Autumn (Four Seasons Book 1) Read online

  Jared remained silent thinking for a moment, which led Jackson to say, “There isn’t anything else I could really tell you. Can I go now?”

  Jared looked down at him contemptuously and said, “Go? Why would I let a sniveling coward like you go? So you could tell your rich bosses that the Black Hand is going to rob the Federal Reserve and you would be some kind of hero?”

  “I wouldn’t tell anyone, I promise,” Jackson replied timidly.

  “I have a better, more permanent way to make sure you don’t tell anyone,” Jared said, bringing out his favorite handgun and twisting a suppressor onto the barrel. Before Jackson could realize what was going on, Jared shot him in the head.

  “Dump him in the river. It doesn’t matter which one,” Jared told the two guards.

  Later that evening, Jared was back in his plush apartment in Midtown that overlooked Central Park. Being the leader of an organized crime ring certainly had its benefits and Jared was content to exploit them. In another time, such a meteoric rise would have gotten attention from entities such as the IRS, but Jared had foreseen that problem long before it came one. Through a combination of bribery and intimidation, Jared had gotten the authorities to look the other way as he gathered modest riches to himself.

  It had not always been this easy for him, as he sat brooding on his dark past. Jared had grown up on a farm in Iowa and had developed an early penchant for violence that marred his brief career in school. He had dropped out of high school and fled to Des Moines, then Chicago, then New York looking for regular work. He was unable to land a job for long and was soon out on the streets.

  Those had been dark times for him. He had gotten by through thievery and terrorizing other homeless people. After a few months though, he had a stroke of luck when the gangs began to grow in the city. Jared fell in with one and quickly gained power through terror and strategically eliminating rivals. Within a few months of falling in with the gang, they had muscled out any competition and were starting to spread fear throughout the city.

  To this point though, few knew who the Black Hand was. They knew that gangs ruled the streets, but few realized that it was only one organization. Jared aimed to change that with the assault on the Federal Reserve and announce to the city and the country that the Black Hand was a force to be reckoned with.

  Jared’s special phone buzzed. He furrowed his brow as he pulled and out and read the message, “You have final approval for the heist. Pull this off and you will be in charge of our fighters nationally.”

  Jared was stunned. He owed his rise partly to this mysterious stranger. During his rise in the gangs, he had been contacted by a man who gave him the messenger. Initially Jared ignored the messenger. The person on the other end kept sending him requests and demands that he did not care to fulfil. After weeks of this he finally did what the messenger asked to resounding success.

  It did not occur to Jared that he was only doing the stranger’s bidding at this point. It only made his job easier and he was being rewarded for it. At the end of the day, he was far better off than he had now that he under the tutelage of the stranger. With bigger rewards on the horizon, he felt no desire to stray from that control now.

  Jared could not help but feel smug. He had gone from living on the streets to nominally controlling an entire city. With the promise of controlling a national apparatus soon, he felt that nothing could stop him.

  Chapter Four

  Deep in the Rabbit Hole

  Greg Carlton had not had an easy time in the three weeks since the official opening of the federal investigation into Task Force NYC. Since he had revealed to the FBI that his fiancée had gone missing during a Brooklyn riot, the investigation had been broadened and made even more intense on the leaders of the task force. The Task Force leaders were not shy about letting Greg know that they blamed him for this intrusion and had even gone so far as to threaten to remove him from his spokesman position.

  This behavior had convinced Greg that something was going on deep in the heart of the agency and he resolved to uncover it. He kept his head down but his eyes wide open, looking for any sign of a conspiracy. It was hard going by himself though, so in the last week he had decided to recruit some people to his own private investigation.

  The problem was that he did not know who he could trust. Greg had not spent his time at the agency trying to make friends, especially after Veronica was lost. Now it was even harder since it seemed that half of the task force was annoyed at him for causing the investigation to widen. Every time he went to his cubicle, he could feel hostile stares following him until he had gotten himself hidden from view. Even Patrick had become distant with him, not talking to him unless it was official business.

  One day in the last full week of January, Greg was at his cubicle trying to rummage through the notes management had given him for a press briefing he would conduct the next day. It was mostly nonsense about the ongoing investigation and a passing mention of how the city had seen a drop in the number of violent crimes in the first three weeks of the new year. Greg could tell they were only throwing that in there to try to make it look like they were doing their job, but he also knew it was not true. The violent crime rate had gone down, but not due to any activity from the agency.

  While he was reading the notes, someone came around to his cubicle that he did not recognize. The young woman asked, “Are you Greg?”

  Greg replied warily, “Yes…”

  “Hi, I’m Ashley,” she said, stretching out her hand to shake his.

  Greg shook her hand, still bemused as he asked, “Do you need anything explicitly from me?”

  “I don’t, but I was told to give this to you and to tell you not to open while you are here,” Ashley said, handing him an envelope. “We’ll be seeing each other soon.”

  Greg was utterly perplexed, but did as Ashley had said. He tucked the envelope away among his notes in his briefcase as she walked away. He glanced around to check to see if anyone had noticed anything, but nobody was paying any attention to him.

