Gamma Blade (6 page)

The EMT squatted down beside her. “You a doctor?”

“Yes.”

He began running expert hands over the man, probing, evaluating. Beth glanced back and saw his colleague, a female paramedic, rolling a gurney out of the back of the ambulance.

Beth stood. Instinctively, she placed the palm of her hand on her belly.

She looked toward the line of storefronts and buildings where Venn had run to. A scattering of bewildered-looking pedestrians milled about, but there was no sign of Venn.

The feeling of dread, so familiar and yet so terrifying each time it came, cut through her heart.

She hadn’t heard gunfire. That was a good thing. It probably meant Venn had either lost the guy, or had caught up with him and subdued him without needing to fire a shot.

As she watched the street, a dark figure emerged from the end of a narrow alleyway between two tall buildings. It was a man’s shape, lean and wiry, dressed all in black. His features weren’t discernible in the shadows. Beth thought that he was white, or maybe a light-skinned Latino.

He wasn’t running, exactly, but he wasn’t strolling either. Rather, he came out of the alley at a lope, glancing from side to side. Like a wolf, skulking through hostile territory.

As a physician, Beth had learned to trust her instincts. Not blindly, not in the face of reason and evidence. But when something
felt
wrong about a patient’s presentation, even when in most respects the patient appeared entirely healthy, she’d come to recognize that her years of training and experience had embedded an intuition deep within her which she ignored at her peril. They’d talked about this, Beth and Venn. He told her that cops got to be the same, after long enough in the field. You got a prickling, a gut-sense, that something wasn’t right, and more often than not when you followed where that sixth sense was going, you wound up discovering things most people would have missed.

Beth had that feeling right now.

The man who’d appeared at the mouth of the alleyway, and who’d turned to his right and begun striding down the street, was connected with Venn.

Beth glanced down at the man on the ground. She saw that the two EMTs had collapsed the legs of the gurney and were easing him onto it, in preparation for transport in the ambulance.

She wasn’t needed here for now.

Beth began to trot across the sidewalk toward the darkness of the alleyway entrance.

Behind her, she heard a second ambulance arrive in a wail of sirens. Or maybe it was a police  car.

She reached the dark aperture and looked down it, at the high walls which narrowed toward the slit of an exit at the other end.

She saw a mound of shadow on the ground, limned by the light of the distant cross-street.

Beth broke into a run.

She dodged a dumpster halfway along, felt plastic sacks and crumpled tin cans scattering beneath her feet.

As she drew near, she watched the shape on the ground take form. A man’s body, big, rangy, sprawled unnaturally, on its knees, with the head and torso sagging forward over the legs.

She saw the gleam of light off the cropped scalp.

Oh my God.

It was Venn.

Chapter 9

It was like a rerun of the procedure Beth had gone through a few minutes earlier.

She slipped her fingers across his jawline and down his throat, feeling for the carotid pulse on either side.

At the same time, she peered at the dark blotch on the curve of his occiput, just above the nape of the neck.

There was a smear of blood there, and a growing contusion beneath.

A smear, and a bruise. Not a crater.

After a heart-stopping second, Beth felt the throb of a pulse against her fingertips on both sides.

And, an instant later, she felt pressure against her hands as he reared up and back.

He groaned, long and low, like a crypt door opening after centuries of being sealed.

Venn slumped forward once more, his head not quite meeting the concrete.

Beth slid her hand down and across his chest and grabbed him. Hugged him close. Pressed herself against his back, not as a doctor, but as a woman discovering the man she loved was alive, when she’d been convinced he was dead.

He was alive.

Through the surge of relief that threatened to paralyze her, Beth felt Venn tense, the muscles of his chest and abdomen harden.

His head turned a fraction to the side.

Quickly, she said: “Venn. It’s me. Beth. I’m here.”

He twisted, pulling free from her grasp, turning on his knees to face her. For an instant, in his eyes, she saw something she’d seen before, long ago, during that terrible period when they’d first met. It was a frightening look, a stare of implacable, ruthless calculation.

It was the look of a cornered animal, coiled and ready to do anything,
anything
, to preserve its own existence.

