Capture (Butch Karp Thrillers) (34 page)

D
EAN
N
EWBURY DRUMMED HIS FINGERS ON THE LONG
wooden table in the private conference room down the long hall and past the reception area from his office. As he waited for his appointment to arrive, he studied the symbol inlaid in gold in the center of the table. It depicted a shield from which three running legs, placed equidistantly, protruded around the circumference. The triskele was an ancient symbol whose origin was lost in the mists of time, but it was part of the Isle of Man flag, as well as the symbol for its long-lost sons.

Whichever way you throw it,
he recalled of the triskele legend,
it lands on its feet
. Just like the Sons of Man, whose council members wore rings with the triskele emblem as a sign of their united purpose. Despite many setbacks, including the fiasco at the New York Stock Exchange, he would know in just a few days whether that purpose would reach its culmination in his lifetime.
And whether you’ll be part of the council when we reap the benefits.

At the moment, however, he was an old man who wished he was home in bed instead of waiting on that idiot congressman, Denton Crawford, at ten o’clock at night. Still, it was probably better to meet after-hours, if they had to meet at all.

The conference room was only accessible via a solid steel security
door from the reception areas or a VIP-only elevator to a private, guarded garage beneath the Fifth Avenue building’s main garage. “I don’t see why we need to meet at all,” he’d groused to Crawford when the man called that afternoon. “Everything’s in place. The proper people have been paid to look the other way. The package will be delivered according to the new schedule.”

However, Crawford had insisted they needed to talk and so here he was. Newbury glanced up when the monitor for the security camera in the parking garage winked on at the arrival of a dark Mercedes. As only a very few people had access to the garage, he knew that Crawford had arrived. He watched as the chauffeur got out and opened the door for his passenger, who stepped from the vehicle wearing a fedora and a heavy trench coat.
Look at that fool, he thinks he’s playing spy games,
he thought.
Surely even if he’s successful the other council members and SOM families won’t approve his ascension into leadership. If he can be controlled, perhaps he’d be a more manageable replacement for V.T.

Dean Newbury didn’t even bother to look up when the monitor for the private elevator whirred into action, but instead got up and made himself a stiff whiskey and soda at the bar. The first sip was scorching its way down his throat when he heard the sound of the elevator arriving and then the titanium lock on the security door clicking open.

Newbury looked up expecting to see Crawford and scowled when a man wearing a silver mask stepped into the room. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded.

“What?” the man lisped as he stepped up to the far end of the table. “Don’t you recognize me, my old mentor, Dean?”

The tumbler of whiskey slipped from Newbury’s hand and crashed to the floor. “You,” he whispered. Suddenly, it all made sense. The bold, merciless plan. Even Crawford as the front man; he’d always been one of Kane’s toadies. “We thought you were dead.”

“Ah, but I am risen.” Kane laughed and removed his mask, taking pleasure in the shudder it elicited from Newbury. “A little worse for wear, as you can see, but I’ll soon rectify that. Right now, this face serves my purpose.”

“Where’s Crawford?” Newbury asked.

“Probably asleep in bed with his favorite call girl in D.C.,” Kane replied, “a busty little brunette named DeeDee, I believe, and waiting on his instructions from me.”

Newbury let it sink in. As if there could have been any doubt, Kane had just told him who was the mastermind behind Operation Flashfire and, if it succeeded, in the driver’s seat for leadership of the Sons of Man. Dealing with Crawford would have been one thing, but as an adversary, Kane was on another level entirely.
One I will not be able to control,
he thought.

“I can see you’re disappointed in my resurrection,” Kane continued. “Now that hurts. After all, I was once your protégé when that disloyal son of yours got himself killed in that war
we
started. How ironic, the Sons of Man go through all that trouble to foment revolution in the sixties and one of its favorite sons dies as a result. But that’s all ancient history. A more immediate concern is that you seem to have replaced me so quickly as to be unseemly with your nephew, V.T. Of course, I have no idea why in the hell you think he can be trusted.”

“I had hoped that blood would be thick enough,” Newbury replied. “And if not, I have my own uses for him.”

