Rising Phoenix (34 page)

“Well, what do you think?” Colombar took another sip of his drink.

“It’s our man, it must be. Did you notice that he mentioned the kerosene by name, and this guy’s ex-DEA. It fits too perfectly”

Colombar walked over to one of the thick sofas and sat down, putting his feet on the table in front of him. Alejandro Perez followed, perching himself on the arm of the opposing sofa.

“And the others?” Colombar asked. Corey was the fourth man to try to claim the reward.

“I think we should start with this one. It seems to be the most promising.”

“I agree,” Colombar said finally. “Send some guys out to find this John Hobart, and bring him back to me.”

“I don’t think we should do that, Luis. Kidnapping American citizens and transporting them across the border can be … complicated. Actually, I would suggest simply notifying the FBI. They’ll find him in short order, and things will quickly return to normal.”

Colombar bared his teeth. “I don’t want this motherfucker to get caught—I want him dead! Since when do we work with the fucking FBI, Alejandro? Since when?”

“We don’t, Luis. I only thought that in this situation …”

“In this situation you’re going to do what I say—just like always.”

Perez took a deep breath to calm himself. He wasn’t
going to win this battle. He took another approach. “Perhaps you’re right, Luis. Better to get this over with quickly. Let me send Renaldo to Maryland. He can take care of the problem there. No need for you to get directly involved.”

Colombar thought for a moment. “Okay, do it.” He stood and started for the bar at the opposite end of the room. “That piece of shit was lying to us about not helping this guy. Little fucker’d do anything for an ounce of blow and fifty bucks. No, he gave him the information all right. Son of a bitch has cost me twenty million dollars! Call whoever’s driving him back to town and tell him to dump that fucker’s body by the road somewhere.”

Perez had already enjoyed one minor victory in the conversation. Two was going to be pushing his luck. “I don’t think we should do that, Luis.”

Colombar turned away from his ice bucket and stared at him, dumbfounded.

“You’re telling me that I can’t kill some cockroach street addict that cost us God knows how many millions?”

“We asked for information out on the street and offered a reward. I’m concerned that if it gets out that we killed the man who brought it to us, no matter how justified, we may have a hard time collecting intelligence in the future.”

Colombar slammed his drink down on the table, spilling most of it. “This isn’t open for discussion. Kill him.”

A
nthony DiPrizzio put his finger to his lips and motioned to the television, prompting his consigliere to move quietly to the sofa next to his desk. DiPrizzio leaned back in his chair and turned his attention back to the screen where Jake Crenshaw, Americas voice of conservatism, was beginning his show.

The audience was on its feet—most clapping loudly, the others punching the air with balled fists. The occasional loud whistle or catcall mixed into the thunderous applause.

Crenshaw quieted the crowd, using the same gesture as a professional football player in a stadium.

Crenshaw snapped the paper in his hands loudly, signifying that he was about to speak.

“I’m a little depressed today,” he told the cameras. “Oh, you probably think you know why. You think its because I had to sit through three hours of Democratic drivel last night—geez, and I thought
I
liked to hear myself talk.”

The audience giggled.

“But that’s not it, ladies and gentlemen. Why am I depressed? It’s because tonight’s the last night of college week.” He indicated to the cameraman to pan across the crowd full of young people, most advertising their respective universities in bold letters across their chests.

“As you probably know, we’ve flown in youngsters from different universities to sit in the audience every day this week.” He turned to his producer. “Who do we have today?”

“Princeton and Yale,” came the unmiked voice.

“Princeton and Yale … a couple of fine community colleges,” Crenshaw boomed.

The audience laughed again.

He turned and struck a pose reminiscent of the Heisman Trophy. The crowd cheered in anticipation. He walked over to a large easel near his desk and flipped back the sheet covering it. On it was a vertical red bar with numbers going up one side in increments of one thousand.

He took a red indelible marker from the tray on the front of the easel and made a show of reading from the paper in his right hand.

“Says here that the death toll’s reached twenty-four thousand five hundred.” He drew a corresponding square on top of the red bar and colored it in.

