31. Snacks and Whacks
Chapter thirty-one
Snacks and Whacks
WRAITH
One of them is already dead by the time I get here.
Noah meets me at the corridor junction and falls into step beside me. "The one you caught in the throat. He suffocated in holding."
I nod. Wasn't intentional. Wasn't not intentional either. I hit him to stop him, to protect áine, and his anatomy made the decision for us.
"McLaren?"
"Already in there." A pause. "She's in a mood."
That's an understatement. I could hear it in her voice when she called to confirm she was on her way. Someone pointed a gun at her sister-by-choice tonight and she's hella pissed.
Interrogation 2 is pretty much identical to Interrogation 1. Metal lined walls with no discernable seams for DNA and blood evidence to get caught in, a floor of the same industrial grade material with a drain so the room can be completely sanitized after every use.
The full spectrum LED light strips on the ceiling are as bright as daylight. Turning on the extra bank turns the room into its own form of torture cell only tolerable while wearing darkening goggles.
Which we sure as hell don't offer our reluctant guests.
There are currently three men secured to steel chairs designed to bolt to the floor. The chairs are removable but when bolted can withstand more pressure than even I can bring to bear on their occupant.
The three gangbangers aren't going anywhere.
McLaren is standing in front of the one in the middle when I walk in. She's got lead lined fingerless gloves on and the man's swollen right eye attests to the fact she's been using them to effect.
"I didn't break his jaw. He can still talk," she says, not looking at me.
So, she figured out he's the one that held a gun on áine. It wouldn't be hard. She asked for his description in the text thread I had going with my team during the movie with áine and the girls.
"Good." I roll my sleeves up, eyeing our captives.
Do they realize they are all going to die tonight?
The guy on the left is sweating through his shirt. The one on the right watches me with the flat assessment of someone unafraid of violence and the pain that comes with it.
The one in the middle, the focus of McLaren's ire, isn't cowering away from her despite the hits he already took.
Right.
Pain isn't going to be the primary motivator for getting information out of these assholes. Not at first, anyway. They need to be primed.
I choose the aerosol administration of the talk juice compound Mick used on me once upon a time.
I don't give them enough to knock them out for long, but just enough to put them under for a few minutes. They'll wake disoriented and unsure how long they were out, their inhibitions lowered.
I administer slightly more to the guys in the middle and on the right. They'll wake up about fifteen minutes after the guy on the left, if they respond to the drug according to bodyweight.
If they use, that number could go up or down. Depending on their drug of choice, the talk juice will react differently. Uppers in their systems will make it less relaxing and take longer to take effect, but the combination can also cause hallucinations.
Which can aid in interrogation, depending on what their imaginations conjure up for them.
Downers will make them sleep longer and can enhance the effect of the talk juice significantly. They can also cause an OD depending on how much is in their system.
"What about giving them a shot of this?" McLaren holds up a vial of the compound we source from the Greek mafia in Portland.
Administered directly to the blood stream, it causes hypersensitivity in pain receptors and higher doses induce paranoia and hallucinations.
"If they already took something, that stuff can kill them, even at its lowest dose," Noah says doubtfully.
Which is why we rarely administer it to a guest of our fine facility until they have been in holding at least twenty-four hours.
"We can test it on him." McLaren nods toward the asshole who wanted to shoot my woman. "If he dies, we still have two of his friends to get answers out of."
"It would save time," I acknowledge.
That didn't used to matter. But I didn't used to have a woman waiting for me at home, or daughters I promised I'd be there for breakfast with.
After Noah puts a blood pressure cuff on his wrist and a pulse monitor on his finger, I let McLaren have the honor of injecting him.
She stabs the needle into the man's jugular and presses the plunger on the syringe forcefully. "Take that you son of a bitch, asswipe with a death wish."
Even knocked out, his body jerks in reaction as the chemical cocktail hits his bloodstream.
He does not go into cardiac distress though. His pulse rate increases to that of a man running rather than sleeping, but his blood pressure doesn't go into the danger zone.
Leaving him to settle into the full effects of both drugs, I pull a chair in front of the man on the left, sit down and wait for him to wake up.
It takes less than five minutes for his eyes to start fluttering. Another fifteen seconds before they open and he blearily stares through me.
I kick his chair to get his attention. It doesn't move, but his body feels the vibration from my kick and his gaze sharpens with fear.
I dangle the kerchief he'd been wearing tied around his bicep. "What gang are you with?"
He wets his lips and stares at me.
I kick his chair again.
"Hollow Point Kings," he croaks out.
A small but extremely violent gang that has been gaining territory in Queens over the last few years.
They're street thugs, dealing crack, hiring out muscle and accepting low paid hits that don't require finesse. Their business doesn't intersect with ours.
To my knowledge, the Shaughnessy Mob has no dealings with them.
Ten minutes later, I know they had street rats watching áine's apartment building. It's in their gang's territory, so when we were observed leaving the building, it was easy to pull in a hit crew within minutes.
