Procession of the Dead (3 page)

We knew we were on the right track when Neil Wain contacted us. Wain wasn’t one of The Cardinal’s men, but he was a ganglord of some note. You had to be wary if you got on the wrong side of him. He had The Cardinal’s seal of approval and in the city that was everything. Dealing with him brought us one step closer to Party Central. Wain was a test—we were being sounded out. If we proved ourselves competent, there’d be more to come. Wain was the door to a new world of upper-echelon corruption, politics and total control. The world of Cardinal crime.

He wanted us to handle a drug shipment. He’d arranged for it to be brought into the city but there was too much for him to distribute by himself. We were to take a third, pay the bulk up front and cut him in for a percentage of our profits. He was asking a lot but money wasn’t the issue. We wouldn’t make much out of the deal in the short run, but long term it could be our most profitable move ever.

We met him at an abandoned wharf warehouse, late Tuesday night. It had been a struggle getting the money together in so short a time—part of the test—but we cracked a few heads, called in favors and did it.

Theo was excited beyond words. His eyelids were blinking up and down so fast, you almost couldn’t see them. His hands were twitching and I could hear his heart beating from ten feet away. “This is it, Capac,” he told me, squeezing my arm. “I never thought it would come so soon. It’s because of you. Don’t deny it! We were going good until you came along, but you’ve made us go great.”

“You’re flattering me,” I protested. “All I do is follow orders. I’m nothing special.”

“Don’t you believe it,” he said. “Whatever we get tonight, wherever we go from here, it’s down to you. This is your night. Enjoy it. Hell,
relish
it.” He bit his lip to stop his eyes from watering. He hadn’t been this emotional since our first encounter. “Come on. Let’s go meet our destiny.”

We left our limo—hired for the day because you simply
had
to have a limo if you wanted to be a
real
gangster—and walked into the abandoned warehouse with three of our men. Wain was waiting for us, standing patiently beside his own car, briefcase in hand, smile on face. Theo broke into a near-trot and strode ahead of us, arms outstretched, too thrilled to maintain a solemn, businesslike air. “Neil!” he boomed. “Neil, by Christ, it’s great to see you! How long’s it been since—”

Bullets tore his chest apart as if it were a paper bag. His arms flailed and his legs buckled. Blood sprayed in all directions. The gunfire continued, even though he was obviously dead. He was spun around like a whirling dervish. I saw his face and the bewildered expression he was to carry into the next world. Then a couple of bullets wiped it away, expression, face, everything.

Two of the three men with me acted calmly and professionally, diving to the sides, reaching for their holstered guns as they moved. The other soiled his pants, fell to his knees and sobbed for mercy. They all died, caught in a lethal hail of metal pellets from the heavens.

Five seconds later I was standing in a pool of blood with four corpses beginning to steam in the cool night air. The echoes of gunfire were dying away, the walls swallowing the sounds hungrily.

I was stunned. Five seconds earlier I had been on my way to fame and fortune. Now I was a standing corpse-to-be. I looked at my uncle, limp and lifeless, and wondered where we’d gone wrong. We’d had no quarrel with Wain. Our paths had never crossed. What was his beef?

I realized, after a few hazy moments, that I wasn’t dead. I looked around the warehouse, blinking stupidly. The snipers were strolling down the stairs from the second landing, smoking, laughing, claiming kills. Neil Wain was standing the same as before, unruffled by the bloodshed. He gazed at me without any apparent interest, then turned at the sound of approaching footsteps.

A burly man came out of the shadows, a face like granite. He nodded curtly at Wain, walked past and stopped before me. He looked me up and down. “You Capac Raimi?” he asked.

I stared at him, mouth open, about half a light year behind the action. I had to be dreaming. I’d wake up in a minute and—

He slapped my face hard. “Are you Capac Raimi?” he asked again, louder this time, not used to repeating himself. I saw murder in his eyes, death if I kept silent. But I couldn’t speak.

Another man crossed the room. He wasn’t much older than me and had the look of a society gangster. He laughed as he considered me, spat at my feet and cocked his hat back at an angle. “This ain’t him, Tasso,” he said. “This’s just a bum. Let’s kill him and split. I’ve got a date.” He raised his gun so the muzzle was pointing a centimeter beneath my chin. “Can I do the honors?”