He turned back to the audience. “It also says things are tapering off. You think these people are finally wising up?” An uncertain grumble came from the crowd. “No? Me neither.”

Crenshaw walked to the end of the stage, still holding the marker. “Y’know, I’m getting a lot of garbage
for our little chart. You wouldn’t believe the mail I get.” He affected a whining voice. “How can you condone murder, Jake? How can you condone the killing of the people in society that need our help most?” He grimaced. “Ladies and gentlemen I want to be perfectly clear on this point.
I do not
condone murder … but this just ain’t murder.”

The crowd cheered again—more fists in the air. This time he let them go, pacing the stage. “Look, the CDFS gave the druggies plenty of warning. Geez, the liberal press had this story plastered across every TV and newspaper in the country. Look at this …” A newspaper article popped up on the screen. The headline was VIGILANTE CROUP THREATENS TO POISON U.S. NARCOTICS.

“This was clipped from a local newspaper from a town of less than two thousand people in South Dakota—not exactly a hotbed of narcotics trafficking. My point is this: Everyone knew what was going to happen. It’s like putting a gun in front of somebody and then warning them over and over that it’s loaded. If they shoot themselves, is it murder?”

The crowd was on its feet.

“And now Jameson gets on the TV and says that this is a crisis that compares to WW II.” Crenshaw looked straight into the camera. “I’ll tell you what the crisis is, Danny Boy, it’s that you liberal Democrats let these druggies take over our cities in the first place.” He jogged back to his desk and picked up a copy of
Newsweek.

“I guess the White House doesn’t actually subscribe to this, but it has an interesting statistic this week.” He
flipped through the magazine, stopping at a page marked with a paper clip. He held it up.

“I don’t know if the cameras can pull in on this …” The camera closed in on the article.

“If you can’t read this, it says that forty percent of the U.S. public is behind what the CDFS is doing and that fourteen percent are undecided. If you were to read further in the article you’d find that it says that the undecideds are moving to pro-CDFS positions, and that quite a few of the people who were arguing against what they’re doing are changing their minds.”

Crenshaw turned and nodded almost imperceptibly. “Looks like it’s time for a break.” He mopped his brow with a pudgy hand. “It’ll give me some time to cool off.”

The television screen faded into a pizza commercial as Anthony DiPrizzio pulled himself upright and hit the MUTE button on the remote in front of him. “It would seem that the tide of public opinion continues to turn, eh, Randy?”

“And that ain’t the worst of it,” Randall Matlin said, tossing a manila folder onto DiPrizzio’s desk.

DiPrizzio slid the folder toward him and began flipping through the pages it contained. “The numbers are worse than we thought.”

“Yeah, I didn’t expect demand to drop off as fast as it did. It was like someone turned off a fucking spigot. It’s killing our cash flow, Tony.”

DiPrizzio chewed idly on his lip, considering the problem. The CDFS was having more of an impact
than he had expected. But he hoped to avoid restructuring the organization based on what he assumed would be a short-term problem.

“Do we have enough cash to get us through the month, Randy?”

“Yeah, but we’re gonna have to pull from the offshore accounts. And its gonna cost us to carry all this inventory. We probably should have refused delivery on that last shipment.”

DiPrizzio nodded. “We only pay for it if it’s good, though. Go ahead and bring in some cash. I don’t want to do anything drastic until we see what’s gonna shake out.”

Matlin looked worried. “What if it takes a while for the Feds to catch these assholes, Tony? Hell, what if they aren’t even looking that hard? Our cash reserves are gonna run out sooner or later.”

DiPrizzio smiled. His counselor knew the streets better than anyone, and he was insanely loyal. But he was old school.

Matlin had been his father’s counselor and had been a part of DiPrizzio’s life since he was a small child. It had been Matlin who recognized young Tony’s intelligence and convinced the old don to send him to Wharton for an MBA, and later to put him in charge of the Family’s growing concerns.

“Times change, Randy. This could turn out to be a hell of an opportunity for us.”

Matlin dug around in his pocket for a cigarette, but didn’t find one. “You’re a miracle worker, Tony, I’ll admit that, but I sure don’t know how the hell you’re gonna turn this into an opportunity.”

