As they walked back through the darkened streets, Anthony casually passed out cigarettes to the four teenagers.
"Dion," Anthony said, striking a lighter. "Besides the Crips getting hammered last night, has anything else unusual been happening with the gangs in Queens?"
"Actually, yeah," Dion said without hesitation, leaning in to catch the flame. "Recently, guys from all the crews have been vanishing. More than a dozen from 24th Street alone are just... gone."
Lamar nodded, exhaling a thin stream of smoke. "18th Street, ABK, the Bloods, the Crips, even the Aryan Brotherhood. People are disappearing."
Anthony stopped walking.
He looked at the kids. "Could they have been picked up in a police sweep?"
Dion shook his head. "Every crew has cops on the payroll. We always get a heads-up before a raid. Nobody heard a thing."
"And it ain't just gangbangers," Dion added, his voice dropping. "It's office workers. It's the homeless. The police definitely ain't conducting secret sweeps to arrest guys sleeping in cardboard boxes."
Anthony reached for his phone, preparing to call Sergei to check if any Tarasov men had gone missing.
Before he could dial, twelve-year-old Kevin spoke up.
"Word on the street is the Tarasovs are the only ones not losing guys. That's why everybody thinks the Russians are behind it."
Anthony raised his eyebrows. "No shit?"
"Have any bodies turned up?" he asked.
"Never," Dion said. "Everybody's looking, but the guys who go missing just evaporate."
Anthony looked at John. "What's the play here? Why would he intentionally turn every street gang in the city against the Tarasovs?"
John frowned. "I don't understand the angle. But it puts the Tarasov syndicate in a very dangerous position."
Tyrone had been listening to the exchange with growing horror. He took a hesitant step back. "Are... are you guys the FBI?"
"Have you ever seen an FBI agent throw a liver hook like that?" Anthony laughed. "Alright, kids. We have to go. Remember to call me when you collect our money."
Anthony and John turned and walked away, their figures quickly swallowed by the shadows of the abandoned industrial blocks.
Dion watched them disappear. "Who the hell are they?"
Lamar shivered. He looked at Dion. "Dion... the thirty dollars... are you really going to try and collect it?"
Dion wiped the bloody blade of his hunting dagger against a brick wall. "Anthony told the old man he wanted his money back. So we're gonna get him his money back."
The four boys, leaning on each other for support, limped off into the night to lick their wounds.
Anthony and John emerged onto a relatively quiet, illuminated avenue.
"Why the sudden interest in a bunch of street kids?" John asked.
He genuinely couldn't understand why Anthony had gone out of his way to protect them, let alone set up a burner contact.
"Don't you think they remind you a little bit of you and Marcus?" Anthony asked, watching the neon signs flicker against the wet pavement.
John didn't answer.
He had noticed it too. The four boys shared a deep, unbreakable bond. Faced with absolute slaughter, not a single one of them had run. The twelve-year-old had shown a feral courage that most adult assassins lacked.
"Besides," Anthony continued, "we just learned a critical piece of intelligence from them. Sometimes, the stray cats hear the mice better than the lions do."
"You want to plant your flag in Queens," John deduced. "You're going to use those kids as proxies to take over."
"Not plant a flag. Control the board," Anthony corrected, his eyes dark. "The traditional gangs are erratic. Unreliable. Rather than let those animals run wild, it's better to install a desperate, loyal faction and keep the territory strictly under my thumb."
John took a drag of his cigarette. "It's true. At least those kids don't have complicated political ambitions yet."
"So you start with Queens?"
"It depends on whether the Bloods decide to see reason," Anthony flicked his ash. "But yes. Brooklyn and Queens first."
"Do you think Winston knows anything about these disappearances?" John asked suddenly.
Anthony shook his head. "If Gramont is involved, Winston wouldn't tell us."
"Fair point," John agreed. "Even if Winston secretly supports us, he can't openly violate High Table neutrality without a rock-solid justification."
Anthony lit another cigarette.
"The disappearances Dion mentioned," Anthony said, exhaling a plume of blue smoke. "They aren't a coincidence."
John's gaze drifted over a homeless man shivering in a doorway.
"The tactic is highly effective at isolating the Tarasovs," John said. "But it doesn't fit Gramont's psychological profile."
Anthony stopped walking. He frowned.
John was right. Gramont was an arrogant, theatrical aristocrat. Secretly kidnapping homeless people and low-level street thugs was entirely beneath his sense of elegance.
But if the disappearances were a deliberate frame-job against the Tarasovs, who else in New York had the resources to pull it off?
With Preston and Bertrand Laroche dead, the Crips were headless. Their new boss, Patrick, didn't have the strategic vision to orchestrate mass disappearances.
"Could it be a ghost crew sent by the Camorra?" Anthony asked. "Retaliation for Santino?"
John shook his head immediately.
"If Gramont is operating in New York, he would never allow an Italian syndicate to cross his borders. He would view it as a direct challenge to his authority."
John looked at Anthony. "I can't figure it out. What is the tactical value of kidnapping the absolute bottom tier of society?"
"You don't think it's an operation against the Tarasovs?"
"If Gramont wanted to force me out of hiding, he wouldn't use something this messy," John said. "There is a different geometry at work here."
Even with [Compensatory Perception] and his enhanced cognitive processing, Anthony couldn't connect the variables. The data simply didn't exist yet.
But Anthony knew one thing for certain: unlike the High Table assassins, ordinary street gangs did not possess "Continental Immunity." If someone was vacuuming up dozens of civilians and gangsters, the NYPD should be screaming about it.
It was time to ask the people who got paid to know.
Anthony pulled out his phone and dialed Officer Jimmy Simmons.
Jimmy picked up on the third ring. He sounded stressed.
"Anthony," Jimmy sighed. "I gave you my private number as a courtesy. Please tell me you haven't triggered another massacre. I just finished managing the bloody mess you left at MetLife. I know you operate with special privileges, but please try not to make as much noise as John does."
Anthony laughed. "John is standing right next to me."
"Good evening, Jimmy," John said dryly.
"Good evening... good evening, John," Jimmy stammered, the color audibly draining from his voice. "I didn't mean anything by it."
"We know," Anthony said, leaning against a graffiti-stained brick wall. "Jimmy, I need some information. Have there been a massive spike in missing persons cases across Queens and Brooklyn lately?"
A heavy, two-second silence hung over the line. Anthony heard the scrape of a chair being dragged across linoleum.
When Jimmy spoke again, his voice was a harsh whisper.
"Jesus, Anthony. That topic is as sensitive as a live grenade right now."
"The FBI took over the jurisdiction. Then Homeland Security stepped in. They completely locked out the NYPD Major Crimes Unit. My precinct is only authorized for perimeter patrols. We have zero access to the core case files."
Anthony blinked. He hadn't expected the federal government to be involved.
That explained why there hadn't been a single leak to the local news stations or newspapers. The feds had clamped down on the information entirely.
"I had a conversation with some locals tonight," Anthony said, waving off a passing taxi. "Gangs are losing men. The homeless are vanishing. Office workers are disappearing without a trace. And there are zero bodies."
"Shouldn't the NYPD have flagged an underground organ trafficking ring or a mass kidnapping operation early on?"
"Jesus Christ," Jimmy hissed, his voice dropping so low Anthony could barely hear him. "Listen to me very carefully. I am only going to say this once."
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