Rising Phoenix Read online

  “Oh, I’d say about a fifth of it. I’ve got another week or so to finish.”

  Hobart walked over to a large metal drum much like the ones that he’d seen full of kerosene in Colombia. Out of the top grew a transparent rubber tube capped by a cork stopper. “So you’re putting it in here?”

  “Yeah. As soon as it’s dried into a powder I pour it in there. It’s a slow process—you don’t want to get any powder in the air. It’s real concentrated.”

  “So how much of this stuff am I gonna need?” Hobart sat down on a rickety chair next to Swenson.

  “Depends. Are the drums the same size as this one?” He pointed a shaky finger at the barrel with the tube in the top.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll have to do some calculations, but probably a half a pound per drum—something like that.”

  As Manion turned, the reflection fell away from his goggles and Hobart got a good look at his eyes. He was flying. No doubt this was the reason for his enthusiastic cooperation. Hobart wondered if he even remembered why he was working with the mushrooms, or if he’d just pushed it to an unused part of his brain. In any event, he seemed happy, and Hobart wanted to make sure he stayed that way until the job was done.

  “How you fixed for money, Pete?”

  Manion looked at the ground. “Well, you know, okay, I guess.”

  “Bob, see that Peter gets a thousand bucks before he goes home tonight.” He stood and turned toward the exit, letting Swenson go ahead of him. He wasn’t sure if he could make it back through the maze.

  “Keep up the good work, Peter.”

  Back in the office Swenson popped the top off another beer. “So when are we leaving?”

  “We’ll let Peter finish what he’s doing—get that all tied up. Then we’ll go. How’re our guys in the field doing?”

  “Things are getting set up pretty quickly. They all seem to have their covers set. Most of them have made at least one clean transaction.”

  Gaining a reputation for dealing good drugs at a fair price would deflect blame to other parts of the distribution chain when they began introducing the orellanin into the mix. At least that was the theory.

  Out of the top drawer of his desk Swenson took a few sheets of paper held together by a paper clip, and handed them to Hobart. “Here’s a full report. It’s pretty current, I did it a couple of days ago. You were a little later getting back than I thought.”

  “Yeah, me too.” Hobart rose slowly from his chair. “Hopefully Peter won’t go too fast. I need the week off.”

  A well-rested John Hobart sat behind his desk punching numbers into a LOTUS spreadsheet. CNN was providing background noise.

  The figures represented a one-year financial projection for Clipper City Antiques and Oddities. Things looked like they’d get a little tight in about twelve months, but it wasn’t worth worrying about. Who knew what the next year would bring?

  He had been in Baltimore for a little over a week—plenty of time to slow down and focus on the details. He was completely up to speed on his four undercover teams and had spent some time thinking about the future of the project. So far he was happy with the plan that he’d originally devised. A few holes had appeared, but they were easily filled.

  Swenson peeked his head around the corner of the office door. “He’s done.”

  Hobart saved the file he was working on and walked slowly back to the warehouse. Swenson was standing next to the entrance, waiting for him, when he walked up and pulled a respirator off the wall.

  “You won’t be needing that, actually. The lab’s clean. I’m getting rid of all the waste this afternoon.”

  Hobart hung the respirator back on the nail and followed his partner into the warehouse, weaving his way through the furniture with practiced ease. They found Manion tying up a large Hefty bag. All of the lab equipment was gone, and the floor and walls looked as though they’d been freshly scrubbed. There was still a puddle of water near a drain in the floor that Hobart had never noticed before. Near the loading dock door, a pile of garbage bags sat next to the remnants of the wooden crates that had protected the deadly mushrooms on their voyage from Eastern Europe. In the corner opposite the refuse, a stack of Tupperware containers sat, each sealed in its own Ziploc bag.

  Swenson pointed to the containers. “I had Peter break the orellanin into smaller containers. The ones marked with red tape are for you. He figured out the exact amount you need.”

  “That’s it,” Manion said, tossing the last bag onto the stack. “It’s ready to haul away.” He was breathing hard, unaccustomed to the physical demands of cleaning.

