Читать книгу Angel of Death - Christian Russell - Страница 5

CHAPTER ONE

Monday, October 12

Mark Du Nancy started his day in a cranky mood. The previous evening, due to consistent efforts and despite his reconciling attitude, Cathy had finally managed to start the usual daily conjugal fight. Actually, it had been more of a soliloquy. Mustering his last strength he had managed to send Tommy to bed and then, for almost an hour, he had listened to the usual sermon. Again he had been told he was a worm, an ungrateful sonofabitch, while she was the benefactress who had pulled him out of the dump. When the reprimand had finished, Mark had felt more tired than after an hour of iron pumping.

He had slipped outside quietly, like a shadow, heading to the small park nearby. There, sitting on a bench, breathing in the cold October evening air, he had wondered where his old Cathy was. The Cathy who used to push his wheel chair impatiently along the alleys of Bellevue Hospital.

He tried to imagine what his life would have been like if it hadn’t been for that stupid car accident, in the spring of 1988, which had prevented him from ever playing hockey again, but brought Cathy, his future wife, into his life as a compensation.

Despite the noble particle in his name, Mark came from a family of La Crosse poor farmers. Since early childhood he had liked hockey and given it a lot of practice. When the Sioux Falls people had offered him a college grant on condition that he played for them, he had felt like he had had the devil’s own luck. Only with a hundred bucks in his pocket, he had got on the first Grayhound to South Dakota. A smart boy, he had stood out due to his academic results but especially as an undisputed star and goal getter of the hockey team.

He had been playing so well that the Winnipeg scouts noticed him and offered him an NHL four-season contract with the Jets after he graduated from college. He had only spent a season in Canada for in 1986 the NY Rangers managers had bought his contract, bringing him to the city he had always thought to be the capital of the world.

With the Rangers his talent had simply bloomed. Playing as a left forward he had managed to score sixty-eight goals in two seasons. And everything had climaxed that day in 1988 when he had been picked to play in the All-Star Game. Unfortunately, his manager had proven quite inapt. If now, on the same team, Gretzky was making six million dollars a season, Mark had made only $300,000 in two seasons at the NY Rangers.

Then, a few weeks after the game of his life, the car crash took place. With backbone lesions and both legs broken,Mark had listened almost in a state of shock to the doctors’ gloomy prognosis: a fifty per cent chance that he would ever be able to walk again. His strong will had managed to turn it to the best account after four months of wheeling around in a chair. Playing hockey was out of the question, though. It was there, in the hospital, that he had met Cathy Ravelli. The newspaper lady had come to do a story on the sad fate of a talented hockey player. They had fallen for each other. Then the woman had prolonged the interview using as a pretext a new set of questions every time she visited him. Slowly a love affair came to life.

The story had been printed weeks before but she kept on coming and he enjoyed her visits. Mark had believed he had seen sensitivity and delicacy in Miss Ravelli. Today he was wondering whether those qualities had really existed outside his own mind. Two months after his discharge they got married. With the hockey money Mark had managed to build himself a big house and furnish it properly.

In their first year of marriage everything had been OK. Peace and harmony. In the next few months, however, things had grown worse and he had found his wife to be a very cold practical woman. Had Cathy really changed or had she just taken off the mask she had been wearing? After several years of dull marriage little Tommy was born. And a very good child he was. To him had Mark transferred his entire affection. His wife’s defects hadn’t seemed that important to him any longer.

In 1989, Julius Beck, an FBI hot shot who had admired his hockey skills, had asked him whether he was interested in a job with the Bureau. And Mark, whose life was far from offering him too many opportunities, had gone for it full speed.

The time spent at Quantico had brought him and his wife further apart. Almost imperceptibly he had begun seeking comfort in other beds, more and more often. His charm and the remains of his lingering fame had opened the door to many bedrooms.

