The Ascendant Read online

  Vito nodded. “Okay, continue. What did they ask you to do?”

  “Can I have some water?”

  Vito walked over to the bar, took a plastic bottle out of the mini-fridge and threw it to Clark. He missed, and it bounced onto the floor near his knees. The deputy mayor twisted off the cap and guzzled.

  Vito scowled. “Just don’t drool anymore. Are you going to get up off the floor?”

  Clark shook his head. “Rather stay down here right now. Feeling weak in the knees.”

  Sandy noticed the man’s hands were still shaking, causing some of the water to drip down the front of his shirt. Clark poured some into his hand—splashed it onto his forehead and along his cheeks. His face was still red and blotchy.

  “Stay down there, then. Just hurry up and tell us what we need to know.”

  Clark looked down at the floor. “What protection will I have?”

  Sandy felt the rage building again. “Just do the right thing, for fuck’s sake! Innocent lives are at stake!”

  “But, what happens to me?”

  Sandy took a step towards him. “Right now, you should just be concerned about staying alive. Because, in a moment or two, I might just kill you myself.”

  Clark recoiled. “Okay, okay. But, what happens next?”

  Vito put his hand on Sandy’s shoulder and eased him down onto the couch. Then he knelt on one knee and glared at Clark.

  “Listen carefully. To keep you alive, the authorities will have to be involved. We told you that already. I don’t know what they’ll do about the tale you have to tell about the Quincy Market attack. They might not believe you. You’ll have to show them whatever evidence you have on paper, in your hard drives, things like that. Just you saying that Whitfield and Stone instructed you on what to do won’t carry much weight. Because we are talking about a presidential candidate here. Serious stuff. I can’t be involved with you any longer once you decide to talk to the authorities. I’m Cosa Nostra—I don’t have the cred. Sandy can make the connections for you, put you in touch with a top federal prosecutor. If they believe you, I’m guessing they’d want to compel your testimony in a deposition, then put you under witness protection. Otherwise, you’ll be a dead man.”

  Christopher opened and closed his fists, as if trying to loosen up his fingers. Then he slid his right hand up to his chest and patted it. “Feels like a fluttering in my heart.”

  “Just stress. C’mon, sit in one of the chairs and get comfortable.”

  Clark shook his head. “No, I’m…more comfortable down here.”

  Sandy leaned forward in his seat. “Christopher, back to what you were telling us. What did those two people ask you to do?”

  Clark stared at the floor. “Stone asked me to provide them with a city vehicle. I drove one out of the compound and left it for him in a plaza parking lot.”

  “Doesn’t someone take inventory of city cars?”

  He nodded. “Yes, the van was reported stolen after dispatch checked inventory. It went through the system, I tracked it down, and deleted it from the records. So, there’s no record of it being stolen or even in existence now.”

  Sandy shook his head in disbelief. “You cover your tracks well, don’t you? Do you know the license plate number?”

  “Yes, it’s in the hard drive of my laptop. The vehicle is a Ford Econoline van, and it says Boston Public Works on the sides.”

  “What were you paid for this?”

  Clark took another sip of water. “They deposited $200,000 into my Bermuda account, which was for both things they wanted.”

  “Killing people is pretty lucrative for you, isn’t it Christopher?”

  “I don’t kill people. I never ask what they intend to do. Even with the Quincy Market attack, I had no idea what they’d planned. I only arranged for the permits and access.”

  Sandy lashed down with his hand, like a dagger, right into Clark’s throat. The man choked and rolled over onto his side.

  “You cowardly piece of shit! Don’t pretend innocence. You knew what you were doing was wrong. Even after it happened—and you knew that you’d helped to make it happen—you were more than happy to keep your money, and certainly didn’t try to turn them in.”

  Clark struggled back to his kneeling position and scurried backwards a bit, just enough to be out of the reach of Sandy’s hand. He was still holding his throat, and his breathing was becoming more labored.

