Delta Ghost (2 page)

O’Dell stood five-seven or -eight, a full six inches shorter than Venn. They were probably around the same weight, Venn guessed, but in O’Dell’s case the mass was concentrated in the tire of fat around his waist, in his butt, in the blubber of his jowls and his neck. O’Dell was an amiable guy, with a stout man’s engaging though wistful smile, as though whenever he encountered somebody who wasn’t fat like him he immediately felt inferior, and regretful.

Venn picked his way through the gloom, his rubber sole crunching on something that he thought might be a glass syringe, maybe empty, maybe not. He peered at the numbers on the doors of the apartments to the right. Thirteen. Fifteen.

“Seventeen,” said O’Dell.

Venn reached into his leather jacket and drew his gun from its holster. It was a Beretta M9A1, his favored firearm, and one he’d held on to since his days in the US Marine Corps. A lot of military personnel had expressed reservations about the pistol, mainly in regard to its stopping power. But Venn had never had a problem with it. Besides, he wasn’t in an international combat situation in a hostile terrain like the Afghan or Iraqi desert. He wasn’t up against a crack team of Taliban, or Al’Qaeda, or even the rag-tag forces he’d faced in Bosnia and Kosovo, all those years ago.

He was going in against a bunch of junkies.

Venn put his ear to the door of number 17, held up his free hand to O’Dell for quiet.

Vague noises from within. Creaks and shuffles that might have been people walking about. A TV pumped out the inane chatter of commercials.

He reached for the door handle.

*

V
enn had seen the advertisement in the
Village Voice
two weeks earlier.
Property owner seeks competent and assertive security expert to enforce terms of contracts and collect monies owing.
He’d called the cellphone number O’Dell had included, and had been mildly surprised when the voice at the other end had been not a secretary but O’Dell himself.

“It’s hard, Mr Venn,” said O’Dell at their first meeting, the day after Venn made the call. They were in O’Dell’s office on Second Avenue, a featureless box of a room that might have been built from a kit and stank of sweat and hopeful despair.

O’Dell was sweating in his too-tight shiny beige suit, his hands clasped business-like on the desk before him. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m as liberal as they come. I voted for our current mayor. I became a landlord because I wanted to make a difference to people’s lives. To provide the poor, the underprivileged, the destitute, with homes that were affordable and comfortable and safe. And most of my tenants are decent folks. Single moms who’ve escaped abusive relationships along with their kids. Ex-cons on parole who’re determined to go straight and make something of their lives. Disabled veterans with PTSD. But...
but
... I also get the junkies.”

O’Dell sighed, looked toward the window for a view of the Manhattan skyline that wasn’t there. “Smackheads. Meth addicts. They tug on your heartstrings, persuade you they’re clean and sober. Offer evidence. References. So you give them an apartment. The next thing, they’re smoking, shooting up, inviting hordes of their friends and associates to use the apartment you’ve granted them as a drug den.”

O’Dell looked up from his hands, gazed at Venn.

“I need somebody who can clear them out, Mr Venn. Sorry if I sound harsh. If there was another way of resolving the situation, I’d take it. I don’t want to make anybody homeless if I can help it. But these people... they’re taking advantage. And they’re scaring away other tenants. I haven’t rented out another apartment in that block for three months. Word has gotten around.”

Venn said, “Why not go to the police?”

O’Dell gave another sigh, held his palms heavenward. “I did. The cops assumed immediately that I was just another typical slumlord. A hard-hearted son-of-a-bitch who was making up lies about his impoverished tenants to get rid of them when they’re a few days late with their rent. They wouldn’t even send round a patrolman to take a look.” He leaned across the desk, bitterness in his face. “I wasn’t a supporter of Mayor Giuliani, back in the day. But, so help me God, I could use a little zero tolerance right now, Mr Venn.”

“Okay,” said Venn. “I’ll fix your problem for you.”

O’Dell blinked, his eyes startled in his pudgy face. “Just like that?”

“I’ll need to find out a little more about what I’m dealing with,” said Venn. “How many people approximately there are in the apartment at any given time. Have they ever given you cause to suspect they’re dealing, or manufacturing, rather than just using. That might mean they’re packing weapons. But, sure, I’ll find a solution.”

