Delta Ghost (7 page)

Everybody called him Venn. Nobody called him
Joe
. Not even Beth. Nobody except Captain Kang, his boss.

Venn said, “Cap, you ought to know that I’ve just –”

“I don’t care if you’ve just found out your mother and your sister had the same sperm donor. Get over here.”

*

O
ver here
was Kang’s office in One Police Plaza, the NYPD’s headquarters on Park Row. Venn found a patrolman at the scene who had a package of Handi-Wipes in his car, and cleaned the blood and brains off his face and neck as best he could before he took the Mustang to Lower Manhattan.

David Kang was a Korean-American whose jaw was constantly working on a piece of nicotine gum. He’d been chewing it for nine years, longer than he’d been a smoker. Venn had read in a magazine that the stuff gave you mouth cancer.

“Been hearing about your afternoon while you were on the way over,” said Kang, after Venn had seated himself across the desk from his boss and Kang had shoved across a mug of coffee. “Three kills, yes?”

“They were all good ones, Cap.” Venn meant they were all justified.

“Oh, I don’t doubt it.” Kang chewed his gum, his face morose. “Hell of a lot of paperwork, Joe. One
hell
of a lot.”

“Tell me about it,” said Venn sourly. Just discharging your firearm meant a legendary amount of red tape afterward. Killing three perps... it didn’t bear thinking about.

“It’s got to be perfect, Joe. Buffed to a shine. Or else I’m gonna get reamed out over this.”

Venn sighed. Kang was an okay guy, and mostly trusted Venn to take his own decisions without micromanaging him. But the captain was ambitious, politically, and it was typical of him that just after Venn had put down three gunmen, and come under fire himself, Kang’s first thought was of his own inconvenience.

“Anyways.” Kang slapped the desk. “You can do the paper stuff later. The reason I called you down here is O’Dell.”

Venn became alert. “The arrest was good, Cap. No irregularities.”

Kang waved a hand. “Yeah, yeah. No problem with that. Congratulations, by the way. It was some result.”

“Harmony did the actual takedown.”

“But you’re the boss, Joe.
Always
take the credit when you’re the boss. It’s something you need to learn.”

Venn fought the urge to roll his eyes.

“Thing is,” Kang went on, “O’Dell wants to talk to you.”

“I’m sure he does,” said Venn. “He’ll be pissed at me.”

“No. I mean he’s offering to plea-bargain. Says he’s got some dirt to spill. Which was the whole point of arresting him, of course. But he won’t talk to the DA, yet. Says he’ll only speak with
you
.”

Venn frowned.

“Also,” said Kang, “he’s insisting on an immediate audience. Or the deal’s off.”

“He’s setting ultimatums? That’s our job, or the DA’s.”

Kang shrugged. “Yeah, well. It’s worth hearing him out.” He tipped his head. “O’Dell made bail, and he’s here at the Plaza. You can see him right away.”

As Venn made to stand, Kang said: “Wait. Two things, before you go. Bring me up to speed on this afternoon’s shit.”

Venn sat back down, gave a summary of events. Of Righteous’s information, of the call to Kruger’s phone and the discovery he was dead. Of the trip to the Bronx, and the encounter with the kid, Clune.

Afterward, Kang sat, masticating slowly. “Huh. You see any picture emerging?”

Venn shook his head. “No. Kruger supplies drugs to O’Dell’s tenants. Shortly after we arrest O’Dell, Kruger gets whacked. Could be coincidence. A rival dealer, maybe. We find Clune searching Kruger’s shell address. Clune spins us a bunch of crap about how he’s this tourist who got mugged. Then we tail Clune, and four Latinos jump him. They don’t kill him, which makes me think they wanted him alive for some reason.” He ticked off on his fingers. “We need an APB on the kid, which I’ve already told the local cops to put out. And we need to squeeze the guy we caught. You’ve got to convince the local boys to let Harmony do it, or at least be part of it, Cap. I’d have done it myself if you hadn’t called me over here.”

“I’ve already told the local guys to hold off until you’re through here,” said Kang. “You and Harmony can do it together.”

“Okay. Thanks.” Venn rubbed at the bruises on his arms and shoulders where he’d rolled on the sidewalk. “How about you, Cap? You see a connection between it all?”

“Nah,” said Kang. “But drugs are at the center. It’s usually about drugs.”

