Текст книги "Known Devil"

Автор книги: Justin Gustainis

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

“I know a guy at the Times-Tribune,” I said. “He’s always pestering me for stories.”

“Then maybe you oughta give him one,” McGuire said.

“Yeah, I think I will.”

“I love the idea,” Karl said, “But we’re not gonna sink Slattery’s campaign with something like this.”

“No,” I said. “But maybe we can cause it to spring a leak or two.”

“Then what?” Karl asked.

“Then we’ll see,” I told him.

Karl and I went downstairs to pay Rachel a visit – the first time either of us had seen her since early in the morning, when Karl was still defying the laws of nature by being awake after sunrise.

The custodians had been waxing the floors at this level, and the smell of polish was strong as we walked toward the open door of Rachel’s office. We found her seated behind her desk, face buried in a big, old-looking book. Although an awful lot of written material has been turned into easy-to-read electrons these days, Rachel once explained to me that most of the old magical texts still only exist in paper form. When I’d asked why, she’d said, “Not enough of a market. The people with the skills don’t have the interest, and the people with the interest don’t usually have the skills. Besides,” she’d said with a light laugh, “there’s such a thing as tradition. Not to mention safety.”

“Safety?”

“Sure. I’d hate to be in the middle of a tricky conjuration and have the battery of my Kindle pick that precise moment to fail.”

Rachel looked up as we came in. I got a quick smile, but when she turned to look at Karl, the smile faded and her expression became unreadable.

As we approached, Karl said, “Hey, Rachel.”

Rachel nodded slowly. “Karl.” She pushed her desk chair back and stood up.

The witch and the vampire looked at each other for three or four seconds, before Rachel broke the silence. “I hardly know what to say, Karl. I’m certainly relieved to see you, although Stan called me as soon as he knew that you were back among the living. Well, not the living, but…”

“I know,” Karl said.

Rachel brushed a couple of stray hairs out of her face. “I just… I’m sorry that my skills let you down, Karl. If it’s any consolation, I spent most of today in gut-twisting uncertainty, until I heard you were OK.”

“It doesn’t make me feel better that you had a miserable day, Rachel,” Karl said gently. “Why would I want that? I’m not mad. You did the best you could with a brand-new spell – and, hey, the darn thing worked, didn’t it?”

“It worked, but less than perfectly,” she said.

Karl shrugged. “Perfection’s a pretty high standard. If everybody used that one, most of us would come up short. The spell did what it was supposed to – kept me going long enough to work a little Influence on Mister Slattery.”

“Yes, Stan said you had been successful, but didn’t go into detail. Maybe that part’s none of my business?”

“You’ve been with us through most of this mess,” I said to her. “No reason to keep you in the dark about the rest.”

I told her what Slattery had said, and briefly mentioned some of the possible implications we’d discussed with McGuire. When I was done she shook her head slowly. “Patton Wilson. I should’ve known.”

“We all should’ve,” I said. “But you know what they say about hindsight.”

“Yeah, looking out your ass is always 20/20,” she said. “Now that you know he’s the guiding hand behind all the recent hurly-burly, what are you going to do about it?”

“We’re still working on that,” Karl said.

“Rachel, I agree with Karl that we oughta be grateful the spell worked as well as it did,” I said. “But have you figured out why it didn’t last the whole day, like it was supposed to?”

“This is an area where actual data is scarce,” she said. “But I have a theory.”

“Theorize away,” I said.

“It comes down, in a word, to stress,” she said. “The spell was already putting considerable strain on Karl, since it had him going against his vampire nature by remaining conscious after sunrise. And then, on top of that, he’s confronted by that oaf with the crucifix.”

She turned to Karl with a grin. “Congratulations on the way you dealt with that, by the way. Strong work.” She stood up and stuck out her hand.

Karl’s grin was a mirror of her own as they shook. “Thanks – but nobody was more surprised than I was. I should call Doc Watson, let him know his therapy passed the acid test.”