The look winked out like a candle flame being extinguished.

And the Venn she knew, she loved, was back.

His gaze was unsteady, his eyes blinking and peering and seeming to have trouble focussing. But he recognized her, all right.

He scooted closer and grabbed her face, one hand on either side.

“Beth. You okay? What have they done?”

She didn’t pull away. But she said, confused: “
They?
Who do you mean? Are
you
all right?”

Venn leaned in, pulled her close, tightening his grip across her back almost painfully, crushing her against him. She felt his face against her neck and her hair. They squatted awkwardly like that for a few seconds, on the floor of the alley.

At last, Venn drew back, his hands on her shoulders. She watched his face. He stared into her eyes, then looked away, his lids hooded. As if he was recalling.

“Son of a bitch,” he said through his teeth.

“What happened?”

Venn stood. He swayed a little, but kept his feet. His hands slid down along Beth’s arms and he drew her up with him.

“The son of a bitch,” he said again. “He didn’t shoot me.”

“What -?”

Venn looked down one end of the alley, then the other, as if orienting himself.

He took Beth’s hand.

“Come on.”

*

By the time they rejoined the ambulance and the police patrol car on the street overlooking the marina, Venn had filled her in.

About the man who’d gotten the drop on him in the alleyway, and the words they’d exchanged, and the sudden loss of consciousness which in the final instant Venn had assumed to be the work of a bullet blasting away his life, but which turned out to be a blow to the back of his head. Enough to knock him out, but not to kill him.

“It takes a special talent,” Venn said.

“What does?” Beth looked at the ambulance, wondering why it hadn’t pulled away yet. Then she saw the uniformed cop talking to the first paramedic, who was standing by the open door of the vehicle, ready to jump up, and realized the cop was taking a brief statement.

“To hit somebody hard enough to knock them unconscious, without killing them or turning their brains to mush.” Venn was talking in his normal bass-baritone growl, Beth noted. His speech wasn’t slurred. Which suggested he was okay, that the blow to his head hadn’t caused any significant neurological damage.

Beth squeezed his hand. “Venn, what were you thinking?”

He looked down at her, blinking, as if registering the tightness of her grip. Or maybe it was the tremor in her voice.

“Running after that guy?” The words came pouring out of her, unstoppably. “You could have been shot. Or stabbed. Why’d you do it?”

Emotions wrestled for dominance on his face. She saw truculence there, but also compassion for her. And guilt, too.

“The same reason you stopped to help that guy on the gurney over there.” He nodded toward the ambulance. “It’s what you do. Your instincts kicked in.”

“Except my job doesn’t put me at risk. Not in the same way.” Her eyes were welling up. She didn’t mean to rebuke him, to accuse him. She realized that what she felt wasn’t anger, as she’d thought at first. Rather it was a desperate, wrenching
relief
.

Venn didn’t say anything. Just put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close.

They walked together over to the cops at the ambulance. One of the patrolmen started toward them, as if to tell them to move along. The female paramedic said: “That’s her. The doc who first attended to the guy.”

The cops were both immediately interested. They turned to Beth, eyed Venn up.

He held up his shield, which he’d already taken out so that he didn’t have to reach into his pocket and thereby arouse suspicion. “Lieutenant Joseph Venn. NYPD. I was the one who called, when I saw the group of men on the pier watching the yacht.”

One of the cops peered at the ID. His eyes switched back to Venn’s face.

“What you doing here?”

“Enjoying a weekend in Miami,” said Venn. “At least, trying to.”

He and Beth told the cops what had happened. As they related their story, another cop car showed up.

The officer in charge spoke on his phone. Then he said: “We’ll need to take a formal statement. And we need some info on that guy in the ambulance, too.”

“Any ID on him?” said Venn.

“Driving license,” said the cop. “His name’s James Harris, from Colorado. We’re checking on the home address right now. Got to tell you, though, this doesn’t look like a routine mugging. Not with what you saw, the guys lined up alongside the yacht.” He jerked his head at one of the patrol cars. “You guys ride with us. We’re following the ambulance to the hospital. Our lieutenant’s going to meet us there. You can talk to him then.”

