The Frenzy War (5 page)

Deidre shook her head.

Soares glanced at Willy before returning his gaze to the frantic woman. “You need to be home in case anyone tries to contact you about a ransom. Where do you live?”

“B-Buh-Bensonhurst …”

“My partner and I will take you home. We need to stay there with some police officers.”

“Gabriel?”

Gabriel made a shushing sound. “It's all right, Deidre. Go with them and cooperate any way you can. I'll send someone to keep you company soon. Does Marshal know?”

She nodded, tears in her eyes. “He's waiting to hear from me. I said I'd call—”

“I'll call him. Don't worry about that.”

“Is my baby going to be okay?” Deidre crumpled in his arms.

He held her. “I'm sure she is. You have to be strong for her sake.”

Soares called across the store, “Cato, let's go!”

Cato left Suzie, Karol, and Raphael at the office door. He followed Soares and Deidre out the door, and Gabriel watched them leave.

“What kind of girl is Rhonda?” Willy said to Gabriel.

“She's a daydreamer. If I remember correctly, she likes to write poetry.”

Karol returned with Raphael.

“The office was raided,” Raphael said. “They took the recorder but didn't touch the safe.”

Gabriel's expression turned grim.

“I'm afraid your store's going to be closed for a couple of days,” Willy said.

“That's not important.”

“I don't want to kick you out of your own business, but we need to prevent contamination of evidence.”

“I understand. What will you be doing?”

Gabriel's really used to running things.
“For one thing, we need to notify Jason's parents.”

M
ichael pressed his thumb against the button on the remote control, and the chain-link gates hummed as they parted. He drove through the gates and pressed the button again, then entered the compound of dirty brick buildings. The van passed through a short tunnel and emerged into a cratered parking lot. The only vehicles, invisible to the road outside, belonged to him and his companions: vans and SUVs.

The crumbling warehouse in Newark, New Jersey, had come cheap, thanks to the teetering economy. They had paid the landlord under the table and convinced him they only wanted to lock up the lease until they were able to raise the money needed for renovation. The man had been happy to take the cash for property he had been unable to rent.

Michael backed the van up to the concrete loading bay platform and switched off the ignition. “There's no place
like home,” he said, a joke he doubted his colleagues would grasp. Michael loved American movies and had watched them voraciously, even during his training to become a member of the Brotherhood of Torquemada. He could recite the names of movie stars, the years movies were released, and behind-the-scenes gossip if only he knew someone who shared his interest. But he had no friends beyond his soldiers in arms, and he accepted that such sacrifice was a small price to pay to serve in the Brotherhood. “Everybody out.”

Eun opened the side door and hopped out at the same time Michael and Angelo did. They climbed the five concrete steps as Henri, Myles, and Valeria unloaded the sofa from the rear of the van. Michael inserted a key into a box mounted next to the loading bay door and turned it. The metal door ground open, revealing an interior as gray as the sky above. Henri, Angelo, Myles, and Eun pushed the sofa into the bay.

“Do you want me to move the van?” Valeria said.

“No need,” Michael said. “This is as good a place as any for it.”

She locked the doors and joined the others inside, and Michael twisted the key again and ducked beneath the door as it rattled shut.

Inside, Eun removed the cushions from the sofa and tossed them aside. Their captive lay motionless within the black body bag upon the sofa's interior base. Eun unzipped the bag, exposing the unconscious female, her wrists and ankles chained together.

Eun spat on the floor. “I wish we could kill her now.”

Michael removed his coat. “That would defeat the whole purpose of our mission today. We're after intelligence.”

Henri pulled off his knit hat, revealing his gleaming head. “Let's put her away while she's still down. I don't want to take any chances.”

Angelo, Henri, and Myles lifted their captive from the sofa and carried her in the body bag to the wide metal door that Michael unlocked. Eun and Valeria followed, and Michael brought up the rear. After Valeria flicked on the lights, Michael closed and locked the door.

Inside the warehouse, the men laid their captive across a wide wooden dolly, and Angelo set his large hands on the push handle and walked it forward.

“Are you telling Tudoro we completed the first phase?” Henri said as they crossed the ground floor of the warehouse.

“No,” Michael said. “I want complete communication silence. He'll follow the news.”

Father Tudoro had been instrumental in recruiting all of the Brotherhood members at early ages. He and the monsignor he answered to were the Brotherhood's primary representatives in the Vatican. Michael knew that perhaps a dozen powerful men controlled the organization in secret. The identities of the others—European socialites who ran in powerful circles, mid-level politicians, and members of the intelligence communities—were kept a secret from the soldiers for security reasons. These high commanders determined the Brotherhood's strategy. If Tudoro died, none of the soldiers could identify the men above them and would have to wait for a new liaison to contact them. At thirty-five, Michael was the oldest soldier and had earned the right to
lead the others into battle.

They boarded a freight elevator and descended to the basement level. Angelo pushed the dolly through the dank lower corridor along gray cinder-block walls. He stopped at an open door, and Henri and Myles helped him carry the female into the room. Michael stood at the one-way viewing window they had installed and watched the men lower the female onto the floor. Then they lifted her out of the body bag and positioned her in one corner on a bed of straw.