“The thing is,” said Venn, “this kid, Clune – he wasn’t a junkie, or a tweaker, or a speed freak. He doesn’t
feel
like the kind of guy mixed up in narcotics. He definitely isn’t the one who whacked Kruger.”

“But he knows something.” Kang raised his eyebrows. “You’ll find him. Now... you better go listen to what O’Dell has to say.”

This time Venn made it to the door before Kang said, “Oh yeah. I said,
two
things.”

Venn turned.

“Take a shower first. And lose the jacket. You smell like an abattoir.”

––––––––

D
anny Clune ran.

It was easy to lose himself, because lots of other people around him were running, too: running away from the gunfire, and the screaming, and the blare of the police bullhorns. But Clune ran as though he was alone, and out on an open plain, and being tracked by a sniper rifle’s telescopic sight.

He weaved between parked cars and dodged startled knots of pedestrians and stumbled down alleyways, leaving clattering overturned dustbins in his wake. He ran so that his breath sawed hotly and painfully in his chest, and his legs threatened to cramp to a standstill, and his empty stomach roiled and tried to expel its nonexistent contents.

Clune was scared. Scared in a way he’d never been before, not even a week earlier.

He was in a city of eight million people, a land of skyscrapers and boltholes and warrens. The easiest place in the world to disappear and never be found. Yet he felt as if that sniper rifle was tracking him from the heavens, its barrel trained on an invisible bullseye on his back.

Before he realized it, he was on his knees on the sidewalk, drool spilling from his wide-open mouth onto the steaming concrete, his chest gripped in a vise, his heart slamming like a techno beat.

A pair of legs appeared in his line of vision.

Slowly, Clune lifted his head.

“Hey, man. You okay?”

It was a middle-aged man, dark-skinned. Mexican.

With breath he didn’t know he had, Clune yelled. The man started.

“Hey –”

Clune was up again, scrambling away and finding his feet and heading across a wide street, missing the fender of a car so narrowly he felt its slipstream against his thigh.

*

H
e’d been fleeing for fifteen minutes, or two hours, he didn’t know which. Sometimes he ran; when that got too much to bear, he slowed to a stumbling lope. He had no route to follow, no idea where he was heading. For all he knew, he was going round in circles, and would suddenly find himself back at the street market.

He tried to think rationally. Every time he did, a swarm of gibbering terrors overwhelmed his mind like a zombie horde.
What was going to happen to him if they caught him?

Clune forced the fears aside, like a redneck hero hacking his way through legions of the walking dead, and concentrated on the facts.

He hadn’t found what he was looking for in Kruger’s office. Well, that was hardly a surprise. And he’d never find it now.

The Mexicans had tailed him back to the cop’s, Venn’s, office. They must have, otherwise how would they have got on to him at the street market? Which meant they had probably spotted him on the street, when he’d watched them shoot Kruger. If Venn and the woman cop hadn’t turned up when they did, the Mexicans would have grabbed Clune while he was searching Kruger’s office and he’d be dead now, or worse.

The Mexicans were still looking for him. Clune had no idea how extensive their network was, but he had to assume it reached everywhere. He couldn’t leave New York and escape back to Britain, because he’d lied to Venn: there was no return flight booked. He could, of course, flee in the other direction, into the vastness of America itself, but how long would he last? He had no money, apart from the fifty dollars the police had given him. And he’d forever be looking over his shoulder for the Mexicans. He’d never sleep again at night.

He had two options, then. He could go to the police. Turn himself in at the nearest precinct house, tell them his story. But they’d require him as a witness to the shooting dead of Kruger, and that would expose him. The Mexicans would find a way of getting to him.

Or, he could turn to Venn. Venn was a cop, but at least Clune felt he had some kind of relationship with him, however tenuous and confrontational. He’d spill the beans to Venn, apologize for having lied to him, and maybe, just maybe, he’d be able to persuade Venn to keep him out of the story. To help him avoid having to testify in the Kruger killing.

Then, perhaps, Venn might succeed in taking down the Mexicans, freeing Clune from the threat of kidnap and torture and execution which he was currently living with.

Then, a flock of winged pigs might soar across the skies of a frozen hell.

It was, Clune decided, worth a shot. It was his only chance, however remote its prospects of working.

