Omega Dog (2 page)

Despite himself, Venn felt his anger rising. Damn it, would he always be this sensitive about it? Would he never be able to hear somebody talk of his dismissal from the force without feeling needled?

He clenched his fists. Although he held them beneath the table, out of sight, Corcoran seemed to sense his fury.

‘Little touchy there, Joe?’ There was the hint of a smile in his voice.

The familiar use of his name provoked Venn further. ‘I did my god damn job,’ he muttered. ‘And I did it well.’

Corcoran tilted his head. ‘
So
well, that the Chicago PD got hit with a record lawsuit. It nearly crippled them. They couldn’t hang on to you after that, Joe. Be reasonable.’

‘Who the hell are you?’ said Venn, fighting the urge to stand up and yank the guy out of his chair by his scrawny neck.

Corcoran held up both hands, palms down, in a placating gesture. Venn kept his seat, still seething.

‘You’re not a cop,’ said Venn.

‘No. You’re right. I’m not.’

‘So who are you?’ repeated Venn.

‘I’ll tell you in a minute. Promise.’ Corcoran stood, and began to pace, reciting again. ‘You were finally let go of, after almost a year’s suspension from the Chicago force. And you upped sticks and came here, to Manhattan, six months ago. You’re now sole proprietor of Diagram Consulting Services. A gumshoe. Your pre-tax profits for the financial year just ended were exactly one thousand, three hundred and sixty-nine dollars, and thirty cents.

‘You were the alpha dog. A decorated Marine, a detective lieutenant in one of the biggest and most respected police forces in the United States. And now you’re reduced to this. You’re no longer the alpha dog, Joe. You’re the bottom of the pile. The omega dog.’

‘Wait a minute.’ Again Venn battled with an impulse to stand, one he didn’t give in to. He still wasn’t convinced the cops weren’t watching. ‘How do you know what I earned? All of that other stuff you could have gotten from my police records. Not my earnings.’

Corcoran nodded, as if it was a fair point. He continued to pace back and forth as he spoke. ‘I work for an organization, Mr Venn – may I call you Joe?’

‘Mr Venn’s just fine.’

‘An organization that has access to the IRS records of anybody it’s interested in. Their health records, too. Their third grade school reports, if necessary.’

‘You’re a spook, then? CIA?’

Corcoran appeared to be laughing silently, though his face remained impassive. ‘Something like that. Anyhow. Your income for the past year was less than fifteen hundred dollars. Hardly a fortune. And I know how much of a payout you got when the Chicago PD cut you loose. That wasn’t exactly an earth-shattering amount, either. In fact, unless your private eye business sees major progress in the coming year, you’re likely to be out on the streets.’

Venn glared at the skeletal, smooth-pated apparition stalking up and down before him. Where in God’s name was all this heading?

Corcoran went on: ‘So. You spend your evenings in bars, drowning your sorrows. Getting into fights, to release some of that pent-up frustration, that bitterness you’ve been harboring toward the world. One night – tonight – things get out of hand. You end up breaking some fellow barfly’s neck down a dark alleyway.’

‘Just a minute.’ And this time Venn did get up. Corcoran stopped pacing, but didn’t flinch, just watched him. ‘I didn’t break his neck. That I know for sure.’

‘Really.’

‘Yeah.’ Venn drew a deep breath. ‘I socked him upside his head with a fistful of quarters, kneed him in the gut, and bashed him over the back of the head for good measure. But I didn’t break his neck. He was still breathing when I left him. I know how to break a man’s neck. If I’d wanted to, I would’ve. I didn’t, so I didn’t.’

Corcoran gazed at him in silence, his pale eyes betraying nothing. Then he took out a cell phone and murmured some thing into it.

A moment later the door opened and another guy in plainclothes came in with a buff envelope. He handed it to Corcoran and left. Corcoran opened one end and pulled out a sheaf of glossy photographs. He handed them across the desk to Venn.

Venn took them and shuffled through them. They were black-and-white crime scene shots, of the kind he’d seen countless times as a detective. Venn recognized the background as the alleyway he’d been in a few hours ago, with its beer cans and fried chicken bones and rubble.

He also recognized the man lying on his back, his ugly mug that of the guy from the bar. His neck was bent unnaturally backwards and sideways, and his open eyes had the dull glaze of death.

