Viper

16

Sunset View, South Brooklyn, New York City On the way back to Nancy's parents' house, Jack swung by the home of his ex-FBI partner Howie Baumguard. An expensive divorce and an expansive booze problem had moved him from West Village, SoHo, to rented-room squalor. Jack climbed the garbage-strewn steps outside his friend's building, and made his way upstairs to a third floor that had never seen a working light bulb.

He had to bang four times before Howie eventually slid the bolts and opened the paint-peeling door on a chain thick enough to tow a truck.

'Hang on, I've got it,' he said, squinting at Jack in the hallway.

A warm, sour smell of beer and fried food hung in the air. The tiny room was so untidy it looked as if it had just been burgled.

'Great to see ya, man. Great to see ya.' Howie bear-hugged his former partner until he heard him gasp for air.

Jack slapped his buddy's back, then stepped away a pace. 'Wish I could say the same about you. My friend, you look like a bag of shit.'

'Man, ain't you the charmer!' Howie scratched the start of a bald spot appearing in his nest of unwashed hair. 'Sit yourself down, Mr Smoothtongue, I'll fix some coffee.'

Jack watched him waddle away. Howie had just hauled himself out of the sack and was dressed in blue boxers and an old grey T that only half covered his paunch. He'd never been one to watch his weight but it looked as though recently he hadn't even given it a passing glance.

'I ain't got milk. Black okay?' Howie's head was inside a fridge that smelled as though something old had crawled in there and died.

'Just fine. You want some help?'

'Yeah, sure do. I want that you shoot my ex-wife, so I don't pay alimony. I want that you get me a new job paying half a mill a year. Oh shit, I nearly forgot. I want that Lindsay Lohan blows me twice a day and tidies up a little before she goes.'

'That all?' said Jack, moving dirty dishes and crumpled cans from around the foot of the couch. 'Should be a breeze.'

Howie eventually reappeared, his giant knuckles wrapped around the handles of two mugs of black coffee. 'Man, I'd diet for Lindsay. Hell, I'd go to a fat farm and have a blubber-suck for her. You know, where they stick one of those friggin' hose-pipes in your gut and – voom! – in a schlurp they've siphoned off forty pounds. Yep, for Lindsay, I'd lose the weight!'

Howie handed over the coffee and slumped in a chair. 'Anyway, how have you been keeping? How's your catcher's mitt?'

Jack flexed the fingers of his left hand. It had been badly cut during his final encounter with the Black River Killer. 'It's getting there. Seems some nerve got damaged.' Jack fell silent for a moment. Memories of BRK flooded back – the nightmares that had haunted him for years, the victims he'd been unable to save and the personal danger that BRK had exposed him and his family to. 'Doc says I probably won't ever have a hundred per cent feeling back but, with physio, I think I'm gonna get close.'

'At least it's not your right hand,' said Howie, a twinkle of mischief in his eyes.

'Yeah, thank God for small mercies. So, exactly what happened at the Bureau? I can't believe you quit.'

Howie shrugged his huge shoulders in a way that made him shrink. He looked like a jilted teenager who didn't want to talk about it. 'I was a mess, man. It was jump or be pushed, and I didn't want the Push Monkey on my friggin' back.'

Jack tried the coffee. Cheap instant. Too hot to drink. Too bad to swallow.

'You should have claimed some lost time, taken a spell of compassionate. I'm sure they'd have understood that you needed a little breathing space.'

'Maybe,' said Howie, sounding defeatist. 'Truth is, I can't even walk straight, let alone think straight. I'm best outta there. I couldn't bear the thought of fucking up in the field.'

Jack put down the coffee. He could see his friend had been more depressed by the divorce than he'd realized. 'You've got to kick the booze, Howie. You know that, don't you?'

'Booze helps me snooze,' he joked. 'Without it I just lie awake at nights and drive myself friggin' crazy.' Howie put his hands behind his head and stretched his neck, trying to ease the tension that seemed to be always with him. 'Every minute of the goddamn day I can see Carrie getting balled by this punk at the gym that she went to. Christ alive! I was so fuckin' stupid not to realize she was playing away.'

Jack tried to get him focused. 'What exactly is bugging you? Is it that you found your wife cheating? That you discovered she wanted to be with some other guy? Or just that you got divorced?'

'All that and then some.' Howie scratched at his head again and then checked his fingers to see if he'd lost more hair. 'You know, I think what pisses me most is that I still love her. Even now, I'd forgive her and try again, but she don't want none of it.'

Jack tried to counsel the depression out of him but it was deep-seated, like a bruise that was yet to show its colour. It was going to take time to work through. He was still hurting for his friend as he said goodbye and caught a cab back. He'd promised they'd do lunch soon and he'd help him get sorted.

A couple of hours later, back at Nancy's parents' place, Jack was still thinking about Howie as he took a call from Massimo Albonetti. The Direttore cut to the chase. 'Jack, I called the Criminal Investigations Unit in Naples. Turns out they know your Luciano Creed, and he is a strange young man.'

'That I knew.'

'Creed is late twenties, single, came to them on secondment from the university, with good recommendations. A top graduate in criminal psychology and on paper the perfect recruit to the Crime Pattern Analysis and Research Department. But that's where the good stuff stops.'

'I figured it might.'

'That's what makes you such a good profiler, Jack,' joked Massimo. 'A month ago they terminated Creed's contract and escorted him off the premises. He shouldn't even have been at that conference, let alone claim that he was there on behalf of either the university or the police.'

'They give a reason why they let him go?'

'Sexual harassment. No specific incident, but several female admin staff went to Personnel and complained about him.'

'For doing what?'

'Pestering them. Asking them out.'

'Since when was that a crime in Italy?'

Massimo laughed. 'Since it was done by ugly, creepy guys who smelled like sewage. Women complained of his lack of personal hygiene and said they felt he was mentally undressing them. Even when they told him to get lost, he kept coming back.'

'Anyone have a good word for him?'

'From what I learned, I don't think his Mamma would even have a good word for him. Given your comments, Jack, my colleagues in Naples would very much like to meet Creed. And they'd also like to talk to you about him. Do you know where he is?'

A bad feeling stirred inside the profiler. 'He's disappeared, Massimo. Hotel receptionist said he headed out to Newark just after it reopened. Maybe he's back in Naples, maybe he's on the other side of the world.'

Disappeared. The word resonated with both of them. Disappeared, just like the women had.

Just like killers do.