  As much as he wanted to look at the envelope as soon as possible, he knew that it was probably unsafe too, especially since Ashley had warned him not to. Greg was forced to pretend to work on his statements for the briefing tomorrow while thinking about what the message might be that someone was trying to convey to him.

  The rest of the day passed by without anything else out of the ordinary occurring. Greg left the building and headed back to his apartment acting normally; he had felt recently that someone had been watching him as he moved around the city. He maintained his poise and did not act like he was holding a strange message in his briefcase as he made his way back to his apartment.

  The winter sun was just setting as he got back to his apartment. After going inside and making sure that no one could see into his apartment he finally tore into his briefcase for the envelope. He quickly found it and tore it open so forcefully that he slightly tore the letter inside as well. Greg unfolded it quickly and read:

  “Greg, I hope you are doing well. I am writing to gauge your interest in conducting a private investigation of the functions of the agency. Since you revealed that an agent went missing, it has become clear that there is a conspiracy going on within the agency. We are developing a conspiracy of our own to get to the bottom of this and present our findings to the FBI. We would greatly appreciate your assistance or at least your silence if not. If you are interested, please go to the address enclosed on Saturday, January 28th at 10 pm. We hope to see you there.”

  Greg read through the letter again and a third time as well. He was trying to find any hints as to who may have written it, but his contact was cleverer than that. If he wanted to find out who had contacted him, he would have to go to this meeting.

  Knowing that if this private investigation were to be discovered he would probably lose his job, Greg shredded the letter and threw it away, saving only the address. A random address would not look suspicious, especially since he had shredded the time
of the meeting.

  Greg went to his living room and sat down, turning on the TV just to get some noise so he could think. It was true that he was suspicious of the agency. It was also true he did not know who he could turn to about it. He had not expected this opportunity to fall into his lap and he felt that it would be foolish to ignore it and wonder what could have been.

  Throughout the rest of the week, Greg had been able to get through his job without raising any suspicion that he was plotting against his superiors. He also kept an eye out for any sign of his contact, though that came to nothing. He spotted Ashley a couple of times, but she did not acknowledge him either time. He resolved just to wait for the end of week and see what came of the meeting he had been invited to.

  Saturday was a day off for him, so Greg contented himself to sit in his apartment and spent the entire day watching college basketball before going to the late-night meeting. The meeting place was in Hoboken, so he planned to leave early to be able to get himself across the Hudson in time to make the meeting.

  There was no realistic way for Greg to walk that far, so when he left his apartment, he hailed a cab and bade the cabbie to take him across the river. As the trip wore on, Greg became glad that he had left as early as he had. The drive was taking an immense amount of time as moderate snow had begun to fall across the city, clogging traffic and grinding the city to a virtual standstill.

  Despite the fact it was nowhere near the meeting time, Greg kept glancing nervously at his phone to make sure that he still had plenty of time. After what seemed like hours, the cab finally dropped him off at the meeting site. He paid the cabby and then turned to enter the meeting place.

  Greg had been dropped off in a series of apartments near the river, which surprised him. He had not looked at where the meeting was explicitly, but he did not expect it to be at a private residence. He had thought the address was for an office suite. The specific apartment was on the top floor of the building that he was standing in front of, so he entered the building and went up the elevator to the prescribed floor. He emerged on the landing and saw the room listed on the address was right in front of him. Nervously, he knocked on the door sharply.

  The door was almost immediately answered by Ashley. “Greg it’s good to see you here,” she said. “Please come in,” she added, moving aside to let him through.

  “Thank you,” Greg said, entering the small room. There were a handful of other people in the apartment from what Greg could tell, most of which he recognized from work. A couple, however, he did not know at all.

  One of the people that he did not know spoke up and said, “Ashley you did not say that your new recruit was the spokesman for the task force.”

  “Greg can be trusted,” Ashley explained. “He’s the one that blew the whistle on the Task Force about Veronica going missing.”

  “Only because he didn’t know any better,” one of his coworkers, a black man named Charles Davis, added. “Still, it was worth it to see Emma and her cronies squirm.”

  The stranger still seemed unsure, but he still got up to shake Greg’s hand. “My name is Bob Pates. I’m the one who started this little conspiracy. No offense, but your explanations of the agency’s failings are bullshit.”

  “I’m starting the feel the same way,” Greg replied.

  “Good. We could use that here,” Bob said, sitting back down. “Why don’t you sit down there, Greg, we’re only waiting on one more person.”

  There was a knock on the door and Ashley went to answer it. When she returned, she saw that she had returned with Christine Wade, the agency director’s personal assistant.

  “Christine is here?” Greg asked, bemused.

  “Greg is here?” Christine asked, mocking him. “I came over early, Greg. I wasn’t walking around moping for the last two years.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t recall you having lost a fiancée,” Greg replied sarcastically. “But, by all means…”

  “Enough you two, we have work to do here,” Bob said impatiently. “We need to get Greg caught up to speed on what he does or doesn’t know, then we can go back to bickering. Greg, do you know what the Black Hand is?”

