BRAINRUSH, a Thriller (10 page)

Jake couldn’t even spit at the asshole.

Mental checklist: Drugs suck.

Carlo grinned. “Ah, yes. My stinger cocktail has slowed you down a bit. Well, no matter. We’re going on a little trip. But don’t worry, we’ll take care of all the details. We will make sure that your employer, your family, and your friends are all aware that you are gone. In fact, your entire neighborhood will soon learn of your…departure.”

What the hell?

He saw Carlo’s hand reach to his right, just outside of his peripheral vision. When it came back into view, it was gripping Jake’s limp wrist. Jake felt nothing, as if it were somebody else’s hand. Carlo used his other hand to tug off his jade ring. It was the ring his father had given him on his eighteenth birthday along with the necklace and Mason medallion that was somewhere on the floor. Heirlooms handed down from his grandfather.

Carlo took Jake’s watch from his other wrist and then walked into the darkened kitchen, stooping in front of something on the floor. His wide back blocked Jake’s view of what he was doing. 

Frog Face was still in the room with Jake. He leaned over and began removing Jake’s clothes. Thick drips of blood slipped from the man’s smashed nose and soaked into the fabric of the couch just in front of Jake’s face.

After gathering Jake’s shirt, pants, shoes, and socks into a bundle, the big man lumbered into the kitchen beside Carlo. 

Lying there in nothing but his boxers, Jake’s initial shock gave way to fear. The indignity he was suffering was nothing compared to what he had gone through in the simulated POW camp. But this was real, not training.

The two strangers moved with military precision, reminding him of Tony. That’s the miracle Jake needed right now—for Tony to walk in the front door and put a rage on these assholes.

Since his head and neck wouldn’t move, Jake had to strain his eyes to one side in order to catch a view of what the two men were doing in the kitchen. He still couldn’t quite make out what they were working on.

He heard a frustrated grunt from one of the men, then Jake’s jade ring skittered out of the kitchen into the living room. Carlo swiveled to retrieve it, and Jake saw the outline of a limp body stretched out behind him, one leg held up by Frog Face as he slipped Jake’s pants over the foot. 

Carlo picked up the ring and turned back to the body, wiggling it onto one of the guy’s slack fingers. Carlo stood and the light from the living room bathed the stubbled face of the man on the floor. His moist eyes were filled with fear. They locked on Jake and blinked a silent appeal for help. 

Closing the kitchen door behind them, Carlo and Frog Face returned to Jake’s side. Frog Face unfolded a blue jumpsuit and began slipping it around Jake’s legs. Carlo held up a new syringe, tapped it a couple of times, and squirted a small amount of clear fluid out of its tip. Reaching for Jake’s arm, Carlo said, “Goodnight, Mr. Bronson. See you in Venice.”

Venice?
Francesca was behind this?

I’m such an idiot—

The last thing Jake remembered was the pungent odor of natural gas.

Redondo Beach, California

T
ony stood on the curb across the street from the smoldering remains of Jake’s home. He wore his navy blue LAPD windbreaker and baseball cap. 

Marshall sat on the curb below him, his face buried in the white sleeves of his crossed arms. “I just can’t believe it, Tony. This can’t be true.”

Something about the scene troubled Tony, but the pain of Marshall’s voice cut through his thoughts. He sat down next to him, resting his hand on Marshall’s shoulder. “I hear ya, Marsh. They don’t come any better than Jake.” 

Fire trucks and emergency vehicles were scattered along the street amidst a tangle of hoses and equipment. Firefighters, their helmets removed and their heavy yellow jackets open, walked slowly back to their trucks, weary from the battle lost. The air was thick with the smell of smoke. 

Like confetti after the Rose Parade, shrapnel and rubble from the blast littered an area stretching well into the yards across the street. Jake’s home was a soggy, smoldering skeleton, with the roof collapsed, and remnants of the original framework jutting up into the moonlit night. A group of crows squawked from the tall pepper tree one house away as if anxious for the crowds to depart so they could begin their foraging.

One of the neighbors told Tony that the initial explosion had occurred two hours ago, rattling windows and setting off alarms for a nearly three-block radius. It was not the sort of sound the residents of Redondo Beach were accustomed to. Sure, they saw this sort of thing on TV all the time, but never “live” here in their protected little South Bay oasis.

The fire captain had said it was a natural gas explosion from a leak in the kitchen. “Must have been leaking for a while,” he’d said. “The gas built up, a spark set it off, and the fireball blows the place apart.” 

Jake would have died instantly, thought Tony. Thank God for that.

But Tony still wasn’t satisfied. Call it cop intuition, but something didn’t seem quite right, and it was nagging at him. A gas explosion could easily leave a debris field like this, but the amount of gas had to be substantial, and it would’ve had to have been contained in one area with no easy means of escape. Marshall told him that Jake had stayed away from his place for the last couple of days. That could explain the slow gas buildup. But what sparked it? The firemen had found Jake’s charred body in the kitchen. How did he make it that far into the house without first smelling the gas?

It just didn’t add up. 

Across the street, the coroner’s crew pulled the gurney out of the back of its van. One of the techs unfolded a black zippered body bag and placed it on top. Then he and his partner headed inside for Jake, or what was left of him.

Marshall stared at the scene with glistening eyes. Tony knew he wasn’t used to this sort of thing. “Hey, man,” Tony said. “Why don’t you head on home? I’ll keep an eye on things around here and stop over later.”

“There’s no way I’m going back to an empty apartment right now. I’m too pissed off to even get behind the wheel.” He kicked something away from under his feet. Tony’s eyes followed the small piece of wood as it skidded across the pavement, stopping next to the scorched remains of a window screen.

