Rising Phoenix (7 page)

When he had been completely satisfied with the financial stability of his new organization, tentatively called the Committee for a Drug-Free Society, or CDFS, he had made his way back to the office for the last time.

Blake had been perfect. And why not? He did this type of thing for a living. Hobart had slammed through his office door, “accidentally” not getting it entirely closed. They had argued loudly, Blake making vague accusations, and deriding his attitude. Hobart had constructed an equally vague defense. Finally the Reverend had told him to get out. Hobart had slammed the office door behind him, getting it closed
this time, and walked quickly past the four people waiting in Blake’s outer office. He had felt their eyes on him as he strode purposefully down the hall.

When the elevator doors opened into the lobby, the front desk guard was standing directly in front of him, blocking his exit.

“Reverend Blake called down and asked me to take your elevator key,” he had said nervously. His right hand shook slightly as he held it out in front of him.

Hobart silently complimented his former boss on his thoroughness as he slid the key off its ring and placed it in the guard’s outstretched hand. He forced his way around the man and walked through the sunlit lobby. As he opened the first set of glass doors, the guard called after him. “The Reverend told me to tell you that he’d have your personal belongings sent to your house.”

Hobart left the building shaking his head. He’d make a covert operative out of Simon Blake yet.

But now that part of his life was over and a new chapter had begun. He gunned the Jeep through a yellow light. He had an appointment in less than two hours, and he had at least an hour’s worth of work to do at home first.

Hobart jerked the wheel right, almost missing the narrow side street. He was nearing Canton, about two miles east of the Inner Harbor. Recent years had seen the transformation of this waterfront area from a poorly maintained warehouse district to a yuppie haven. He was a few blocks north of the water, though, and the
neighborhood was typical Baltimore. Narrow brick row homes and crowded, potholed, car-lined streets. Elaborate Catholic churches adorned street corners, recalling another time.

Hobart scanned the streets as he drove. It seemed that every other doorstep held a dull-looking chain smoker taking advantage of the unseasonably warm weather. Shouted profanity floated through his open window as women yelled at their children or at the dogs running loose in the street.

He continued on, glancing back and forth from the street to a small Post-it note stuck to his dashboard. Cresting a hill, he could see the blackened metal roofs of the city as they melded together into a black and silver tapestry.

Only a few blocks from the waterfront, he found what he was looking for—a small brick warehouse with a professionally dressed woman in a wheelchair gliding back and forth in front of it. He swung his car into the nearest available space and jogged across the street. Hearing him coming, the woman turned and gave him a practiced smile.

“Mr. Severen, I presume. I’m Karen Styles.” She held out her hand, keeping the other one firmly around the chair’s left wheel.

He took it. “Please call me John.”

In between bouts with the church’s various bank accounts, Hobart had managed to contact an old acquaintance who had a talent for forgery. He’d provided four different identities, complete with passports, driver’s licenses, birth certificates, and even library cards. The license in the name of John Severen
pictured him as having sandy brown hair and a thick mustache. Hobart had made the appropriate changes to his appearance with the help of a well-stocked theatrical makeup shop. He still wasn’t used to the change. It was disorienting to look in the mirror and not see his closely cropped black hair and smoothly shaven face. Worse yet, the mustache itched mercilessly.

“Let’s take a look,” the Realtor suggested, using the key in her hand on the heavy metal door to the warehouse. Hobart reached over to help her. She found the lights and he followed her in.

They entered a small outer office. The walls had been painted yellow sometime in the distant past but had faded to an uneven tan. Hobart walked across the stained carpet and through a door at the back. It led to a nearly identical room. Two large windows had been cut into the wall to the left of him. Judging by their crooked appearance, the work had been done long after the sturdy brick building had been erected.

“If you walk back around here, you can see the bathroom and the entrance to the warehouse section.” He followed her, examining her thin neck as she maneuvered the wheelchair through the narrow hall. It would take less than a second to snap it. She’d never know what happened. He frowned. Too dangerous. She was a loose end that he would have to tolerate.