Venn had left the guy face-down. Yet here he was, on his back.

And Venn knew he’d been set up.

He dropped the sheaf of glossies on the table, sending them fanning across the scarred surface. Slowly he raised his eyes to Corcoran’s.

Corcoran said, ‘I have a deal to put to you.’

––––––––

V
enn didn’t feel like sitting down again. Didn’t feel like doing anything except walking straight through this creep and busting out. But Corcoran lowered himself once more into his chair, and sat waiting, and Venn understood the guy wasn’t going to say anything till he sat down too.

Once Venn was seated, Corcoran began without preamble.

‘If this goes to trial, you will be convicted and you will go to jail. No question about it. It’s an open-and-shut case. And the judge isn’t exactly going to be lenient, given your past history of violence. You’re looking at years behind bars. If not decades.’

Venn waited. The man had said
if
.

‘On the other hand,’ went on Corcoran, ‘if you’re prepared to cooperate, and to carry out a little job for me, I can make these charges go away. Permanently. I have considerable influence, Joe. The department I work for has a lot of clout. And what I’m going to ask you to do has significant implications for national security. If you succeed in pulling it off, you’ll be forgiven everything. You might even be offered your old job with the Chicago PD back.’

‘Hell will freeze over before I work for them again,’ said Venn, very quietly.

Corcoran smiled, revealing small, rodent-like teeth. ‘Be that as it may. I’m just trying to make a point, Joe.’ He held up a bony finger. ‘Plus, I can set you up for life, financially. No more scraping to make ends meet. No more having to rely on growing your client base in order to eat from day to day.’

Corcoran studied Venn’s face for a reaction. When none came, he steepled his long fingers, the tips beneath his chin.

‘The job I want you to do is to find somebody. Someone who’s gone missing. Find them, and bring them back.’

Venn kept his face neutral. Inwardly, though, he was surprised. He’d assumed he was going to be asked to carry out an assassination of some kind. That was how these deals usually worked, wasn’t it?

‘Who?’ he asked.

Corcoran reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and took out a cell phone, different than the one he’d used to make the call a few minutes earlier. He touched a button and laid the phone on the table and turned it so Venn could see the screen.

The picture there was a head-and-shoulders shot of a man in his fifties, the kind of photo that went on a staff ID badge. The man wore thick glasses and had thinning gray hair combed over his scalp. He looked ill at ease in his own skin.

‘Leonard Lomax,’ said Corcoran. ‘Professor of neurochemistry at Yale. He didn’t turn up to deliver his lectures three days ago, and hasn’t been seen or heard from since. He lives alone, but his work colleagues have been to his house and there’s no sign of him there.’

‘What about hospital emergency rooms? Morgues?’

‘Those have been checked,’ said Corcoran. ‘Nothing. We assume he’s still in the United States, because there’s no record of his passport having been used at any of the ports or airports.’

‘You think he may have been kidnapped?’ Venn was interested despite himself, his natural cop’s instincts coming through.

Corcoran raised his eyebrows. ‘It’s a strong possibility, yes. There’s been no ransom demand so far, but that doesn’t mean one won’t come in time. Or, whoever’s taken him doesn’t intend to ransom him at all, but rather plans to use him for their own purposes.’

‘What do you mean?’

Corcoran paused, chewing the inside of his cheek, as if deciding how much to tell Venn. ‘Professor Lomax is an expert – some say
the
world expert – in neurotransmitters. Do you know what they are?’

‘Sure,’ said Venn. ‘The things that convey information from one brain cell to another. They regulate things like mood and behavior.’

‘Something along those lines, yes,’ said Corcoran. ‘Professor Lomax has been instrumental in the development of several breakthrough drugs used to treat depression, schizophrenia and anxiety. There’s any number of hostile countries, and even friendly ones, that would like nothing more than to have Lomax working for them. And if they can’t lure him away with the promise of money, then they might resort to more drastic measures.’

‘Hold on,’ said Venn. ‘Isn’t that a possibility? That Lomax has decided to go work somewhere else, for another government, and has simply skipped out?’

‘It’s possible,’ Corcoran admitted. ‘Possible, but highly unlikely. Lomax is a patriot. An all-American hero who has turned down a number of extremely lucrative offers from private companies here in the US in order to continue to work as a research scientist for the public good.’

