Midnight Club (17 page)
Authors: James Patterson
John Stefanovitch; Minersville, Pennsylvania
THERE HAD BEEN
a massacre, and he had been there. He had heard the horrible screams of death.
Relax, now. Don’t overload, Stefanovitch told himself.
Let everything settle down first, then try to sort it out…
Stefanovitch’s parents’ house was visible down the winding road, beyond a dusty coal hauler they had been following the last few miles. The sky overhead was dark gray, stirred up but oddly beautiful over the sprawling Pennsylvania farmlands, which weren’t all that far from Atlantic City.
“That’s it on the right down there. The homestead.” Stefanovitch broke the silence of the past couple of minutes.
Rest, he thought again.
Get away from Atlantic City, from all of the death and chaos.
Tomorrow is soon enough to start again; to try to understand…
“So you really are a farm boy,” Sarah said in a soft whisper, her waking-up voice. It was just past two in the morning.
“Yes, ma’am. That’s Stefanovitch A&M up ahead. Stands for Agriculture and Mining. My humble beginnings.”
Nobody was up at the nineteenth-century farmhouse; nobody except for Stink. Stink was a brown and white mongrelcollie, now officially retired from running the farm. Stink had a friendly, intelligent face, with the softest chestnut brown eyes. Stefanovitch called her to him, puckering and smooching his lips.
Stink began wagging her tail, working it into a blur. She was yipping and circling Stefanovitch and Sarah as if they were farm animals to be herded into a tighter pack.
“Get down, Stink. You been in that brook again, haven’t you? That old creek in back.”
The dog was happy to see Stefanovitch, but also confused. It was the wheelchair—juxtaposed with the familiar face and voice. Stink had never gotten used to it.
“Let’s go inside. Get some sleep if we can,” Stefanovitch finally said to Sarah. “You can meet everybody tomorrow.”
Relax for now, he told himself again.
Forget about Midnight.
Sarah learned all about the Stefanovitch clan over Sunday breakfast. She heard tales of the famous Stefanovitch soup kitchen, which Isabelle and Charles Stefanovitch had maintained at the farm for twenty-five years; which they still kept open for anyone in the area needing a hot meal.
Stef’s father told humorous stories about John and his brother, Nelson, growing up in the small town, both of them local sports deities; both boys also unusually sensitive toward the poor and unlucky, because of their soup kitchen duties.
Most revealing of all, Sarah witnessed a touching and special love between Stef’s mother and father. She had never seen anything like it, especially among people their age. They were obviously best friends, intimate and loving.
“Do they ever fight?” Sarah asked as she and Stefanovitch drove around the countryside later that morning.
“One time when we were kids, she marched off to her sister’s. She stayed for two weeks. Called it a long-overdue vacation. Most of the time, though, no. My parents are amazing people.”
“So what happened to you?” Sarah grinned as she asked the question. Her hair was piled up at the back of her head. Her clothes were early lumberjack. She looked like a local beauty.
“People always ask the same thing. I learned all of their bad habits, none of the good ones. I screwed up so bad, I became a cop in New York. A form of social work, in some opinions. What makes it worse, I have no major regrets.”
SARAH AND STEF
got back to work before noon on Sunday, finally beginning to talk about what had happened in Atlantic City. The investigation had to move along, to go forward somehow. At least they could think straight after a good night’s sleep.
There had been a horrifying massacre. More than a dozen crime bosses had been murdered in cold blood.
By whom?
For what possible reason?
Strangely, by late Sunday, Stefanovitch was sinking into a black mood, a frame of mind he didn’t understand, much less know what to do about.
He tried to work for a little longer, out on the screened-in back porch, with its view of the farm’s silo and woodshed. He and Sarah kept returning to the same question about the investigation—who stood to gain from the shootings in Atlantic City?
That was the linchpin now, the huge unanswered question. Who would benefit because of the murders?
Stefanovitch’s back ached, and his leg tingled unpleasantly. He hadn’t had any exercise for days. He thought that he needed to go for a long walk; to
run
across these familiar fields the way he had for twenty-some years of his life. He needed to run full out now, until his lungs burst, until his legs collapsed underneath him.
“Hi there. Hey, are you all right?” Sarah finally picked up on his strange mood, his isolation over the past hour.
“I think I have to go. I have to leave,” Stefanovitch said, absolutely a shot out of the blue.
He couldn’t run; he had to go. Everything was collapsing in on him. The investigation. Coming home. Sarah.
It was too much to handle. He felt like he was finally cracking, a huge fissure starting at the base of his spine.
“Excuse me?” At first, Sarah didn’t think she had heard him right. “Stef?”
His face flushed, Stefanovitch began to push himself off the back porch. “I have to go, Sarah.”