Tony studied the twisted screen. He walked over and picked it up. Rolling it over in his hands thoughtfully, he said, “Hey, Marsh, didn’t you help Jake put new screens up?”

Marshall looked up at him, his eyes red. “Yeah, last month. You know Jake—he never closed his windows so good screens were a must.”

“That’s it!” Tony said, his hands balled into fists. “Jake hated the feeling of being closed in.”  Tony was one of the few people who knew why.

“What the hell difference does that make?” Marshall asked.

Tony paused a second before he answered, piecing the puzzle together. “It means Jake’s death wasn’t an accident.”

Marshall’s head jerked to attention.

Tony paced back and forth in front of him, his New York accent creeping back. “Marsh, Jake hasn’t closed his windows in years. And if they were open, the gas from a leak woulda dissipated and the explosion woulda been a lot smaller. Somebody closed those windows. If it wasn’t Jake, who da hell was it?” Tony’s pace quickened. He was certain he was on to something.

Marshall frowned. His voice was choked. “Maybe it
was
Jake.”

Tony stopped mid-stride. “What?”

Marshall stared into the distance at nothing. “Jake was smart. Maybe he needed to make sure that the explosion would be big enough to do the job, big enough to kill him fast and sure.”

“What the hell are you talking about? Wait a minute, you’re saying—” Tony felt a cold chill creep up the back of his neck. “No way, man. You’re sayin’ Jake offed himself?”

Marshall let out a long, slow breath. “Because he was dying.”

Tony was stunned. He knew Jake was having some health issues again, but—

“He didn’t want us to know,” Marshall said, his voice soft. “I found out by accident during the earthquake at the hospital. Overheard a nurse say something to the MRI tech during all the confusion. Some sort of brain tumor.”

Tony’s shoulders sagged. “Jeez, Marsh, you shoulda at least told me. Maybe I coulda been there for him, talked him out it. Even a few months woulda been somethin’.”

“Tell me about it, man.” Marshall pressed his face into his hands. “I should’ve seen it coming. But I didn’t do a thing.”

Tony bridged the gap between them and squeezed Marshall’s shoulder. “It’s not your fault.”

An intermittent squeak from the wheels of the gurney drew Tony’s attention across the street. The coroner’s crew had returned with its grim cargo, the black body bag wiggling from side to side as the techs navigated across the rubble-strewn front lawn.

Tony and Marshall remained at the scene long after most of the emergency vehicles and personnel had left. Tony spent most of his time sifting through the debris in and around the apartment, making sure the Redondo PD bagged and tagged anything of importance that survived, including the remnants of Jake’s laptop. Marshall remained across the street among a growing crowd of friends and neighbors who had heard the news. 

Lacey from Sammy’s bar showed up and sat next to him.

The reality of Jake’s death was settling in.

Venice, Italy

F
rancesca pulled her suitcase across the cobblestoned alley. Small puddles from an afternoon shower gathered between the uneven stones. It had been a long trip home. 

As many times as she’d gone over it in her head, she was still confused about what had gone wrong with the American. Yes, they had a rocky start at the library, but everything seemed to be going fine the next day. She had felt his heart go out to the children when they talked about her research at the institute. She could sense his desire to help. At one point she was certain that he was seriously considering it. And then suddenly, as if he’d seen a ghost, his walls slammed shut and he left her sitting alone in the coffee shop, dumbfounded. 

She shook her head in frustration, pulling her suitcase over the final footbridge before reaching the alley that led to her home. A fifteen-foot-high wall blocked the end of the lane, much of its aging plaster missing, the rust-colored brick and mortar beneath exposed in an irregular patchwork. A tall arched oak door was recessed in the center of the wall. Embedded beside it was a worn marble plaque with an embossed bust of a bald man whose warm smile belied the stern set of his eyes. An engraved inscription beneath the figure read
Marco Fellini MDXCVI
.

She pushed through the heavy door and let out a contented sigh at the familiar musky aroma of jasmine. The flowering vines climbed the walls that surrounded the courtyard of her family’s ancestral home. The gentle lapping of the canal water in the boat garage reminded her of the countless mornings she spent with her father in his workshop as he polished and repaired his prized gondola and taught her his version of the ways of the world. 

  Hefting her suitcase, she trudged up the four-hundred-year-old stone steps leading to the front door of her home. 

The murmur of men’s voices brought a smile to her face. “Papa, I’m home!” 

Her father sat at the worn pine dining table with her smiling cousin Alberto, her uncle Vincenzo, and three of her father’s lifelong friends, Salvatore, Lorenzo, and Juliano. Except for her twenty-year-old cousin, whose cherubic face always seemed to blush when she was around, the men were all in their sixties. Alberto and two of the men were dressed in traditional gondolier garb—white and blue-striped jerseys with silk red scarves and matching waistbands. Their stitched straw hats were on the credenza behind them. Her father and uncle were in comfortable house clothes. Though they all gave her big smiles, they seemed to shift uneasily in their chairs when she entered the room. She was tempted to open her senses to them in order to get a hint of what mischief they were into but she resisted. Men needed their secrets. Besides, her father had long ago learned to shield himself from her talent. She couldn’t explain why it was so, but she’d encountered a number of people she couldn’t read. Her father was one of them.
Signor
Battista was another.

“Francesca! You’re back so soon?” Mario said. He stood and embraced her, holding her longer than usual.

Her father had been acting odd the past few weeks—anxious about something—and she still hadn’t gotten to the bottom of it. Even today, with his friends surrounding him, something wasn’t quite right. She pulled away and looked in his eyes for an answer. “Papa. What’s going on?”

He patted the sides of her shoulders with his callused hands. “Everything is fine, sweetheart. No need to worry. We’re just struggling over some proposed legislation that may affect our membership requirements. And, of course,
Carnevale
is only few days away.”