Unlucky for them, they were nearby and got tasked with the hit.
It doesn't take much more to learn that his friend who shot me was lead on the op. The other four men who pretended to mug us are gang members pulled in for the job. And the objective was to kill me and áine, but she was the primary target.
Nothing I hadn't figured out on my own already.
"Who contracted the job?"
"I don't know, man." He sniffs, tears clogging his voice. "I told you. Ask Venom, man."
I don't know what kind of drugs are already in his system, but he took something. Talk juice doesn't usually make our captives weepy.
"Venom got the cool street name. They call me Snacks. How lame is that?" he complains.
"About as lame as going up against the Shaughnessy Mob," Noah says, flicking his toothpick in the trash. "You gotta be next level stupid to do that."
"You're the mob?" Snacks looks around the interrogation room. "I thought the mob was a bunch of old men laundering money through dry cleaners."
Dry cleaners? What the fuck?
"Is this Venom?" McLaren grabs the middle guy by the hair and yanks his head up.
"How'd you know?" Snacks asks, his eyes wide.
"Because you just told us this was the boss," McLaren replies with disgust.
"Then why'd you ask me?"
This guy is almost too stupid to kill.
McLaren glares at me. "Oh no. You get that look off your face, boss."
I raise a brow at her.
"He would have killed you and for that I will off him myself, but he was willing to kill áine too. áine," she emphasizes.
All the fury I felt when these assholes came for us on our way to the coffee shop rolls like lava through my veins.
"The fat chick? Yeah. We were supposed to kill her. And you, but fuck, you're like the Terminator, man. They should have sent more of us if we were gonna take you out," he whines.
Fat chick? My áine is soft and curvy. Perfect.
"Now, that's the Wraith we know and the city fears," McLaren says with satisfaction.
"After we took care of you, we were going to get her daughter."
"Why?" McLaren asks in a chilling tone, not asking which one.
It doesn't matter. They're not getting their hands on any of my girls.
"Punishment. Your boss was messing with Demon's plans, man."
"How?"
"Don't know."
"What were you going to do with my daughter?" I ask.
Something he hears in my voice makes Snack flinch. "Demon's got a buyer lined up for her. My cut was gonna set me up for a month."
"Which daughter?" McLaren asks now.
"The oldest one."
A buyer? For Sadie? Fucking hell. They don't even know her name.
My fingers are curled around his throat and squeezing before I even realize I've moved. "You sell children?"
"Uh, boss, if you want an answer, maybe don't crush his throat with your hand until after he gives it to you?" Noah says, conversationally.
I let up the pressure on Snacks' throat. "Answer me."
"Demon and some rich business dude," Snacks gasps out.
"What's the rich business dude's name?" I demand.
Demon is the leader of the Hollow Point Kings. I know that already, but I don't know much else about him. His gang wasn't on our radar as more than a small time player in the city's underworld.
If they're selling kids, they need to be exterminated like the vermin they are.
Snacks shakes his head. "I don't know."
"What do you know?" I squeeze until he can't breathe. Hold it for ten seconds and then release.
He sucks in air, coughs, wheezes and then says, "They were gonna pay us once we picked up the girl."
"How were you supposed to get to her?" McLaren asks while I fight with the urge to snap the piece of shit's neck.
"With him and her mom out of the way, there was only an old lady," Snacks says, like it's a fully executable extraction plan.
McLaren punches Snacks in the face. "That old lady would tear out your intestines and feed them to you before letting you take one of her grandchildren."
While McLaren takes out some of her frustration on the gangbanger, I text Dagda with instructions to put a full eight-man team on my family. The girls are not to leave the apartment without a four-man team. I want bodyguards outside each of their classrooms for the last four days of school.
I'd pull them out completely, but they've been through enough upheaval as it is. I promised to keep them safe and that is what I will do.
But I'm not putting them in a prison to do it.
I turn back to Snacks. "McLaren."
Breathing hard, she steps back, rage rolling off her in waves.
"You were going to kidnap Sadie and sell her." It's not a question.
But the man who has fried too many braincells with something nods. "Yeah, man. What's the big deal? Bitches gotta learn to put out sooner or later."
Venom's eyes open just as I snap Snacks' neck, the sickening crack jerking is head sideways to see what's happening.
I release my hold on Snacks' jaw. His head flops forward.
I stalk to Venom. He flinches back, but he's got nowhere to go. I flip open my knife and cut a line down his cheek before stabbing him right below his left clavicle. He screams.
Good. The Greek mafia's drug has taken effect.
By the time McLaren and I are done with him, and he and his remaining cohort are dead, we know where Demon lives and what his real name is. We know that he's been in business with some rich dude for the last two years selling women and girls.
We don't know that man's name but I can guess.
Kenneth-fucking-Shaughnessy.
We know where the gang meets and who the other members are. There are only fifteen.
Fifteen men that will be dead before Kara Fitzgerald takes down her Christmas in July decorations.