The Kingmaker

19 - History

 "An intense fire engulfed several cabin cruisers left docked at the beach today, following an explosion that many are beginning to suspect is the work of a serial arsonist. Bystanders report that an altercation took place shortly before, with several unidentified men converging on the boats and aggressively approaching security on duty -"

Eden scratched her jaw. DiAngelo had moved fast, hadn't he? But of course. A man like that would only need a single false rumor to explode. He was bigger now, maybe, but he would always be the ratty, twitchy young boy she had first seen on the streets of the Slum Belt. Always ready to sink his teeth into anything that even brushed his nose, whether it was a true threat or just a passing breeze.

"- six bystanders injured from the resulting flames and debris, but all are expected to make a full recovery. Police have yet to identify any of the men reported to have caused the incident, but promise they are using all available resources to track them down and bring them to justice. Anyone with information is encouraged to step forward and -"

Sure. Anyone with information who 'stepped forward' would find their tips shoveled into the dirt and left there to rot. The Alexandria City Police Department knew better than to interfere in turf conflicts - rather, they sought to profit from it. They had no intention of resolving this, much less bringing anyone 'to justice' as the newscaster so optimistically declared. In fact, if anyone attempted to intervene with a little too much enthusiasm, they could probably expect to be paid a visit themselves by 'interested parties,' and then they would have their own lethal problems to deal with.

" - authorities still have no additional information on the first explosion that rocked Alexandria University just a few days ago, but do say that it is too early to say whether these two incidences are linked. Alexandrians are encouraged to stay home and off the streets in this turbulent time until they are safe again."

Safe? Again? When had the streets here ever been safe? Eden kept her head leaned back against the wall, listening to the sounds of her neighbor's cheap television on the other side filtering through. Good thing that the old man was deaf and had to keep the volume high; she'd been able to stay on top of the media exposure because of his unwitting generosity. He could definitely use a better television though. She could tell that the static was growing steadily worse every day.

So the public suspected an arsonist, or at the very least some kind of turf war antics. That was an interesting spin on the story, she thought, one that she could use to her advantage. She had already provoked DiAngelo into aggressing on Goodwin's operations, which had been made triply easy because of his paranoia, his ego, and most critically his greed - he, too, was a participant in the crystal meth market after all. He would look for any reason to lower the big fish in the pool a few notches, and if the other crime lords objected and tried to intervene, he would simply provide the 'proof' of Goodwin's trespasses on his own territory first.

Eden nibbled on her thumb, considering her options. DiAngelo was only roughly in her hands in the same way a bucking bronco was in the hands of its rodeo rider. She was staying on his back with her hands on the rein, but she wouldn't be able to steer him in any particular direction just yet. She needed more leverage for that, more influence. Right now, she was just a voice on the phone who had given him an excuse to run rampant as he'd wanted to for a while, and that only tipped her slightly on the side of his favor. She needed - more.

She needed to be valuable.

She pulled out her phone - a new one this time, she had discarded the old phone in an abandoned dump after her last conversation with DiAngelo - and punched in 'Danielle' the hooker's phone number from memory. A text would do; the other woman would never pick up a phone call and Eden didn't particularly want to hold a verbal conversation with her anyway.

"Hey, texting you from my boyfriend's phone since mine is f*****g up. Hope you heard about the boats on fire. Think that was where they were trying to cook. Don't know where else I can go to get anything now."

The reply came a minute later.

"What do you mean. No speed?"

Eden tapped away at the phone's keypad. It was an ancient relic, a flip phone with no keyboard, just a number pad that she had to rotate through to reach the right letters. The things she did in the name of digital safety...

"None. They were on these big boats. Like yachts but with kitchens inside. Apparently they would go out on the water in the night and just cook out there. No campers."

"How do you know that."

"DiAngelo. My boyfriend works for him."

A long silence this time. It was a gamble; someone like Danielle would be leery of continuing the conversation - ever - now that she 'knew' Eden's circumstantial proximity to one of the most prolific drug barons in this area of the city. Free fractions of an ounce of blow every so often weren't tempting enough for anyone to risk getting the attention of powerful criminals, even through degrees of social separation. Eden knew that well, and yet she had told Danielle anyway for a specific reason:

The woman probably couldn't keep her damn mouth shut.

The first hint had come the night they met. A smarter, more discreet woman would have held her tongue and never admitted what she was there for instead of letting Eden convince her so easily of her harmlessness. In fact, a smarter, more discreet woman wouldn't have been there at all, nosing around and hoping to see something in the night despite already having heard that meth production wouldn't kick back up for several more days.

Danielle had neither of those traits, however, and instead possessed a mouth too ready to start flapping and share her information with just a little prodding. No doubt the woman would spread Eden's lies for her as quick as wildfire among her friends, and then from there...

No answer still. Good. That mean the conversation was over, but in just a few days she would see the fruits of it. She had said she would call DiAngelo, too - but on second thought, she would wait another couple of days. She would make the excuse that she was being chased, that she had had to relocate and therefore hadn't been able to make safe contact. Keeping DiAngelo salivating a little wouldn't do too much harm as long as she didn't let the suspense fester into paranoia and suspicion.

