Chapter 7 – Undercover, Part Three
Matt
Three days after his nighttime visit to Karen, Matt was walking back to his desk from the break room when he heard voices coming from inside Owlsley's office. He kept walking until he estimated he was out of "normal" hearing range. Then he stopped and bent down to tie his shoe.
"No," Owlsley was saying, "send them to the new location at 39th and 10th. It's only half full. We need more stock there."
"How many?" a second voice asked. Jimmy Callahan.
"Ten," a third voice replied. Someone Matt didn't know.
"Ages?" Callahan asked.
"Fourteen to eighteen," the third man replied. Matt felt sick to his stomach. He now knew what they were talking about: human trafficking, the worst kind.
"You sure they're arriving tonight?" Owlsley asked.
"I'm sure," the third man assured him, "they'll be there by one."
Matt had heard enough, and the conversation appeared to be at an end, anyway. A single set of footsteps emerged from Owlsley's office, walking away from him. With both shoes now securely tied, Matt stood up and made his way to his desk. What he had just heard sickened him, but it was also an opportunity. Vanessa would jump at the chance to disrupt this part of Owlsley's operation, which would get Jay off his back – for a while, anyway. Equally important to Matt, there was little risk Owlsley would suspect he was the source of Vanessa's information. So far, Owlsley hadn't brought him into the human trafficking part of his business, for which Matt was grateful. Now he had a second reason to be thankful.
He checked his watch: 4:30. He finished his work in progress and shut down his computer before leaving. If anyone questioned his early departure, he could always say he had business to handle in Hell's Kitchen. It was even true. It just wasn't the Owl's business. As soon as he was clear of the building and confident he wasn't being followed, he called Jay and left a message: "Meet me at my apartment in thirty minutes." A few minutes later, Jay replied with a text, which his phone read to him: "On my way."
When Matt arrived at Mike's apartment, Jay was waiting in the hall outside. Matt didn't waste any time. As soon as they entered and made their way to the living room, he said, "Owlsley's got an operation going down tonight that the boss is gonna want to take out."
"What is it?"
"Human trafficking – young girls."
Jay shook his head. "Ugh." There were few crimes that Vanessa considered out of bounds, but unlike her husband, she drew the line at crimes against children. All of her people knew that. She made sure of it. "When and where?" he asked.
"Tonight," Matt replied, then filled him in on the details.
When he finished, Jay didn't have any questions. He simply said, "Thanks, man," and left.
A little after midnight, Matt was crouching in the corner of a rooftop overlooking the intersection of West 39th Street and 10th Avenue. The sound of young girls' voices identified the building across the street as the location where Owlsley's people were holding their "stock." The thought made his skin crawl. The sound of several vehicles' engines, idling, several blocks away, told him Vanessa's people were there, waiting for the right time to move in. He was confident they would get the job done, but if they didn't, he would. Now he just had to wait.
He didn't have to wait long. It was a little before 12:30, he guessed, when a truck pulled into the alley next to the building across the street. Vanessa's people arrived within seconds. The alley exploded with gunfire, shouts, and screams, but the melee was over within a few minutes. Vanessa's people had come in force and quickly overpowered The Owl's crew. Sirens approached. Vanessa's people heard them and took off. The cops would finish the job for them. Matt stayed until he was sure the girls, both those in the truck and those in the building, were safe.
The next morning, The Owl was raging. Sitting at his desk, down the hall from the boss's corner office, Matt could hear him clearly.
"They were waiting for us?" Owlsley demanded.
"Yes." Jimmy Callahan's reply was almost too soft for Matt to hear.
"Who was the rat?"
"We don't know," Callahan admitted. He sounded unhappy. For good reason.
"Well, find out!" Owlsley bellowed.
"Everyone who knew about the operation is either dead or in jail," Callahan pointed out, "except you and me, of course."
"How many in jail?"
"Four."
"Bail them out," Owlsley ordered. "Then sweat them until they give up the rat."
"You got it, boss." Callahan's footsteps retreated into his own office.