Michael glanced at Valeria beside him. “Remove her clothes.”

She cocked an eyebrow.

“Animals don't need garments. She's mocking us.”

Valeria walked into the cell and whispered to Eun. They kneeled on the floor and used knives to strip the female naked. Then they secured manacles attached to chains bolted into the walls to her ankles and wrists and stood back. Using a key, Henri removed the chains they had attached to her in the bookstore, and Eun fastened a collar around the unconscious girl's neck.

Michael had been surprised when Tudoro had introduced women into the Brotherhood, but Eun had proven herself to be a fierce warrior and Valeria's commitment was unwavering. Looking at Valeria's long black hair, streaked blonde, he had no trouble imagining the curves of her body beneath the coat. He frowned on fraternization within the group but knew that sex provided an important physical and emotional release. As the leader, he felt it would be unseemly for him to indulge in physical pleasure with his subordinates.

The soldiers filed out of the cell, and Angelo slammed the steel door shut with a reverberating clang and slid its iron bolt lock into place.

“What now?” Valeria said.

“We wait for her to wake up,” Michael said.

With Karol standing beside him, Willy watched the EMT workers transport Jason Lourdes's bagged body on a gurney to the EMS truck double-parked before the store. The crowd of spectators had swelled, and scattered cameras flashed. He recognized beat reporters, freelance photographers, and news crew members, all of them performing their jobs with detached professionalism.

They don't have a clue,
he thought. “You want to drive?”

“Sure, why not?” Karol said.

Ducking beneath the crime scene tape, they made their way through the crowd, dodging microphones thrust in their faces. Once they had cleared the gauntlet, Willy said, “I don't need this bag of shit now.”

“You think you don't have to work major cases while you're waiting for your promotion to come through?”

“Depending on what this turns out to be, there might not
be
a promotion.”

“Why's that?”

“Nothing derails a career like a hot case. Tony Mace was at the top of his game two years ago, all set to move up, and then me and Patty caught Terrence Glenzer's murder. Now Patty's dead and Tony's scooping up K-9 shit.”

“You and Patty caught the case. Not Mace. I'm sorry
like hell for what happened to her, but being on that case didn't prevent you from getting promoted.”

“We don't really know that, do we?”

“You think the department froze all promotions to keep you down?”

“Nah, but with the freeze in place, the brass didn't have to worry about me. They put Tony in charge of that mess, and when he didn't deliver, they sent him to obedience school. And then every one of them took a fall. Me and Landry are the only ones who didn't get hurt, and that's because Tony protected us by keeping us out of things at the end.”

Karol circled the car. “You don't think there's a connection between this case and that one, do you?”

Willy looked around the sidewalk, then got into the car and waited for Karol to do the same. “We got a DOA with his head cut off, possibly by a sword. The Manhattan Werewolf case involved a sword—”

“A
broken
sword.”

“The other half of that sword's blade was used to kill a man in Central Park. The perp didn't need both halves to make his point.”

“What happened to the pieces?”

“Some bigwig in Rome claimed them.”

“So they're not even in the country.”

“Angela Domini witnessed the murder of an upstate tribal cop named John Stalk. Tony witnessed that murder too.”

“What did he see?”

“He won't say.”

“So far, I'm not seeing a pattern.”

“That bookstore carried Terrence Glenzer's self-published
book about American Indian legends, including several about werewolves. Did I ever tell you what Patty looked like when the Manhattan Werewolf finished with her? What all of the vics looked like? They were torn to pieces. I mean that literally: bones and all.”

“I've seen some TV documentaries. So, you think the perp
was
a werewolf?”

He looked into her eyes. “This isn't for any reports, okay? This is between partners. Between us. I seen a lot in Homicide but nothing like those DOAs. No fucking human being did those jobs.”

Karol raised her hands. “Hey, I don't know what to say. You're going to believe what you're going to believe. But I do know Jason Lourdes wasn't killed by a werewolf. Why would a werewolf use a sword?”

“I don't know. I'm just telling you that case was cursed from day one, and my gut tells me to watch our step on this one, or we'll both be joining Tony at the dog pound.”

Riding beside Raphael in the backseat of the same taxi that had brought them to the bookstore, Gabriel found his mind racing in several directions at once, resulting in confusion. Micah, the driver, belonged to the Greater Pack of New York City, so Gabriel felt free to speak his mind.

“A sword,” Raphael said. “Not just any sword, either, I bet. The Blade of Salvation.”

“We don't know that.”

“The hell we don't. The Brotherhood of Torquemada is in this country, and they've found us. Somehow they
learned we use the store as a beacon, and they moved on it.”

“What matters right now is that Rhonda's missing.”

“They'll use her against us. Make her give up our names.”

“You keep saying ‘they.' The Brotherhood sent only one assassin to face Julian.” Julian Fortier, who had used the alias Janus Farel, had terrorized the city two years earlier. A former member of the pack, he had turned rogue after a hunter killed his mate. Gabriel, Raphael, and Angela had been his childhood friends.