Black Man / Thirteen

Ortiz swallowed, mustered control from somewhere.

“Then, I have a request,” he husked. “Please, at least may I phone and speak to my family first. To say good-bye.”

“No.” Carl hauled the COLIN director up onto his lap, locked an arm around the man’s neck, positioned his free hand against the skull. “I’m not here to ease your passing, Ortiz. I’m here to take what you owe.”

“Please…”

Carl jerked and twisted. Ortiz’s neck snapped like rotten wood.

Soft, chiming sirens went off everywhere in the suite, the wail of distressed cudlip society. Man of substance down. Rally, gather, form a mob.

The beast is out.

CHAPTER 52

The crash team were fast—less than two full minutes from when the micro-docs tripped under Ortiz’s skin and the sirens went off. But well before that, the COLIN Security detachment had heard the alarms and come through the door on general principles. They found Ortiz in his wheelchair, slumped over to one side, Norton and Marsalis standing staring at him.

“Sir?” The squad leader looked at Norton.

“Lock this whole floor down,” Norton told her absently. “Call in some more support to do it. I don’t want anyone, not even NYPD, getting up here without my say-so.”

“But, but—”

“Just do it.” He turned to Carl. “You’d better get moving.”

Carl nodded, looked once more at Ortiz, and then stepped outside the unconsciously tightening ring the security detachment had formed around the body. He headed out of the room without looking back, out of the suite and into the corridor where he met the crash team head-on, all lifesaving speed and resuscitation gear, gurney and white coats, dedicated emergency room doctor and all.

He stood aside to let them pass.

Outside the hospital, he walked rapidly away, two blocks west and four south, lost himself in the sun-glinting brawl and bustle of the city. He peeled off his S(t)igma jacket, pulled his pack of phones from it, then balled it up inside out and dropped it into the first recycling bin he saw. The cold bit through his shirt, but he had COLIN-approved credit in his pockets, and he had time.

He stopped on a street corner, checked his watch, and calculated traveling time to the JFK suborb terminal. Hoped Norton could hold up his end.

Then he pulled a new phone loose from the pack, clicked it on, and waited for Union cover to catch up with it. With his other hand, he dug in his trouser pocket and tugged out the photo and list of scribbled numbers Matthew had hooked for him the night before.

“Okay, Sev,” he murmured to himself. “Let’s do this.”

She stepped into the gloom of the bar uncertainly, but with a certain confidence as well. They were, after all, on her home ground, Lower Manhattan, only a couple of blocks north of Wall Street and the NYPD dedicated Datacrime HQ. She hadn’t had to come far.

Two short steps in to let the door hinge shut behind her, and she sca

“Amy Westhoff?”

He raised himself out of his seat as she reached his booth, offered her his hand. She took it, gave him a searching look.

“Yeah. Agent…di Palma, is it?”

“That’s right.” He flashed his UNGLA ID, carefully held so she’d see the photo but not the name. Feigned a querying frown to distract her as he put the badge away again. “But I see you’ve come on your own?”

She made a dismissive gesture as she seated herself on the other side of the table. The lie hurried out. “Yeah, well, my partner’s wrapped up with, uh, some other stuff right now. He couldn’t make it. Now, you said this is about the bust on Ethan Conrad four years back. I don’t really see how that can have anything to do with me, or with Datacrime.”

“Well, it is only a stray lead. But then…can I get you a drink, maybe?”

“No, thank you. I’ve got to go back on duty. Can we make this quick?”

“Certainly.” Carl sipped at the Red Stripe in front of him. “In fact, my own jurisdiction in this matter is, should I say, rather loose. Obviously we’re not on UN territory here.”

“Not far from it, though.”

“No, true enough.” Carl put his drink down, let his hands drop into his lap. “Well then, I guess you’re familiar with the case. I understand you had some kind of relationship with Ethan Conrad, back before it was known what he was.”

Tautly. “That’s right, I did. Well before anybody knew what he was.”

“Ah, yes, quite. Well, it’s just that I’ve received information from an NYPD officer, an ex-officer in fact, Sevgi Ertekin. Would you have heard of her?”

The waitress sauntered over, eyebrows raised, notepad not yet out of her apron pocket. It was early yet. Aside from the lonely broker, they had the place to themselves.

“Get you guys any—”

“We’re fine,” said Amy Westhoff curtly.

The waitress shrugged and backed off. Carl gave an apologetic look. Westhoff waited until she’d gone back to the bar before she spoke again.

“I knew Ertekin, vaguely, yeah. So what’s she been saying?”

“Well, she said that you tipped off UNGLA about Conrad’s thirteen status because you were jealous that he’d left you, and that you then tried to call and warn him at the last minute. But were too late, obviously. Now—”

“That fucking bitch!” But even in the low light, he could see that Amy Westhoff’s face had gone ashen.

“You’d deny that then, I assume.”

Westhoff lifted a trembling finger. “You go back to that raghead bitch, and you tell her from me—”

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible. Sevgi Ertekin is dead. But she did give me a message for you, something she meant to do but couldn’t manage.”

The blond woman’s eyes narrowed. “What message?”

Then she flinched, yelped, reared back in the booth, and looked down at her trouser leg. She pressed on her thigh with both hands.

“What the fuck was that?”

“That was a genetically modified curare flechette,” Carl said coldly. “It’s going to paralyze your skeletal muscle system so you can’t breathe or call for help.”

Westhoff stared at him. Tried to get up from the table, made a muffled grunting sound instead and dropped back into her seat, still staring.

“It’s a vastly improved variant on natural curare,” he went on. “You might call it the thirteen of poisons. I think you’ll last about seven or eight minutes. Enjoy.”

He slid the Red Stripe over so it stood in front of her. Westhoff’s mouth twitched, and she slumped against the wall. Carl got up to go. He leaned in close.

“Sevgi Ertekin wanted you dead,” he told her softly. “And now you are.”

Then he eased out of the booth and headed for the door. On the way out, he looked across at the bar, where the waitress sat on a stool, fiddling with some aspect of her phone. As she glanced up at him, Carl fielded her gaze, rolled his eyes expressively, put on jilted, hurt, and weary. The girl pulled a sympathetic face, smiled at him, and went back to her phone. He reached the door, pushed it open, and let himself back out into the late-afternoon chill.

He dropped the flechette gun down a grate on Wall Street, a little sad to see it go after the trouble Matthew had gone to in tracking down a suitably disreputable dealer for him, and the price the suitably disreputable dealer had screwed out of him when it became clear that Carl was in a hurry.