Lethal Experiment Read online

  “Their prison I.D.’s.”

  “That’s how we find out who they are?” she said.

  Quinn smiled. “Exactly.”

  I called Darwin, rattled off the prison ID numbers for him. After hanging up I said, “Darwin’s going to run the numbers and find out if there’s any connection between the Bernies and bombers.”

  “And if there is?” Alison said.

  “There won’t be. You approached Hector with this robbery scam, but Afaya approached you about getting his driver into your bus. My boss thought Afaya might be dealing with you here in Dallas, and in the other cities you work.

  “Afaya did ask me about the other cities where I work. But he hasn’t said anything about putting his other relatives to work as drivers.”

  “Not yet, but you can bet he will.”

  “So what are you going to do, kill Afaya?”

  “Darwin gets to make that call. But he’ll probably want you to go on about your work, business as usual, and he’ll put some people into your companies to keep an eye on things.”

  “Am I supposed to help Afaya’s people get hired?”

  “Again, Darwin’s call. But my guess is he’ll want you to get close to Afaya, develop a relationship, let him talk you into putting someone at most of your Park ‘N Fly’s.”

  “What if I want to walk away?”

  Quinn and I exchanged a glance.

  “There’s no walking away at this point,” Quinn said.

  Alison folded her arms across her chest. “I’m not going to sleep with a terrorist,” she said, indignantly.

  “You will if you have to,” I said. “And you’ll give him the full treatment.”

  “Once you guys leave, you won’t be able to make me do anything. I’ll get a new identity, go into hiding.”

  “Alison, you’re in this up to your eyeballs. You’re going to help us bring down the biggest terror cell in America, and you’re going to do it for all the right reasons.”

  “What,” she sneered, “Patriotism? A sense of duty?”

  “That, and two hundred thousand dollars, tax free.”

  “You’ll put that in writing?” she said.

  “We don’t put anything in writing. But we’ll put the money in a locker for you and give you the key.”

  “What stops me from taking the money before you kill the terrorists?”

  “You won’t know the location of the locker until the job is finished.”

  “What, I’m just supposed to trust you?”

  Quinn said, “If you like, we could just kill you instead.”

  “What a charmer,” she said.

  Quinn bowed.

  “There’s a more immediate problem,” I said. “The Texas Syndicate. When they find out what happened they’ll want to make an example of you.”

  Alison’s face tightened. “This wasn’t my fault,” she said. “Hector’s the one that got them involved.”

  “That’s not how they’re going to see it, Hector being dead and all.”

  She looked around, started to panic. “I can’t stay here,” she said.

  We were silent awhile, Quinn and I thinking it through, Alison waiting to hear something reassuring. Finally I said, “When Darwin calls to ID the Bernies, I’ll have him find out who’s the head of the Syndicate. I’ll arrange a meeting and see if I can keep you alive awhile.”

  Alison had used many voices in the short time I’d known her. The one she used now told me she finally understood the danger she was in: “If you keep me alive and give me two hundred grand, I’ll do my part.” She thought a moment about what she’d just said, set her jaw, and nodded once, firmly. “I will. I’ll do whatever you say.”

  “That’s my girl,” I said.

  Alison pursed her lips. “Since we’re going to work together, I don’t have to keep calling you Cosmo, do I?”

  Quinn laughed. “Far as I’m concerned, that’s his new nickname.”

  I frowned.

  “My name is Donovan Creed,” I said to Alison.

  “I like Cosmo Burlap better,” she said.

  “Of course you do.”

  Chapter 33

  The Control Unit of the maximum security prison at Lofton, Texas, was built four years ago, in response to the riot that ended the lives of four guards and twelve inmates. The unit houses 320 male prisoners under six different levels of security. The worst offenders are locked in solitary confinement twenty-three hours each day. Their cells are concrete chambers, with steel doors and a steel grate. Cell furniture, including the bed, desk, and chair, are comprised of poured concrete. The top of each cell contains a four-inch high by four foot long window that allows prisoners a view of sky and nothing else. This design has a purpose: without landmarks, inmates can’t discern their specific location within the building. Their one hour per day outside solitary gives them an opportunity to exercise alone in a concrete bunker. Each month they’re allowed one family and one attorney visitation. My visit was an exception, courtesy of Darwin’s connections.

