Wrong Deal With An Angel

Chapter 1 **Couple of days ago it had all come crashing down. The bad things came, like a winter storm. Pushed over the edge, I found myself in the cold no-man's land between right and wrong. No road-signs. On a crash-course with the Mafia. With nothing to lose. The Lone Star was trailing me by the dotted line of empty shell casings that I left behind. I was trying to look for the answers, but every gunshot, instead of closure, was just a hole with more questions leaking out. A spreading labyrinth of questions, like a pool of blood spreading on the snow. There are a million bodies in this city. Murders criminals, people that ran out of time out of friends. Empty faces, by the time they found me who was to say I was any different then them! I lay my head back in the cold of the night; the ally way was just as unforgiving as the bullet lodged in my side. That's my blood, a lot of my blood, the stain of red engulfing my hands just made things worse. Just outside the ally a car stops in the traffic lights. The light paints snow red, like the whole city was in flames. But inside, in the shadows of the ally, it's all done in blues. I know I'm lying to myself. No amount of painkillers can keep this ache away. They were all dead, the men that hunted me. This final gunshot will be an exclamation mark to everything that had led to this point. I dug my finger into the trigger, and then it was over. Nothing, click! Empty clip. Just my luck. I wanted so bad to believe it was over, but like god himself was pulling on my soul telling me I can’t die. If only it was as easy as telling im done, but God 1 me 0. Seem the bastard was right once again. 1 week ago. I didn't like the way the show started. But they had given me the best seat in the house. Front row center. In the backseat of a moving car, I am cut loose from the city. It watches me pass with sharp neon eyes. The night has gilded the skyscrapers in silver. Every brick wall is covered with graffiti. Something goes clank in the night, and the sound is close enough to a gunshot to take me back to the beginning. My last meeting with Troy before I went undercover. Sitting in a crummy diner opposite me, he had grinned, a friendly bear, but I had seen it in his eyes. We hadn't been on the side of the winners in a long time. He was playing it safe, talking shop! It must have been there. The sign of things to come. Clear in the fear in Troy’s eyes, in the darkness of the coffee I was drinking, in the way my Beretta dug painfully into my side. But we were blind to it then, closing our eyes to it. Refusing to see it. Later that night, Stryker Davis as a DEA special agent was erased from the vast network of databases, and replaced with a new version of me: Stryker Davis, the career criminal with a mile-long rap sheet. To make any kind of sense of it, I need to go back seven days. Back to the night the pain started. Amelia, my wife was lying on the bed. Bullet holes like rubies on her chest. Our baby's cry cut short, the absence of it heavy in the air. That gunshot, like an exclamation mark to end it all, the answer to all my questions, had already rung out a long time ago, even its echoes gone. The gun was fused to my hand from that moment on. That room inside me everywhere I go. Especially now as the city presses close to the windows of the car, its monster's heartbeat under the tires. The strangers squinted eyes in the rearview mirror. My hands numb and held awkwardly behind my back. Everything that came after that room is hopelessness, a chaotic swirl, rising nausea that tastes like rust in my mouth. Life was good. The sun setting on a sweet summer's day, the smell of freshly mowed lawns, the sounds of children playing… A house across the river, on the Jersey-side. A beautiful wife and a baby girl. The American dream com true. Honey, I'm home! But dreams have a nasty habit of going bad when you're not looking. The sun went down with practiced bravado; twilight crawled across the sky, laden with foreboding. That was seven days ago. Everything ripped apart in a hell’s minute. The killer junkies had been high on a previously unknown designer drug. After the funeral, I told Troy I would be transferring to the Cold Case Unit. It took us three long years to get a break in the Innocenti case. Then, finally, two months ago, a dime-dropper tipped us off that Aspanu Innocenti, a mob boss in the Innocenti crime family, was trafficking. I went undercover, infiltrated the worst Mafia family in Denver. 7 days ago. Days undercover: 64 I came in from the cold and the dark. Outside, the city was a cruel monster. I'd been slowly working my way from small-time to the big fish, trying to get to the source of the drug. Troy and Harbeck. were my only contacts in the DEA… The only ones in this decrepit city who knew I was down here. I hadn't had a face to face with Vincint Burlesconi since I'd gone undercover. Outside, the mercury was falling fast. It was colder than the Devil's heart, raining ice pitchforks as if the Heavens were ready to fall. Everyone was running for shelter like there was no tomorrow. It didn't get any better when I got to the warehouse. The feeling hit me like a point-blank shot straight in the face… Something was not right about this. My Beretta stirred nervously under my coat… but the doors had already shut behind me, and I was in for the ride… Next stop: Hell holding hands with an angel. The rusty door led to an abandoned part of the warehouse closed off since the early 40’s. Something big was going down at Roscoe Street. Maybe that's why Burlesconi had wanted to meet me here. Maybe not… One way or another, I was going to find out. Death was in the air, the stench of cold dry blood filled it like a rising ammonia, screaming could be heard even though there was really nobody screaming. This warehouse was like war zone, I could only imagine its background count. The whole warehouse itself had eeriness to it, it may have been just me but something was tugging at my sleeve. A little red flag that I should of payed attention too. Some of the Innocenti boys had their way with a Saint, who knows why. The poor boy had to be only 16 at most. Got caught in the wrong crowd, his girlfriend laying on the floor with a hole the size tangerine in her head. Small sprawl boy, looking for a way to be accepted. Now lay chained to a chair without a face or enough teeth to make a dental record. Little Mr. Sunshine her, Goldie lox, daddy must have missed a lot of dance residuals. You could tell she wasn’t from the Warrens, probably had a thing for bad boys. Daddy should have told her they would be the death of her before he ran away. Sad story it really is, happens far too often in this world. Nothing was stopping me, but for some reason I didn’t even dare touch the wooden bat that was covered with the boys brain matter. But the note was glowing in my sights. I pick up the letter trying my best to not slip on any of the blood. Hard to read, the blood smeared most of the hand writing away. A signature lay await at the bottom like it was stalking me “A. Harbeck” Harbeck. Was it just ironic or did I get myself into much more then I wanted. I couldn’t wait to find out. **