He reared back and swung. The TRONGG sound echoed, and he saw the handles bend.
He gave it another full swing without taking time to think about it—TRONGG—and the handles popped off, one bolt each.
He pulled off the chain, nervously checking both ways, waiting for someone to come upon him. A dog barked close by, as near as the next building over.
He grasped the half-removed handles and only then wondered what he would do if the doors were locked from inside. The padlock outside seemed to throw that into doubt, however, and when he pulled . . .
. . . the door opened with a sick groan.
Cement stairs coated with dust and dead bugs, leading to another door—its lock plate broken.
Fisk thumbed the flashlight button on the fore grip of his 870 and pushed the door open.
CHAPTER 65
The man known as Chuparosa was upstairs watching a baseball game soundlessly on a laptop computer when he heard the twin clangs.
Watching baseball helped him to focus. He was dressed in his black pants and tuxedo shirt, his bow tie ends dangling from his winged collar. It was a recording of an interleague game from August. The Yankees were playing the Braves in Atlanta, so there was no designated hitter. The Mexican leagues had adopted the DH at more or less the same time as the American League, and Chuparosa did not understand the reason behind splitting Major League Baseball down the middle. The game was improved by the designated hitter rule—it was a fact!
Fortunately the Yankees were up 3–1 in the seventh. Chuparosa’s uncle, the one who raised him, had always revered the Yankees organization as the greatest sports franchise in the world. Chuparosa hated his uncle unreservedly, but agreed with him in this thing only. His ball cap sat atop the table next to the computer, between it and a copy of H Para Hombres magazine with a picture of an almost naked Ninel Conde on the cover.
The noise was so startling and so loud, so obvious, he immediately dismissed it as the product of a nearby worker. But nothing could be left to chance.
Tomás Calibri came running into the room, buttoning up his trousers, the sound of the flushing toilet coming through the bathroom door.
“What is that, patrón?”
“Find out,” said Chuparosa.
Calibri reached for the silenced MP5 submachine gun standing by the door.
Chuparosa said, “We are just a few hours away from glory. Do not take any chances.”
CHAPTER 66
The flashlight mounted on Fisk’s Remington 870 was a recently purchased SureFire—incredibly powerful, but it gobbled batteries at an outrageous rate.
Inside the broken door to the basement, Fisk briefly swept the dark room, making certain no one was there to shoot him as he silhouetted himself in the doorway. Then he thumbed the flashlight off again. He did not want to go dark-blind. Nor did he want to tip off his location.
The noise of his entry had surely alerted anyone inside the warehouse.
He moved left, along a narrow walkway, cutting quickly through the blackness, ears straining.
Footsteps, above. He switched his light on again, directing it at the ceiling. Heart pine over massive old wooden beams. The creaks were farther away than that. A second floor above him.
He moved quickly down the hallway—too quickly, misjudging the end of the hall and bumping into the wall so abruptly he saw stars. He stopped, shaking it off. He turned right. He blinked the SureFire on and then off again.
Along the wide side of the room stood a series of unlabeled doors. As many as eight.
He aimed the light down, low to the ground, minimizing its illumination, and hurried across the gritty cement floor to the first door.
He put his hand on the knob but did not turn it. “Hello?” he whispered, remembering Thring’s description of the room the hooker had been locked inside.
“Come in,” said a female voice, barely audible, trembling.
Fisk tried the door, shotgun muzzle up. The knob turned. The door only locked from the inside, to keep its occupant from escaping. The flashlight blinded the young girl inside, who was no older than fifteen, sitting naked on a bare cot next to a chair with folded bedsheets stacked upon it.
With one thin arm, she blocked her eyes. With the other she attempted to cover her small breasts.
Fisk froze there for a moment. Then he grabbed the knob and pulled the door shut again.
Fisk backed away from the door. He looked down the wide room at the other doors.
Best to leave them locked in for now.
He quickly checked his silenced phone. No reception down here.
He put his phone away and thumbed off the light, picking his way across the room in darkness. The odor here was foul, the air uncirculated. He neared the end of the room and thought he could make out a flight of stairs headed up. He turned on his SureFire again . . . but the image he saw before him burned itself onto his retina, even after he shut off his flashlight again.
There, against the wall and on the floor, the amount of dried, brown blood was astonishing.
Slung against the paneled wall, splashed against the concrete floor.
Fisk held his breath in an attempt not to breathe in the fumes. He thumbed on the light again.
He saw the divots in the floor, amid all the smeared blood. He swung his light to the corner, where stood a tool resembling a post-hole digger, its blade crusted brown.
The scene was even grimmer the second time he looked at it. Grim and infinitely sad.
This was where the Rockaway thirteen had been decapitated and otherwise maimed.
CHAPTER 67
Chuparosa checked the exterior surveillance cameras, front and back. There was nobody outside the building, no vehicles except those parked along the curb, nothing moving. No police cars, no vans.
If it was a cop, he had come alone. Which meant he was crazy or stupid.
If it was not a cop, who could it be? The unluckiest thief in the history of the world? Or another, unexpected threat?
Chuparosa buckled on his holster containing the Glock 21. He reached for the M4 carbine he had stolen from a drug dealer three weeks before.
He decided he wanted to keep eyes and ears on Calibri, and started down the stairs after him. Tomás Calibri had been shot twice fighting communist guerrillas during his stint in the Mexican military, where he was awarded the Condecoración al Valor Heroico and the Cruz de Guerra. Three years later he offered his mercenary services to the Zetas. He was a man of questionable intelligence, in Chuparosa’s opinion, as well as being a little insane—but he was a good man in a fight.
Calibri was starting toward the door to the basement. As Chuparosa came off the bottom step, the elevator from the basement groaned to life, the thick cable starting to pull the car upward.
Chuparosa motioned to Calibri to take up a position opposite him by the elevator door. Calibri could cover the elevator while Chuparosa watched the basement door, and they could each shoot without concern for hitting each other.
The elevator hummed and whined and shuddered as it moved up toward them.
Whoever this strange visitor was, they had him.
CHAPTER 68
Chuparosa, thought Fisk, quickly surveying the room by flashlight. He spotted a freight elevator gaping open, a rectangular slab of darkness in the wall. He thought to try the stairs first—quieter—but he had already announced his presence with the bulkhead chain.