  Roy “Wolf ” Williams had recently bought three years at Level Six security for attempting to kill a guard. Now that Roy was removed from the general prison population, I had no doubt that some other maggot would soon step up to head the Texas Syndicate. Until then, Wolf Williams was the man.

  “I don’t give a shit how they died,” Williams said. “It’s on her, now.”

  “Alison didn’t even know those guys. Hector’s the one that brought them in.”

  “Yeah, well Hector’s dead. So that leaves the girl.” He sneered. “Tell her it’s gonna be ugly.” He licked his lips. “Real ugly.”

  Wolf Williams knew all about ugly. He was a six-five, three hundred fifty pound turd, with vacant eyes, a puffy, pock-marked face, and cruel Joker-type lips that exposed a mouthful of tiny teeth in various shades of yellow, brown and black. Prison regulations ensured his hair was shaved short in a buzz, but you look at him and know he’d wear it long and filthy if he had the choice. Like the way he wore his greasy, scraggly beard.

  “I’m going to ask you nicely not to kill her.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Visitors and inmates are separated by thick, floor-to-ceiling bullet-proof glass.

  Lucky for him.

  “Look,” I said. “You want to go after someone for killing those pukes, go after me.”

  “We plan to. You’re a dead man walking.”

  “Fine. So leave Alison alone.”

  “No way. She suffers. It’s part of the code, man.”

  We looked at each other through the glass. “I’m willing to barter,” I said.

  “You wanna barter? Get me out of here.”

  “It doesn’t work that way.”

  “Then no deal. I got little to gain and nothing to lose. I got no family, nothing to live for when I get out.”

  “You could have had family waiting if you hadn’t killed them.”

  He shrugged his shoulders and stroked his wormy beard. I kept quiet, waiting for him to get to the question I knew he had to ask.

  “What’s she look like?” he said. “She hot?”

  I took a plastic baggie from my pocket, held it up to the glass. Inside the baggie was a picture of Alison, fully dressed.

  “Not bad,” he said. “Tell you what: you get me a hundred grand and a conjugal visit with her once a month, and I’ll let her live for a year.”

  I’d have bet a grand he couldn’t have pronounced the word “conjugal.”

  “I can do the hundred grand,” I said. “Not the sex.”

  “No deal, then.”

  “Look. They’re not going to let you anywhere near a woman for the next three years. Surely they explained that when they put you in the hole.”

  “You’re a big shot with the government, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. So make them do it.”

  “Doesn’t work that way unless you’ve got something huge to bargain. And we both know you don’t.”

  “Which is why she’s gonna die.”


  “I’d rather she live. And what’s more, she’d prefer not to die. Let’s wrap this up, Gumby. Here’s the best I can do: a hundred grand and a hundred naked pictures of Alison.”

  “Th ey won’t let me have naked pictures in here.”

  “They’ll never know.” I showed him Alison’s picture again. “The reason this is in plastic, it’s a rub off . You give me the name of your guard, I’ll make sure he sneaks you the pictures a few at a time. The way it works, you rub the picture with your finger. Th ere’s a totally naked photograph of Alison under this coating.”

  “Bullshit.”

  I held the photo at an angle so he could see the raised portion above her clothing.

  “How long they been doing that?” he said.

  “The technology is new, but the idea goes back to Leonardo Da Vinci. If you take an x-ray of the Mona Lisa, you’ll find two other paintings beneath it. Back in those days canvasses were hard to come by. If you wanted to paint something new, you painted over a used canvass.”