Kane frowned. “I had best not find that your uses ran counter to my plans,” he warned. “Even your old cronies on the council won’t save you if you interfered with an approved plan. And even if you didn’t, but your nephew turns out to have been a spy, you’ll be held personally responsible.”

“I’ll take care of my nephew in whatever way is appropriate,” Newbury replied. “I killed my own brother, didn’t I?”

The decision on V.T. came with a small pang of regret. He’d come to recognize that an old man’s desire to have the Newbury name continue on in a leadership role with the Sons of Man had clouded his judgment. V.T. was a liability and would have to be removed. Still, he’d enjoyed their dinners and conversations.

Just that afternoon, he’d walked in on V.T. as his nephew was playing with a remote-controlled truck in his office.
“What’s this? Goofing off on company time?”
he’d pretended to scold.

V.T. looked up, embarrassed.
“Oh hi, Uncle Dean. Yeah, sorry, I
should be slaving away over torts, but I just bought this little beauty off a street vendor in front of the building. I always loved these when I was a kid and couldn’t resist.”

“Quillian did, too,”
Newbury said, surprised that the memory caused a pain in his chest.
“Anyway, don’t worry about it. You’ve been working a lot of late hours. As a partner, you really don’t have to do that all the time, you know.”

“Now how would it look if I let my dear old uncle put in more time than I did,”
V.T. said with a smile.
“An ingrate, that’s what, after all you’ve done for me. When I think that I could still be working at the DAO even worse hours for a mere pittance of the pay and little or no thanks, I thank my lucky stars you stepped up to the plate.”

“I’m glad I could talk some sense into you, my boy,”
Dean had replied with a chuckle.
“I look forward to many more years together.”
He’d known that was a lie—he’d already decided that V.T. would never be completely trustworthy—but it sounded good at the time.

“I’d be happy to take care of him for you,” Kane said. “I have some old scores to settle with your nephew. You do know he led Karp’s white-collar crimes bureau that started all my troubles.”

“I said I’d take care of him myself.” Dean scowled. “It’s a family matter, and the family will deal with it.”

Kane grinned, a ghastly look on his ruined face. “Got to love that old-fashioned concept of family justice; I know a little bit about that myself. But just make sure you do deal with it. One of the first orders of business when I assume my rightful place at the head of the council will be a general housecleaning. I’m afraid we’ve gotten soft, even a little dotty, and we’ll need to be a lean, mean fighting machine over the next few years. The problem with hereditary seats on the council is eventually you get a lot of deadwood, like Crawford; it’s time for some fresh, young blood.”

“Careful, Kane, you’re not sitting in my chair just yet,” Newbury said. “And in the meantime, what are you going to do about Karp? The cowboy was spotted in New Mexico this past weekend, and then took a plane back to New York. So we have to assume that they know Lucy Karp never arrived. That’s going to turn up the heat.”

“I’m not worried about District Attorney Butch Karp,” Kane said.
He held up a cell phone. “We’re in constant communication. It’s as if I can reach out and touch him.”

“What about David Grale?” Newbury asked, and for a moment thought he saw fear in Kane’s eyes. But the man quickly recovered.

“Grale is a madman,” Kane replied. “He’s in no position to do anything about my plan. And if he tried, well, I still have Lucy Karp in my possession. He won’t do anything to endanger her life. Unfortunately, the spy I had embedded with these so-called Mole People is dead. I had hoped to use him to hunt them all down in their filthy sewers after things had settled down again. But it doesn’t matter, I’ll find another way to settle my debt with Grale.”

Ten minutes later, after a quick review of the plans, Kane said he was leaving.

“And al-Sistani?” Newbury said. “Are you going to let him go?”

“What, and have someone out there who can tell the world what we’re really up to? Hell no,” Kane said. “As soon as our package is delivered, he’s toast…so to speak. The idiot almost got us followed by that madman Grale; he actually had a GPS tracking device in his shoe. It was from a dog collar, if you can believe that shit. My man Abu found it with a hand sensor before we got home, but that could have been bad. I’m going to enjoy watching the little towelhead fry for that alone.”

Newbury squinted at Kane as the younger man walked toward the door. “I don’t understand why you wanted to meet in the first place,” he said. “This was an unnecessary risk.”