Everything was coming apart in his head. He thought he might be sick…
But mostly it was one thing, one impossible problem that he couldn’t begin to deal with… He liked Sarah too much—and he understood in his heart that it could never work between them.
He couldn’t stand that. Maybe people had to be stuck in a wheelchair to understand. Probably they did. But that was the way it was. He had to get out of there right away. The feeling had come over him like waves of claustrophobia in a crawl space. It was unbearable. Impossible to explain to Sarah or his parents.
Sarah might have stopped him, physically stopped him, but she didn’t even try.
She let Stef take his things out to the van. She watched him say good-bye to his parents, apologizing for leaving so suddenly. It was all so weird, and so intense. Real life could be like that: the daily soap operas most families learned to live with.
She stayed on at the farmhouse for the night. She wanted to talk to Isabelle and Charles about their life out in Pennsylvania. She needed the background for the book, she told herself. Getting back to New York would be easy enough in the morning.
“I know John too well,” Isabelle Stefanovitch finally said to her in the brightly lit kitchen, where the two of them had talked for hours, sipping port wine. “He would never hurt your feelings like this, not unless he couldn’t help it. He would never purposely hurt your feelings, Sarah. He’s very tense now.”
“I know that,” Sarah said. She thought that she understood what had happened. She could imagine his state of mind.
Her feelings were hurt, though. She couldn’t help that either. That was reality, too.
Somewhere out on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, meanwhile, Stefanovitch drove with his foot pressed all the way down to the floor. The foot in his mind.
He was falling in love, and he couldn’t bear it…
Stefanovitch forced himself to dwell on the Midnight Club the rest of the way back to Manhattan. The horrible screams he had heard in Atlantic City became background noise for the long ride home.
Who had ordered the massacre? What had happened to the Midnight Club?
Those were the questions he had to answer. That was the maddening puzzle he still seemed no closer to solving.
The Midnight Club
Kennedy International Airport; Six
A.M.
EVERYTHING THAT COULD
change changed at six o’clock on the morning of July 11, a Monday.
All that had transpired since the first murders at Allure was suddenly redefined for everyone, especially the public, who would hear and greedily read about the new twists and turns the following morning at the latest.
The passenger tunnel inside the Air France terminal at Kennedy Airport was thickly carpeted, camouflaged in bright vermilion and blue. It was luxurious by most airport standards, reminiscent of the nouveau riche travelers it served. The long corridor was all serenity as it filled with well-dressed passengers exiting from the Concorde. The two-hour-and-fifty-minute flight from Paris had been a thing of perfection.
Among the final passengers to deboard the crowded jetliner was one who couldn’t possibly be on the flight…
Alexandre St.-Germain exited the plane.
The Grave Dancer was very much alive.
His dress was elegant, befitting his businessman image. A beige suit and salmon shirt were hand-tailored; his black half boots were soft Italian leather, as was the briefcase he carried. St-Germain’s face was deeply sun-bronzed, his wavy blond hair meticulously combed back. Nor did his eyes betray any physical or emotional discomfort. They were dark, shiny stones that gave away nothing of what went on behind them.
A black Bell helicopter with gold racing stripes was waiting for him at the New York airport. He had to stoop low as he climbed into the close quarters of the cockpit. His eyes rapidly brushed over the repository of glass and shiny metal instruments inside the plane.
He encountered Jimmy Burke of the New York Police Department, who occupied the far left corner of the copter. St.-Germain smiled knowingly, his head cocked slightly to the side.
“Hello, Jimmy B. I’m back safe and sound. Did you miss me?”
As the shimmering helicopter made its way out of the early morning airport maze, the two men talked for the first time in several days.
“I don’t believe Atlantic City could have gone any better,” Burke was characteristically enthusiastic. He had developed a disarming smile and manner as a promising wise guy in the East New York section of Brooklyn. Like many of the local hoods, he had fulfilled his patriotic duty by joining the army in the late 1960s. He’d met Alexandre St.-Germain in South Vietnam and immediately begun to smuggle and sell narcotics for the Grave Dancer.
St.-Germain returned the easy, predatory smile. “The old bosses, the ones who were never able to learn the new ways, are gone. The way is clear for necessary change. A new order has emerged. Not only in New York, but in Rome, Paris, London, Tokyo.”
Burke nodded. “Everyone who matters is blaming the vigilante policemen, the so-called death wish squad. One reason is that the death squads actually existed in the New York Police Department long before this. I told you about the squads. Once that was leaked to the newspapers, everything else followed smoothly.”
“Yes, the media can be very accommodating. What about the others who were involved? The detectives. Rodriquez and Parker?”
Burke answered without revealing the trepidation he suddenly felt. He had prepared himself for the expected question, but not for the intensity in Alexandre St.-Germain’s eyes.
“One of them is dead. Aurelio Rodriquez was taken care of in Atlantic City. Parker is a little bit of a problem. Parker escaped.”