  Swenson put his arm around Manion’s narrow shoulders. “We really appreciate your help, Peter.”

  He really knew how to play the addict. Hobart noticed that Manion actually seemed to Have taken a liking to his partner, who was pulling a wad of bills from his pocket. Swenson pressed them into Manion’s trembling hand and began walking back out to the office with him, leaving Hobart alone. He walked over and ran his hand across the innocent-looking Tupperware, remembering that his mother had used similar containers to store leftovers.

  It was almost time to find his place in the history books.

  Hobart settled into the ragged easy chair for the last time and surveyed the dark room around him. Very little had changed. The same dishes sat on the coffee table, the food on them perhaps slightly more petrified than it had been a month before. The same books were stacked on the floor, though they seemed to have collected quite a bit of dust in his absence. The same closed-up smell assaulted his nostrils. He found all these things comforting in a way. He hated surprises.

  Most of the money that he had given Manion he found stuffed in an envelope between his mattress and the filthy carpet. For all his brains, Manion just wasn’t very sneaky—something Hobart appreciated in a flunky. His usefulness was waning, though. Swenson had stayed close to him throughout the distillation process, asking questions constantly. Manion, who loved to talk endlessly about physics and chemical reactions, would have made a great college professor in another life. The reward for teaching Swenson everything there was to know about the distilling process wasn’t tenure, though.

  Hobart had almost dozed off when he heard a key hit the lock. Looking at his watch, he registered that he’d been there for almost three hours. He watched Manion’s unmistakable figure come through the door, leaving it open behind him. A moment later a young girl walked through and pulled the door shut behind her.

  She was just a waif, really. All skin and bones beneath a billowing, full-length chiffon dress. She shared Manion’s pale complexion and red-rimmed eyes, though she was much younger. Eighteen at the most.

  “Who’s your friend, Peter?”

  They both spun around, startled. The waif almost fell over.

  “John! What are you doing here? I’m finished!” He backed himself against the wall. The waif was over her initial fright but wasn’t sure what to do. She stood in the middle of the room nervously shifting her weight from one foot to another.

  “Just one more thing, actually.” Hobart rose from his chair, stuffing his hands in his pockets. They were covered with surgical gloves and he didn’t want Manion to panic. He walked up to the young girl and looked her over carefully. His first impression had been correct, she was definitely no older than eighteen. A closer inspection revealed that she was really quite pretty, in a sort of fragile way. Also, she didn’t seem to share Manion’s shoddy personal hygiene habits.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Hobart said, not taking his eyes off the girl.

  “Tracy. Her name is Tracy.”

  “She looks a little young for you.”

  Tracy was squirming beneath his gaze but hadn’t mustered the will to move yet.

  Hobart bent and picked up a black satchel lying on the floor. He continued to focus on the girl’s face. There were no lights on, and it seemed to glow in the semidarkness of the room.

  “Come here a sec, Peter.” />
  Manion did as he was told and took a place next to Tracy.

  “Who is he, Peter?” She seemed even younger when she spoke. Her voice came out a high-pitched whisper.

  “Its okay, Tracy. He’ll leave soon, I promise.”

  “He’s right Tracy, with any luck at all, I’ll be out of here in five minutes, tops.”

  With that, he drew his .45 and pointed it in their general direction. Tracy let out a squeal and Manion put his arms straight up in the air, like a train robbery victim in a bad western. Hobart put his index finger to his lips, silencing them both. Reaching into his bag, he pulled out a couple of handkerchiefs and handed one to each of them.

  “If you would be so kind as to stuff these in your mouths?”

  They stared blankly at him.

  “C’mon, start stuffing,” he prompted, leveling the gun at Tracy’s nose. That seemed to be enough incentive for her, and she began pushing the cloth into her mouth. Manion followed suit.

  “Get all of it … good. Now please turn around. Hobart pulled two bandannas out of the satchel and blindfolded both of them.

