Chapter 8 - The Shadow Emperor
Pier 4 smelled of dead pogies, diesel exhaust, and salt spray frozen against rusted iron.
The wind coming off Narragansett Bay had whipped the sleet into horizontal needles that stung the eyes and froze the moisture on Martha’s eyelashes. She sat behind the massive steering wheel of Maxwell’s 1994 Dodge Ram flatbed, the Cummins diesel engine idling with a deep, rhythmic rattle that vibrated through the floorboards.
Beside her, Maxwell sat in the passenger seat, his legs wrapped in a heavy wool car coat, a Remington 870 pump-action shotgun resting across his thighs.
He had not taken another dose of anything.
Instead, Martha had spent twenty minutes in the study wrapping his ankles and calves in tight elastic compression bandages, creating external support struts that locked his hyper-mobile joints into place. It was crude, battlefield physical therapy, but it gave his awakening nervous system a stable platform against which to fire.
Fifty yards away, under the yellow halogen floodlights of Warehouse 7, three black Lincoln Town Cars were parked in a semicircle around an open shipping container.
Donald Vance stood near the container door, his cashmere coat collar turned up against the sleet, a clipboard in his gloved hands. Opposite him stood Frank Moretti—a squat, thick-necked man in a sheepskin jacket who had controlled the Boston waterfront rackets since Maxwell’s father was buried.
Between them stood Dr. Jonathan Albright, holding his leather doctor’s bag like an old church lady holding a purse.
"They're waiting for the confirmation call," Maxwell said, his voice flat and low through the truck cab. "The hitters were supposed to call Donald from the house at eleven-forty-five to confirm the fire was lit."
Martha checked the dashboard clock. It was eleven-fifty-two.
"What do we do?" she asked, her hands tight on the steering wheel.
"We don't negotiate," Maxwell said. He racked the slide of the Remington. The metallic *clack-clack* was the most final sound Martha had ever heard. "Drive straight through the wooden barricade at Gate 3. Stop twenty feet from the Town Cars. Leave the high beams on."
"Maxwell—"
"They think I'm dead, Martha. Or they think I'm strapped into a chair drooling on my slippers while the house burns. Let them see what their money bought."
Martha took a deep breath. She reached down, pulled the heavy cast-iron gear lever into first, and dropped the clutch.
The five-ton truck surged forward.
The rear tires broke traction on the wet salt-slicked asphalt for a fraction of a second before the dual wheels bit into the gravel. The truck slammed through the splintered spruce two-by-fours of Gate 3 with a shower of painted wood chips and leaped into the open yard under the halogens.
Brakes squealed as she threw the truck into a skid, bringing the heavy steel front bumper to a halt exactly twenty feet from the nose of Vance’s Lincoln.
The four high-beam halogen headlights blazed directly into the faces of the men by the container.
"What the hell is this?" Moretti’s voice barked over the wind. Men in leather jackets reached beneath their coats, their silhouettes sharp against the blinding white light of the truck’s lamps.
The driver’s side door opened. Martha stepped down onto the wet asphalt, her heart hammering against her ribs, her face pale under the sleet.
Vance shielded his eyes with his clipboard, squinting through the glare.
"Kovak?" Vance’s voice was incredulous, climbing an octave. "What the hell are you doing with Maxwell’s truck? Where are the boys from Benefit Street?"
"They had car trouble," Martha said, her voice carrying over the diesel rattle.
"You stupid bitch," Vance snarled, stepping forward, his hand sliding toward the interior of his cashmere coat. "You stole a truck from my yard? Frank, put a hole in her and let’s get this container locked—"
The passenger door of the flatbed swung open.
The yard went utterly, dreadfully silent.
A heavy work boot—an iron-toed Red Wing logger boot, laced tight to the calf—hit the running board.
Then it stepped down onto the asphalt.
The rubber sole crunched into the salt and frozen gravel with the unmistakable, solid weight of a two-hundred-pound man putting his mass through his own skeleton.
Maxwell Rourke stepped out of the high beams.
He was limping. His gait was stiff, mechanical, the movement of a man whose nerves were still screaming with raw, unfiltered static, but he was not leaning on the truck. He was not using a cane.
He stood six feet two inches tall in the salt wind, the Remington resting easily in the crook of his right elbow, his dark hair plastered against his forehead by the sleet.
Dr. Albright dropped his leather bag. It hit the slush with a wet, hollow slap.
"Max?" Vance whispered. His face didn't just lose color; it collapsed into a mask of pure, unadulterated horror. He took two steps backward, his knees knocking against the bumper of his own Lincoln. "Max... that’s... you're..."
"Jonathan," Maxwell said, his voice rolling through the shipping terminal like distant thunder. He didn't even look at Vance; his gray eyes were locked on the old physician. "You told me the Zurich peptide would take two years to show results. You told me the spinal cord was dead."
Albright began to shake. "Maxwell... listen to me... Donald said it was the only way... he said Moretti was going to wipe out the whole family if we didn't—"
"Shut up, Jonathan," Moretti barked, his own face dark with fury as he realized the magnitude of the trap they had walked into. Moretti reached for the .38 in his sheepskin jacket.
Maxwell didn't raise the shotgun to his shoulder.
He fired from the hip.
The blast of double-ought buckshot caught Moretti’s Lincoln dead in the radiator grille, blowing the chrome into a thousand jagged shrapnel fragments and venting a geyser of white steam into the freezing air.
Moretti froze, his hand half-out of his coat, his eyes locked on the smoking twelve-gauge barrel.
"The next one goes through your windshield, Frank," Maxwell said, stepping forward. His left leg dragged slightly, but every step was deliberate, heavy, the march of a sovereign reclaiming his territory from the jackals. "Take your three scows, take your Boston scum, and get off my pier before I decide to see if you float better than your uncle did."
Moretti looked at Maxwell. He looked at the shotgun. He looked at the dark shadows of twenty union longshoremen who had suddenly emerged from the doors of Warehouse 7, carrying iron hooks and cargo bars—men who had answered the emergency radio call Martha had broadcast from the truck’s marine band ten minutes earlier.
Moretti spat into the slush, turned on his heel, and climbed into the rear seat of his second car. "Drive," he growled.
May you like
Within thirty seconds, the two Boston cars had reversed out of the yard, their tires throwing rooster tails of gray slush, leaving Donald Vance and Dr. Albright standing alone in the glare of the truck’s lights.
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