystery man who Elon had knocked unconscious.

So far, his guys had been unsuccessful in locating the hospital where the guy was being kept. Brull was almost certain he’d been admitted to a ward, rather than sent home the same day. Brull’s cousin was a nurse down in , and she was a useful source of information about all things medical. She’d told him once that people who’d lost consciousness following a head injury were always admitted for observation, at least overnight.

The trouble was, Brull was running out of time. If the man was okay this morning, he might be discharged. And then the trail would go cold. So Brull had gotten up early, at six o’clock, and had gone into overdrive, pulling his men off all but the most essential business across the city and directing them toward the hospitals. Each of them had a copy of the photo Elon had taken of the guy the night before.

Brull thought about his cousin the nurse. Probably the most interesting thing he’d gotten from her, though she didn’t know it, was the name he’d given himself.

She’d been working in an oncology department once, and had told him about the gamma knife. It wasn’t a surgical instrument, as the name suggested, but rather a machine used to treat brain tumors with radioactive agents. Most of what she’d told him had been lost on him, but that name stuck.

Gamma knife.

He played with the term in his head, tossing it around, until he decided that an even better-sounding name was
gamma blade
.

And from that day on, Ernesto Justice Brull had regarded himself as the Gamma Blade. He was a precision instrument, striking skilfully and excising his opposition.

He never told anybody else about the name. But he found that, whenever he doubted himself - which wasn’t often - the words rose in his mind once more, and reminded him of his power.

Gamma Blade.

*

The phone on his desk buzzed, snapping Brull out of his thoughts.

“Yeah.”

It was the receptionist downstairs, Maria. She was sullen and downright hostile to most callers, by default, and loyal as hell to Brull. “Got a man here wants to see you, sir.”

Brull was surprised. He didn’t get a whole lot of cold callers asking to see him personally. Usually people who showed up at the reception desk were deadbeats, unemployed and normally unemployable. They came looking for work, and Maria either referred them to one of the Brull’s guys in the downstairs offices, who’d go through the motions of taking their details but never contact them again. Or, more often, Maria would tell them to get lost, or ask for references up front which few of them were able to provide.

“Who is he?” asked Brull.

“Says his name, uh, Robert Smith,” said Maria. “White guy, big. Looks like a thug. Says he’s got some information you’ll want to hear.”

Brull sighed. Another wannabe informant, claiming to have insider access to somewhere he imagined Brull couldn’t go.

“Tell him to fuck off,” said Brull. “Be reasonably polite about it.”

Maria put her hand over the phone. Brull didn’t replace the receiver, because if the guy downstairs started getting abusive, he wanted to know about it quickly so he could intervene.

She came back a moment later. “He says he wants to talk to you about the boat, whatever that means.”

Brull was immediately alert. He felt adrenaline flood his system, was aware of his senses heightening in acuity.

Was this an attempt to set up a new rendezvous?

“Okay,” said Brull. “Send him up. First, who else is in the building?”

She knew what he meant. “Jimmy Martinez, and Alberto.”

“Tell them to get up here and meet this guy by the door. Tell them to frisk him.”

“Got it, sir.”

Brull opened a drawer of his desk. Inside lay his . He left the drawer open, within immediate reach but hidden from the other side of the desk.

He sat back and waited.

Chapter 16

Estrada parked up a side street, two blocks from the office. The neighborhood was quite different from the ones Venn had encountered in the city so far: potholed, neglected asphalt on the roads, garbage spilling out of splitting sacks lined up along the walls of tenement buildings, young men hanging around on street corners.

You found it in every American city Venn had ever been in.

Estrada said, “The moment there’s any shit, hit speed dial.”

Venn grunted. “If I get a chance.”

He got out and strode the two blocks until he saw the office halfway down the street, its name in cheap, garish paint on the awning: Columbus Employment Agency. He was in his comfortable clothes, jeans and leather jacket and boots, so he didn’t think he stood out all that much. Other than that he was white, in an almost exclusively Latino neighborhood.

The lobby was cramped and smelled of stale cigarette smoke and sweat. The smell of despair. A single, battered-looking elevator was straight opposite the doors, alongside the stairs. To the left, a receptionist sat behind a counter. She was grim-looking, and glared at him balefully as he entered.

Without preamble, Venn said: “I need to speak with Ernesto Brull.”

She didn’t do anything at first except stare at him.

At last, she said, “Do you have an appointment?”

“No.”

“Then he’s not available.”

“He will be when he hears what I have to say.”

That didn’t make sense, and Venn saw her trying to work it out.

He took out his wallet, seeing her tense as he reached into his pocket. He peeled off two twenties and dropped them on the desk.

She stared at them as if they were a couple of dead fish.

“How about it, honey?” he said.

After a moment, she took the bills with one hand and made them disappear, while she reached for the phone with the other.

Venn heard her end of the conversation. As he waited, he saw a man come down the stairs next to the elevator.

The man was holding onto the handrail, although he looked neither frail nor all that old. It was as if he didn’t trust his legs to support him. His head was bowed, his posture slumped. He looked utterly broken.

At the bottom of the stairs, he looked up suddenly, as if noticing Venn for the first time.

Venn had seen fear before. But he thought the guy’s eyes were the most terrified ones he’d ever seen in his life.

The receptionist put her hand over the receiver. She said to Venn, a note of triumph in her voice: “Mr Brull is unable to entertain you at this time.”