  “Now, why don’t you both lie down on the floor and relax.” They both sank awkwardly to the floor.

  Digging around in the satchel, he pulled a full syringe and a two-foot length of rubber tubing. He reached in again, fishing around the bottom of the bag until he found another syringe, brought along for just such a situation.

  He wrapped the tube tightly around Manion’s upper right arm and unbuttoned his sleeve. The vein was adorned with an endless trail of holes and bruises—the result of fifteen years of daily injections.

  Manion began grunting and wiggling until Hobart pressed the .45 up under his chin. The cold metal froze him. When he’d calmed down, Hobart plunged the syringe into a vein and depressed the plunger. Manion jerked with the initial prick and then relaxed deeply as the heroin flooded him.

  Hobart turned his attention to Tracy, who seemed to be straining to hear what was going on. He unbuttoned her sleeve, but found no tracks. The other arm was also clean. He sat confused for a moment. She had the look of an addict and was hanging around with Manion …

  He grabbed the hem of her skirt and began pulling it up. Her hands came to life, grabbing her thighs to stop the progression. The barrel of the gun under her chin was just as effective on her as it had been on Manion. She went limp and began sobbing quietly through the handkerchief in her mouth.

  He pulled her dress the rest of the way up, exposing her pale thighs and a pair of faded pink panties. Pulling her legs apart, he found what he was looking for—track marks scrawled across her inner right thigh.

  He drew his glove-covered finger up the soft, cotton covered cleft between her legs and then back down the edge of her panties, where wispy blond pubic hairs peeked out from behind the fabric. Her sobbing grew louder, and she began choking on the handkerchief in her mouth.

  He moved quickly, repeating the procedure performed on Manion. He felt his fingers dig deeply into her thigh as the heroin relaxed her muscles, and he let go abruptly. A hand-shaped bruise on the girl’s thigh would probably go unnoticed by the overworked Baltimore coroner, but it didn’t pay to be careless.

  Hobart pulled the handkerchiefs out of their mouths, removed their blindfolds, and stood up, stretching his back. As he was throwing his things into the satchel he looked carefully around the room, making sure that he hadn’t left anything but the syringes with the appropriate fingerprints pressed onto them. Manion’s breathing was becoming increasingly labored as Hobart padded silently out of the living room and through the back door. Each of the syringes had contained enough heroin to kill two, maybe three people.

  The dampness of the soil had finally managed to soak through Tek Markus’s jeans, making it impossible to sit still any longer. He lifted himself up a few inches and scooted farther back into the bushes, showering himself with droplets of icy water in the process.

  It was too cold to wait any longer. Rico Washington’s mother had left for her night job more than ten minutes ago and Tek was starting to lose the feeling in his hands. He cupped them to his mouth and blew. The gray smoke of his breath slithered through his fingers and disappeared with no effect.

  Tek kicked his friend’s leg gently, being careful not to bring down another waterfall. “Put that forty down and let’s get busy, man.”

  Twan finished peeling the label off a half-empty beer bottle and then smoothed it back on with his palm.

  “Wake up, man. What’s wrong with you?” Tek said.

  Twan finally looked up. “This is bullshit, man. Rico ain’t gonna do nothin’. He’s okay, you know?”

  “That’s easy for you, man. He ain’t been dissin’ you all over the ’hood.”

  Twan renewed his attack on the label in silence, but Tek could read his friend’s expression in the twilight. He was in. He might not be happy about it, but he was in.

  Rico had started shooting his mouth off about getting revenge a few days after his sister’s funeral. At first, Tek had just ignored it. After all, he hadn’t shot her on purpose; it had been an accident. Besides, Rico was a nobody—by all reports, he didn’t even own a gun.

  But now almost two months had gone by and the verbal attacks just kept on coming. If anything, they had become more frequent and bitter. People were starting to ask Tek what he was waiting for. Starting to speculate that he was scared.

  Tek grabbed a small tree with his left hand and ’Twan’s arm with his right, and hoisted both of them to their feet.