  The words came out in a rasp.

  “About a week…after I gave them the van, Meagan met me. She…wanted me to approve the business license…for a restoration company. I pushed that through. It was a start-up company, no prior experience on the record, Muslim connected. And she wanted me to arrange to award the bid for a project to them, instead of the other bidders. We were handling the bidding process for an institution and ensuring work was done to code, etc. We do that from time to time for important city institutions. So, I arranged for them to get the project.”

  “What’s the name of this restoration company?”

  “New England Restorations.”

  “And they don’t really exist, just like that Boston Party Pleasures at Quincy?”

  “Well, they exist now, they didn’t before, and they probably won’t after.”

  “Can’t this all be traced at City Hall to you?”

  “I got smart this time. After I arranged the business license and the bid award, I changed the records to show another official’s name, someone who passed away recently. It’ll look like he did these approvals. I wasn’t so careful on Quincy, but nothing was ever investigated anyway. It was white-washed for some reason. Labeled as terrorism, and left at that. I found that kind of puzzling, but counted my lucky stars. This time, though, I didn’t want to take a chance.”

  “You’re just getting real good at this, aren’t you?”

  Clark finally decided to stand. Slowly, he got to his feet, and leaned against the fireplace mantle. His breathing was getting more labored by the second.

  “I’m not feeling too good, guys.”

  Vito put his hands on his shoulders and guided him over to the couch. Eased him down, and passed his water bottle to him.

  “Tell us what this project is, and then we’ll call a doctor for you. Looks like you’re just having an anxiety attack.”

  Clark took a long sip and several deep breaths.

  “It’s the church, the cathedral.”

  “Which one?”

  “Cathedral of the Holy Cross. Re-doing…some of the floors and pews, as well as some needed restoration work…on the pipe organ. A few weeks of work. They’ve…started already, should be finished in…another week or so.”

  Sandy gasped. “That cathedral holds a couple of thousand people at a time! It’s massive!”

  Vito grabbed Clark’s face in his massive hand and turned it to face him, squeezing his cheeks hard in the process. “You must have some clue as to what they’re planning. What are your thoughts?”

  “I don’t…know. But, that Senator Berwick’s speeches are all about…the terrorism threat, trying to scare people about…Muslims. A prominent Catholic cathedral would probably be…a good target for them this time. That’s my…guess.”

  Sandy jumped to his feet. “Christ, a couple of thousand people crammed into that church would be sitting ducks. Could be a bomb or some kind of gas? And what’s the purpose of the van? What do they intend that for?”

  Clark shook his head. “Don’t know. Might not be related.”

  “I think you know more than you’re saying. Better tell us. If the authorities are going to consider witness protection for you, you’re going to need to tell them everything about this thing, as well as the Quincy Market attack.”

  Clark leaned forward and clutched his chest. He looked up at Sandy and gasped. Then his heavy upper body suddenly seemed to lose the abil
ity to hold itself up. He rolled forward off the couch and crashed to the floor.

  Vito dropped down beside Clark and flipped him over onto his back. Began CPR repetitions.

  After fifty or so, he sighed and leaned back on his haunches. He did one final check for pulses in the city official’s wrist and throat, and then just slowly shook his head.

  “He’s gone. Heart attack.”

  “Jesus.”

  Vito made the sign of the cross and closed Clark’s eyelids. Then he called out to his two men who were upstairs in the second floor den.

  They bounded down the stairs and quickly took in the scene. Didn’t seem surprised. It was as if this was the type of thing they saw every day—and Sandy thought that maybe it was.

  One of the men spoke. “What you want, boss?”

  “Need a clean-up. The usual.”

  “Where?”

  “Boston Harbor would be a good choice. It always is. Wait until dark, of course.”

  37

  Sandy was driving aimlessly. Through the main streets and side streets of Boston, some of which he’d never even been on before. Normally he’d enjoy exploring new areas, but not today. Today he was looking for a Ford Econoline van, with the words Boston Public Works on the side.