“You don’t understand?” Kane replied, as though surprised. Then he laughed. “Why, to gloat, old man, and tell you to your face that your time is almost over. Soon you’ll be put out to pasture…and that’s if you’re lucky.
Myr shegin dy ve, bee eh,
right? What must be, will be.”

Marlene looked up from the old couch in the back of the Housing Works Bookstore. It was ten o’clock, she’d been there for an hour, and there was still no sign of the Walking Booger.

She was trying to decide whether to get another cup of coffee—
guaranteeing that she wouldn’t get any sleep tonight, if worrying
about Lucy wasn’t already going to do it
—when she heard the little bell above the front door ring. An enormous shaggy head poked in to survey the place, which was followed by the body of the Walking Booger.

There was no mistaking him. He was a giant of a man, even taller than Karp and Treacher, and probably as heavy as both men combined, though there was some question as to how much of that bulk was man and how much was the layers of filthy clothing he piled on. He appeared to be covered in thick, dirty hair from head to foot—if the tufts that jutted from his sleeves and covered his hands, neck, and face were any indication—and resembled a bear. A dirty, smelly bear.

Apparently homeless and preferring it that way, the Walking Booger got his nickname due to the fact that he usually had a grimy finger shoved up his nose. Such was the case when he spotted her. “’arlene! ’ood to ’ee you,” he shouted in his usual muffled Booger-speak, and smiled. He shuffled forward but instead of stopping where she sat, he moved right on past to the counter, where he told the barista, “A ’reat and a ’ot chocolate, pleas’. The ’ady will pay.”

The barista looked over at Marlene, who nodded. “Whatever he wants. Nice to see you, too, Booger.”

When he had his brownie and hot chocolate, Booger shambled over to where Marlene was sitting and plopped down across from her on a chair that groaned under his weight. His unmistakable odor washed over her and for a moment she wondered if she might pass out.

She forgot about how he smelled, however, as she watched him break off a piece of brownie between two crusty fingers, one of which had been involved in the recent nasal excavation, and pop it into the hole that appeared in his beard below his nose. As he chewed, he looked at her and smiled, or at least she thought he was smiling—it was difficult to tell through all the hair.

“So I had a message from Lucy that you wanted a treat?” Marlene said.

Booger nodded enthusiastically as he pinched off another piece of brownie and devoured it. “Yes, ’reats are ’ood…. ’ucy a great ’irl.”

“Yes, she is,” Marlene agreed. “But I can’t find her. Are you going to help me?”

Nodding, the giant stuffed the rest of the brownie into his mouth, licked his fingers, and then slurped noisily at his hot chocolate until it was gone. He then stood up, wiped his hands on his filthy coat, and said, “Come ’ith me, ’arlene.”

Halfway to the door, he stopped and leaned over to look her in the eye. “’oh-one ’ollow us, ’kay?”

“No one will follow, I promise,” Marlene said, and followed him out into the night air.

Thirty minutes later, after dodging through a maze of alleys and dark streets, they arrived at the Bowery Mission in the East Village. Booger pointed to a side door in an alley and said, “’ock on the door. ’avid wants to ’ee ’ou.”

“Uh, thanks, Booger,” Marlene said, and did as she was told. The door opened and she found herself looking at the magnified blue eyes and pointed nose of Dirty Warren.

“Fu-fu-fucking ass tits…there you are,” the little news vendor said. “Booger sure took his sweet time getting you here. Oh boy, oh boy…!”

“Thanks, but am I supposed to be meeting David?” she replied.

“Yeah, down the end of the hall…scumbag douche…first door on the right.”

Marlene walked to the end of the hall and knocked on the door. She didn’t bother to wait for the reply before entering.

David Grale sat in a large chair across the room next to an ancient floor lamp that cast dim light and did little to reach the dark circles beneath his haunted eyes. He looked worse than ever, she thought, gaunt and emaciated. “Hello, Marlene,” he said. “Sorry about the walk, but I can’t be too careful. Everybody wants a piece of this poor boy.”

“Hello, David. Where’s my daughter?”

Grale looked at her for a moment with his glittering dark eyes. “I don’t know just yet, but I have reason to hope that all is not lost. However, I have to tell you some bad news…Kane’s alive and he has Lucy.”