  Twan mumbled something unintelligible, but followed solemnly as Tek made his way to the front door of the small gray house. Tek stopped at the door and looked over at his friend, who was shifting his weight nervously from one foot to the other and chewing desperately at his lower lip. Frowning deeply, he knocked on the door and stepped back two paces.

  When the door began to open, Tek used the added distance to build up momentum. He drove his left shoulder hard into the door and managed to wedge a foot inside the house. Grabbing the thin bronze chain stretched tight in the narrow gap between the door and the jamb, he used his foot as a lever until the chain broke free and he was able to slip gracefully into the house. He pulled a machine pistol from his waistband as ’Twan closed the door behind them and circled to the back of the room.

  Rico Washington stood three feet in front of him, wide-eyed and wearing only a pair of red boxer shorts and a Georgetown Basketball sweatshirt. At seventeen, he was two years Tek’s senior and a full foot taller. He had started shaving recently and it had raised an uncomfortable-looking rash on his cheeks.

  “Whassup, Rico?” Tek said, leveling his machine pistol at the boy’s chest.

  Rico backed up a step and looked past Tek. “’Twan—what’s going on, man?”

  Tek held the gun steady, but looked back at his friend. ’Twan had both hands thrust into his pockets and had squeezed his body between an empty bookcase and the wall. He was looking at his shoes as though it was the first time he’d ever seen them.

  Tek knew now that bringing him along had been a mistake. ’Twan and Rico had grown up two doors from each other. They had been fast friends until about the fifth grade, when ’Twan’s interests had turned to the streets that Rico wanted so much to escape. They hadn’t spoken a full sentence to one another in years, but the memory of their friendship hadn’t completely faded, either.

  Tek turned his attention back to Rico, satisfied that ’Twan was not going to interfere one way or the other. “What you thinkin’, dissing me around the ’hood? You lookin’ to die?”

  Rico straightened his shoulders and thrust out his chest, trying to use his considerably superior size to psychological advantage. Tek wasn’t impressed. He was used to killing men older and larger than himself. Nobody was bullet-proof.

  “I asked you a question, Rico.”

  “You killed my sister, man. You fucking shot her in the head.”

  “You’re nothin’, man. Look at you—I kill your sist
er and you don’t do shit,” Tek yelled back, his voice dripping with hatred and contempt that he didn’t really feel.

  Rico stared back at Tek, eyes burning with rage and frustration.

  “What’s your sister think of you now, huh? Now that she knows her brother’s too much of a pussy to take out the guy who killed her and just runs on at the mouth instead?”

  Rico’s eyes softened perceptibly and he looked away.

  It was useless. The spark of anger that Tek had been carefully fanning since breaking through the door just wouldn’t burn. Shooting a boy he hardly knew just for being pissed about the death of his sister was harder than Tek had planned. But it had to be done. Without his reputation, he was nothing.

  Tek looked at his right hand. It was still numb from the cold. He couldn’t feel the rough grip of the gun on his palm, or the cold steel of the trigger under his index finger. The only sensation was a vague burning as the heat of the room seeped into his skin.

  He moved his eyes back to Rico and pretended that the finger on the trigger belonged to someone else. The gun jerked twice as the ghost hand tightened and Rico sank to his knees, then pitched forward. Tek jumped to the side, barely avoiding being knocked over by the falling body.

  “Oh, fuck man, you killed him,” a very young-sounding voice behind him said.

  Tek twirled around on his heels, gun stretched out before him; but it was only ’Twan.

  “No shit. Let’s get out of here.”

  10

  Western Maryland,

  January 5

  Hobart was starting to feel as if all he did was travel. He was looking forward to the day the preliminaries would be over.

  The sun was rising directly behind him and though it was still low in the sky, he reached for his sunglasses. He had been driving for almost an hour, heading west to Saint Louis. His back was already starting to ache—probably due to the anticipation of being in the same position for the next thirteen hours. Leaning the seat back helped, though it put his arms in an uncomfortable position. Switching back and forth was probably the answer.