The Swan and the Jackal

Chapter Six

Fredrik

If Dorian Flynn wasn’t part of our new Order, and my assigned partner, he’d be the one I killed tonight. I hate this guy. I might just kill him anyway.

“Tha fuck is this bitch talkin’ about?” Dorian asks, staring down into a magazine with some famous couple posing with a baby on the front. He flicks the center of it with his middle finger, making a short snapping noise and then drops the magazine on the table between us. “Don’t you ever read this shit?”

“No,” I answer simply, uninterested, and bring my mug of coffee to my lips.

I continue to watch out the tall glass window of the coffee shop for signs of my next interrogation. Short, bald man with a death wish long overdue.

“Well, you should,” he says, looking at the magazine again. “This is what society has become. An overpopulated flock of loudmouth, zero talent celebrities who get paid to fondle America’s nutsack with bullshit drama.” He shakes his head and presses his back against his chair. “Y’know, I could make a goddamn killing on pickin’ these motherfuckers off. Hell, I think even Faust would be up for it.”

I really don’t care much about what Dorian is going on about, but I know that if I don’t respond with something soon, he’ll notice and might never shut up.

“Those people, as moronic as they may be,” I say looking across the square table at him, “aren’t hits. At least not yet.”

Dorian shrugs and reaches out to close the magazine with two of his fingers. “Well, for the record, I want the first one that is.”

I nod and look back out the window. “I’ll let Victor know.” And then I add with a smirk, “Seems to me they’re fondling your nutsack just fine. The fact that you care about any of it at all proves that.”

Dorian grins. He crosses his arms, covered by a dark brown leather jacket over his chest. He has short dark-blond hair, clean-cut though spiked-up in the front and on the top. He’s not as tall as I am at 6’3, must be about 6’, with bright blue eyes that he often covers with sunglasses. He’s been killing people for eight years now (he told me this when we first met, as casually as he might tell me he’s been working in real estate for eight years) and I admit, he’s good at only twenty-six years old. But a lot like Niklas Fleischer, Victor Faust’s brother, Dorian is undisciplined and sometimes reckless. Though, I also admit that it seems to work for him.

He shakes his head, smiling across at me. “I’d like to bag one of those bitches. It’s true. You got me.” He puts up his hands, palms forward, and then drops them back onto the table. “But only to see the look on her face when I kick her out of my bed after I’m done with her. Knock her off her pedestal a little.”

My left brow rises. “Oh, I see.”

He nods. “Yeah, I could fuck a woman like that all day long, but at the end of the day, I’m looking for a nice, quiet, respectable girl to bring home to my folks, y’know.”

“I thought your folks were dead?” I take another sip of my coffee.

Dorian shrugs and stretches his arms behind him high above his head. “Yeah, they are, but you get the picture.”

“Sure I do,” I say, though I still wish he’d shut up already. “But somehow I just don’t see you settling down.”

The spot between Dorian’s eyes hardens as he rears his chin back. “I didn’t say anything about settling down.”

“Well, nice, quiet and respectable usually means settling down,” I point out.

He throws his head back and laughs lightly. “Maybe in your world,” he says. “Then again, you’re kind of sadistic and I highly doubt that a nice, quiet, respectable girl would get too close to you for you to find out.”

No, but I happen to have one in my basement. Granted, I have to keep her shackled inside the room so she doesn’t run away or try to kill me, but Cassia is the kindest, most respectable girl I’ve ever met. And I’ve met a lot of women. Broken a lot of women.

A short, stubby bald man wearing a waist-length thick coat steps outside of a black sedan that just pulled into the parking lot. Its headlights are on, beaming at us through the tall window, and the motor remains running. Puffs of exhaust pour out of the rear stimulated by the frigid December air. Snow is thick on the outskirts of the parking lot where a snowplow made its rounds this morning, shoving mounds of it off the parking lot and out of the way.

“It’s James Woodard,” I say quietly, keeping my eyes on him from the tall window.

Dorian turns his head to look as the target leaves the running car and heads to his own car parked three spaces over.