It took a week of careful eavesdropping and discreet questions disguised as casual conversation, but Matt finally pieced together what happened to the four men who survived the attack. Apparently, they had enough time while they were in jail to get their stories straight. They agreed to finger Alex Petrov as the snitch. Petrov was conveniently deceased, having been killed by Vanessa's people in the attack and therefore unable to contradict them. Owlsley didn't believe them. He ordered Callahan to have them killed. Three of them ran after they made bail. The fourth didn't move fast enough and was killed.
Later that same day, Matt was in Hell's Kitchen, collecting cash from a mid-level drug distributor, the replacement for the man who'd been his second assignment. The distributor had set up shop on the third floor of a vacant tenement. When Matt reached the third-floor landing and opened the stairwell door, he heard voices. He held the door open a crack and paused to listen.
"I gotta get back to 50th Street," a man's voice was saying. Matt didn't recognize the voice.
"OK," the distributor said. "See you later."
"Yeah, see you later."
Footsteps approached. Matt closed the stairwell door silently, then darted up the steps and flattened himself against the wall of the fourth-floor landing, hoping the unknown man wouldn't look up. He wasn't sure he was out of the line of sight from below. The third-floor door opened and closed, and the footsteps descended. Matt waited ten minutes before descending to the first floor and leaving the building. He'd come back later. He had an idea what "50th Street" was and didn't want the distributor to suspect his conversation had been overheard. He found a nearby diner and drank coffee until he judged enough time had passed. Then he returned to the vacant building.
The distributor was still there, sitting in a folding chair behind a card table. He looked up when he saw Matt approaching. "Yo, Murphy," he said.
"Hey."
"I got the cash," he said, pulling a roll of bills out of his pocket and holding it out.
"It's all here?" Matt asked.
"Yeah, of course."
He was lying. "Let's be sure, shall we?" Matt said, reaching into his breast pocket and taking out his currency reader. He unrolled the bills and peeled off the one on top, then fed it into the device.
"One," the electronic voice announced. The distributor gulped.
Matt raised his eyebrows. "Seriously?"
"The small bills are on top," the distributor explained. Another lie.
"OK," Matt said, taking a bill from the bottom of the stack and feeding it into the reader.
"One."
"Nice try, asshole," Matt told the man, throwing the bills down on the table. "Now hand over the rest."
The distributor scrambled to his feet. "Going somewhere?" Matt asked.
"Uh, what . . . no," the man stammered.
Matt pushed him back into his chair, then pulled up another chair and took a seat next to him. "You need to think very carefully about what you do next," he said. "Do you know what happened to the last guy who tried to skim more than his percentage?"
"Uh, no."
"No one does. He disappeared. One day, he was just . . . gone. And the way he did it, it was a lot smarter than . . . this." Matt waved his hand toward the bills on the table.
The distributor stood up and swung wildly at Matt, who dodged the blow. OK, the time for conversation was over. He had had enough of this asshole and his bullshit. Before the man could get his hands up to defend himself, Matt landed a blow to his head that took him down to his knees. Two more punches, and the man lay on the floor, unconscious. Matt patted him down and found a second roll of bills. A quick check with the reader confirmed the bill on top was a hundred. He stuffed the roll of bills in his pocket, along with the bills on the table, and left. Owlsley would have to find a new man for the job – again. And Matt would have to find out what was going down on 50th Street.
His route to the downtown subway took him along the block where the new office of Nelson & Murdock was located. He walked past the brownstone, staying on the other side of the street. At the end of the block, he stopped. More than anything, he wanted to turn around and cross the street, walk up the steps to the office and abandon the operation, dump "Mike Murphy," just . . . walk away. He was sick of being "Mike Murphy," sick of the things he had to do to preserve his cover, sick of watching his back 24/7. Men had already died because of this mission of his. How many more would die before it was over? He frowned and set his jaw. Not yet. Not until Owlsley was gone. He had to finish what he'd started. Only then would Foggy and Karen be safe. He walked on. But he stopped two blocks later and bought a burner phone.
That night, Daredevil tracked down one of Owlsley's other distributors in an abandoned warehouse near the river. The man gasped and scrambled to his feet when he saw the vigilante.
"I'm just here to talk," Matt assured him, holding out his gloved hands, palms up. "Tell me about 50th Street."