Beth said, “I want to ride in the ambulance. He’s my patient.”

The cop looked at the paramedics, who shrugged. “No problem,” said the male one. “Won’t hurt to have a doctor riding along.”

Beth was reluctant to let go of Venn, and he was hanging onto her, too. But she patted his arm.

“See you there, okay?” She prized herself free and got on board the ambulance.

*

Brull waited till he’d turned four corners and was six blocks away before he broke into a run.

His instincts had told him to run first, then slow down once he’d put distance between him and the scene. But his instincts were wrong, and he ignored them. Running out of the alleyway when he knew there were witnesses, and cops, would have painted a target on his back in neon colors.

Six blocks away, there was nobody following him. He was certain of it.

But he started running then, because he had work to do.

He’d parked his car along a tree-lined avenue which ran alongside a park. There were a few late-night strollers on the avenue, he noted, couples and small groups of friends walking off their evening meal. Nobody looked at him for long. He might have been a jogger - though oddly attired for such an activity - or simply late for an appointment or a date.

Brull’s car was a two-year-old silver Dodge Challenger. Some people might have considered it an overly conspicuous set of wheels for a man in his position to be driving, but here in Miami, muscle cars were a dime a dozen. And in some ways, paradoxically, the car gave him added camouflage. It was the last vehicle you’d expect an otherwise cautious gangster to be driving.

Naturally, he had no chauffeur. He wouldn’t let anybody else behind the wheel. Brull dropped into the leather front seat and gunned the engine and took off, at the same time flipping open his cell phone.

It was answered on the first ring.

Brull said: “Talk to me.”

Elon, one of his enforcers, was on the line. “It’s off, boss,” he said. “The guys faded fast. Before the cops got there.”

“Before the
local
cops got there, you mean,” said Brull. “That guy who chased you...”

“Yeah, I know,” said Elon. “You kill him?”

“No.” Brull didn’t explain. He didn’t need to. Elon would guess why his boss had left the cop alive. And in any case, it wasn’t his business what Brull chose to do.

“He was from New York,” Brull continued.

“NYPD?”

“Yeah. His name’s Joseph Venn. V-E-N-N. A detective.”

Brull listened to silence as Elon pondered this.

“Get on it,” said Brull. “Find out what New York’s interest is in us.”

Elon said, “Boss, this Venn looked like a bystander. Walking along with his girl when he saw me hit the guy. It might be coincidence.”

“Maybe.” Brull saw a patrol car in his rear-view mirror, its cherrytop flashing, but it was headed away from him and he relaxed. “I don’t want to take any chances, though.”

“About that guy. The one I hit,” said Elon. “I don’t know what happened to him.”

“He was alive. I saw him being loaded on an ambulance, and his face wasn’t covered up.” Even as he’d emerged from the alleyway, Brull had considered boosting a random car and following the ambulance to see which hospital it went to. But that would have been too risky, with the cops in the area. He went on: “We need to find that guy. Start checking all of the hospitals. You can probably narrow it down to the closest ones. Post guys at each one. Tell them to be discreet.”

“Got you, boss.”

“You get a look at his face?”

Elon sounded proud. “Better than that. I got a photo of him. Hold on.”

His voice disappeared. A few seconds later, a text message announced itself on Brull’s phone. He looked at the attached photo, keeping his eye on the road ahead as he drove.

The picture was a grainy, typically night-time one. It showed a man from the back, his face in profile and turned to the right. Beyond him was the marina, bright and blurred. Brull guessed that Elon had taken the picture as he’d crept up behind the man, who was standing in a waiting pose.

Elon had been smart, taking that photo. Brull wouldn’t forget it.

The man was wearing a lightweight sports coat, the color unclear. He was white, with dark hair, still full despite his age, which was probably around Brull’s own, or maybe a little older. Forty, possibly. He was clean-shaven. A strong nose, taut lips.

Brull got back on the phone to Elon. “He doesn’t look familiar,” he said. “Send that picture to all the guys staking out the hospitals. Anybody who’s even a vague match, let me know immediately.”