I glance at my Rolex. “Same time. Just like last week.”

“He’s consistent,” Dorian says.

“Yeah, fortunately for us, that’s his first mistake,” I reply.

I stand up and remove my black coat from the back of the wooden chair and slip my arms into it. I zip it up to my throat. Dorian follows suit. We wait until the drop-off car is completely out of the parking lot before we head outside into the winter air. James Woodard glances at us once as we approach my car on the other end of the lot, but neither of us make eye contact. Woodard passes us off as any other customer leaving the coffee shop. He’s not a smart man and it’s a wonder why he was ever employed by any organization like mine to do even the simplest of tasks.

His stupidity is one reason we have to get rid of him. That, along with his selling information of our new Order to another black market organization. It isn’t much and none of it’s true. Victor has been suspicious of Woodard since he took over Woodard’s Order last month. He has been feeding Woodard false information on us ever since. Just to see if he’d sell it. And he did. Twice. It just so happens that the man in the black sedan who just dropped him off was the buyer and one of our guys.

But where I come in, is interrogating him to find out if he’s been selling that information to anyone else. And to find out if anyone else is involved. It’s a perfect night to torture a man. And I have two hours left to make it back to my house with Woodard.

I told Cassia four hours, and I always keep my promises.

Dorian and I hop inside my car and the engine purrs to life. Woodard pulls out of the parking lot first, and already knowing which direction he’ll be going, I wait about thirty seconds before I put my car into reverse and set out to follow him.

“What a fucking idiot,” Dorian says with laughter. “How long did Victor say Woodard was employed under Norton?”

“Two years,” I answer while pulling out of the parking lot and heading east.

“Shit,” Dorian laughs again, “I’m surprised he lasted two days.”

“Yeah, I have to agree with you on that one.” I keep my eyes trained on the dark road, retaining the speed limit and trying to keep Woodard’s car in my sights.

“You don’t agree with me on much, do you?” Dorian asks, glancing over at me briefly. Not that he cares, really, but he’s not so arrogant that he doesn’t at least try to get along with others.

“No, I do agree with you on a lot,” I admit. “It’s just taking me some time to adjust to your guns-blazing methods.”

This time his laughter fills the car.

“Are you serious?” he asks with humor and disbelief. “You’re fucking scary, man. All I do is shoot people. You’re one step away from a full-fledged serial killer. Talk about adjusting.”

He says I’m scary, but I doubt he’s at all afraid of me, or much of anything for that matter. He’s too cocky and reckless to be afraid.

“I take it you’ll be sitting this one out then?” I ask as my head falls to the right and I grin over at him.

Dorian smiles and nods. “Yeah, man, he’s all yours. No arguments here.”

That’s good, because there’s much more to tonight’s interrogation than what a typical one entails.

And my audience will be limited to one.

We follow Woodard to a house he’s been staying in since Victor killed his employer and took over their operations. Woodard also has a house over in Roland Park, the one he thinks he’s led us to believe he spends most of his time at. Further proof this man is a lowlife piece of shit because he has a wife and two daughters he leaves in that Roland Park house, unprotected and oblivious to what he’s involved in and how much danger they’re in, while he hides out in the rental.

I think of killing him tonight as my good deed for the month, because his wife and daughters will probably live longer if he’s dead.

After Woodard pulls into the driveway and kills the engine he locks himself inside the house. Dorian and I park on the street in the cover of shadows cast by a thick of trees. One light glows from the window on the downstairs floor. I make my way to the front door while Dorian heads around back. I hear his boots crunching in the snow as he rounds the corner. After a few minutes, giving Dorian time to position himself at the back door and scope out the house through the windows, I raise my knuckles to the red-painted door and knock three times.

The curtain covering a tall, slim glass window running down the side along the length of the door frame, moves as Woodard tries to get a glimpse of me. The porch light flips on and I smile looking right at the peephole in the door, knowing that he’s looking back at me through it.

Still with a smile on my face, I raise two fingers and wave.

“Who the hell are you?” he asks nervously, his voice muffled by the thick block of wood between us.