O’Dell sat back in his chair, relief and gratitude fighting for control of his expression. “Mr Venn, you don’t know how -”

“It’ll cost you, of course.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. I realize you wouldn’t -” O’Dell broke off. “How much?”

Venn told him.

O’Dell’s face froze. His eyes flicked about, calculating.

He said: “Agreed.” He heaved himself up out of his office chair, extended a sweaty hand. “You’ve got yourself a job.”

*

V
enn had visited this district of Queens before, but he’d never been inside any of the apartment blocks. He was a Chicago native, born and bred, and after he’d left the city’s police department nearly three years earlier, he’d set up as a private investigator in Manhattan. His cases, such as they were, had been mostly of the bourgeois kind. Surveillance of the cheating spouses of Upper West Side financiers. Missing-person hunts on behalf of the worried middle-class parents of rebellious college dropouts. The occasional contract involving a suspicion of white-collar fraud, paltry thefts from an IT company’s supply cupboard.

He’d never slummed it.

Now, two days later, and standing poised outside the door of room number 17, with O’Dell behind him, he reflected that the noises coming from the other side wouldn’t have been out of place in any of the homes he’d laid surveillance on in more respectable parts of the city.

But he knew that beyond the door lay something very, very different.

Venn had already laid down his ground rules to O’Dell. “There may be some damage to property,” he’d said. “Unavoidable. Busted locks, smashed furniture, shot-up wall plaster. It doesn’t get deducted from my fee, unless we both agree I used unreasonable force.
Both
agree.”

O’Dell had swallowed, and nodded.

Venn put his hand to the door handle and turned it, gently.

He leaned his weight, equally carefully, against the cheap wood of the door.

The door held.
Locked.

Without looking at O’Dell, Venn took a step back and raised his right leg and pistoned it out, the full force of his strength from the hip channeling into his sneakered foot.

The wood splintered around the lock.

Venn barged his shoulder against the door and it gave, wrenching free from the metal lock and handle, and he was inside, the fug of smoke tearing his eyes immediately. He swung the Beretta across the room in a two-handed grip and yelled, “Raid,
raid
,” and saw five figures in total through the fumes, half-camouflaged in the chaos of ripped couches and empty pizza boxes and spilt bottles of cheap wine. Two of the figures slumped against one wall, barely conscious enough to swivel their heads his way. The other three sprang up from armchairs, thin and wiry and agile.

One woman, two men. Two of them African-American, the other guy white.

They clustered together, which made it easier for Venn. He roared, using the voice he’d honed in the Marines, the thunderclap bellow that commanded attention:
“Get down on the ground,
now
. Place your hands behind your heads.”

The woman and the white man hesitated. Then the man muttered, “Oh shit, oh shit, oh
shit
,” and they dropped, faces down, their fingers interlocked at the backs of their necks.

The second man made a run for it.

He moved with amazing speed, like a ferret, whipping between the obstacles strewn across the floor and toward a half-open door on the left. Venn didn’t fire, just vaulted over the couch in his path and got to the door as it swung closed and flung it open and aimed the Beretta.

It was a bathroom, a stinking cesspit with a floor flooded to the depth of a half-inch. The window opposite was raised, and the man’s skinny jeans-clad butt wriggled as he worked his torso through.

Venn sloshed through the pool, grabbed the back of the man’s T-shirt and hauled him back so that his head struck the bottom of the window. The guy yelped.

“Fuck, man -”

Venn dropped him in the water, or whatever it was. The man landed on his ass. He tried to scramble away, his legs flailing and splashing Venn’s chinos.

Venn didn’t bother to point the gun.

“Name?” he said.

The man’s eyes burned with a mixture of fear and defiance. He snarled: “You want to show me a warrant?”

“Who said I was a cop?” Now Venn aimed the Beretta, at a point just below the man’s breastbone. “You might as well tell me your name. It’s the only thing you can possibly give me.”

The man propped himself up on his elbows. He muttered something.

“Say what?” Venn tilted his head closer.

“Righteous.”

“I said, your
name
.”

“That
is
my name.” The guy drew himself up so that he was sitting on the soaked floor, his arms round his bent legs. “Righteous. Righteous Hammond.”

