JULY 7, 1977
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK
Hopper paused at the far end of the table, then started what must have been his fifth lap as he paced the length of the meeting room buried somewhere deep in the warren of USPS offices. At the table sat Special Agent Gallup and Leroy Washington and a half-empty silver carafe of coffee, next to an empty one the trio had finished what felt like hours ago.
Gallup watched Hopper pace. “Are you done yet, Detective?”
Hopper stopped to run his hands through his hair. He turned to face the agent. “Am I done? You asked me if I’m done?”
“I did, yes. Because the sooner you realize the gravity of the situation you’ve gotten yourself in, the sooner we can get to work.”
Hopper shook his head. “This is insane.”
“No, it isn’t,” said Gallup. “And you know that. I can run through it again, if you like. Maybe this time you can take some notes, because you seem to be having a hard time comprehending just what I can do to you and your friends and your family if you don’t cooperate.”
“This is crazy.” Hopper resumed pacing.
“Because I will ruin their lives, and yours, if you don’t cooperate. And it won’t be my fault, it will be yours. Because the choice is entirely up to you.”
Hopper stopped in the middle of the room. He closed his eyes. Behind his lids, red shadows danced.
“You go undercover for me,” Gallup continued from somewhere a million miles away, “or you disappear. Diane loses her job. The IRS goes after them. She loses the apartment. Same for Detective Delgado. And that’ll just be the start, believe me.”
“You can’t do that,” said Hopper. He opened his eyes. “You can’t do any of that. Nobody can.”
Gallup looked at Leroy. “What am I doing wrong here, Leroy?” He gestured to Hopper. “Does your detective friend not speak English anymore? Did my agents hit him too hard on the head?” He turned back to Hopper. “I’ll try one more time. You will rot in whatever hole I put you in, and everyone you know will wish they were in there with you. Do you understand that, Detective?”
Hopper placed his hands on the table and leaned toward the agent. “And you can’t do any of that!”
Gallup shook his head. “I have the power to do precisely what I please. The choice is entirely yours.”
Hopper and the agent locked gazes; Hopper held it for a good few seconds, then he sighed and paced the room again.
Leroy’s eyes followed Hopper as he walked from one end of the room to the other and back again.
“Hopper, come on, listen. If this is a chance to get my sister out and to stop Saint John, then maybe it’s the only plan we got. Will you just sit down and listen to him?”
Hopper sighed and closed his eyes, willing his temper to calm. When he opened his eyes, he moved back to his seat and sat heavily in it. He looked at Gallup.
“So what if I said yes?”
Gallup linked his fingers together on the table. “You’ll cooperate?”
“No, I asked a question. And Saint John? How do we stop him? We don’t even know what he’s planning, do we? Apart from summoning the devil, that is.”
“Well,” said Gallup. “We’re assuming this devil worship that Mr. Washington has talked about is really a cover for something far more real and far more serious. Something I’m hoping that you’ll be able to find out. That is the whole reason I’m proposing this course of action.”
Hopper leaned back in his chair and shook his head in disbelief.
Gallup unlinked his hands and turned his attention to his shirt cuffs, adjusting them so they were just so.
“Our task force has been watching the Vipers for some time, Detective. They’re a new gang—New York is full of gangs, of course, but so far our intel suggests that the Vipers are something different. We believe their leader, the man who identifies himself as Saint John, has been gathering not only new recruits, but matériel. The recruits we think have come from other gangs. Somehow Saint John has done what few gang leaders have been able to do, uniting different factions and gangs, organizing them together under his own umbrella, as it were. Combining gangs also combines resources, and we know he has accumulated a lot of money and weapons. But it seems he’s recruiting from elsewhere, too—he’s forming a sort of inner circle, somehow finding people with particular expertise. What that expertise is, we don’t know. What he wants them for, we don’t know either. But we believe he’s planning something big, something that will pose a severe and significant threat to this city and its people.”
At this, Leroy nodded, rocking back on his chair. “Something big, man. I told you then, I’m telling you now. Things are going to get crazy. Day of the Serpent, that’s when it is.”