“I’d like to talk with you about that sometime,” Rachel said. “The therapeutic process, I mean.” She turned back to me. “Facing that cross, especially in the assertive manner he did, must have put more strain on Karl than even his resilient vampire system could handle. So the spell was broken, and Karl instantly reverted to his natural – or, rather, supernatural – state.”

“I returned to life and found out that we still had the same problems as before,” Karl said. “The vampire gang war, the Patriot Party trying to take over, a bunch of Slide-addicted supes knocking over grocery stores…”

“That reminds me, Rachel,” I said. “You were looking into ways that magic might help with the Slide problem. Any luck yet?”

Rachel ran her hand over a face that looked like it would have benefited from a good night’s sleep. Of course, I was pretty sure you could’ve said the same about mine. The only one of us who’d had any rest lately was Karl, and his was involuntary.

“On that front, I can report good news and bad news,” she said. “Mostly bad.”

“I could use some good news right now, even a little,” I said. “So let’s start with that.”

“OK. Well, since Slide is a drug that affects only supernaturals, it is particularly susceptible to manipulation by magic. I’ve been able to develop a spell which neutralizes its effects. From what you’ve told me, there’s a hallucinogenic phase, followed by a wave of euphoria, right?

“That’s what the addicts say.”

“Well, I’ve been able to render the small samples you gave me into something that should cause nothing but a mild headache, which is nobody’s idea of fun.”

“Rachel, that’s fantastic!” I said

She made a face. “No, it’s not.”

Karl and I looked at each other, then he said to Rachel, “Sounds like there’s something here we don’t know about.”

“On the contrary,” Rachel said. “I’ve told you all there is to know about my experiments with the stuff. What you’re not getting is that my results have no practical value.”

I thought for a few moments, then told her, “I think I see where you’re going with this.”

“Well, I’m not too bright,” Karl said, “so I wish somebody would fucking explain it to me.”

“What I can do in my workroom doesn’t affect what’s going on out in the street, Karl,” Rachel said. “I can hardly expect the… dealers, pushers, whatever they’re called, to drop by so that I can render their product useless before they go out and sell it. From their perspective, it would be a pretty bad business decision, wouldn’t it?”

“Oh,” Karl said, followed a moment later by “Shit!”

“OK, it was worth a try,” I said. “Thanks for giving it a shot, Rachel. Guess we’ll have to deal with the Slide problem the old-fashioned way – by busting the dealers and trying to squeeze them into giving up their suppliers.”

“Except we can’t bust the fucking dealers,” Karl said, “cause the shit they’re selling isn’t even illegal – yet.”

“Well, yeah, there’s that,” I said.

“I sympathize with your plight, guys,” Rachel said, “and I only wish…” Rachel stopped speaking, and I saw that she had a faraway look in her eyes, like somebody who’s trying to think of three things at once. She dropped back into her chair, as if her knees had suddenly given way.

“Rachel? Are you alright?” I asked.

She didn’t reply for a few seconds. “Me? I’m fine – apart from being a total fucking idiot, that is. Leave that out, and I’m doing just great.”

I looked at Karl, and it was clear that he didn’t know what was going on, either.

“Sympathize,” Rachel said. “I told you that I sympathize with your plight.”

“Uh, yeah,” I said, just to be saying something.

“Sympathetic magic!” She slammed her small fists down on the desk’s polished surface. “That’s the fucking answer. Dear Goddess, I ought to have myself committed to an institution for the terminally stupid!”

“Rachel,” Karl said, it’d be good if you’d stop beating yourself up long enough to tell us what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“Alright, sure,” Rachel said. The distracted look on her face was gone, replaced with something that looked to me like triumph.

“You guys know what sympathetic magic is, right?” she asked.

“More or less,” I said. “You cast on a spell on some object that represents another object, or maybe a person. Kind of like voodoo dolls – stick a pin in the doll, and the person it represents feels a stabbing pain.”