“Hold it, Vincent,” the older guy said.

“Why? It ain’t him. This is just some kid with a speech problem. We’re wasting time. Let’s—”

“I… I’m Capac Raimi,” I wheezed.

They looked at each other, unconvinced. “You got any proof?” the older one asked.

My hands scurried to my pockets, searching for cards and tags I knew I didn’t have—I’d never been one for credit cards or clubs that required membership. No driver’s license. I probably had a passport lying back in the house, but I couldn’t have sworn to that.

The assassins saw my hands shaking and began to snicker. “Shit, Tasso,” the younger one said. “This guy’s just some chump who wandered in.” He cocked his weapon and nudged my left ear with it.

The elder statesman shook his head and smiled bleakly. “You haven’t got anything on you to prove who you are? Everybody carries credit cards. You must have at least one piece of plastic.” He raised an arm and cocked a finger at me. “Your life depends on it, boy. Cough it up or…”

“I don’t have anything,” I said, voice steady, preparing myself to die with dignity. I looked my murderer in the face and grinned. “So you might as well go ahead and shoot, you bastard.” I could have given myself a standing ovation. I was about to die, but I was going in style, head held high, and many a man would have paid a fortune to do the same.

The granite-faced killer scratched his chin. “He said you’d say that,” he muttered. “That’s what the guy in his dream did. Him and his damn dreams. OK!” He clapped his hands and signaled the milling gangsters back to their cars. “Vincent, you’re with me.” Vincent nodded obediently and spun off toward one of the limos parked against the warehouse walls, hidden in the shadows of the slaughterhouse. “Wain, take care of the money.” He kicked Theo’s case across the floor. “Make sure The Cardinal gets his cut.”

“What?” Wain’s face puckered. “But I was doing him a favor! We helped him out, damn it. I thought the least he’d do—”

“You thought wrong,” my captor snapped. “Business is business, Neil, with its right ways and wrong ways. Cutting The Cardinal in— that’s the right way. Shortchanging him is as wrong as you can get, short of pissing on the Devil on your way down the steps to Hell.”

“OK,” Wain grumbled, picking up the case. “I’ll see The Cardinal right. I’m no fool.”

“Glad to hear it. I guess we’d better be off then, Mr. Raimi. Would you care to go first?” He beckoned toward the limo which was pulling up beside us. I looked at the man, then the limo, then Neil Wain. I didn’t know where this night was heading or what lay in store for me, but seeing as how things were so far out of my hands, I decided I might as well go along obligingly and enjoy the ride. Pulling my coat tight around my shoulders, shivering from the cold and shock, I stepped into the car.

We’d been driving through the silent streets of the city for about ten minutes, nobody saying a word. I was starting to feel uncomfortable. The initial spate of shock which had numbed me to Theo’s death was receding, and it was easier to talk than dwell upon the memory of his confused expression and ruby-red blood. Recalling the name Vincent had used back in the warehouse, I cleared my throat to break the silence and asked hesitantly, “Are you Ford Tasso?”

He looked over in my direction, face expressionless. “Yes.”

“The famous Ford Tasso,” Vincent snickered. He was driving. “His name a curse in a hundred languages. Come one! Come all! Bow down and—”

“Shut up,” Tasso said softly, with immediate effect. He’d put up with a lot of Vincent’s nonsense, but only to a point, and Vincent was cunning enough never to push his luck.

Ford Tasso. The Cardinal’s number two. The strong arm of the city’s unofficial king, feared almost as much as the only man he would ever call master. If The Cardinal was a myth, Ford Tasso was a legend.

I examined him in the sliding glare of amber streetlights. He was getting on in years, at least in his late fifties. A big man, six-two, bulky like a bear. Thick hair, black as soot. He was sporting a pair of sideburns, relics of the disco age, and a thin mustache. His face was cold and hard. He breathed lightly. Black suit, white shirt, gold cuff links, rings and chains. Dead eyes.

This was the man who’d run the city with The Cardinal for the last thirty years, who’d killed or bulldozed all in their way. He looked the part. Two words came to mind as I sat back and summed him up. They were
cold
and
blooded
. But I kept them to myself. He’d had a nickname once, when he was young—the Lizard Man. He didn’t like it. The last man to mock him was found dead a couple of days later, his stomach emptied of organs and filled with snakes and iguanas. He’d been plain Ford Tasso ever since.

