The Fury

The Fury - book excerpt

Chapter 1

He had run an exhausting race across the arid plains. He ran over sunbaked fields of bleached grass, along the banks of muddied streams, across boulder-strewn cliffs. He had reached the limits of his endurance, realizing they would have him eventually. Fear had long given way to naked terror, which hardened into ruthless desperation. His heart was exploding in his chest, his lungs bursting from exertion. He knew that he would soon be dead unless he could find refuge. Yet he knew there was none for his breed along the wastelands of the Kalahari.

Their voices were audible to his razor-keen sense of hearing, and he realized they were slowly gaining on him. The steady patter of running feet in mechanical pursuit was like an echo of his own heartbeat behind him. He clambered over the ridge, daring a split-second glance that saved his very life. The bushman’s throw was perfect, the handmade spear soaring in a graceful arc. It would have plunged between his shoulder blades had he not twisted with a frenzied yelp. He lost his balance, hitting a strip of loose shale which sent him sliding off the ridge.

His ribs slammed against a boulder as he fell, knocking the wind out of him. The hunters were swarming the cliff above him, yelling unintelligibly, poised to hurl their spears one last time. He tried to scramble to his feet, crawling on all fours, realizing that he was about to breathe his last…

Buda Sakumbe was jolted from his nightmare, his bedsheets soaked in sweat. His eyes bulged in terror as he stared wildly around the darkened room. His lungs filled with the cool night air as he trembled with relief, realizing it was just a dream. The dread that it could happen again, in this time and place, made his guts churn with anxiety. He knew he would not be able to go back to sleep, yet he also knew it did not matter. Since he had come to this place, he had met no one, gone nowhere. There were only the blackouts…and the nightmares.

He knew they would come for him eventually, and the nightmares would begin anew. He knew he was here for only one purpose, and he could only hope to understand his role in this strange and distant land.

He had been one of them, a proud member of the San tribe living in what the white man called the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in Botswana. His people lived off the land, using their poison-tipped spears to hunt game to feed their families. It was during the hard dry season when the Witch had come to him, at the time when the San settled in around the rapidly-drying waterholes and the white men tried their hardest to move them onto the farming settlements. It was during this time when the Witch convinced him that the Spirits could help him protect and defend his family and his people.

She took him to her cave where she taught him the prayers and the rituals, and how to cast the spells. He met her in the secret place when he was out hunting, and she would bring him away and take him back. She always gave him water to take back, plenty of water for his family and friends. The water was precious, life-giving. In exchange for the water, he gave his time, and in time she taught him great and terrible things. Together they brought great evil against the white man in his homeland, and death to those who invaded the Kalahari. He was named the village hounga , and had used his powers to bring blessing and healing to the tribe. Only now, his people had turned against him, and she had come to bring him to safety. She gave him a new name and found him a new home. This new home, however, was unlike any place he had ever known, and he was sacred.

He fell back into his bed and wrapped his sheets tightly around himself, panicked by the memories of the past and the fear of things to come.

Johnny Devlin downed the rest of his Heineken, adding the bottle to the waitress’ loaded tray after she replaced the empties with a fresh round. He watched with amusement as his teammates tried to make time with the buxom brunette over the din of the music blaring from the PA system. They were almost shouting at each other in conversation, sitting in their regular booth in a dark corner of Manitoba’s in Alphabet City.

They could have been mistaken for a motorcycle crew, and as they got drunk, they would have welcomed a challenge. They were deep in Hell’s Angels territory, and could have cared less. They were the Zombie Squad, a top secret, officially non-existent black ops unit of the New York City Police Department. It was a task force assigned to the cases no one else dared take. The pay was high, as was the casualty rate. The length of service was notoriously short. Most of those who left the squad were emotionally or physically crippled, or dead. The guys who signed up were cowboys who were sick of revolving door justice and would break all the rules to get the job done.

“What do we got on the Carson murder?” Benny Roscoe sidled over by Devlin. The four detectives were dressed in black, wearing leather jackets, T-shirts and jeans. They generally worked alone though would call upon each other whenever necessary. Some cases were just bounced around between them until someone got a handle on it, then they would join forces and crack it wide open. This happened to be one of them.

“Not much more than Homicide,” Devlin sipped his beer. “It looks like just another drug killing, but I think it was just too messy. Carson was a happy camper, he made good money, he was a good earner, he never skimmed. He was a good guy to deal with, and he was moving up in the world, but not too fast. It looked like somebody was trying to send a message, and I’d like to find out who and why.”