"I don't know nothin'," the man protested.
"You're lying," Matt declared. "Try again."
"No, I swear, whatever's goin' on there, it's above my pay grade."
Still lying. "Wrong answer." Jesus, where did Owlsley find these bullshitters? Matt grabbed the man's right wrist and twisted, hard. "What're they doing at 50th Street?" he asked, in his lowest, most menacing voice.
"OK, OK, I'll tell you," the man panted. He took a deep breath. "It's where the shit goes when it gets to the city. They cut it and package it there."
"Where on 50th?"
"I don't know the number – " the man began.
"Where?" Matt twisted his wrist again.
"Ow!" The man took a gulp of air. "Between 9th and 10th, middle of the block."
"North or south side?"
"North."
"Floor?"
"The basement."
Satisfied the man had told him everything he knew, Matt released his wrist. "You should probably leave the city," he advised the distributor as he headed for the door.
When he was a couple of blocks away, Matt climbed a fire escape to the roof of a building. There he pulled out the burner phone he'd bought earlier that day and punched in Foggy's number.
"Hello?"
"Hey, Fog."
"Matt!"
"Yeah, it's me."
"Why're you calling? What's happening? Are you OK? Do you need help? What can I do?"
Matt interrupted his friend before he could ask any more questions. "Breathe, Foggy, breathe. I'm fine."
"OK," Foggy said doubtfully. "So why'd you call?
"Maybe I just wanted to hear the sound of your voice."
Silence. Then something that sounded like a sniff. Finally, Foggy said, "Damn it, Matt I hate this."
"I know."
"But it's going OK, the job, I mean?"
"Yeah, it is. It took a while, but I think I'm finally getting somewhere."
"And Owlsley doesn't suspect?"
"No, I don't think so. Not yet."
"'Yet'?" Foggy asked. Of course that's what he would pick up on. Damn.
"I'm probably gonna get burned, sooner or later," Matt said, as gently as he could. "It's only a matter of time."
"Please tell me you at least have a plan for when that happens," Foggy said. "Preferably one that doesn't involve you getting killed."
"I do," Matt assured him. That wasn't strictly true. When he was burned, he probably wouldn't see it coming. That made it a little difficult to have a plan. Foggy didn't need to know that, however.
"And you're being careful?"
"I am. Really."
Foggy snorted. "I wish I could believe that."
"You can. Honest."
"Karen didn't believe you, either," Foggy informed him.
"I know."
"Then you know we have plenty of reasons not to."
Matt sighed. "I promise to be careful. I'm even crossing my heart. That enough for you, buddy?"
Foggy didn't answer him directly. Instead, he asked, "How much longer?"
"As I told Karen, as long as it takes. I don't have the kind of access to do any serious damage, the kind that'll bring Owlsley down. He's smart – and cautious. It's gonna take time to gain his trust. I'm working on it, but I'm not there yet."
"I get it."
"How's Karen?" Matt asked.
"She's OK," Foggy replied. But then he said, "No, she isn't OK. She tried to hide it, but she was pretty upset after she saw you."
"Upset?" Matt asked, surprised. She didn't seem upset when he left. "Upset about what?"
"Oh, I don't know," Foggy told him, "maybe the fact that she thought she'd just seen you for the last time. Alive, that is."
Damn. Matt had no answer for that.
When Matt didn't say anything, Foggy continued, "So when you come back – if you come back – you two need to figure out what the hell you're doing."
"But Fog," Matt started to protest. There was nothing to figure out. He and Karen were friends, that was all.
Foggy interrupted him. "Yeah, right. Just talk to her, that's all I'm saying," he said firmly.
There didn't seem to be anything else to say. Or maybe there was too much. "I should be going," Matt said. "It's late, or early, or whatever."
"Yeah. You'll call again?"
"If I can."
"Make sure that you do."
"OK." On that note, Matt ended the call. He closed the burner phone and put it in his pocket, then climbed down from the roof. When he reached the alley behind the building, he took out the phone. He put it on the ground and smashed it with his boot. Then he picked up all the pieces he could find and discarded them in several random trash cans and dumpsters on the way back to Mike Murphy's apartment.