Day 69 - Darwin's Game - Chapter 18 (2111 words)

©Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

DARWIN'S GAME

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 18

The van smelled of day old sweat and Chinese food as Agent Levy took a seat near the monitoring equipment. He had flown out to New York to follow up on a lead around the now deceased Evan Jacobsen, formerly one Tony Vittorio of Gambini syndicate, most of who's leaders were now incarcerated thanks to his testimony. A wire tap on some of the Gambini lieutenants had thrown up a large amount of chatter about the Darwin situation and with the recent security breach of the team in San Francisco, it was decided to get Levy out of the city for a few days and put some fresh faces, some unseen and imported faces into the team.

A few weeks ago when this had all started there was a lot of noise about the re-appearance of Tony the Snake, but it had been cautious and reserved, they were as surprised to see him as the Bureau had been to see him on the list. WitSec had officially lost track of him and the Marshall Service was hunting him as a top priority. He had vanished without a trace, the trail went completely cold and there were no sightings, no paper trail and no activation of any of his former life contacts.

There was also zero reaction from the Federal wire-tapping programme, if there was anyone in the Mob who were aware of the fact that he was missing, let alone knew where he was it was not forthcoming on any surveillance they were getting. A leak in the department eventually got through his former associates and then interest was piquing, which put the investigators in mind of their lack of involvement in his disappearance.

The last theory, and the one that stood is that Vittorio, now Jacobsen, was responsible for his own escape and whereabouts. He had resources that they knew about, but he also had other money they could not account for and assets he never gave up as part of his deal. They were patiently waiting, monitoring his moves and his activity to see if he came back to find any of it while on the programme. He never made a single step out of place until one day he went into his office, in a alarm company where he was a service technician, he had training and a knack for it, and then he was gone by lunch time, no one had seen him since.

His cover had been well and truly blown long before the Darwin s Game first episode came to light, the constant presence of FBI, Marshals and other police highlighted that the quiet yet forceful Evan Jacobsen was much more than met the eye. When the Game came to air and the blanks were filled in by the media coverage, those former employees suddenly found their perspectives on the former Mob Hit-man a precious, valuable commodity. The house he lived in was sifted through, his phone was found on his desk, leaving no clues and no call history of any relevance and no movement on his current cash-flow accounts.

He disappeared without a trace, at first they thought he had 'been' disappeared, then they assumed he was behind it himself, but no one would have, even could have predicted what had really happened. The new theory was that Darwin himself, if he was an individual or group had been directly behind the kidnapping from Witness Protection. The surveillance teams on the Gambinis was stepped up a notch as the revelation of his participant status in the Game was made public, and they listened for weeks as the various theories and suggestions on how he would be dying were tossed around bars and offices with reckless abandon. Usually more circumspect in their language in any room, you never know who is listening after all, the gangsters were speculating freely on what they wanted to happen to the associate turned traitor to the syndicate.

Levy moved a food container off the panel in front of the chair and gingerly closed the lid, shutting off the stench of noodles and mushrooms emanating from the contents that had been sweltering in the back of the van for well over 16 hours from the previous night.

“Jesus boys, don't you ever clean up?” Levy was wrinkling his face in disgust.

“Hey?!? I don't come to your house and insult you there do I?” the unshaven and just as ripe agent Brown was well overdue a replacement shift. He was bleary eyed and only a little offended really. It was not his fault that the place was a mess and that it smelled so bad. His partner had a dose of food poisoning and had left early that morning, contributing his own foul smells to the confined space before leaving. The second shift had been way laid by an emergency call-out across Manhattan and so he pulled into the double shift on his own, barely getting a chance for a toilet break let alone time to freshen up himself or the van.

“I've read the transcripts of what we have so far, plenty of support for this whole exercise, but anything we can move on? Any leads or unquantified data we can explore? Anything?”

“Not much, they have been working a lot of angles in the city, trying to pinpoint exactly who this Darwin is.”

Agent Levy was perplexed. “Why? Their guy is dead, isn't that the end of it for them? What's their continued interest in the Darwin connection?”

Brown shook his head “Don't know exactly, they waver pretty much from wanting to shake the guys hand to teach him a lesson for taking their revenge away from them. Depends on the day and who's trying to impress or scare who inside there.”

“Have they found anything at all?”

“Nada. Well apart from the detail we got on your leak back in the Bureau office in Arizona.”

