At least, that’s what I thought until I saw the light red stain on the carpet by the door I’d come in through. It had clearly been scrubbed numerous times, but damned if blood wasn’t just too difficult a liquid to get out.
“His name was Jeremy Robertson,” a voice said. “And he didn’t listen.”
I whirled around to find a woman standing at the other end of the room. From the lines and age in her face I made her out to be in her early to mid-forties, but the tone and muscle definition was striking beneath her black tank top. She had long black hair that I could see spread out behind her waist and her green eyes looked at me with a strange kind of calmness that would have given me chills if I wasn’t scared to death.
“Jeremy killed himself,” she said. “We only bring in men who have something to lose. Unfortunately, as we learned later, Jeremy had nothing.”
“Eve Ramos,” I said. “You’re the Fury.”
Ramos laughed, her voice high-pitched, full of delight.
“The Fury,” she said. “I always found such enjoyment in that name. And to think how many people trembled at the very sound of a person who might not even exist. I suppose it works the same way with Satan and even Jesus.
Beholden to deities we will never know exist until the day we die.” Eve Ramos looked up at the ceiling. “I bet
Jeremy Robertson knows whether there is a devil.”
“You manufacture this poison,” I said. “I’m pretty sure that if there is a devil, that puts you on an even keel with him.”
“Oh, Mr. Parker,” Eve said as she crossed the room to where I was standing. Then, moving faster than I knew possible, she had gripped my throat in her hand and said,
“Who’s to say the devil is a man?”
She then pushed me backward. I coughed once, but stared her down.
“You killed my brother,” I said. “Just like you’re responsible for about a dozen more deaths from this drug.”
“A dozen?” Ramos said. “Henry, you don’t know the half of it.”
“So what do you want?” I said. “And where’s my friend?”
“Officer Sheffield is fine,” she said. “Unfortunately, as a police officer, we cannot simply dispose of your friend until we can be certain it is done in a way that is, shall we say, less than incriminating.”
“And me? Why am I here?”
“Henry, you came to us, remember?”
“Why am I alive?”
“You’re alive because you have use to me. Before you die, you have a chance to do one last noble deed. And then when the time comes to meet your maker, you can be sure it will be the right one.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Please,” Ramos said. “Sit.”
I didn’t move.
“Fine. You’ll be sitting enough anyway.” She went to the head of the table, pulled out a leather chair and lay back, propping her feet up on the table. She was wearing dark boots, dirty and worn. This was not a woman who preferred high heels. “You are a newspaperman. I take it you know much about our product from the reporting of
Ms. Paulina Cole.”
“I read her article,” I said. “And I know how you got her to write it.”
“See,” she said, smiling. “I knew you were a bright young man. There’s no way Ms. Cole could have had access to that information without anybody else knowing about it. Yes, we fed it to Ms. Cole. And now you are going to write another article for your newspaper. And once that is done, you can leave this world in peace, knowing you’ve kept your loved ones from harm’s way.”
“My loved ones?”
Eve took her feet down, leaned forward. “You came to my attention right after your brother, Mr. Gaines, was killed. How fortunate for us that another man was accused of his murder, that was an unexpected bonus. But when you figured out who pulled the trigger, we needed a way to keep you in check. It is part of my job to learn about people. Their families, backgrounds, careers, loved ones.
I know you have barely seen your parents in ten years. I know you have little family or friends. But you do have a woman who holds your heart. So piercing her would pierce you.” She smiled. “So to speak.”
“My brother,” I said. “You were behind it. You killed him.”
“Guilty,” she said. “When you run an organization, the buck stops with you. When your brother learned about our plans to diversify our product, he objected. In my line of business you cannot have employees questioning decisions, or threatening to divulge company secrets. He came to you, and that’s when I decided he had to be dealt with.”
“Dealt with,” I said. “That’s a pleasant term for coldblooded murder.”
“Nothing around here happens without my say-so,”
Ramos said. “And if you do not write this for me, I will take your woman, Amanda, and I will make her scream so loud that even if you do make it to heaven, Henry, her cries will pierce the ears of God himself. I will grind her bones to paste, and coat the walls of this room with her blood. And I will make sure you are alive when all of it takes place. And only when you have no screams left to offer will you join her.”
I sat there, my whole body cold. Amanda.
“You see, when I kill a person, their death must not be in vain. It must represent something. Your brother’s death was a sign that even our highest-earning lieutenants were not invulnerable. Kenneth Tsang’s death was a warning to new employees as to what could happen if you weren’t trustworthy. Brett Kaiser’s death showed that we can reach anybody, anywhere. To me, blood and bone are like paint and a brush. With the right artistry, one can create a work of art that speaks to people. Your family, Henry, would be a message that our reach does not stop within our organization, but that we can touch even the smallest, most insignificant lives.”
“You wouldn’t…”
“I wouldn’t?” Ramos said. “Your mother and father live in Bend, Oregon, on a sunny little street called Eastview Drive. I can have a man there tonight. Your parents could be dead before the evening news. Your parents are insignificant, which is why their deaths would be all the more glorious.”
“You’re a monster.”
“I’m only a monster because this involves you, Henry.
How many monsters do you see, day in and day out, in your line of work? Proximity heightens emotions.
Things could be different. You could have been down on your luck, penniless, and come to work for me. And then, like so many of these young men, you would have understood.”
“I don’t know anything besides what Paulina wrote,”
I said. “There’s nothing more to the story.”
“That’s not true,” she said. “You’ve been quite an explorer. Tell me what you know.”
I looked up at her, and if looks could kill Eve Ramos would have been dead several times over. “I know that you and Rex Malloy were in Panama together, and that your troop was attacked and Chester Malloy was killed. I also know that it was in Panama that you learned how to synthesize Darkness, and you managed to smuggle it back to
America. I know that all your drug mules are young men, and you’re using their debts to get them to work for you.”
“Great thing about those young men,” Eve said, “is that they have something to lose. You see, when a man has pride, he will do things he knows are wrong to prove his worth. These men were born with nothing, but worked their way into high-paying jobs. When those lives were taken away, that ambition, that pride, left a gaping hole.
I simply offer to fill that hole. I will not use men from the slums, poor urban souls who have nothing to lose.
Dealers are nothing more than hungry animals. You feed them, throw them an extra bone here or there, they’ll do anything for you.”
“Even die for you.”
“Not by choice, but yes.”
“Why 718 Enterprises?” I asked.
“Ha! That’s simple, Henry. I was born in Queens.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
There was a knock at the door behind Ramos. She went and opened it. A man stood there. He was wearing a suit, brown hair neatly combed. And he was holding a legal pad and pen.