The bathroom was small and basic. A sink, toilet, and mirror. It had the same faded yellow walls but they were stained by mildew, causing wide black streaks that at first glance looked like wallpaper. Karen stopped at another formidable-looking door and tugged at it with all her
might. It didn’t budge. She looked at Hobart who, finished with his examination of the bathroom, pulled it open. She wheeled through with a grateful smile.

It was just about the right size, close to fifty by fifty feet, with a twenty-five-foot ceiling height. The walls consisted of old brick, occasionally obscured by dirty wooden shelves. At the far end was a tall garage door. It looked large enough to back in a semi. Hobart wandered around aimlessly, stirring up the brightly colored sales flyers littering the floor and ignoring the Realtor’s sales pitch.

“Until two weeks ago the warehouse was occupied by a T-shirt company.” She reached down and picked up one of the flyers. “That’s where all these flyers came from. Obviously, it will be broom clean if you decide to take it.”

“And there are apartments above?”

“Two. I confirmed that they’re both available, but I hear that they’re not that nice.”

“You said eight hundred dollars for the warehouse?”

She nodded.

“How much for the entire building?”

She chewed her bottom lip. “Probably double that, sixteen hundred. Keep in mind that there’s no access to the upstairs from here.”

He took another quick turn through the space. “I’ll take it for a year with a one-year option. It’ll need some work, though. I assume that the owners wouldn’t mind if I made a few improvements—at my own expense, of course.”

“What kind of improvements were you considering?”

“Nothing special. A little paint, a new carpet, maybe an alarm system.”

She shrugged. “I can’t imagine that would be a problem. What kind of business are you in, John?”

“Wholesale antiques.”

“Really? That’s interesting,” she said in a slightly bored tone. “Let me pop out to my car and call the owners. I want to make sure that I quoted you right on the apartments, and ask them about the improvements. If everything’s all right, we can go back to my office, fill out a little paperwork, and it’s yours.”

“Fine.”

It was almost five o’clock when Hobart left the realty office in Fells Point, an area known for good seafood and dive bars. The smell of steaming crabs hung in the air, inviting him into the restaurant directly across the street. He glanced at his watch. Dinner would have to wait.

Hobart pulled his car into a narrow space about a block from his final destination. He fished a small scrap of paper out of his pocket and dialed the number written there on his cellular phone. It rang four times before being picked up by a machine.

“Leave a message,” was the only greeting, followed by a loud beep. He didn’t. Instead he pulled a small black knapsack off the floor of the Jeep and walked across the street, straining to make out the numbers on the houses in the waning light. When he got to 619 he turned and walked into the narrow passageway between it and the house next door. The cracked
cement under his feet was under two inches of sudsy water. It smelled like laundry detergent.

The passageway eventually opened into a small backyard separated into two parcels by a short chain-link fence. Hobart entered the gate on the left. He looked around to confirm that no one was watching from the windows of the surrounding houses, and pulled out a large screwdriver. It turned out to be unnecessary. The door swung open when he grabbed the knob. Smiling, he entered the kitchen.

Dishes were stacked everywhere, and judging from the smell, they’d been there for some time. Hobart’s gaze fell on a small pile of bones lying on the floor and he froze. He stood perfectly still for almost a minute listening for any sign of a dog. Hearing nothing, he padded quietly into the living room. No self-respecting canine could have missed his less-than-silent entrance.

He made a quick walk through of the house, confirming that no one was home. The other rooms were in a condition similar to the kitchen. Plaster was falling from the ceiling in places and half the lights seemed to be burned out. The furniture—what little there was of it—looked like it had been retrieved from city dumpsters. The single bedroom didn’t actually have a bed, only a foul-smelling mattress lying on the floor.

He moved quickly, placing listening devices in the phone, the living room, and bedroom. He was thankful for the surgical gloves covering his hands—he wasn’t anxious to touch anything with his bare skin. No telling what you could catch.

When he was finished, he situated himself in a worn
out La-Z-Boy next to the front door. It wasn’t particularly comfortable. It didn’t recline and it looked like most of the foam had rotted and fallen out onto the carpet. Other than that, the chair was ideal. He couldn’t be immediately seen from the door, and it was more sanitary than sitting on the floor—though only marginally.