  And, of course, they were everywhere. With no license plate to identify the orphan van, he had very little to go on. Before Christopher Clark died, he’d said that the license plate number of the stolen vehicle was in the hard drive of his laptop. But, when Sandy entered the “Quincy” password that Clark had blurted out to the thugs back at the cabin, a prompt came up on the screen for a secondary sign-in.

  So, his computer was locked up like Fort Knox, and, while Vito said one of his people could probably get into it given some time to work, they didn’t have the luxury of time. Whatever was going to happen, according to Clark, was imminent.

  And Vito warned that since Clark was a deputy mayor, the laptop probably had several more levels of security to get past. In other words, it was probably a lost cause. And probably also irrelevant. Vito suggested that even if they succeeded in finding the license plate number, the plate had probably been replaced by now.

  Sandy knew he was right.

  In frustration, he’d fled the Cosa Nostra safe house and left Vito and his men to deal with the disposal of Clark’s body. Sandy knew that it would be dumped in Boston Harbor, but that was already more than he wanted to know. These guys were all so calm and matter-of-fact about it, which meant that it was probably a regular occurrence for them. To Sandy, it felt like he’d fallen through the looking glass into a world of madness.

  He appreciated all of Vito’s help, including the way he’d saved his life back at the Triple-L facility, but all that help had only brought Sandy kicking and screaming closer to an underworld that up until recently he’d only flirted with. Shared information with them here and there, got a little help from them here and there. But now it felt like the Cosa Nostra’s fingers were squeezing his balls.

  Of course, Vito hadn’t actually demanded anything yet and had only acted, so far, as a concerned friend, but Sandy still wondered if his fears were real or imagined. Could the Cosa Nostra actually do anything heroic without expecting payback? And, as well, he now owed them his life, and while he liked and respected Vito Romano, he wondered when the gangster would come to collect.

  Where would this lead? He didn’t know. All he knew was that he needed to drive. Feel useful. Pretend that he could actually find that Ford Econoline, even though he knew that in a big city like Boston it was virtually impossible.

  At the very least, though, he was blowing off steam as he drove around. Starting to think more clearly.

  After a couple of hours and a couple of confrontations with the drivers of two public works vehicles, he weaved his way around Boston’s maze onto Washington Street.

  He parked on a side street and grimaced as he remembered one of the public works drivers yelling at him, challenging him to commit an impossible sex act. He’d yelled it loud enough that several people stopped and stared at the commotion. Luckily, it seemed as if no one had thought to raise their cellphones to snap a photo of a well-dressed man who just happened to have a middle finger shoved in front of his face by a guy in coveralls. Would have been a good one and might have gone viral.

  Sandy sat in his car and stared at the impressive spire of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross.

  Then he saw it. The other piece to the puzzle that Clark had confessed to.

  A white sprinter van parked in a side driveway of the cathedral, with the words New England Restorations emblazoned in red.

  The front doors of the church were open, and several men were lingering inside the foyer.

  Sandy donned his sunglasses, got out of his car, and opened his trunk. Grabbed a Boston Red Sox cap and pulled it down low over his forehead. He then sauntered up to the front entrance.

  Tried to be nonchalant, to make it look like he belonged.

  Shoved his hands in his pockets and entered the building. Nodded at the men standing there, ignoring their curious looks, and made his way into the church.

  All of the men seemed to be of Middle Eastern descent, which didn’t surprise Sandy in the least. If there was a false flag being planned here, designed to strike fear in the hearts of Americans, the dots were connecting in his mind.

  Radicals hired, given an assignment, convinced of the opportunity for jihad, destined to be caught or killed, but mission accomplished.