There had been an embarrassing trail of communications back to a field office in Arizona where Jacobsen was living, leaving the Vittorio persona behind and fully taking on the new shadowy world of being a totally different person with little depth to themselves. His location and circumstances were not known in the offices until after his outing on the Game, but once the press had started bringing out stories about the players, there were a couple of ill-advised opportunities being taken to sell details, not ones that were of any risk, but ones that the media were willing to pay for.

The bosses were not as gentle with their follow up questions to the people around the Jacobsen identity and they had muscled their way in quietly but with a brutal efficiency to the reporters with the background on Jacobsen and who he was and what he had done. They went to work as surreptitiously as possible with the people who Jacobsen had been working with, trying to find their own leads and clues as to the location and the current status of the 'Snake'. They had hit a big and hard a brick wall as the government investigators had.

Levy did not like New York, it was cramped and small and just didn't have the same feeling that he got from the Bay City, he was always tense whenever he came here. Yet here he was wasting time and checking on things he could have easily done remotely, listening to live feeds while reading and reviewing transcripts back in his home office. They had wanted him out for a few days, let the dust settle around the Facts Alone partners, they had refused police protection and had hired security firms, military contractors for hire as bodyguards and taken refuge in an undisclosed location, they were being very cautious now and were no longer cooperating. As Jacob had put it, how can the authorities protect them when they could not even protect themselves against the same threat.

Darwin had cheated prisons, exiles, witness protection and apparently even death to get his men. Blake and Jacob put no faith whatsoever in the FBI or any other agency's ability to shield them from this person or group. Here they were four weeks later and none the wiser to the man's identity or intention, with the exception of the obvious one to let the game play out, let the 'fittest' survive.

“Look if you have to be here, and I know you do, can you spot me a couple of hours man? I could use a shower and I am dying to take a dump. You have NO IDEA.” Brown was saying this in a playful tone, but underneath it was a serious pleading that was no joke.

“Go, I got this. Get me some of that New York's finest slice when you come back, take your time.” Levy sat down and put on the headphones, then took them off again looking suspiciously at the band and wiped with a nearby tissue. “And some purelle, yeah that would be helpful thanks.”

Brown nodded and slammed down his hand on Levy's shoulder as he checked the monitors for activity outside the Van. It was dead in the alley outside as expected, they did not have to be parked right outside the street, but they had plenty of cameras of their own installed locally as well as live feeds from city cameras that had been there all along. They were close, but not in line of sight in a side alley across the block.

Levy settled in and reviewed the logs, things he had read and scanned through prior to his arrival at Kennedy airport that afternoon. There had been a few extra conversations that day but nothing about Darwin or about Vittorio/Jacobsen.

He heard the phone line click in and saw the warning light on the tap engage as he listened intently to a heavily Italian voice ordering Italian food from another heavily Italian voice. He shook his head at the accents, wondering how much of it was put on to sound that way, how much of it was natural. The conversation ended and the phone went silent.

“Hey, put that thing on again. I wanna see that bastard go limp, it makes my day. You know what? Get me that Darwin Mook on the line.”

Did he just hear that? Levy sat up and pulled his cell out of his pocket, ready to call in the rest of the team, set up and and trace back from this back end, low-level mob underling to Darwin himself. Was it really the Mob all along? Was this whole thing a set up to get to Jacobsen? Was it a trial run for a bigger job? What was going on here? He was on edge, tight as a drum and hanging in the quiet as nothing is said for a few moments.

“Frankie you fuckin' idiot, don;t just stand there looking as stupid as you are. I know you don;t know who he is, when I say “get me Darwin on the phone” you say “What for Russo?” Think of it like a knock knock joke, ok?”

“Russo?”

“Oh for Fucks Sake Frankie!”

“Right” The voice changes to an overacted tone “What for Russo?”

“Jesus.” Russo is obviously not happy with the straight man routine of his man Frankie. “Because as good as he is with killing this fucking scum-bag, low-life, piece-of-shit, snake in the fuckin' grass, I just wish he could have killed him more... I don't know, violently. Bloodily. Less drown-y, more dismemberment-y.”

“Is that even a word?”

“No, no it fuckin is not. You know I wish I knew who this Darwin guy was, if I did? I swear to God almighty I would have fuckin' paid him to take you along with the other colossal pain in our collective asses.”

Levy let go the tense breath he had been holding, he could see that there was nothing here, he knew it before he had gotten on the plane. Just as well he had brought a good book to read, he pulled it out of his jacket pocket and opened it to the bookmark and continued on with his research.

The title of the book was “The Origin of Species – Charles Darwin”. Levy settled back, one ear tracking the audio feed and the rest of his attention on his background reading. It was going to be a long few days before he could head back, after the next episode had been 'delivered' with him out of the city.