Next to him was a large shelf overflowing with books. He leaned over and scanned the titles. No novels or fiction, just textbooks on subjects like physics and chemistry. Archaeology also had a place, but the thick dust on the covers suggested that the subject had fallen from grace. He was glad to see that his old friend was keeping his mind sharp.

The friend he was waiting for was one Peter Manion. Hobart had flipped through a bootleg file on his ex-informant the day Blake had given him the go-ahead. He hadn’t seen Manion for years—not since his DEA days.

Manion had been born on the east side of Baltimore to a working-class family in 1957. He’d shown an early aptitude for math and science and was encouraged by his mother, a particularly strong woman whose interest in education belied her lack of one. His father hadn’t shared her convictions and had constantly belittled his son for his shy, quiet demeanor. In the end his mother prevailed, and Manion won a full scholarship to Johns Hopkins. It was there that he became interested in the darker side of chemistry.

One evening in the last half of his sophomore year, Manion had been befriended by a pretty psychology student. After a few weeks, his new friend brought up the
possibility of Manion cooking up a batch of LSD. He’d resisted at first, but the promise of quick and easy money finally seduced him. When he finished that first batch, curiosity had overwhelmed him and he tested his handiwork.

That had been the beginning of a drug problem that engulfed his life and ended in his addiction to heroin. He left JHU in 1978, the middle of his junior year, and had been in a drug-induced fog ever since.

They had first met during Hobart’s tour as a Baltimore DEA agent in the early eighties. Manion’s intelligence, connections, and paranoia had made him an ideal resource for the young John Hobart. While he never actually informed on individuals, Manion had been a fount of information on the manufacture of designer drugs and the refinement of biological intoxicants.

Hobart hadn’t seen him in almost ten years, but hadn’t had any difficulty in finding the addict. He lived only three blocks from the house that he’d occupied the last time they’d met, and his phone number had been in the book. Drug dealers could only afford so much anonymity.

At six-thirty Hobart heard the unmistakable sound of a key turning in the lock on the front door. He pulled his .45 automatic from its place under his left arm and quietly stood. By the time the door finally swung open, he had flattened himself against the wall about a foot away from the doorjamb.

The man who entered was taller than Hobart, but his body seemed to sag from some unseen weight, bringing his head to eye level. Hobart recognized him immediately, though the years of inactivity and drug use had taken their toll. He maneuvered himself behind the man
and pressed the barrel of his gun snugly into the back of his neck.

Peter Manion froze. “Darren, is that you? I told you I’d get you your money next week, man. I got some stuff cooking. I swear you’ll get every dime.” His voice was thin and Hobart had to strain to hear despite the fact that he was right behind him.

“Have you not been paying your bills, Petey?”

Manion’s body snapped straight, forcing Hobart to adjust the barrel of his pistol. Manion obviously recognized his voice.

Hobart slowly circled around to face him, drawing the gun along the slack skin of his neck.

Manion looked straight into Hobart’s eyes, ignoring his elaborate disguise. He began unconsciously rubbing the wrist that Hobart had broken so many years before.

“How you doing, Peter? Long time no see.” Hobart grabbed the front of Manion’s filthy sweater and pushed him onto the La-Z-Boy that had been his home for the last hour.

He sat down on an old army footlocker that passed for a coffee table. “You look like you’ve lost weight—been working out?” The haggard face across from him continued to stare blankly. Finally it spoke. “I heard they drummed you out of the DEA.”

Hobart shook his head at the feeble attempt at bravado. “That’s what everybody thinks. Fact is, I just switched organizations.”

“Who you working for now? FBI?”

Hobart shook his head.

Manion’s eyes widened. “CIA?”

Hobart smiled and nodded almost imperceptibly.
Peter Manion had always been a borderline paranoid schizophrenic. Hobart still remembered his fantasies involving the CIA and how they were behind everything from Kennedy’s assassination to the closing of the local Seven-Eleven. Manion saw the CIA as a faceless, all-powerful organization with operatives behind every corner. Hobart intended to put that paranoia to good use.