“Them Homicide chumps just about shit their drawers when they found out me and Flash were scrounging around up there,” Romeo Browne chuckled. “I heard Vice wasn’t too happy either. They get all bent outta shape when we score on those cold cases. It tells all the big shots how their brown noses aren’t doing their jobs.”

“Those bastards don’t want to get to the bottom of anything but their Scotch bottles,” Ozzy ‘Flash’ Shadizar liked to say. “They figure if they wait long enough, those dealers’ll end up killing each other before the cops have to step in.”

“Problem is, all them brothers and sisters getting killed as innocent bystanders,” Browne shook his head. “I can’t stand by and see that happen.”

“That’s right, and once the blacks are all gone, then they stand by and watch the Puerto Ricans get killed, then the Dominicans, then the West Indians,” Roscoe preached to the choir. “They don’t give a shit if every poor person in the City goes six feet under as long as they got their pension waiting when it’s over.”

“It doesn’t make any sense, though. Why an attack dog?” Devlin tried to wrap his head around the situation. “You gotta feed the damned thing, it shits all over the place, it barks, it attracts fleas. Granted, nobody’s gonna rat out a posse, but the thing’s gotta be more trouble than it’s worth. Maybe you sic it on Carson to scare people, keep everybody in line, but where are you gonna keep a thing like that?”

“Tore his face off,” Roscoe grunted. “Ripped some bone right off his skull. I mean, how big was the frickin’ thing? What kind of dog does shit like that?”

“That was the third victim,” Flash pointed out. “We always say that three’s the charm, that’s when we step in. If the beat cops and the detective squads don’t jump on a case by then, they never will. There’s been two other dealers that got torn up recently. If we don’t nip this in the bud, it’ll go viral, and we’ll never get a handle on it. We come up a day late and a dollar short, the animal rights people’ll come in behind us and tie a knot in our tails. Plus, if the things get rabies or some shit, children are gonna start get bitten. I’m with Johnny, we need to give this priority. You know when the papers get it, it’s out of our reach.”

“Okay, look, I’m going to go riding with Vosberg tomorrow night,” Devlin decided. “I’ll get a solid lead and we’ll squeeze the shit out of it. Something’s gotta give, it always does.”

“Vosberg?” Flash was exasperated. “C’mon, John. That rat is gonna burn all our other leads, you know that. That piece of shit drives everybody underground, the way he operates. Don’t do it.”

“What other leads are we talking about, Flash?” Devlin leaned back in the booth.

“Man, you getting desperate now,” Browne squinted. “I’ll tell you what, if me and Benny go up there tomorrow night, I guarantee we gonna come back with some fresh leads.”

“Well, Vosberg can’t burn what we don’t have,” Devlin told them. “Flash, if you go up there and talk to some of your Grenadan bros, and Romeo and Benny go do what they do, I think I can get enough done with Vosberg for us to do some serious dog hunting.”

“All right,” Benny always brought enthusiasm to the table. “It’s Zombie time! They’re gonna be dancing to the beat of the living dead!”

Devlin smiled quietly, sipping his beer as he looked out into the neon-drenched shadows of the notorious rock club. He had a creeping foreboding that this case was going to be very, very different.

The beautiful young woman sat nervously in the seedy storefront, surrounded by religious statues and spiritual curios in the fortune-telling parlor on 137th Street in Harlem. The young black man who sat with her was not sure what this fine piece of white sugar was doing here in the first place. He did not know what he was doing here either. All he knew was that Kenya was getting weird, going into business with the West Indians and jacking around with these palm-reading tarot bitches. It was almost as if the operation was relocating to this stink-ass welfare tenement, and dudes were getting killed just for asking why.

“Madame Nola will see you now,” a giant black man dressed in a black suit and tie came out from the back room behind the counter to greet them. “Thank you, young man, that will be all.”

“Okay, ya’ll be cool,” the kid was quick to make his exit. He remembered his grandpa talking about the Black Muslims in the Sixties coming around in suits and ties, building an army and taking over Harlem. These new dudes had people talking, but they were more like robots than anything. Nobody knew where they came from, what they did or where they went, but there seemed to be more and more of them as time went on, and the only one they seemed to be talking to was Kenya. And that mofo was getting weirder and weirder.