He knows who I am, or rather, he knows why I’m here. There’s no way he’s opening that door freely.

“Open the door, James,” I call out in a singsong voice. “We have something to discuss.”

“G-Go away!” His voice is trembling. “I don’t know you and—I-I’ll call the cops if you don’t get off my property!” He says this with a sudden burst of confidence as if he actually believes the police are going to be able to help him.

But too soon the confidence fades when I don’t move from my spot in front of the door and the smile on my face doesn’t lose its potency. I stand with my hands clasped together in front of me.

Suddenly, I hear a rhythmic beeping noise, as though Woodard is punching in numbers on an alarm keypad next to the front door.

BACK DOOR OPEN, I hear a robotic voice say when he tries to set the alarm.

Then I hear a scuffle inside, a loud bang against the door and something similar to glass shattering against the floor inside.

“No! Please! I-I…please!” Woodard calls out with a straining voice as if something, Dorian’s arm perhaps, is pressed around his throat.

“Sit down and shut the fuck up,” I hear Dorian say, and I picture him waving that gun of his in front of Woodard’s face.

Everything goes quiet and then the porch light flips off, bathing me in darkness again. A second later, I hear the locks on the front door clicking and then it opens.

Woodard has been shoved into an oversized lounge chair in the front room.

“I-I don’t know who you are or—”

“Sure you know who we are,” I say, stepping around a broken vase and toward him.

I pull the ottoman away from his legs and take a seat on it directly in front of him, resting my arms on my thighs at the elbows, my hands dangling between my legs.

Woodard is shaking, the extra chin jiggling in the dim light cast by the lamp on the table next to him. He’s wearing a navy and tan checkered long-sleeve with the top three buttons left undone and a white flannel shirt underneath. He reeks of cheap cologne and permanent markers.

Reaching up one pudgy hand, Woodard presses the tip of his finger in the center of his glasses and pushes them back over the bridge of his nose.

“Look, seriously, I really don’t know why you’re here,” he says rather pathetically, his dark, beady eyes jerking between me and Dorian. “I don’t work for Norton anymore. Someone else took over. I just do what I’m told.”

I smirk and glance behind him at nothing in particular. Already I can’t seem to get the image of him in my chair, out of my head.

“So you do know why we’re here,” I mock him, cocking my head to one side. “Trust me, my friend, you’d do better to be honest up front.”

I hope he’s not honest up front. I want him to deny everything so I can get to work on him.

Woodard glances at Dorian.

“Tell me who you are,” he says, more pleading than a demand, and then he looks back at me. There appears to be realization in his eyes. “I-I remember you. Both of you. Y-You were at the coffee shop. You followed me from there, didn’t you?”

“Does that really matter?” I ask and cock my head to the other side.

I stand from the ottoman and straighten my coat.

“Search the house,” I tell Dorian. “I’ll send a cleaner to dispose of everything after you’re done.”

“Wait…what are you doing?” Woodard asks nervously from the chair.

I remove a syringe from my coat pocket and pull the protective cap off the tip of the needle.

“No…w-wait a goddamn minute! Y-You haven’t even asked me anything! You haven’t given me a chance to talk!”

I don’t want you to talk.

Dorian’s eyebrows crease as he looks at me questioningly.

“Let’s see what he has to say first,” Dorian speaks up, waving his gun at Woodard who keeps looking at the barrel apprehensively, worried it’s going to go off. “There’s a lot of shit to go through, Gustavsson. If the guy is willing to talk, I’m all for listening.”

“Yeah…,” Woodard agrees, hoping I’ll do the same, his eyes jerking back and forth between us.

Suddenly, he looks as though he was slapped in the face. His beady eyes grow wider and his breathing begins to elevate.

He points a shaky, pudgy finger at me.

“Gustavsson? Y-You’re Fredrik Gustavsson…t-the one they call the Specialist?” His big head begins to shake side to side, over and over. “No…I-I’ll tell you anything you want to know. But I don’t have anything to hide. If I’d known who you worked for—shit, if I’d known who you were—I’d have let you in at the door. No questions asked. I’d have made you fucking soup!”

