The Dark Ones Read online

  The guy smiled and said, “My job is to create a need for funerals, not attend them.”

  The guy indicated Mike to follow, and Mike hurried to keep up with the man’s loping strides. His stomach fluttered as he approached the gaping door of the warehouse. It was like being an explorer in a newly found cave. He knew that Hark had a violent temper and little patience for mistakes. He wasn’t sure what to expect.

  Rumor had it he had taken a pickax to the last guy who screwed up one of his assignments. He had no trouble imagining the ghoul who escorted Mike into the warehouse using said pickax on an unfortunate victim.

  They passed rows of crates and cardboard boxes, until they reached a door at the far end of the warehouse. It had a sign on it marked PRIVATE. As expected, the man patted him down, and, apparently satisfied, gave a grunt. They stepped through the door. Mike expected to find an old desk and scuffed furniture, but he was surprised. A dark hardwood floor stretched across the room, and on it rested an Oriental rug. The walls were paneled in a rich cherry and a leather couch and chair were arranged in front of a desk. Behind the desk, between two bookshelves, brightly colored tropical fish swam in an aquarium. The hum of the filter filled the room.

  “Sit down,” the man said.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Mike said, and plopped on the couch. The leather smelled new.

  From behind him, the door opened. Hark rounded the sofa. Mike caught a glimpse of his outfit: pink polo shirt, blue track pants, and sandals. He took a seat behind the desk and folded his hands as if he were a CEO preparing to address the board.

  “So you know why you’re here?” Hark asked. “You got the note.”

  He had. A week ago he’d been out at Cozumel getting some Mexican food and trying to talk Lisa McCready out of her panties. After dinner, he’d found a note in the pocket of his leather jacket. Someone was a crafty son of a bitch. It had said to meet Hark at the warehouse, with the date and time. “Got here early.”

  “That’s good. Guy shows up late, I show him the fuckin’ road. That’s how it is.” He opened a desk drawer, rummaged around. Mike studied him. A solid build starting to go to flab. Probably busted a few skulls in his day. Thick calluses on the hands, scuffed knuckles. You could hammer nails with those fists.

  Hark pulled out a bag of jelly beans from the drawer. He took out a handful and popped them in his mouth. Chewing, he held out the bag. “Want some?”

  Mike didn’t want to be rude. “Sure,” he said, and took a handful.

  “I eat these things by the bagful. My dentist fucking loves me.”

  Mike popped the jelly beans in his mouth. They were way too sweet, but he managed to get them down.

  “I hear you’re good,” Hark said.

  “Who says?”

  “It gets around. Heard you pulled that Peckham job. Nice score.”

  “How’d you know?”

  “You think I’m a cop or something? We’re in the same business.”

  “Makes me jumpy, is all.”

  Hark put the jelly beans away. “I don’t need jumpy.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Mike said. “So what’ve you got?”

  Hark smiled. He was going to enjoy this.

  “Like to get down to business, huh?”

  “My time’s valuable,” Mike said.

  Hark laughed, a short bark, like a blast from a machine gun. “Your time’s valuable. What the fuck? This guy.” Still laughing, he said, “You familiar with those condos going up over off Furman?”

  “Near the old Iron Works?”

  Hark nodded. “They’re half done. The builder comes to me for a loan. Needs sixty grand go keep things going. I say fine. I tell him what the vig’s going to be, he tells me to go fuck myself. I tell him get the hell out. Before he leaves, he tells me he might go to the attorney general regarding some of my ... business dealings.”

  “And you want me to ... ?”

  “Burn the fucking things to the ground.”

  “I don’t do arson.”

  “The price is good.”

  It had better be damned good. “I’m listening.”

  “Fifteen grand.”

  Mike could keep Mom’s chemo treatments going for a while with that money, maybe have enough to fix the leak in the roof. “Why so much?”

  “I want to nail this fuck, teach him a lesson. And you’re good. You’ll keep your mouth shut.”

  Mike leaned forward. “I’ll need twenty. It’s high risk.”

