honest, it scared him. He knew where he was going and wasn’t in a hurry to get there. Besides, while he was alive, he could keep killing members of the Purists. He might even be able to kill them all.
He wondered what he would do, then. But it didn’t matter. It would be a long time before he got them all.
Syracuse, New York
“C OME ON , J ACKER ,” T ROGG grunted, holding the bloodstained bag of ice to his aching head. “Hurry the fuck up.”
“I’m doing my best, man,” Jacker whined. His left arm in a sling, Jacker moved a felt-tipped marker back and forth on the dog-eared sheet of copy paper. He paused to push stringy, dirty-blond hair out of his eyes and then bent to his work again.
“Don’t test me, Jacker,” Trogg rumbled. He flexed the fingers of both his hands, picturing them wrapped around a throat. He wanted to find that commando. It had to be the same guy; there was no question. It was the guy who’d hit the cook house, the guy who’d butchered Chopper Mike, Mike’s old lady, and even his rug rat. Trogg had done worse himself over the course of his life, but this was different. This was family. This was the Purists. Nobody tried to do the Purists like this son of a bitch had done. He was going to pay. Yeah, he was going to pay, but first he was going to suffer. Trogg was going to take great pleasure in torturing the bastard until he went insane—and then torturing him some more until he died.
The doctor Trogg used for these little incidents had treated him and Jacker, taken his bribe and scuttled off. Trogg almost had to laugh. It was a good bet the city’s south side was the only part of Syracuse that still got house calls from the local medical establishment. Like anything in life, you could have whatever you wanted if you didn’t care what it cost and you didn’t care what laws you broke. Sure, a lot of the doctors paid to come by were, well, less than legitimate, but you took what you could get.
Trogg knew he was lucky to be alive. His head felt as if it were going to split open. The bullet had creased his forehead but left his skull intact, leaving him with what was going to be an impressive scar when the stitches came out. He was doped to the gills on codeine from his private stash of painkillers. Jacker had bad burns and a busted arm, but he’d recover, too. He wasn’t going to be very pretty, what with the skin all screwed up on his arm and face and neck, but then, he hadn’t been that pretty to start with.
“He’s gonna pay, man,” Trogg said out loud, not so much to Jacker as to the Universe itself. “We’re gonna find him and we’re going to make him scream and beg to die.”
B OLAN SAT AT THE interrogation room table with the rookie, Officer Paglia, opposite him, both of them shuffling through files. The impromptu work space had that entrenched locker-room tang that so many rooms like it never lost—sweat, mostly, mixed with stale air, peeling paint, and the stink of bodies long neglected and abused by their owners. Bolan’s credentials had gotten him the space and enough cooperation to get the young officer assigned to him for support, but Syracuse’s chief of police and his federal counterparts had made it clear they weren’t happy to have him butting in. Bolan didn’t care what they thought as long as they stayed out of his way.
“This is everything you have on the Purists and any killings involving them?” Bolan asked.
“Everything—murders we believe or that we know they’ve committed, and all of the killings of Purist members in the area,” Paglia confirmed. He shrugged. “To be honest, a lot of guys on the force seem to think the folks upstairs don’t want to try real hard to solve those.” He pointed to several crime-scene photos depicting what could only be dead bikers.
Bolan nodded. The Purists were scum and their deaths were no big loss. But innocent victims were getting caught in the cross fire. A vigilante war had been launched, and the killer apparently saw everyone who got in his way as legitimate targets, even if they had nothing to do with the gang or its members.
“What are you looking for?” Paglia asked. Bolan looked up at the young man. There was real intuition there—and Paglia could obviously see that Bolan was no by-the-book, procedural investigator or forensics analyst. The soldier decided to be honest with the cop.
“I need some way to predict where the killer will go next,” he admitted. “I can’t stay one step behind him. I’ve got to anticipate his moves so I can cut him off.”
Paglia considered the photographs and manila files, then started hunting through them. “I think I know,” he said.
Bolan watched, curious.
“Here.” Paglia presented him with a file. “As far as I know, there’s been no hit there, but the location is central to Purist operations. I’ve heard rumors through the force that we’ve tried a couple of times to get undercover agents in the gang, specifically to get a look at this place. The word is that this is where the bodies are buried.”
“And?” Bolan pressed.
“Can’t get in.” Paglia shrugged. “They’re too suspicious or just too smart. They won’t accept someone they don’t know. At least, that’s what I’ve heard.”
Bolan considered that. While relatively new to the force, Paglia was typical of police officers everywhere—hooked into gossip that was more true than false, though never completely accurate. The thin blue line was shot through with grapevines. You could drop a pen in the break room of a station house at three in the morning and, by five past three, every cop on duty within ten miles would know about it.
In the file photo, an innocuous building sat on a street corner in a vaguely industrial-commercial district. A large, fading sign on the front of the facade proclaimed it Zippers Arcade.
“You want to find the Purists,” Paglia told him, “go to Zippers. If you don’t find them first, they’ll find you. ”
Bolan nodded. It was time to make a move.
T HE SEEDY BAR AT THE corner of East Fayette Street and Columbus Avenue bore a cracked but still-bright sign proclaiming it Club Lightning. A stylized lightning bolt striking the silhouette of a man and woman adorned the sign and, Rook presumed, invoked its name. Across the street from the bar—which bore several No Loitering notices and boasted a metal sign forbidding the possession of guns, knives and drugs on the premises—was an equally seedy barbershop. Close examination of both buildings would reveal several old bullet holes. The corner of East Fayette and Columbus was notorious in Syracuse. Shootings occurred there regularly, thanks to violence in and around the club. Several attempts to shut down the bar under public safety ordinances had failed.
Rook pulled his pickup truck to a stop in the barbershop’s parking lot, blocking the exit. An African-American man in his late teens or early twenties immediately exited the shop and challenged him.
“Hey, man,” he said. “You can’t park that there. Move your ass.”
Without hesitation, Rook shot him.
The .45ACP round from Rook’s four-inch Smith & Wesson 625 Mountain Gun punched through the young man’s chest and turned his white shirt a bloody red. Without pausing, Rook walked calmly across the street, drawing his second Smith & Wesson 625 with his left hand. The Hogue grips on both weapons felt warm in his palms. He did not break stride as he kicked in the door, planting his foot in the center of the metal warning sign.
The Whiteshirts were strange bedfellows to the CNY Purists but, as Rook had discovered, drugs and drug money often forged alliances between otherwise bitter enemies.