Professionally, he had devoted himself to fighting city crime. He had fretted with enthusiasm. He dreamed of locking up all the criminals in the States. But little by little, his eagerness had lessened and been replaced by mere routine. At this stage, life to Mark was neither a holiday nor a mourning day, it was simply a working one. A working life whose routine didn’t bore him yet but managed to take away some of that joie de vivre characteristic of the first years in the FBI. Meanwhile too many curs had pissed on his ideals. But he had decided to stick to his road, resigned to know that there was no better world.

Mark didn’t have a playful spirit. Whenever there was a promotion in sight, a “fat bone” as they called it in the department, he hesitated as if he had just run into some relics. He let the more ambitious ones grab it. Besides, he had systematically refused to get his degree in law. Which meant he would never get to be a SAC: special agent coordinator.

He was, however, one of the most gifted federal agents and Beck was well aware of that. 1997 had been a difficult year for Mark who had taken up drinking and still hadn’t lost his job. And that because even at such moments he had proven very effective, and Beck was a practical man. For almost a year now he had broken up with Daniel’s and hadn’t touched liquor ever since. Sometimes he missed that inferno and would have been extremely interested in a short visit. Only he knew it was completely out of the question.

Such a visit would have meant falling back into that abyss forever and Mark liked to think he was powerful. Now everything was fine at work but his marriage was awful. He would have to make a decision as soon as possible.

He went inside. The light in their bedroom was out. He lay down on the sofa and fell asleep thinking of his next step: an honest discussion with Cathy about getting a divorce.

* * * * * * *

The same thought was on his mind the following morning while he was heading for the office. The FBI department on Church Avenue in Kensington where Mark was working now had opened three years before. It belonged to the NIFO, the FBI field department in New York, and was the second largest in the city. His boss, SAC Julius Beck, also known as ‘The Mogul,’ was a black man who had climbed all the steps in the Bureau hierarchy. He had even run for the job of head of the Security Department. In the Brooklyn department he had almost two hundred agents under his command.

His trump cards were his strictness and severity. Few could brag about ever seeing him laugh. There was even a story that went about the department according to which, while at a party, he had once told a joke to a secretary. Yet nobody had been able to trace that secretary.

Beck had no family. He had dedicated his entire life to his career. He was a tough guy and never called his co-workers by their first names. In college, he had shared a room with Will Bratton, head of the NYPD, and they had remained friends ever since. ‘The Mogul’ was very keen on his habits the way most bachelors are. Twice a week, on Tuesday and Friday, he went to Harlem and had dinner at Sylvia’s.

While heading for the office Mark kept running into the “young wolves.” They rushed up and down the steps and along the corridors giving off an air of vitality and exuberance. They were heartless to the ones they investigated but turned rapidly into yes-men in front of their bosses. In ten or fifteen years, Mark thought bitterly, most of them would be calling for a premature heart attack while scheming to hit their bosses from behind.

The office of the D2 squad whose head was Mark was downstairs, halfway down the hallway. D2 was also called the “international squad” due to its heterogeneous makeup. They were all American citizens but had their origins in various corners of the world. D2 was made up of a Jew—Arty Steimberg, a Greek—Sean Paulardis, a Pole—Dumpy Kulikovski, a Frenchman—Mark Du Nancy, and the Irish Mary O’Gavin from Poplar Bluff, nicknamed ‘Miss Bluff.’ The squad dealt mainly with serial killers but in quiet times they received various other assignments.

When Mark entered the room Paulardis, Steimberg and the woman greeted him. Kulikovski was on vacation, in Hawaii, and would not return until Wednesday. As usual, Sean was making passes at the young female agent.

“Come on, Mary, say you’ll join me to the Halloween ball.”

“No, Sean. I’ve told you before. My immune system has already produced antibodies to the idea. If I have to, I’ll ask the Mayor to display my refusal on a board in Time Square. I’ve already accepted Kurren’s invitation.”

“Who? That moron who tripped over a drug dealer and busted him?”

“Yes, man,” Steimberg broke in, “only that busting made the headlines. Kurren’s a star now!”

“Of course,” Paulardis agreed, “and Mary won’t go out with a nobody like myself. She only goes out with hot shots. But mind you: one of these days my name will make the front page too.”