  “I got the fire marshal in my pocket, low risk.”

  “Twenty.”

  “Sixteen or get out.”

  Something told him it would be wise to accept the offer. “Okay. I’m in. What if I get caught, though?”

  “You don’t want to think about that,” Hark said. “Concentrate on the job.”

  “Consider them toast.”

  Mike pulled into the driveway. He killed the Monte’s engine and sat with his hands on the wheel. What if the job went wrong? He could wind up at the bottom of Lake Erie. But what if it went right? The money would be nice. But arson. That was a new one for him. He risked putting his ass in the fire—literally—but you didn’t turn down Hark. The guy had connections, and if this job went well, there might be more. That could lead to more cash and better care for Mom.

  He got out of the car and climbed the steps. He paused for a moment, looking at the peeling blue paint on the house. Forty years in the Valley and his mother wouldn’t move. The Mc-Crearys and the O’Laughlins were dead or living in the burbs. The Hoolihans remained next door. The Irish had moved out and the junkies and gangbangers had moved in. The Purina mill was long gone, and when it had been demolished, Mike had watched the rats in a veritable conga line leave the place. The Valley had begun a slow decline, like an aging movie star losing her looks. Except there was no facelift or Botox for a neighborhood.

  He entered the house, inhaling the aroma of cigarette smoke and bacon grease. He slipped through the house, stopping at the photo on the dining room wall. In it, he kneeled, dressed in pads and uniform, his helmet at his feet. That had been sophomore year and he had started at free safety. He was All Western New York that year, but that was before he met Mickey Schuler, and according to his mother, before he had flushed his life down the toilet.

  Schuler had been team manager. A wiry kid prone to wearing heavy metal T-shirts and studded belts, he had a whistling asthmatic wheeze. That alone had kept him off the team, and it was probably best, because half the team would’ve cheerfully snapped Schuler’s leg. Mickey had a knack for irritating, slipping tacks in a set of cleats or juicing the water bottles with Dave’s Insanity Sauce. The hot sauce in the water had left him on the verge of getting fired.

  One day after practice, Schuler approached Mike. “I’m thinking of robbing a store. Maybe that place on the corner of your street.”

  “You nuts?” Mike had said, still dressed in full pads.

  “It would be easy. Especially with two of us. I’m not talking using guns or nothing.”

  “Why you telling me this?”

  Shuler leaned against the bleachers, arms crossed. The blue-and-white-clad Bulldogs jogged off the field, red faced and sweaty.

  “You’re smart, Mike. Not like those shitheads,” he said. “I’ll split it with you.”

  After going back and forth, something inside Mike clicked. It was like a switch turning on, some internal machinery that had been dormant. His body hummed. He liked the idea. Loved it.

  Three days later, while Schuler distracted the clerk by breaking a bottle of grape Crush, Mike had slipped behind the counter, hit the cash button on the register, and grabbed a wad of bills. He slid the drawer shut and darted out of the store. Somehow he felt jazzed, smooth, and liquid. He floated home.

  They had split $176 and were in court a week later. The crime spree had ended and because they were nice Irish Catholic boys they had only to pay back the money and perform community service. They wouldn’t pull another job until after grad
uation.

  It was Schuler he would call to help with the Hark job.

  Now, Mike entered the back bedroom. Agnes O’Donnell was on the bed, dressed in a pale green nightgown, her veiny legs poking out from underneath. She had a white scarf over her head to cover her now hairless scalp. The skin on her face seemed to sag a bit more with each day.

  “Where you been?” she asked.

  “Out on business.” He pulled up a chair at the side of the bed. He kissed her cheek and she rewarded him with a weak smile.

  “Been gone a while, haven’t you?”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “Hand me my smokes.”

  “C’mon, Ma.”

  “They can’t do any more damage, Michael. It’s like bailing water on the Titanic. Hand them over.”

  Reluctantly, he handed her the pack of cigarettes and a lighter. She took one out and lit it. The harsh smoke filled his nostrils. The tumor that had began in her right breast had metastasized in her lungs and liver. The doctors were giving her a month. He didn’t like to think about that.