“That’s essentially it,” Rachel said. “I don’t mess around with vodoun – a lot of it comes under the heading of black magic. But I know that for the spell to work, the doll must not only resemble the intended victim, but also has to contain something that was physically part of him – or her.”

“You mean like hair, fingernail clippings, stuff like that,” Karl said.

“Exactly,” Rachel said. Then she turned to me. “You told me earlier that you had some baggies of Slide left, Stan. Do you still?”

“Yeah, two of ’em – they’re in my desk,” I said. “Are you telling me that you can cast a spell on a few bags of Slide, and that will affect all of the shit, no matter where it is?”

“Not by myself, I can’t,” she said. “Something like that, you’d need a great deal of magical power to make it work – a lot more than I possess.” She grinned at us. “But I bet I know where I can get some help.”

“The local coven, you mean,” Karl said.

“Yep. Quite a few of my sister witches are as concerned as I am about what Slide has been doing to our town. I bet they’d jump at the chance to help render the stuff harmless.”

“I want to be sure I’m following you,” I said. “You think you can change Slide – all of it – into something that won’t be addictive to supes anymore?”

“I would think so, yes,” she said. “We’d be able to alter its molecular structure – always assuming we can make the spell work, that is. No guarantees in the Art, as you know.”

“I’m no expert on magic,” Karl said, “but that sounds fucking brilliant to me, Rachel. Way to go.”

She shook her head. “Congratulate me if I can–”

“Don’t say it, Rachel,” I told her. “Just… don’t.”

As we walked back to the squad room, I said to Karl, “I just had the beginning of an idea. I think I’m gonna send an email to an old buddy of mine.”

“It’s always good to keep in touch with your friends, I guess.”

“Well, we used to be friends – at the U, before I dropped out to join the cops. Turned out, this guy became a cop, too – even though he stuck around to get his degree first.”

“He’s on the force? What’s his name?” Karl asked.

“Ted Kowal – but he doesn’t live around here. After college, he moved to Philadelphia – I guess he’s got family down there. Spent a couple of years doing this and that, then he joined the Philly PD. He’s a Detective Second in their Organized Crime Unit, now. Or he was, last I heard from him.”

“If you wanna talk to the guy, why not just call him?”

“Unlike you and me, he works days.” I glanced at my watch. “He’s probably in bed by now.”

“OK, and you’re gonna reach out for this dude because why?”

“Two reasons. One is Teddy probably knows as much as anybody – on this side of the law, anyway – about the Delatasso Family.”

“The original one, you mean – that Ronnie D’s old man controls.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I don’t get it – you figure that by finding out about the old man, it’ll somehow help us deal with his kid up here?”

“Something like that.”

“You’re being mysterious again, Stan.”

“I prefer to think of it as enigmatic.”

Karl looked at me. “Reader’s Digest?”

“Yeah. The January issue, I think. Or maybe it was February.”

“I must’ve missed that one. So enigmatic is like mysterious, huh?”

“Yeah, more or less.”

After a few seconds, Karl said “Two.”

“Huh?”

“You said you had two reasons for getting in touch with this Kowal guy. What’s the other one?”

“Teddy owes me a favor – a big favor.”

I got through the rest of our shift by drinking enough coffee to float a battleship. Fortunately, it turned out to be a quiet night – too quiet, like they say in the movies. It was as if the whole city was holding its breath – waiting. That’s a worn-out cliché, I know. But sometimes even clichés are true. You could see the tension in the way people walked and held themselves, hear it in the way they snapped at each other over stuff that usually would get no more than a shrug.

When I got home it was still dark, but the birds in nearby trees were already chirping in anticipation of the sunrise. I checked my watch and estimated there was about half an hour until dawn.

Christine was sitting at the kitchen table, eyes focused on the screen of her laptop. When I walked in, she looked up at me, glanced down at the computer again, then did a double-take. Her welcoming smile quickly turned into a frown of concern.