“I don’t doubt it for a moment,” Mary said, “but that’ll happen only when scientists discover you’re the missing link in the chain of evolution.”

Mark was already feeling better. They were all his team and he knew he could rely on them at any time. He knew what each of them was worth and they would jump off a bridge if he asked them to.

He had picked Sean Paulardis during a raid in the Bronx. He belonged to a motorcycle gang. Mark had personally convinced ‘The Mogul’ to send him to Quantico. He was a dark, medium-size guy, extremely well-built and agile.

When he had first laid eye on him, Mark had compared him to a mustang colting around in the prairie. He is young and hungry, he had said to himself, and these are important things. His attention had also been drawn by the fact that Sean had been in the Navy SEALS. For a five-foot tall guy like Paulardis to be in the elite unit of the U.S. Navy was not a common thing. Mark had found out soon that Sean had finished BUDS top of the list and that he was an excellent marksman, probably better than any other in the NYFO. That had been his best argument to Beck. For during the preliminary theoretical tests, the Greek’s paper had by far been the worst. And very saucy too. It contained only two correct answers: his first name and his last. That was all, for under the third heading, “Sex,” he had written “six or seven times a week.”

At the physical tests and the target shooting he had ranged way above the others. Sometimes Mark called him Epaulard because of the way he entered a room during a raid. Actually his nickname in the department was ‘cowboy.’ And he did look like a modern cowboy. No matter the season, he always wore navy blue clothes and the indispensable navy blue cowboy hat which he only gave up four or five days a year when the heat was unbearable.

He dressed like the Wild West men and tried to mimic their phlegmatic speech; sometimes he could be very rude, though. Once in a while he would take his guitar from the locker and sing some nice old country songs with his beautiful bass voice. His idol was Johnny Cash whom he worshipped. He didn’t dare copy his dress style which is why he had replaced the black with the navy blue. Sean was an ingenious tough guy who knew all the tricks he needed to survive and Mark was glad he wasn’t on the wrong side of the road, where he had found him.

To Paulardis everything was a joke. Even his own life. He was more like the white version of Cassius Clay. He insisted that in the dictionary his picture be placed next to the word ‘virility.’ He was a sworn bachelor and famous for it. He would say he’d rather make more women happy than a single one miserable. At home he kept an amulet to protect him against getting married. It was a picture showing his Uncle Demetrios with an apron on and a sink full of dirty dishes in front of him. Sean looked like a big baby whose much delayed maturity lingered like some chronic disease. He owned a ’63 Corvette, a Zippo lighter, and said he only needed a Harley Davidson to feel truly American. Like a drug addict, Sean needed to feel heavy adrenaline discharges in his blood. And he got them driving his car at 130 mph or bungee jumping from one of the East River bridges.

He was an excellent man of action although his methods weren’t exactly orthodox. The Bronx gangs were made up of really tough young men. Paulardis had been one of their leaders. His tendency to react violently had been polished, however, first by the SEALS, then at Quantico, through the various Taekwondo techniques. That was why he was one of the few agents who could deal, empty-handed sometimes, with several attackers at the same time.

Arty Steimberg, the skinny Jew, looked like a typical austere person, always fearful and discontent, always doubting his abilities. Generations before, his forefathers had learned about the inscription on the Statue of Liberty and had taken it for granted. They had packed their hopes and sufferings and came here for a piece of the great American dream. From them, Arty had inherited enough fear and insecurity to feel lonely in a city where yet other two million Jews lived. Steimberg was a natural born activist, one of Yehudah Levin’s assistants in the Jews for Morality Association.

As a teenager he had worked as a secretary for Simon Wiesenthal. Maybe his countenance, often morose and disgusted, came exactly from the terrible things that had filled his mind back then. Whenever Mark tried to soothe him he would say, “I’m a Jew, man! I know what nails and thorn wreaths are for.” A series of Jewish publications from all over the country had appointed him their correspondent in New York.