“There’s nothing to tell,” I say, though I’m pulling straws here. “We already know what you’ve been selling and to whom. There’s no coming back from that.” I just need him to shut the fuck up. I need to interrogate and kill him. I need Cassia to see it. “Stand up.”

Woodard looks to Dorian for help, seeing as how he was the one of us willing to give him more time. Lucky for Woodard, Dorian doesn’t like paperwork and this big house full of files he’ll have to sift through when I leave is the only thing keeping Woodard alive right now. In any other case, Dorian would’ve blown his brains against that hideous tapestry curtain behind him already.

“Five minutes,” Dorian suggests. “Come on, man, you know I’m all about taking them out quick, but he’s ready to talk.”

Woodard nods furiously, his hands gripping the edges of the chair arms, his double-chin moving like Jell-O.

I sigh heavily and drop my hands at my sides, the syringe filled with a cocktail that would’ve put Woodard to sleep long enough to get him back to my house quietly, dangles from my fingertips.

“Three minutes,” I say.

“O-OK…three minutes,” Woodard stutters. “I’m not a traitor.”

“So, you’re a liar,” Dorian says from beside me.

“No.” Woodard shakes his head. “I did sell information to Marion Callahan, the guy who dropped me off in the parking lot. But—”

“Sounds like a traitor to me,” Dorian adds and then raises his gun, pointed right at Woodard.

I reach out and place my hand on the cold steel, lowering it. The last thing I need is for Dorian to kill my victim and leave me with no one to put in my chair. Or, the gun to go off that close to my ear and make me go deaf.

“Clock’s ticking,” I say to Woodard.

He puts up his hands momentarily and then drops them on the tops of his legs covered by khaki pants.

“I wanted to prove to the new bossman that I’m worth keeping,” Woodard says. “Because I knew I was on my way out the first day Norton was killed and you guys took over. Look at me. I’m not necessarily considered an asset at first glance. And I couldn’t get a face-to-face meeting with the new boss.” He sighs. Already, I’m feeling a wave of disappointment beginning to wash over me. “Marion Callahan approached me outside my house, where my wife and daughters sleep for Christ’s sake, and told me that if I could get him information on the new boss and his operations, they’d secure me a top level position in their outfit. N-Not as a killer, of course,”—he smiles squeamishly—“I’m useless in the field. Never killed anyone in my life—w-well, once, but it was an accident.”

“Two minutes,” I remind him.

He nods and goes on:

“I met with Callahan twice and gave him two flash drives. Bogus information. Nothing on those drives is real. False names. False locations. Hell, I even made up details of a mission that never happened.”

“Why would you do that?” I ask.

As much as I need to deal with Cassia, I equally need to deal with this. It is my job, after all, and I could never bring myself to give Victor Faust less than one hundred percent of my effort.

“Because I looked into Callahan,” Woodard says. “I know my way around computers and information. I have backdoor access to FBI, CIA, Interpol—shit, I can get information on anyone from any database. But Callahan, he wasn’t in any databases. None. I took his fingerprints from the business card he gave me. I ran him against everything for two weeks. Nothing.”

“Well, that’s not entirely unusual,” I point out. “Given his profession.”

Woodard stands from the chair, so deep in thought that he probably doesn’t even notice. I let him. Dorian does, too, but keeps his gun at the ready down at his side. Woodard begins to pace, stopping every few seconds to look back at us, gesturing his hands intensely as he explains.

“Come on,” he says as if we should know better, “there’s always some kind of record, even if it’s hidden on a Girl Scouts application. No one is a ghost. Not like this guy.”

“So then he’s using a fake name and his prints have never been recorded,” Dorian says, getting as impatient as I was moments ago. “So fucking what. That doesn’t prove anything other than he’s good if there’s no record of him.”

Woodard smiles chillingly. “Not if he’s a Boss.”

That gets our attention.

Dorian and I look at each other briefly.

“Do you have any proof?” I ask.

