Chapter 3 - Smoke on the Water
Dawn broke over Baltimore Harbor like a bruised peach, smearing streaks of pale orange and sickly purple across a slate-gray sky. The snow had stopped, leaving behind a thick, pristine blanket of white that muffled the usual industrial screech of the container port.
Inside his downtown penthouse office overlooking the inner harbor, Curtis Hale swirled a finger through the condensation on his crystal tumbler of scotch. He wore a bespoke charcoal suit that cost more than Clara made in six months, his dark hair neatly parted, his face a masterpiece of corporate calm.
A sharp knock rattled the heavy mahogany door.
"Come in," Curtis said smoothly.
A junior enforcer named Frankie stepped into the room, stamping melted snow off his wingtip shoes. Frankie looked nervous, his eyes darting toward the floor as he approached the massive glass desk.
"Well?" Curtis asked without turning around. "Did cleanup sweep the wreck at Warehouse B?"
"That's just it, boss," Frankie stammered, swallowing hard. "The harbor patrol hauled the SUV out of the concrete wall an hour ago. The state troopers processed it as a standard winter slip-and-slide off the icy lane."
Curtis turned slowly, a thin smile touching his lips. "And Vance?"
"That's the crazy part, Mr. Hale. The car is empty."
The glass in Curtis’s hand stopped swirling. The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. "Empty."
"Blood all over the steering wheel, passenger side window blown out, airbag deployed," Frankie rattled off, reading from a crumpled notepad. "But no body. Not in the cabin, not in the snow around the tires, not in the water below the pier. Divers checked the slip. Nothing."
Curtis slammed his tumbler down onto the marble desk, amber liquid splashing over the rim. "Nothing doesn't happen! A man with three broken ribs and a shattered knee doesn't just sprout wings and fly out of a sinking SUV in the middle of a blizzard!"
"Maybe... maybe a rival crew picked him up before our guys got back?" Frankie offered timidly.
"Which crew?" Curtis hissed, stepping around the desk, his face contorting into an ugly, furious mask. "The Italians stay on the North Side. The Irish are too drunk to coordinate a hit like this. If Roland crawled out of that wreck on his own two feet, he's bleeding out somewhere within a mile of those docks."
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Curtis walked over to the floor-to-ceiling window, staring out at the frozen expanse of Pier 14 below. His empire—the drugs, the shipping routes, the payoffs to city hall—was sitting right in the palm of his hand. He had waited ten years to inherit this chair. He wasn't about to let a ghost crawl out of a snowbank and take it back.
"Listen to me, Frankie," Curtis said, his voice dropping into a lethal, quiet register. "Lock down every warehouse from Pier 1 to Pier 20. Double the patrols. Check every shipping container, every diner, every flophouse, every stray dog running the alleys. Find Roland Vance. And if he's breathing, make sure he stops."