Venn and Estrada had discussed the approach in the car on the way. They’d decided to go straight for the jugular.

Venn said, “Tell your Mr Brull that I want to talk to him about the boat.”

She spoke into the phone again.

Then she put it down. “He’ll see you. But you need to hold on a moment.” She picked up the phone again and dialed another number.

Venn saw the guy at the stairs hadn’t moved. He looked at him again.

The man was staring openly at his face. As Venn stared back, the guy quailed a little, as if realizing he was being rude.

He muttered something inaudible and trotted quickly past Venn toward the door.

Venn watched him go.

“Okay,” said the receptionist. “Up the stairs, second floor. Don’t bother trying the elevator, because it ain’t working.”

“Which office is it?”

“Mr Brull’s assistants will be waiting.”

I bet they will
, thought Venn.

*

The dingy corridor ran left to right at the top of the stairs. Venn saw two men waiting to the right. They stood with their feet apart, heads slightly lowered.

Just like the row of guys on the pier last night.

And, like those guys, these two had smoothly shaved heads.

“Hey, fellas,” said Venn. “I’m looking for Mr Brull’s office?”

One of the men beckoned with his fingers. “Step over here, raise your arms, place your hands against the wall with your feet back.”

At least he didn’t say assume the position, Venn thought.

He did as he was told. “Just to let you know, there’s a gun in my inside jacket pocket,” he said conversationally.

He’d assumed he’d be frisked, and had debated leaving his Beretta in Estrada’s car. But, once again, he recalled the maxim: a cop never leaves his gun behind. If they took it off him now, he might be able to get it back. But in the car, it would be no use to him at all.

One of the men ran his hands expertly over Venn’s torso, under his arms, between his legs. The other one stood off to the side, well out of reach, watching Venn’s face for the tell-tale signs of an imminent attack.

The first man took the Beretta from Venn’s shoulder holster.

“You gonna give me a receipt for that?” said Venn.

The guy grabbed him by the shoulder, harder than necessary. “Okay. You can stand up straight now.”

The other man knocked on a door. From inside, a voice said: “Yeah. Come.”

The man pushed the door open and went in first. The other guy followed Venn.

Venn stepped into a large office, which unlike the rest of the building so far was freshly painted, and bright with the sunlight flooding in through the large picture windows.

On the other side of an incongruously threadbare floor rug was a desk.

Behind it sat a man. Shaved head, thin, vulpine features. A wink of something glittering between his slightly parted lips.

There was the faintest movement in the man’s black eyes. The tiniest spark of recognition.

And Venn knew, even before the guy spoke, that this was the man from the alley last night.

Chapter 17

“You should have finished the job last night,” Venn said.

It was his opening line.

The two goons stood to either side of him and slightly back, so that he couldn’t see both of them at the same time with his peripheral vision. It was a standard formation. Professional.

Across the desk, Brull said: “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Venn said, “So what’s the story with the boat? The
Merry May
?”

Brull kept the same neutral gaze. “Once again, what you’ve said means nothing to me.”

Yes, the voice clinched it. It was him, all right.

“Like I say, you should have killed me when you had the chance,” said Venn. “Because now you’ve got a whole new problem in your life. A problem called Joe Venn. And I’m the kind of problem there isn’t a solution to.”

A faint smile twitched at Brull’s lips.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “What’s your name? You told my receptionist you were Robert Smith. Yet you seem to be referring to yourself as, uh, Joe Venn.” He said the last two words as if they tasted foul.

Venn was alert to the two guys on either side of him. He couldn’t see them properly, but he could sense them. And he was ready to react, if he detected a tensing in them, the threat of imminent action.

“Yeah,” said Venn. “I know what you’re doing. You’re taking care with what you say, because you can’t be sure I’m not wearing a wire. Even though your two puppies here frisked me. I might have some new-fangled mike in my shoe. Or embedded under my skin. You’re a cautious guy, Brull. Maybe too cautious. Which is why you didn’t shoot me last night.”

Brull frowned. It was an expression of genuine curiosity. He nodded encouragement for Venn to keep talking.

“So I’m not here to interrogate you, Brull. That’ll come later, and then you will talk. Believe me. No. Right now, I’m here to scare the pants off you. To let you know that whatever you’re cooking, we’re outside the kitchen door. We’re smelling it, already. All we don’t know is the exact ingredients.”

Brull tipped his head back, eyed Venn through narrowed eyes.

“That’s about all I came here to say. You screwed with the wrong cop last night, Brull. If you’d just let me chase your guy, and lose him, or if you’d simply come up from behind me and punched my lights out, then none of this would be happening. But you had to play out that little charade, didn’t you? Getting me to kneel down, execution-style. You had to do it, because your ego demanded it. And that just shows how, despite your cautiousness, despite the notion you have of yourself as this hot-shot up-and-coming king of the underworld, you’re just another cheap little hood. Guys like you come and go all the time. Here today, on a slab tomorrow with your worthless brains blown out the back of your skull.”

Brull had raised his eyebrows by now, and was grinning. The diamond in his tooth winked.

“Gentlemen,” he said, glancing from one of the goons to the other. “Show Mr Venn, or Smith, or whoever he is, the door, will you?”

Beside him, one of the goons jerked his head.

Venn turned his back on Brull and walked toward the door. As he opened it, he felt one of the men’s hand on his shoulder.

He stopped, glanced back.