  “I look like I want a history lesson?”

  “Rub the picture with your thumb or index finger just hard enough to make some heat. That’s what melts the coating. I’ll get you a hundred photos of Alison with clothes on. You can enjoy her that way or rub the pictures and make her nude, it’s up to you.”

  “What kind of girl poses for a hundred naked pictures?”

  “The kind who wants to live.”

  “She know about the hundred pictures yet?”

  “Nope. She’s only done this one.”

  “You seen it?”

  “I have.”

  His face was flushed. He licked his lips. It was enough to make you sick. He said, “You’re gonna bribe the guard, just give him the naked pictures in the first place.”

  “If I give him naked pictures, you think he’ll pass them along to you?”

  “Hell, no! Not that degenerate bastard.”

  “That’s why I’m printing pictures on top of the naked ones.”

  I could see it in his pitted face: he was intrigued.

  “She shaved?” he said.

  “You want her shaved?”

  “I want her shaved.”

  “Okay, well she’s not shaved in this one, but I’ll make that happen next time.”

  We worked out the logistics for getting him the money, and he gave me the name of his guard.

  “How did it go?” Alison said.

  We were in my rental car, heading to our motel room at the Quality Inn.

  “For now you should be safe. That’ll change in a few days or weeks when he loses the power to decide.”

  “So what are we going to do?”

  “Kill him.”

  She’d been looking out the window, but when I said that, her head spun back to face me.

  “Why? How?”

  “Why? Because it’ll send a message to whoever takes his place in the gang. How?” I smiled. “I’ll tell you later.”

  “We still going back to Dallas tonight?”

  “Soon as I fi nish talking to Wolf ’s guard.”

  “What time’s the meeting?”

  “The guards get off at eight, so I’m hoping around eight-thirty. Wolf says his guard likes to have a few drinks at the titty bar on Euclid before going home to beat his wife.”

  She looked at her watch. “That’s like, six hours. What are we going to do till then?”

  “Nap. It’s a long drive back to Dallas, and neither of us got any sleep last night.”

  “You only got the one room today.”

  “One room, two beds.”

  “What, you think I’ll run away if I have my own room?”

  “I think it would be harder for me to protect you.”

  “But I’m safe for now. You said so yourself.”

  “I said you should be safe for now. You want to take a chance?”

  Chapter 34

  For five hundred dollars and the promise of more to come, the guard was glad to smuggle Alison’s photo into Wolf Williams’ cell. I gave him the picture and cash in the parking lot behind the titty bar, and Alison and I were finally flying back down the highway to Dallas.

  “I didn’t pose for any nude photo,” Alison said.

  “It’s only important that Wolf thinks you did,” I said.

  “I still don’t understand. He’s going to get the picture, he’s going to rub it with his finger, then what?”

  “The reason the picture is in the plastic baggie, there’s a coating on it, made out of snake venom. There are hundreds of microscopic glass shards imbedded in the coating. When Wolf starts rubbing the photo, he’ll cut his finger and create an entry for the venom.”

  “You’re insane,” she said.

  “Probably.”

  She gave me a look of exasperation. “I’m supposed to hang my life on that ridiculous plan?”

  “Trust me, he’ll be dead fifteen minutes after getting the picture.”

  “You’ve done this before?”

  “I have.”

  “What kind of person imbeds broken glass and snake venom onto a photograph in two hours’ time?”

  “Say it.”

  “What.”

  “You’re glad you’re on my side.”

  She shook her head. “You are seriously fucked up, Creed.”

  “And you’re noisy in bed.”

  She looked at me. “Are you talking about last night? For your information, that was an act.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “What, you think I actually wanted you?”

  I didn’t respond.

  “Someone sure has a high opinion of himself,” she said.

  I sighed.

  “Touching you last night gave me the creeps,” she said, and she was just getting started.

  It was a long ride back to Dallas.

  Chapter 35

  I’ve lived my entire adult life by what I call the phone call theory.