“This may sound like pots and kettles coming from me, Daddy – but jeez, you look like death warmed over.”

“And only lightly warmed over, at that,” I said. I hung up my coat and went over to look in the fridge. “Oh, you got me some pineapple juice – thanks, sweetie.”

“No problem, she said. “Would you like me to make some coffee to go with it? We could hook up an IV drip and put the stuff directly into your bloodstream.”

“I’ve had more than enough coffee already,” I said. “Besides, I’m done fighting sleep. In a little while I’m getting into bed, and sleep and me, we’re gonna embrace like horny teenagers.”

“Fatigue seems to make you poetic,” she said. “Have you really been awake for two days straight?”

I sat down and had a big swallow of juice, closing my eyes in sheer pleasure as it slid down my throat. Getting my eyes back open took some effort. “Afraid so,” I said. “A couple of things I had going didn’t quite work out as planned.”

“Like what?”

Knowing there wasn’t much time until dawn, I ran it down for her as briefly as I could. Making myself focus was hard. It felt like my brain was swimming through a river of sludge.

When I’d finished, she said, “Holy shit,” and shook her head slowly. “Poor Karl. Poor you, for that matter.”

I lifted my shoulders in a shrug that took more effort than it should have. “It all worked out, eventually. Things are actually looking up, a little.”

“What Karl did with the cross, though – that’s just… fucking awesome. I can’t wait to talk to him about it.”

I gave her a crooked smile. “Guess you vampires aren’t the spawn of the devil, after all.”

“I never thought I was,” she said, smiling back as she shut down her laptop. “I’m the spawn of Detective Sergeant Stanley Markowski, who’s only devilish once in a while.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve got the beginnings of an idea that might take ‘devilish’ to a whole new level.”

“Really? I’d love to hear all about it.” She stood up, glancing toward the window. “But now it’s time all good vampires to go off to bed – and I’d say the same about one Detective Sergeant as well.”

“No argument from me,” I told her. “I’ll fill you in on the rest at breakfast.”

“I can hardly wait,” she said, then bent over to give me a kiss on the cheek. “Goodnight, Daddy. Sleep well.”

“I think that’s pretty much a sure thing,” I said. “’Night.”

I set my alarm twice that day. The first time was for 11.00am so that I could put in a call to Ted Kowal in Philadelphia. Fortunately, I caught him at his desk in the Organized Crime Unit, and it didn’t take much persuasion for him to agree to what I wanted.

“Alright, Stan – I’ll send it to you as a Word doc attachment before I go off shift,” he said. “You sure you want me to use your personal email address for this?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “Christine nagged me into upgrading our home computer setup, so I’ve got a pretty good printer here.”

“Uh-huh. And I suppose once I’ve sent it, you want me to delete the message from my ‘Sent Mail’ file, and then get amnesia about this whole conversation.”

“Exactly. You’re a pretty smart guy, Teddy,” I said. “Makes me glad the Pittston cops never found out about that time in high school when you–”

“Oh, go fuck yourself, Stan.”

“I tried that once – threw out my back something awful.”

I reset the alarm clock for half an hour before sunset and went back to sleep. If I’d known what was waiting for me, I would’ve just stayed awake, exhaustion be damned.

I was chasing Patton Wilson, who looked the same as the last time I’d seen him – iron-gray hair, tan, slim build. He ran pretty damn well, too, for somebody in his sixties. I pursued the bastard all over Scranton, but it was a Scranton without people except the two of us – deserted streets, abandoned cars, all the buildings silent and dark. There were storm clouds above us with big, dark thunderheads. I was kind of amazed at my ability to keep up with Wilson for so long, but also frustrated because I wasn’t gaining on him. He stayed about fifty feet ahead of me. He couldn’t seem to find the speed to pull away, but I wasn’t closing the gap, either. Fifty feet between us, all over town. Then Wilson started taunting me, throwing words back over his shoulder like mud balls.

