The Murdered World 4 (Patreon)

‘Cockroach’ Flynn McAvoy was no one’s idea of a dashing cat burglar, but at five foot six, he didn’t need to be. There was nowhere he couldn’t climb, wiggle, slip, or crawl. And in his own way, he was as careful and as calculating as Frank Castle. Long before he picked one lock, he knew everything there was to know about his target’s security system, layout, and exactly what loot he intended to acquire.

McAvoy was returning from one of those preliminary excursions now, jubilant. Not just because his surveillance promised a good haul, but because in photographing the penthouse he planned to burgle, he’d gotten several good shots of the lady of the house with a young maid. And what that girl was cleaning was damn sure spic and span by the time she was done.

McAvoy didn’t go for blackmail, but this was the kind of treasure it was damn nice to have around, for use in one way or another.

His phone rang. He picked it up so jubilantly, it could've been one of the girls in his photographs calling.

“Yello?”

“McAvoy.” Castle's voice, cold and crisp, razored across the phone lines.

Panic seized him instantly. “What the hell, Castle? What the hell are you doing calling me? We're good, remember? We're square. That old guy, I didn't mean to startle him. He wasn't supposed to be there. And I got him help, didn't I? He's still alive. You can't kill me when I ain't killed anyone.”

“When someone's in my sights, I don't give them a courtesy call.” Castle sounded like he would be amused, if anything ever amused him.

“What do you want then, Castle? You know if anybody knew I was talking to you, I'd be dead as that skull on your chest.”

Castle asked after four buildings in cities McAvoy had previously done the rounds in. McAvoy told him everything he knew about the security systems, guards, loot, whatever Castle wanted to know.

Knowing most if not all of Frank's questions were total bullshit. He might never set foot in Chicago or Seattle or Houston. But if the mob started asking for him in those cities, he'd know McAvoy had sold him out. Hell, he might not be planning to hit any of the targets. Just wanted McAvoy full of misinformation.

“One last thing,” Castle said, after spending forty-five minutes grilling McAvoy and ruining his evening totally. “What can you tell me about Angel Mercader’s mansion?”

“Angel Mercader?” McAvoy gasped. “Jesus Christ, you gotta be nuts. Now I know you're pulling my leg. Nobody goes against the Angel of Death, especially not in his own house. That place is a fortress.”

“Do you know the way in or not?”

“Shit, man, even if I knew I wouldn't tell you. You know what he'd do to me if he found out I told you anything about him? It'd be worth my life if I let slip he had dandruff.”

“What do you think I'll do to you if you stop being useful to me?”

“Fuck you, Castle. You're just one guy. Angel, he's an empire. I could leave town tonight and you'd never find me.”

“Then I'd better not let you out of my sight.”

Some intuition made McAvoy look down. He saw the red dot over his heart. He flinched and the dot followed him like it was sewn to his chest.

“Aw fuck, Castle, shit. That ain't right. You coulda faced me, man, like a man, and I would've given you respect. But you had to trick me, man, that's not fair. I thought I had some wiggle room.”

“You can wiggle all you want. Most people do while the life is draining out of their body.”

“Okay, look, man, take it easy. I'll tell ya. The mansion… aw shit, let me think!”

“Think all you want. This laser sight has a great battery.”

“Alright, okay, shit… yeah, Angel’s house, it's got this swimming pool that connects out to the ocean. there's a tunnel underground, underwater. And there's a gate that's supposed to lock out all the sharks and shit. It's supposed to be alarmed, but the saltwater fucked up all sorts of shit in there. The alarm kept going off for no reason. So they just shut it off. If you knock out that gate, ain't nobody going to notice.”

“Is that right?”

“But then you're in the middle of this fucking guy's compound, and he keeps an army around. Gets off on it, having a bunch of armed psychos ready to do whatever he wants. You're nuts to go anywhere near the guy.”

“Then I probably won't be bothering him. I'm not nuts, now am I?”

McAvoy gulped. “Yeah, Castle, yeah. You're probably just yanking my chain. I won't worry too much about it. We were talking, that's all. Just shooting the shit. Who remembers what they're talking about when they're just chatting?”

“We were talking about fishing, McAvoy. When you fish, you throw the little ones back. But if they get bigger, they should be careful not to get caught again.”

The phone went dead at the same time the laser dot disappeared.

In Miami, Frank shut his laptop, trusting the drone's automated programming to pilot it back to its rooftop power pad. The quadcopter had no weapons, only a laser pointer. But it was amazing what you could get with a phone call and a bit of red, instead of just a phone call.

***

Cell phone towers. Ugly pylons of garish gray metal and toothy flanged antennae at the top. The rich hated having them ruin their billion dollar views, but didn’t want to do without the wireless internet they provided. And so they insisted on the towers being disguised. In the case of Jupiter Island, it became an abnormally tall palm tree, all but indistinguishable from the real thing with its antennae concealed in a thick bursting of fronds.

There was a similar principle at work with Frank Castle’s garb. When he worked, he always wore black. The skull, the body armor, the trenchcoat, and boots. So that when a Mafioso saw a man in running shorts, tennis shoes, and a hooded sweatshirt, all they thought of was that he was another jogger.

They thought nothing of him stopping to lean against one tall palm tree and retie his shoe, then sit down against it for a moment to catch his breath and hydrate from a workout bottle. And Frank was careful to sit so that his body blocked the view from the house. They couldn’t see him pry open the access panel to the cell site, feel out the USB port, then draw his specially modified drive—smaller than a bottle cap—from inside his wristband and pop it into the port. A moment later, Frank’s phone shook. He ignored it; the USB drive would only have sent a signal if it worked. He closed the access panel back up, then lifted himself to his feet. He slotted the bottle back into his Nike belt and started jogging again. It had all taken less than a minute. If they had ever noticed him, the guards on Mercader’s property soon forgot.

They had no idea that Frank was now tapping every call they made outside of landlines. And who used those anymore?