Venn was silent, thinking. Then he said, ‘Three days, he’s been gone?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then he’s lost.’

‘What?’

‘The first twenty-four hours are crucial, in a missing-person case. After that, the odds of success diminish rapidly.’

‘You’d better hurry up, then, hadn’t you, Joe?’ said Corcoran quietly.

Venn looked at Corcoran. He looked at the table, the walls, the window over to his right. He considered his alternatives.

There were none.

‘Why me?’ he asked.

‘Because,’ replied Corcoran, ‘I’ve had my eye on you for a long time now. The agency I work for is constantly on the lookout for new talent. For men and women with high levels of intelligence, physical prowess, and commitment. For exceptional people. You came onto our radar when you were still a Marine. We watched your police career with great interest, your rise and then your fall. Whatever your shortcomings, Joe, you remain an extraordinarily useful resource.’

‘When you put it in human terms like that, how can I fail to be flattered?’ said Venn sourly. ‘But why bring in an outsider like me at all? Why not just send in the Feds?’

‘Ah.’ Again Corcoran gave his ratty smile. ‘It’s a little awkward, this. You see, we don’t trust the FBI. Or the police. We – my agency – believe they may be involved in Professor Lomax’s disappearance.’

‘The... FBI have kidnapped him?’ Venn couldn’t keep the disbelief out of his voice.

‘Not officially. But there may be rogue elements within law enforcement which are involved. It’s too much of a risk to take. We need someone fresh. An outsider, as you say, like yourself.’

‘Tell me one thing, Corcoran,’ said Venn.

‘What’s that?’

‘Why did you have to set me up like this? Use the threat of a murder charge to get me to go along? Why didn’t you just, you know,
ask
me?’

‘Because this way, we can be far more sure of your ongoing commitment to the operation,’ said Corcoran smoothly. ‘There’s going to be no backing out, no last-minute cold feet.’

‘So you murdered a man.’

‘No!’ For the first time, Corcoran’s voice rose. Leaning in close, he said, more quietly, ‘No. We didn’t kill him, Joe.
You
did. And that’s the way it’ll stay, until you do what I want.’

––––––––

T
he first thing Aaron noticed about the guy was his shoes.

Two-tone brown and cream spats of beautifully stitched leather, and buffed to a dazzling spit-shine, they were in total contrast to the rest of the guy’s outfit. The olive-colored chinos with faded coffee stains on them, the rumpled white shirt, unbuttoned at the collar, the frayed tweed coat with leather elbow patches, all gave the impression of a bumbling academic, too absorbed in his work to bother much about external appearances.

But the shoes didn’t fit that image.

The guy was around forty, or maybe fifty. Like many people his own age – twenty-eight – Aaron found it difficult to tell the ages of those over thirty-five. They all fell into that vague category best described as
old
.

The guy had a full head of light-brown hair, threaded with gray, a little long and swept back in a way Aaron guessed would be described as
raffish
. His face was mild, bookish, and his eyes were an unremarkable gray behind round wire-rimmed glasses.

Aaron was proud of the way he noted and catalogued these little details. He had a talent for observation, he knew, and it was developing all the time. The perfect skill for a novelist. Which Aaron was. Or at least was going to be.

‘Help you, sir?’ Aaron asked. He’d stood up behind the desk as the guy approached. Small acts of politeness would build into a reputation which would in turn serve Aaron well. Maybe even get him promoted to senior librarian before the year was out.

‘Thank you,’ said the man. His accent was British, and his voice was mild, courteous, with a hint of strength behind it. Like the guy was a lecturer. He probably took classes right here at Columbia, Aaron guessed. English Lit? Maybe, though Aaron knew a lot of the people in the department and he’d never seen this man before.

The guy went on: ‘I’m looking for this book.’ He held out a scrap of paper torn from a notebook. Aaron took it.

In a spidery script was written:
The Epistemology of Conflict, by Marcus Royle
.

So the guy was a philosopher, or a sociologist. Maybe a criminologist. Maybe all three.

Aaron said, ‘One moment, please, sir,’ and tapped at his computer keyboard. He was alone behind the desk. It was eight-twenty in the evening, forty minutes before Butler Library closed, and the staff levels were down to a minimum, in keeping with the relatively smaller numbers of customers.