  The way my theory goes, you can be good, bad, or somewhere in between. You can be rich, poor, or middle class. A winner or loser, a builder or breaker, a giver or taker, makes no difference: we’re all just a phone call away from a life-changing event.

  I’ve seen it a thousand times: you can abuse your body or nurture it. You can be the most honest, loving, generous person on earth—or the worst. You can live your life by strategy or pure chance, run with gangs or walk with kings, doesn’t matter. We’re all hostage to the phone call. And if there’s one thing in life you can count on, it’s that at some point in your life, you’re going to get one of these calls.

  Like Ronald Goldman, a waiter, Mezzaluna Restaurant, LA: June 13, 1994, he got a call that Nicole Simpson’s mother, Juditha, left her glasses at the restaurant. It was a call that changed his life.

  Not all calls are bad.

  Herbert Plant, former homeless guy, Worcester, England: got a call he’d won five million dollars playing the Lucky Dip Lottery.

  Happens to someone every day. A guy with a perfect life gets a call. His white blood cell count is off the charts. A woman with a perfect life gets a call. Her husband is cheating on her. Or he just died in a car wreck.

  Want to live like me? Every time the phone rings I wonder if this is the call that shatters my life or saves it. Not saying my life needs saving. I’m just saying.

  So I’m in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, waiting to catch a flight to Nashville, when my cell phone rang. I looked at the caller ID and saw Kathleen was trying to reach me.

  “What time does your plane get in?” she said.

  “My plane?”

  “Don’t tell me you’re still in Dallas.”

  “Sorry.” I wondered what she was expecting me to do that day.

  She sighed heavily. “You’ll at least be here by dinner, right?”

  “In New York City? By dinner?”

  “Oh. My. God, Donovan. Please tell me you didn’t forget.” She sounded heartbroken.

  Of course I forgot. My life was
running at warp speed. Until that very moment I was planning to hit Nashville running, kill Trish and Rob to satisfy the requirements of Victor’s creepy social experiment, then rush to Boston to start hunting Tara Siegel, to talk her out of using Callie’s girlfriend for her body double.

  “Of course I haven’t forgotten. How could you possibly think that?” I said, stalling while forcing my brain to rewind.

  “Thank God. You had me scared there for a minute.”

  Something big was happening today with Kathleen and I needed to figure out what it was. “Just a sec,” I said, “I’ve got to give my credit card to the counter lady.”

  I covered the mouthpiece and started a brain backtrack. The day before, Alison and I had driven to Lofton, where I’d met Wolf at the prison. Later that night I’d bribed his guard to deliver the death picture. Then we drove back to Dallas, where I helped Alison get settled into her new hotel room. I spent the next four hours giving her a crash course in how to help Darwin set up the terrorists. Afaya should be contacting Alison soon. Until then, she’d continue her Dallas audit of the local Park ‘N Fly as though nothing unusual happened the past two days. Wolf Williams’ body had been discovered, and Augustus Quinn was guarding Alison until I could work a deal with whoever wound up replacing Wolf as head of the Texas Syndicate. Darwin would let me know when that happened, and agreed to set up a meeting between me and the new boss.

  “Any clue who’s first in line for the job?” I had asked Darwin.

  “Could be any of a half-dozen guys,” he’d said. “It’ll probably be a guy on the outside this time.”

  “Any guess how long we’ve got?”

  “No, but shit eventually floats to the top.”

  The mind backtrack wasn’t working. Maybe I should try current events featuring Kathleen.

  Let’s see, I thought. Kathleen was planning to move to Virginia so she and Addie could be closer to me. Something about the move? Something about…Aw, shit. How could I have forgotten?

  “Today’s the day you get Addie,” I said. “Of course I’m planning to be there.”

  “In time to go with me to pick her up, or in time for dinner?”

  I looked at my watch. “In between those. With any luck, I’ll be at your house before you get her home.”