  “Word’s getting around Michael.”

  “About?”

  “Your good deeds.”

  “I ain’t no Boy Scout.”

  “Mrs. Torrez said you gave her a hundred bucks toward her cable bill. And you bought Mr. Galpin a motorized scooter. Ann Driscol told me. You hit the lottery?”

  Yeah. The money. He kept a little tucked away from each job he pulled, selling stolen goods or using cash taken from a heist and spreading it around the neighborhood. Spreading money around was the least he could do, help out the neighbors.

  “Well?” she said, through a curtain of smoke.

  “I’ve been doing some odd jobs.”

  “For?”

  “People.”

  “Ann said she saw you talking to Gino the Wop over chicken parm at Chef ’s”

  “Ann Driscol needs some duct tape for that mouth of hers. Gino needed someone to run some errands.”

  She blew smoke overhead. “People say he sells hash out of that garage of his. Car repairs, my asshole.”

  “Mom, don’t talk like that.”

  She cuffed him one across the side of the head. “Ow!”

  “I’m still your mother,” she said. “You and Schuler up to something?”

  He pushed out the chair and stood up. “I’m going to take care of you, Mom.”

  She gripped his wrist, her skin warm against his. With a pleading look on her face, she said, “Don’t lie to me. Are you pulling burglary jobs?”

  He looked into her eyes, formerly full of hellfire, able to extract confessions from the heartiest of souls. Now, they were watery and red rimmed, the eyes of someone who had felt more than their share of pain. Eyes that were looking for the referee to call the fight. “Never, Mom.”

  “Okay, Michael.”

  He went upstairs, to the flat where he stayed, his guts feeling like a mess of knotted ropes. He had looked into the eyes of his dying mother and told the worst lie of his entire life. Taking a Heineken from the fridge, he unscrewed the cap and it gave a little pop. He took a swig. Right now it tasted like cigarette ashes in dirty dishwater. He set it down.

  Just a few more jobs, then that was it. No more stealing. Or lying.

  CHAPTER 3

  “Chief, got a problem,” Laura said, and watched Dr. Lawrence McGiver as he looked over the contents of a manila folder. The comb-over that he effectively plastered to his head hung down onto his forehead, and his rimless glasses were on the end of his nose. His narrow face seemed even more pinched than usual. He looked like a man in perpetual pain.

  “Pennington, what is it? I’m going over the DiLeo case here. Busy busy.” He snapped off his glasses and said, “Come in. Make it quick.”

  Laura hurried into the office. The smell of McGiver’s cologne hung in the air, and under that, a whiff of the cigars she knew he snuck in here. The window to the office was cracked open, and she wondered if he had been sneaking one recently. She had an image of her boss bent over, craning his neck sideways and blowing smoke through the barely open window. She had to stifle a laugh at the thought.

  “Well?”

  “I have to leave.”

  “You sick?”

  “No.”

  “What then?”

  “It’s my father.”

  “He sick?”

  “I got a phone call.” One of the ER nurses had come running in while Laura was looking over a kid with an ankle sprain. At first she had thought someone was dead or hurt, but the nurse had only said, “Your dad’s in trouble.”

  “What is it?” MacGiver asked.

  Here goes. “He’s trying to stop the old Iroquois brewery from being torn down.”

  “And that’s an emergency because?”

  She felt her face get hot. Why did she always feel like such an ass explaining this to people? She wasn’t the one acting crazy. “He’s holed himself up inside the building. The machines are outside waiting to tear it down. He had the foreman on the job call me to come down. They’re going to arrest him.”

  “Well, there’s something you don’t see every day.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Can we spare you?”

  “Ostrow and Sampson are here.”

  McGiver let out a long sigh.

  “The brewery’s only five minutes from here.”

  He put his glasses back on and picked up a pink form from the folder. She knew the DiLeo case was wearing on the boss. One of the docs had missed an irregularity on an EKG and sent a patient home. The patient had stroked out later that day and now the family had hired a billboard attorney to sue the hospital.

