Earthbound : A gripping crime thriller full of twists and supernatural suspense by Fynn Perry (popular romance novels TXT) 📗

for him, so he made his way to the secret war room and passed straight through the mirrored door. He took a moment to look at the map on the ‘crazy wall’ again and particularly at the locations of the fulfillment center in New Jersey, the hospital in Manhattan, the storage facility in Brooklyn, and the two nightclubs in Manhattan. Two out of his five businesses hit and now on the NYPD’s radar, John thought.

He crashed on the couch in the living room and fell into a light doze. A few hours later he heard Lazlo return and noted, from a clock on the wall, that it was 2:00 a.m. John followed him up the stairs, waited for Lazlo to get into bed, and then lay down on a nearby antique chaise lounge from which he could keep an eye on the detective.

Lazlo’s mobile phone started to ring just two and half hours later at 4:30 a.m. Despite his lack of sleep, Lazlo moved toward his ringing phone with remarkable agility. “Talk to me,” he said in a dry voice.

John moved closer to listen to the caller.

“The raid was at four-thirty this morning. We made thirty arrests; all seem to be Mexican nationals, but with no passports or other ID, we can’t be sure. We searched all the houses. They came up clean except for some weed and several rifles, which were handed over straightaway.”

John quickly realized that the caller was not talking about a raid on the fulfillment center but the workers’ village. Genius! thought John. Under the current administration, nobody would question a random raid on a housing settlement of illegal immigrants by the ICE. The Newstone police force obviously hadn’t been given a heads up. Perhaps the ICE knew not to trust them.

El Gordito had just lost an enormous part of his workforce for the most critical and fundamental part of his operation: the manufacture and packing of the drugs into legitimate goods. Without the production line in particular, there was a significant risk of orders not being satisfied, and his clients would not be forgiving. He would start to make mistakes. Maybe Lazlo had a workable plan after all.

Guilt suddenly soured his enthusiasm as he realized that this minor victory had major consequences for the workers. Their conditions may have been degrading, but now their only livelihoods had been taken away from them and their families.

For a moment, he wondered if the observers of The Game would find his guilt entertaining.

As soon as Lazlo sat down to the breakfast he had prepared, another incoming call flashed up. John recognized the voice as belonging to Mathers from NYC Health.

“El Gordito’s lawyer is, of course, disputing the closure, and the hearing with the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings has been moved forward to Monday.” Mathers continued. “I’m getting heat on this from above, and the message is that the clubs need to be re-opened Monday.”

“Fuck!” Lazlo shouted and after thanking Mathers for the information, ended the call. He pondered the problem for a moment and then called the one officer in the force who was willing, as a favor, to bend the rules for him, in return for Lazlo giving him interesting work above his grade.

“Cousins?”

“Yes,” came the reply.

Lazlo expressed his gratitude again for the heads up on the floater in the Hudson before asking him for another favor. “DNA and Mayhem got raided for food violations yesterday. I want you to check the whereabouts of the head chefs. If I know El Gordito, they’re going to be made to pay for this.”

An hour and a half later, Cousins called back with the addresses of both El Gordito’s chefs.

Lazlo listened and replied. “Force the door if you have to, but get inside those apartments and call me back when you’re inside.”

Twenty minutes passed before Cousins was on the line again. He was breathing fast. “This one’s dead, detective. I found him lying on the floor in his vomit. Looks like poisoning. The meal is still here on the table…” There was a brief pause with the sound of suppressed gagging before he continued. “It’s got roaches and other bugs in it. I’m sending photos to your phone.”

“Stay on the line, Cousins,” ordered Lazlo as his phone chirped and he opened up the files he’d just been sent.

John moved in to take a closer look. The first photo showed a male body lying on a tiled floor in a near fetal position. The victim’s eyes and mouth were wide open as a result of massive strain from what looked like heavy retching. Vomit had pooled by his open mouth and a close-up shot showed the presence of cockroaches and flies in it. Next was a photo of a plate of linguine with the same insects mixed into it.

“This is excessive punishment, even by El Gordito’s standards,” Lazlo commented as he looked at the final two photos that showed ligature marks around the wrists and ankles. “He’s gone out of his way to show his anger by staging the murder scene––the chef apparently poisoned by his meal––the bugs being added to make a point about the health department finding insects in his kitchen. They didn’t kill him, so I’m guessing we’ll find something like strychnine in his system. Call it in and go to the Mayhem chef’s apartment. It’s bound to be the same story there.”

Lazlo hung up and went through the contact list on his phone. He would need another favor from his forensic pathologist friend, Tom Stevens.

“Don’t hang up, Tom!” Lazlo said as soon as he heard an angry yell at the other end of the line.

John then heard shouting through the phone. Whoever ‘Tom’ was, he was upset and saying he had been put through a load of crap because of a complaint of trespassing against him after he and Lazlo had inspected Kendrick’s body without a warrant at a crematorium owned by El Gordito. John recalled Lazlo’s description of the double set of stitches