08/05/2019
An excerpt of Steve Cavanaugh's THIRTEEN is now live on Flatiron Books' page! Read it here:
https://www.facebook.com/flatironbooks/photos/a.570726973044880/2373458822771677/?type=3&theater
Read an excerpt of Thirteen by Steve Cavanagh Books! This thriller goes on sale August 13. #Thirteen
Prologue
At ten after five on a raw December afternoon, Joshua Kane lay on a cardboard bed outside the Criminal Courts Building in Manhattan and thought about killing a man. Not just any man. He was thinking about someone in particular.
It was true that Kane had, at times, while on the subway or watching passersby, occasionally thought about killing a nameless, random New Yorker who happened to fall into his line of vision. It could be the blond secretary reading a romance novel on the train, a Wall Street banker swinging an umbrella as he ignored Kane’s pleas for change or even a child holding its mother’s hand on a crosswalk.
How would it feel to kill them? What would they say with their final breaths?
Would their eyes change in that moment of passing from this world? Kane felt a ripple of pleasure feed heat into his body as he explored those thoughts.
He checked his watch.
Eleven after five.
The sharp, towering shadows flooded the street as the day melted into twilight. He looked at the sky and welcomed that dimming of the light, as though someone had placed a veil over a lamp. The half light suited his purpose. The darkening sky returned his thoughts to the kill.
While he’d lain in the street, for the past six weeks, he’d thought of little else. For hours on end he silently debated whether this man should die. Apart from this man’s life or death, everything else had been carefully planned.
Kane took little risk. That was the smart way. If you are to remain undetected, you must be cautious. He had learned this long ago. To leave the man alive carried risks. What if their paths crossed sometime in the future? Would he recognize Kane? Would he be able to put it all together?
And what if Kane killed him? There are always a multitude of risks in such a task.
But these were risks that Kane knew, risks that he had successfully avoided many times before.
A mail van pulled up at the curb and parked opposite Kane. The driver, a heavyset man in his late forties wearing a postal uniform, got out of it. Regular as clockwork. As the mailman walked past him and went inside the service entrance to the court building, he ignored Kane lying on the street. No loose change for the homeless. Not today. Not for the past six weeks either. Not ever. And, regular as clockwork, as the mailman walked past him, Kane wondered if he should kill him.
He had twelve minutes to decide.
The mailman’s name was Elton. He was married with two teenage kids. Elton ate from an overpriced artisan deli once a week when his wife thought he was out running, he read paperback novels that he picked up for a buck apiece from a little store in Tribeca, and wore furry slippers when he took out the trash on Thursdays. What would it feel like to watch him die?
Joshua Kane enjoyed watching other people go through different emotions. To him, sensations of loss, grief, and fear were as intoxicating and as joyous as the best drugs on the planet.
Joshua Kane was not like other people. There was no one like him.
He checked his watch. Five twenty.
Time to move.
He scratched at his beard, which was almost full now. Wondering if the dirt and sweat added to its coloring, he slowly got up from the cardboard and stretched his back. Moving brought his own scent to his nose. No change of pants or socks for six weeks, no shower either. The odor made him gag.
Something to take his mind from his own filth was required. At his feet, a moldy upturned ball cap held a couple of bucks in change.
There was satisfaction in seeing a mission through to its conclusion. To see your vision fulfilled exactly as you’d imagined it. And yet Kane thought it would be exciting to introduce the element of chance. Elton would never know that his fate would be decided in that moment, not by Kane, but by the toss of a coin. Selecting a quarter, Kane flipped the coin, called it in the air, caught it, and laid it flat on the back of his hand. While the coin had spun in the cold mist of his breath, he’d decided that heads meant Elton would die.
He looked at the quarter, shiny and new against the dirt ingrained on his skin, and smiled. Ten feet from the parked mail van sat a hot dog stand. The vendor served a tall man with no coat. Probably just got out on bail and was celebrating with some real food. The vendor took the man’s two dollars and pointed him toward the sign on the bottom of the stand. Beside the pictures of grilled kielbasa sausage was an ad for an attorney and a phone number below it.
HAVE YOU BEEN ARRESTED? CHARGED WITH A CRIME?
CALL EDDIE FLYNN.
The tall man bit into his dog, nodded, and walked away just as Elton came out of the court building hauling three sacks of mail in gray burlap bags. Three bags. That confirmed it.
Today was the day.
Normally, Elton emerged with two bags or even a single bag of mail. But every six weeks Elton came out with three bags. That extra mailbag was what Kane had been waiting for. Elton unlocked the rear panel doors on the mail van and tossed the first bag into the back. Kane approached slowly, his right hand outstretched. The second bag followed the first into the van.
As Elton took hold of the third bag, Kane rushed toward him.
“Hey buddy, you got some spare change?”