  A Muslim firm would do the work, and the predictable disaster would happen once again. Most Muslims would be horrified, but in the dark alleys of America there were always radicals to find and manipulate for terrorism, and maybe this fly-by-night contracting firm was just one of many organizations that were willing and able. Muslims at large would be blamed once again for convenient political agendas.

  Sandy’s stomach was doing flips as he pondered what might be going on here.

  Several workmen were straining to re-install heavy pews, and several more were on their hands and knees power-sanding a section of floor near the imposing altar.

  Standing close to the altar, with his hands folded across his chest, was a man wearing a clerical collar.

  Sandy took off his baseball cap and sunglasses out of respect and headed straight for him. He looked to be the man in charge of access to the cathedral and by his body language, gave the impression that he was annoyed at having to spend his day watching over workmen.

  The priest smiled as Sandy approached. Sandy held out his hand. “Hello Father. My name’s Bill Brunton.” Sandy had no idea how that phony name had popped into his head, but he felt better right now being Bill Brunton than Sandy Beech.

  “Pleased to meet you, Bill. I’m Monsignor Flaherty. Are you with the restoration firm?”

  “No, I’m just a nosy businessman. I live around the corner. Wanted to pop in and see what all the fuss was about here. Seems like you’ve had some major work done. I love this cathedral and couldn’t resist being nosy.”

  “Well, I’m glad you didn’t resist. Nice to talk to someone who doesn’t grunt replies. These guys have been at it for two weeks now, and they’re almost finished. I’m the building superintendent here at the cathedral, so it’s been my job to watch over them every day.”

  Sandy nodded. “Pretty boring for you, no doubt.”

  The priest chuckled. “Yes. I’d rather be golfing, for sure!”

  “So, they’re almost finished?”

  Flaherty grimaced. “If you’ve been in the cathedral before, Bill, you probably don’t notice much difference. A few pews refinished, some floor sections re-done.”

  He looked up to the loft area at the back of the cathedral and pointed. “And we still don’t have our iconic pipe organ back yet. They’re supposed to be delivering it today, but I won’t hold my breath. The project involved
doing some aesthetic work on the decorative aspects of the organ, but these clowns work so slowly and sloppily, I’m kind of worried. A few bad pews we can live with, but that pipe organ is everything to us.”

  Sandy followed his finger with his eyes. “They’re going to raise it back into place?”

  “Yes, they’ll be using a lift, just like when they struggled to get it out of here.”

  Sandy frowned. “Why didn’t they just do the work right here? Why haul it away?”

  Flaherty shook his head. “I asked the same question. They grunted and gave me an answer that I couldn’t really dispute. Said they had to do the work offsite. I don’t know anything about these things, so I agreed. Wish I hadn’t.”

  Flaherty glanced at his watch. “Walk with me outside, Bill. We’ll chat in the sunshine. The pipe organ ordeal should be about to begin, if they’re still on schedule.”

  They walked up the aisle together, out onto the promenade. Sandy donned the Red Sox cap once again and pulled the brim down low. Slipped his sunglasses back into place.

  And sure enough, there it was. It had arrived. In all its glory. Sitting on a flatbed truck parked along Washington Street was the 1800s pipe organ, dismantled into four large sections.

  A team of four men were disconnecting the chains that had been holding it safely in place on the truck bed. Behind the flatbed was another smaller truck, with a mobile hydraulic lift being backed down onto the street along a ramp.

  With his eyes fixated on the pipe organ, it had taken Sandy an extra few seconds to notice another vehicle. The one he’d been driving around Boston all day hunting for. A white Ford Econoline van with the signage Boston Public Works had pulled in right behind the hydraulic lift truck.

  Sandy caught his breath and felt a pain in the pit of his stomach. The dominos were falling into place for this insidious plan from Lincoln Berwick’s demented campaign.

  He didn’t know what the plan was, didn’t know when it was supposed to happen, but all the pieces were there. The stolen van, the rigged contract to New England Restorations, the Muslim workers—all confessed to from the pathetic lips of Christopher Clark.