They were a cluster of in-dorm instructors equipped with whips and rods who believed that inflicting punishment on the flesh served only to strengthen a youthful mind. The beatings were numerous and painful, given that the select members of the Squad were expert on the multiple variety of torture methods that were the practice of the day, often experimenting late into the night on new techniques that had just been brought to their attention. The Boiler Man soon enough became their favorite target, due to his ability to withstand vast amounts of punishment with a strength seldom seen in a student so young and so visibly fragile.
The leader of the Squad was a middle-aged, overweight English scholar who preached Shakespeare by day and doled out beatings under the shroud of darkness. His name was Charles S. Pennington. “He was a repulsive man in all respects,” the Boiler Man once confided to one of the few friends he allowed himself. “He only smiled when he had a whip in one hand and flesh to snap it against. I detested his very presence and lived for the moment when I would be able to release my well of pain in his direction. I wanted to show him that his brutal lessons had not been wasted.”
Charles S. Pennington was the Boiler Man’s first kill.
He waited until two weeks after his official release from Saint Francis the Divine to exact his revenge on the Squad’s leader. He left equipped only with a high school diploma, a certificate of academic excellence, a printout listing the college courses for which he had accumulated credit, and six letters of recommendation presentable to any would-be employer. The Boiler Man was a month past his eighteenth birthday when he walked that final time down the wide, expansive front hall of the only place he had ever lived. He never once looked back at the walls of the institute, allowing himself a small smile as the thick double doors slammed shut behind him, sending him out to an unknown and uncharted world filled with cities and countries he knew only from books and magazines. He ventured out without fear or trepidation, convinced that he was about to embark on an adventure that would not only be justified but might prove to be financially rewarding as well. The Boiler Man’s goal was to put all that he had learned in his years at Saint Francis the Divine to full use and then add to it until there would be no one better at the art of murder than the institute’s most gifted and valued student. He marked as his first target in that quest the man who took such pleasure in inflicting pain on others, the respected Charles S. Pennington.
He chose his location with care, a local bookstore less than a mile from the school grounds. He wanted a method that would not only be noticed and commented on by the surviving members of the Squad and the student body as well but appreciated by the master of pain himself. It had to be a death of classic proportions, one that would propel the Boiler Man toward his chosen path and help to establish for him a reputation that would soon be etched in the blood of countless victims.
The very instant Pennington spotted the Boiler Man heading his way in the rear of the bookstore, he knew his moment of truth had finally arrived and that the student he had beaten and tortured for so many years was now about to take a giant step forward and surpass the teacher. He didn’t put up a struggle or say a word as the Boiler Man quietly led him out of the small store, down a grimy and narrow alley, and into the open mouth of a basement stairwell. And it was there, inside that dark, dank chamber of torture, that the young orphan who had been weaned behind the walls of Saint Francis the Divine vanished off the map and the Boiler Man was brought to life.
It took three long days for Charles S. Pennington to die.
The body was never found, despite an active and fairly intense investigation. None of the officers involved in the case ever bothered to tap into one of the thick oak wine barrels that lined the far walls of the basement. If they had taken the time to open the dozen containers at the back, they would have found the fermented body parts that would eventually make up the human puzzle that had once been Charles S. Pennington.
The movie was in its final moments, and the Boiler Man was ready to strike.
He stood up, eased out of his empty row, and walked down the center aisle of the theater, moving with an eerie silence. When he reached the fourth aisle from the front, he stopped and looked down at the old woman gazing up at the screen. The old woman sat still as stone, her eyes focused on the movie. “You need something from me it had better wait until this is over,” Theresa said.
“I didn’t come here out of any need,” the Boiler Man said, his voice barely audible above the sounds onscreen.
“And you didn’t come here to see a Lee Van Cleef movie,” Theresa said. “So whatever it is, let it rest until the end of this one.”
“Fair enough,” the Boiler Man said, slipping into the seat next to Theresa. “I’m always more interested in endings than beginnings.”
Theresa gently moved her left hand down against the side pocket of her housedress, her fingers feeling for the .38 Special. The Boiler Man smiled up at the screen, absorbed in the final climactic shoot-out. “Don’t,” he said to Theresa. “You’ll be dead before you can grasp the handle, and you’ll miss the best part of the movie.”
“I have people in the lobby,” Theresa said, “three of them to your one. Be aware of that fact.”
“I’ve met them,” the Boiler Man said. “And they won’t interfere with our business. Because they’re dead, I mean. It’s only the two of us. I figured it would be much cozier that way. I’m not one for crowds.”
“What do you want from me?” Theresa hissed, glaring at him with hateful eyes.
“I thought you wanted to see how the movie ended,” the Boiler Man said.
“Fuck the movie,” Theresa said, practically shouting out the words in the near-empty theater. “And tell me what you want here?”
The Boiler Man did a slow head turn and looked at the old woman, a player in the drug game since she was in her early teens, and smiled. “I come to give you a gift,” he said. “From an angel.”