They drove me to Party Central. Heart of the city. Home and workplace of The Cardinal. The safest place in the world for the invited. Death for any foolish enough to trespass. Vincent pulled up by the front to let us out. Ford dismissed him when we were on the pavement. “Will you want me later?” he asked.

“Nah,” Ford replied. “But be at Shankar’s early tomorrow. We’ve got a busy day.”

“Ain’t we always?” Vincent grumbled, slamming shut the door. He squealed away in a cloud of burning rubber.

I looked up at the massive building. I’d seen it many times but never this close. It was old, full of architectural curves and angles, a bitch to design, a nightmare to build. Imposing glass windows, red brick lower down, rough brown stone higher up. It looked like a renovated church, but I knew every window was reinforced and wired. Every floor was protected by the most expensive alarm systems available. Men with guns stood ready to shoot down intruders, any time of the day or night. It was an impenetrable fortress. Rumor had it there was even a nuclear fallout shelter buried beneath its floors, equipped to last a hundred years.

Two doormen controlled the massive front portal. They were dressed in red, capped and gloved. Harmless and friendly. The five armed guards to either side of them weren’t so welcoming. These were members of The Cardinal’s own personal army, the Troops. It had taken The Cardinal a long time to receive government backing for the recruitment and arming of his own personal force. He’d had to buy half the city’s politicians and kill the rest. There’d been civil marches and protests from the police. It resembled a war for a while.

The Cardinal wanted his own official army. Everybody else—understandably—was less enthusiastic. Eventually The Cardinal won, like he always did, and the Troops came into being. Five hundred strong and increasing all the time. Ford Tasso had been their commander in chief in the early days, before moving on to bigger things. There were more Troops in the foyer, posted at regular intervals, alert and poised to open fire at the first sign of trouble. I wasn’t about to give them any.

The ground floor of Party Central was all tiles and marble, and your feet clacked whenever you moved. From there on up, however, it was carpet. The building was famed for its carpets, imported from Persia and India. They covered every inch of the floors above, even the stairs and in the toilets.

Shoes were outlawed above the first floor. All employees and visitors had to check in their footwear at one of six reception desks before they could go up. There were no exceptions. Socks or bare feet, nothing more, not even a pair of slippers. And Christ help you if your feet smelled—everybody in the city knew at least one amputation story. The Cardinal had an allegedly sensitive nose and didn’t appreciate foul odors in his innermost sanctum.

Ford Tasso and I handed over our shoes and took receipts. The receptionist placed them on a constantly moving conveyor belt and they were swept through to the back for storage. Ford got his bearings, I stared around in wonder, then we were heading for one of the building’s many elevators.

It was late but the foyer was busier than most places were during the day. Businessmen with laptops were gathered in small groups, discussing the state of the markets. Off-duty Troops relaxed in the lounge near the back. A dozen or more receptionists manned the various desks around the floor, checking everyone in, arranging appointments, taking phone calls, keeping in contact with the hundreds of agents at work in the field.

The elevator was from a different time. Large, carpeted, with cushioned walls and soothing music. There was an operator present at all times, using a cranking lever to guide his ship up and down the twenty-three-story shaft. He was amiable but I could see the bulge of a gun beneath his jacket.

Theo had loved that elevator. He’d told me about it several times. He once said, if he could choose where to die, it would be in one of Party Central’s marvelous old elevators. The memory brought a lump to my throat and I had to struggle to focus. It would have been nice to grieve for Theo, but these could be my last few minutes alive and I wasn’t about to waste them mourning the dead. If I survived, there’d be plenty of time for Theo. My uncle would have expected nothing less of me. “Good evening, Mr. Tasso,” the operator smiled. “Which floor?”

“Fifteen,” Tasso grunted.

“Certainly, sir.” He shut the door and spoke into a microphone. “Floor fifteen. Mr. Tasso.”

“Identification,” a dry, computer-controlled voice answered.

Ford spoke his name. A small panel beneath the microphone clicked open and he pressed down his fingers. There was a brief pause, then the elevator began to rise, much faster and more smoothly than I expected. Like the building’s exterior, this might look like a throwback to simpler days, but it was modern and efficient beneath the surface, an oiled monster in an antique mask.