“You’ll never catch me, Markowski! You’re too old, too slow, and too stupid!”

“I almost got your ass last time, in that warehouse!” I yelled. As devastating retorts go, it left a lot to be desired.

“Close only counts in horseshoes, you Polack cocksucker!”

I’d read that Wilson had gone to some fancy college years ago. Harvard, Dartmouth, one of those places. Apparently it hadn’t helped him develop a refined vocabulary.

“Know why you’ll lose, Markowski? Rules! You have to follow all those stupid cop rules, and I don’t. I do what I want, when I want, to whom I want.”

At least, he’d known enough to use “whom”. A point for the psychopath. It occurred to me that Wilson was starting to sound like a James Bond villain, and I wished Karl was here to see it – he gets a kick out of that stuff.

He was right about the rules, though – damn his rich, crazy ass. But I was finally starting to run out of steam, and my lungs were burning. I’d have to stop soon, and Wilson would get clean away and finish his plans to get control of my city. One of the rules cops have to follow is that you can’t shoot a fleeing suspect, if he’s unarmed. You’re supposed to catch and subdue him “using nonlethal means,” as the manual puts it.

Well, fuck the manual – and fuck the rules, too. I reached under my jacket to draw the Beretta from my hip holster. And the holster was empty.

Ahead, Wilson came to a sudden stop and whirled to face me. He was holding my gun. “This what you’re looking for?” he said with a smirk. “Then, by all means, let me return it to you – one bullet at a time.”

He cocked the weapon and aimed it right in the middle of my face. His expression said, “I win again, sucker. I always win.” Then he squeezed the trigger.

The alarm woke me up before I had the chance to die.

I sat on the edge of the bed for a few minutes, trying to shake what was left of that fucking dream out of my brain. Then I got up and checked my email. Teddy hadn’t let me down. The document attached to his message was exactly what I’d asked him for, and I started printing it – all ninety-four pages’ worth.

Over breakfast, I told Christine about the plan to pass on the news about Phil Slattery’s verbal indiscretion to the Times-Tribune.

“That ought to have him spitting blood over his morning paper,” she said.

“I hope so,” I said. “Karl really wants to be the one to do it – maybe I should let him.”

“Why’s he so eager?”

“He thinks if he leaks the story, he can get the paper to refer to him as ‘Deep Fang’.”

She chuckled, then took a sip from her cup of Type O. “Deep Fang – if that isn’t the name of some porno film, it should be.”

“What do you know about porno films?” Sometimes it’s hard to stop being a parent.

“Me?” She touched the fingertips of one hand to her chest, like some Southern belle in the movies. “I don’t know a blessed thing about such matters, Daddy. I’m as pure as the virgin snow.” She gave me a wicked grin. “Or I was – until I drifted.”

I decided this wasn’t a topic I wanted to explore with my daughter, so I said, “Well, Slattery drifted, too – with some help from Karl.”

“Think he’s likely to drift far enough to sink his own flotilla?”

“Flotilla?”

She shrugged. “Just preserving the metaphor.”

“No, that won’t sink him – not all by itself,” I said. “Fortunately, I have only begun to fuck with him.”

“Good one, John Paul Jones,” she said. “Are those the devilish doings you referred to last night?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Tell me,” she said.

So I did. It took quite a while.

When I was done, she sat there and looked at me for several seconds. “I knew you could be a tough son of a bitch, Sergeant – you have to be, in your job. But this kind of ruthlessness is something I haven’t seen in you before. I’m not sure I like it.”

“Yeah, well, extraordinary times demand extraordinary measures. Somebody said that once, although I forget who.”

“No, don’t hide behind clichés. That’s for cheap politicians – and whatever else you are, you’re no cheap politician.”

“What do you want me to say? That I’m happy about it? That I rubbed my hands together and cackled fiendishly when the idea came to me, like some fucking mad scientist in the movies?”

She shook her head slowly. “I know you better than that. It’s just that…”

“What?”