Despite his protesting armor, he was in fact a very shy man. The lampoonist’s aggressiveness was meant to conceal the self-consciousness and disappointment of a man who had dreamed himself a fighter pilot as a child and now used the plastic bags on the plane every time he flew. When he was sad, Arty had a baroque way of expressing himself. More than once during their assignments he had proven a power of anticipation the others failed to grasp. “I can simply smell danger in the air,” he joked about it. His passion for computers had made him the squad’s specialist.

Steimberg and Paulardis lived in a strange symbiosis. Sean spared Arty the violent part of the job, often taking over his share while the other always held an extra set of ideas available. Other than that their relationship resembled that between a dog and a tree. And most of the times, Steimberg was the tree.

Mary O’Gavin had been top of her class at Quantico. She was a beautiful young woman with big blue eyes and a pair of legs that made Sean wish he were a pair of stockings. She hated his passes at her, though. At times like this she would tell him he acted like a silly lover boy from a soap opera.

A tragic story had made her move here from St. Louis. Nobody knew any details except Beck. Not even Mark. Mary was extremely bright and knew what this job meant to a woman. In the FBI, a female agent had to be twice better than a man to be half as appreciated. But that hadn’t affected her enthusiasm. She still believed in justice. So much justice one who was well past puberty could lucidly hope for. Both she and Steimberg had graduated from law school.

Dumpy Kulikovski’s presence in the squad was superfluous. A genuine XXL. He thought of himself as their specialist in “shuffling the papers.” Everyone loved the fat Pole for his good heart.

“Any new files from ‘The Mogul’ yet?” Mark asked.

“No, it appears we’re going through a peaceful period right now,” Mary answered. “So it’s still the old cases we’re working on.”

Suddenly one of the phones on Mark’s desk started to ring. The agent picked the receiver.

“This is he.”

He listened attentively then said, “OK, boss, I got it: tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. we’ll have to be at LaGuardia.”

The others looked at him curiously. But Mark lit a cigarette first, took a few draws and only then decided to talk.

“We’ve got a job for tomorrow. Governor Dukakis is coming here together with Senator Wheller. It seems they’re to attend a gala at the Majestic. Henry Wheller has asked the Mayor to plead with ‘The Mogul’ to put us in charge of their security.”

“You mean he’s asked for you in particular,” Mary corrected him smiling.

They all knew what had happened six months before. During the visit of a Republican Congressional delegation, a nutcracker with a gun had jumped right in front of Wheller. Mark, who was close to the senator, had managed to pull him down the moment he had been shot at so the bullet had only hit the senator’s hat. Ever since that day, whenever he came to New York the old senator insisted that his bodyguards be supervised by Du Nancy.

“Tomorrow morning at nine, Sean, Arty and me will be at LaGuardia and escort him from there,” Mark decided. “Mary, you’ll bring these reports up to date, won’t you?”

The young woman nodded obediently.

“It seems the whole family will be at the Majestic. Including Dorothy Wheller, the famous actress, the senator’s niece,” Arty said.

“Well, in that case, this might even turn out to be a pleasant job,” Sean tried to delude himself.

“I suggest you stick to your waitresses,” Steimberg said.

As Arty was a great hockey fan himself, Mark asked him, “How about joining me and Tommy to the Rangers game on Saturday?”

“He can’t. On Saturdays he cheats on his friends,” Sean put in.

“Bullshit,” the other said. “I spend them with my wife. Saturdays are our honeymoon days,” Arty’s face lit up.

“That’s exactly what I meant,” the Greek said.

Steimberg was about to jump at him, fists tight, but realized the futility of it and gave up.

“One of these days I’m going to post you on the wall, Paulardis!” he said. Then he suddenly turned serious. “Actually, I can’t make it, Mark, I’ve got Bar Mitzvah on Saturday evening. My elder son, Avy, turns thirteen. I was going to ask you and Tommy over.”

“Thanks, Arty, but Mike Richter has already promised Tommy to let him shoot a few pucks at his goal after the game. Besides, you know how hard I tried to learn the Hava Nagilah and couldn’t.”

“Then the invitation stands for the first day of Hanukkah,” Steimberg suggested.

“Sure, why not,” Mark answered.