Read Online The Furies by Mark Alpert - Free Book Online

any ideas about where to go?”
    He didn’t expect an answer but Ariel nodded. “Go west, young man,” she said. “Take the Roosevelt Expressway to I-76.”
    â€œYou have a destination in mind?”
    â€œI do. But I have to warn you. It’s a long drive.”

FOUR
    Agent Larson heard the motorcycle coming long before he saw it. The noise of its engine echoed against the concrete pillars that supported the New Jersey Turnpike above the Meadowlands. Although hundreds of cars and trucks sped along the turnpike every minute, the parking lots and rail yards below the causeway were almost always deserted. Larson had been standing beside his SUV for half an hour before he heard the rumble of the Harley-Davidson. A minute later Van came in sight, slaloming his bike between the pillars.
    Larson hated this part of his job. Six years ago he’d transferred to the FBI’s field office in New York, where he’d hoped to rise through the ranks of the counterterrorism division. Instead, he got assigned to the Violent Gangs Task Force, specifically the squad that monitored motorcycle gangs in New York and New Jersey. Although the biker gangs were involved in drug dealing and gun trafficking, the assignment was a lot less prestigious than tracking down terrorists. Larson spent most of his time looking for informants who were willing to rat out their friends. He couldn’t stand dealing with the scumbags. They were, for the most part, outrageous bullshit artists.
    Van, though, was an exception to the rule. A few weeks ago he told Larson about an upcoming heroin shipment, and that tip resulted in one of the biggest drug busts of the year. So when Van called the field office this morning, saying he had information about the shootings in Brooklyn last night, Larson was willing to listen. He agreed to meet the biker in the Meadowlands.
    Van coasted to a stop but stayed on his Harley. He was tall and solid, in his late forties or early fifties but still in good shape. He had a face like a drill sergeant’s, hard and lined and angular, but it was topped with long, messy hair that had turned dirty gray. His clothes were a mess too: ripped jeans, scuffed boots, and a grease-stained bomber jacket. All in all, he looked like an aging veteran who’d decided to spend his retirement on a long, debauched joyride. And for all Larson knew, that’s exactly who Van was. The biker had refused to reveal his last name or any other particulars. He belonged to a gang called the Riflemen, which was a new club, much smaller than the established ones—the Hell’s Angels, the Pagans, the Outlaws, and so on. Still, he had a lot of connections in the other gangs and seemed to know everything that was going on.
    Larson stepped away from his SUV and cautiously approached the motorcycle. He’d met Van in person before and knew that he carried an old pistol in a shoulder holster. To defuse the tension, Larson grinned and put a jaunty tone in his voice.
    â€œYou’re late,” he said. “You get stuck in traffic?”
    Van didn’t smile back at him. “What are the cops saying about Bushwick?”
    He was all business today. And that was all right with Larson. No sense in dragging it out. “They found six dead at the scene. One was the night clerk at the hotel, the other five are John Does. But there’s evidence of more casualties. It looks like whoever attacked the place pulled out their wounded.” For a moment he pictured the scene on Evergreen Avenue, which he’d visited earlier that morning at the request of the New York police, who’d discovered motorcycle tracks on the streets near the hotel. Blood and gore were spattered all over the hotel’s roof and in the alley below. “The crime-scene techs collected a shitload of shells. There was a hell of a lot of shooting, that’s all they know for sure.”
    â€œThat’s because it’s a war. This was