“I don’t get to look myself in the mirror anymore,” she said. “But you do – every damn day. Question is, will you still be able to do that, after this shit you’re talking about goes down? Always assuming you can make it work, that is.”

I rubbed one hand over my face, slowly. “I don’t know, honey. I really don’t. But I do know this much – I won’t be able to look myself in the mirror again if I let this city go right down the fucking tubes, without doing everything I can to stop it. And I mean everything.”

The mug she’d been drinking from had left circles of moisture on the table. She traced each one with her fingertip slowly, as if she had all the time in the world. Then she looked up and said, “Well, if that’s the way it is, Sergeant, then all I can say is – get out there and kick some fucking ass.”

This time, I was the one who’d suggested the Brass Shield Bar and Grill as a meeting place. My motivation was basically the same one that had brought Louis Loquasto here the first time – safety, but a different kind of safety. Before, Loquasto had wanted to be close to all these off-duty cops as protection against the Delatassos’ bombs and bullets. Now, I wanted to be seen talking to him in here, because nobody in his right mind would even think about engaging in a criminal conspiracy while surrounded by all these guys wearing badges. At least, that’s what I planned to say to Internal Affairs, if it ever came to that – and it might.

We’d agreed to meet at eight o’clock, an hour before my shift was due to start. I figured that would be plenty of time – after all, how long does it really take to light a fuse?

The consigliere was punctual, sliding into the booth just as the clock over the bar reached the top of the hour. The room was full of the buzz of about two dozen half-drunk cops having what passed for conversation; I had to lean forward so he could hear me, and maybe that was just as well. I nodded toward the glass resting on his side of the table. “I ordered you a bourbon on the rocks, like you had last time. Don’t drink it if you don’t want to – it’s just for show.”

“Just as well,” Loquasto said. He had to lean forward as well. We’d look like conspirators, except every other booth in the room featured the same thing. “As I recall, it isn’t very good bourbon.”

“I guess most cops don’t have your refined taste in booze.”

He raised an eyebrow at me. “I hope you had in mind something more interesting to talk about than your tiresome class envy.”

“Yeah, I did, actually,” I said. “How’s the war with the Delatassos going?”

“We’ve taken some losses recently, but it’s not over yet. I have no doubt that Mister Calabrese will ultimately prevail.”

He was both a Mafia consigliere and a lawyer, so I couldn’t tell that he was lying – even though I knew he was. Word on the street was that the Calabrese Family – what was left of it – was hunkered down in defensive positions, driven off their turf by the Delatassos’ car bombs and superior firepower.

“What would you say,” I asked him, “if I told you there was a way for your boss to get the Delatassos out of Scranton and out of his face – for good – in just a few days?”

He looked at me for a second or two, then picked up the glass of mediocre bourbon and drained it in two swallows.

“I would say, ‘Tell me more,’ naturally.”

“It involves more work for your pet shark, John Wesley Harding,” I said.

“I have no idea to whom you’re referring ,” he said. Loquasto was not only an expert liar but a grammar maven, too. “But do continue, if you wish.”

“You know that Ronnie Delatasso is trying to take over in Scranton because he’s probably never gonna head the main branch of the family down in Philly – his old man being undead and all.”

“I believe I was the one who conveyed that information to you, Sergeant.”

“I’m just trying to set the stage,” I said. “OK, Delatasso Senior is undead – but that’s not necessarily a synonym for ‘immortal’, as the number of vampires who have died in this town recently should demonstrate.”

“Yes, I was aware of that very basic fact,” Loquasto said. “Were you planning to tell me anything that I don’t already know?”

“I was just going to point out to you that if something should happen to his old man, Ronnie would probably pull up stakes here – no pun intended – and go back home to take over the family business. He’s the only son, right?”

“Yes.” Loquasto chewed his lower lip for a moment. “But if you’re suggesting that some hypothetical ‘pet shark’ of ours should be sent to Philadelphia on a mission to assassinate Charles Delatasso, you’re wasting your time – and mine.”