Clune stopped, looked around him, seeing his surroundings properly for the first time. He squinted at a street sign. MacDougal Street.

MacDougal.
Despite himself, Clune made the mental link. Bob Dylan had lived there in 1969, and had been pestered by a crazy fan who rooted in his trash. And there, on the corner with Minetta Lane, was Café Wha?, which had launched the careers of Hendrix and the Velvet Underground and Dylan himself.

In other circumstances, Clune would have been thrilled to be there, would have basked in the ambience and snapped endless photos. Now, the bohemian surroundings of Greenwich Village held nothing but menace for him.

How was he going to make contact with Venn again?
Reach out
, as the Yanks liked to say? Returning to Venn’s office was too risky, even if Clune remembered how to find it. The Mexicans might still be watching it in case Venn found him and brought him back there. Clune considered turning himself over to the nearest precinct house, the idea he’d rejected before, but insisting on speaking with Venn and nobody else. But what if they didn’t take him seriously? What if they beat all the information he had out of him, or waterboarded him, or whatever these American cops did? Or, worse, what if they contacted Venn... and Venn just laughed, said he wasn’t talking to some snot-nosed little Brit who’d Maced him, thank you very much?

The idea hit Clune, then.

It was the longest of shots. But to Clune’s desperate mind, it seemed as brilliant as the shafts of sunlight angling in through the canopy above him formed by the plane trees lining the street.

V
enn saw two men in the room as he stepped inside. One was O’Dell, still fat and sweaty in his too-tight suit, but with a harrowed, haggard air he hadn’t had earlier.

After a quick shower in the staff bathroom down the hall, Venn had changed back into his old clothes, leaving the leather jacket off – it would need drycleaning – and made his way to the interview rooms. A civilian employee had directed him to the one he wanted.

The other man in the room was tall, erect, well-dressed in a light-gray French silk suit that was tasteful rather than flashy. He was maybe forty-eight or fifty, with a head of bouffant hair that was only slightly graying at the temples.

The lawyer, Venn guessed.

“O’Dell,” said Venn, closing the door behind him. “I’d say it was a pleasure but I’d be lying.”

O’Dell was seated at a functional wooden desk, his hands clasped on the top. He looked sullen, didn’t meet Venn’s eye.

The elegant man stepped forward as if he was protecting O’Dell. “Lieutenant Venn,” he said. “Peter Franciscus, counsel for Mr O’Dell. I should say for the record that I have advised my client against this course of action.”

Venn eyed him. The man was tall, almost Venn’s height. “Why?” he said. “You got something against your client offering the law his full cooperation?”

“I believe he ought to be talking to the District Attorney. Not to you.” Franciscus held Venn’s gaze. “But he insists.”

“Yeah, well, me and old Sean here go way back.” Venn pulled up a chair, waited till Franciscus made a move to sit down before seating himself on it. He leaned his elbows on the desk, spread his hands. “So? What you got?”

O’Dell hesitated for only an instant before he started talking. He’d clearly rehearsed his spiel.

“There’s a man. An associate of mine He supplies narcotics. I send customers his way. My...tenants. ”

“Yeah, I know,” said Venn. “One of those saps you were swindling already told me about him. Stefan Kruger.”

O’Dell looked startled.

Venn went on: “I mean
the late
Stefan Kruger. Oh, you haven’t heard? He was shot dead on the street in the Bronx shortly after I busted you.”

Now O’Dell was more than surprised. His face was waxen beneath the sheen of sweat.

“Why so scared, O’Dell?” said Venn. “I mean, I can understand how you’d be disappointed, angry even, that your bargaining chip had been removed from the equation. But... scared?” He sat back in his chair, rocked on the hind legs.

Beside O’Dell, the attorney, Franciscus, said, “My client’s said all he wants to say. This interview is terminated.”

Venn ignored him. “And why exactly did you want to speak to
me
, O’Dell? Rather than the DA?”

“You don’t have to answer that,” said Franciscus.

But O’Dell looked Venn in the eye. “Kruger is - was - connected.”

“You mean mobbed up?”

“I don’t know,” said O’Dell. “I never really got to know the guy. But if word got round that I’d ratted him out, my life wouldn’t be worth jack. I was going to put a deal to you. You take him down, investigate and neutralize his connections, and then I testify.” He wiped a palm over his face. “Guess it doesn’t matter now.”