Hopper glanced at the gangster, then looked back at Gallup.
“Except we don’t know when that is. And all this talk of devil worship and summoning Satan. You think that’s just window dressing?”
Gallup pursed his lips. “You know as well as I do how the gangs of New York can be…colorful, shall we say. Each one carves out its own niche and identity. Saint John, whoever he is, seems to have been cultivating something of a cult of personality. We suspect that’s how he has been able to get other gangs to join him so readily. A charismatic leader, talking about the end-times and how his gang is not only going to summon the devil but serve him in the coming apocalypse, his words reinforced by ordering a series of ritual killings? It’s pure fantasy, but in a town like this, people can be drawn in, probably more easily than you would imagine, whether they really believe in it or not.”
Hopper rubbed his face, then dropped his hands to the table. “Seems like you have a lot of intel already.”
“Mr. Washington here has been most helpful,” said Gallup. “Plus—as you rightly suspected—we have other informants who have been able to feed us information. Agent Hoeler was one such informant.”
“One such informant who got himself caught and killed,” said Hopper.
Gallup nodded, but didn’t say anything.
Hopper shook his head again. “So why do you even need me? Why not just throw me in jail for obstructing your investigation? You already have informants, you already have intel, why not just go in, take Saint John and his gang out?”
But Gallup was already shaking his head. “We can’t risk precipitous action. If we start this, we need to know we can end it. We need to know what Saint John is planning. We need details, plans, times, dates, people. Everything. If we go in now, we might hurt the Vipers, but we might trigger Saint John’s plan—or a contingency plan. It’s too much of a risk. We need something concrete we can act on, and as soon as possible. That is why we need you.”
“But why me?”
“Because you’re not just any homicide detective. You’re a decorated veteran. You have the experience and you have the ability. You can handle yourself under the most extreme circumstances—your record speaks for itself. And…”
Gallup smiled. Hopper didn’t like the expression at all.
“And?”
“And,” Gallup continued, “you want to help.”
Hopper looked at him. He was in deep—far deeper than he wanted, far deeper than he had any right to be.
But.
Gallup was right. He did want to help. He wanted to stop the card killer. He wanted to catch him, bring him to justice.
More than that, he wanted to protect his neighborhood. Protect his city.
Protect his family.
Special Agent Gallup could read him like a book. Hopper hated him for it. But he also knew that he wouldn’t be able to resist. He didn’t know if Gallup’s threats were genuine, but the man seemed to hold a very powerful, if mysterious, position. It wasn’t a risk Hopper wanted to take. He didn’t like it and he didn’t like people like Special Agent Gallup.
But, even without the threats…he had to do this.
Had to.
He looked at Leroy, sitting next to him. The young man was drumming his fingers on the table, his knees jiggling underneath it.
“I need to get my sister out, man. Saint John, he’s bad. I need to get her out. I need to get me out.”
Hopper looked at Leroy for a long while, then he turned back to Gallup. The special agent smiled again and—for the first time—it seemed like a genuine expression.
“We’re all working to the same end, Detective Hopper.”
Hopper said nothing.
“So there’s your choice,” said Gallup. “You can say no, and okay, sure, you disappear and your family’s life goes to hell”—he waved a hand like it was nothing at all, a minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of things—“and maybe we can get this done without you and everything will just work out fine.”
He leaned forward across the table.
“Or maybe it won’t. Maybe Saint John and the Vipers will win. Maybe Beelzebub really will erect a throne on top of the Empire State Building and rule over a burning world. Or maybe something much more real and much worse will happen.”
Hopper looked at Gallup. He looked at Leroy. The gangster’s nostrils flared as he took deep, slow breaths.
“So,” said Gallup, “the question is really, are you going to help me save the city, or not?”
Hopper poked his tongue into his cheek. He could feel his heart thudding in his chest.
Then he nodded. Just once.
“Excellent,” said Gallup. “Now, the first step, Detective, is to make you disappear.”