“What do you mean, he escaped?”
Alexandre St-.Germain’s eyes had become dark beads. His nose flared, so that momentarily the handsome face was almost hideous, a much older man’s profile.
“Parker got out of Atlantic City. He’s acting as if none of it happened. He hasn’t even tried to contact me.”
“So the affair in Atlantic City
could
have gone better,” St.-Germain said, his chin jutting menacingly. “Well, I suppose it’s not important. It’s nothing we want to deal with at this time. For the moment at least, let it be. Let Mr. Parker be.”
THAT AFTERNOON ALEXANDRE
St.-Germain’s yacht cut through a light chop about thirty miles off City Island. A comfortable breeze streamed across the deck, where St.-Germain met with Cesar and Rafael Montoya, powerful drug underbosses from Colombia.
The music of U2 played somewhere on the yacht. Revolutionary claptrap. Bono grieving for Ireland and other lost causes.
Both of the Montoyas were impressed with the style and demeanor of the Grave Dancer. Neither of them would show it, however. They were the sons of one of the men killed in Atlantic City, but there was no problem there. They had agreed to set their own father up. The meeting this afternoon was to divide the spoils in South America, to move forward with the business of the new Club.
Alexandre St.-Germain took Porsche sunglasses from his shirt pocket and slipped them on. “So how is everything in Bogotá?” he asked the Montoyas.
“Como siempre,”
said Rafael. “I told you months ago, my father doesn’t matter anymore. My father was nothing to anyone who matters.” Rafael Montoya had been educated at the University of Miami, but mostly he had learned in the jungles and mountains of his homeland. Rafael was twenty-six, one year older than his brother.
Something about the meeting caused St.-Germain to smile. “You know, the world is now run by men like us,” he said. “Maybe it always was.”
“And what kind of men are we?” asked Rafael, who had been enrolled as a philosophy major at Miami.
“Psychopaths.” Alexandre St.-Germain shrugged and his smile broadened. “No one understands us. They can’t put themselves in the minds of men who act without a conscience. They try to understand, but they can’t.”
“I have a family.” Cesar Montoya spoke now. He had a pouty baby’s face that reflected his soul. “I have plenty of conscience. More than I need.”
St.-Germain calmly took a shrimp from the platter set before them. “You think so. Well, that’s good, Cesar. Myself, I have no family, no attachments. I have only myself to be concerned about. You know, I even enjoy wet work. Wet contracts. I understand who I am. I am a monster. I was an assassin when I was twenty years old. Psychopath? Do you know that word?
Psicopata?
”
The brothers looked at one another, and then both bearded men laughed. This afternoon, each was wearing a white linen suit with leather sandals. The sandals alone cost more than the average yearly wage in their country.
“It is a time of great change,” Alexandre St.-Germain went on. Although he was speaking to the brothers, he seemed to be staring through them. They might as well not have been there.
“For the past five years, we have been planning everything so carefully. There was very little bloodshed until Atlantic City. The other members, the bankers, the politicians, they don’t like killing. They prefer the courts. In New York, in Rome, London, the Far East, in Bogotá, information was mysteriously made available to ambitious district attorneys and other prosecutors. The traditional ranks of the syndicates were thinned out in this efficient manner. Do you see what I’m saying? Then came Atlantic City. Years of work were consummated in a few moments. The old crime empire was eliminated. And now, a completely new breed exists. Here’s to better business for us all.”
Rafael Montoya raised his glass of white wine. “Congratulations on your victory.”
“Our victory,” said the host, still seeming to look through the skulls of the two Colombian drug lords.
The Montoyas smiled again, and seemed relieved by the last pronouncement. “Our victory.” So, they were getting their father’s territory after all. The Midnight Club had made its decision.
St.-Germain gave the two brothers lunch, and they talked very serious business for the next hour or so. He was curious about their future plans, the future of the South American drug business. Suddenly, he seemed to want to know everything from them.
As he listened, he was thinking that Rafael and Cesar Montoya were the worst kind of sociopaths, the most dangerous of all. The brothers were bloodthirsty animals, yet they thought of themselves as family men. They had helped him plan the death of their own father; and ironically, their father had helped him plan this afternoon as well.
Wet work. Yes, he did enjoy it. Shattering the most sacred taboos was sport for him. His only true release.
Psicopata.
The gun concealed in Alexandre St.-Germain’s waistband was small, less than ninety millimeters. It was over almost before it had begun. Two head shots fired on the deck of the luxury yacht. Both Montoyas dead. Perfect execution of the street law.
They were too uncontrollable to run South America, even Colombia. Their father had known that. Alexandre St.-Germain knew it as well.
They were old-style gangsters, not businessmen. They had no place in the future of the Midnight Club, the new Club.