DiPrizzio stood and walked to the opposite end of the room, opening a small hutch and pouring himself a cup of coffee. He dropped in a couple of sugars and started back for his desk. “We’ve got it too good now, Randy. The Colombians take on the risk getting the stuff here, then we buy it, cut it, and sell it for one hell of a profit margin. Demand is unlimited, and our customers depend on us. The cops make trouble every once in a while, but that risk is built into the price. It’s the perfect business.”

Matlin nodded his agreement. He had a nostalgic look on his face, as though he thought that those days were gone forever.

“Think about IBM,” DiPrizzio continued. “They’d been making business machines forever—stuff like typewriters and cash registers. But then computers come along. That could have driven them out of business. But it didn’t. Why? Because they changed with the times.

“And what about the music industry? Do you think that the record album manufacturers were happy when they found out that albums were going to become obsolete? They had to throw out millions of dollars in manufacturing equipment and buy millions more in replacements. But now they’re selling CDs—that are cheaper to produce than records—at twice the price.”

“But we’re not IBM, Tony.”

“Sure we are. What happens if the FBI doesn’t ever get these guys, and the floor drops out of our market?”

The look on his counselor’s face told him that he didn’t have any idea.

“We adapt, Randy. I haven’t given it that much
thought—’cause I think the Feds’ll come through—but off the top of my head, I think we’d start with a vertical integration.”

“A what?”

“Vertical integration. Set up a partnership with the Colombians, get more involved in street-level dealing—regulate it. That way we can watch the drugs from coca leaf to when it goes up our customer’s nose. Before, all you had to do was be breathing to sell the stuff. That’d be over. We’d differentiate on quality. Our customers would know that the stuff was safe, and they’d easily pay double the price for a little peace of mind. I see us packaging in those tamper-proof bottles—like Tylenol comes in now. The price increase should more than make up for higher expenses and loss in volume.”

Matlin laughed and clapped his hands together. “I always said you were a goddam genius, Tony. Now I’m sure of it. Hell, you almost got me hoping that the Feds blow it.”

DiPrizzio sipped at his coffee. “Yeah, we’ll be okay in the long run—it’s the next few months I’m worried about. It’s gonna cost us a lot of money to wait around and see what happens.”

“What about trying to get these guys ourselves?”

DiPrizzio shook his head. “Don’t see how. We’re working with the Colombians to help them figure out where the stuff was hit—but whoever’s doing this knows we’d do that. No, I think we pretty much leave it to the Feds.” He chuckled. “I never thought I’d be counting on the goddam Bureau’s efficiency to save my ass.”

T
he weatherman’s promise of a beautiful late winter day had been broken. The Reverend Simon Blake increased the speed of the wipers as the slightly frozen raindrops splattered against his windshield like bugs.

He slowed the car slightly, bringing it back under fifty-five, and glanced nervously in the rearview mirror. His paranoia and depression had been deepening over the last few weeks, and his wife was near panic. The face that looked back at him in the mirror was almost unrecognizable. The twenty pounds he had lost looked great at his waistline, but his face had become gaunt. Combined with the red-rimmed eyes and shadow of a beard, he looked like a completely different person.

He shook his head violently, clearing his eyes of his image, but not the other image. The one that wouldn’t leave him alone. The one that God himself had planted. It was hell, he knew now. In it, people writhed in agony on a cracked asphalt playground. Behind them the face of Satan laughed. Others watching the
news report had only seen a dilapidated public apartment building. He knew better It hadn’t been God who had sent him down this path, it had been his age-old nemesis.

The Reverend caught a glimpse of a Days Inn in the distance and veered the car onto an off-ramp. He passed by the hotel, circling to the rear The Mercedes splashed loudly through a large puddle as he entered the parking lot.

He slipped the car into a space between two trucks, thinking it would make his vehicle less conspicuous. Taking a deep breath, he got out and jogged through the rain toward room 115. He exhaled loudly as he stood in front of the door, realizing that he had been holding his breath. Panting slightly from the run, he rapped sharply on the door. A moment later it seemed to open itself. He stepped in. The door slammed shut behind him.