“Why’s that?”

“If we did have some Boston hit man on retainer, I would be fairly certain that he’s never worked in Philadelphia before.”

“And that would be a major problem?” I already knew the answer to that question, but I wanted Loquasto to say it himself.

“Of course.” He made an impatient gesture with one hand. “A man like Delatasso is going to be well protected. If there is a gap in his personal security, even a local professional could take weeks finding it. As for someone coming in from out of town, who’s unfamiliar with both the city and its criminal element…” Loquasto’s thin lips pursed for a second before turning down at the corners in a frown. “Let’s say that the talents of such a man would be better employed… elsewhere.”

“Good as Harding is, he hasn’t been able to stop the Delatassos from kicking your asses so far.”

“I would dispute your characterization of asses being kicked, as you so elegantly put it,” Loquasto said. “Besides, as I told you, it’s not over yet.”

“But you agree that if Charlie Delatasso was to run into the business end of a wooden stake tomorrow, your troubles would be over.”

“In theory, perhaps. But I find wishful thinking a waste of time and mental energy, Sergeant.”

“Yeah, me, too,” I said. “I don’t figure it would come as a surprise to you that the Philadelphia cops have been keeping the Delatasso family under surveillance for years, waiting for the Don to make a mistake so they can put him away.”

“As you say, not much of a surprise.” Loquasto maintained his poker face, but I was close enough to see the pupils of his eyes contract, which meant that I’d finally said something that interested him.

“What if this guy you never heard of, John Wesley Harding, got his hands on the Philly Organized Crime Unit’s file on Delatasso? A file that lays out where the Don spends the day, the places where he does business, and the guys he hangs out with – including names, addresses, phone numbers, and even photos of Delatasso and his ‘business associates’?”

Loquasto sat back in the booth and looked at me for a few seconds. “I’d say that kind of information would be of… considerable interest.”

“There’s one thing you were wrong about, earlier, Counselor.”

I got the raised eyebrow treatment again. “Indeed?”

“Delatasso Senior’s got bodyguards, sure, both for daytime and at night – but only a few, and they’re not what you might call high-quality guys.”

“Is that right?”

“Uh-huh. It’s been more than ten years since anybody made a serious move against Delatasso. He’s been top dog down there for so long, he’s grown complacent. And so has his security.”

“And you reached this conclusion how, exactly?”

“By reading the OCU’s file – the one I told you about.”

“I see.” Loquasto stared into his empty glass as if it were a crystal ball. Then he looked up. “I believe I’ll have another drink,” he said. “Can I get you anything?”

“No, I’m good, thanks.” I figured Loquasto wanted another shot of that bourbon about as much as I wanted another hemorrhoid, but if the guy wanted some time to think, I was happy to give it to him.

The service in the Brass Shield isn’t what you might call speedy, so it was almost five minutes before Loquasto returned with his fresh drink.

He sat down, took a sip, and grimaced slightly at the taste. Then he leaned forward. “Alright, Markowski – what do you want?”

“Two things,” I said. “One of them is information.”

“Concerning?”

“Patton Wilson.”

Loquasto’s eyes narrowed. “That rich fool who was behind all the ‘helter-skelter’ nonsense last year? What about him?”

“I want to know where he is.”

“Somewhere in Australia, the last I heard.”

“Then your information is out of date. He’s here.”

Loquasto blinked a couple of times. “Here?”

“In Scranton. Or close by.”

“What’s the source of your information?” he said quickly.

“Sorry, that’s confidential,” I said. “But it’s reliable.” I didn’t want to have to explain that I was working from deduction here, rather than cold fact. I wanted results from Loquasto, not an argument. Anyway, a guy named William of Occam once wrote something along the lines of “The simplest explanation that fits the known facts is probably true.” And there was only one thing that made sense out of the chaos I’d been dealing with – Patton Wilson was back.