16
Boomer stood waist-deep in the cool waters of the Sound, walking a wicker basket filled with fresh-caught clams back toward the moored rowboat. He dropped the basket over the side of the boat, resting it under one of the seating planks. “Two more bushels and we should be set,” he said.
“We’ve caught enough to fill the needs of three restaurants already,” Natalie said. “What do you plan to do with all these clams?”
“Half the catch I give to my sister,” Boomer said, looking up at her through the sharp glare of the midmorning sun. “She makes the best stuffed clams on the planet, and makes sure I get more than my share. What’s left I give to the elderly in my old neighborhood, folks my parents knew and would spend mornings like this with when they were young.”
“Do you come out here a lot?” she asked. She was wearing a large black T-shirt over a bikini bottom, her back resting against the side of the boat, her long legs stretched out under the open planks.
“Not as much as I should,” Boomer said. “Used to come here every week in the spring and summer like clockwork. Back when my dad was alive. It was our time to spend together, get to talk or just be in each other’s company.”
“How did he die?” Natalie asked.
Boomer paused. “Like a lot of people,” he said. “For no reason.”
“Would you have been a cop had he lived?”
“I can’t answer that,” Boomer said. “I was a kid when he was killed, and all I can remember is wanting to go out and somehow try to make that right. Get the guy who took my father from me. And if I couldn’t do that, then go and get the ones who took other kids’ fathers. Getting back and getting even was all I thought of. Back then and now.”
“Our choices are made for us, more often than we like to think,” Natalie said. “It’s as if it were all planned out even before we arrived on the scene. Look at the two of us. Your whole life has been built on revenge. And mine has been designed to avoid the clutches of someone like you.”
“What if you had decided against going into the
life?” Boomer asked. He was leaning against the boat now, his arms folded and at rest on the bow. “Would your father have allowed you to make that call?”
“You not only met him, you went up against him,” Natalie said, a hint of sadness creeping into her voice. “What do you think he would have done?”
“Could you get out now?” Boomer asked. “If you wanted to?”
Natalie smiled at him. “You are out, and you can’t stay away,” she said. “What makes you think I’m any different? We’re both in, Boomer, because we both want to stay in. It’s the only life we’ve known, and the only one we’re ever going to know.”
“It’s crazy for us to be here like this,” Boomer said. “You know it, and so do I.” He let a moment go by. “But even knowing that,” he said, “I’m glad we’re here, just the two of us.”
“Have you ever come close to having someone in your life?” she asked.
“Once, a lot of years ago,” Boomer said. “I was in love. I thought she was. And she was—but with me, not with what I did. She came to see me one day when I was in the hospital, banged up, shot up, and I caught that look in her eyes and I knew. She couldn’t handle the danger end, and I didn’t want to make her a young widow. It was safer just to let her go.”
“I’m not afraid of the danger end, Boomer,” Natalie said.
Boomer hoisted himself into the boat, knelt down in front of Natalie, and reached for her hand. “You know,” he said, “I’ve never kissed a crime boss before. At least not on the lips.”
“And I’ve never kissed a cop,” she said.
He reached up, took her in his arms, and held her, their bodies warmed by the sun, their eyes locked. Holding her tight against his damaged chest, he leaned down, put his lips to hers, and stepped over a line he never thought he’d cross.
17
The Cessna rolled to a stop on the tarmac, engine droning, landing lights blinking. The white side-panel door opened and two men stepped out and walked down the narrow steps, one of them hand-blocking the glare of the sun from his eyes. They stood on the tarmac and gave the immediate area a quick scan, both facing the wide-berth hangar, their jackets flapping in the cool breeze of a late-spring day.
“I told those fuckers not to be late, did I not?” one of the men said. “Or was it just me that heard that?”
“Relax, Junior,” the second man said. “We got plenty of time. Nobody checks out shit at these private airports. We could be dumping a line of bodies from out the back of the fuel tank, wouldn’t even get a second look. Besides all that, our crew has never once missed a delivery, and there’s no reason for you to give any thought that they will today.”
“I’ll relax all right, soon as all that cocaine is moved off my damn plane and into their damn truck,” Junior said. “Until then, I’m going to just stand here and fuckin’ worry like some sorry-ass skycap.”
“You’re a stress machine,” the other man said. “No wonder you need to pop all those pills all day. You worry worse than some soft-tit old lady.”
“Put a knife to your line of shit and cut it, Raul,” Junior said, pulling a thin cigar from his inside jacket pocket and holding it in his right hand, where it would add mileage to his anger meter. “Like you’re not standing there with bubbles coming out of your tight ass. If these fuckers are a no-show, we have to make good. And that’s bad, cousin. That’s top-of-the-tier bad.”
They turned when they heard the truck engine and watched as a heavy-duty four-wheeled full-load came out of the hangar with a roar and headed straight for where they were standing. “They may be a few ticks late,” Raul said, “but they are for sure hauling ass like they looking to make up for the lost minutes.”