  “Make it quick,” he said.

  She left him to his reports and hurried for the parking ramp.

  Laura turned right at the street sign marked Iroquois Alley, taking note of the bullet hole punched in it. The alley, a stretch of rut-marked dirt, led to an L-shaped brick building. It was four stories tall. Around it was an array of construction equipment: dozers, excavators, and dump trucks. The old brewery was close to becoming rubble. Iroquois had been popular when her dad was a young man. Outside of brewpubs, Buffalo had no breweries left.

  She parked the car near a rusted red dump truck and got out. She still had her scrubs on, and she drew stares from some of the workers as she approached a man in a yellow hard hat. He had a stubbly face and thick jowls. He spoke into a cell phone. He appeared to be someone in charge, perhaps the foreman.

  She looked at the building. A large doorway, one meant for trucks, was open. The smell of oil and diesel fuel hung in the air. Darkness filled the opening, and she could only see a few feet into the building. That made sense, for they would have shut the power off years ago. But somehow the darkness inside seemed more complete, total, than any darkness she had ever witnessed. She didn’t envy any of the demolition workers who may have to set foot in the old brewery.

  Behind her, she heard one of the men say, “Hey, we got a nurse in case someone gets hurt.”

  Laura turned around to see a lanky guy with bushy hair leaning against the cab of the dump truck. A cigarette dangled from his lip. He held a Styrofoam coffee cup in one hand.

  “I’m a doctor. And if someone drops a brick on that pointy head of yours while I’m here, yes, I can help you.”

  He took a drag off his cigarette and blew out smoke. “Okay, doc. Don’t have to be so touchy.”

  She bit his head off. Maybe not necessary, but she was losing patience.

  Now, the guy on the cell phone finished his call and folded the phone shut. He stuck it in a holder clipped to his belt.

  Laura tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Laura Pennington. I’m looking for my father, Charles. Got a call he was here.”

  “You’re the crazy dude’s daughter, huh?”

  “He’s not crazy.”

  “If you say so. Hang on a sec.” He walked over to a beige pickup truck, opened the driver’s side door, and took out a flas
hlight and a hard hat. He came back and handed her the hard hat. “Put it on. There’s some crumbling bricks in there. Don’t want you to get bopped on the melon.”

  She put the hard hat on. It was loose and wobbly, but it would keep said melon intact.

  “Pirrone,” he said, introducing himself.

  He waved, indicating her to follow.

  She followed him under the doorway to a set of stairs in a narrow case. In front of her, the flashlight bobbed and the stairs creaked underneath them. If not for the flashlight, the building would have been as dark and dank as a cavern. She wanted very badly to find her father and get back into the sunlight.

  Pirrone stopped at the landing. Laura wound up next to him. In front of them, on the wall, was a wooden hatch with rusted steel strapping across its front.

  “He’s in there,” Pirrone said.

  “What is it?”

  “When this place was a brewery, they had rollers in there, used them to slide the cases where they needed to go, I suppose.” He crouched down and opened the hatch.

  Laura crouched next to him, taking in the odor of cigarettes and aftershave. He handed her a flashlight, which she shone in the opening. Ten feet inside, she saw her father, dressed like he was going to play eighteen at the muni golf course. He wore a dark cardigan with a polo underneath it, and khakis, which were now stained with grease at the knees. He gripped a flashlight whose beam sputtered in the darkness.

  What have you done now, Dad?

  “Hello, Laura.”

  “Interesting place you’re spending your free time these days.”

  “They won’t listen any other way. Not the councilmen, not the planning board, nobody. This will get their attention.”

  Pirrone stood up, his knee popping. “The cops are on the way, you know.”

  Laura looked up at Pirrone. “Did you really have to do that?”

  Pirrone tilted his hard hat back with his finger. “I’ve got machines sitting idle, and idle machines don’t make my bosses any money. I need him out of here. Yesterday.”