Chapter 5 - The Judgment of the Wolf
The private hangar at Rockford Airport was quiet, the rain blurring the runway lights into long, smeared streaks of yellow and red. A small twin-engine Cessna sat on the tarmac, its propellers already spinning with a low, vibrating roar.
Dr. Harold Whitmore, a man of sixty-five with silver hair and an elegant, custom-tailored coat, was hurrying up the metal steps, a heavy leather briefcase clutched to his chest. His hands were shaking so violently he dropped his boarding pass onto the wet asphalt.
He bent to pick it up.
A black leather shoe stepped squarely onto the paper.
Whitmore froze. He slowly looked up, his breath catching in his throat as the pale light of the hangar illuminated the scarred, severe face of Levi Marconi.
“Going somewhere, Harold?” Levi asked, his voice smooth and cold as the rain.
“Levi!” Whitmore gasped, trying to force a look of relief onto his face, though his skin had turned a sickly shade of grey. “Thank God you're here. I... I received a tip. There’s an active hit out on you from the eastern factions. I was trying to get to the northern borders to coordinate with our contacts—”
“Save it,” Levi said.
He reached out, his massive hand clamping around Whitmore’s throat with a strength that lifted the older man completely off his feet, slamming him hard against the aluminum hull of the aircraft. The leather briefcase clattered to the ground, bursting open to reveal stacks of hundred-dollar bills and encrypted ledgers.
“Eight years, Harold,” Levi whispered, his gray-blue eyes mere inches from the doctor’s terrified face. “Eight years I sat across from you at my father’s memorial dinner. I let you check my pulse. I let you tell me stories about how much he loved me. And all the while, you were dripping poison into my veins to pay off your debts to New York.”
“Levi... please...” Whitmore choked out, his face turning purple as his fingers clawed uselessly at Levi’s iron wrists. “I loved Antonio... they would have killed my family...”
“My father would have protected your family if you had been man enough to ask,” Levi said, his voice dropping into a register of pure, absolute finality. “But you chose the easy way. You chose the needle in the dark.”
Levi lowered him slightly, just enough for Whitmore’s toes to touch the wet metal step. With his other hand, Levi pulled a small, clear glass vial from his inner pocket—the very vial Sal’s team had recovered from the Street Grace vault.
“This is the New York formula, Harold,” Levi said, holding the glass between his fingers. “The one you prepared for my nine o’clock appointment today. It’s funny how things come around. You spent eight years trying to stop a Marconi’s heart. Let’s see how yours handles the pressure.”
“No! No, please, Levi! Don't!” Whitmore shrieked, his dignity completely evaporating as he began to weep, his body shaking against the plane.
Levi stared at the old man—the grand family physician, the pillar of the Chicago medical community, now reduced to a begging, sniveling coward on a wet runway. He looked at the vial, then out at the dark, empty sky over the tarmac.
Suddenly, the image of a little seven-year-old girl in broken shoes flashed through his mind. Sir, please don't take your medicine today. She had saved him not with violence, not with money, but with a wild, bright laughter that refused to let the darkness win.
If he forced the poison down Whitmore’s throat here, in the dark, he would be exactly what the doctor thought he was. A monster in a black suit. Another body in an alley.
Levi slowly let go of the doctor’s throat.
Whitmore collapsed onto the steps, coughing violently, gasping for air as he clutched his chest.
“You’re not going to die tonight, Harold,” Levi said, stepping back into the rain. “Death is too clean for what you did. You’re going to stay alive. You’re going to sit in a courtroom while the state prosecutor reads every name, every shipment, and every murder you signed your name to. I’m going to strip your family name off every hospital wing in this city until the word Whitmore means nothing but a thief in a white coat.”
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He turned to Sal, who was standing near the edge of the hangar with three state state police cruisers already pulling onto the tarmac, their sirens silent but their red-and-blue lights washing over the wet concrete.
“Hand him over,” Levi said. “And clear the hangar.”