“Annabelle,” the tall, golden-skinned mulatto with the feline green eyes and the gypsy style came over, taking her forearm in both hands. “I am Madame Nola. It is so good to meet you.”

“It’s wonderful meeting you too,” Annabelle cooed. She was dressed in a beige designer dress, her long brown hair curled and styled, framing her lovely face and draping her proud bosom. “We’ve spent so much time in the chat room, I feel like I’ve known you forever.”

“Spiritual connections know no bounds, my dear,” Nola smiled softly, leading her behind the counter to the curtained room in the back. “Yet they grow so much stronger once we’ve made physical contact. There is just so much ahead of us, so much to learn about each other, so much for us to explore together. I am so glad you finally decided to take this leap of faith. Together we will create miracles, and we will truly go where no women have ever gone before.”

“When will I get to meet Miss Goyette?” she wondered. “You told me so much about her, it feels almost like I’m going to meet a saint. I’m so nervous, I don’t think I’m even ready for it.”

“You will meet her very soon, Anna, and I will guarantee that you will be ready,” Nola assured her as they stepped into a parlor out of a bad fortune-telling movie. There were garish red curtains and drapes everywhere, surrounding a red Persian-carpeted floor upon which sat a large round oak table featuring a huge crystal ball. “Our journey will begin here, and when you can see more clearly, clearly than you have ever seen before, Miss Goyette will come to you. I can feel your gifts, child, I can feel your power. Miss Goyette will come to you soon, very, very soon.”

“When do we start?” Annabelle asked softly.

“Very soon,” she repeated. “Your quarters will be in the back, through that door. It is a modest area, with a convertible sofa and a kitchenette. If you need anything just call me on the cell phone. I stay upstairs with Miss Goyette, she is elderly and needs someone to tend to her. There are books on the coffee table, I ask that you read them so that you can prepare yourself for the journey ahead. It is important that you fill your mind with the things that we are about to explore. Familiarize yourself with these things, so that we can move as quickly as possible and do not have to spend much time staying in one place in order for you to grasp them.”

“Oh my gosh,” Annabelle giggled nervously. “This sounds so exciting.”

“The journey is only getting started, my child,” Nola held her forearm again in a way that gave her goose bumps. “We’ve only just begun.”

Bridgette Celine had started Parisienne Investigations on a wing and a prayer after graduating from John Jay College of Criminal Justice a couple of years ago. It all started over a drink with a grade school classmate, Phil Selah. They met by coincidence at the Downtown Bar and Grill on Court and Amity Streets in Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill area where she was born and raised. Phil had recently passed the bar and was opening his own law office in Brooklyn Heights. He guaranteed her plenty of work if she could serve subpoenas for him, and she agreed to refer any domestic surveillance clients as the need arose. Things worked out well, and after two years she had paid off her small business loan and was now hacking away at her student loan.

Recently she had gotten an e-mail from a lawyer named Jack Nelson who wanted her to do a surveillance job for him. She thought it odd that he had arranged to meet her at the upstairs room at Sam’s Restaurant across from the corner of Court and Baltic Streets in Cobble Hill. Though it was a family business operating over a half century, they almost never used the upper floor. Apparently the owners held whoever Jack Nelson represented in high esteem.

Bridgette was a tall, beautiful woman whose childhood friends called her Bridge due to her 5’10” stature. She had long chestnut hair that reached to her lower back, alluring velvet eyes, a smallish nose and a full lipped smile. She was seeing Bobby Mendoza as of late, and their relationship was getting to where she knew he would be spending the night at her apartment on Warren Street sometime soon. Mendoza was a GVN who had been assigned to home health care with one of her recent clients in an insurance fraud investigation. They hit it off and began seeing each other socially, and right now its seemed the sparks were flying.

She was hoping to get some more of these surveillance jobs, as she was now charging $150 an hour for her services. Phil had gotten her some connections with a couple of his classmates at the NYU School of Law, and she would charge them a $150 flat rate to serve a subpoena or deliver a court document for them. Things were picking up, and if Nelson represented a wealthy client she might end up having to hire an assistant to take care of her routine jobs.

It was a short walk to Sam’s Restaurant, and she did a quick workout before making breakfast and watching Good Morning America before heading out for her 9 AM meeting. She realized that Sam’s normally opened around 11 AM, which meant they were making the place available two hours early. That said a lot more about this prospective client. As she approached the restaurant she saw the Mercedes-Benz parked out front, and continued smelling money as she walked down the steps and found the glass door open.