“No,” said Elton, and hurled the last bag into the van. He closed the right side of the van doors, then took hold of the left-hand door and slammed it shut like a man who didn’t own it. Timing was key. Kane stretched out his hand, fast, begging for a few dollars to be placed into his palm. The path of the van door
took Kane’s hand and the momentum slammed the door shut on Kane’s arm. Kane had timed it well. He listened to the sound of metal hinges as they scissored against flesh, crushing the limb. Grabbing that arm, Kane let out a cry and fell to his knees, watching Elton put both hands on top of his head, his eyes large and mouth distended in shock. Given the speed at which Elton slammed the door, and the sheer weight of the thing, there was little doubt that Kane’s arm should’ve been broken. And a messy break at that. Multiple fractures. Massive trauma.
But Kane was special. That’s what his momma always told him. He cried out again. Kane felt it was important to put on a good show: the least he could do was pretend to be hurt. “Jesus, watch your hands. I didn’t know your arm was there . . . You . . . I’m sorry,” said Elton, spluttering.
He knelt beside Kane, and apologized again.
“I think it’s broken,” said Kane, knowing that it wasn’t.
Ten years ago, most of the bone had been replaced with steel plates, bars, and screws. What little bone that remained was now heavily reinforced.
“Sh*t, sh*t, sh*t . . .” said Elton, looking around the street, not knowing exactly
what to do. “It wasn’t my fault,” said Elton, “but I can call a paramedic.”
“No. They won’t treat me. They’ll take me to the ER and I’ll be left on a gurney all night then sent away. I don’t have insurance. There’s a med center. Ten blocks away at most. They treat homeless. Take me there,” said Kane.
“I can’t take you,” said Elton.
“What?” said Kane.
“I’m not allowed to take passengers in the van. If somebody sees you up front I could lose my job.”
Kane breathed a sigh of relief at Elton’s efforts to stick to the Postal Service rules. He had counted on it.
“Put me in the back. That way no one can see me,” said Kane.
Elton stared at the rear of the van, and the open side door.
“I don’t know . . .”
“I’m not going to steal nothin’, I can’t move my arm, for crying out loud,” said Kane, and followed it with a moan as he nursed his arm.
After a moment’s hesitation, Elton said, “Okay. But don’t go near the mail sacks. Deal?”
“Deal,” said Kane.
He groaned as Elton lifted him off the street, and cried out when he thought Elton’s hands got too close to his injured arm, but a short while later, Kane sat on the steel floor in the rear of the mail van and made all the right noises to accompany the rocking of the suspension as the van drove east. The rear of the van was separate from the cab, so Elton couldn’t see him, and probably couldn’t hear him, but Kane figured he may as well make the noise just in case. The only light came from a two-by-two bubbled glass hatch in the roof.
They had barely cleared the vicinity of the courthouse when Kane produced a box cutter from his coat and cut the ties at the top of the three mailbags from the courthouse.
First bag was a bust. Regular envelopes. Second bag too.
The third bag was the charm.
The envelopes in this bag were different, and identical. Each envelope bore a printed red band on the bottom with white lettering that read open this correspondence now. Important court summons inside.
Kane didn’t open any of these. Instead, he spread each envelope out on the floor. As he did so, he filtered out those addressed to women, and placed them back inside the bag. Half a minute later he had sixty, maybe seventy envelopes spread out in front of him. He took pictures of five envelopes at a time, using a digital camera that he then tucked back into his clothing. He could blow up the images later to focus on the names and addresses written on each one.
His task complete, Kane returned all the letters to the bag, and retied them all with fresh ziplock tags that he’d brought with him. The tags weren’t that hard to come by, and they were the same brand used by the court office and the post office.
With time to spare, Kane spread his legs out on the floor and looked at the photos of the envelopes on his camera screen. Somewhere in there he would find the perfect person. He knew it. He could feel it. The excitement sent his heart fluttering. It was like an electric current that rose from his feet and plowed straight through his chest.
After the constant stop-and-start of Manhattan traffic, it took Kane a few moments to realize the van had in fact parked. He put the camera away. The rear doors opened. Kane clutched the arm with the fake injury. Elton leaned into the van, offering a hand. Cradling one arm, Kane reached out with the other hand, grabbed Elton’s outstretched arm. Kane got up. It would be so easy, so quick. All he needed to do was plant his feet and pull. Just a little more pressure and the guard would be hauled into the van. The box cutter could go through the back of Elton’s neck in one smooth motion, and then follow the jawline to the carotid artery.
Elton helped Kane out of the van as if he was made out of glass and walked him into the med center.
The coin had come up tails: Elton wouldn’t be touched.
Kane thanked his savior and watched him leave. After a few minutes, Kane left the center and walked out into the street to check the van hadn’t doubled back to make sure he was okay.
It was nowhere to be seen.
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