“No,” Woodard says. “But think about it, the ones at the top of the food chain, they’re the most protected. They have no ties to anyone other than their right-hand men and their gatekeepers. They trust no one and they kill at the first sign of betrayal or suspicion. It’s why the bosses are harder to find.” Woodard points at me, still smiling darkly. “Have you ever seen Vonnegut?” he asks and it surprises me that he knows anything about my former employer, or that he was my employer at all.

“No,” I answer. “Not face-to-face.”

A grin spreads across Woodard’s heavily cracked lips.

“Do you even know his first name?”

I don’t answer, but I imagine the confused look on my face does that for me.

“That’s what I thought,” Woodard says.

He’s feeling much more confident now about this whole situation. I, on the other hand, have surpassed the feeling of anxiousness about getting back to Cassia in time, and am now more concerned about the things Woodard is telling us.

Dorian shoves the barrel of his gun into Woodard’s chest and forces him back into the chair.

“What the fuck are you trying to pull?” Dorian demands. “Marion Callahan has been reporting your stubby ass up the chain of command. Our boss knows what you did. If Callahan was the leader of another organization, why would he be messing with you at all? Why not just go to the source and take out our boss if he’s such a ghost?”

“Because Callahan can’t get to our boss,” I say, pulling Dorian by the shoulder to move him away from Woodard. “He’s trying to get in the old fashioned way, by working his way up that chain of command, gaining trust by pretending to weed out traitors.”

“OK, but since when do bosses go out in the field and get their hands dirty like that?” Dorian brings up a good point. “Why risk himself by putting himself out there? Why not just get one of his men to do it?”

“Because the best place to hide is in plain sight,” I say. “And if it was me and I wanted to take out another leader, I’d probably do it myself, too.”

Woodard nods at me as if telling me he couldn’t have said it better.

Even Victor Faust is guilty of this, wanting to be the one to take out the leaders. It’s like another badge on his shirt, a trophy, and completely understandable. When Victor sent me to France to get the key to the deposit box in New York from François Moreau, he didn’t send me there to kill their leader, Sébastien Fournier. He insisted that he’d be the one to take Fournier out.

“There’s one thing to prove before anything you’ve said can be taken into consideration.” I sit down on the ottoman in front of Woodard again, making sure he has a good view of the needle dangling from my fingers in-between my knees. “The information on those drives that you sold to Marion Callahan.”

Woodard’s chin jiggles again as he nods rapidly.

“It can be verified,” he says putting up his hands in surrender. “I swear it.”

I glance at Dorian still standing at my left. “Looks like you’ll be babysitting tonight,” I say and he looks instantly argumentative. “I’m going to get in contact with our employer after I leave here and tell him everything that was said here tonight.”

“Fuckin’ A, man, you can’t be serious,” Dorian contends, waving his gun hand out beside him. “I can’t fucking stay here. It smells like cough drops and…,” he wrinkles his whole face, “…cheese.”

I get up from the ottoman and dig in my pocket for the protective cap, slipping it back on the needle.

“If his story doesn’t check out,” I say as I start to walk past Dorian, “then you can shoot him,” I add with my hand on his shoulder.

Despite knowing I’ll never hear the end of this from Dorian later, I leave him there with James Woodard and set out to do what I have to do. First, I call Victor and tell him everything about our visit with Woodard. He instructs me to wait until I receive word about what to do next, which thankfully got me out of doing anything else about it for the rest of the night.

Now I can focus on Cassia.

My teeth are on edge, my throat is dry, my head is spinning with scenarios, all of which begin with a brutal interrogation and end with Cassia remembering more of her past and more about Seraphina. But I’ve waited too long as it is. I have no one to take back to interrogate.

Feeling defeated and angry about how wrong this night has gone, I slam both hands against the steering wheel. The back of my neck is sweating. I’ve been grinding my teeth so abrasively on the drive back that my jaw hurts.

Just when I think it’s over and that I’ll have to wait another week or two before I get another interrogation job, I accept in my mind that returning to my old ways is all I have left.

And so I make a sharp U-turn in the split in the road and head east to find a man I’ve had on my backup list for times just like these, when I have no other choice.