“Get away from the plane,” Junior said, his senses on high-tension alert, eyes darting from the oncoming truck to the empty lounge to his right and up to the roof of the two-story building that housed the mini-terminal. “Get the fuck away from the plane now!” Junior grabbed Raul by the back of his jacket and the two skirted toward the double doors of the lounge, pulling out semiautomatics as they ran. They slammed open the doors and rushed into the lounge, diving in just as the truck rammed into the parked private jet, the loud explosion rocking the afternoon air and sending flames thick as tree stumps hurtling skyward, brick, glass, and rubber flying in all directions. A wave of brown smoke rushed through the lounge, now littered with debris, and covered the fallen bodies of Junior and Raul like a blanket. Sirens wailed in the distance as fire engines and an ambulance rushed to the site of the explosion.
Boomer, Dead-Eye, and Ash stood a half mile away, their backs against the warm side of an empty hangar, where an overhead awning shielded them from the sun’s glare. “It’s a little scary what you can learn working in the arson unit,” said Boomer, arms folded across his chest, eyes on the smoke and flames in the distance. “I might ask you for the recipe sometime down the road, if that’s good with you.”
“Wouldn’t take you long to figure it out, trust me,” Ash said. “It’s not rocket science, it only looks like it.”
“It still doesn’t explain how you got that truck to roll out of there like that,” Dead-Eye said, visibly impressed. “The bomb part, I get. You been around it long enough, you pick shit like that up. But you don’t learn how to jack a truck, kick the engine over, and have it move on down the road like it’s manned by a Formula One driver glued behind the wheel on the arson shift. That much I do know. That’s a class you take in a whole other school.”
“The name Earl Stanlislaw sound familiar?” Ash asked.
“Earl the Pearl,” Boomer said. “A mad bomber worked the city about four, maybe five years back. You the one nailed him?”
“Not directly, but I was part of the team,” Ash said. “And then I was assigned to study him, profile him for the department. To do it right, I had to get to know him a bit. I’d go up to Comstock on his visiting day each month, sit across the glass, and listen to him talk about bombs. He was mad, no doubt on that, but not exactly crazy. He might also have been a finger touch away from a genius, at least when it came to explosives and the best ways to use them. I read dozens of bomb books, just so I wouldn’t come off as a total moron when I started with my pop-quiz questions.”
“Did he show you any other tricks besides the truck one you just pulled off?” Dead-Eye asked.
“I’ve got one or two more picture cards palmed up my sleeve,” Ash said. “I’m a rookie next to Earl the Pearl, but I picked up enough to do some damage to the dealers. Nothing all that technical, but I learned how easy it is to blow shit up.”
“He’s the guy tore apart a downtown department store during a snowstorm,” Boomer said. “Or am I thinking of someone else?”
“No, that was Earl’s work,” Ash said. “It was one of his best jobs, for my money. He planted the device in a perfume display on the second floor, one of those pit stops where a lady gets a free whiff of some new smell. It was timed to go off when the bottle hit the halfway point—which, in this case, was around lunchtime.”
“Did he have a beef with the store?” Dead-Eye asked. “Or maybe with the perfume company?”
“That’s the madness of Earl,” Ash said, shaking her head. “He didn’t have a beef with anybody. He just liked to set off bombs and be there to see the end result. That’s where we part company. At least, I like to think we do. We only go after the ones who caused us some level of pain.”
“How did the drug dealers touch you?” Boomer said. “And I don’t need to know if you don’t feel like giving it a say. I just wondered, that’s all, and we seem to be on the subject.”
“They touch everyone, not just you or Dead-Eye or me,” Ash said. “Every arson fire that’s set in this city can be finger-traced back to drugs. It’s true now, and it was true back when I was a kid. They either do the torch jobs themselves or they farm them out to some kid eager to hook up with their crew. Any way you burn it, their torch prints are on every piece of soot in this town, and the poorer the neighbor
hood the truer that proves out. To tag along with the gas and the flames, you can add a long list of wasted innocent lives that went down in the smoke because of those heartless bastards. That’s why I went into the arson unit, and that’s why I’m here standing next to the two of you.”
“I wish we could get them all,” Boomer said to her, “but there’s always going to be a hundred of them to one of us. So it turns into a long night at a bowling alley. We just look to knock down as many pins as we can before the lights go off and they send us on our way.”
“This is the second haul of Angel’s we’ve hit in less than three days,” Ash said. “How soon you think it will be before he hits back?”
“Depends on how fast he figures out who it is that’s pulling at his drug chain,” Dead-Eye said. “If I had to guess it, I’d say no more than another day or two, four on the outside.”
“How will he get to the two-and-two?” Ash asked.
“He’s not top-tier because of his looks,” Boomer said. “He’s taken the years to set his domain up like a small country—complete with connections, legal and not. He’s got the money and the names to piece together who we are, and some of those names come to the table wearing a cop’s tin. We just need to be smart enough not to let him get close to where he can slice together where we are. If we can manage that, then we’ll make a dent.”