  Greg looked at him and said, “They were a terrorist group in Europe over a century ago. They were responsible for the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. What does that have to do with anything?”

  “I’m talking about something a bit closer than 130 years ago,” Bob explained.

  “Well then, no,” Greg replied simply.

  “The Black Hand is the gang running this city,” Charles said, cutting in before Bob.

  Greg looked confused as he said, “Gang? As in one?”

  “Yes, it would appear that way,” Bob said, sighing. “From what we can tell, the Black Hand is the only gang in the city.”

  “How is that possible?” Greg asked in disbelief. “There’s been gang related violence from one end of the city to the other for months now. And this whole time it was one gang?”

  “Yes,” Bob replied simply.

  “How the fuck did we not know that?!” Greg demanded, turning to Christine.

  “Emma Drexel has known for months that the Black Hand was the only group in the city that was committing gang related crimes,” Christine said tonelessly.

  “Then why the fuck…” Greg started angrily.

  “Because Greg,” Christine said, interrupting him, “she’s a chicken shit. She doesn’t want to admit that the Black Hand is as big of a problem as it is, so she tried to suppress it as much as possible. She has an image to keep up and a big fat Fed paycheck to take home as well.”

  “Obviously telling you as the public face of the agency would have made it a lot harder to keep the Black Hand a secret,” Charles explained. “You might have accidently let it slip during a briefing.”

  “It wouldn’t have been an accident,” Greg replied dryly. “So if Drexel knows about this Black Hand, is she doing anything about it?”

  “Not really,” Christine said. “Admitting there is a problem is too much for her so she can’t be expected to do something about the same problem as well.”

  “Is anyone at the Task Force doing anything about it?” Greg asked somewhat desperately.

  “That’s why we are here,” Ashley said from the door.

  “No one in control of the agency can be expected to do anything about it,” Bob explained. “If the Black Hand is going to be stopped, it needs to be done outside of the agency’s authority.”

  Greg thought for a moment and then said, “Are you sure it is just Drexel trying to keep everything under her control?”

  “What do you mean?” Christine asked.

  “What if there is another reason the agency won’t do anything about the Black Hand,” Greg said, turning to her. “There has to be other people there that know that the Black Hand is out there in the agency that are keeping a lid on it too. So what’s their motive?”

  There was silence for a moment until Bob said, “If you want, that can be your task. See if there is something going on deep at the agency. Or you can help investigate the Black Hand itself. I’ll admit, neither task is going to be easy.”

  “I’ll see what’s up at the agency for now,” Greg replied simply. “But while I’m thinking about it, what do you know about the Black Hand so far?”

  Bob sighed and glanced out the window, which faced east towards Manhattan. “It’s big. Very, very big. If the Black Hand were an underground labyrinth, then we’re only in the first atrium. We don’t know how far or deep this goes. We don’t know if they have infiltrated the city government, the police, the fire department, the banks, or anything like that. The only place we know they’re not is Task Force NYC thanks to Christine here.”

  “We do have some inkling of their organization though, thanks to Eric over there,” Charles said, nodding towards the other person besides Bob that was not from the agency.

  “I don’t know much,” Eric said. “I’m Eric Samson by the way, fresh out of high schoo
l in Queens, now a mole in the Black Hand.”

  “How did you manage that?” Greg asked.

  “I am a hell raiser,” Eric said, almost sounding bored. “Arson is my thing. I like fire.”

  “If you are still an arsonist, then why…?” Greg started.

  “Why am I willing to rat out the people I work with?” Eric asked. “I light trash can fires, dummy. That shit’s harmless. What the Black Hand is doing is pure evil. Murder, extortion, arson that actually does harm to people, gang rapes, organized terror, they’ve done it all. Most of the shit they do doesn’t make the news. They exist to create fear in the city. I like my joke. What they do is not a fucking joke.”

  Greg was taken aback at how adamant Eric had been. He did not respond, so Eric continued, “Anyway I need to tell you all this anyway because most of you haven’t heard this yet. The Black Hand is very organized with orders coming from the top down. There is some boss over the whole thing, but I don’t know who it might be or how far up the chain of command they are either.”

  “At my level, we are organized into groups of a few to maybe a dozen. We each have our own block to harass. Above me is a block leader that dishes out the attacks she wants to carry out. She usually acts on orders from the neighborhood commander and so on up the chain. Orders come from the top down. Usually the bosses will let the neighborhood commanders do what they want, but sometimes there is a citywide order that can only come from the top boss.”

  “Can you tell when an order comes from the top boss?” Ashley asked.

  “My group hasn’t gotten one yet if there has been,” Eric explained. “Not unless they explicitly ordered us to commit arson and vandalism on Tuesday, which seems too specific for them to give.”

  “Wait, your next attack is going to be on Tuesday?” Greg asked.

  “Yeah,” Eric said. “The neighborhood leader says we are supposed to create havoc in the area on the 31st and my block leader interpreted that as arson and smashing windows and shit like that. We might be covering up for a more specific attack from a different group, but I don’t know anything besides that. They keep us regimented so nobody on my block knows what is going to be on two blocks over and crap like that.”