In the meantime, she needed to start prying a little more through more legal channels to understand more about the nooks and crannies of the crime jungle in the city. She needed information, context. And what better place to start than -

--------

Zero shrugged off his gear and let it drop to the bed, standing in silence as he observed the new foxhole that DaleCorp had set the unit up with. Well, not in complete silence. On the other side of the wall, he could hear Ben moaning someone's name and sounding like he was being gutted through. Or maybe more like he was gutting someone else.

Not that it was a woman. He was entertaining himself with the latest p**n he'd found on his phone, no doubt, since the rules had been clear about the safe house: no guests. It was a condominium unit close to the headquarters so that they could always be available to call and rouse even when they weren't part of the on-duty squad, a cautionary measure in place since things were bound to get riled up and violent very soon on the streets. Any wealthy businessman would be an easy, lucrative target for cartel hits, after all, and with whispers of turf wars cropping up...

Bang bang!

"Hey, Zero, you there?"

He glanced over at the wall. Hearing his name called from the mouth of a man who had just apparently finished jerking himself off didn't sit well with him. A moment of polite recuperation would have been more appropriate.

"Pass me something from your stash. I want to try getting off while I'm high."

Zero stared down at his bed covers and wondered if he ought to pretend he was already asleep, or wasted he supposed. Either was believable. His squad mates were utterly convinced he was only good at shooting targets and dodging bullets; he was otherwise the equivalent of a human sloth in their eyes.

But this did open up an opportunity. If Ben was laid out flat and dazed, with Sam accompanying Red Chief to check the security of the venue of DaleCorp's next social event, Zero would be free to wander without rousing suspicion. What time was it? Still three in the afternoon, plenty of time until the other two would return.

Half an hour later after Ben was busy watching the blank television screen in his room with rapt interest and reddening eyes, Zero was slipping out of the condominium complex and hitting the pavement with steady strides. He wasn't wearing his tactical gear, of course. The last thing he needed was to draw eyes and alert everyone to the presence of a mercenary in their midst. That would hardly turn out well.

He didn't know where to start, was the question. He had already inspected the old Ingram home and determined that no one had been there in a very long time, that whoever owned the place had likely never even intended to fix up the place and make it livable again to begin with. Whatever the reason, he had his suspicions, but until he could find any substantial proof to back it up, he was just treading open water with no harbor in sight.

His first hunch had been that the target herself had somehow acquired the property under an assumed name. It would make sense. Reconquering lost territory, reclaiming the site that had seen the end of her family and her old life. But that couldn't be right: whoever had purchased the place had done so only months after the incident once the banks were done fighting over the deed. At that time, the target had still been in confined physical therapy, under watch day and night with no access to the outside world.

So that lifted her from the pool of possibilities. Who, then? Clearly it wasn't a grieving philanthropist attempting to immortalize the gruesome price the old police commissioner had paid for trying to clean up the city. If it was such a well-meaning stranger, they wouldn't have left the house unguarded and unprotected from the elements at the very least. Whoever had bought the property had done so on a whim that had evaporated shortly after, marked by the negligence over the years that followed.

So maybe, Zero thought, it was someone who was more interested in flaunting their new territory to the public than in preserving its monumental significance. A collector of macabre, deathly aftereffects, someone with a perverse interest in owning a place where the most brutal murders of the century had taken place.

Or - someone who had a different kind of personal stake in the incident. Someone connected to the incident itself who had wanted to make a final statement of desecration and conquest by buying up the place and making a point of never removing the evidence of what had happened that night. Like pissing on a dead man's grave, Zero thought.

He'd be able to find out more at the courthouse, maybe, but that would attract too much attention. There couldn't be many people who inquired after property purchase histories, even 'historical' ones, and he would be accompanied by an owl-eyed employee observing him suspiciously the entire time.

No, what he needed to do was go somewhere a little more innocuous, somewhere he wouldn't be suspected or even memorable for that matter. Somewhere with records that would go back just as far even if they were second-hand sources, and without an archivist watching over his shoulder and breathing down his neck.

Zero climbed the steps of the grand Library of Alexandria a quarter hour later, keeping his head down and his hands in his pockets. His hood was up, and while that might give him a shifty appearance, he would rather that than give anyone a chance to see his face and potentially recognize him in the future. Anonymity was the safest weapon he had, and the greatest defense.

Besides, he wasn't the only one. Someone else was climbing the steps ahead of him with a dark green sweater of her own, a scarf wrapped around her collar and concealing her lower face. Sure, it was cold, but like as not it was someone who simply wanted to stay just as anonymous as him. Maybe she had enemies, or maybe she was meeting someone here behind her boyfriend's back, who knew -

Zero almost froze when the woman turned slightly to pull open the glass door entrance. He was glad he hadn't - surely the woman would have seen him stop moving out of the corner of her eye, and then all would have been lost.

Even from this angle, her side profile was unmistakable. It was a second's glance, a momentary glimpse, but Zero knew what he had seen. As the door swung shut behind the woman, he climbed the rest of the steps with quiet caution, and then brushed his hand against his firearm hidden under his zip-up.

And then he followed her in.