“You gotta be kidding me,” said Venn.

He jerked the Beretta’s barrel upward. The man stood, following the order. His thin legs shook beneath him, and Venn thought he was clamping his jaws shut to stop his teeth chattering. Even in the gloom of the bathroom, Venn could see the needle tracks up the scrawny arms, the gnarled worms of his long-defunct veins.

Venn motioned to the door and the man went, shuffling noisily through the water. Back in the main room, the man and the woman were still on their bellies on the ratty carpet. Both had their heads raised and were peering in his direction.

O’Dell stood in the wrecked doorway, looking uncertain.

Venn said: “All right. This is the way it is. I’m leaving now, alone. I’ll be back in two hours, on the dot. The three of you, plus your two comatose buddies over there, will be gone by then. If you’re not, I’ll kick all of your asses so hard you’ll spend the rest of your lives shitting through your mouths. Do I make myself clear?”

On the floor, the woman said, quietly but clearly: “Cracker motherfucker.”

Venn stared at her. She was young, in her middle- or late twenties, and would be quite attractive in different circumstances. Her hair was in cornrows, and she had cheekbones that could cut glass.

He glanced over at O’Dell. “Nah. You know what? The hell with this. I’m hauling these skells down to the local precinct station. The cops there know me. They’ll turn this place over. Most likely they’ll find enough crap stashed here to put these freaks away on a dealing charge.”

He aimed the Beretta, straight-arm, at the woman’s head. “Up.”

O’Dell said, “Wait.”

And Venn thought:
Bingo
.

O
’Dell said, “Maybe I can make an offer.”

Venn kept his gun trained on the pair on the floor. When the man he’d caught in the bathroom stayed standing, Venn motioned with his free hand. The man spread himself, face down, beside the others.

Facing Venn, as though there was nobody else in the room, O’Dell said, “Ten per cent.”

Venn frowned.

“Ten per cent,” O’Dell went on. “Of everything extra I charge them to stay here, and thereby stay out of jail. I’m thinking a one-hundred-per-cent markup on their current rent. To buy my silence. You get ten of that. Every week, for as long as they stay here.”

Venn watched the fat man’s eyes. They held nothing of the quiet despair he’d seen there at their first meeting. Instead, they were shrewd, businesslike.

After a few seconds’ silence, O’Dell took a step into the room. “Passive income. You do nothing more. The knowledge that you might come back, at any time, will keep them paying. A guaranteed wad of cash, each and every week. What do you say?”

Venn raised his eyebrows. With his free hand he reached inside his jacket, as though scratching his chest in thought. He brought his hand out.

In it was a shield.

“Sean O’Dell,” Venn said, “I’m arresting you for attempting to bribe a police officer. You have the right to remain –”

O’Dell bolted for the door, moving surprisingly quickly for a man his size. Venn sighed.

The woman on the floor leaped up, hurtled after O’Dell like a rocket. She reached him as he got to the door, colliding with him so hard he was knocked out into the corridor beyond. Venn heard him land with a crash and a stifled yell.

“– Silent,” Venn heard her finish. “Anything you say may be used against you in court. You have the right to an attorney...”

The two men on the floor stared about in confusion. The two bodies slumped against the walls were conscious, but too strung-out to react.

Venn watched the woman hustle O’Dell back into the apartment. With his hands cuffed behind him, he looked comical in his too-tight suit, like a waddling penguin. His face was flushed and purple, and for a moment Venn was concerned he might be having a heart attack.

“You can’t do this,” O’Dell yelled. “I have connections. I’m a personal friend of –”

“Councilman Marshall. Yeah, I know,” said Venn.

Marshall was an influential voice in the City Council, and well respected in the Queens district he represented. O’Dell was a member of the housing taskforce Marshall had appointed to look into homelessness in the borough, and a golfing friend of the man. As such, any investigation into wrongdoing by O’Dell was bound to be politically sensitive.

But handling that kind of case was what Venn specialized in.

The woman held up her own shield next to O’Dell’s face. “Just in case you try telling a jury the arresting officers didn’t both identify themselves. Detective Sergeant Harmony Jones.”